by Dane Hartman
“Over here!” Harry said, the Magnum extended in his hands and resting against the roof of the cruiser.
The gunman looked toward him in utter bewilderment. A little belatedly, he thought of thrusting his shotgun through the open window of the cruiser and shooting Harry. Whatever his next thought was it was his last.
The .44 hit him at the top of his skull, right in a glimmering bald spot which made for a perfect target. Blood, like oil, erupted from the surface. The gunman was driven back by the shot—and though he didn’t leave the ground, it seemed that at any moment he might. Then his body, propelled backward, reached the edge of the bridge and, not being content to stop right there, continued farther and plummeted into the bay.
Harry regretted having not delivered him to the bottom of the sea earlier—before he’d gotten the two cops—but even killers had their season, and sometimes you couldn’t do anything to them until that season ran out.
As additional police cruisers pulled onto the bridge, Harry turned and trudged wearily back to San Francisco. He figured he’d like to get someplace where he could stop losing blood.
C H A P T E R
E l e v e n
“Haven’t seen you in a few days, where you been keepin’ yourself?”
As Slater Bodkin probably wasn’t interested in a response, Harry had no intention of giving him one. Slater looked up, noticing the Band-Aids that were strategically positioned on Harry’s face. He frowned. “Accident I reckon,” he said.
“That’s right.”
“An automobile?” Slater made every syllable of the word count.
“You got it.”
“Young man like you ought to be more careful.” That said, he promptly lost his fascination with Harry’s condition. “Out there, you see it!” He swept his arm back to the right.
“The boat?”
“It’s ours. Or to be precise, it’s Harold’s. But generally speaking, it’s ours for the duration. Handsome, ain’t she? I’d say close to two hundred thousand for her. ’Fraid our Harold got carried away again.”
It had the look of a craft worth that much. It stretched out to a shade longer than forty feet and gleamed whiter than 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, with a flush aft-deck configuration.
For a boat that might well be sacrificed, it was an expensive proposition. Keepnews could always replace the crew, including him, but the boat?—he was going to have to sell a hell of a lot of shopping malls and condominiums to keep affording yachts like this one.
“She’s got two staterooms forward, a master stateroom aft,” Slater was saying. “Plenty of space for everyone. Got a saloon and a nice little galley where Max’ll have everything he needs.”
“Max?”
“Great cook, Max is. You should see what he does with flounder. Only trouble is he likes everything hot.”
“Hot? Spicy hot?”
“Sometimes he goes overboard.” He chuckled deeply at his own little joke. “I mean on the food. I remember a couple of times our lips were running blood. But if you can get beyond the hot the taste is real fine.”
This was going to be some sea voyage, Harry thought, lips bleeding, stomach churning. Just thinking of Max, he lost his appetite.
“Best thing about her though is the windows. Half-inch Du Pont Abscite. Bulletproof!”
“Nice thing to know.”
With Slater’s arch manner and unrelenting chatter it was hard to tell what the man was thinking.
“Go take a good look at her. She’ll be your home the next few weeks.”
Harry sauntered down the length of the pier, striding up to the boat. He was now close enough to make out the name Keepnews had christened the boat with. It was certainly appropriate.
CONFRONTATION the dark Roman characters on the hull spelled out.
Maybe not yet, Harry considered, but soon enough.
When he got back to the other end of the dock he saw that Slater was no longer by himself. He was with his niece. Wendy. A revealing purple halter allowed an ample glimpse of clean tan flesh above and below; her cut-offs ended abruptly, extremely high on her thighs. Her hair was tied back and covered by a yellow handkerchief. Her eyes flashed at him from behind big oval glasses tinted the same shade as her halter. She waved to him.
“You like Harold’s new toy?”
“An impressive piece of machinery,” he admitted.
“Harold bought it yesterday, decided to bring it down here and show Slater. Sort of a test run. You know how Harold gets. Once the urge strikes, he has to do everything all at once. I don’t think he ever waited in line for anything in his life.”
Slater grinned and chomped down on his pipe.
Wendy strode up to Harry and, taking him by the arm, drew him away from Slater. “How come you never called? I was expecting you to.” She wore a petulant expression that reminded Harry of a cross child.
“Well, I got kind of caught up in things.”
This stopped her. She gently raised her hand and touched his face.
“Oh yes. I’m sorry, I’d forgotten. Are you going to be permanently scarred?” She seemed suddenly worried about how his face would look once the bandages came off.
“I don’t suspect that I’ll be entering any beauty contests any time soon if that’s what you mean. But I probably won’t look in much worse shape than I was when I started.”
“My problem is that I’m too selfish, think just of myself.”
Harry didn’t contradict her. It was her problem. One of them at any rate.
She went on. “It must have been awful to have gone through that.”
She might have been referring to the running battle that had continued outside of Winnicker’s, but Harry wasn’t absolutely certain. A woman like Wendy tended to be on the oblique side. “I can see where you wouldn’t have had a chance to get in contact with me.”
“So Harold told you what happened?” Harry was interested in seeing how information was communicated in the Keepnews’ house.
“Oh no.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Harold never tells me anything. Or else what he does say is not always the whole truth. But I have my ways of finding out what’s going on.”
“I’m sure you do.” Harry was developing an appreciation for her skills at ferreting out facts—not to mention fishing people out of the deep.
“Which is why I happen to know you were set up.”
Harry held her in his eyes, trying to divine her thoughts. Impossible.
“You mind explaining, Mrs. Keepnews?”
She wasn’t looking at him. She seemed to find the polluted waters of the bay more interesting.
“Harold found out about us. You don’t think we fooled him. And like I told you before, Harold’s a man who can get insanely jealous. Just as he did with Max.”
The idea of being linked with Max, no matter what the context was, irritated the hell out of Harry.
“Now how did he find out?”
“I don’t know. Maybe one of the men he has out following me around. He has spies everywhere.”
As she continued speaking Harry began to get the feeling that she was making this up as she went along. But he couldn’t be absolutely certain. “So what you’re saying is that Harold decided to kill me, and he did it the easiest way he knew, by sending me to Winnicker’s and having some drug runners do the job for him?”
Wendy hesitated as though she had to give this some thought, see if it jibed with the scenario she’d constructed—or was it the truth as she knew it? Then she said yes, that was how she understood it was.
“But now that I’m still among the living, he’s going to let me go fishing for him off Mexico?”
She shrugged. “You might want to give it up. Mexico’s just another way of getting killed.”
“What about Max? I thought the idea was to save his ass.”
“Max,” she said dully. She seemed to have forgotten all about him. Max had a habit of slipping from memory if you didn’t work hard at it.
She turned
to face Harry, her eyes mysterious entities behind those lavender-tinted lenses of hers. “I don’t think any harm will befall Max. He’ll survive.” Again she touched his face, very tentatively. “It’s you I worry about.”
Then she leaned close to him, pressed herself to him on tiptoes, and kissed him full on the mouth. And was gone. Like that. Ran off as though a more protracted goodbye would prove too wrenching.
Harry all at once felt very old. He walked back to where Slater was sitting. Slater pretended to have seen nothing. He too appeared to be enthusiastically studying the murky greenish waters in the vicinity of the piers. The seagulls that swooped down on the rotted wood pilings were being very noisy. Slater was being very quiet.
“So,” he said, sounding very offhand, “you’re going to be ready to sail Friday?”
“Friday? Thought it wasn’t to be till the end of next week.” Friday was just two days away.
“Moved up. Harold’s orders. Friday now.”
“Well,” said Harry, watching a couple of squawking seagulls do a little jig in the afternoon sunlight, “as far as I’m concerned the sooner the better.”
C H A P T E R
T w e l v e
Two days out at sea and there was already trouble. Not trouble from pirates. They might be lurking just beyond the horizon for all Harry knew, but they had yet to make themselves known. No, the trouble was all due to the crew members. One of them would have been all right, even two of them would be possible. But the combination of Max, Vincent, and Booth was deadly. The only reason, it seemed to Harry, that Vincent and Booth got along was because they hated Max so much. Without Max, they’d have been tearing at each other’s throats. Max, of course, didn’t like anyone, and from the way he acted you got the feeling he expected the same in response.
Slater, by temperament or sheer intestinal fortitude, seemed to be able to accommodate everyone. He never raised his voice when he was angry. He merely sucked a bit harder on his pipe and gave the miscreant a withering stare. Possibly it was because he expected people to do what he wanted that he was obeyed. Maybe it was some kind of mystical force he had acquired in the years he’d spent at sea.
Harry, on the other hand, was something of a mystery to the crew. They couldn’t figure out what he was doing on the boat. Max, who knew more than the others, was especially resentful of his presence and even at the outset he’d attempted to enlist Booth and Vincent against him. But because Booth and Vincent so generally despised Max, they assumed that Harry couldn’t be all bad if Max didn’t like him. Not that they were inspired to strike up a friendship with Harry; that would be stretching things too far. Rather, they avoided him whenever possible, and if their paths should cross, they’d make do with a grudging nod and a mumble that might have been hello.
The three crew members occupied the two forward staterooms. Harry and Slater shared the master one aft, which worked out well enough. Usually one or the other of them was on watch, allowing each all the privacy he wanted.
So it was that Harry was alone, stretched out on one of the twin beds, staring lackadaisically up through the porthole. All he could see was blue, blue sky, blue water, blue everything. That was just fine by him—he wasn’t anxious to use his eyes for anything more taxing.
Just then there was a commotion above him. He turned over in hope that whatever it was would go away. Didn’t go away. Instead it just got louder. Voices began to distinguish themselves. He heard Slater yelling, and that was something he never did.
With a groan Harry lifted himself from the bed and went to see what the matter was.
Out on deck he found Max and Booth squared off. Booth was naked to the waist, which permitted a panoramic view of his gallery of tattoos. Swastikas and royal black eagles rippled each time he raised or swung his arms. In his right hand he held a speargun. Max, not to be outdone, clutched a knife in his hand. The knife, Harry estimated, was capable of going straight in one side and out the other with an inch or so left over for insurance. Max never seemed to learn. He too was naked to the waist, and here and there on his tan well-developed chest you could see where other knives had gone before, leaving behind streaks of pink and white scar tissue. Undoubtedly, some of those scars had been made that day on Polk Street before Harry had intervened.
Well, now it looked as though he was going to have to intervene again because it didn’t appear that Slater was likely to get things under control. Though he was eager to mediate he was still wise enough to keep his distance, contenting himself with loud words and arms raised in appeal.
Vincent meanwhile was thoroughly enjoying the spectacle. “Stick him!” he kept urging Booth, “stick him!”
Booth had the advantage. His weapon was longer, allowing him more room in which to maneuver. But you had to give Max one thing—he was not afraid. He might be a moron, but he was a brave moron.
“What’s this shit about?” Harry asked Vincent.
Vincent spat out his cigarette and said, “Booth got the runs from Max’s cooking. That meat loaf last night, that was what did it.”
“I had the meat loaf,” Harry said. “I survived.”
Vincent shrugged. “Booth’s got a more sensitive stomach maybe.”
Looking at him, Harry doubted that Booth had a sensitive anything.
“Cook your own shit from now on!” Max was saying.
“I’ll cook you, you cocksucker, I’ll roast you and eat you whole.”
Booth suddenly lunged forward, baring his teeth in his attempt to show Max he meant what he said.
Vincent laughed.
“You all can go to hell,” was Slater’s judgment. Harry had the feeling that he’d have liked to walk away and forget the whole business, but obviously there was nowhere to walk away to.
“I don’t believe this, I really don’t think I believe this,” Harry said. He had the vision of two dead crewmen, martyrs to lousy meat loaf.
He would have to do something. He preferred to let them grind each other into the deck, but it would be far better if they did so without the benefit of sharpened instruments.
So Harry stepped between them, knowing that all this action did was to invite getting stabbed from both sides. But for the moment he enjoyed the luxury of surprise. Neither Booth nor Max had made up their minds about what Harry’s intercession meant.
“Why don’t you throw down your weapons?” Harry said, his voice deliberately calm. “You want to fight, fight. God might not have given you any brains but He gave you two hands.”
Booth had to think about this for a minute. Harry knew if he got one he had the other. The question was would either of them accept his suggestion?
Finally, Booth dropped the speargun into Vincent’s hands. “I’m willing,” he declared, leaving Max with no choice. He surrendered his blade to Slater.
Booth didn’t waste any time. He delivered a nicely executed roundhouse kick straight to Max’s chest, knocking the wind right out of him. For unfathomable reasons Max remained erect. You could hear him sucking frantically for breath. It was clear that if he didn’t do something soon the fight would be over before it had started. Booth charged in again, battering Max with a succession of blows that sent him staggering back toward the starboard side. Max was not used to someone like Booth. Booth moved in, resolved to finish the job without further ado.
Although it surprised the hell out of Harry, he realized that he wanted Max to win. He disliked Max intensely, wished he’d never laid eyes on him much less accepted the responsibility for saving him from Harold’s wrath. But when the choice was Max or Booth, Harry decided to go with the lesser of two evils.
The lesser of two evils wasn’t faring very well. The only reason he was still standing was because he had the gunwales to prop him up. Still the gunwales weren’t very high, and it would only take Booth a few solid punches to send him crashing into the Pacific where, already bloodied, he might prove too much of a temptation to the sharks who made their home there.
Maybe he slipped, maybe he
purposely stepped out of the way, it was hard to tell, but whatever impulse guided Max it was obviously the correct one. By moving to the left he managed not only to avoid a blow that might have dropped several front teeth down his throat but he also succeeded in unbalancing Booth. Booth, having expected Max to remain in one place, had lunged forward. But all he found himself hitting was thin air. And because he was in motion, he could not stop, and so propelled he slammed his belly against the gunwales, grimacing in pain.
Max, surprised to find he had an advantage, had recovered sufficient wind to drive a punch into the side of Booth’s head. Instantly Booth’s left ear turned deep scarlet. Booth half-turned, only to receive a left hook that found its resting place directly underneath his chin. Having not really gotten his balance back, Booth was hurled up against the wall of the pilothouse. His head made a loud cracking sound when it hit. Both his hands clutched his throat. For several moments he remained unmoving. Max’s blow must have temporarily jeopardized his air supply. He was gasping as hard as Max had been just a half a minute or so before.
Max, moving very slowly as though he were already immersed in water, now stepped forward and began to rain Booth with several more blows. Booth still could not react, and the only protective gestures he made were to turn his head and twist his body to diminish the target area Max had to work with.
Vincent didn’t like how this fistfight was developing. Harry could see that he was anxious to intervene on his friend’s behalf. Not being constrained by the rules established for the fight, he thrust out the speargun Booth had given him. Then he started his advance toward the two struggling men.
Harry reached forward, gripping him by the arm. “I wouldn’t do that, Vincent.”
Vincent glared at Harry. The tip of the speargun was now turned toward him. Slater noticed this and, with Max’s knife in hand, began to circle around just in case Harry required assistance.
This was one instance Harry was determined not to resort to fire-power. Producing a gun would only invite further suspicion as to what his role was on the Confrontation, and he refused to take that risk unless it was absolutely necessary.