The Intimidators (6 page)

I said, “Fort Fincastle, the water tower, the stone staircase you showed me yesterday, or the old Royal Victoria Hotel. What’s your guess?”

Fred asked, “What makes you think he’s heading for any of them?”

“Anybody setting up a contact with a stranger is likely to pick one of the standard tourist attractions. Easier for him to find, and a good place to waste time inconspicuously if one party to the meeting should be delayed.”

“The Royal Victoria seems most suitable. Fine spot for lovers and spies, really. You could lose an elephant in those old gardens.”

I said, “Okay, we’ll gamble on your intuition. The Royal Victoria it is.”

When we drove into the grounds of the shut-down hotel, a Volkswagen bus with some tourists on board was just pulling away down the narrow old curving driveway that had obviously been designed for shining carriages and handsome horses back when the internal combustion engine and the rubber tire were mere mad gleams in their inventors’ eyes. A small blond girl in a white linen pantsuit, with a blue silk scarf at her throat, was snapping pictures of the giant kapok tree with an Instamatic camera. The lightweight, lady-type bicycle on which she’d presumably arrived leaned against the bushes at the end of the walk. Except for her, we seemed to have the place to ourselves.

“This is the old Royal Victoria Hotel, sir,” said Fred loudly, going into his spiel. “It served as unofficial headquarters for the wealthy blockade-runners back during your Civil War. A fine old place; maybe you’d like to walk around and snap some pictures, sir. That’s a kapok tree, the big one there, with the platform in it. Used to have an orchestra playing up there every evening.... Just take your time, sir. Look around. I’ll wait right here.”

I hesitated a moment; then I took out my gun and knife and dropped them on the seat beside him, having come to a decision I should have reached earlier. Well, if anything

went badly haywire here, the weapons were better off with him than in my hotel room, where they might eventually cause a lot of international discussion about why a certain tall dead man had come to the Islands heavily and illegally armed. Fred glanced at me sharply over his shoulder and swept the weapons out of sight.

I got out, opening my camera case, and made my way past the bicycle, admiring the elaborate ten-speed gearshift mechanism and the shiny levers for the rim-brakes, front and rear. I guess I really had an underprivileged childhood. My bikes had all had just one lousy speed and a single, lonely coaster brake—New Departure was more common, as I recall, but Morrow was supposed to have more class.

The little white-suited blonde was coming down the steps from the orchestra platform up in the big tree. I saw that while she was small, she wasn’t quite small or fragile enough to be called tiny. As a matter of fact, she was constructed on quite durable lines for her size. If she’d been six inches taller, she might have looked overly substantial, particularly in pants; as it was, she just had a cute and cuddly look, helped out by her long, shining, Alice-in-Wonderland hairdo. She gave me a restrained little smile of thanks as I stepped aside to let her pass—but her eyes, that matched the scarf around her neck, studied my face just a little too hard and too long. I thought I could read a kind of desperate question in those blue eyes: was I the person she d come here to meet, and if not where was he and how much longer did he expect her to hang around this derelict hostelry?

It could have been my imagination, of course. I’m not a qualified reader of minds, particularly feminine minds. Still, you don’t survive long in the business by disregarding hunches; and a hunch was what I had, loud and clear. I was aware of the girl glancing at her watch as, having received no satisfaction from me, she moved on toward the driveway.

I climbed the wooden steps to the weathered wooden platform supported by the thick, twisted branches of the great tree; and I went though the motions of adjusting the camera and taking a few pictures, making a kind of casual, panoramic series of shots—the box was actually loaded; we take our props seriously—the last of which caught the girl fiddling with her bike. It was a long shot for the normal two-inch lens I was using, a telephoto would have been better, but the face should turn out clear enough to enlarge if I hadn’t forgotten some important technical detail. It had been a long time since I made pictures for a living.

I buttoned up the camera once more in its tourist-armor—no pro would be seen dead with one of those awkward cases—and strolled back to the taxi, trying not to make my steps too long or too fast, although I was aware of the seconds ticking away and of a small man in a sloppy summer suit getting a couple of steps closer with each tick.

“Okay, driver,” I said, pulling the door closed. “Where do you suggest we go now?”

Fred started the motor. “Well, sir, you can get a fine view of the city from the water tower....” He put the car into gear.

“I’m leaving the camera,” I said when we were out of the girl’s hearing. “Have the film processed immediately and tell them to get right to work on the blonde. Frame seven or thereabouts; the last exposure. You can fill in the description; you saw her as well as I did. Now slow down and drop me off. Then get the hell out of here and keep going.”

Fred glanced at me. “Don’t you want your gun?”

“I’m under orders not to cause an international incident,” I said. “It’s pretty hard to shoot somebody in a foreign country and follow those instructions. Or knife them, either. Whoa, right there, where she can’t see us....”

Then I was standing in the driveway alone. I slipped into the bushes and worked my way through the jungle to a point from which I had a view of the enormous tree up the hill. The girl in white was back on the platform. Apparently that was the meeting place that had been assigned to her. It was a hell of a spot for a secret contact, within plain sight of anybody lurking in the thick cover below. Actually, there was only one logical reason why you’d send a girl to a rendezvous wearing target white, and arrange for her to wait conspicuously up a tree in a deserted garden....

I heard him coming before I saw him. I’d put myself in the right place, very near the spot I’d picked from above as most suitable for what he had to do—what he’d come halfway around the world to do. Okay, so I’d been wrong and he was going to take care of his job right away, within a couple of hours of his arrival here in Nassau. You had to hand it to the little man, I reflected, calmly sitting down to lunch when he found he had a few minutes to spare. No wonder he’d been mad when the food had not been forthcoming on time. It was enough to throw any virtuoso off balance, being plagued by such infuriating inefficiency just before a performance.

I couldn’t hear the footsteps any longer. Then I saw him, slipping along the overgrown walk nearby, keeping well down so he couldn’t be seen from above. He stopped at the edge of a little paved circular opening around an old stone fountain, now quite dry. He crouched in the shelter of the ornamental shrubbery gone wild, close to me. I heard a faint clink of metal. He’d taken two items from under his floppy pants legs and was fitting them together to form a single-shot pistol. I’d never seen the weapon before, but I’d read descriptions: a fairly new U.S. product called, I believe, Contender.

A tiny telescopic sight was already attached to the barrel. It’s only in the movies that you carry the telescope separately, stick it casually onto the gun after you have your target in view, and then make a lot of interesting final adjustments—I’ve always wondered what the hell those movie actors thought they were supposed to be accomplishing, fiddling with those knobs and dials. In real life, when there is serious shooting to be done, you anchor the optical sight firmly and immovably to the weapon, zero it in carefully, and never dream of monkeying with it again. You just hope to God that if you leave it strictly alone the outfit will still be shooting in the right place when the right time comes. Pavel Minsk opened his firearm and slipped a cartridge into the breech. I heard a faint click as the action closed again.

Check to the tall gent trying to make himself invisible in the brush. I had a very simple choice. I had a job to do, and I could do it efficiently and safely by letting him shoot and then taking him before he could gel his single-shot weapon reloaded again. Or I could be a stupid goddamn hero trying to save the life of a female stranger at the risk of my own.

I wished I’d never asked Mac a certain question. Now I knew, because I’d been told, that he didn’t give a damn how many blondes got shot, or brunettes or redheads either, as long as Pavel Minsk didn’t survive them by very much, say two seconds. I couldn’t kid myself that maybe this diminutive wench should be preserved for some important international reason. If I saved her, it would be from pure, simpleminded sentimentality....

The Mink was rising to take aim, using both hands on the gun; the approved, modem, handgun-assassination style. The old technique of holding a pistol one-handed at the end of a wobbly outstretched arm is strictly passé for business purposes. The girl was still standing up there with her shining white suit and her inexpensive camera, waiting for the person she’d been sent here to meet—the skull-faced gent with the scythe, although she didn’t know it. I heard the metallic sound of a pistol hammer being cocked; and I let out a loud yell and charged.

The yell, and the crashing in the brushes, were supposed to disconcert Minsk long enough to let me reach him before he fired, or throw his aim off if he did manage to shoot. It was a fairly primitive tactic, but it had worked for me before. But this was the Mink, and his nerves weren’t vulnerable to loud noises, and he was faster than he had any right to be. If he’d had an ordinary repeating pistol, designed for fast, instinctive, close-quarters work, I’d have died right there—but in that case I wouldn’t have gambled that way. With his clumsy, telescope-sighted, long-range, one-shot weapon, Pavel had to decide whether to employ his single available cartridge for a snapshot as he turned, without using the sights, or risk taking time to line up the slow and awkward optical system for a certain kill. He went the snapshot route, firing the instant the weapon swung more or less into line. I saw the flame as I lunged forward, and even, I thought, the jump of the muzzle; and I heard the vicious crack of something more powerful than an ordinary pistol cartridge.

Something hit the side of my head a savage blow. Everything seemed to go bright red; but in the middle of the redness remained a small tunnel at the far end of which I could see the little man desperately trying to stuff a fresh load into his one-shot weapon. I went in low and caught him about the middle and carried him backward across the paved area. The redness was closing in now, but I’d made all the calculations in advance. Three long steps, and I lifted little Pavel Minsk into the air and swung him down hard, as if he were a heavy sledgehammer with which I was trying to break up the sharp stone edge of the old, dry fountain....

As I said, it was dead easy. At least it would have been if I’d remembered, and acted upon, Mac’s very sensible remark to the effect that we in no way resemble any organization dedicated to humanitarianism and good works. As it was, having chosen to do an easy job the hard way, I woke up—well, there had been a couple of previous awakenings, but they’d been kind of hazy—in a hospital bed with a murderous headache. There were two identical little blondes in identical white linen pantsuits sitting beside my bed. It took a while, and considerable willpower, to make them fuse into one.

“Oh, you’re awake,” she said, seeing my eyes open. “Thank God!”

“Who’re you?” I whispered. I guess I could have spoken more loudly, but with my head the way it was, I didn’t want to risk cutting loose with any unnecessary volume.

“Don’t you remember? In the hotel garden....”

I licked my lips. “Sure, you’re the blonde with the cheap camera and the expensive bike. Is that how you get your mail: Mr. Postman please deliver to the blonde with the cheap camera and the expensive bike?”

She laughed quickly. She was a very pretty girl when she laughed, but I kind of wished she’d curb her noisy gaiety.

“It was a rented bike,” she said. “I’m Lacey Rockwell, Mr. Helm. The police told me your name. They gave me permission to wait in here. I felt so... so
responsible.
I wanted to be sure you were all right. How do you feel?”

“Great,” I said. “Just as if somebody’s split my head open like a piece of kindling. A nice clean split.... Lacey. What kind of name is that?”

She moved her shoulders slightly. “I asked my parents that. They said they just thought Lacey sounded kind of nice.... Mr. Helm?”

“Yes?”

“That man. I have to know. Was he... was he really trying to
kill
me?”

I said. “What does he say, that he was shooting blackbirds for a pie? Or did he get away after I passed out?”

Her face changed. “He... didn’t get away, but I’m afraid he’s not saying anything. When you tackled him, his head hit the edge of the fountain and.... Well, he’s dead, Mr. Helm.”

I was silent for a lengthy moment. It was a relief to know that, in spite of my sentimental aberrations, the job had got done in a reasonably workmanlike manner, but of course I couldn’t say that.

“Jesus!” I whispered. “My God! I didn’t mean to kill the poor guy!”

“Poor guy?” the little girl said with sudden sharpness. “Poor guy indeed! You’re forgetting that he was apparently trying to murder me and that he did shoot you—an inch to the side, the doctor said, and you’d be dead. I’m not a very bloodthirsty person, Mr. Helm, but I do not consider that wicked little man a ‘poor guy’! I think he got just what he deserved! When you shouted, and I looked down there and saw that nasty-looking gun pointing straight at me just before he whirled to face you....” She stopped, with a shiver. “I guess I’m just a sissy, but nobody’s ever tried to kill me before. I simply can’t get used to the idea.
Why,
Mr. Helm?
Why
would anybody want me dead?”

It was hard to keep track of all the nuances. My mind didn’t want to stay focused on her, or my eyes, either, in spite of the fact that she wasn’t difficult to look at. There’s something very attractive about girls—particularly small blond girls—with that clear, smooth, delicate complexion. This one even had sense enough to let it speak for herself instead of trying to improve on it with makeup. She was really a very appealing kid, and a hell of a fine little actress, and I wondered just who it was she was putting on her bewildered act for. The most logical person, of course, was me.