Death Dives Deep

by Michael Avallone

  And the best news of all was waiting for us when we got back to the Coast Guard station at Jacksonville, Florida. Wet, half-drowned, and wondering where all the horseshoes had come from.

  The President of these United States was on the mend. The heart-attack scare was over. Bethseda had pulled him out too. The Man would live. Yes, to run the country, to scotch cold wars, balance the budget and torpedo a Castro plot off the coast of Florida under the waters of Skeleton Key. To even send me on yet another assignment on another day.

  Whatever gold lay at the bottom of Skeleton Key belonged to the United States. No great Communist time schedule was going to be served.

  Let Castro chomp his cigar about that one.

  If he could still afford cigars.

  THE KITTEN IN THE MOUSE AUDITORIUM

  I SAID goodbye to Harry Healey and his ladies in Florida. Healey was going back to Key Alma to see if he could resurrect the thriving skin-diving business that had once been called Healey-Sothern. Serena wanted to marry him with all her green-eyed intensity and Arvis was thoroughly satisfied with her new stepmother. Both beautiful girls could have made anybody feel better, but Harry Healey was still thinking about Artie Sothern and Ben Suc and golden schemes beneath the sea.

  It was a typical sunny Florida day. Making it hard to believe that snow still choked the streets of Manhattan.

  The Government had rewarded Harry Healey with a nice fat chunk of cash for his participation in uncovering a subversive plot to deceive America. Everybody forgave him for shooting Dandy Jaxon.

  The Coast Guard, the Federal agents and the U.S. Navy had raided Skeleton Key, found the underwater cave and a handful of lovely sirens and Spanish-speaking mining experts, and Cuban faces were red all over the diplomatic channels. A lot of apologizing was going on but in the end we confiscated the gold vein. Castro buttoned his lip and retreated behind the walls of his castle, practicing a lot of new ways to say "Yankee, go home." Madame Roti remained a mystery woman, even in death.

  Harry Healey's sixty-two pages of manuscript were now part of the official Congressional Record. It would make nice reading someday if Castro ever stepped out of line again.

  When Harry and the girls saw me off at the airport in Miami, we shook hands, kissed and I promised I'd look them all up again sometime. Serena and Arvis looked almost like twins now. With the bronzed and muscularly rugged Healey, they made a nice family. But my plane was waiting and I was champing at the bit to go back home and see the office and Melissa Mercer again.

  "Noon. Take care."

  "You do likewise. You'll be all right now. How can you go wrong with two of America's sweethearts for company?"

  He grinned but his eyes were sad.

  "Artie made it all come out even in the end, Noon. Didn't he? Made up for a lot of things."

  "Sure, he did. See you around, Healey. Don't write any more stories. Leave it to the guys who get paid for it."

  "Check."

  I looked at him carefully. "Answer me a question?"

  "Sure. Shoot."

  "Exactly. Dandy Jaxon was shot about six times in the back. That still bothers me."

  He winced. A sad expression crossed his rugged face.

  "I got him with the first slug high in the chest. He spun around like a top. I was so damn mad and upset I kept on blasting away—I was like a trigger-happy kid. When I thought what they had done to Artie—"

  I nodded, convinced.

  "Sure. I understand. So long, Senior."

  He stood there at Miami International, his arms wrapped around his women, and I took the wild blue yonder out. By jet.

  Even as the silver bullet climbed up out of sight, losing Miami below, I could see him still waving from behind the chain-wire fence. Arvis had been crying when I left, but Serena Savage had been smiling and proud. She had even called me Ed again.

  That closed the books for me on Healey-Sothern.

  I closed my eyes and slept all the way into Kennedy Airport.

  I got down to the mouse auditorium at eight o'clock the next morning. It had been too wild a night to call up Melissa. So I decided to wait until office time. When I got there, she wasn't in yet. So I had a cigarette, fiddled around with some unanswered mail. At ten, she still hadn't showed so I phoned the President. The red-white-and-blue Ameche felt good once more in my hands.

  His voice didn't sound like a man who has just had a whopping coronary.

  "Glad you're feeling better," I said. "Will they let you play golf?"

  "Won't cut down on my game, Ed." He laughed but turned sober just as suddenly. "Thank you for your part in the manuscript business. You're a very rare man, Ed."

  "Also very lucky. If a dying man hadn't changed his mind, none of us would be out of this."

  "Perhaps. But you know what to do with your luck. Very few people do. It's a talent of yours. An art, almost, and luckily for me and the country, I've been able to make use of it."

  "You're very welcome. I'm glad it's over. It was a ring-ding of an assignment. I'm still not sure I believe half of what happened."

  "It happened," he said grimly. "And it's all in the record. That gold would really have thrown everything out of kilter, you know. As it stands now, we have to make pretty certain it's absorbed gradually by the economy. We'll have to keep it under wraps a long long time. Cuba could have toppled the gold standard if things had worked out in their favor."

  "I know. Well, I'll not keep you. Call me anytime, Chief."

  "Don't worry," he said, feelingly. "I will."

  "A happy New Year, Chief."

  "Amen to that, Ed."

  We both hung up and I felt about fifty percent better. Hope is the thing with feathers, but it's also the bird of truth when you get it from the right sources.

  Twenty minutes later, Melissa Mercer came trooping in from the street She wore a green sheath dress under her winter coat and I had her in my arms before she could get the coat off.

  "Coming in late?" I said mockingly. "Tsk, tsk. What will your boss say?" There was a stack of newspapers on her desk. I hadn't bothered.

  Her eyes were glad to see me. Suspiciously moist. And her lips were definitely warm. I kissed her a half dozen times just to warm the notion up. We got behind the desk and I parked her on my lap and we did some serious smooching for about five minutes. After awhile we gave up because we both had to start breathing again. And, after all, it was a business day.

  "Hey," she laughed. "You're as glad to see me as I am to see you."

  "You said it, you poor man's Diahann Carroll."

  "You're not poor, Ed. You're rich."

  "Interesting, if true. How do you make that out, girl?"

  She smiled into my eyes, searching my face. Other women are beautiful, too, but she's in a class by herself. A nonpareil all the way.

  "Well, you're free, white and over twenty-one. And you've got me."

  "And you're free, black and over twenty-one. I get it. So what do we do about that?"

  She put her cool face next to mine.

  "Noon, let's strike a blow for civil rights, democracy, mixed-marriages and everybody in the whole damn world and get married. How does that grab you?"

  I kissed the tip of her nose.

  "You know something, Ace? One day you're going to ask me that just once too many times and I'll surprise the hell out of you by saying yes."

  Melissa Mercer laughed happily. There was only a trace of sadness in her blues-singer voice. Her lithe body snuggled up against me on the swivel chair. She was a fine fit. She had always been a fine fit.

  "I got a scoop for you, Mr. Noon."

  "Yes?"

  "Surprise me," she said challengingly. "Just go ahead and surprise me."

  I looked over her shoulder at the red-white-and-blue phone.

  She never would believe me but it was the only thing in the world between her and me.

  I loved her too much ever to want her getting killed because of it.

  Sometime later that night, we lay to
gether in the big bed in her apartment. The one that faced the wide windows fronting on the East River skyline. And we hugged and kissed and did all the things that no one else should ever really see or know about except the two people involved.

  She was as warm and as cool as rainbows and lovely women can be. I was lost in her arms and not a bit interested in finding my way out of them.

  "Ed."

  "Yeah?"

  "You're never going to give this business up, are you?"

  "Ask me an easier one. I'm hooked."

  She let the subject drop and wriggled closer. Her soft laughter filtered over me. All in all, she was a most unforgettable girl.

  "Funny?" I asked.

  "Uh-huh. I was just trying to picture us both going down to the office, old and gray, using canes and doddering around like old-timers. Noon and Mercer. Maybe it's better than a mixed marriage at that."

  "Shut up," I said, "and make love to me."

  She did.

  Call it a cop-out, if you like, but it's true. Being my secretary was bad enough, but as Mrs. Noon she would have been an even bigger target for those who make it their business to stop the clocks of people like me. You can't build love nests in the espionage business. Not with a world up for grabs and more than a thousand characters always out to throw a monkey wrench into the peaceful machinery.

  It was too damn bad all down the line, but I was sure that the red-white-and-blue phone would ring again.

  It's always an open line.

  Wide open.

  Ask the man who runs a country.

  * The Doomsday Bag, The New American Library, Copyright © 1969 by Michael Avallone.