Dom returned from his mission too soon, Chris knew with foreboding, to be bringing encouraging news.
‘It wasn’t a cab,’ he said. ‘The only cab they saw was the one you got out of. But they did see her leave. About half an hour ago, a car pulled up here, and she came out of the house with her suitcases and took off in it. A couple of those old characters got a look at the driver. They thought it might be her father. A very respectable, grey-haired guy, they said, only he looked sore at the whole world.’
‘Prendergast,’ Chris said.
Dom nodded.
‘I thought the same thing as soon as they described him. But it couldn’t be him, could it? He’s off on one of those week-end Caribbean cruises, so Beth said.’
‘Greenberger says he ducked out of the cruise at the last minute.’
Dom frowningly tried to comprehend this.
‘But why would she take off with him? Did you say something to her that might –’
‘No,’ Chris said flatly, ‘I didn’t.’
And now it was impossible to throttle down that freewheeling imagination. Prendergast, finally clear of his family for a few days. All those gaudy places along Motel Row made to order for a real farewell party. Daddy was spending at least a thousand a month on his secretary, Hilary had said. Who could blame him for wanting to collect one soul-satisfying, final payment on that investment?
And Elizabeth Jones Monte hadn’t overstated her case last night. She was, as she had said, totally uninhibited and a lot of fun in bed.
Chris reined in his imagination before the pictures it drew became too graphic. Hell, after all the girl had said and done until sleep caught up with them at dawn, he must be doing her an injustice. He couldn’t even take oath it was Prendergast who had driven off with her. When she called she’d probably have a logical, convincing, soothing explanation for everything. If she called.
She did. Crazy, he thought, how it felt to hear her voice. ‘Chris?’
‘Beth, where are you? Who are you with? What –?’
‘Chris, darling, I don’t have time to talk now. But nothing’s changed, except that I’ll meet you in London. Wednesday at noon, inside the entrance to the British Museum.’
‘The hell with that! I want to know right now who you’re with and what you’re up to!’
‘Chris –’ A blatting, mechanical voice squawking something unintelligible briefly drowned out her words. ‘– perfectly all right. I really am. Wednesday noon at the British Museum. I love you, Chris.’
The phone went dead. The way he was gripping it, he realized, he might have been trying to squeeze more words out of it.
‘Where is she?’ Dom said.
‘She didn’t say, but it must be the airport. There was a P.A. system that sounded like it. From the rush she was in, she’s probably getting on a plane right now.’
‘To London?’
‘Yes.’ He felt a little better being able to say it. At least, gone was that incongruously obscene picture of her and daddy Prendergast shacking up on Motel Row. But it didn’t explain why she would want to get to London ahead of him. And why, if he stuck to schedule and arrived there Tuesday morning, she wanted to postpone meeting him a whole day.
Unless London wasn’t her immediate destination.
The envelope with the two airline tickets in it had been stowed away in the top drawer of his dresser. He had a feeling, even before he opened the drawer and looked into the envelope, that her ticket wasn’t there any longer.
It wasn’t.
When he phoned the BOAC desk at Miami International he didn’t have to fake the concern in his voice. He was Christopher Monte, he explained, and he and his wife had been booked for the Monday night flight to London via Nassau. Then Mrs Monte had decided to leave a day earlier and had just called to say good-bye from the airport but had forgotten to give him her flight number. Could he have it, please?
‘Yes, of course, Mr Monte.’ The girl in charge was coolly, sweetly British. ‘I arranged the exchange of tickets for Mrs Monte myself. I have the flight number right here. It’s Number 55. Departure is nine Tuesday evening from Logan International Airport in Boston.’
Braced for it as he was, it still hurt. And from the way Dom was looking at him he knew his reaction showed plainly.
‘Mr Monte?’ said the coolly British voice. ‘Are you there, Mr Monte?’
‘Yes. That’s the Tuesday evening flight from Boston. By the way, there wouldn’t be any trouble about changing my ticket to the same flight, would there?’
‘No, I’m sure there wouldn’t.’
Dom followed him into the bedroom and stonily watched him drag his suitcase out of the closet. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he said.
‘Boston.’
‘You’re a damn fool. Hell, you’re not even half Calabrian, but you’re acting just like some wild-eyed paisano about this. And you don’t have the right to. You know what Beth is like.’
‘Grow up, kid. There’s a good chance Prendergast knows what she’s like too, under the gingham gown. And she’s into him for at least ten thousand dollars already. In this world, you don’t get something for nothing.’
‘Man,’ Dom said in awe, ‘if that’s what you think, you are really freaking out. In no time at all she’ll have a million dollars cash to pay him back with. Don’t you trust her at all?’
‘No. Either she’s too shrewd to be trusted, or she’s too stupid to be let out of the house alone. One way or the other, she’s still a sitting pigeon for anyone out to get her. I have an investment to protect. The best way to do it is stay close to her right up to the payoff.’
‘All right, but don’t take off all fired up like this. Listen to me, Chris. Cool off first. You’ll only be sorry about it afterwards if you don’t.’
He was sorry about it even sooner than Dom could have reckoned. In fact, as soon as he swung the rented car north into Ocean Drive to bypass the jam of traffic on Collins Avenue.
When he felt the hard, smooth metallic pressure against the nape of his neck he knew instantly what it was and his stomach fluttered with terror. Then the terror became a helpless rage with himself. To have called Beth stupid and then to have walked carelessly into a trap like this!
‘Gently, gently,’ the Spanish-flavoured voice said into his ear. ‘Do not stop the car. This is a gun I hold, not a toy. Very dangerous. And with a silencer. No one would even look this way if I squeeze the trigger a little bit too much. You understand?’
‘Yes,’ said Chris. He glanced into the rearview mirror to see the face so confidingly close to his. Pinched features, flaring ears, the straw hat planted squarely on them exaggerating them even more. It was the little man he had caught eavesdropping in the corridor outside Beth’s room at Cobia.
‘Now,’ said the little man, ‘we do nothing to make trouble, eh? We only turn around and drive nicely to the charter boat place by the causeway, and there we will take care of our business.’
15
According to the lettering on her stern, the boat was Chirica II out of Grand Bahamas, and it struck Chris that while she was outfitted for fishing with a flying bridge, a pair of swivel chairs aft, and big-game rods ready in port and starboard pole sockets, she was meant for something other than fishing. A graceful forty-footer, she was far too narrow in the beam for her length. And where the usual sea-going motorboat hull in these waters was white, she, as well as the neat little dinghy slung in her davits, had been painted ebony black.
An oversized speedboat, he thought. A night runner good for maybe forty-five or fifty miles an hour when patrol boats took off after her. It brought back to him the memory of that night on the beach at Naples. The cops searching him had acted as if they had been tipped off that he was on the beach to deliver contraband to a boat lying offshore. Was it possible that Chirica II had been out there in the darkness waiting for him?
But that was only guesswork. The sure thing was that she was waiting for him now, and he was hardly aboard
when she was away from the dock in a surge of power and heading seaward through Government Cut. His hijacking, he knew, had been a professional job from start to finish. He had been taught the hard way that there was nothing in the world as persuasive as a gun in the back – the pressure of it made any impulse to resist seem suicidal – and the little man’s gun had never for an instant ceased to prod his back even during the delicate process of getting him and his valise out of the car and steering him past some sightseeing tourists on the dock. The gun was now concealed by the jacket over the little man’s arm, but the nose of its silencer remained hard against Chris’s spine until Chirica II had cast off and was on her way.
The only others who seemed to be aboard her were the dapper young man in khaki naval jacket and skipper’s cap handling her wheel on the flying bridge and the burly, broken-nosed crewman coiling rope on her deck. Then, as she left Fisher Island astern and met the open water of the sea with a thud and a hiss, her cabin door opened and an unlikely-looking pair emerged from the cabin.
The man was small and plump, swarthy and sleek-haired, and with immensely large, dark, liquid eyes. He wore an elegant yachting jacket and carried in his arms a tiny Yorkshire terrier with a bright yellow ribbon in its topknot. The girl, tall and lissome, might have been a lovely, red-headed, freckle-faced nymph off the Irish moors except for the garment she wore, a turquoise and silver sari which draped her from neck to ankles. Her feet were bare, and, somewhat marring the general effect, there was a patch of adhesive tape on each big toe.
The man beamed at Chris. Speech bubbled rapturously from him in highpitched breathlessness.
‘My dear Mr Monte, what a joy to meet you at last. But what you must think of me for having you brought here like this. With a gun. With weaponry, no less. Oho, you think, this is a crude fellow, this one. But you are wrong. If there had been other means of making sure you would share my company, I would gladly have used them.’
‘I can think of a couple,’ Chris said.
‘No, no, a polite invitation would not have been heeded. You have other fish to fry. You are intent only on rushing into the disaster I must save you from. Worst of all, you are being closely followed, and we must have privacy for our little chat. Alas, where can one find privacy in this electronic age but out here on the briny deep? Here, at least, we are safe from all eavesdroppers.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Chris said. ‘Somehow, I don’t feel very safe. Not with that gun aimed at me.’
The man nodded solemnly.
‘Who can blame you? What a sinister appearance it does have. And if you knew the reputation of Leon, who is aiming it at you, I think you would find it even more sinister. But perhaps we can solve this problem by having Leon strap you into that swivel chair as if you were about to catch a mighty fish.’
This was an order, Chris knew, not a suggestion. And the results were not too bad. For one thing, his arms were left free. For another, he observed that once the strap was buckled around his waist, Leon no longer kept the gun fixed on him but dangled it from a forefinger by the trigger guard. For the time being, an accidental pressure against the trigger meant a hole in Leon’s foot, not Christopher Monte’s head.
The swivel seat was facing forward. He saw the bow of Chirica II swing south-east, felt the boat picking up speed as she lightly flirted over the swells of the Gulf Stream.
‘Where are we headed for?’ he said to his host. ‘Cuba? And who the hell are you, anyhow?’
‘Oh, questions, questions.’ The man smiled engagingly at him. ‘Yet you have the right, Mr Monte, to know the company you are in. How else can you be expected to willingly enter a partnership with it? So I will tell you that I am Gosala Mookerjee, and that this enchanting young lady is Baby. I am sure it will not surprise you to learn that she was, not long ago, a most dangerous contender for the title of Miss Florida.’
‘Runner-up,’ said Baby. ‘The freckles screwed up everything.’
‘Yet each little one only adds to your beauty,’ Mookerjee assured her gallantly. ‘And this faithful canine,’ he said to Chris, ‘is Pet. He too was almost a champion. For the rest, our craft is under the command of Captain Arseniegas, that sturdy seaman is named Bates, and you have already met Leon. And now to complete the introductions, you will please permit Leon to remove your wallet and papers so that I may examine them.’
He put down the dog and seated himself facing Chris to study each item carefully. The plane ticket appeared to puzzle him.
‘How curious,’ he said. ‘To London tomorrow evening, yet you are packed and ready for the voyage now, passport included. Why, Mr Monte?’
‘You’ll have to let me know what all this is about first.’
‘My dear fellow,’ Mookerjee’s large, liquid eyes brimmed with concern, ‘but you must not take that tone. You must not be heroic like some idiotic motion picture player. Surely, you are aware that in the cinema one bleeds only red paint while you, alas, would bleed red blood.’
‘What he means,’ said Baby, ‘is that if you don’t talk up, Bates will give you one sweet working over.’
Bates turned at the sound of his name. Looking at the broken-nosed, massive bulk of him, Chris decided to postpone any bleeding as long and cheaply as possible.
‘I was going to change the ticket and make the trip today,’ he said.
‘Is that what Mrs Monte has already done?’ said Mookerjee. ‘Is she now on her way to London?’
‘You’re a little premature. There is no Mrs Monte.’
‘Perhaps you have forgotten there has been one since yesterday morning. Would you like me to describe her to you?’
That reedy voice prodded memory. What had Hilary said about the unknown who had phoned her? A boy soprano with a handkerchief in front of his mouth –?
Chris said, ‘Were you the one who phoned a friend of mine a couple of nights ago and asked if she was Mrs Monte?’
‘I was.’
‘And put a phonograph record in another friend’s room last night?’
‘It was Leon who saw to that on my instructions.’ Mookerjee shrugged regretfully. ‘I must admit the record was a miscalculation. It was intended to make Mrs Monte pick up her chips and leave the game. Instead, she plunged into it deeper than ever by promptly rushing to your side in the small hours. I badly underestimated her determination and cleverness. But, of course, she is playing for enormous stakes.’
‘Is she? Maybe she just rushed to my side to hear what was on the record.’
‘With her own machine on the table waiting to perform this service? No, no, my dear fellow, do not make my mistake. Respect her cleverness. Know that she is as wily as the serpent. Believe me when I say she has gulled you splendidly this far.’
‘How?’ The worst part was the hard sincerity in that shrill voice. It sounded as if Mookerjee fervently believed every word he was saying.
‘How?’ he echoed. ‘Alas, I must refuse to tell you that. I am in a maddening dilemma. I can tell you no more than you already know. Otherwise, I stand to lose all my share of the prize waiting for us.’
‘The Valentine money,’ Baby said impatiently. ‘And why don’t you get down to business?’
‘Whose business?’ said Chris. ‘Anton Teodorescu’s?’
‘Ah, that one,’ said Mookerjee distastefully. He shook his head. ‘No, our business, Mr Monte. Yours and mine. You were prepared to accept a ridiculously small share of the Valentine estate. With my collaboration, you will receive ten times more than that. In a nutshell, a cool half-million dollars.’
In a nutshell, Chris thought, just give this cheerful little cutthroat the word to get rid of Beth once the estate was hers, and then, under the terms of her will, it would all be Christopher Monte’s, to be split fifty-fifty between him and his partner, Gosala Mookerjee.
This, at least, made sense in a murderous way. What didn’t make sense was the man’s fervent comments on Beth’s wiliness. Since he didn’t know about her taking off for Boston with Prendergast, he had t
o be talking about some other game she was playing. But what game?
‘Come on,’ Baby said sharply. ‘Don’t you like the idea of collecting half a million instead of a lousy fifty thousand?’
‘Who wouldn’t?’ Chris said.
‘Then what bothers you?’
‘I guess it’s the idea of having to attend Mrs Monte’s funeral to collect it.’
Baby looked startled at this. Then she said scathingly, ‘Hell, you didn’t marry her to worry about her, did you? Just forget about her and stick to business. That means getting the deal down on paper. Mookerjee’s a lawyer. All you have to do is sign a paper making him your lawyer to handle your interest in the Valentine estate. Simple. And the arithmetic is even simpler. He works for you on a contingency basis, meaning you pay him half of what you get. It’s all strictly legal that way.’
‘You’ve got a funny idea of what legal is, haven’t you?’
‘Look, I told you Mookerjee’s a lawyer, so –’
‘That’s right, so do me a favour, Baby. If your boy friend’s a lawyer he’ll have a quick answer to this one. Just ask him what good any contract is that’s been signed under duress. Ask him what happens if I go to court and tell them I signed it with a gun at my head.’
‘But, my dear fellow,’ Mookerjee said, ‘you will not go to court to challenge our contract. One must go to court with clean hands. Yours would never pass the test.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means,’ Baby said in an exaggerated little girl singsong, her eyes very wide, ‘that I was parked right there on La Gorce when you and Marty McClure killed Jack Zucker. I saw everything. The way you and Marty dragged him out of your car and knocked him down, and the way you got back in the car and drove over him. Oh, everything. If I hadn’t been so scared of Marty I would have gone to the cops right off, too. But now Marty’s dead, ain’t he? I don’t have to be scared of him any more.’
‘If you think the cops would believe any of that –’
The Valentine Estate Page 9