Operation Fireball (7 page)

“Okay.” It seemed little enough to do.

“See you soon.” Erikson smiled—I realized it was the first smile I’d seen from him—and left the men’s room.

Two minutes later I picked up my bag at the bell captain’s desk and left the Hotel Aztec and San Diego.

The first thing I noticed about Key West was the heat.

At Miami after the flight from San Francisco the temperature had been 82°. At Key West International Airport it was 87°, and it was a humidity-boosted increase. I could feel my clothes beginning to stick to me during the short walk from the terminal to the cabstand.

The September-afternoon flight from Miami to Key West in an elderly DC-3 was picturesque. The color alone would have sent an artist to an LSD pill in an effort to duplicate it. A thousand variations of blues and greens tinted the waters of the Atlantic and the Gulf on either side of the scimitar-shaped line of tiny islands extending down to the tip of the Keys.

The majority of the key islands seen from the air were covered with a dense growth of pine trees and fringed at the water’s edge with a brief skirt of white sand. Many keys appeared uninhabited, but occasionally a glimpse of a white house amid the pines or a boat at a dock could be seen. The overall impression was one of silent isolation.

“Take me into the center of town,” I told the cabbie, a yachting-capped native with a Spanish cast to his features. I didn’t want to make my first appearance at The Castaways in a cab. The air coming through the cab windows was warm, damp air. There was no hint of a breeze. The landscape was flat as a pool table. Trees grew in profusion in backyards and in parklike areas. I saw Australian pine, date palm, banyan, jacaranda, and tamarind.

The driver took me to the La Concha Motor Inn on Duval Street. The lobby had a deserted, off-season look. My footsteps echoed hollowly on tile as I approached the front desk. As I registered, I had the feeling I could have any room in the house. “Sorry our restaurant is closed, sir,” the clerk apologized. “The Mermaid Tavern adjoining is open, though.”

A boy took my bag aboard the elevator. He stopped at the second floor and we picked our way around a welter of beams and braces extending into the corridor. A second elevator shaft was being sunk beside the first. The boy turned on the air-conditioner in my room. The resulting blast of frigid air all but stiffened my wilted collar. I fiddled with the adjustment after the boy accepted my tip and left the room, then stretched out on the bed and breathed lightly until I stopped dripping.

I didn’t intend to, but I fell asleep. I’d lost an extra day in San Francisco while I waited for the electronics warehouse to chase down some obscure part on Erikson’s list. I hadn’t spent the time with my hands folded, and I’d flown out too soon afterward for my system to have a chance to recover.

When I awoke, it was almost dark. I showered, but even after a cold rinse my skin felt clammy. I had only long-sleeved white shirts in my bag. I rolled the sleeves, dispensed with tie and jacket, checked the set of my wig in the mirror, and walked down the single flight of stairs to the lobby.

No one was in sight, not even the clerk or the bellman. I went to the front entrance, opened the glass door, and stepped out onto the sidewalk. The first breath was like being hit in the face with a steamy dishrag. The humidity must have been at least ninety. I could feel my skin prickling as moisture built up subcutaneously.

I walked west on Duval Street, toward the docks. While studying a map of Key West I had been surprised to find how compact it was. Within the business district everything was within walking distance. Flowering trees overhung the sidewalk. I recognized cereus and frangipani. They would have been bushes or shrubs anywhere except in this tropical atmosphere. Foliage was junglelike in its density and in the riot of color given off by outsized blossoms.

I had dinner at the New England Restaurant, which was on the waterfront with a view of the Key West Bight. When I left the restaurant, I had my course charted. I backtracked a block on Front Street, turned left on Ann, crossed Green, and turned left on Caroline. I passed Peacock Lane and William Street before coming to Margaret. From the intersection I could see the glitter of neon announcing
THE CASTAWAYS
.

I walked the half block and turned into its entrance which I was amazed to see had no door. The humid night air drifted inside to mingle with the air conditioning. Hazel was behind the bar. She had on her usual sleeveless buckskin vest. I couldn’t see the rest of her, but I was sure she would be wearing her working uniform of Levis and silver-conched cowboy boots.

She looked up at my entrance but gave no sign of recognition. There were fewer than a dozen customers in the room, from their looks commercial fishermen. A flight of stairs led up to a second floor, and at its foot a battered table held an open journal that evidently functioned as a guest registry.

“Jim Beam,” I said to Hazel as I sat down on a bar stool. She served it to me on the rocks, at the same time cutting her eyes toward the end of the bar. After a sip of my drink I looked down that way. A wiry-looking man in khakis was sitting on the end stool with his back to the wall so he could watch the entire room.

His skin was dark, whether naturally or from the sun I couldn’t tell. He had black hair, shiny with oil. He was handsome in the pretty-boy style that can still look dangerous. There is a type in the Keys, native to the area, known as a conch. Part-Spanish, part-Indian, part-everything-else, they’re great watermen, raised on the channels and inlets. This man looked the part. He had a half-filled glass with a liquid dark enough to be rum, but his eyes were doing the drinking. He was focused on nothing except Hazel’s movements behind the bar.

The conversations in the room were so quiet I could hear the drone of the air conditioning. On the walls I could see the fresh paint that Hazel had ordered. She stooped swiftly beneath a hinged flap on the bar top, which permitted her to reach the main floor area near the stairway. She ran upstairs lightly and disappeared around a corner that concealed the second floor landing.

I slid from the bar stool, crossed the room, and climbed the stairs. Hazel was waiting at the top. I patted her back as she hugged me. “What about the piratical-looking type at the end of the bar?” I asked her.

“He’s one of ours.” She kept her voice low.

I glanced at the closed doors of the rooms leading off the second floor corridor. “Anyone up here?”

“No. Sound carries downstairs.”

“How do you know he’s one of ours?”

“Erikson told me.”

“Erikson is here already?” I hadn’t intended that Erikson would beat me to The Castaways. I had a mental image of Karl Erikson sizing up Hazel behind the bar. “Did he give you a hard time?”

“Not at all. The one downstairs is Chico Wilson. He’s the boat owner. He’s drinking a hundred-fifty-four-proof Demarara rum. Straight.” Hazel smiled. “Drinking and trying to make me.” She was looking down the stairwell behind me. “Here he comes.” Her voice rose. “Watch it! He has—”

She placed a palm in my chest and shoved. I staggered backward until my shoulders hit the wall behind me. I could see the Latin-looking type from the bar moving noiselessly up the last few stairs. In his right hand was a curved fishing knife.

“Take care thish one f’ you, doll,” he assured Hazel. I thought it was funny until I saw his eyes. They were glazed.

“Now, listen, Chico—” Hazel tried to bar his progress. He moved right through her as if she weren’t there. Considering her size, it was quite a trick.

“Teach ‘m not horn in ‘f not invited,” he muttered, confronting me in the narrow space.

“Does the name Erikson mean anything to you?” I said.

It slowed him, but it didn’t stop him. His thinking processes were submerged under a quart of rum. He continued to herd me into a corner, where I couldn’t escape his knife. I wasn’t wearing my gun, since with only a shirt on it would have been impossible to conceal the outline of the holster. I was lining up a spot on his anatomy to plant my heel when Hazel came up behind him and rabbit-punched him. She really let him have a bunch of knuckles at the end of a full-armed swing.

It would have floored an ordinary man. All it did to him was spin him around in her direction. “Th’ hell you doin', doll?” he growled at her. The hand with the knife in it massaged the back of his neck.

“That’s my fella you’re fixing on carving,” Hazel informed him. “He’s one of us.”

He blinked at her several times. I couldn’t tell if it was from the rabbit punch or the news. He turned full around to examine me for a deliberate moment. Plainly he wasn’t impressed by what he saw. He turned back to Hazel again. “Your fella o’ny because you haven’t known me long,” he told her. The knife disappeared in some sleight-of-hand too rapid for me to follow. I couldn’t even tell if it went into his shirt or his pants. “Shorry. Buy drink for ‘s all, okay?”

“Okay,” Hazel agreed. She shepherded him toward the stairs. “Come on, Earl,” she said to me.

“Pleased t’ meetcha, Earl,” Wilson said over his shoulder from the middle of the stairs.

“We shouldn’t be seen in the bar together,” I reminded Hazel.

Wilson turned around and started back up the stairs. “You refusin’ to drink with me?” he demanded belligerently.

“I’ll bring the drinks upstairs,” Hazel said hastily. “Go into the first room there.” She motioned to the door on the left.

“Okay,” Wilson said with a drunk’s sudden change of direction. The first thing he did upon entering the pleasantly furnished room was to turn off the air conditioning. “Too cold,” he said. I sat and sweltered for twenty minutes while Wilson drank rum and talked to Hazel during the intervals when she wasn’t running downstairs to take care of the bar customers. Wilson crossed me off his list as soon as he found out I didn’t know anything about boats. Hazel, though, he liked. “Me’n you’s gonna get real friendly,” he said to her. “I’m gonna screw you till your belly button turns red, white, an’ purple.”

Hazel smiled. Wilson stood up and went into the bathroom. For all the rum, he was still walking in a straight line. “If you’re waiting for him to pass out, forget it,” Hazel said to me. “I’ve seen his type before. He can go for three days and stay as sharp physically as a razorback hog.”

“Don’t underestimate the slob,” I warned her. “I’ve seen his type, too. They’re like rattlesnakes. If you cut them in two, the end with the head gets stronger. You sure you’re all right?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Then, I’ll leave. I’ll be back in the morning to stay.” Wilson came out of the bathroom. “Good night, everyone.”

He accompanied me to the door, the most genial of hosts, but he remained in the room while Hazel and I went downstairs. I pointed to the absence of a door at the front entrance. “Are you trying to air-condition all of the keys?”

“It’s the custom of the country,” she replied. “Like New Orleans. No doors. We put a grill up for closing.”

“Is Erikson staying here tonight?”

“He said he had something to do but that he would be back tomorrow.”

“Right. See you then. Keep an eye and a half on friend Chico.”

“If he flashes that knife again, I have a powder for his rum,” she said. “But I won’t need it. He’ll concentrate now on waiting for me to beg him to take me to bed.”

She gave me her big smile, and I went out the doorway.

During the walk back to the La Concha Motor Inn, I came to two decisions.

The first was to try to find out what Karl Erikson’s business was in Key West that kept him away from The Castaways that night.

The second was not to appear in the handsome Chico’s presence again without having my .38 available.

BY TEN O’CLOCK
the next morning I was installed in a room at The Castaways. Hazel sat on the bed and watched me unpack. “What comes next?” she wanted to know.

“I’m not sure. When we all get here—” I stopped as footsteps sounded on the stairway leading up from the first floor. I looked at Hazel. “Our friend Chico?”

“I doubt it. He should still be sleeping it off.”

I eased myself to the door, cracked it, and looked out. Karl Erikson’s blond head appeared above the level of the landing. As all of him came into view I could see that he was loaded down with packages. I opened the door wider, crossed the corridor, and threw open the door of the room across from mine.

Erikson nodded to me as he went inside and dropped his brown-paper-wrapped packages on the bed. They were tied with heavy twine, and the bed bounced from the weight suddenly deposited upon it. The blond man had walked upstairs with the load as easily as if he were carrying a loaf of bread.

I went back to Hazel’s and my room, and Erikson followed a moment later. “Where’s Slater?” I asked him.

“He’ll be along tomorrow.” Erikson and Hazel exchanged good mornings. I wondered why he didn’t say something to me about Hazel’s presence at The Castaways. “I think we can get going—”

We both turned at a sound from the doorway. Chico Wilson was standing there in a pair of white underwear shorts that contrasted sharply with the deep tan of his torso and legs. He yawned, stretching his arms akimbo. He had the smooth skin of a girl, but I could see the hard ripple of muscle beneath. “Hi, Karl,” he said. His eyes were clear. There was no outward indication of the load of booze he’d taken on the day before. “Hi”—he snapped his fingers while looking in my direction—“Whatever-your-name-is.”

“Earl,” I said.

“Earl,” he repeated. He grinned at Hazel on the bed. “Hi, doll.”

“You’ve met, then?” Erikson said to me.

“We’ve met.” I said it with no particular inflection, but I could see Erikson studying me. He didn’t pursue the subject, but I could visualize him putting it away in a file-now-and-come-back-to-later compartment of his orderly mind.

“Can we take a cruise on the boat, Chico?” Erikson asked.

“Anytime,” Wilson affirmed. He grinned at Hazel again. “You’re invited, doll.”

I waited for Erikson to object. When he didn’t, I thought I knew why. A woman aboard the fishing cruiser would give a touristy appearance to the expedition.

“We’ll meet at the boat in an hour,” Erikson ruled. “Separately.” Whether he realized it or not, his tone had all the flavor of an order from the quarterdeck. “Chico, stop off at this address”—Erikson handed him a slip of paper—“and take what they have for you aboard. There’ll be another load later to be brought here.”

Wilson was again smiling at Hazel. “It’ll be a pleasure to welcome you aboard the
Calypso
, doll,” he said. He yawned again, then stretched exaggeratedly in a manner that effectively displayed shoulder muscles. A jagged ridge of knotted scar tissue across his otherwise smooth abdomen indicated that at least once Wilson had been talking when he should have been listening. He left the room after a final look at Hazel to note her reaction.

“Not exactly my idea of an undercover man,” I said to Erikson. “He draws the eye like a drum major.”

“He comes well recommended,” Erikson replied. “And so does his cruiser. See you in an hour.”

“I wish I understood that man,” I said as the door closed behind him.

“What’s to understand?” Hazel asked. “I’d say that the body-beautiful Chico is a much more complicated animal.”

“No. I’ve met a hundred Chicos. I’m not sure I’ve ever met an Erikson.”

“Well, how does he come through to you?”

I hesitated. “I’m not sure. He doesn’t seem to
fit
, somehow. Or maybe I’m imagining things.” I went over and sat down beside her. “Maybe it’s because he had the handicap of a college education. He’s an ex-Navy type embittered at authority after getting scorched, you know.”

“Well”—she snuggled closer to me—“he said we had an hour.”

“He might not even have been doing anything wrong himself. When the Navy decides to blitz an offending admiral, they usually burn down all the surrounding scenery so they won’t have any skeletons in the closet in the future.”

“An hour,” Hazel said pointedly. She wriggled still closer.

“It would be a shame to waste it,” I agreed.

There followed a mutual laying-on of hands. When it developed that we were wearing too many clothes for that form of exercise, we got rid of the clothes. The room’s air conditioning felt moist upon my bare flesh.

“Move your knee out of the way,” I said to Hazel.

“Out of the way of what?” she murmured.

“Out of the way of the machinery. That’s it. There.”

“Mmmmmmmmmmm!”

“Over the waves, baby. Over the waves.”

• • •

Within the given hour we stood on the dock looking down at the 38-foot length of the
Calypso
. I had trouble locating it at first amid the cluster of hulls and the forest of masts. When Hazel and I arrived at the dock, a five-minute walk from The Castaways, my glance ran up and down the maze of boats tied up in straggling rows until I came to a break in the ranks of white hulls. I stared for a moment before I realized I was looking at the
Calypso
. Its hull was dark blue and the superstructure was dark grey. The boat blended with the water while the other hulls stood out. I didn’t know Chico Wilson’s usual business, but if it was what I had a hunch it was, the sea-blending nonvisibility of his cruiser made a lot of sense.

We walked out on the stringpiece nearest the cruiser. “She doesn’t look fast,” Hazel observed. Hazel was in white minishorts and a bright-colored blouse. I was wearing wash slacks and a loud sport shirt she’d bought for me. Beneath the loose-fitting sport shirt I had on my shoulder holster.

The
Calypso
looked squat and heavy as it lay low in the water. “This test run is to make sure of its speed,” I said. “Although Erikson said the cruiser came well recommended.”

Chico Wilson popped his head out the pilothouse door and waved to us. “Jump aboard,” he called, eyeing Hazel’s shorts greedily. I could see Erikson in the pilot house with him.

I leaped down onto the weather-beaten fantail, then helped Hazel down. We walked over worn wooden planking to the forward cabin door. Wilson and Erikson met us there. “Chico’s going to give us a quick tour,” Erikson said.

I could see Hazel eyeing grease on the planking and chips out of the paint as she followed Wilson into the cabin. I had already noticed peeling deck paint and green, oxidized brasswork. Inside, the carpeting was threadbare and there were damp curls of dust in the corners. There was the musty odor of moldy cushions, and oil and gasoline fumes were thick enough to almost form a haze.

Erikson’s mouth was screwed up in distaste as he glanced around. Wilson saw it, too. “Don’t worry,” he said grinning. “She’s clean where it counts, the hull an’ the engine compartment.”

“Let’s see the engine,” Erikson said shortly. Wilson led the way amidships and pried up a double door in the flooring. Buried in the
Calypso’s
midsection were two brutish-looking in-line engines. “What horsepower?” Erikson asked.

“Three twenty each,” Wilson replied. “Jammed into the same space I pulled a single two-hundred-fifty-horsepower engine off its bed. Hell of a job, but it was worth it. When I cut these babies loose, the Coast Guard don’t know which way the old girl went.”

“What’s your cruising range?”

Wilson showed his white teeth again. “Well, it’s not Europe. Tank capacity’s four hundred eighty gallons, but when these two engines get to suckin’ juice at forty knots, this sweet bitch uses gasoline faster’n you can throw it overboard in five-gallon cans.”

“Forty knots,” Erikson repeated. He looked slightly mollified. “All right, take her outside and wring her out.”

I saw the back of Wilson’s hand trail across Hazel’s bare thigh as he passed her. She didn’t change expression. Up on the flying bridge I picked out a slightly less dirty seat cushion and sat down. Above my head I could see the corroded metal of the aluminum tuna tower.

Wilson started up the engines, which rumbled dutifully in a double-basso duet. He ran fore and aft like a monkey, casting off lines while Erikson fended us off the stringpiece with a boathook. Wilson sprinted back to the wheel and backed the
Calypso
away from the slip in a graceful arc, then threaded his way through the turns in the wharfage until he reached the channel leading to open water.

“How many in your crew?” Erikson raised his voice above the sound of the engines.

“Two reg’lar. My mate, Donnie Redmond, who can handle her as good as I can, an’ a kid to handle the bait for fishin’ parties.”

Outside the bight there was a pronounced swell. Wilson increased the speed, and the chest tones in the
Calypso’s
mechanical voice deepened. The boat seemed to climb a bit higher in the water as it surged smoothly through the waves rather than over them. Erikson stood at arm’s length from Wilson near the wheel; his body relaxed with the swaying motion in the manner of a man who has experienced several thousand hours in like circumstances.

Hazel remained on her feet, too, a half-dozen paces to the rear of the pair at the wheel. I noticed that her eyes were fixed on the huge maritime compass swung overhead so that it confronted the wheelsman without the necessity for his turning his head. I remembered again that Hazel had handled powerboats during her years on Florida’s Gulf Coast.

Erikson said something to Wilson that I couldn’t hear in the freshening breeze. Our speed increased, then increased again sharply. Sheets of water surged past the bridge at eye level, thrown off from the bow wave as the
Calypso
bored through the swell. The engines roared like monsters in travail as the swaying motion quickened to a plunging motion. The new gyrations of the
Calypso
reminded me forcefully that I was a land animal.

My sensations must have showed in my expression. Wilson glanced over at me, and a corner of his mouth curled. His gaze passed on to Hazel, who was balancing easily against the boat’s motion, her red hair flying. Wilson’s white teeth gleamed in the provocative grin I was coming to dislike. He patted the steering wheel invitingly, in dumb show inviting Hazel to take over.

She looked at Erikson, waiting for a veto. When he provided none, she stepped up and took the wheel. The wind flattened her blouse to her body, delineating her large breasts. Wilson watched her hands on the wheel for a moment, then stepped aside to give her room. He saw her glance up at the compass, and his grin widened. “Nor’ by nor’west!” he bawled.

I could see Hazel’s lips move, but I couldn’t hear her voice in the whistling windstream. She must have repeated the direction, because the
Calypso
changed course gradually, then settled down to throwing water again. “By God, she can set a course!” Wilson roared in delight. “We’ve got us a sailor aboard!”

In a few moments Erikson tapped Hazel on the shoulder and motioned for her to give way at the wheel. He took over himself and began conning the boat in a series of sweeping turns, testing its maneuverability. Hazel came over and sat down beside me. Before she left the wheel, Hazel stooped and picked up something which she showed me as she sat down. It was a length of a lead pipe with a wooden handle.

Wilson sat down beside us, closer to Hazel than he needed to be. “That’s to repel boarders,” he informed us when he saw what Hazel held in her hand. “Lots of pirates in these waters.” He slipped an arm around Hazel’s waist. In seconds his hand had circumnavigated her body and the fingers at the end of the hand were cupping her breast.

Hazel twisted on the seat cushion, raised the lead pipe, and smashed it down upon the railing within inches of Wilson’s encircling arm. The pipe made a noticeable dent in the hard wood of the railing.

Wilson didn’t flinch. His fingers were no longer at Hazel’s breast, but he didn’t remove his arm. “You want to be a little bit careful with that thing,” he said.

“I
was
careful,” Hazel informed him sweetly. “That time.”

“I like it when they have a little spirit,” Wilson said to no one and everyone.

At the wheel Erikson raised his arm. Wilson started to get to his feet, but the blond man waved him off. He beckoned, and Hazel went to him and took the wheel. I couldn’t tell if Erikson had seen the byplay with the lead pipe or not. He sat down between Wilson and me.

“I want this cruiser cleaned,” he said to Wilson without preliminary. “And I mean cleaned thoroughly. If we had the time, I’d want it painted, inside and out. I want the bilge kept bone-dry, and I want extra vent holes bored and extra cutouts made along the floor near the gratings to permit air to reach all parts of the hull and bilge. Right this minute this boat is nothing but a floating gasoline tank.”

“You’re the doctor.” Wilson shrugged. “When we takin’ off for real?”

“Just as soon as I can get all the necessary gear together. I’d say no later than two weeks from today. If we string it out beyond that, we risk running into the early hurricane season. When we get back to The Castaways, I’ll give you another list of supplies I want brought aboard.”

“We goin’ in now?”

“Yes.”

Wilson returned to the wheel to relieve Hazel. “Why did you let Slater so far out of your sight on his way down here?” I asked Erikson. “After the problem you mentioned?”

“I think he’s settled down,” Erikson said absently. “He had a lot of accumulated steam to blow off.” The big man’s pale blue eyes were fixed upon a big patch of corrosion on a stanchion. I knew the unkempt condition of the
Calypso
must gripe his neat ex-Navy soul. “Actually, it’s Slater’s physical condition that makes me want to keep him off the shellac,” he continued. “We’re facing some hard, hard going down in the interior, and after years of disuse, I don’t know if his musculature will stand up to it.”

The
Calypso
slowed in its forward drive. Erikson stood up and looked forward. When I followed suit, I saw that we were approaching the Key West waterfront. I sat down again as Erikson rejoined Wilson at the wheel. I had felt chilled during our high-speed run on open water, but now the land heat rolled over the boat in a muggy tide. I could feel the perspiration starting again.