DEATH DIVES
DEEP
Ed Noon Mystery #21
Michael Avallone
STORY MERCHANT BOOKS
BEVERLY HILLS
2014
Copyright © 2014 by Susan Avallone and David Avallone All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author.
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For Karl Redcoff and Evelyn King and coffee time on West Thirtieth Street.
From an unrecorded conversation in the White House:
MR. PRESIDENT: Would you be willing to act as a special agent to this office? To have no one know of your existence except myself? Without portfolio, certification or credit of any kind. I can never officially acknowledge your services, you understand. If it ever came to a choice of sacrificing you to save the Security posture of the Government, there would be no alternative for me. I should have to let your head roll. So all you can count on from me is expense monies to cover your assignments. Knowing all that, would you still take the job?
ED NOON: When do I start, sir?
THE CAST OF CHARACTERS
. . . according to their cover stories
ED NOON . . . . . . . . . . . . . private detective, New York
MR. PRESIDENT. . . . . . . Chief Executive, Washington
HARRY HEALEY . . . . . . skin diver, Florida
ARTIE SOTHERN . . . . . playboy fisherman, Denver
SERENA SAVAGE . . . . actress, Connecticut
CONSTANT SMITH . . . live-bait salesman, Mexico
DOC PONTO . . . . . . . . medical man, Seattle
DANDY JAXON . . . . . . con man, Miami
ARVIS HEALEY . . . . . . teen-ager, Pennsylvania
JESUS KILLY . . . . . . . . con man, Puerto Rico
FREDERICK O'MALLEY. . F.B.I. agent, Michigan
HOPTON AND RALEIGH. . . F.B.I. agents, Manhattan
MADAME ROTI . . . . . . . . . . businesswoman, Toronto
LEO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . chauffeur, New Jersey
. . . and some of them dissemble no more.
Contents
Right Out of a Z Movie
Live Bait
Reader's Report
Cliff Hanger
What Ever Happened to Harry Healey?
Insanity, Inc.
The Lady's from Hell
F.B.I.—Caught a Spy
Station Identification
The Bermuda Angle
Lethal Lovely
Night Plane to Nowheresville
Spider Buddy
Operation Drop Dead
The Kitten in the Mouse Auditorium
RIGHT OUT OF A Z MOVIE
THE President of these United States called me on the phone exactly one hour before the fourth scheduled moon shot from Cape Kennedy. The two items are not related. One has nothing to do with the other. At least they didn't when he rang me up on the red-white-and-blue hot line that sits on the office desk and makes everyone but Melissa Mercer think I'm color-blind.
Mr. President had had to talk tough to Red China. He'd just gotten back from a summit meeting in Hanoi. The world was holding its breath again. A thermonuclear end to all the troubles of the universe still seemed just around the corner. Nobody wanted it to come. Which was why I was surprised to hear the President's voice dumping the Healey-Sothern affair into my lap.
"There's a package you'll be receiving some time today. From the Xerox people in New York. Ostensibly, it's an unfinished draft of a manuscript you had them reproduce for you. Roughly sixty pages or so. You understand?"
"Check."
"When you've read the material, call me back."
"Will do."
For a moment, his famous voice lost the cool authoritative sound and he chuckled.
"I assure you I'm not interested in a prospective bestseller. It is imperative I know your thoughts on this particular matter. Nobody at this end has been able to make heads or tails of this particular piece of copy. I'm gambling on that curious intellect of yours, Ed. All the usual Federal agencies are up against a stone wall."
"You flatter me, as usual."
"Nonsense. The record speaks for itself." There was a pause. "Call me as soon as you can. As always, this may be important enough to cost me my job."
After he had hung up I lit a Camel and tried to carry on my business as usual. It wasn't easy. Melissa Mercer was enjoying her two weeks of holiday from the Noon Private Detective Agency and I'd gotten so used to her sunny presence around the mouse auditorium that I now missed her as much as my thirtieth birthday. The Man had left me with some sobering thoughts. I wasn't thinking at all about the Healey-Sothern papers. I was thinking about old age, retirement and the fact that a fortyish private eye was just pushing things a little. I didn't feel like running anymore, late hours weren't all the fun they used to be and I was wary of fistfights, running gun battles and screwball clientele. A man does get older, doesn't he?
Hell, I didn't even put away as much scotch and gin as I used to. Like Satchel Paige said often enough, I couldn't look back. Something might be gaining on me. And Christmas was coming.
In that lovely mood, I was lonely at the desk until an hour later when a delivery boy walked gloomily into the office and dropped a gum-taped letter-size parcel on my desk. I signed for it after I saw that the shipping memo was made out to Ed Noon. Mr. President had his methods. This was one of them.
After the boy left, less gloomy with a dollar tip, I locked the front door of the office, called my answering service to tell them I was out to lunch and parked myself under the big windows that face West Forty-sixth Street. The only thing I didn't disconnect was the red-white-and-blue phone. That was a line that had to stay open. When you're on twenty-four hour call from the first man of the nation, you can't hang up. The penalties of the supra-secret service.
The package came apart fairly easily. Within the brown wrapping paper was a stack of freshly run-off Xerox sheets. Numbered from one to sixty-two. The President hadn't pulled my leg. It was in manuscript form, all right. Title and byline and everything. It made me feel like an editor or a reader in a book publishing firm. I had an acute feeling that I wasn't supposed to blue-pencil a thing but that my opinion meant a great deal. Acceptance or rejection.
In that decisive mood I settled back in my swivel, loosened my collar and began to read.
I hadn't read a book in months, my last reading for pleasure being Ardrey's Territorial Imperative and African Genesis. Ardrey's material and the manuscript pages on my desk, as far apart as the poles in treatment and content, still had an awful lot in common.
The story that Harry Healey had committed to sixty-two pages of pale paper was all about territory and violence. Healey, whoever he was, had gotten more than his fair share of both.
His saga was right out of a Z movie. The kind of second feature from the good old days of the Thirties which would have starred Chester Morris, Richard Dix and Victor McGlaglen with a dame like June Lang or Dolores Del Rio thrown in. Take your pick. When they made the same kind of movie in '57, they called it Fire Down Below and Robert Mitchum, Jack Lemmon and Rita Hayworth kicked the same kind of gongs around.
Anyway I looked at it, Harry Healey's opus sounded and smelled like Wylie's whiff into midnight.
With a supporting cast of thousands.
The Chief had employed my unique kind of services many tim
es in the past. The moles who try to undermine the democratic way of life are always working underground. Sometimes they burrow up the works with sabotage, assassination or, like the last time out*, they kidnap someone like the Doomsday Bagman (who always follows the President around with that black satchel containing the blueprints and code patterns for all-out thermonuclear war). I still got nightmares remembering how the hand grenade that an F.B.I. turncoat threw at lovely Felicia Carr and myself exploded the rat into the next world because I'm faster than a Kansas twister when I have to be.
But Harry Healey's story was something else again.
LIVE BAIT
by Harold J. Healey
THE day my partner showed up at the beach with that green-eyed witch in tow, I knew we were in for it. We being me, Harry Healey, and my partner, Artie Sothern. It wasn't the green-eyed doll's fault. Her name was Serena. That's a laugh. She was about as serene as a hurricane.
Artie had always been allergic to good-looking dolls and Serena was the last word. But the trouble wasn't her fault. She didn't bring us to the Florida coast. That was our idea all the way.
You see, Artie was buck-hungry. That started the trouble.
Me, I was beginning to wonder if I hadn't left the best part of me in Ben-Suc. We'd scraped and scrimped and put our dough together on a small operation known as Healey-Sothern off the Florida Keys. A lousy little inlet with a stretch of sandy beach where we specialized in skin diving, spear fishing and anything that meant an honest dollar. For business and for kicks. Artie and me had an awful lot in common. Even though he hailed from Denver and I was a New Yorker, we hated Vietnam, liked the outdoors and wanted a tan that didn't come out of a lamp. Salt water and the Florida climate and working for ourselves had seemed like the only way out of this crooked world. So we had pooled our discharge loot, invested in diving gear and a trim sloop and set up business in a clapboard shack on Key Alma.
Serena was his own idea. One of the very few notions we had never shared.
Key Alma is a garden spot visually what with its palms, sandy beach and blue sea. Geographically it's something else again. Not exactly what you'd call a picnic grounds. The Gulf Stream whips through that part of Florida on its way out to deeper water and what that's done to the shore is a mariner's nightmare. The coral reefs form a ledge around the cove high enough to walk on and the shore line is so badly chipped you'd swear somebody went to work on it with razor blades. It's a bitch of a place to steer a ship. Any ship of any size.
A bitch just like that green-eyed Serena turned out to be.
Healey-Sothern finds Key Alma ideal though for the sort of life and business we figured on. There's no competition from rival diving outfits so we supply all the nearby clubs and restaurants with crab meat, catalinas, barracuda steak. The sort of food the clientele would never dare dive for themselves.
Every now and then we'd rent the sloop out to the rich pleasure bums who wanted to thrill their dames on the high seas. What with the rentals on the boat and the loot earned from the fishing hauls, Artie and me had a going business. It was hard work but fun and the pay was terrific. We could have gone on forever, I think.
Until that damn Serena fouled up the bivouac.
Our clean sloop was called The Naked Lady. Which was Artie's idea. Crazy I called it but I had to agree it made the sign on our shack an eye-stopper:
HEALEY-SOTHERN COMPANY
SKIN DIVING SPEAR FISHING
NAKED LADY FOR RENT
It's funny, but I always think of that sign and Serena together. Naked ladies are what killed Artie Sothern, I think.
Anyhow, the day the troubles started, I was lashing some loose sail on The Naked Lady when Artie came ambling along the pier with Serena on his arm.
I thought I was seeing things. I'd been having a lot of headaches lately. A ton of aspirin didn't seem to help. Maybe it was the sun, the salt water, but I was feeling way off my feed. Cranky and irritable. Coming off the Lady onto the pier and seeing Serena for the first time didn't help any; she was about as quiet-looking as a tidal wave. No wonder they name hurricanes after women. Her hips, bust and legs were incredibly shapely and big. All of that and green eyes, too.
"Senior!" Artie had a Joe College voice. "Look what I found in Melona. Sitting all by her lonesome in Pete Wiley's bar. Serena, meet Harry Healey. Say hello to the pretty girl, Harry."
"Hello, Serena," I said.
She stared at me and all I saw were those deep green eyes . . .
I got restless at this part of the story and got up to find some scotch. There was always a bottle in the lower drawer of the desk, in the approved movie style. The manuscript didn't exactly grip me. It was becoming homework, but I went back to it. The President hadn't sent it to me because he liked sea stories, obviously. There must be something in it. There had to be to engage the attention of the White House.
"Senior, don't look so glum. It's a lovely day, isn't it?"
You must know an Artie Sothern. You've got a brother like him or maybe you roomed with him in college or soldiered with him. You must know someone with the same amount of good looks, curly hair, white teeth and just plain balls.
"Shut up, Junior. Want to wake the seagulls?" My headache was killing me just then. I stared right at the girl. "Pleased to meet you." I looked back at Artie. "And where, pray tell, are the supplies?"
Artie slapped his forehead and winced.
"How could I remember? There I was fishing the list out of my pocket and I saw this beautiful green-eyed creature nursing a lonely drink in Pete's. Well, at least I had sense enough to bring her back."
"Congratulations. You want me to dance with joy? Artie, we needed that stuff. . ."
Serena was staring at me because I was annoyed.
"Showgirl?" I was dripping with sarcasm. Artie was chuckling. Nothing bothered him very much. Not even me.
She barely made a negative nod. Artie had put his arm around her bared shoulder. She was dressed in a hip-hugging piece of silk that was more bikini than dress. Artie had nothing on but his old khaki slacks and a Mets' baseball cap. He and the girl were both as brown as cinnamon toast.
"Senior," Artie tsk-tsked. "You mad at me?"
"Forget it. Constant Smith can pick up the supplies for us later. We have to run over to Skeleton Key and try for some of those sponges again."
"Say, Harry. How about a deal?" Artie winked at me. "Serena's never been out before and you're so waterlogged now the rest will do you some good. How about you sitting this one out? I can handle the Lady all the way and dive for the sponges and Serena can help me as standby. Same time she gets a pleasure cruise and I get some work in for Healey-Sothern. Three's company, you know." He winked again.
What the hell. We had both worked our tails off hauling fish for the resorts and you can't sit on the Arties of this world for too long without them flipping their lids. He needed a little fun. He'd been a good boy, besides. He was one of the strongest, hardest workers I'd ever known. He played just as hard, too. There's no other way, I guess.
I can't say I minded passing up the cruise this once. My head was getting hotter by the second. I felt boiled out. Parched.
"Sure. I guess you could do it alone."
"That's my boy. See, Serena? I told you Harry was a good egg."
I looked at her again. Fleshpot with terrific handles, but her damn green eyes gave me the willies. It was like looking down into the bottomless Atlantic. Plus which she hadn't hardly said a word. Her smile was Mona Lisa, you know? The kind that demands a swift kick in the teeth.
"First time a woman's ever been on board," I told her.
"That's nice."
"Dames and boats don't mix."
"That depends on the dame and the boat, doesn't it?"
"I suppose so."
"I don't think you ever suppose anything, Mr. Healey. You look like the cautious, careful type."
"What?" That blurted out of me.
"Skip it," she said.
I felt nuts. Skip it,
she had said. That's nice, she had said. That depends on the dame and the boat, doesn't it? she had also said. Perfectly logical remarks. Maybe true, but the damnedest, unholy part of all of it was that I hadn't heard her say it! Not the words anyway. I'd had to read her lips.
I'd been looking straight at her. Seen her full red lips move, but there had been a bubbly sort of undercurrent of sound coming from her mouth. As if she had been talking while drinking a glass of water.
I looked at Artie to see if it was a rib but he was unfurling sail on The Naked Lady, whistling something from Carousel. I had to shake my head, turning away. My ears were roaring like a waterfall. When I felt a little more sure of myself, I turned back again. Artie was helping Serena on board, one hand close to her lush fanny. He was laughing and shouting at her, dishing out a lot of mock orders as it she was some lowly seaman and he was Captain Bligh. I couldn't understand it. I heard him fine. Loud and clear.
"Cast off, you lubber!" Artie yelled.
Serena, as spectacular as a dame can be with what she had going for her, laughed and smiled at me. She waved at me as the Lady's dove-white sails billowed out into the full wind. Her tightly-held breasts danced.
"Goodbye, Harry," she called. The bubbles again; the odd sound of water running over her voice. I blinked in the sunlight.
Standing on the short, rickety pier of the marina, I watched them go. My head was hammering again. Not even the sight of the Lady, as pretty as a poem, dipping and plunging for the mouth of the inlet, made me feel any better.
I got hold of myself. It looked like my hearing was going again. I thought of Ben-Suc and the sniper's bullet that had parted my hair. A mild concussion according to the medics. I decided right then and there that it was high time I ran up to Melona to see Doc Ponto for a physical. Maybe I'd been down under where the sea is deep and green just one time too many. Either that or the Florida sun had finally bleached me out. It's happened before to better men than me.
Serena's green eyes mocked me as the Lady swept out to sea.
Death Dives Deep Page 1