Death Dives Deep

by Michael Avallone

  "Where have you been all this time?"

  "In Vegas. I got a job as a blackjack dealer. Figured it was the best place for me. All I was interested in was keeping under cover and earning three square meals a day. But listen to me, Noon. I was scared. More scared than I ever was in Ben Suc. This was a lot different from a shooting war. . . ."

  "I'll buy that. But why start a story you couldn't finish? The way you set up the thing it could have passed simply as an adventure yarn you would try to sell to a magazine like Argosy or one of the other men's mags."

  Suddenly, he looked very sober and thoughtful and it would have been hard, very hard, not to buy the Brooklyn Bridge from him if he had offered it for sale. He had a very honest face. Like Spencer Tracy on a clear day.

  "I thought about that—and it comes to this. I did think my number was up and I wanted to get it down on paper right away before something happened to me, and then I sent what little I had to Serena. I trusted her. That make sense?"

  "For now . . . yes. What about Arvis?"

  A long sigh escaped him. "Never figured on the kid coming to look for me. I had her tucked in Pennsylvania all safe and sound. Not even Artie knew about her. . . ." He thought about Artie for a long second and passed a big hand over his face. "I got married when I was eighteen and it lasted about two months—a real kid marriage. Arvis's mother died later on . . . brought up by a sister of my wife's. I kind of roamed the world after that. Until Ben Suc—and then Key Alma with Artie. I sent money, wrote letters now and then, but I didn't see Arvis at all. I never figured she'd be the plucky kind of kid who would come looking for me."

  "Plucky?" I shook my head. "You can call her more than that. According to Serena, she was gutsy enough to get a pair of private cops to go looking for you on the strength of maybe there was a treasure map in what you wrote down. And she doesn't look a day over eighteen."

  "She's nineteen," Harry Healey said dully. "I'm older than I look. And Arvis did that because she managed to get in touch with Serena—something I said in a letter to her that I wrote in Vegas but had a customer mail from California—Arvis went right back to Florida to see if she could pick up my trail. She met Jaxon and Killy there and did what she had to, I suppose, to get them interested in a manhunt she obviously couldn't afford. Crazy kid."

  "Then you haven't seen Arvis at all?"

  "No. And only today Serena told me all about that shooting and seeing her come out of that building with Dandy Jaxon practically dragging her off. Your building, Noon. Is she all right?"

  "Jaxon won't harm a mealticket. But he shot Killy dead right in front of my eyes."

  He winced. "He doesn't sound any good. Kind of a guy who would kill a partner just to keep everything for himself."

  "That he is. He introduced himself with the name Killy in my office just before the killing so it follows he'd already made up his mind to doublecross his little partner. Arvis couldn't stop him. She must have done a great job on Dandy Jaxon. He believes there are millions of dollars tied up in your bedtime story."

  Harry Healey stared at me evenly. His eyes were almost sad.

  "Serena thinks Arvis must have got Jaxon's tongue hanging with a story about maybe a lost Spanish galleon. You know how many of them went down off the coast of Florida in the days of pirates and bad weather. What do you think?"

  "Please. It's all been too fast too soon. I don't know. I just don't know. I'll admit Jaxon acted as if he was looking for a map to Treasure Island. I'll buy that. But I won't buy any wild crazy kind of Atlantis. Lost continents are not in this year. Take my word for it."

  "Don't con me, Noon." His voice was a ragged growl. He stopped looking sad. "The story was sent to you. The Government was the only one that should have had a copy. I'm not stupid. You must be tied in with the F.B.I. or CIA or something or somebody pretty big. Why should they send it to you? Nobody's said a peep to Serena in all these months. So tell me—how come a private cop gets his hands on Government property?"

  "I dine regularly at the White House. Old friend of the family."

  "Come on. Don't hold out on me."

  "You'll have to trust me, Harry. That's all I can tell you. You wouldn't believe my real story if I did a swearing job on a stack of old Bibles."

  "You're asking a lot, mister. Half the people I know have been killed because of this mess I got myself in. I don't mind my own neck but I got Serena to consider. And now Arvis has come busting into the act. Give me a break. I want to believe you, Noon."

  Our eyes locked. He was a big boy and if he suddenly lost faith in me I'd have my hands full wrestling with him. He still had the Luger, too.

  "All I'll tell you, Harry, is that I'm a special agent. Nobody in the world has a job like I have. We'll have to let it rest there. Believe me, if I was one of your enemies I never would have come walking in here under my own power doing the Lone Ranger bit. If I was one of your water people, would I leave myself open like this? All they have to know, according to you, is where you are and it's all over, right?"

  "Don't be cute." He shrugged helplessly. "I've lived for a long time half-expecting a building to fall on top of me. I still don't know what the hell is going on in the water off Skeleton Key. Zero. I don't know why Artie is dead. And why they ran down a nice guy like Doc Ponto or why they lowered the boom on Constant Smith, even if Serena thinks they wanted to pin that on me. Do you get what I'm saying? Something is going on down there, just off Skeleton Key—and it's all mixed up with swimming broads and trouble—and by God, I'm going half off my nut! Why isn't anybody doing something about it?"

  "Easy. Simmer down."

  "Easy?" He snorted. "You ever been dragged under by beautiful strangers trying to drown you? Listen—I still get nightmares about it. . . . It's like something out of a movie serial."

  He was right. He was older than I thought he was. I hadn't heard anybody use that expression in years. But Serena had come drifting back from the kitchenette with a small metal tray bearing three tall glasses. It looked like scotch on the rocks.

  "Scotch. All I have right now," she said. "If you want yours with water, Noon . . ."

  "You read my mind the first time." I took a glass and rattled the ice around. "Harry, the Government seems to work slow all the time. But you'd be surprised. All these months something must have been happening. The Coast Guard, spotter planes, radar tests and all that stuff. You haven't heard about anything because they very obviously didn't come up with anything. When they sent me the manuscript, it was a last resort. They know all about me—or rather a very important person does. I help when I can."

  The color drained right out of his rugged face. His big shoulders sagged.

  "Then it's no good. It's like I expected. They're too big, too clever. How the hell can they hide down there without some kind of device picking up their trail? God . . . it's uncanny. In this day and age, too."

  "It's because it's this day and age," I reminded him, "that you weren't carted off to the booby hatch first crack out of the box. It's wild, it's nutty and it's fantastic—but they go to the moon now, too, and ten years ago that would have gotten you arrested, too. Slow down now and let's both do a little constructive thinking. To quote a well-worn cliche, all is not lost yet."

  "No," Serena Savage said slowly, sipping her drink, coiled on the butterfly chair like a beautiful animal, "just hopeless. Harry's a marked man and you know it. If they know about him, they want him dead. The sooner the better."

  "You are cheerful, Serena," I said. "Can that kind of talk. And don't hang crepe."

  "He's right, Honey," Harry Healey muttered. "Don't quit now."

  "The underwater people." I shook my head. "Let's think about that for a second."

  "What's to think about, Noon? They're there all right. You heard Serena. She's been there. . . . I wish I'd had that to put into my manuscript. Maybe then they would have believed it a bit more."

  I eyed Serena. "Yeah, Serena. Too bad the writing bug didn't bite you. You could have added a
lot more to Harry's story."

  Her shoulders came apart in a helpless shrug. Her green eyes mocked me. "Don't be foolish, mister. You think I didn't tell that to the nice man with the business suit in Washington? He took down a lot of notes, that F.B.I. man did. But then all he did was show me out and say he'd be in touch with me."

  "Then all is not lost at that. You've probably had every move watched since you went to them. Chances are you're staked out right now. Which means they know Harry's back in town. Which is also probably the reason why you're both still alive and those secret society characters haven't come around to rub you out. Unless they actually believe that Harry Healey vanished and that Serena Savage really did drown that day on Skeleton Key. Oh, it's a knotty one, this one, all right. Why the hell don't these people have agents out of the water making sure their secret is really kept?"

  "Talk, talk, talk," Serena Savage said in a dead voice. "I'm sick of it. Harry, let's chuck the whole thing and go someplace. South America . . ."

  "No," he said in a quiet voice, and I could hear the sound of a million arguments between him and his green-eyed mistress. "They killed Artie Sothern. I've got to square that. One way or the other. You know that."

  "I know it," I said. "The banana tree in Ben Suc." I downed some of the scotch. It was a good brand. Just the right amount of bite. But we weren't getting anywhere. I'd gotten a lot more facts to go with Mr. President's sixty-two pages of trouble and assignmeat but it was high time I got on the hot line and added what I knew to what he hadn't told me. Obviously.

  I got to my feet and set the glass down on the mosaic coffee table. It was bordering on nine o'clock. A new day was dawning. And I didn't want to call the Chief at an ungodly hour. Harry Healey and his Serena looked at me in surprise.

  "Taking off?" Harry sounded disappointed.

  "Yeah. Will you two promise me something?"

  "Depends," Harry Healey said. He looked suspicious. With his nightmares, I couldn't blame him.

  "I'm not asking you for any favors or money or miracles. Just stay put. Here. In this apartment. Until I buzz you tomorrow morning. Don't go off on any wild-goose chases. I'll need just that much time to call the people who sent me the manuscript. They'll be able to tell me now exactly where your story stands with Washington. You understand? Tomorrow I'll be able to tell you whether you ought to go to South America or not. It's a great idea, really. You can't do anything about your water people except give testimony when the time comes. And you're on the record right now thanks to that story you sent in. So make me a promise and stick to it."

  Harry Healey said, "We'll be here. If I don't hear from you by four o'clock in the afternoon, the promise is off."

  "Deal." I studied Serena Savage who was finding the ice in her scotch suddenly very interesting. "Serena?"

  "I'm on Harry's side, Noon," she murmured without looking up. "We have to trust you. What choice is there?"

  I had no answer for that. "Keep the door locked. Try not to make any phone calls. If Jaxon comes barging around, stall him. At least until I get some information."

  It was a crazy case from the word Go. But at least all the main pieces were in place and stationary and I felt I could leave the chess board in position while I took time out for a recap from the guy in charge of the game. It made sense that way. As Serena had so succinctly said, what choice is there?

  As for the underwater thing, well, there was no point in whipping up a lot of hare-brained theories. Sure, sections of the Third Reich had gone underground before; there was proof, scientific fact, that man could build himself an underwater complex and live there forever without coming up for air—but he would still need outside help to do so. As for piracy schemes and projects complete with beautiful hijackers, well—what was the use in guesswork? I had a feeling the Chief would have a lot to tell me when we made connections. He didn't send me Harry Healey's xeroxed masterpiece because he knows I'm an avid reader.

  With Castro still in the unquiet world and Red China and the Russians, there was a whole bagful of tricksters to pick from. The location of Skeleton Key in the Florida waters was just too close for U.S. comfort.

  I had one last question for Harry Healey before I waltzed out of the love nest on West Fifty-third Street in the heart of the nakedest city of them all.

  "Harry."

  "Something else?"

  "Yeah. Did you ever ask yourself how The Naked Lady managed to get all the way back to Key Alma at night with nobody on board to steer her home to port? With only a dead man on the deck?"

  He rubbed a forefinger along his sunburned nose. His smile was deadly.

  "Sure. And I always ask myself how high is up and how deep is down." He swore. "Goddammit, don't you think I know how impossible that is? The only answer to it is I don't have the answer."

  "That's all I wanted. Just had to hear a man with seamanship experience say it out loud. Thanks."

  He frowned. "You think someone steered it most of the way back, got close to shore and then jumped ship before I could spot him?"

  "I'm not saying anything. Good night, you two, and try hanging onto each other a little while longer."

  "Four o'clock," he reminded me. "Tomorrow."

  "Check."

  He waved a feeble gesture of goodbye at me. Serena Savage raised her lovely face from the depths of the butterfly and stared obliquely at me from beneath lowered lids. So very suddenly that it was quite a comedown, she had given me nothing but ice since Harry Healey had come back to life. I thought about that on the way out of the building. The quiet, hushed foyer was warm and cozy. Beyond the frosted glass front door lay darkness, the cold and lit-up Manhattan.

  I heard Harry Healey bolt and latch the door of the apartment as it closed behind my back. The mechanism grating home in its grooves had the sound of death about it. Van Gogh's bridge looked ghostly.

  My immediate prospects were very gloomy. There was the shooting mess at the office that would need explaining if Mike Monks tied me in with Killy's corpse as he was bound to. I had to use the red-white-and-blue Ameche, one way or the other. There was no other method of talking to the President. I shivered in my thin gray suit as the icy outer blasts belted me in the face on the front steps of the building. The light snow had given way to a very earnest downfall of the stuff I much preferred in a whiskey glass.

  Frost and blinding sleet choked the city.

  Moving headlights flashed down the block, coming on fast.

  I saw the cab coming before whoever was riding in it saw me. On instinct alone—the gambler's god—I ducked down behind the stoop of stone steps, underneath an archway leading to a basement apartment. I huddled there in the falling snow, feeling the bite of the wind, as the cab came to a purring halt before Fourteen West Fifty-third Street. A door slammed and I heard Dandy Jaxon's inimitable snarl as he paid the driver. Then Arvis Healey's frightened voice pleaded with him not to make any more trouble. There was enough already, it seemed.

  "Please, Dandy. You promised . . ."

  "Shut up. You still stallin' me? Cut it out. I'm all outa patience . . ."

  It was no trick at all to watch them go barreling on into the apartment house, with no pretense of caution, stealth or etiquette. It was very obvious that one of them or both of them had been there before. Arvis's boots clattered and Jaxon's heavy shoes thudded like shovels smacking stone. The snow hadn't caught hold on the steps yet. Arvis sounded like she was sobbing.

  I waited about five minutes after they went in and the front of the building was quiet again. Car horns blasted dimly on Fifth Avenue and the invisible bells in Saint Patrick's tolled the time. Nine o'clock, the bells said. The metal clappers seemed to say, "Lies, lies, lies . . ." Nine times.

  I took too long trying to unscramble the dizzy churning madhouse that my thinking apparatus had become. The machinery was all fouled up and I wasn't exactly sure what the hell to do next.

  That is until a gun somewhere inside the building began to make explosive, cannonading noise
s.

  Somebody got off about six shots before I got my mind unfogged and raced back into the building. The shots echoed hollowly. Like the bullet music in a shooting gallery.

  Six blasts of gunfire.

  It sounded like Harry Healey's Luger, but I couldn't be sure. Shots from behind closed doors have a curious similarity. A parallel sound of terror, alarm and trouble.

  The unholy trinity of violence.

  Ask anybody who's ever heard them.

  THE LADY'S FROM HELL

  I DIDN'T have my .45 and I didn't have a key to get into the building which meant I would have to ring a bell. Serena Savage's or somebody else's. Even as I swept into the narrow hallway-lobby once more, I had only a second to think about that. The gun blasting had stopped as suddenly as it had begun and I waited for the familiar clamor of doors opening, women screaming and a general upheaval of the quiet building's tranquil existence. Up to now, that is. The glass front door barred my way.

  But I didn't need my .45 and I certainly didn't need a key. Light spilled from the open doorway down the hall marked 1 E and the huge shadow of Dandy Jaxon loomed, blocking the light and transfiguring the peaceful setting of the foyer. Through the glass door I saw him come reeling toward me, lurching like a wounded bull. His porkpie hat was rammed down over his forehead and his trenchcoat was flapping open. He came toward me on a drunken course. Only he wasn't drunk. His rough, lumpy face was the color of old teabags and his eyeballs were fluttering dangerously. I saw his tongue sticking out of his thin-lipped mouth. Then he fell against the door, clutching the knob, pawing it. I helped from my side. When I got the barrier to one side, he wobbled on through and literally fell into my arms.

  He was heavy and I could feel the blood staining my hands as they closed around his broad back. I tried to hold him up, tried to see past his bulk down the hall toward Serena Savage's apartment. The open door mocked me. There was no sign of anybody. No sound of life. As if everyone in there were dead. Or gone.