The Intimidators (3 page)

I decided that if I ever had to take him, I’d better start when he wasn’t looking and use a club. He was too big and in too good condition for me to worry about trifles like fair and unfair.

“Sorry,” I said. “I was always lousy at geometry. The only triangle I can remember was called isosceles.”

“It’s sometimes known as the Bahama Triangle,” Haseltine said. “It’s also been called the Atlantic Twilight Zone, the Devil’s Triangle, the Triangle of Death, and the Sea of Missing Ships. It’s supposed to be haunted by sudden whirlpools large enough to suck down good-sized freighters and tankers, or immense sea monsters with hearty appetites for sailors and airplane pilots, or freak windstorms capable of totally disintegrating ships and planes, or very hostile unidentified flying objects equipped with real efficient vanishing rays. Take your choice.”

“Just what are the boundaries of this lethal area?” I asked.

“Well, you were right out in it, at Walker’s Cay,” said the sunburned man facing me. “It kind of depends who’s doing the survey, but generally speaking the line’s supposed to run from a point somewhere up the U.S. coast, out east to Bermuda, down southwest to a point somewhere in the neighborhood of Puerto Rico, say, and back up along Cuba and Florida to the starting point. Some writers have put the eastern corner as far off as the Azores, and the southern one way down near Tobago, but that’s stretching it a bit.”

“That’s a lot of water, regardless,” I said thoughtfully. “If I’ve got the picture right, the only real concentration of land included, except around the edges, is the Bahama Islands and the Bahama Banks—if you want to be generous and call all that shallow stuff land that I flew over in the plane this morning. What’s this about maelstroms and sea monsters?”

“Ships and planes keep disappearing out there,” Haseltine said. “Did you ever hear of Joshua Slocum?”

“The old gent who sailed around the world all by himself, long before Chichester and the others?” I said. “Sure, I’ve heard of him. Vaguely.”

“Slocum was a qualified sea captain, and as you say, he’d taken his little sloop clear around the world, the first man to make the voyage singlehanded. You’d have to look hard to find a more experienced sailor. In 1909, Captain Slocum provisioned the
Spray
in Miami and headed for the West Indies, out in the Triangle. He was never seen again, and no trace of him or his boat was ever found. Haseltine cleared his throat. “In 1918, the collier
Cyclops
left Barbados, bound for points north by way of the Triangle, and vanished. In 1945, a flight of five planes took off from the Naval Air Station right here in Fort Lauderdale and disappeared out there, all five of them. In spite of an intensive air and sea search, no identifiable debris was ever discovered. In 1958, the highly successful ocean-racing yawl
Revonoc,
a very seaworthy yacht with a topnotch skipper, went missing in the Triangle while sailing from Key West to Miami.... Am I boring you, partner?” Apparently he could switch the Texas accent off and on. “Actually, I’m just picking and choosing. Adding up all the stories I’ve come across, just the ones that have been reasonably well authenticated, I figure that over a thousand folks in boats, ships, and planes, have simply dropped out of sight out there, in this century alone.”

He wasn’t boring me, but I was having a hard time trying to guess what a supposedly jinxed patch of ocean had to do with a gent named Pavel Minsk, due in Nassau the day after tomorrow.

I said, “And what have you lost out there,
amigo
?” When he looked up sharply, I grinned and said, “Pardon me, but you’re not exactly the type to do a lot of heavy research on this Hoodoo Sea without a personal interest.”

After a moment, Haseltine laughed. “I reckon I should have expected you to figure that out. The man in Washington said you had brains.”

I didn’t know whether or not I was supposed to react to this casual mention of Mac, if it was Mac he meant, so I didn’t. “Nice of him,” I said noncommittally.

“He also said you were a tough, cold-blooded character, a genius with firearms and edged weapons, a terror at unarmed combat, and a hell of a fine seaman to boot. Just the man I was looking for, in fact.”

It didn’t sound like Mac. At least he’d never laid it on that thick, talking to me. “I see,” I said.

“Look, Helm, I go first class,” said Haseltine. “I use only the best. Apparently, in this case, that’s you.”

I said, “Whether it’s true or not, it sounds nice. Keep talking.”

“Do you know what the average private investigator looks like? He’s a ratty little man who knows all about tailing people inconspicuously and planting bugs in motel rooms and snapping sexy pictures to go with the incriminating tapes, but show him a gun and he turns to jelly. When I heard—as you know, I’ve got some pretty good political connections—when I was told about the job you did over on the other side of Florida last spring, I knew you were the man I wanted. Well, I pulled some strings and was finally steered to our mutual friend in Washington. He sure doesn’t go in for publicity much, does he? He was damn hard and expensive to find. Does he always sit in front of that bright window? With that glare in my eyes, I couldn’t see enough of him to know him if I saw him on the street.”

“Maybe that’s the idea,” I said.

“Anyway, I put the proposition to him,” the big man went on calmly. “I showed him where it was to his advantage—a man in a job like that needs all the friends he can get—to lend me one of his best people for a week or two.”

He said it quite casually, as if he’d merely gone shopping for a good fishing rod, naturally in the classiest sporting goods emporium in town. It was, of course, fairly incredible. He might as well have said that he’d talked the late Mr. Hoover into renting him a G-man for a little private job he had in mind.

That the guy would even think it was startling enough, but a lot of money tends to affect a man’s mental processes, leading him to believe, more or less, that the rest of the world was invented just to serve him. The fantastic thing was, however, that Mae seemed to have gone along with the proposition, meekly agreeing to put a government agent, me, at this cocky Texan’s disposal.

I didn’t believe it for a minute, of course. That was the trouble. I’d never considered Mac, except for a bit of dry sarcasm now and then, as very strong in the humor department, but it was obvious that he was having a little joke at Big Bill Haseltine’s expense and expecting me to go along with the gag. Something was brewing in the Bahamas or adjacent areas. Maybe the tanned gent across the table was involved in some way; and letting him think he’d hired or borrowed me was a good way for me to keep an eye on him. On the other hand, it was perfectly possible that Haseltine’s problem was totally unrelated to ours; and that Mac had simply seen an easy way to spare the budget by getting a wealthy sucker to supply me with a plausible cover.

The fact that I was the guy who was going to have to duck the punches when Haseltine learned he’d been exploited was, of course, of no concern to Mac. I was supposed to be able to take care of myself. Well, the way he was setting this up, with both a cold-blooded Russian homicide specialist and a tough Texas millionaire soon to be after my hide, it looked as if I was going to have to live up to the fancy billing he’d given me, simply to survive.

I grinned. “Well, I never really bought that story about how grateful you were for all I’d done for you,” I said. “So I’m working for you for a week or two?”

“Let’s just say we’re working together, partner,” he said, surprisingly tactful. “As a matter of fact, you’ve been on the job for three days already, ever since you took off for Walker’s Cay. I wanted you to get the feel of the Islands; and also I wanted folks there to get the impression that you’re just an eager beginner at big-game fishing, panting for that first big marlin of your own, even while you’re snapping pictures for this hypothetical article about Haseltine the Great dragging in a thousand-pounder on six-pound line. Nuts! Have you ever used that stuff? Hell, man, it breaks of its own weight if you let the fish take out more than a hundred-odd yards of it. If you don’t have a good boat and a real gung-ho skipper who can keep you right on the fish’s tail, you’ve had it right now.” He grimaced. “How about cameras and film? Have you got enough to make it look good, wherever we wind up? If not, you’d better hit the stores in the morning and fix yourself up.”

I said, “I’ve got à little errand to run in Nassau, Mr. Haseltine. I guess I can pick up what I need there. I’ve got most of it. I used to really do it for a living, you know.”

“Who’s sending you to Nassau, the man in Washington?” Haseltine’s brown eyes narrowed and looked kind of muddy and ugly for a moment. “The understanding was that you’d be on my business full time. Maybe I’d better get on the phone and straighten him out....”

“Relax, Mr. Haseltine,” I said. “Whatever it is, it’s something related to your problem, just a hunch, he said, but I’d better check it out before I did anything else. I can’t tell you the details because it involves some people you’re not supposed to know about. After all, we’ve got to make some gestures toward security.”

“Yeah, sure.” He was still studying me suspiciously, as well he might, since I’d made up every word of what I’d said the instant before I’d said it, in the interest of millionaire diplomacy. Not that I knew that what I’d said was wrong, but I didn’t know it was right, either. Haseltine relaxed slowly. “Well, okay. If you want to play secret agent a bit, I guess it won’t hurt. We can get you from Nassau to wherever you need to go as soon as you’re ready, no sweat. And where the hell do you get this Mister-Haseltine routine, Matt?”

I grinned. “In this racket, we’re always respectful to the big brass, Bill. It makes them feel good, and it doesn’t make them a bit more bulletproof if the time should ever come that we have to shoot them.”

He grinned back. We were pals—well, almost. “I wish I thought you were kidding,” he said. “I bet you would shoot me if I got in your way, you elongated bastard. Aren’t you going to ask what it is I want you to look for?”

“Out in that Sea of Missing Ships?” I shrugged. “Well, if you want to tell me, okay. But after the build-up you just gave me, I figure the name is Phipps, Wellington Phipps. At least he’s the only person to go missing out there in a boat recently that I’ve heard of; and now I remember there was some mention of this Terrible Triangle legend at the time. A wealthy contractor type from the West Coast who’d brought his sailing yacht east for a season of racing. The
Ametta Too,
whatever that may mean. Vanished a while back sailing from Bermuda to Palm Beach; I saw it reported on TV. A typical disappearance like you described: no survivors, no life preservers, no wreckage at all. Bermuda to Palm Beach, that course would pass just north of the Bahamas, wouldn’t it?”

He nodded slowly, unsmiling. “Okay, so you’re real bright, just like your boss said. But you’ve got one thing wrong. I don’t give a good goddamn what happened to old Buster Phipps. I mean, Buster’s okay, but if it was just him and his boat, to hell with them. Only, he had his wife and daughter along. They’d flown out to join him in Bermuda after the big race. Amanda and Loretta; that’s where he got
Ametta
from. Second boat of the name,
Ametta Too
. They’re real cute out there in sunny California.”

“Cute,” I agreed. “But he could have called the second one
Loranda,
just for variety.”

“I was going to marry the girl,” said Haseltine. “I still am. She’s alive, somewhere. I know it. Find her for me, Helm.”

The commercial flight back across the Gulf Stream the following morning gave me time to think things over from the perspective of a new day. A jet would barely have got off the ground before dipping down for the landing, but this particular Fort Lauderdale-Nassau run—continuing on to Governor’s Harbor in Eleuthera, wherever that might be—was made by a lazy old twin-motor prop plane that loafed through the sky at a reasonable altitude, giving a good view of the watery scenery below. I decided that being pulled through the air by a fan had certain advantages over being booted in the tail by a firecracker; even more so since I’m under the illusion that I know more or less how a piston engine works, while I don’t kid myself I have any understanding of jets. I just hope somebody does.

“Look, I helped race that damn boat from Newport to Bermuda,” Haseltine had said irritably when I asked him about the details. “She was new, she was sound, she was seaworthy as hell—actually a little too seaworthy for real racing. You’ve got to cut a few corners and take a few chances if you want to come home with the silver these days. The time when you could just buy a set of new sails for your family cruising sloop and hope to compete are gone forever. It’s a cutthroat business now, partner, don’t ever think otherwise. Business, hell! It’s a science. The
Ametta
was fast, all right, but she was no skinned-out, stripped-down racing machine. And Buster was a good seaman, but—well, again, maybe
he
was a little too seaworthy for racing. He didn’t really have the old win-or-die instinct, if you know what I mean. His boat and his crew came first. Oh, he’d drive us; he’d drive like hell; but if there was a question, he wouldn’t gamble. He’d do it the safe, seamanlike way, and worry about getting to the finish line afterwards. Hell, look what happened in that damned race.”

“What happened?” I asked.

He looked surprised. These sporting characters are all alike. They always expect everybody to know who caught the biggest fish, shot the biggest elephant, rode the fastest horse, and sailed the fastest boat.

“Well,” he said, “we were in a pretty good position as we neared Bermuda, damned good in fact considering our low handicap-rating; we were right in there on corrected time. But you know that lousy finish line. Trying to find it in broad daylight in clear weather and stay off the rocks is bad enough. This was in the middle of the night with a gale blowing. And the bastards who’d set it up had made all kinds of crazy rules about what navigational equipment could and could not be used. You’d think they actually wanted a few shipwrecks for excitement. So there we were, batting around in that goddamned storm off a lee shore, well up with the leaders, and the navigator kept saying we were right on course, right on course. We just hoped he knew what the hell he was talking about. You couldn’t find your fly in that weather to take a leak. Suddenly old Buster kind of wrinkled up his nose and tamed to the guy, never mind his name, and told him to switch on the Omni, fast.”