But I knew it would get reported back and whatever he wanted done would get done. I got to like the store and the stamps and all, sort of. And I practically killed myself at the Health Club, but I got awful restless.
I really did."
She had figured out, finally, that Sprenger was the key to her personal freedom. She worked on him for a long time.
He was very cool and cautious. Finally desire was stronger than circumspection.
"Those cats that have the choice of a couple hundred girls, the one they want the worst is the one they shouldn't have," she said.
"I knew the leverage it gave me once we started, and so did he. What I was afraid of, he'd have me killed and have it look as if I just packed and left. He couldn't be expected to be able to keep me from splitting.
He set up our dates, you'd think it was a CIA operation. If it ever got back to the Mcdermit brothers, you can imagine. A man who'll rip off your wife when he's supposed to be keeping her on ice will cut a piece of your money too. I was afraid once he had all he wanted, I was going into a canal, car, clothes, and everything. So I told him I had confided in a certain person, who would never never tell, unless, of course, I disappeared or something. And then I had him between a rock and a hard place. If he hurt me to make me tell who, I'd make a phone call to Philadelphia, and he was dead. He was right on the hook, and he knew it, and he had no way of stopping anything I wanted to do. And what I wanted was money of my own, and I told if he'd become a client of Fedderman, between us we could take him for what he was worth, which I figured at four hundred thousand, from things he had said. He explained to me he was supposed to have good judgment, and I wanted him to make a stupid, dangerous, amateur investment in postage stamps, for God's sake. He said Fedderman would go to the law if he got swindled, and the name of Frank Sprenger would come into it, and some people would come and take him swimming. I made him talk to Fedderman. I made him check it out that there's a steady market for rarities. He found out there's no duty hardly anywhere in the world on importing or exporting rare stamps. I had the leverage, and I kept at him. He had to use his own money. He went over just how I wanted to do it, and he figured out better ways.
After we started, I found out Ray wasn't getting out and might even have to go the whole ten years. Which would make me an old bag, thirty-three damn years old, and the hell with that noise. So it made it more important to me to take Fedderman."
I could see how neatly she had trapped Sprenger. But I wondered that he had not arranged a fatal accident or a fatal illness so plausible the confidant would have felt no need to make a report.
I could guess at his dismay in investing a fortune in little colored bits of paper.
She got up and went and looked out the port.
"There's enough water out there to run the little boat, right?"
"Right."
"You're pretty tricky."
"Keep talking."
She sat on the bed again, choosing her words carefully, explaining to me that it was her guess that by now Frank Sprenger had reported her missing, and with whom and how, to the Mcdermits. He would have to do that to take the edge of plausibility off any report the confidant might make. There wasn't one, but he had no way of knowing.
Or maybe now there was one. Me. The only way Sprenger could feel completely safe would be to arrange the private, efficient, anonymous deaths of Mary Alice Mcdermit and Travis Mcgee, and recover the fortune in rarities with which Mrs. Mcdermit had fled.
"They're aboard?" She nodded.
"Show me."
She snapped the train case open. I went over and stood over her, tensed for any unpleasant surprise she might bring out of the dark blue case.
She took out the top tray, and under it were three six-by-nine manila clasp envelopes, with cardboard stiffening, each filled to about a half-inch thickness. She opened one and eased some pliofilm envelopes out and spread them on the bed. I saw blocks of four and six stamps, still in Hawid and Showgard mounts, showing old dirigibles, old airplanes, black cattle in a snowstorm, portraits of Chris Columbus, with and without Isabella.
"All here," she said.
"Years and years of the good life.
It will last forever in the right places. I cleaned some goodies out of the safe too, stuff he has for stock.
"Where'd you get the junk you substituted?"
"Indirectly, by Frank, through an independent agent buyer in New York.
I made new inventory lists without any description of quality. He bought junk. Stained, torn, thinned, repaired, re gummed faded, rejoined, even forgeries. They cost a little over twelve thousand, I think. I took them to my apartment and mounted them and put them into the duplicate book. Then when we were close enough to all the traffic could stand, Frank distracted Hirsh, and I switched books and shoved the good one into that box Frank got me that I showed you. We went out together, and I mailed it. Frank thought it was coming to him, but I'd changed the label. God, was he ever irritated!
But what could he do?"
"What could he do?" I wanted to go further with it, but sensed that this was not the time to push. I picked one of the transparent envelopes up and looked at a block of six showing a mob scene around Columbus in chains.
"Careful!" she said.
"That's thirty-five hundred at least."
"Anywhere?"
"Practically." She gathered the stuff up and put it back into the envelope. She closed it, hesitated, put the other two back into the train case, and handed me the one she had just closed.
"What's this?"
"It's worth about forty percent of the whole thing, that envelope. I think we should be entirely honest with each other. You've got to forgive me for trying to do a stupid thing. I need your help. Do you have a passport?"
"Yes. Aboard."
"And some money?"
"Yes."
"I can really be a very loving person, dear. That's at least a hundred and sixty thousand dollars in that envelope in your hand."
"You mean, leave us flee together, Mrs. Mcdermit?"
She looked annoyed.
"Well, why the hell not? What else have you got working for you? It's what we were going to do anyway."
"Only at some port of call with an airstrip, I was suddenly going to find you missing." "I thought of it. I thought I might, after a long long time alone with you."
"With me, the great lover?"
"That would probably never never happen again, and if it does, you shouldn't be so silly about letting a person help."
"But now we start going by air right away?"
"What's the best way to do it?"
"Oh, probably take the Munequita right across the stream to Bimini. It might jar your teeth and kidneys loose. Top off the tanks and run to Nassau. Tie up at Yacht Haven and take a cab into town and get a visa for London or Rome or Madrid and go out to the airport and wait for some thing going our way."
"That easy?"
"The first part of anything is usually easy."
"I always wanted to see the Islands. I really did. I just hate missing the Islands. Maybe we can come back some day."
Yes indeed. I would have truly enjoyed showing her the islands. How the big aluminium plant and the oil refinery of Ferrous Dodd blacken the stinking skies over St. Croix.
Maybe she'd like the San Juan Guayama and Ybucoa areas of Puerto Rico where Constitution Oil, Carbo-Combine, Absolute Mineroils and Old Oil have created another new industrial wasteland where the toxic wastes have killed the vegetation, where hot oil effluents are discharged into the sea and flow westward along the shoreline in a black roiling stench, killing all sea life.
She might be impressed were I to cruise into Tallabea Bay and describe to her the one and a half billion tons of untreated wastes from Constitution-Carbo Combine which put a two-foot coat on the bottom of the bay. Or we could take a tour up into the mountains to watch how the trade winds carry the bourbon-colored stink of petrochemical stacks through the passes all the w
ay to Mayaguez, ninety miles from the refineries. While in the hills, we could cehck and see if Leviathan Copper and Landmark Super Steels have started to strip-mine the seven square green tropic miles of high land which they covet.
It might have made quite an impression.
"Can we start now? Can we?"
"It's full dark on an outgoing tide. The morning is good enough. In the morning I can take the Flush back out the way we came and leave her in storage at Regal Marine.
Abandon her and it attracts too much attention. The Coast Guard would get in the act and Civil Air Patrol and guide boats and so on. Then we can go on from there."
"Okay. I feel so much better. I'm so glad we had this frank talk, darling.
"I guess we accomplished a lot."
"Oh, we did!" She lifted the train case back out of the way and hitched over to me and put a shy kiss near my mouth. I held her and looked past her hair at the manila envelope I still held in my right hand.
Pore helpless little critter. Sharing her wealth, but only on a temporary basis. Only until she could find the right time and place to slip an ice pick into my brain through whatever orifice seemed handiest.
"Shouldn't we have a drink to celebrate?" she asked.
Of course, of course. She trotted to the galley to make the drinks. I changed into khakis and a white T-shirt and went to the lounge. As she came smiling in with the drinks, I said, "If Frank were to come here tonight... "
She jerked and lost some of my drink on the back of her hand and on the carpeting as she was handing it to me.
"Jesus! Don't come on like that, will you?"
"Hypothetical question. Would he come alone?"
She sat opposite me and pondered it.
"I don't know. It depends. He's the kind of guy who likes all the odds his way. I'd say this. If he didn't come here alone, he'd leave alone.
There isn't any such thing as trusting people, not when it's worth money to them to put a knife in your back. What he'd probably do, he'd fake one of his slobs into thinking it was some other kind of deal, and when it was done, he'd drop the slob right beside us."
"Is he really as rough as you seem to think?"
"You've got me nervous. Is it okay to pull those curtains across? I don't like all that black looking in at us."
"Go ahead."
She pulled all the heavy curtaining and turned off two of the four lights. She sat beside me and said, "That's a lot better." She touched my glass with hers.
"Happy days," she said.
"Happy days, Mrs. Mcdermit."
"Is it like a joke, the way you keep calling me that?"
"I guess it's like a joke."
"The best thing would be if Frank did come here and we were ready and waiting and we took him."
"Would he be hard to take?"
"You better believe it. He's a freak. He knows it all judo, knives, guns, everything. Like a hobby. And he is fabulously strong. Not just ordinary strong, but special, the way some people are. He can
hold his hand out like this, all his fingers spread, and put four bottle caps between his knuckles, here, here, and here, and the last one between his thumb and the side of this finger. Then he can slowly make a fist and bend every cap double. Don't look at me like that. It isn't a trick. He has to be careful to place them right, or they can cut into his flesh. There's another thing he does. You know the kid game, you put both hands out palm up and the other person puts their hands palm down on top of yours and tries to yank them out of the way before you can turn your hands over and slap the backs of their hands?
I've never seen anybody fast enough to slap him or fast enough to get out of his way. And, wow, does he ever slap! He told me once that when he was fifteen years old, he was a bouncer. He never had to hit anybody, he said. He just took hold of them above the elbow and walked them out, and they always went. They couldn't use that arm for a few days either."
"Good with guns?"
"Not fast-draw stuff. Not like that. He has these custom guns, like he had one in the car he showed me once, like a rifle, with a place for his hand to fit perfectly, carved out to fit his hand. And a telescope fastened to it, with a lot of straps and gadgets. He said he makes his own loads. He belongs to clubs where they shoot at targets, and he wins cups and medals. Do you know what he told me? He said he could put a ten-penny nail into a tree, hammer it in and leave a half-inch sticking out, and he could stretch out on the ground a hundred yards away and drive it in with his first shot every time. I said I didn't believe it.
He said he'd show me, but he never did."
"He may yet."
"Will you please stop that! It makes my skin crawl.
And it's getting too cold in here. Can you do something about it before my teeth start chattering?"
I went over and turned the thermostat down. The deeper voice of the compressor stopped. The generator chugged on. I heard a wind sound and a faint shift of the bulk of the Flush. I took Mary Alice out onto the deck to prove to her the bugs had been blown away. We went up onto the sun deck. There were ragged clouds obscuring and revealing a third of a moon. I could see a considerable distance by moonlight. The flats stretched out in every direction, mud flats, sand flats, grass flats, dotted with the mystery shapes of mangrove islands, from handkerchief size on up to fifty acres.
It was not a reassuring vista. It was not terrain I could protect easily. The obvious way to get at me would be to keep in direct line with the nearer islands, pick a close one, come up behind it, wade out the flats to the edge of the mangrove and then settle down and wait, with a clear field of fire through the shiny green leaves and the gnarled branches and roots.
I would be able to tell better by daylight, but the nearest one big enough to use as a screen for a long approach seemed to be at just about nail-driving distance.
"I don't like places like this," said the lady.
"You won't be here long."
"Hurray."
I went back down the ladder way and out to the aft deck. I stripped down to my boat shoes and went over on the shallow side and walked the bow anchor and stern anchor out to a better angle. I climbed aboard the Muhequi ta and unsnapped part of her cover, enough to get a small hook out and make it fast to a stern cleat before I walked it back to where she would ride quietly.
I got back aboard~ the Flush by getting up onto the diving shelf permanently affixed to the transom just above water level, then climbing up the two folding metal steps, and swinging over the rail.
She watched me dry myself on my T-shirt and said, "How can you stand to go down into all that black guck? There could be stuff down in there that bites?"
I pulled the T-shirt back on and picked up the pants.
They had lost some weight. I spun her and got her throat into the crook of my arm and felt around until I came upon the outline of the little automatic, pouched down into her groin. She stabbed back at my eyes, and I tightened up on her breathing until she was pulling at my arm with both hands. I slid my free hand down inside the jeans and found the gun and pulled it out. I spun her back away from me. She thumped into the bulkhead, coughed until she gagged, and said, "I'll feel better if I've got it. Please?"
"Sorry."
"You creaked my neck. You know that?"
"Sorry."
"I wouldn't shoot you with it. You know better than that."
I went in. She followed me, complaining. Now her throat felt sore. I didn't have to be so rough. Some kind of bug had bitten her on the forehead out there. See the lump it made? Why are you carrying your pants? Put them on.
You look ridiculous. I went to the head to get away from her, picking up my manila envelope enroute. It was the same heft, but I looked inside, just in case. All apparently in order. All yours, Hirsh, Deo volente.
Ever since one Boo Waxwell nearly brought me and Mends to an untimely end aboard this same Flush, Meyer and I have Improved many an idle hour trying to add surprises to the furnishings. They have to be unexpected and not complicate
d. Meyer is very good at it. I opened one of his.
It is quick and easy. You open the medicine cabinet. It is set into a double bulkhead. The bottom shelf seems to be a part of the outer frame of the cabinet itself. But if you take the stuff off it and push it up against the pull of a friction catch, it opens like the lid of a box. I reached down in there and took out the oily Colt Diamondback, checked the load, put it back, and put its far smaller and weaker cousin beside it. The recess was deep enough to stand the envelope on end where it would not touch the weapons. I slapped the lid down, put toilet articles back on it, and shut the cabinet. Invisible hinges, a very sturdy catch, a nice deep dry hole. One of the better efforts.
The Scarlet Ruse Page 23