My hand was still sore from hitting Frank Hayes on the side of the head, but the swelling was gone. Collier was aware of where I was standing, and I knew he would turn his head and direct a question at me. As I saw the first movement of his head, I started the punch at grass level. It came up through the muscles of thigh and behind, up the back, and reached the hand last of all. It resembles the old game of snap-the-whip, played by the foolhardy young on roller skates or ice skates. The fist is the last person at the end of the whip. The fist exploded down onto the turning jaw, knuckles nicely aligned along the shelf of bone. It blew his mouth open. He said, "Uhhh!" and dropped facedown so close to me his forehead hit the toe of my left shoe, and it felt as if I had dropped a bowling ball on it.
Two cars were coming to the party. The headlights swept across me. They parked where they would not pass close to me on their way to the fun and games. They did some whooping and doorchunking. When they were gone I listened to party sounds. There was another sound much too close, and I had a moment of alarm before I identified it. It was coming from an all-white Continental not more than fifteen feet from me. It was angled away from me, which put me back off the stern port quarter, in its blind spot. It was a measured phlumph, of enough weight and purpose to rock the white success symbol on its mushy springing. Once identified, I realized that there were two blind spots operating to hide me. A woman made a cooing sound, which rose to a question at the end and was answered in rumbling, effortful grunting. The phlumph cycle accelerated, and I squatted and slid my arms all the way under Tom Collier, kept my back straight as I stood up, and used the momentum to hoist him up over the high side of the pickup bed, giving him a half roll as he fell onto the metal floor.
I had seen a side road where the horse fence started, so I drove down there and went a hundred feet along the road and stopped, with my lights off. I climbed into the back. Collier was still slack. I' fingered his jaw; nothing felt broken. I unlocked the tool chest and found a pencil flash in the top tray and used it to locate my roll of one-inch filament tape, on the handy dispenser. Better than a fivehundred-pound breaking strength. I shoved his short sleeves out of the way and took a turn around his left arm just below the elbow, then pulled his two arms together, the insides of the forearms pressing against each other. I took the tape around the two arms just below the elbows four times and nipped it off with the dispenser trigger. I took three turns around his ankles and nipped it off.
When you think back, you can remember how many melodramas you have watched where the captive worked his hands loose from the ropes, or went hippity-hop to where they keep the kitchen knives, or broke a bottle or a light bulb and sawed on the broken glass, or even found some way to burn himself free.
Too bad. All obsolete. Try the filament tape. Trust a friend. Or truss one. No way to get teeth or fingers anywhere near it, or get the hands anywhere near the ankles. No way to stand up, or keep your balance if you do. No knots to learn. And I had him secure thirty seconds after I found my tape. I threw a tarp over him and shoved him forward where the wind wouldn't catch the tarp. Then I went looking for a place. I had the feeling I had seen a canalbank road heading left and right just as I Came off his bridge onto the ranch side.
It was there. I took it slow. We'd had a dry December. I headed east, parallel to the highway, over there on the other side of the canal. After I had begun to wonder if I would ever find a place to turn around, I came to a hurricane-wire fence with a padlocked vehicle gate in it and enough room to turn around. The ground was firm along the fence line. I walked it first, and then drove back away from the highway and the canal for two hundred yards or so.
I dropped the tailgate and reached in and pulled him out to where I could get hold of him and lift him. There were little resistances in his body that told me he was doing the shrewd thing and playing possum. I sat him up, put a shoulder into the middle of him, and hoisted him over the shoulder, my right arm around his meaty thighs, his head and arms dangling down my back.
Using the pencil flashlight, I walked into the edge of the brush and found a mounded area of coarse grass, sand, shell and limestone, probably a place where some small current in the sea had pushed up a window of sea bottom when mankind was only an unborn threat to the distant future.
I carried him with as much of an effect of effortlessness as I could manage. Standing straight, I unclasped my arm from around his thighs and rolled him off my shoulder. I felt him tense up as he went off. He hit without a sound other than the thick thud of impact. That is another way to tell. When a person is unconscious, a jolt like that will rasp the air through the slack throat with an easily audible noise.
I left him in the dark and went back to the toolbox and got the short-handled spade and also a couple of Coolite sticks. I like to keep them on board the Flush and in the car. You peel the wrappers off, and bend until they make a little snapping sound, and then shake them to mix the chemicals. They provide a good strong light for three hours, with no trace of heat. It is a white light with a slight greenish cast to it.
He was on his right side with his back toward palmettos. I activated the Coolite sticks and tossed them onto the ground about ten feet apart. I stood between them and stepped the spade down into the coarse stuff, levered a load loose, heaved it to the side. It was easier than I expected. Once I was through the top crust, the consistency was predictable, and I was able to get into a good digging rhythm. When I worked my way around to where I could look at him without appearing to, I could see little catchlights against the wetness of his eyes and knew he was watching me.
I made it six feet long and about three feet wide. My hands began to tingle in a few spots, warning of where the blisters would puff up if I kept going much longer. By then I was almost down to my hip pockets. I had begun to get a sucking sound when
I pried the bottom loose. I put the light on the bottom and saw the water beginning to seep in. I sat on the edge and stood the spade up in my dirt pile and rubbed my hands together and rested for a little while. Then I went over to him and rolled him far enough so I could check the pockets in that jump suit. I found a wallet. I took it over to a Coolite and squatted on my heels as I checked it. Nice wallet. Some kind of fine-grained lizard hide with a grey cast to it. Gold corners. Gold initials, lower case, t.j.c.
American Express Gold Card, Diners, Cat Cay membership, Bunnyworld, the Riviera in Vegas, Atlantic Club, Air Travel Card, Abercrombie & Fitch, Shell, Texaco, Exxon and BP Three fifties, four twenties, a pair of tens and a pair of ones. I prodded around in the money section and found another flap and pulled it up and found two five-hundreds and a one-hundred. Thirteen hundred and fifty-two dollars for digging a hole. I put his driver's license and his cards back into the pretty wallet. They were his identity. They were Tom Collier.
So the symbol was inevitable. I shoved the money into my pocket and I half turned and flipped the wallet into the grave. It hit with a small splat.
"McGee," he said. Nice tone control. Nice modulation. Good for a speech on the floor, or at the jury rail.
"Sah!" Hard and sharp, the enlisted man's protective response.
"I am a very good lawyer. You're going to need one."
"Not if I think everything out."
"You're not thinking. Do you intend to drop me into that hole? If you do, you're not thinking clearly. I'm worth one hell of a lot more to you than you took out of the wallet."
I sat on the edge of the hole again, feet dangling inside."You're cool about it. I like that. Just take my word, Collier. You have to go into the hole. I won't put you in live. I'm not some kind of kink. I'll give you a good one across the nape of the neck with the edge of this spade before I put you into the hole."
"Why do I have to go in?"
"They have to be looking for you. They'll figure a man like you would be all set to run at any time. Tricky. If you're around, they'll look for somebody else. And they could get lucky and come up with me. Are you sure you have the right person? I'm the acting senior
partner in a very reputable law firm. 'Tricky' is a strange word."
"I'll have to tip them off. It's too much to put into one phone call. Maybe three calls will be best. Three different phone booths, miles apart. Tomorrow. I'll be able to say I read it in the morning paper."
"Read what? About me being missing?"
"They won't know you're missing until they come looking for you. Look, it went wrong. I screwed up the detail. It was a good chance and I worked hard on it, but I know when it's time to cover the tracks and run. It has to be you because you're the logical one.
"Logical one for what?"
"The one that killed Lawton and Charity Hisp this afternoon."
"What!"
"We were having such a nice talk, me and Lawton. From time to time I had to encourage him. He'd get over hurting from the last time and get brave again. And, damn it, we were right down to the final item, just how and where he was going to give me his copy of Ted Lewellen's seven projects, with the maps and overlays."
"Lewellen?"
"Oh, come on! Do you think I'm that stupid? There's no point in going on with this." I reached and plucked the spade out of the dirt pile.
"No, nol That was just a reflex. I'm sorry. Okay. Professor Lewellen. I'm caexecutor of the estate. What about Mr. Hisp?"
I laid the spade across my thighs. "It was just one of those damn-fool things that happen. Bad luck. You know that long skinny neck of his. He took a chance and tried to duck around me and I swung to stop him and the edge of my wrist hit him right on the throat and crushed something in there. He started digging his fingernails into his neck. His face began to get red: He fell down and rolled around and his eyes bugged out. Then he hammered his heels on the rug and died. No doubt about how dead he was. She and I knew it the minute it happened. I nearly lost her. Ran like a deer. I caught her by the nape of the neck in one of those little garden places. Great day for necks. I held her head under the water in one of those reflecting pools. After she stopped buckling, when I let go of her, she stayed right there, facedown on the stones with her head under. She saw me hit Hisp. I knew that if I was going to have any chance at all, she had to be number two."
"Were you driving that idiotic blue Rolls truck?"
"No. I borrowed a car."
"Their children were out?"
"Every one."
"Look. Having my arms like this is beginning to make my shoulders cramp so bad, I can't think. How about cutting my arms loose?"
"Not one chance, lawyer. Forget it."
"Well... what time did this happen?"
"Two o'clock. I know you've got the original. I know that stuff was in your hands because at the time Ted died, you were trying to work out some way it could be handled in his estate if he died. Okay. Frank Hayes and I were with Ted a few years ago in Mexico, looking for something in the Bay of La Paz. We crapped out. Our big pump quit and the weather began to turn, and before we could get back there, a hurricane changed the bottom so much we'd have to start all over again."
"And this Frank Hayes is the Hayes of Seven Seas, based at Grand Cayman?"
"Right. We were both lined up to go with Ted on the one he was getting ready to leave on when he was killed. It was going to be rich and easy. He brought me the letter from Mansfield Hall and we agreed it sounded like whoever he represented had hold of Ted's research. And I knew it belonged to the daughter and that she didn't have it, and nobody had seen it since he died."
A couple of tree toads tried their pitch pipes and the whole chorus gradually joined in. Some moths had been attracted to the Coolites. They could land on them without frying, and their wing shapes made big moving shadows.
I knew his mind was spinning, running back and forth and up and down the cage, looking for a way out.
"Mansfield Hall," he said. The tone was not questioning. It was bitter.
"No," I said. "He didn't name you. I figured if somebody was trying to make a deal through Hall to set up a treasure hunt, it had to be Hisp. I got to you through Hisp. In my phone tip I tell the law that you and Hisp defrauded Ted Lewellen's daughter. I tell them it was your idea. I tell them you owned Hisp on account of knowing how he and a man named Gary Lindner speculated in bonds in the bank's name six or seven years ago. I tell them you are a director of the bank and you were trying to turn the estate assets into money by secretly making a deal with Seven Seas. I tell them that you and Hisp were fighting about who was going to get what. They'll really look for you, Collier. They may look a lot of places, but they won't look in this hole. Sorry, friend. It's the only way I'm going to get home free. Find something wrong with it."
"Just one thing wrong. Jesus, this hurts! It keeps me from thinking clearly. Can't you..."
"No. What's the one thing wrong?"
"Assume it works. You walk away empty."
"I'll be in the clear. I'll settle for that."
"Killing the Hisps is going to be very big, McGee. When they can't find me, it's going to be more and more important to pin down exactly where I was when last seen. And who I was with. I can make you a better offer. I'll swear I asked you to the ranch early. You arrived about one o'clock. I'll turn over all the Lewellen papers to you."
"And then blow the whistle on me. Who would they believe? Thomas J. Collier, or me? No thanks."
"But you don't know how much ammunition you have, man! You know that I betrayed my trust as co-executor of the estate. You know I learned of illegal bond dealings and didn't report it. You could completely ruin me. They'd pick me apart. Blow the whistle on you? You could even make a pretty good case that I was the one who sent you to beat some sense into Lawton Hisp."
I thought it over. There is the precise point in the poker game when you have to give the impression of carefully computing the odds. Most people with a bust hand bet too quickly and smile too much. You hesitate a long time before you make your heavy bet into that strong hand across the table.
I got up and tossed the spade aside and went over and picked him up off the ground.
"What are you..."
I carried him to the hole. "Hey! Oh, my God!"
I bent over and swung him over the hole and let go. He landed on his back in three inches of seepage.
"McGee!" he roared, from the darkness.
I chunked the shovel into the dirt pile, picked up a full load, dropped it where I figured the middle of him had to be.
"Wait!" he roared. "Wait!" and then he began yelling. He was trying to make words, but he couldn't get his mouth closed far enough to make them. He was breaking.
I went over and got one of the Coolites and dropped it into the hole next to his head. I sat on my heels and looked down at him. He stopped roaring.
"I don't see why I should have to explain all this to you, Collier. You're just too damned tricky. There's no way I could trust you to do what you say. I'd worry all the time. I'd wonder if you don't own somebody on the cops who'd come to pick me up for questioning and blow my brains out of the far side of my head for resisting arrest. You're too important. You sell people this big successful image called Tom Collier. I almost forgot to give you the message from Nancy. She says to tell you she's doing just fine without you."
"Listen! Please listen! I'll write everything down. Things they can prove. Please get me out of here! Oh; Jesus! You've got to be crazy. I can write down... terrible things I've done. You're right. Nobody should ever trust me at all."
"Ted Lewellen trusted you. Pidge trusted you. How did you expect to get away with making a deal on Lewellen's research and maps? Big strikes get publicity. She'd remember the name of the sunken vessel, wouldn't she? Publicity would smoke you out. Then she'd have some questions."
"Get me out of here!"
"No way."
"Wait! What did you want to know? About the daughter? She'll be locked up. Nobody will be paying any attention."
"Locked up for what?"
"Emotional problems. There's a history of instability. The deal is I can get appointed guardian. Her husba
nd gets the income from the trust."
"You made a deal with Howie Brindle?"
"Help me. Please."
"Want to see how many shovels it takes to cover your head?"
"What do you want?"
"Howie wouldn't make a deal with you. Even in a hole in the ground, in the last five minutes of your life, you keep on lying. Howie is a wonderful guy. Ask anybody who knows him."
"Brindle is a bug! Listen, he worked for me. Any lawyer with experience in criminal defense knows that kind of a bug. Five minutes after I started chatting with him about the death of Fred Harron, I knew he'd killed Fred. Maybe he did Lois a favor. That's beside the point."
John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 15 - The Turquoise Lament Page 20