I thought about that for a second.
"Well?" he growled again. "You finished? I got work to do."
"Yeah, I'm finished. How's your bursitis?"
"Lousy, thanks. And I gotta decorate my sister's tree for a flock of nieces and nephews. Oh, well . . . if I don't see you in the next couple of days, Ed—Merry Christmas."
"Merry Christmas, Michael."
We hung up on each other and I stared out the window which had caked up to the cornices with solid snow. The F.B.I. had closed another information channel. Another dead end. No questions asked. No answers given. They had sealed and shut off all local entrances and exits to l'affaire Healey.
It wasn't fair. Wasn't fair at all.
Mike Monks and I were both bachelors, never having found women sappy enough to marry cops, and he had a bad shoulder and had to deck the halls with boughs of holly and all I could do was sit by the silent phone, smoke cigarettes endlessly, and drum my fingers down to the bone. I was getting office-happy. With no Melissa around to at least beautify the atmosphere and provide a sounding board for my deductions and possible conclusions, I was going squirrely.
And the man in the White House was seesawing between life and death in a Navy hospital in D.C.
It was a helluva way to spend the yuletide season.
There wasn't a ho-ho in me.
Sixty-two examples of xerography had driven me up my own private wall.
On the third day of frustration and strings of zeroes, I closed up the office at five o'clock and went home in the snow.
To my little gray home on Central Park West.
Not even a sexy abandoned female could have turned me on, the mood I was in.
A fourth day passed.
A fifth. And a sixth.
And on the seventh day I should have rested. But I couldn't. The President was still critical. And it had begun to seem as if there had never been a manuscript, a Harry Healey or any of the assorted oddballs and drop-outs who made up his salty saga.
Christmas Eve I spent in the apartment, morosely drinking and trying to make like Sherlock Holmes. But it was no use. Sherlock at least had all the pieces when he built up a case and cracked the solution. All I had was part of the puzzle, not all of it.
A flock of Noël cards came in, to the mouse auditorium and to my home address, from people like old friends, former clients and old girl friends, but the one bright ornament in the entire collection was a long distance phone call from Mercer herself. All the way from sunny San Juan. There wasn't a single piece of news, information or contact via the mail. And I had an unfinished case on my hands for the very first time. It was a sad feeling, somehow.
She knows me very well. She spotted the sadness in me even from two thousand miles away.
"You sound miserable," she said. "Didn't Santa fill your stocking?"
"I'm loaded with joy toys. How's Puerto Rico?"
"Fine. I really needed this. But I miss you, stinker."
"Likewise. Let me see, when are you due back?"
She sighed. "Four days. Monday morning."
"Be on time. There's a desk drawer full of unanswered mail. Like bills and mash notes."
"You." She laughed. "Working on anything special since I'm gone?"
"Nothing," I lied. "Everybody's been good this Christmas season. No divorcees, no runaways, no missing persons. No dead beats."
"Not even a special call on the Betsy Ross?"
"Nothing." It was her name for the three-colored Ameche, but she never had had more than a suspicion exactly what its true nature was. I had wanted it that way.
"I'm running up your bill," I said, "but you can take it out of me in free coffee and danish for all of next month. Listen, while you're down there I want you to check every newspaper there is. Even off-island rags but mainly any that deal with shipping stories. Stories happening around Florida, the West Indies, Bermuda. That whole area. Got that?"
"Combining pleasure with business again, huh? I knew it. And what am I looking for, pray tell me."
"Anything that has to do with losses of vessels at sea. Everything from a dory to a yacht or schooner. Got me? I'd appreciate it, Mel."
"What's this all about?"
"Just do it. Bring back whatever you can. I can wait until Monday." I was clutching at straws but I had to do something.
She laughed. "You trying to find out what's going on with this Bermuda Triangle business?"
She had me. It was one of those little things. Something I should have thought of but hadn't. Out of the mouths of good-looking babes. I could only say, "Come again?"
"You know. That area in the Bermuda waters that's been bugging the authorities for years. Where all those boats go down and are never recovered. You must have heard of it. Oceanographers are going nuts trying to dope it out. They even had a special on it last year on TV."
"I know, I know. Mel, you're priceless. You just got a raise."
"I did? Goody for me."
"I'll hang up now. God bless and come back safe."
"Ed?"
"Still here."
"I hope the President pulls through before I get home. It's kind of put a damper on this whole trip."
I stared at the phone for a second. It was just like her and thoroughly in keeping with a heart as big as Harlem.
"Your halo's showing," I said, "and you're spending a fortune with every breath you draw."
"Who cares about that? Weren't you the one that taught me that money is only paper and it burns?"
"I'm a big mouth. You shouldn't listen to everything I tell you. Haven't you got a mind of your own?"
"I do and you're not a big mouth. You talk too much, sure, but it doesn't change the fact that you're the nicest, sweetest, most exasperating man I ever met. White or black or purple."
"I love you, too."
"You really do, you know. You're just resisting my basic black charm."
We were on her favorite subject and I didn't have the heart to hang up on her. We did have a love, a very special kind, but I hadn't been able to call all the shots the way I wanted to. It's like that when you get hung up on a woman. Any woman. If you're going to take their hearts and their feelings and turn them inside out, they're entitled to a helluva lot more from you than a few laughs.
"Mercer, I'm hanging up."
"So hang up—but button up your overcoat."
"I hear you talking, Magic Mouth."
I heard her peck the air at her end and the call ended.
But she had left me with something that made my day, night and week. Something I should have thought of first and hadn't. Something not even the Man had mentioned to me, but what else could explain his unwarranted interest in a wacky sea story from a man who had lived and operated far off the Florida coast?
The Bermuda Triangle.
Of course. It had been staring me in the face since the very time I had been reading Harry Healey's story and I hadn't tumbled to it once. It was a way-out guess, reaching for a handful of comets, but what the hell. What other explanation could there be?
It all came back to me with a rush. All the newspaper reportage, the TV special, the dire and gloomy prognostications of experts and marine mystery specialists. The Great Bermuda Triangle Mystery. Why hadn't I thought of it before? Maybe because it was so farfetched?
If that was the catch to the President's assignment, it would certainly explain the interest of the F.B.I., Frederick O'Malley's forbearance with nosey private detectives, and perhaps all the deaths which had happened because of Healey's confession on paper. Yes, Virginia, there was a Bermuda Triangle but the real question was: Was it a true phenomenon of nature gone mad that swallowed up ships mysteriously or was it a human agency hiding behind the vast enigma of the deep?
Maybe I was dead wrong, but it was certainly the first constructive piece of thinking I was doing since O'Malley showed me the door on East Sixty-ninth Street; the only piece of constructive thinking. I'd been shooting blanks for a whole week.
&n
bsp; It was a good feeling to hear the wheels turning again. The old motor turning over.
Melissa Mercer was a wonder girl. As always.
She had mentioned the Bermuda Triangle.
And now I had something to think about, to sink my teeth into. To make like a detective all over again. Like it says on my P.I. license.
I thought about it.
It was so absorbing it even made me forget, for a little while, that the Man in the White House was still playing a losing game with the Reaper.
But old habits are hard to break.
I called up The New York Times and placed an ad which I wanted to run for a week. I was desperate, maybe wasting my time, but ready to try anything.
The ad was for the personals, the agony column that somehow always draws flies.
It was very short and very much to the point.
The only bait I had left:
HARRY, I KNOW HOW THE STORY ENDS.
COME TO MY PLACE. WE HAVE BUYERS GALORE.
NOON
THE BERMUDA ANGLE
WHEN you're involved, however carelessly or indirectly, the enemy has to come looking for you. It's the only way they know how to play it. The common cost of investigation of any kind is danger. Knowing a lot or a little makes no difference. A little knowledge, where crime or illegality or sabotage is the heart of the matter, like the cliche says, is a very dangerous thing.
So I stayed at home, doing some necessary research on the Bermuda angle and waited. If I hadn't dreamed up Harry Healey and the whole thing, I knew somebody was going to come looking for me. Either him or somebody connected with him—or them. The water people. Enough time had gone by for somebody to make a move. False, overt or otherwise.
I'm an old hand at the waiting game, even though patience is not one of my virtues.
But on Saturday I went down to The New York Times offices, found an old pal who owed me a favor and got back home with a stack of xeroxed copies of old file stories on the Bermuda triangle. A trip to the public library hadn't turned up much of any value. Bulletins from the White House indicated a slight change in the President's condition, but it wasn't anything to pop champagne corks about. A state of emergency existed in the Capitol, and the Vice-President, the Cabinet and all the Houses were still getting ready for the worst.
So I did the necessary homework, armed with a glass of scotch on the rocks, barricaded in my apartment, and ready for bear. I got the company I expected around nine o'clock that still snowy Saturday night. But it wasn't a bear. It was a she-wolf, from the blunted tips of her Mod shoes to the top of her raven black hair.
It was Madame Roti, of course. Who else? The fabulous brunette fantasy of Serena Savage's fairy tale.
Somehow I wasn't surprised. I should have been but I wasn't. Like I said, the President of this country doesn't play games. He never would have sent me Healey's manuscript if it was no more than Wizard of Oz material.
She came as advertised. Serena Savage had described her to a T.
She stood on the threshold of the apartment when I answered the door, .45 drawn, and waited for me to ask her to come in. I drank my fill for a long second, making certain she was alone. She was, but she had everything else going for her.
The face was a mockery, almost. No woman should be that beautiful and liberally endowed. She was tall, almost my height, and her body was the long and slinky kind that makes any outerwear seem no more than a second skin, no matter how bulky. In this instance, it was a fur-trimmed gray coat, drawn to her left hip, buttonless, but held by her arms. She wore dark culottes and somehow had managed to venture out into the snows without galoshes. I imagined a limousine or a fancy hearse waiting downstairs with a big chauffeur who could tear horseshoes apart. She was that type looking woman. Her face was an exquisite chisel of the necessary features, but it was a lovely mask, all the same, without expression. You could never imagine this doll going to the bathroom or having a cold. She was as unreal as that. Lovely like a death mask is lovely. Unlined, perfectly formed, but cold, cold, cold. She gave me the creeps.
"I am Madame Roti," she murmured.
"You couldn't be anybody else," I agreed. "Come on in. Have you come to make love to me or try to kill me?"
"Let me in. I will tell you what you have to know."
"You'll have to let me frisk you. All the way, honey. House rules—especially with females."
Her eyes flashed, but she said nothing, holding the coat wide. It took me a few seconds to rove my hands over her hips, thighs, waist and breasts, front and rear. She didn't flinch or make a move. Nodding, I stepped back and she swept by me in a trail of swishing sounds and the fragrance of lotus blossoms. I locked the front door again and followed her into the living room.
She was extremely businesslike for all her deathless sophistication. She dropped onto one of the comfortable chairs that faced me and crossed the long legs beneath the culottes. She did not take off the fur-trimmed coat. The fur was as white as snow, but snow was never that expensive.
Her eyes studied me, scientifically, almost detached, without any feminine nuance at all. She did not smile.
"People have been going about all of this backwards," she said without preamble. "I am here to remedy that."
"Remedy away. Do you want a drink?"
"No. There isn't time. I must leave New York tonight. In roughly one hour. I want you to come with me."
"I'm flattered. You're a pip and all that but it's not so simple. What big eyes you have, Grandma."
I was wasting my time and hers. She ignored the crack.
"There is a privately chartered plane at Linden Airport in New Jersey. It will take us to Florida. I cannot tell you where, but it is important you do come. Apart from the wishes of my friends, they are offering you something extraordinary. Something that will take you out of all this shabbiness—" here her cold eyes swept around the inglorious environs of my home—"and also permit you to live the rest of your life like an emperor, without having to probe into the ills of mankind for your paltry retainers."
"You," I said, "have got to be kidding."
She shook her head, ever so slightly.
"I'm not here to fence. You either come, see my people, accept their offer, or you are a dead man. As surely as you are sitting there. No, don't smile. Don't think the idea ridiculous. You are only a man. Men die. Tonight, tomorrow, or next week, no matter how you try to avoid it, they would kill you. Sooner or later." She eyed the clock on my imitation fireplace. "You have only five minutes to decide, Mr. Noon. Frankly, I was in favor of killing you. I want you to know that so that you will expect nothing from me. But my people feel you have some value. I confess I do not know what."
"Your people. Water people?"
She frowned, the only rise I'd gotten out of her since we had met.
"More of Healey's nonsense I suppose. It doesn't matter. I will also tell you with complete frankness the reasons I am here. There has been too much attention paid to Healey's excesses already. We know the Federal Bureau of Investigation is involved. You had become involved, too. Therefore, we have decided to ask you to talk to us, at least, before this all gets completely out of hand. Now I can tell you no more. They simply do not want you running around loose here in the east. You might stir up a hornet's nest, needlessly. That is why you have some value as of this time. Dead, you would no longer be a trouble. But alive, you have nuisance value. So, on that score alone, you will be made an offer. This is your reprieve from death, you could say. Make use of it."
I frowned that time.
"I don't have the manuscript, if that's what this is all about. I think Healey has it back. I also think he has killed a man to accomplish that."
She showed her teeth in a moue of impatience.
"Forget Mr. Healey. Forget the manuscript. I have made you an offer. Tell me now whether or not you accept. If you say no, I will leave and you can spend the rest of your lifetime looking over your shoulder. So which is it to be?"
"You're ama
zing," I said. "Like everything else connected with this weirdo. I'm supposed to fly with you to Florida, just like that?"
"It's that or I walk out of here. You learn nothing else from me and worry yourself to death. Once more I'll ask you—do you come or don't you?"
I didn't really know what to do. I wanted to learn all I could but I wasn't sure I wanted to go dashing off into the night with this lovely stranger, either. It was cold out and it's very lonely when you are dead. But I was tired of hanging high and dry on the line, too.
"Just one more question, Madame Roti?"
"Very well. The last and only one."
"You took a chance coming here, didn't you? How do you know I won't put a slug on you and turn you over to the F.B.I. and let them sweat some answers out of you?"
"Really." She shook her head as if I were a moron who had to be tolerated for some as yet unexplained reason. "My name is Arla Roti. I am a visitor from Canada. A vacation from the sportswear firm I own and operate in Toronto. What could you possibly tell the F.B.I. that would allow them to detain me for questioning? If anyone has been telling you strange stories . . . well . . . I don't see how you could implicate me in any way. As for your getting brutal with me, I shall tell you that downstairs my chauffeur is waiting for me. He will be here in approximately fifteen minutes—as much time as is left of the half hour I allotted myself to talk you into coming with me. My chauffeur is a very large, very young man who is devoted to me. He is entitled to wear the black belt as a judo expert, among various other talents." Her dark eyes stirred and apart from the accuracy of my guess about her dark limousine with strong arm to match, I didn't ask her about his other talents. She was exactly the sort of woman who could keep a man around for sex whenever she needed it. Love wouldn't have a damn thing to do with the arrangement at all.
"You win," I said. "I'll go to Florida with you."
"A sensible choice."
"Shall I pack a toothbrush?"
"It won't be necessary. The plane is equipped for all emergency passengers. You won't need any extra clothes, either. You will find a complete wardrobe ready for you on arrival."
Death Dives Deep Page 10