The Intimidators (15 page)

He said, with a hint of belligerence, “Look, Helm—”

I said, “Make up your mind. You got them knifed; do you want to fix them yourself, or do you want us to do it?”

“Okay, but—”

“I know, I know,” I said. “One of these days. Sure. Now roll it.”

He started to run up the power window, and stopped. “You got one thing wrong, Helm.”

“What?”

“I’m not a half-ass Comanche. I’m a quarter-ass Kiowa.”

I watched the car drive away, wait for an opening and join the traffic on the crowded Overseas Highway, disappearing from sight to the east. Well, anyway, the big guy had a sense of humor, for what it was worth.

The Tarpon Lodge was another lush green pocket of quiet and relaxation off the busy, noisy, honky-tonk highway strip. The dining room was located well down towards the shore, but it looked out on a lighted swimming pool instead of the dark Gulf of Mexico. I suppose it proves something about Florida that with all that lovely open water just lying around out there, they still have to pump the stuff, filter it, chlorinate it, heat it, and package it in tile and concrete before they’ll condescend to swim in it.

I parked the rental car in the designated space under a couple of palms, which always makes me uneasy. One thing they haven’t managed down there, yet, is to stop those trees from doing what comes naturally and producing coconuts. I’m sure they’re working on the problem, but in the meantime you’re in the target area any time you’re under one. I don’t suppose the chance of being beaned is much greater than that of being struck by lightning, but in a high-risk business one prefers to avoid all the avoidable dangers. Nevertheless, I screwed up my courage and walked politely around the car to help my companion out like a real gentleman, coconuts or no coconuts.

She’d changed to a long, flowered skirt and white silk shirt that made her skin look very brown in the darkness. Her hair was done up the way I remembered it, smooth and ladylike. I escorted her into the place. It wasn’t crowded: a fairly high-class-looking restaurant with a dignified hostess who greeted my companion by name and title and showed us to a booth at the side of the room. A waitress took our drink orders.

“Cap’n Hattie,” I said, when we were alone once more. “Cap’n Hattie, for God’s sake!”

Harriet Robinson laughed softly. It occurred to me that she’d always had trouble with names. She’d never been the elfin type I normally associate with the name Robin; and she certainly wasn’t the staid New England spinster I visualize when somebody says Harriet.

“I’m a local institution, darling,” she said. “I’m their tame lady skipper. If you don’t treat me with respect, a dozen salty charterboat captains will come for you with gaffs and billy clubs.”

“How did you manage it?” I asked. “That’s close to a hundred grand’s worth of air-conditioned sportfisherman you’ve got in that slip; and maybe ten grand’s worth of outboard over at the other dock, counting the radiotelephone and other electronic gear.”

“Just about,” she agreed. “I’m not a fool, Matt. I knew I was getting mixed up in something that could backfire badly, up there on the Chesapeake, and I took a few precautions. I hear my dear husband had me declared legally dead.”

“So I’m told.”

“I’m afraid it didn’t make him quite as rich as he’d hoped. Oh, he’s got enough to get by on; maybe enough that he never even noticed there was any missing. A head for business was not his strong point, if he had one. In all our years of marriage, I never found one, even in bed. God knows why I married him.... Well, that’s kind of irrelevant, isn’t it? Anyway, I’d put quite a bit aside where I could get at it under another name, if I had to run for it. As I did, thanks to you.” There was a little silence. The waitress put our drinks on the table and went away. Harriet glanced at the long cylinder of rolled-up paper I’d brought with me, and said: “Well, break out your charts and let a nautical expert look at this problem of yours.”

I shook my head. “Not yet. We’re going to have company. I don’t want to have to go over it twice.”

“Company?” Harriet frowned quickly. “I don’t know that I like that very much, Matt. Does this ‘company’ know—”

“About your colorful past as the rich and subversive Mrs. Louis Rosten?” I shook my head again. “No, and he won’t if you follow my lead. Just look beautiful and mysterious like the time you greeted me in a filmy negligee late at night—and slipped me a Mickey just when things were getting interesting.”

She laughed; and we compared notes about those bygone days; and I told her what she needed to know about Big Bill Haseltine, including a brief sketch of the evening’s stupid activities, which she found highly amusing. I was glad to see it. When I’d known her before, she hadn’t been a lady to be shocked by a little gore, and I was relieved to find that the years hadn’t softened her noticeably.

“Here he comes now,” I said, glancing toward the door.

She looked that way, and whistled softly. “That is a
big
man!”

“So was the dinosaur big,” I said sourly. “With a brain the size of a golf ball, located mostly between its hind legs.... I think the resemblance is very close. Captain Robinson, Mr. Haseltine. Harriet, Bill. You’ve got to watch this guy, Hattie. If he disapproves of you, he’ll send his big, dangerous goons after you.”

“Lay off, Helm.” Haseltine sat down, glanced appraisingly at the handsome woman beside him, and looked at me. “How much does she know?” he asked.

“Enough,” I said. “You can talk freely in front of her.... Hattie.”

“Yes?”

“Tell him, please. Recite the list of people I wanted you to help me look for, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course, Matt. The names were: Marcus, Lavalle, Rockwell, Phipps, and Phipps.”

I looked grimly at Haseltine. “Just to settle the question of whom I was working for here in the Keys, and why I was having drinks with the lady. Our problem, you see, has got mixed up with a bunch of others. I had a hunch it might be easier to untangle the whole mess from here, and I wanted Hattie’s help. She’s got some special qualifications we can use, never mind the top-secret details. And if you see her behaving in a way that doesn’t seem to make sense, will you please ask a few questions before you have her beat up? There just might be a logical explanation, you know.”

He said, “Goddamn it, Helm, I asked you to lay off. Maybe I was a little out of line, but you kind of overreacted, didn’t you? Sticking a knife in a guy’s back just because he gave you a little lip, for God’s sake!”

I said, “
Amigo,
except for a few special individuals of interest to the organization I serve, all anybody’s ever had to do to stay perfectly safe and healthy in my neighborhood is leave me alone. Your thugs chose not to. Once they opened that gate, I figured I was at liberty to walk as far in as I chose. That’s how far I chose. Anyway, the guy wouldn’t have talked if I’d given him time to think about being strong and silent.”

“Goddamn it, the boys weren’t armed! All they were going to do—”

Harriet put a warning hand on his arm. “Here comes the waitress, Bill. What do you want to drink?”

“What.... Oh, bourbon and branch water, thanks.”

She passed the message to the girl, who went away. It was time to stop the bickering, which had served the purpose of distracting him, keeping him from asking too many questions about the newest and most attractive member of our team.

I grinned, and said, “Okay, so we’re both bastards, Bill. Maybe I ought to tell you how I got that way, so you can make allowances.” He was still glowering at me, and if I’d had my way I’d have taken the rich, dumb ox out into the middle of the Gulf Stream and drowned him, but I wasn’t here to indulge my private preferences. I went on quickly, before he could interrupt: “It was in college, the first college I went to, a real gung-ho place. It had a kind of ornamental pool, called the Lily Pond, although it was mostly muck and weeds. The upper classmen, if they disapproved of the behavior of a lower classman, had the cute habit of descending on him in force, dragging him out to this glorified mud puddle, and heaving him in. It was kind of an old school tradition....”

I waited while the waitress put Haseltine’s drink in front of him. He tasted it sulkily and said nothing. I went on.

“Well, one day the grapevine let me know I was next on the dunking list. I’d been expecting it. I’d been planning on upholding the school honor in such individual sports as fencing and rifle-shooting, but the seniors had decided I ought to go out for basketball because of my height I’d told them frankly that if there was anything that turned my stomach, it was team sports of any kind, particularly the ones that became college religions. That hadn’t gone over real big, if you know what I mean. Well, I just didn’t feel like an involuntary bath that evening, so I laid out a hunting knife and wedged a chair under the doorknob of my room. It was a fairly feeble old chair and the back was cracked, but nobody knew that but me. I just wanted some evidence that they’d actually broken in. There weren’t any locks in that dormitory that worked. It was a real togetherness institution. You weren’t supposed to want privacy, ever. That was considered antisocial and un-American.”

I grimaced, and took a sip of my drink, and glanced at Harriet to see if I was boring her. Apparently I wasn’t Her eyes were bright with interest. She was really kind of a bloodthirsty bitch, come to think of it, but I found it a refreshing contrast to the phony, mechanical humanitarianism currently fashionable.

“Go on, Matt,” she said.

“Well, they came,” I said. “There was the usual loud-mouthed, beery mob. They yelled at me to open the door. I called back that I hadn’t invited them, and if they wanted in, they knew what to do. They did it. The first one inside after they’d smashed the door open was the big school-spirit expert who’d given me the pep-talk about how I didn’t want to let the college and the basketball team down. He was very brave. He told me not to be silly, I wasn’t really going to use that knife, just put it down. I told him when he put a hand on me, I’d cut it off. So he did; and I did. Well, not all the way off. I understand they sewed it back on and he got some use out of it eventually. Nevertheless, the immediate result was a lot of groans and gore, very spectacular. I told the rest it was a sample, and I had plenty more if anybody wanted it. Nobody did.”

I looked at Haseltine. He reacted beautifully, right on cue. “Jesus Christ, Helm, those hoys were obviously just tight and having a little fun—”

“Sure,” I said. “And they could have gone and had their tight little fun anywhere they damned well pleased, except in my room at my expense. I made that quite clear to them before the action started. They chose to ignore the warning. That made it open hunting season by my way of reckoning. I figured... I still figure that anybody who invades my domicile by force is mine if I can take him. Anybody who lays hands on me without my permission is fair and legal game. Anybody who opens, the door to violence has simply got no legitimate beef if a little more violence walks in than he bargained for. As far as I’m concerned people can either stick to polite, civilized conduct, or I’ll give them jungle all the way.”

“What happened then?” Harriet asked curiously. “What did they do to you? The school authorities, I mean?”

I grinned. “It’s strange that you should ask,” I said. “What makes you think they’d do anything to
me?
I was the aggrieved party, wasn’t I; the victim of unprovoked aggression? I mean, there I was in my room, studying hard and minding my own business like a good little freshman. A bunch of hoodlums breaks in and, outnumbered though I am, I defend myself bravely.... Wouldn’t you think I’d be in line for a hero medal, or something?”

“Hell, you didn’t have to use a
knife!
” Haseltine protested.

“Of course I had to use a knife. Or a gun,” I said. “What was I supposed to do, beat up a dozen older boys, including some outsized football types, with my bare fists? Superman, I’m not. To stop them, without actually killing anybody, I had to do something swift and bloody and dramatic to show I meant business right at the start. I did just about the least drastic thing that could get my point across.... They threw me out of that school, of course. Having a weapon in my room, was the official excuse. The broken chair, proving they’d forced their way in, saved me from being sued or arrested for assault, but nobody ever did anything about any of the others besides a sort of token reprimand. And at that point,
amigo,
” I said, looking at Haseltine, “I realized I was just a little out of step with the rest of the world, a world where you’re supposed to let people heave you into fishponds any time they happen to feel like it. I decided I’d better look around, once I’d finished getting my degree elsewhere, and see if I couldn’t find at least a few characters marching to my kind of music. After a while, I found them; or they found me.” There was a little silence. I could see Haseltine getting ready to give me a big argument. There wasn’t any doubt whose side he’d have been on in that old college hassle; and I found the old anger coming back that always hits me when I meet that kind of a guy, the kind that broke into my room that night, the kind that’s always pushing people around and always gets terribly, terribly shocked and self-righteous when he runs into somebody who’s willing to die, or kill, rather than put up with his overbearing nonsense.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” I said, just as he was starting to speak. “There’s a kind of epilogue that might interest you, Bill. Three years later I read in the papers that there was a big scandal at that school. You see, another bunch of arrogant seniors had got hold of another poor dumb freshman whose behavior wasn’t to their liking; and they’d given him the old school heave—only, it turned out, there was some kind of a rusty drainpipe out there in the muck that nobody’d ever noticed. He landed right on it. The last I heard, he was still alive, if you can call it living. He can blink his eyelids once for yes and twice for no, or vice versa. And every time I think of him, I remember my old hunting knife with much affection. If it hadn’t been for those six inches of cold, sharp steel, that human vegetable might have been me.”