All the way

by Charles Williams

  It was nine when I awoke. My clothes were badly rumpled. I had a slight hangover, but it wasn’t bad. I washed my face, but didn’t shave, and when I appraised myself in the mirror I looked like a man on the wrong end of a two-day binge. Shoving the empty wallet in my pocket, I put on the hat and glasses and took one last look around. Everything was all right. Except for the pants and the nylons drying in the bathroom, there was nothing to indicate a woman had ever been here.

  I went out, being careful not to leave any prints on the knob as I closed the door, got in the car, and drove out. The woman who ran the place was in the doorway of the office; she smiled, and I solemnly tipped my hat. It was a few minutes past ten when I reached downtown Miami and finally found a parking place. The briefcase the tapes had been in was on the back seat. I got out with it and walked to the bank.

  I wrote out the check for a hundred and seventy thousand dollars, and presented it at a window. The teller was a girl. She did a take, raised her eyebrows, looked at me again, and disappeared. I gathered it wasn’t every day she cashed checks in that amount for grimy and disheveled characters who’d obviously slept in their clothes and hadn’t shaved for a couple of days. Well, I’d expected a certain amount of consternation. I stuck a cigarette in the holder and lit it.

  Dakin came out. As I’d suspected before, he never remembered what anybody looked like. He glanced uncertainly around at the people at other windows, and when the girl nodded towards me, he said, “Ah, yes. Mr. Chapman.” We shook hands.

  “Do you really want this in cash?” he asked incredulously.

  I stopped humming The Music Goes Round and Round, glanced at him as if I thought the question tiresome, and said, simply, “Yes.”

  I knew then they’d already checked the signature against the card and knew it was genuine. They suspected a con game of some kind, or that I was in some kind of trouble at home and had worked out this deal for disappearing with a lot of ready cash, but in the end there was nothing they could do about it. I’d put the money in the bank, so who had a better right to take it out? He did ask, since it was made out to cash and the girl hadn’t actually seen me sign it, if I’d mind making out another?

  “Not at all,” I said. I made out another, signed it, and said, “But I’m in rather a hurry, if you don’t mind.”

  He looked at the signature, and shrugged. There was a slight service charge for transferring the funds. They brought the money, packed it into the briefcase for me, I paid the service charge, tipped my hat politely to the girl, and walked out with the briefcase under my arm.

  When I reached the car I placed it on the seat beside me, unzipped it, and removed ten fifties from one of the bundles. I placed them in the wallet and started out US 1. At the edge of Coral Gables there was a large sporting goods store I’d already located. I stopped and bought a six-foot aluminum car-top boat. While the men were installing the carrier atop the car and securing the boat and oars to it, I walked impatiently up and down, chainsmoking cigarettes and muttering about the delay. It came to a little over a hundred dollars. I gave the clerk three fifties, and when he brought my change, I asked, “How far is it to Lake Okeechobee?”

  “You’re headed the wrong way,” he said. “It’s north. Go back—”

  “Thanks,” I said, paying no attention. I was already walking out.

  It was only a few miles from there to the roadside curio stand. I began watching for it, and when I saw it ahead I checked the mirror to be sure no one was too close behind me. I was clear. I kept booming right on at fifty until I was slightly past the place, and then hit the brakes in a crash stop. Rubber screamed, and the car yawed back and forth across the pavement, finally sliding to a stop on the gravel several hundred yards away. I put it into reverse, and shot backwards, and slid to a stop again right before the place.

  The cold-eyed proprietor was waiting on a pair of tourists from Michigan. They were looking at seashells on a long table—or had been. They’d stopped everything now to stare at me. I leaped out of the car and ran over to the row of ornamental flamingos beside the fence. Grabbing one of them up, I lifted it, as if estimating its weight. It was one of the type normally set in paddling pools, with a circular concrete base at the bottom of the thin steel legs.

  I turned towards him with an imperious gesture. “I’ll take one of these.”

  He regarded me coldly. It was possible, of course, that he didn’t like anybody, but I felt sure he remembered me. “I’m waiting on these people, mister,” he said. “What’s the hurry?”

  “Look,” I said, beginning to shout. “I didn’t stop here to tell you the story of my life. All I want to do is buy one of your goddamned flamingos—”

  I grabbed it up in my arms as if to take it to the car, but lost my grip on it and let it drop. It fell over on the gravel. I lunged for it again. At that moment his wife hurried out of the shop and said anxiously, “I’ll take care of these customers, Henry.”

  The Michigan couple was fascinated with the performance. Henry grabbed the flamingo away from me and stalked to the car. Nodding curtly to the trunk, he asked, “You got the keys?”

  “The keys?” I was aghast. “No, no, no! Put it in here!” I yanked the rear door open. “On the seat.”

  He looked at the pale blue leather and then at me. “Mister, it ain’t none of my business what you do with your car, but you ort to put it in the trunk.

  I removed the cigarette holder from my mouth and stared at him in sheer outrage. “In the trunk? Who the hell ever heard of putting a flamingo in a trunk?”

  This broke the tourists up at last. They had to turn away, and I heard strangled sounds of laughter.

  “I mean—damn it—” I went on, gesturing wildly. “There’s no room. My—my suitcases are in there.”

  He dropped the flamingo on the seat. I shoved a fifty-dollar bill in his hand and got in and roared away. As soon as I was out of sight I slowed to forty; there was still a lot of time to put in, and only the remotest chance that Henry would call the police and report me as a menace to navigation. If I were picked up he might have to part with the change from the fifty. I stopped in Homestead and bought a roll of heavy white cord.

  It was shortly after two p.m. when I turned off into the large parking area at the Theater of the Sea, located between Tavernier and Islamorada on the Overseas Highway. It was one of the well-known tourist attractions of the Keys, a large souvenir shop and a fenced area containing the aquarium ponds and tanks stocked with marine life. There were two performing porpoises, and a guide who conducted a tour. I went inside, bought a ticket, and waited for the next tour.

  When the crowd was large enough, some fifteen or twenty tourists, we started around, staring at the fish and listening to the lecture. I paid scant attention and spoke to no one until the guide was squatted at the end of one of the ponds coaxing a jewfish to come up and gulp the mullet he had in his hand. In a moment it did, and then settled slowly back into the rather murky water.

  The guide rose. I pushed my way through the crowd around him, and demanded, “Did you say that was a jewfish?”

  “That’s right,” he replied. “They’re one of the grouper family—”

  I stared at him suspiciously. “I thought they lived in salt water.”

  Someone giggled at the rear of the crowd. “They do,” the guide explained with weary patience. “These are all salt-water fish.”

  I pursed my lips and nodded. “Just as I suspected. All I can say is it’s a hell of a way to treat fish.”

  He sighed, opened his mouth to explain that the ponds were filled with sea-water, but turned away with a well-you-run-into-all-kinds expression on his face. The crowd tittered. The tour went on. I remained on the outskirts, aloof and disapproving.

  I arrived in Marathon at four-thirty p.m., after stopping several times along the way to get out and look at the water. One hour and twenty minutes to go. I checked my watch against a time announcement on the car radio to be sure it was still reasonably accurate,
and hunted up a bar. It was quiet, with hardly anyone in it, and there was a telephone booth at the rear. There was also one out front on the sidewalk, in case the first happened to be occupied.

  I ordered one Scotch and water and nursed it for an hour. The bartender tried once or twice to start a conversation, but I gave no indication I even heard him. At exactly five-fifty, I got up and started out, and then stopped abruptly. “Oh, my God, I’ve got to make a phone call—” Getting several dollars’ worth of change, I went back to the booth and called Coral Blaine.

  “Where are you, dear?” she asked. “I’ve been trying to reach you—”

  “I’m at Lake Okeechobee,” I replied.

  “Then you’re on your way home?”

  I paid no attention. “It’s funny, though. I keep thinking I’ve been here before. I’ve never been in Lake Okeechobee have I?”

  “Heavens, dear, I don’t know. I’ve never heard you mention it. But I’m glad you’ve started back—”

  “Tell Wingard it was too late,” I said. “But he can forget it now.”

  “Oh,” she said, a little uncomfortably, I thought. I was listening carefully for clues. “That was what I wanted to get in touch with you about. He was in this morning—”

  And he’d told her, of course. “It was too late before I figured it out,” I went on, ignoring her completely. “It wasn’t your fault. You kept telling me Marian was there—”

  “Darling,” she interrupted, “couldn’t we stay off that subject, just once?”

  I nodded. There it was. I was sure now.

  “You kept telling me she was,” I continued, “but I didn’t believe you, because I kept seeing her down here. Everywhere I went. What she was doing, of course, was going back and forth. But I don’t know why I didn’t figure out about the radio station in time. I knew how clever she was—”

  “Harris, is this some kind of joke?”

  “All she had to do was walk in there and pick up the microphone and spread her lies to everybody in the country, and turn ’em all against me. Make ’em think I didn’t treat her fairly. The way they turned against Keith, and it wasn’t his fault at all. The girl walked right into his car—”

  “Harris—!”

  “People believed her, too. I can tell. I see ’em looking at me on the street— But I stopped her, even if it was too late. She’s here with me now.”

  “Harris, will you please listen to me? You’re mistaken—”

  “Oh, no,” I said triumphantly. “Maybe she’s got you believing those lies too. Don’t defend her. You know it was all lies. And she is with me. Right here. I’ve got her out in the car. She broke into my room last night, and when I woke up she was leaning over whispering lies to me. I tried to make her shut up—”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying!” Her voice was growing shrill. “It’s utterly impossible.”

  She had turned the knife that Monday morning, but in the field of really exquisite deadliness she was an amateur. While she was sitting there listening to me say I’d just killed Marian Forsyth, Marian was standing at the next desk, talking to Barbara Cullen.

  I dropped my voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

  ”You’ll hear from me. I’ll be in a foreign country, angel, where they didn’t hear the things she told about me, and I’ll send for you.” I hung up.

  I went back to the bar, ordered another drink, and sat for ten minutes or so staring moodily at the mounted sailfish above the backbar mirror.

  “Beautiful fish,” I said to the bartender. “You know, they catch a lot of those down in the Keys.”

  He was so happy at having somebody to talk to again he did a clown routine. He picked up the bottle from which he’d just poured my drink, stared at it unbelievingly, and shook his head. “Pal, you’re right square in the middle of the Keys.”

  “Lovely country,” I said. “Next time you go, you ought to take the whole family; they’d love it.” I got up and went out.

  I went on towards Sugarloaf Key, still driving under forty. There were several problematical factors now, but I was sure I had plenty of time and didn’t want to make that turn off the highway until it was dark. A lot depended on when she decided to call the Florida highway patrol—if she did at all. It would be the logical thing to do. There was still a good possibility I hadn’t really killed anybody, but not much doubt that I was foaming mad and might at any minute. But Marian had insisted her first concern would be getting off the ship herself before it went down, and that she’d chicken out at the prospect of having to call and have her insane fiance picked up and spread all over the front pages before she had a chance to start disowning him.

  But at any rate, she was going to have to tell somebody, and that somebody would call the Florida authorities. But the Okeechobee thing should have stuck in her mind; God knows I’d hit it hard enough. Of course, the operator would have said it was Marathon calling, but nobody ever paid any attention to that, and she’d said it to Mrs. English, anyway. The chances were there would be no alert in this area until they started picking up my trail, and I needed less than an hour now to duck into the hole and pull it in after me.

  When I reached Big Pine Key I could see I was still too early, so I pulled off the highway, drove up a back road for a mile or so and parked, still facing away from the highway. Two or three cars went past. If they noticed me, so much the better. It would take a long time to search Big Pine; it was one of the largest of all the Keys.

  When it was completely dark, I turned and went back. There wasn’t a great deal of traffic on the highway. As I began closing on the turn-off at Sugarloaf there was only one car behind me. I slowed and let it pass, and then made the turn. I speeded up, hurtling over the bumpy country road. In a few minutes I came to the trace of a road going off to the left, and in only two or three more to the openings through the wall of mangroves where boats could be launched. My headlights splashed against the pick-up truck. Aside from it, the place was utterly deserted.

  The faint ruts ran on for another two or three hundred yards through heavy brush that scraped the car on both sides, made a sharp turn toward the water, and dead-ended among the mangroves. There was a narrow channel here, going through them to open water, but it was never used for launching boats because the underbrush and mangroves were so heavy on all sides it would be impossible to turn or maneuver. I stopped just above high tide, and cut the lights and engine. Impenetrable darkness closed in around me, and thousands of mosquitoes, and utter silence except for the faint lapping of the water. There was no surf, because of the shallow water and the mangrove islands farther out.

  Getting out, I fumbled the key into the lock, and opened the trunk. When I’d located the flashlight, I turned it on, unfastened the boat, and lifted it down. I dragged it down to the edge of the water, put the oars in it, the concrete flamingo, the ball of cotton cord, and my canvas shoes. Taking out my khaki shirt, I wiped the steering wheel, dash, door handles, and trunk handle, and then rubbed and wiped my hands and fingers over them to leave a satisfactory number of unusable prints in case they did start to check.

  I opened the whisky, took a drink of it, poured the rest into the water, and threw the bottle far over into the mangroves. Lifting out Justine’s shoe with the broken and dangling heel, I dropped it beside the rear of the car, under some overhanging brush, and checked it with the flashlight. It couldn’t be too obvious. I nudged it farther out of sight with my foot. Good. I dropped the other shoe in the boat. Closing the car, I pushed off. The water was quite shallow and I had to wade out several steps before I could get aboard.

  I sat down and poled it out of the narrow channel with one of the oars. When I reached open water I threw the other shoe overboard. It would move around with the tide, and might or might not be found, but it made no difference. I turned off the flashlight and began rowing parallel to the shore, watching the dark wall of the mangroves. In a few minutes I could see the break in them, and pulled in to the beach. I switched on the flashli
ght again, and saw the pick-up truck. Pulling the boat up, I squeezed the water out of my trouser legs, took off the wet leather shoes, and put on the canvas ones. They had corrugated crepe-rubber soles.

  I carried the flamingo up, unlocked the trunk, and placed it on the floor in front. Then the ball of cord, and the wet shoes. I put the oars in back, carried up the boat, and placed it on top of them. Carrying the flashlight, I followed the ruts on through the brush to the Cadillac. I walked towards the edge of the water, threw the light in, and could see the marks of the boat and my tracks on the soft bottom as I’d waded out. The leather shoes had left some fairly good imprints above high tide, also, and I walked down, leaving the distinctive track of the canvas ones on top of them in places.

  I opened the trunk and took out the steel wrecking bar I’d bought. Slamming the lid down so it locked, I stuck the flat end of the bar under the edge of it and began prying upward. It was stubborn, and I had a large area of steel bent and chewed before the lock finally gave up and it flew open. Then I closed and locked all the doors, and used the end of the bar to knock in the right front window so I could reach the latch. I rifled the glove compartment, leaving everything strewn on the floor. Taking out the briefcase and my fishing clothes, I took one last look around with the flashlight to be sure I hadn’t overlooked anything, and walked back to the truck.