I heard a car start up nearby, and soon head north up the Key, the motor sound fading into the night silence.
Weber came onto the dock. Marty spoke in the low voice of conspiracy. “All set now?”
“He’ll be waiting in the parking lot next to the big city pier they got down there.”
“He’s got my stuff too?”
“You put it in the car yourself, didn’t you? What do you think we did? Throw it the hell out? The house is locked, the electric turned off, the safe is empty. You worry too much, Marty.”
“Goddamn well told, I worry! I told you last week, you do things too fancy, it just means that many more things go wrong. You thought it was so cute, dumping that little car in the water, and we bust our ass getting it onto the boat and it didn’t turn out so cute after all, pal.”
I watched Weber stand and look at the man for long moments.
“What were your orders, Marty?”
“My orders? I guess my orders were to take orders from you, Maurie, but I know more about the rough stuff than you do. Right?”
“Sure, Marty. They can give you a name and description and send you to some city where you’ve never been, and you can blow a man in half in his own driveway and get away clean. That’s nice. So give me the benefit of your expert advice, Marty. Shall we leave these people in the driveway, maybe? How else do we hide four bodies where they’ll never be found, and have them figure me for missing, presumed dead? Give me a better plan, Marty.”
There was another silence. Marty finally said, “So let’s go for a boat ride.”
10
By the time we had moved out into the channel in the bay, I knew Weber had watched Chase often enough so that he had learned to do it by the book. The running lights were on. The dingy was riding on the tow line the proper distance astern. The two diesels were running in sync at, I guessed, about a thousand r.p.m. Weber, with Marty beside him, was operating the Sea Queen from the flying bridge, hand operating the big spotlight to pick up the reflectors on the channel markers.
I knew when we made the turn to starboard and went out through Horseshoe Pass. I knew the tide was a little past the high, and I was praying for Weber to run aground on one of the shifting bars, but he moved with care and deliberation. There was enough swell outside the pass, beyond the bars, to give the Sea Queen a different motion. When he put on more throttle I knew we were clear.
They came down the narrow curving ladderway from the flying bridge and Weber went to the duplicate controls in the semi-enclosed bridge a dozen feet from me. He turned on the chart light.
They spoke over the deep purring of the diesels, raising their voices just enough so I could hear them.
“Now what are you doing?” Marty demanded.
“We’ll run straight out a couple of miles, then take a compass heading that will take us down to Naples.”
“How do you know it will?”
“Because, goddamn it, Chase put all the compensated compass headings on this here chart and I’m reading the right one, goddamn it!”
“So don’t get sore. I’m just asking.”
Weber gave the craft a little more throttle, then came astern with a flashlight, stepping over me and over the body as though we didn’t exist, to check how the dingy was riding.
When he went back to the controls Marty said, “We got gas enough?”
“Yes, we’ve got gas enough.”
“I just don’t want anything should go wrong, Maurie.”
“For God’s sake!”
“I get uneasy about all this water.”
Weber didn’t answer.
“After you open up the bottom like you said, Maurie, how long will it take it to sink?”
“Twenty minutes to a half hour.”
“It will really sink?”
“Like a stone.”
“How far out will it sink?”
“I don’t know! We’ll get you into the dingy and all set. I’ll get it headed straight out on automatic pilot and give it full throttle and go over the side. You’ll have my clothes in the dingy. She may go five miles before the water shorts out the power. And I’ve told you this three times already.”
“How about the people?”
“You’re the expert. You get to knock them out. Then we’ll unwire Brice and little sister. We’ll stow everybody below. If they’re ever found, it’ll show they drowned.”
“Except the guy Ben shot.”
“That will be one of the mysteries of the sea.”
“What are you doing now, Maurie?”
“We’re far enough out. I got to put it on course.”
I felt the change of direction.
“What’s that thing?”
“I’m throwing it over onto automatic pilot.”
“Hey, that’s pretty spooky, that wheel moving back and forth all by itself.”
“I missed it by a couple of degrees. Got to try again.”
I heard the thud again as the automatic pilot was engaged.
After a few moments Weber said, “There! That’ll do.”
“When do we get where we’re going?”
“What did I tell Ben?”
“You said about two o’clock.”
“Well?”
“Jesus Christ, Maurie, can’t I even talk? How will we know when we’re there?”
“From the lights of the city, stupid.”
“I will be one happy son of a bitch when this is over,” Marty said dolefully.
“Now we can go below and get a drink.”
“Doesn’t somebody have to look out in front there in case we’re going to run into something?”
“The only thing we can run into is another boat, Marty. All boats have running lights. It’s a clear night. Now look out there. Way out. See that light?”
“Sure, what is …”
“Another boat, running way out, maybe eight miles off shore. The only thing we could hit would be another boat running on automatic so there’d be nobody at the wheel, and this is a hell of a lot of empty space to be on a collision course by accident. If it will make you feel better, we’ll take a look every twenty minutes or so.”
“I don’t like this running along blind in the dark, Maurie, honest to God.”
“So let’s get a drink and take your mind off it, and let’s play some games with the little sister.”
“But not like with that big broad—we didn’t know her name was Sis until after.”
“You didn’t like it?”
“How could I like it? By the time it’s my turn, I thought she was dead.”
“She wasn’t.”
“Okay, so she wasn’t. But by then who could tell? There’s got to be some type reaction.”
“You want reaction, we’ll give you some, Marty. Maybe you’ll get more than you want. Maybe, like Ben, you ought to settle for Charity.”
As they went below I heard Marty make a sound of righteous disgust. “Me, I could never stand a drunk woman. Honest to God. It goes against me somehow.”
More lights went on in the main lounge. The light shone out across the deck, dwindling the weak moonlight. I could hear the constant roar of the water as the displacement hull thrust it aside. It closed in behind us, in foam and turmoil. I began to work once again to get at the file. I had the idea that I might be able to wedge it upright between the boards of the teak deck. But when I rolled, I felt it slip around to the small of my back.
I fumbled weakly at my shirt and managed to pull it out in front, but I could not get the back of it free.
Suddenly, over all the sound of the marine engines and the rushing of the sea, I heard a thin climbing wail, a prolonged ululation from the captive throat of my girl. Without words, it expressed outrage and a dreadful panic with such clarity that my own breathing stopped and the sweat on my body was suddenly icy. They had either taken the gag from her mouth, or it had been displaced in struggle. I heard a male roar of anger, and I heard Weber’s heavy phlegmy laughter, and then I heard
her making a curious yelping sound.
I was suddenly far beyond careful thoughts, cool planning. Desperation can create a kind of madness, an insane energy. I was on my right side. The wire kept the heels of my hands firmly pressed together, and the wire went far enough up my wrists so as to keep my elbows tucked against my sides. I shut my eyes and forced my elbows out. I could feel the muscles of arms and shoulders bulge like marble against my skin. Vermilion dots swarmed in the blackness behind my eyes. I canted my head onto my shoulder in strain, lips pulled back away from my teeth, my lungs full to bursting, my throat closed. Something would give. It could be bone that would crack, or muscle fiber that would rip away, or the wire that would break. I know the pain must have been great, but I had no awareness of pain. It was an autohypnosis created by an extremity of effort.
Suddenly there was a small popping sound, absurdly tiny to be the product of the most concentrated strain I have ever experienced. I sensed rather than felt a sliding and loosening at my wrists. I opened my eyes and moved them into the path of light from the main cabin. The wire had parted, probably where she had begun to cut into the copper core with the small file. I quickly worked the encircling strands loose. (She screamed in torment and anger.)
My hands were free. I reached down to my ankles. I could feel the senseless fingers fumbling weakly and ineffectually at my ankles. I forced myself into a sitting position and slammed my hands against the teak deck to force some life into them. As life began to seep back into the numbness of swollen tissue the pain was electric and violent. I knew it would be a long time before they regained enough deftness to deal with knotted wire. I groped for the file and I was able to close my hand around it, the way an infant holds a spoon.
(“Bastards!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. “Bastards, bastards, bastards!”)
I swung my ankles into the light and sawed feebly at the exposed wire. It parted after an anguished eternity, and after I had unwrapped the wire I yanked the length of clothesline loose and pulled the sickening cloth out of my mouth. I tried to stand and went sprawling. Both feet were numb. I pulled myself up and stood, holding onto the rail, stamping my feet, trying to bring the feeling back into them.
(“Stop!” she screamed. “Oh God! Stop!”)
I tested my weight on feet that felt like wooden paddles. My hands hung like sacks of putty. I tried to move fast, hoping for surprise, knowing I had no time left.
I went stumbling, lurching down into the brightness of the big lounge. The three of them were at a low divan at my left. Weber was at the far end of the couch, kneeling, laughing, holding her shoulders down. He was facing me. Peggy’s wrists were still bound. She was naked. She was writhing, thrashing spasming her torso and her lean strong legs. Marty, naked except for his shirt, was cursing, struggling, trying to pin and separate her legs so as to consummate this tethered rape. His back was to me.
As Weber saw me, his eyes went wide. He released her and sprang back.
“Hold her!” Marty yelled in fury.
I reached him in two lurching strides. I could not make fists and so I chopped down on the nape of his neck with the underside of my right forearm. As he dropped, limp and sighing, Peggy rolled off the couch and up onto her feet, her face wild and vacant, looking at me and through me with no recognition.
“Run!” I yelled into her face. “Go over the side!”
I knew what Weber was going after, with great speed and direction. I knew I could not stop him, could not even reach him in time. I slapped her face with my flaccid hand. Her eyes seemed to focus. “Over the side!” I yelled once more. She slid fleetly by me. I followed her, blundering, off balance, going too slowly, like one of those nightmares when, in panic, you run from some monstrous Thing, and it is like running through glue.
As I started to pull myself out onto the deck I heard the hard flat bark of the shot. My hand stung where I grasped the edge of the hatch, and tiny things bit into my cheek and throat. I stumbled out onto the deck, veering to my right to evade the line of fire, and I saw her going over the stern. Panic had made her run straight back to dive over the stern rail. I saw her stretched sleek and pale in the moonlight, and I knew that if she entered the water in that sort of dive, the layers of turbulence behind the cruiser would snap her back and her neck and break her legs, if she did not land in the dingy. But just before she fell away into the darkness I saw her curl herself into a ball.
I went over the port rail, hurling myself as far as I could. I smacked the water hard and went far under, wrenched and twisted, spinning, hearing the hard underwater chunking sound of the twin screws. When the water was more quiet I swam under water for as far as I could, hoping I was swimming away from the boat. I came up. The Sea Queen was twice as far away from me as I had dared hope.
I looked for Peggy. She was expert enough to handle herself in the water with bound hands. I knew she had jumped far enough to be clear of the screws. I looked along a path of moonlight. It was empty.
“Peggy!” I yelled her name and listened.
“Peggy!” I listened to too much silence and heard a faint reply. I swam in that direction for fifty yards.
“Peggy!”
“Sam,” she called. “Sam.”
I saw her forty feet away and swam to her.
“Sam, they were trying to …”
“I know. Snap out of it. We’ve got to be smart, honey. We’re going to have to spend a lot of time underwater.”
“I can’t stay under with my hands …”
“I know. So I’ll have to pull you down and try to keep you down. Here they come.”
The Sea Queen, back under manual steering, had finally circled back to search along the path. She came on fast and I could see the white water at her bow. I knew Weber would be up on the flying bridge. Once I could see which way he would pass us—on which side—I set about increasing the distance there would be between us. I slipped my right arm through her arms and slipped her bound hands up over my shoulder so I could tow her and still use both arms. She kicked with reassuring strength and we moved a little faster than I had hoped. When he was so close I was afraid he could detect movement in the moonlit water, we rested.
I said in a low voice, “Be ready to go under. He’ll use that damn searchlight.”
As I had hoped, he stopped short of where we had gone over the side. It is easy to underestimate distance and momentum on the water. He braked it by reversing both engines and then seemed to lay dead in the water. I put my head under to check, and I could not hear any slow churning of the twin screws.
He lay a hundred yards away. The running lights suddenly went off. There was silence. The big white beam came on suddenly. He began to work it back and forth in a random pattern. When it started to come close I said, “Dive.” We went down. The water was as warm as soup. It had a stubborn buoyancy that made me fight hard to keep us under. At last I had to surface. They were shining the big light on the water on the far side of the boat.
“They could have drowned easy,” Marty said. It was startling the way his voice carried over the water.
“Shut up!”
“Look, her hands are wired together, right? And you think you got him in the air on that second shot. So why shouldn’t they drown?”
“You were such big help.”
“It was Ben put the wire on him, not me, pal. He come up behind me and hit me a good one. How far is the shore?”
“Maybe four miles.”
“How long can you keep shining that light around before somebody sees it and thinks maybe it’s a boat in distress and reports it, Maurie?”
“I think that light way back there is Boca Grande, Marty. So we’re maybe seven miles south of there, and this is empty country.”
“I still don’t like it. I told you something would go wrong, dint I?”
“For Chrissake, shut up!”
“Amateurs always get too damn fancy.”
“You get on the light. I’m going to make some big circles around he
re and keep looking.”
I heard the engines go into gear. He started making his first circle, going much too fast for an effective search. I guessed he was losing his temper and his patience. I could predict the path of the cruiser, but not the crazy pattern of the light. I was afraid he would blunder onto us. His second circle carried him dangerously close, and we went under when he went by. His third circle swung out around us, and after we were under, I saw the water all around us lighted up by the searchlight beam.
When I came up, Peggy was coughing and retching. “I … swallowed some,” she said. “You stayed under so long.”
She barely had time to recover before he came around again, and it seemed as if he would run us down. I waited as long as I dared and saw the bow swing slightly, so when I went down I tried to move in the opposite direction. When the turbulence caught us and rolled us, I knew how close it had been.
That was the last time he came anywhere near us. We floated and watched. He was two hundred yards, five hundred yards, and then a mile away.
“Darling, darling,” she said.
“There is one last thing I want to see,” I told her. And then I saw it. The running lights came on. He straightened away on course, running south, leaving us in the bland emptiness of the sea.
“We’re so far out, darling,” she said.
“Just a little swim on a hot night. Refreshing.”
“But which way do we go?”
“We go that way until we walk up onto dry land, girl. It should be LaCosta Key.”
“Can you undo my hands, darling?”
I tried. My fingers were still like breadsticks. “Later, maybe. I’ll try again later, honey.”
“But I can’t help us at all. It will all be up to you.”
“You can help us a little.”
I had been able to kick my shoes off shortly after jumping off the boat. My pockets were empty. The shirt and slacks were light weight. I was tempted to shed them until I realized they might be very useful when we reached shore.
Where Is Janice Gantry? Page 18