Bone Key

by Les Standiford

  “Some three hundred cases of one of the finest wines ever bottled. Vanished, without a trace,” Malloy said. “When it didn’t turn up on the European black market, speculation turned to America. It being Prohibition, a certain gangster of Italian extraction was rumored to have financed the job, but that wasn’t the case.” He shook his head and glanced around the room again. “Who could have ever figured that our own Senator Rafferty had been involved?”

  “Never sell a Florida politician short,” Deal said.

  It brought what seemed a genuine smile from Malloy. “You were always good with a quip, John. Too bad you’re so goddamned honest.”

  Deal shook his head. Something that Malloy had said had begun to nag at him. There was no way he could have known of Rafferty’s involvement unless, of course, he’d gotten his hands on Ainsley Spencer. The thought chilled Deal, but he kept his gaze level on Malloy’s.

  “Did the old man tell you about Senator Rafferty?” Deal asked.

  Malloy looked at him strangely. “What old man? What are you talking about?”

  Deal shrugged. “I was just wondering how you knew so much about all this.” He waved his hand around the dank cellar. It seemed as if the temperature had dropped several notches since Malloy and Conrad had entered. It seemed cold enough to store almost anything here for a good long time.

  Malloy, meantime, was smiling. “Now there’s the interesting part.” He reached into a back pocket and held up what looked like a slender, leatherbound notebook. “It’s a ship captain’s log,” Malloy said, flipping the cover open. “It belonged to a Captain Michael Gavin Malloy.”

  Deal stared back at him. “Let me guess. A family heirloom.”

  “It’s a fascinating story,” Malloy said. He glanced at his watch, then up at the sky. “We’ve got a minute or two if you’d like to hear it.”

  Deal shrugged. “You’re the boss, Rusty.”

  Malloy nodded. “So it would seem, Johnny-boy. So it would seem.” He replaced the diary in his pocket, and then he began to talk.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Cherbourg 1931

  “That is the last of it,” the man beside Gavin Malloy said. Being French, the man put an unnatural emphasis on the of.

  Malloy glanced at the bulky pallet that was being trundled across the dimly lit dock planks and nodded. Never mind that he had spoken to this man in fluent French when the trucks had first pulled up. He was an American in the eyes of the man, and he would be spoken to in English.

  Of course, Malloy was no more an American than the wine being loaded aboard his ship was made of table grapes, but he was not about to waste his energy in that kind of debate.

  “You can certify the count, then?” the Frenchman said. He sounded impatient.

  For that much Malloy couldn’t blame him. It was cold and the mist had thickened, muting the scattered incandescent lamps to weak, parchment-tinted halos, shrouding the men moving the pallet, boiling up beneath the trucks, obscuring the contours of the freighter that loomed above in the night like a rusting storm cloud. A chilly vision of Hell, he thought.

  “You wouldn’t cheat me,” Malloy said. He wiped his hand across his face, felt a trickle going down his neck, diving beneath the collar of his coat. Just September and wearing a coat, for God’s sake. Inside a week, he’d be back in Florida, and so much for coats.

  The Frenchman stared back as though Malloy had delivered an insult. Well, Malloy thought, perhaps he had. Or perhaps the Frenchman had read his mind and knew where Malloy and his cargo were bound. Perhaps it was jealousy that made this Frenchman so dyspeptic.

  “Everything is as agreed, then,” the Frenchman prompted.

  Malloy shrugged. “I didn’t taste the wine.”

  The Frenchman made a sound that was something between a laugh and a clearing of his throat. “Too bad for you,” he said. His intonation suggested the opposite: Too good for the likes of you.

  The cargo net dropped to the docks with a liquid thud, a sound not unlike that of a body falling from a considerable height, Malloy thought. The men on the dock moved to the sodden tangle and pulled it toward the pallet they’d dragged from their trucks.

  The knowledge that this rare freight was destined for Prohibition-blighted America, for delivery to some wealthy but undistinguished swine, had not stopped the Frenchman from stealing it from his employers, however. Such considerations had not prevented him from removing exactly three hundred cases of one of the finest Bordeaux vintages in history from its rightful cellars, shortly before its release to his infinitely more tasteful countrymen. Situational snobbery, Malloy thought. But it was a waste of energy even formulating such judgments.

  The net, swollen by its catch, was rising from the docks as if by magic now, its cable hidden in the dark, the characteristic squeaks of the winch muffled by the gathering fog. Deus ex machina, Malloy found himself thinking. Machine of the gods.

  In Dublin, once, he had studied theater. Though it was a fact, such a thing now seemed impossible.

  “You’ll be here until morning,” the Frenchman said, waving his hand before his face as if there were too much moisture there for breathing.

  “We’ll sail tonight,” Malloy replied.

  The Frenchman stared at him, saying nothing. Perhaps he fancied the image of the Magdelena foundering on the channel rocks—as long as he’d been paid, of course.

  “Then you and I are finished,” the Frenchman said finally. His men—tight-lipped one and all—stood near the doors to their trucks, ready to depart. They were more than three hundred miles from Bordeaux and while Malloy was sure that every official who might have been a bother on the Frenchman’s route had earned a few francs this night, one was always anxious to leave the scene of a crime.

  “We are indeed,” Malloy said. He turned and gestured, and his purser hurried from his place near the bottom of the gangplank, a dark leather satchel in his hand.

  “Give the man his money, Avi,” Malloy said.

  Avi was a dark-eyed little man who looked like he’d been born to the counting room. He looked up at Malloy from beneath the watch cap mashed over his ears, then handed the dripping satchel to the Frenchman.

  The Frenchman snapped open the clasp, peered inside, shook the contents. He removed a bundle of bills, held it to his nose, then up to the light as he riffled the stack. He dropped the packet back into the satchel and flashed Malloy his humorless smile. “You wouldn’t cheat me,” he said.

  Malloy gave him the slightest bow in return. He had always appreciated irony.

  “I’d be careful if I were you,” the Frenchman said, moving off toward the lead truck. “That channel is tricky, even in good weather.”

  Malloy pursed his lips and glanced out toward the sea. He caught a whiff of rotting weed, borne, he hoped, on a gathering breeze. “There is good weather in Cherbourg?” he asked, turning back.

  It drew what might have been a genuine smile from the Frenchman. “Au revoir,” he said and raised his hand as he climbed aboard the truck.

  “Au revoir,” Malloy replied, and went with Avi toward his ship.

  ***

  Malloy had reached the ship’s rail at the gangway deck when the first explosion sounded. He turned as a blossom of flame flew into the sky above a nearby warehouse roof, and in moments a second explosion came, followed by another massive fireball. Seconds later, Malloy heard shouts, and the popping of rifle fire. He turned to Avi, who shrugged, then led the way quickly down the gangway.

  By the time they reached the docks, Malloy had his pistol drawn. He swept past his purser, motioning him to take a post behind the shelter of the gangway. Malloy hurried to the passage between the warehouses where the Frenchman’s trucks had left. He heard footsteps pounding toward him in the darkness and stepped into a shadowed alcove at the corner of the building nearest, his weapon ready.

  A man burst from the passage, his breath ragged, a pistol aloft in his hand. Malloy smelled cordite
and the tang of fear.

  When he realized where he was, the man stopped short, cursing the sight of the ship. He glanced down the dock to his right, then to the left, where Avi was hidden behind the gangway canvas.

  More footsteps thundered in the distance—his own men, Malloy knew. He’d have a word with them, letting this one get so far.

  “Merde!” Malloy heard the Frenchman mutter. How he had managed to survive the blast, Malloy could only wonder.

  From the distance came the wail of sirens, a noise that was obliterated by yet a third explosion. That blast had taken out the only bridge that connected the nearby town with its port, or at least it better have, Malloy thought.

  He knew exactly what the Frenchman’s arrangement with the local authorities had been, for it was no mistake that Malloy had seen to it Cherbourg was their rendezvous point. He had lived in the town for a time shortly after fleeing Russia, and he had paid an old associate now working within the city’s ministry handsomely for the information he would need.

  Once the trucks that had delivered the wine had passed back across the bridge, the authorities would hurry out to the docks, there to impound Malloy’s ship, arrest his men—or more likely kill them—then confiscate the wine. A neat plan, the sort of thing Malloy might have devised himself, were he on the other side.

  As the echoes of the bridge explosion died away, he heard the sound of a motor starting somewhere in the nearby harbor. Which would be the local patrol boat, coming to cut off Malloy’s escape by sea. Of course, he thought. Well drawn. Moments later, a fourth explosion rocked the harbor, and the sound of the patrol boat was no more.

  “Drop your pistol,” he called, waiting for the man in front of him to turn.

  Gavin Malloy had never shot anyone in the back. He was not about to begin with a Frenchman.

  Chapter Forty

  “So Gavin Malloy was your grandfather?” Deal said when Rusty had finished his account.

  Malloy nodded. “He was killed himself in an explosion that sank the Magdelena a few miles off this very coast.” He swept his arm in the direction of the sea. “My grandmother was living in Miami by then. Someone found his seabag washed up on Summerland Key a few weeks later and sent it to her. The diary was among his effects. Neither she nor my father ever told me what was inside, of course. I found it in my father’s house after he died.”

  “And you’ve been looking for the wine ever since?” Deal asked.

  Malloy gave a humorless laugh. “Wouldn’t it be nice to think so,” he said. “It did spur an interest in the subject.” He glanced around the empty cellar. “Living in a place like Key West, you have time for such things.” He gave Deal a smile. “You might have come to discover that yourself.” He stood and stretched. “But the fact is, until very recently I hadn’t wasted a minute searching for the wine. I assumed the shipment of wine my grandfather carried had been lost when the ship went down. Until that night I went to dinner with Stone, that is.”

  Deal shook his head. “I never would have figured you for something like this, Rusty.”

  Malloy shrugged. “I’d call it my due, Johnny-boy. Someone killed my grandfather over this wine, my grandmother drank herself into an early grave, my old man worked himself to death in turn. Why the hell shouldn’t I turn a profit here?”

  “And kill half a dozen people while you’re at it?”

  Malloy gave him a disdainful look. “I didn’t set out to harm anyone. If Dequarius Noyes had been willing to listen to reason, he’d still be alive. He was a penny-ante crook sitting on a multimillion-dollar treasure, way out of his league.” He gave Deal a look that assumed an understanding of the situation.

  “That wine was valuable enough in its own right. A spectacular vintage, so few bottles produced. But this cache”—his eyes widened as he swept his arm around the room again—“it was like stumbling across Amelia Earhart’s airplane in a hermetically sealed room.”

  Deal shook his head. “It’s stolen property, each bottle numbered. How could it be sold?”

  Malloy stared as if Deal were an idiot. “If anything, that makes it even more valuable to a collector. Doled out bit by bit, the value here is incalculable. That’s why it was necessary that Dequarius Noyes be removed from the equation as quickly as possible.”

  So much for Malloy’s earlier pleas of innocence. And so much for their prospects of survival as well, he thought glumly, his eyes on the pistol that Russell had kicked away. Conrad would cut him to shreds before he got halfway to it.

  He glanced back at Malloy. He didn’t want to ask the next question, but he knew he had to. “How about Annie Dodds? Was she at this dinner party?”

  “There is no such person,” Malloy said, his gaze level, not a trace of irony in his voice. “A woman by the name of Anita Dobbins was with us, if that’s who you mean. She’s the one who introduced those men who were at dinner to Stone, in fact.”

  Deal felt himself rocking ever so slightly backward on his heels. The “New York investors,” friends of Annie’s all along, then? The vision of a dark, slender form standing at the rearward rail of a speeding cabin cruiser came to him briefly, then vanished just as quickly into the dark.

  “I wouldn’t blame her for any of this, Johnny-boy,” Deal heard Malloy saying. “She had no way of knowing what would happen, but it would hardly do for her to stay in Key West, under the circumstances.” Malloy broke off, giving him a look that was supposed to seem sympathetic.

  “In fact, if you’d kept your nose out of things, none of this would have happened. Stone would still be with us, as would the lovely Ms. Dobbins. You’d be on your way to a fat contract, he’d probably have been willing to turn his head every now and then so you could knock off a little something on the side.”

  Deal started forward, but felt Russell Straight’s powerful hand clamp on his shoulder. “He’ll shoot you dead,” Russell said quietly in Deal’s ear.

  “He’ll do it anyway,” Deal said, his eyes murderous on Malloy.

  “You’re an old friend, John,” Malloy said. “I’m sorry to see it end this way.”

  His sorrow sounded genuine, Deal thought. The notion only added fuel to his fury. He’d go for Conrad with his bottle of wine, regardless of the consequences, he thought. He doubted Malloy was armed. With any luck, Russell would survive to finish the job.

  Malloy, meantime, was checking his watch. He stood and stretched luxuriantly. “I hate to think of that wine you’re holding going to waste, John,” he said. “Why not be a good fellow and set it down before Conrad does what he has to do.”

  “I don’t think so, Rusty,” Deal said. “This is going to cost you, one way or another.”

  He started forward then, his grip firm on the heavy bottle, cocking his arm back across his chest, his aim at Conrad’s jaw. The big deputy smiled as he saw how it was going to be, and swung the tip away from Russell Straight.

  Deal heard a strange thunking sound from the top of the stairwell then, along with a shout from Malloy. Conrad’s glance wavered momentarily, but Deal was on the move. The big deputy was bringing his weapon into position to fire when there was another strange noise—this one wet, and thudding—and Conrad’s eyes suddenly lost their focus.

  An enormous arrow, Deal thought at first, gaping at the impossible sight before him. In the next instant, he realized. Not an arrow, but a metal spear from a diver’s gun that had pierced Conrad near his jawbone and glanced out through the crown of his head, its tether line still taut and holding the man upright.

  Ainsley Spencer stood at the top of the stairwell with the speargun in his hands. He loosed the tether line from the spear he’d sent through Conrad and began loading another projectile into the stiff elastic firing mechanism.

  As Conrad toppled over, Malloy jumped from the stairwell to the floor of the chamber, going for the pistol that Russell had earlier kicked away. He had his hands on the weapon and was lifting it to fire at Ainsley when Deal strode forward and b
ackhanded him with the bottle.

  The edge of the heavy bottom caught Malloy like a mule’s kick just above the ear. There was a popping sound as his skull gave and the pistol tumbled free from his grasp. He spun around, staring at Deal with a look that suggested some great betrayal, then he went over.

  Deal stared down at Malloy’s unmoving form, then at the still-unbroken bottle in his hand. Ainsley Spencer stood at the top of the stairwell with the loaded speargun braced in his hands. Russell Straight moved quickly past him, bending to check Malloy.

  Russell stood after a moment and came back to Deal, lifting the bottle gently from his hands. “This here’s some righteous stuff,” he said.

  And then they were all moving up toward the light.

  Chapter Forty-one

  “A little closer to those mangroves, now,” Ainsley Spencer said as Russell Straight’s cast plopped into the quiet water a good dozen feet from an array of roots that resembled a tangle of tarantula limbs, constituting what passed for shore in these parts.

  The first cold front of the season had slipped through the Lower Keys the night before, leaving behind a few ragged cirrus high up in an otherwise unblemished sky and dropping the temperature all the way down to the high seventies, cool enough to send most of the flats-loving mosquitoes into a momentary nod.

  A perfect day to be out on the water, Deal thought as he sat on a sling chair on the deck of the houseboat, watching Russell madly winding in his reel. Just a moment before, they’d seen something roll in the waters just short of that tangle of roots. Maybe a tarpon, maybe a school of mangrove snapper.

  They’d rented the boat from a marina in Key West, a smallish, shallow-draft craft designed for easy maneuvering in the waters of Florida Bay. They were about an hour and a half out of port to westward, he supposed, though he hadn’t glanced at his watch since they’d left. The plan was to putter along the coastline until they found one of the thousand and one sandy beaches scattered at the tip of the mainland peninsula, a place to put in for lunch and a swim.