The Valentine Estate

by Stanley Ellin

  ‘Want to try me?’ jeered Baby. ‘Who do you think would rate more with them, you or me? Go on, tell me.’

  Out there in the middle of that pale-green watery emptiness, the landfall of Miami Beach a dazzling white brushstroke against a vast blue sky, he suddenly felt the door of the cage slam shut on him. He was locked in, tied up, strapped down.

  He smiled.

  ‘Baby,’ he said, ‘there’s only one catch to this whole business.’

  ‘What catch?’

  ‘Bring me that wallet and other stuff and I’ll show you.’

  Her face was all sardonic amusement as she sauntered over to him with his belongings and watched him tuck them into his pockets. Mookerjee, at ease in his chair, hands folded over his plump little belly, wore the same expression.

  ‘Well?’ said Baby. ‘What’s that catch you’d like to cook up?’

  With her hair glowing flame-red in the sunlight, the silver filaments in the sari glinting in it, she was, Chris took note, almost obscenely enticing. And, like Hilary Talbot, she moved in a cloud of high-voltage perfume.

  He pointed down at the patches of adhesive tape on her toes.

  ‘That’s it. Your shoes must be too tight.’

  ‘What?’ said Baby in blank bewilderment, and when she looked down he was ready for her. The palm of his hand came up with a brutal impact against the curve of her jaw, he shoved with all his strength, and back she went with a wild screech, arms flailing the air, legs too confined by the sari to regain balance. The bulwark was low, it caught her at knee level, and over it she went with a resounding splash.

  Before she even hit the water Chris was frantically clawing open the buckle of the strap cinched around his waist, and for that instant when everyone on deck rushed to the bulwark, Mookerjee wildly echoing the girl’s screech, the advantage was all his.

  He burst out of the chair, eyes fixed on the gun, and managed to hit the unaware Leon one inept, clubbing wallop on the side of the head just as the skipper of Chirica II, under Mookerjee’s hysterical supplications, swung his wheel hard over. It was the yaw of the deck as much as the punch which sent Leon sprawling, the gun flying out of his grasp and skidding across the deck. He was on his feet and after it, quick as a cat, but Chris was there before him.

  Leon did not put valour before discretion. He took one look at the gunbarrel levelled at his chest and backed away, hands raised. Bates, murder in his eyes, also raised his hands. Only Mookerjee seemed blind to the threatening gun. He clung to the bulwark as the boat swiftly bore down on his adored one bobbing in the swells, and almost wept in his frustration, pleading with someone, anyone, to go overboard and make the rescue.

  ‘She will drown,’ he blubbered. ‘Is that what you all wish? To see Baby drown before your eyes? Look at her!’

  Chris looked. Baby was treading water twenty feet away from the now idling Chirica II, her hair streaming loose, the sari flowering out around her. She seemed, without panic, to be trying to remove the sari. Then she did, and left it floating behind her as she struck out for the boat with a smooth, competent stroke.

  ‘She’ll be all right,’ Chris said. ‘Now get the skipper down here. And with his hands up, too.’

  With Baby out of harm’s way, Mookerjee was fast regaining his aplomb. He looked around the deck.

  ‘What if I refuse?’ he asked craftily. ‘There are four of us here against only one of you.’

  ‘Watch,’ said Chris.

  He was surprised by the violence of the recoil when he pulled the trigger, the more so because the sound of the shot was no louder than that of a balloon popping. But his aim hadn’t been bad. The bullet struck the davit post a foot from Mookerjee’s head and ricocheted off with a deadly and convincing whine.

  ‘Enough, enough!’ shouted Mookerjee.

  So it was the dapper young Captain Arseniegas who saw to the lowering of the dinghy and the disposition aboard her of the company. Baby, meanwhile, clung to the counter of Chirica II cursing with the venom of a wet cat. When, with Bates at the oars, the dinghy was rowed around to her, and she was offered helping hands, it turned out that she had been wearing nothing under the sari. She would rather rot in salt water the rest of her life, she announced furiously, than expose herself this way to the gang of apes she was stuck with. Including Gosala Mookerjee.

  In the end, Chris ordered the dinghy to stand clear and then fetched a blanket from a bunk in the cabin along with Pet who had been peaceably asleep on the blanket. These he handed down to Mookerjee when the dinghy was rowed back alongside Chirica II, and was rewarded by the sight of Baby being hauled naked and dripping aboard the dinghy before she was hastily wrapped in the blanket. He had a grim feeling that this wasn’t the last he would see of Baby and her escort, but he wasn’t likely to have the same interesting view of her again.

  He watched Bates dig in hard with the oars and the dinghy start on its tedious way shoreward. Overloaded as it was, it rode low in the water, but in this calm weather and with a couple of skilled seamen handling it, it wasn’t likely to be in any real danger, he knew. Not that it would be any loss if it went down with all hands.

  He went up to the flying bridge and got Chirica II under way, giving the dinghy a wide berth so that his wake wouldn’t swamp it.

  ‘You fool!’ shouted Mookerjee across the widening distance between them. ‘Come back! You must trust me! There is time yet! Those others are all deceiving you, do you hear?’

  Loud and clear, Chris thought. He had intended to heave the gun overboard. Now instead, he unscrewed the silencer which made it so unwieldy and dropped it into his pocket. The gun itself he thrust into his belt under his shirt and buttoned the shirt over it. It made a heavy, awkward weight, but a comforting one

  And, piloting the high-powered Chirica II towards Government Cut, did some hard thinking which offered no comfort at all.

  16

  He made a bad job of docking Chirica II, coming into the pier head-on with crunching force, and then wasted no time getting into his car and away from there. Heading uptown along Alton, he discovered how explosively tight his nerves were when he suddenly realized he was trying to beat out the traffic instead of riding with it. That was an outlander’s trick in these parts. The south end of Miami Beach was old-age retirement country, full of crankily incompetent motorists and pedestrians, all with a lemming instinct of self-destruction.

  With that thought as a deterrent, he got a grip on himself, and cut down the car’s speed. And so learned that Mookerjee had told him the truth about one thing at least. He was being followed.

  The first clue to that came when the weatherbeaten blue Chevrolet which had eased in beside him at the red light on Lincoln Road didn’t try to beat him across the street when the light changed. Instead, it fell back little by little, drifting over directly behind him. The car showed a Virginia licence plate, the two men in it were fresh-faced, junior executive types, an unlikely pair to be tailing him, but by the time he had swung across town on Dade Boulevard and was heading up Pinetree Drive he knew with a sinking heart that they intended to stay with him. He had given them half a dozen opportunities to pass him, and each time it had been refused. Whatever turn he made, whatever speed he travelled at, there they were, centred in the rearview mirror.

  It was small consolation to know they weren’t police, not in a car with out-of-state plates, and for the same reason not likely to be private investigators put on him by Prendergast. Nor were they hatchetmen for the Zucker mob, whose killer sharks didn’t come in the shape of crew-cut scoutmasters. Because that left only one possibility to contemplate. They had to be agents for Teodorescu and Katia.

  But why would they be tailing him, he wondered, when Beth was the one who mattered? Most likely they had lost track of her when she had suddenly taken off for Boston, but they knew Chris Monte would find her for them again. And once she was found, someone suited to that specialized line of work could be given the contract to get rid of her when the time came.

&nb
sp; He looked at his watch. The fastest possible flight to Boston took about three hours, so she and Prendergast wouldn’t be there yet.

  At 41st Street, risking his neck on it, he feinted a left turn towards the bayside, then suddenly swung in the opposite direction towards Collins across the wildly honking oncoming traffic. The tyres screeched agonizingly, the car heeled over so hard that he thought for a panicky instant it was going completely over, and then he had it straightened out again. But an echoing screech of tyres behind him told him that the Chevy’s driver had not been fooled by the manoeuvre. He glanced into the rearview mirror. A couple of cars were now interposed between him and the Chevy, but there it was, still clinging to him like grim death.

  Where the flow of traffic turned uptown on Collins he pulled clear of it again and swung into the driveway of the Laverne Hotel on the corner there, jamming on the brakes before the entrance. His hopes rose when he saw the Chevy carried past in the eddy of traffic, but they sank again as it pulled over to the kerb just beyond the hotel.

  The barrel of the gun jabbed his thigh as he slid out of the car, and he checked to see that the bulge of it wasn’t conspicuous under his shirt. A youthful bellhop hustled up to take his suitcase and lead him to the registration desk. The boy, he noted, was about Dom’s age but already with the shrewd eyes and hard face of a real sharpshooter. A hustler in the making, the kind he had made sure Dom wouldn’t become, but not bad to have around at a time like this.

  ‘Stick with that bag,’ Chris told him, and saw that the boy knew at once there was business to be done here.

  At the desk he told the clerk that no, he didn’t have a reservation, this was just an overnight stay, cash to be paid in advance, and on the registration card carefully wrote ‘Mr and Mrs Christopher Monte’ in large, easily read block letters. Then he followed close behind the bellboy who, suitcase in one hand and room key in the other, led the way to the elevators. Waiting there, he turned and scanned the lobby. Neither of the shadows was in sight.

  In the room, as the boy was laying his suitcase on a rack and checking the air-conditioning, he shut the door and drew out his wallet. It was well stuffed. He had split Prendergast’s cheque for a thousand evenly with Beth, and most of his share was unspent.

  The bellhop stood there poised, sizing up the wallet.

  ‘Is the delivery entrance down that side-street here?’ Chris asked. ‘Can you see it from the main entrance?’

  ‘It is, and you can’t.’

  ‘All right, then take that bag downstairs in the service elevator and out through the delivery door. Get it into a cab and tell the cabby to wait for me by the delivery door. Then you can come back here and steer me out the same way,’ Chris held out a hand. ‘Let’s see your identification card.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Insurance, sonny. Let’s see it.’

  He returned the card to the boy along with the keys to the car.

  ‘The car’s a rental from Apex on Fifth Street,’ he said. ‘Park it in the lot here overnight, and tomorrow get it back to the agency. They’ll charge it to my account. I know the mileage on it, too, just like I know your name and home address. You want to jockey that load up to Pompano track tonight, you’ll be the one to pay for the gas.’

  ‘I’m the reliable type, mister. And maybe I ought to tell you you’re running up quite a bill yourself with all this.’

  ‘I’m not done yet,’ Chris said in a hard voice, ‘so button up and listen. Somebody will probably be around asking about me. And what you’ll tell him is that I met my wife here in the lobby – anyhow, you figured she was my wife – and that you took us both up to this room. Both of us together. Tell him I called her Beth.’

  ‘What’s she look like?’

  ‘No standout. Very tall and with brown hair she wears in a coronet.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘In braids around her head. Got all that down now?’

  ‘Yeah. But the policy around here is to make sure all reservations are confirmed.’

  The confirmation cost fifty dollars. Paying it, Chris said, ‘And remember, sonny, I’m local talent. Me and my friends are always somewhere around town. If anything goes wrong, we’ll know who to blame for it and what to do about it.’

  That, he estimated, was worth at least another fifty in case his shadows tried to buy off this ally.

  He waited until the boy had departed with the suitcase, then picked up the phone and called Dom at the restaurant.

  ‘More trouble?’ Dom immediately said with apprehension.

  ‘It looks like that’s the name of the game, kid. Now listen close. Is there someone out around the University you can move in with for about a week or so?’

  ‘I can find someone. Why? Is the Beach getting that hot?’

  ‘I figure it’ll be at least twenty degrees cooler around Coral Gables, so tonight just pack what you need and get out there. Knock off from the job, too. If I have to get in touch with you, I’ll write you care of Augie Bloom over at Cobia. Call him first thing every morning and see if there’s a letter or wire for you. Got enough dough to carry you for a while?’

  ‘For a week anyhow. If I’m off the job, it’ll be tough after that.’

  ‘I’ll send you money in a couple of days. Just stay away from the Beach except to pick up any letters at Cobia. Lock the house up and keep far away from it until I give you the word. Okay?’

  ‘Okay. Chris?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Don’t let anything happen to you.’

  ‘Nothing will.’

  ‘And Beth.’

  ‘That’s the project I’m working on,’ said Chris.

  He gently placed the phone back on its stand, crossed the room on silent feet, and suddenly flung open the door. No one was outside it. He leaned out to survey the hallway and saw it was empty from end to end. He closed and locked the door behind him and went back to the phone.

  Augie Bloom’s voice was usually unctuous. Now, when he asked who it was, it sounded loud and edgy. He was a hard man to rattle, Chris knew, but McClure’s murder must have rattled him badly.

  ‘It’s Chris. Are you alone, Augie?’

  ‘Right now I am, but there’s still cops around the place. It’s been terrible, Chris. Terrible. Poor Marty. He wasn’t even cold yet when that miserable Greenberger moved in on me with a warrant and everything. Have they been after you, too?’

  ‘That’s what I’m calling about. Augie, level with me. Greenberger says that guy Prendergast was tied in with Marty. Where would he get that idea?’

  ‘Where? That’s police business. Ask them about it.’

  ‘No, it’s my business too, Augie, just like the tennis set-ups out there and the way you get a cut out of those big poker and crap games on the top floor. And from those cute little college-type call-girls you’ve got listed in that card file. The Herald would have a ball writing up all that dirt, don’t you think?’

  ‘Chris, you wouldn’t.’ Augie’s voice was shrill with outrage. ‘You’re not the type. You’re not a bastard like that.’

  ‘Not if you level with me. Where did the police get their idea about Marty and Prendergast?’

  ‘All right, all right,’ Augie said wearily. ‘From Marty’s papers. They turned his room upside down. They found some cancelled cheques that show Prendergast was into Marty for thirty big ones.’

  ‘You mean he was on Marty’s payroll for thirty thousand dollars?’

  ‘What payroll? Marty lent money, this Prendergast needed money the worst way over the past few months, so there it is.’

  ‘Are we talking about the same Prendergast? The one from Boston who had Cabana 4?’

  ‘That’s the one and only.’

  ‘Do you know if he had anything to do with a good-looking red-head calls herself Baby?’

  ‘No. I give you my word, Chris, I don’t know any more about him than you do.’

  ‘How about Marty? Did you ever see him around with a red-head like that? You would
n’t forget her once you saw her.’

  ‘I give you my word, Chris –’

  ‘You know what, Augie? I think I’ll run over to the Herald right now just for laughs.’

  ‘All right, all right, if that red-headed barracuda told you about it, I won’t make a liar out of her. She went with him a while. You know what I mean, went with him. But not here. In the Bahamas where he has that big beach house. I met her there once when he and I ran over to the casino in Lucaya for some action.’

  There was a knock at the door, and Chris said, ‘Hold on, Augie,’ and went to answer it. It was the bellhop.

  ‘All set?’Chris said.

  ‘All set,’ the boy said jauntily, and then as his eyes fell on Chris’s shirtfront the jauntiness suddenly became an almost passionate respect. ‘Glad to help any way I can, sir.’

  Chris glanced down and saw the butt of the revolver showing between his shirt buttons. He shoved it out of sight.

  ‘I’ll be with you right away, sonny. Just close the door and wait down the hall. You don’t mind waiting, do you?’

  ‘No, sir,’ the boy said with reverence.

  Back at the phone, Chris said: ‘You still alone there, Augie?’

  ‘I won’t be for long. It’s terrible here today. Terrible.’

  ‘You already said that. Anyhow, do me a favour. I might be writing the kid brother care of you, so see he gets the letters. Don’t forward them. Just keep them in your desk. He’ll call every morning about it.’

  ‘Chris, I’ve got so much on my mind –’

  ‘Me too, Augie. That should teach both of us to watch the company we keep.’

  He sat low in the seat of the cab, trying to keep out of sight until the cab had crossed Collins on its way to the Tuttle Causeway and the airport expressway beyond it. Then he looked back and caught a glimpse of the blue Chevrolet still parked near the hotel.

  For the moment, at least, he was that much ahead of the game.

  17

  Walking along the arcade of Miami International Airport thirty minutes later, he found that nothing had changed, he might as well have saved his fifty dollars. Simon Warburton had described it at their farewell meeting. ‘The same face seems to keep popping up wherever you are, and when you turn around to get a good look at it, it isn’t there.’ Which, Chris thought, told the whole story. When he had climbed out of the cab a sharp-featured face near by had been too hastily hidden behind a newspaper. Later, checking his watch against the arcade clock, he had caught a glimpse of that same hatchet profile over his shoulder before it abruptly disappeared from view.