Night Walker (13 page)

The kid was in good condition; running did not seem to bother her, even after her lengthy swim. She plugged right along the narrow bare strip beside the water, occasionally slowing down to wade around a bad place. When she stopped at last, he turned the glasses on her. They brought her very close and clear despite the screen on the window and the intervening leaves. He saw her pause to catch her breath and then wade out into the cove — gingerly because of the muddy bottom here — and begin to swim around the reeds that grew out to a point near the dock.

She was being careful now, doing most of it under water and breaking the surface gently when she rose; then she was under the dock and he could no longer
see her. There was not much doubt in his mind as to her destination now, and he held the binoculars steady on the cockpit of the power cruiser lying at the end of the pier; she would have to come over the stern since the bow was too high to reach from the water. When she came into sight she was moving fast, lunging for the rail and heaving herself up and inboard in a flash, so that if he had not been watching for her there he might well have missed her entirely. She did not appear again. He did not expect her to; she would keep her head down until she had wormed her way into the cabin.

Young let the binoculars down to hang by their strap about his neck. He hesitated a moment, although there was clearly no decision to be made; his next move was obvious. He had to go down there and see what the hell the kid was up to. He pulled the glasses off, laid them on the dining table and walked deliberately out of the house, pausing at the edge of the lawn to look back as it occurred to him that he had never seen the place from the outside to remember it, having been in pretty poor shape the day he was brought here. It was an old brick house, he saw now, with white trim that needed painting. The lines were square and formal and heavy; it was a house that took itself seriously, but the shaggy condition of the grounds gave it an unkempt look, like that of an elderly aristocratic gentleman with alcoholic
tendencies. It was a house that had seen better days, and nicer people.

Young swung himself about, knowing that he was stalling, and looked down the path at the dock below, and thought, sourly,
It’s only a little girl, junior, a hundred and ten pounds on the hoof, if that; and you’ve got a gun.
There was another thought that was trying to claim his attention; but he gave it no chance. He drew a deep breath that hurt the bruises and torn ligaments of his chest but did not seem to touch the emptiness in his lungs, and started down.

The steeper portions of the path were laid in shallow stone steps around which the rains had cut treacherous gullies; and nobody had cut the brush back all spring. Young made the awkward descent with care, since his knees were still not entirely dependable. It was not his intention to hide his approach — he had no strength to spare for that — and he made no attempt at silence; when he reached the dock at last his steps resounded hollowly on the heavy boards. The dock was longer than it had seemed from above. The
Amberjack
lay uneasy at the extreme end of it, stirred by the waves rolling in from the estuary, with a constant creaking of dock-lines and fenders. As Young had told Elizabeth, it was a poor place to keep a boat tied up permanently. The deckhouse windows were shielded by blinds on the inside, so that there was no seeing who was aboard.

Young visualized the probable plan of the boat as he moved forward. On a forty-footer there would not be much variation from the standard pattern: an open cockpit at the stern, the glassed-in deckhouse with steering wheel and engine controls, and, down a short companionway, the galley, head, and sleeping quarters under the forward deck. As Young came closer he noted that the forward hatch was open for ventilation; and the thought that he preferred not to consider stirred again at the back of his mind. He was aware of the old, familiar, low-tide smells; he noticed that the tide was still ebbing, although, by the looks of it, they did not have much tide this far up the Bay. He remembered places he had known where a ten-foot rise and fall was nothing out of the ordinary; it seemed to him that he had been away from salt water for a long time.

He paused at the end of the dock, took a grip of the gun in his trousers pocket, and waited for the boat to swing back in to him. Then he stepped down into the cockpit that was still, he noticed, splashed wetly where the kid had hauled herself aboard. He took a step forward. The deckhouse doors were open so that he could see inside, and she was sitting on the port settee, just abaft the helmsman’s seat. She had her foot in her lap, and a first-aid kit was open on the leather cushion beside her. She looked up without surprise as he stepped inside.

“Hi, Larry,” she said.

Bonita Decker laughed. “Toss me a hanky, will you, Larry? I’m bleeding all over the lousy boat.... Thanks. Now peel me one of those Band-Aids. God damn people who heave bottles and stuff in the water, anyway!”

Young found himself helping her mechanically, although this involved taking his hand from the gun in his pocket. He was uneasily aware of the strained and limited motion of the boat against the dock; he had not had a deck under his feet for more than six years and the familiar heave and roll — the occasional jerk as the cruiser was brought up sharp by the fenders or mooring lines — brought back memories that he would have preferred to leave forgotten. He was also acutely conscious of the open companionway at the forward end of the deckhouse; and he admitted to himself now that he had been terribly afraid that he would not find the girl alone, and that he was still by no means certain that she was alone.

At some time during the past half hour it had occurred to him suddenly that a bold and ingenious
man — a man like Larry Wilson — might well consider it both clever and amusing to choose for a hiding place a comfortable cabin cruiser tied up directly below the window of a wife who believed that she had killed him....

Nothing moved in the forward part of the boat, at least not with enough noise to be heard above the creakings and splashings normal to a vessel lying in this exposed position. Young stood by in silence while the girl covered the cut on the ball of her right foot. She looked up, holding out the stained handkerchief. He took it, trying to read in her small, freckled face — as sunburned as a person of her fair coloring could get — whether she really believed him to be Wilson or was just stringing him along. After all, the kid had not gone to all this trouble just to pay a surreptitious visit to a boat she had doubtless seen several hundred times before; she had come here to find something — or somebody.

Whatever the situation, it was clearly time for him to speak; he could not remain dumb forever. But when he reached for words he discovered that the days that had passed had erased from his mind all memory of Wilson’s normal voice and manner; there was no picture of the man left for him to imitate. All he could think of was a whisper in the night and an armed figure running.

He cleared his throat. “All squared away?” he
asked. “Well, I’ll take this rag below and wash it out.”

The nautical phrases sounded phony to his ears, but the girl seemed undisturbed. She closed the first-aid kit and gave it to him.

“Might as well stow this away, too, while you’re at it.”

He could not tell whether it was a test or not; obviously the little box was kept in a place aboard — presumably below — well known both to her and to Larry Wilson, and just as obviously he had no idea what place this might be. The fact that she made no move to accompany him seemed to indicate that she had no idea of the problem with which she had confronted him.

The companionway ladder was short; four steps brought him down to the level of the galley. He had his hand on the gun now, but aside from the constant motion of the boat itself, nothing moved. The galley was to starboard; opposite was the kind of dinette that could be converted into a berth at night. The area had an efficient and compact look of space well utilized; it was lighted by an oval port on each side as well as by the open companionway. Young found the headroom somewhat scanty for his height; although there was clearance enough, he found himself crouching a little to make quite sure that he would not crack his bandaged head against the deck beams. The problem of the first-aid kit solved itself when he saw, mounted on
a nearby bulkhead, a white-painted cabinet the door of which, hanging open, was marked with a large red cross. He pushed the kit inside and secured the door. He dropped the blood-stained handkerchief on the drainboard of the stainless steel sink, took the gun out of his pocket, and moved cautiously to inspect the three closed mahogany doors in front of him.

The one to starboard opened under his hand to show him the head, with its manually operated, seagoing plumbing that, he recalled, most landlubbers seemed to find fully as confusing as the rigging of a square-rigged ship. The door to port, narrower, revealed a locker devoted to the storage of oilskins and life-preservers. That left only the full-sized door leading forward. He pushed it open and found himself in a neat double stateroom, quite empty, with comfortable berths on either hand, an open and empty clothes-locker, and a well-varnished mahogany dresser with a mirror above.

The stateroom, well forward in the boat, necessarily tapered toward the bow so that the two berths almost met at the forward end of the compartment, leaving only space enough for a narrow door, which stood open, held that way by a brass hook and eye. Young moved forward slowly and looked into the space beyond. There was a pipe-berth here, but this wedge-shaped compartment in the bow was apparently used mainly as a store-room and rope locker. It
was lighted only by the open hatch overhead, which gave sufficient illumination to show that there was no one inside.

As Young paused there a moment, a rumbling went through the whole boat. He found himself gripping the door jamb tightly; it seemed to him that suddenly he could smell gasoline and fire, while at the same time all his senses were prepared for the first ugly lurch and rush of water and the increasingly heavy and sodden motion as the craft settled swiftly, carrying him, trapped in this tiny space, down. He cast a panicky look at the hatch overhead. An iron ladder bolted to the bulkhead made it possible to reach the deck this way. His foot was on the first rung when the starter, grinding away, finally managed to kick the reluctant engine into life.

He leaned against the ladder weakly. Presently he looked down and saw that he had dropped the gun. He picked it up and put it in his pocket. Even now, knowing where it came from, the sound and vibration gave him a trapped feeling; and he walked quickly back through the boat and looked up the companionway at the girl sitting at the controls.

“What the hell,” he asked, “do you think you’re doing?”

She cut the switch and the motor stopped. “Why, I was just seeing if she’d still turn over after lying here all spring.”

He said, “Well, you scared hell out of me.”

“Then you scare awful easy these days,” she said. “What the devil are you doing down there, anyway, Larry? I shouldn’t stick around too long, you know.”

He said, “I was just checking to see what kind of shape she’s in. I’ll be right up.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve got a beer on ice.”

“No,” he said, “I don’t suppose so.”

He turned back and let some water into the sink and rinsed out the handkerchief. When he came into the deckhouse, Bonita Decker was kneeling on the starboard settee, looking shoreward past one of the drawn blinds that she had pulled aside.

“What are you looking at?” Young asked.

“Just checking,” she said without turning her head. “Where is she?”

“Elizabeth? She’s asleep. She went hysterical on me this morning. I had to call Henshaw out to calm her down. He gave her something. She’s good for a couple of hours yet.”

Bonita Decker hesitated, started to ask a question and checked herself; then she stood up and turned to face him and he realized with some surprise that she was almost a very good-looking little girl. She did not quite make it; she had a year or two to go yet. Somebody would have to knock the brashness and the shrillness and the profanity out of her, and teach her how to put on lipstick and fix her hair and what to
do about the freckles, and how to sit and stand and walk — apparently her family had long since given up trying to make a lady of her, and you could see why. Resistance to discipline would be her strong point. She had a look he recognized; kids who were turned loose to grow up around the water developed an air of independence and self-confidence that was unmistakable, if they didn’t drown first. It occurred to him that he might have had something of the same look himself, once.

But the stuff was there, Young thought; even now with the short red hair damp and spiky about her head, with her nose and shoulders freckled and peeling — with that skin she would peel all summer — even now in the green satin bathing suit that was in some way too scanty and careless to be really sexy, she had something to make a thoughtful man pause to look at her twice. It was all the more interesting because she had clearly not discovered it herself; or if she had, it had scared her, and she had decided to pay no attention to it. She was getting along fine being a kid and did not want to change. But the change would come, Young thought, and not too long from now — she was old enough — and she was going to play hell with a lot of men until she found one big enough and tough enough to beat her ears down. It would take quite a man.

Looking at her, Young had forgotten, for a moment,
the circumstances that had brought them together here; then he remembered Lawrence Wilson. Doubtless Wilson had seen the promise he, Young, was seeing now, and had elected himself to teach the kid the facts of life — which meant, in turn, that she could hardly be as unawakened as she looked, not after playing around with a man like Wilson for a whole summer. She was a phony like the rest of them, Young reflected grimly, and that tough-but-innocent-little-kid pose was nothing but an attitude she found useful. It was like Elizabeth’s wistful hopelessness, or Henshaw’s bitter futility, or Wilson’s hearty good-fellowship; it was like his own attitude of rueful self-contempt. It was a mask behind which, like the rest of them, she hid from others — and perhaps even from herself — her real fears and desires, her pretty little schemes and cheap ambitions.