Scorpion Reef (11 page)

“Oh, hello,” I said. “George told me he was going to wire you I was coming over. How are you?”

She understood. “Everything is the same here. Is there another phone you can call me back?”

“Yes,” I said. “Did George tell you about the boat? I’ve just bought it. And by the way, he wanted me to give you an address. I wrote it down, but it’s out in the truck. Suppose I get it and call you back?”

She gave me the number.

I walked out to the truck and stalled for a minute, and then came back and ducked into the booth just inside the gate. I closed the door and dialed, fumbling in my eagerness. She answered immediately.

“Bill! I’m so glad to hear you—”

It struck me suddenly she didn’t have to act now, as she had the other night, because there was no chance anybody could be listening. Then I shrugged it off. Of course she was glad. She was in a bad jam, and she’d had two days of just waiting, biting her nails.

“I didn’t do wrong, did I?” she went on hurriedly. “But I just couldn’t stand it any longer. The suspense was driving me crazy—”

“No,” I said. “I’m glad you didn’t wait for the card. I was worried about you, too. Has anything happened?”

“No. They’re still watching me, but I’ve been home nearly all the time. But tell me about you. And when can we start?”

“Here’s the story,” I said. “I got back around seven this morning, and wrote out a check for the
Ballerina
about twenty minutes ago. She’s on the marine ways now, and will be off sometime tomorrow afternoon. Let’s see, this is Thursday, isn’t it?”

“That’s right,” she said. “Then what?”

“As soon as she’s in the water we have to try out the auxiliary. Then later in the afternoon I’m going to take her outside for a shakedown for three or four hours. I hate to use up the time, but you can’t go to sea in an untried boat. I’ve got everything we need out here in the truck except the actual ship’s stores, and I’m going to make a list this morning and have the ship chandler deliver them here Saturday morning.”

“Is there any way I could go on that trip outside with you?” she asked. “I’m dying to see her, and we could plan how we’re going to get away from here.”

I was tempted. I thought of three or four hours out there, just the two of us alone. She could charter a water taxi, meet me down the channel somewhere. No. It wouldn’t work.

“It’s too risky,” I said. “If you’re going to be safe after you get away from here, there just can’t be anything they can remember afterward that would connect you with a boat. Any boat.”

“Yes. You’re right,” she agreed. “But it’s going to be a long time. I keep getting afraid when I can’t talk to you. We sail Saturday night? Is that it?”

“Yes. Everything will be stowed and ready for sea some time in the afternoon.”

“Have you thought of anything yet? I mean, for getting Francis aboard?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve got an idea. But something else has occurred to me.”

“What’s that, Bill?”

“Sneaking him aboard isn’t the big job. Getting you here is going to be the tough one.”

“Why?”

“They’re not sure where he is. But they’re covering you every minute.”

It was stifling in the booth, even with the little fan whirring. I looked put the glass part of the doors and could see them scraping away at the
Ballerina
.

I went on, talking fast. “But Macaulay first. You can help me a little. I think they’re covering you from both ends of that alley in back of your house, as well as from Barclay’s place in front of it, so we can’t just sneak him out the back way. Now your house, as I recall, is the second one from the corner, so Barclay’s, right across the street, must be also, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said.

“What’s the name of that intersecting street?”

“Brandon Way.”

“All right. Now from Barclay’s house they shouldn’t be able to see down Brandon Way very far, should they? I mean, the angle would be too flat to see much more than the corner itself, and the place where your alley comes out into Brandon would be hidden behind the house next to you. That right?”

“Let me see,” she said. She thought for a moment. “Yes, I’m sure it would.”

“Good. And there are lights only at the intersections of the streets themselves? None around the alley?”

“That’s right.”

“All right. That’s about all I needed to know. I think we can pull it off, but I want to work on it a little more. And I’ve still got to figure out a way to get you.”

“And your diving equipment,” she said. “It’s still in the back of the car.”

“I know,” I said. “I was just coming to that. There won’t be time to fool with it, either, when I come to get you, no matter what kind of plan we work out. So we’ll have to get it aboard first. You’ll also want to bring a few clothes with you. So here’s the way you work it. Put that aqualung in a cardboard carton and tie it. Pack what clothes and toilet articles you can get into another carton, and put both of them in the trunk of your car. Around noon tomorrow call Broussard & Sons, the ship chandlers, and ask if they’ll deliver a couple of packages to the
Ballerina,
along with the stores. They will, of course. But don’t take them to Broussard’s yourself.

“Take the car to the Cadillac agency. It’s got a squeak in it, or the motor goes purtle-purtle when it should go whirtle-whirtle, or something. As soon as you get inside on the service floor and they’re trying to find what’s wrong with it, you remember those packages you were supposed to deliver. Call a parcel delivery service to come after them. The point of all this hocus-pocus is that whoever’s following you will be outside and won’t see the things come out of your car. If he did they’d be hot on the trail in nothing flat to see where they went. All straight?”

“Yes. Now, when do I call you again?”

“Saturday afternoon about five, unless something happens and you have to get in touch with me sooner.”

It took the rest of the morning to check the gear on the sloop and make out a stores list. Broussard’s runner came down in the afternoon and picked it up. The yard closed at five. I drove the truck inside and parked it. The night watchman was a friendly, talkative old man who reminded me a little of Christiansen. He wanted to know if I was going to sail that boat clear up to Boston all by myself. What happened when I had to go to sleep? The whole thing fascinated him. Here was another problem; as fast as I solved one I had two more to take its place. I had to get them aboard without his seeing them.

I studied the layout of the yard. The driveway came in through the gate where the office and the shops were located, and went straight back to the pier running out at the end of the spit. There were some ways on the right, where they were building a couple of shrimp boats, and on the left was the marine railway itself. The
Ballerina
, of course, would be out on the pier after I brought her back in from the shakedown. It could be done, I thought; if I backed the truck up to the pier and left the lights on he wouldn’t be able to see them come out the rear doors. The foreman had given me an extension light and some cleaning gear. By midnight I had the cabin immaculately clean. I switched off the light and lay down on one of the settees.

We put her back in the water a little after one the next afternoon. I kept watch on the bilges for about an hour, and she was all right. With one of the yardmen aboard to give me a hand I took her down the channel against the tide with the engine, after the dock trial, hoisted sail, and went on out. There was a good breeze blowing, kicking up a moderate chop on the bar. I took her back and forth across it and let her pitch to see if she opened up anywhere. When we came back and tied up I pumped the bilges again. In a few minutes she was dry.
Baby
, I thought, standing on the pier looking at her.

There was still nothing in the morning or afternoon papers about his body being found. When the yard closed I backed the truck down to the pier and stowed all the gear aboard the sloop. The yard work was completed now, and I’d asked them to have the bill ready for me in the morning.

I worked on the charts for a while, stowing away the ones we wouldn’t need in the Gulf. Turning on the radio, I picked up a time tick from WWV and started a rate book on the chronometer. After a while I heard a weather report for the West Gulf: moderate east and northeast winds.

I switched off the light and lay down. It was hot in the cabin. I could hear water lapping against the hull. It was a lovely sound until I started thinking of his body down there somewhere. How much longer did we have? I got off him at last, and tried again to see Macaulay, running into the same old blank wall. He didn’t even exist. Then I was thinking of her again.

I sat up and savagely lit a cigarette. I was being paid, I reminded myself, to get Macaulay out of that house alive, and not to lie there thinking about his wife.

All right. So I’d get him out. I had an idea for it, and it might work, too, if I didn’t get myself killed doing it. But what about her? I still hadn’t solved that.

Suppose I arranged a rendezvous out there on the beach and transferred her to the truck? That was all right, provided she could get far enough ahead of them so I could get her aboard without their seeing it. But if they did see it, we didn’t have a chance. That truck was too slow. And I was pretty sure by now they were trailing her with two cars. They’d murder us.

They were pros; we were amateurs. It was going to have to be good. I dug up and discarded plan after plan, but after a long time I began to see a way I could do it. When I had it all straight in my mind, I looked at the watch. It was a little after four. Sleep was impossible now, so I got up and walked out on the end of the pier. Taking off the watch and the shorts, I dived in and went for a long swim out toward the channel. When I came back I sat naked in the
Ballerina
’s cockpit, smoking and watching the sky redden in the east. This was the last day. If everything went right, this time tomorrow we’d be at sea.

T
HE STORES CAME DOWN IN
a truck at a little after nine. I looked quickly for the two cartons. They were there. I took them aboard and started checking stores with the driver. When he had it all on the end of the pier I wrote out a check and started carrying it aboard.

I was still at it at eleven o’clock when I looked up and saw the two strange men come into the yard. They were dressed in seersucker suits and Panama hats, and were smoking cigars. I saw the foreman go over, as if asking what they wanted. They started around the yard, talking to each of the workmen for a minute or two.

Then they were coming toward me. I was just picking up a coil of line; I straightened, watching them. I’d never seen them before as far as I could tell.

“Mr. Burton here’s from out of town,” the foreman was saying. “I doubt if he’d know him.”

“What is it?” I asked, trying to keep my face blank. I was beginning to be afraid. The larger one, the blond, was carrying something in his hand. It was a photograph.

He held it out. “Ever see this man, that you know of?” he asked. He didn’t glance toward my hand as I took it; he watched my face. They both did. They didn’t have an expression between them.

I held it up to take a good look. Then I handed it back. “I don’t think so,” I said. “What did he do?”

“Just a routine police matter,” he said. “We’re trying to find somebody that might know him.”

I shook my head. “Sorry. He’s a new one on me.”

“Thanks anyway,” he said.

They left.

I went on aboard the boat with the coil of line under my arm, but instead of stowing it away I walked down into the cabin and dropped, weak-kneed, onto the settee. I wiped the sweat from my face. The way they worked was frightening; it couldn’t possibly have been more than a few hours since they’d found him, and already they had a picture. Not
a
picture, I thought. Probably dozens of them, being carried all over the water-front. And it was a photograph of him as he was alive, not swollen and unrecognizable in death.

Anybody but a fool would have known it, I thought. The pug would have a criminal record, and when they have records they have pictures. Maybe they had identified him from his fingerprints. But that made no difference now. The thing was that Christiansen would recognize him instantly.

I shook it off. They’d still be looking for Manning, who had gone to New York. And we’d be gone from here in another twelve hours. I was still tense and uneasy, though, as I finished loading stores and went up to the office to write a check for the yard bill. I topped off the boat’s fuel tank and fresh water tank. The ringing clatter of the calking hammers died away at twelve as the men knocked off and went home. It was Saturday afternoon.

I filled the running lights, and drove the truck out and bought some ice. She was ready for sea. There was nothing to do now but wait.

It was bad. And it grew worse.

It was exactly five o’clock when the telephone rang inside the booth at the gate. I went in and closed the door.

“Bill,” she said softly, “I’m getting really scared now. Are we all ready?”

“We’re all ready,” I said. “Listen—I’ve got to get Macaulay first. They’re not sure where he is, and if it works right they won’t even know he’s gone. They won’t suspect anything’s happening. But when you disappear, everything’s going to hit the fan.”

“I understand,” she said.

I went on, sweating inside the booth. I could see the watchman down in the other end of the yard. “Tell him to dress in dark clothes and wear soft-soled shoes. He’s to come out the back door at around nine-ten. That’ll give him plenty of time to get his eyes accustomed to the darkness and make sure there’s nobody in the alley itself. I don’t think there will be, because they’re too smart to be loitering where somebody might see them and call the police. They’re watching the ends of it, sitting in cars. I’ll come down Brandon Way and stop at the mouth of the alley at exactly nine-twenty—”

“But, Bill— You can’t stop there. He’ll know what you’re doing. He’ll kill you.”

“He’ll be busy,” I said. “I’ve got a diversion for him, and I think it’ll work. Now the truck will be between him and the mouth of the alley. Tell Macaulay to come fast the minute the truck stops. And if anything goes wrong he’s to
keep coming toward the truck
. If he breaks and goes back he hasn’t got a chance. But I don’t think there’ll be a hitch. Tell him when he reaches it to stand a little behind the door and just put his hand up on the frame of the window, near the corner. And he’s not to try to get in, or even open the door, until the truck starts moving. If he even puts his weight on the running board while it’s stopped, that guy may hear it. Got all that?”