“I tell him he’s not my type. He says he’s a writer but he looks more like a cop to me.”
Amen, thought Sanford. “What about Janovic?”
“Our football muscle man?” she said with a laugh.
“So he did play football.”
“For five years, according to him. With the Chicago Bears. What they call a tight end, whatever that is … He’s quite a hunk of man, all right,” she said after a silent moment. “A little empty in the head maybe, but that might not be a fatal drawback. I think a smart woman could handle him. But what’s the future in it?”
She paused when Sanford made no reply and said: “According to him he runs around with Hubbard living off the fat of the land, using his muscle if Hubbard gets in trouble, and lining up a girl now and then when Hubbard finds one that takes his fancy … What’s with you anyway?” she said abruptly.
“With me?”
“You’re acting awfully jumpy tonight.”
“I am?” Sanford said, instantly aware that what she said was true but finding no intelligent reply.
“You keep looking over your shoulder. First one way and then the other.”
“If I was, I’ll stop it,” Sanford said and gave her arm a squeeze as his eyes focused on the lights of the hotel a half a block ahead.
The Hotel Bradley stood back from the street, a narrow and rectangular white-painted structure with green trim, its main floor high off the ground with latticework hiding the storage and service areas. There was a good-sized patch of lawn with well-tended borders between the building and the sidewalk, and there was a separate bar in a cube-like one-story structure on the lawn which had been painted the same way as the main building.
As they turned in and started along the path Sanford asked the girl if she would like a drink and she said no. They went up the steps to the first floor and along the veranda to the entrance. There was no one in the small lobby, and after she had opened the door she turned to give him a kiss and a pat on the arm.
“Thanks, Barry,” she said as she stepped back. “It’s always nice to have a gentleman walk you home … See you tomorrow?”
Sanford said “Right,” and wiped the lipstick off his mouth with the back of his hand as he started back along the veranda. By the time he went down the steps his thoughts had centered again on his immediate problem and he decided then that he had no intention of walking back to the Ft. James. For he was thinking of Blanche Hubbard now and what she had said. Don’t worry too much about your self-respect. Don’t get stubborn—
He took these thoughts with him as he cut across the lawn and entered the bar building. There were three local customers perched on stools listening to a short-wave radio behind the counter and he nodded to the barman and ordered a Scotch and soda. For another moment or two he tried to tell himself that he was in no danger tonight because King Hubbard had already returned to the houseboat. He also remembered that he had seen a small eight-foot dinghy tied up along with the two sport fishermen. Anyone who could row could probably come ashore at night without being seen …
He went to the end of the bar and consulted the telephone directory. He made two calls to taxi people he had used before without getting an answer. He came over to his drink and took a swallow, his angular face somber and his dark gaze morose. Again he told himself that nothing could happen on the way back to the hotel. He was still trying to convince himself when he remembered that there had been a taxi at the hotel when he left and now he went back to the phone and dialed the number of the Ft. James.
“Hello,” he said. “This is Barry Sanford. Will you send a taxi over to the bar at the Bradley, please?”
There was a much longer delay than he had expected before the taxi arrived, and when he snapped at the driver he heard some mumbled excuse he did not even listen to—something about being engaged for a short trip when Sanford called. They rode the rest of the way in silence and when Sanford had paid the driver and walked into the lobby he saw that it was ten minutes of eleven. The night clerk hailed him before he could reach the stairs.
“There was a lady asking for you, Mr. Sanford.”
“A lady? When?”
“A few minutes after you left with Miss Dumont.”
Sanford frowned, his dark eyes full of thought until he reached the only conclusion left to him. “Someone from the houseboat?”
“That’s right. Tall. With a yellow dress and dark reddish hair.”
The description was good enough. Sanford knew who she was even though he could not understand it. He had seen Laura Maynard leave from the hotel pier around a quarter of ten …
“She didn’t give her name? … What did she say?”
“She asked for you and I said you had gone out and not come back.”
“Then what?”
“She looked very disappointed. She asked me if I was sure and I said yes, and then she went outside. I think she got into a taxi but I’m not positive.”
“Is that all?”
“No sir. She came back again.” The clerk turned and glanced at the clock on the wall. “Perhaps ten minutes ago. She went upstairs towards the bar. She may still be there.”
Sanford lost no time in getting to the cocktail lounge but when he entered there was no one there but Pedro, the barman, and the boy who was cleaning off the tables. He started to speak to Pedro and then his glance moved on toward the sea and once again he saw the houseboat outboard just pulling away from the hotel pier. Counting heads he saw that there were three in addition to Tom Silva and now he turned back to Pedro.
“The people from the houseboat just left?”
“That’s right. Just now.”
“Three of them?”
“The tall man with the glasses”—Aldington, thought Sanford—“the big one with the blond hair, and the lady in the yellow dress.”
“She left earlier.”
“And came back alone. She was the only passenger. I saw her cross the road and come through the gate. She asked for you. She went out and then came back a few minutes ago. Then the three of them left.”
It was two minutes of eleven when Sanford returned to the lobby and he moved to the entrance and stood looking out at the lighted parking area while he smoked a cigarette. By then the impatience was starting to grow in him and when he came back to the desk he asked the clerk about Police Constable Pierce.
“No sir,” the clerk said. “I haven’t seen him since his ten o’clock round. If he came by he didn’t stop here.”
“Have you been on the desk right along?”
“Yes sir.”
Again in the doorway, Sanford waited until eleven fifteen and then he started toward the pavement outside the gate posts, his annoyance at Pierce for having failed to stop by so he could have company to the Cay Queen expanding into a frustrating sort of anger that was directed first at King Hubbard for having so intimidated him, and finally at himself for allowing the continuing threat to influence his every move.
He was cursing softly but aloud as he walked, but he also remembered the old saying about discretion being the better part of valor. This thought made him swing left along the pavement instead of tackling the black and narrow alleyway directly opposite that led to the seawall. The head-high concrete wall, topped with wire, gave him protection on the left all the way to the corner, and he followed along the curving street past the little lighthouse to the seawall at the harbor mouth. He met no one and heard nothing as he stepped up on the wall and started along it toward the customs house.
A high iron fence ending at the wall was supposed to block entry to the area from this direction but it was no trick to swing round it. Light burned dimly on the second floor of the squarish two-story building. He could make out the outside stairway and the open door above, but he kept moving until a voice hailed him softly from the darkness below.
In that first instant it was a shocking sound and he spun about in an uncontrollable reflex movement, his body rigid before he could identify the voice. Ev
en then it took him another three or four seconds before he could relax sufficiently to answer.
“Is that you, Mr. Sanford?”
He could not see the speaker sitting in the shadowy blackness below the second story but he knew him, and at the sound of the friendly voice was the most reassuring thing he had heard in a long time.
“Hello, Willie,” he said. “Quiet tonight, hunh?”
“Oh, yes sir. Like always.”
Willie was an ancient Negro who acted as a watchman from four in the afternoon until two o’clock in the morning. A retired seaman who had come originally from the island of St. Vincent, he had worked for many years on schooners that served the Windward and Leeward islands, and later he had been a deckhand in British cargo ships. For a small fee he did such jobs as sanding, varnishing, and polishing on the Cay Queen and he still liked the Barbados rum that Sanford kept aboard for such occasions.
Such thoughts of Willie made the remaining fifty yards much easier to take, and when Sanford stepped down into the cockpit of the Cay Queen he had a feeling of enormous relief and accomplishment. Lights from the city sprinkled the black surface of the river with their reflections and only the light slap of the water and the faint rubbing sound of the fenders broke the silence. He had his key in hand now and he reached for the door, fingers locating the lock before finding an odd roughness that had not been there earlier. A moment later he could feel the door move and knew that the lock had been broken. Then, because some of his anger still remained and he was tired of being afraid, he knelt and made himself small. He pushed the door open, leaned round the corner, and reached out until he located the light switch on the side of the companionway.
The single overhead bulb told him that the main cabin was empty and apparently in order. The sliding door that he had put in to save space was half open at the forward end. He could not see into the interior of the smaller cabin and he waited a while, breath held and listening before he advanced.
Having come this far and not wishing to push his luck, he unlocked the gun cabinet and removed the shotgun he had loaded earlier. With the barrel in front of him he started forward, using the muzzle to slide the door all the way open. He felt a little sheepish when he found the forward cabin empty but it did not bother him long. He came back to the companionway and closed the door, hooking it from inside. When he had put the gun down beside the bunk he turned off the light and undressed in the darkness.
11
The first time Barry Sanford awakened during the night he made the transition not in a swift and sudden manner but with a gradual and reluctant process that took a while. He seemed at first to be having a dream in which strange men were whispering about him, and he clung to sleep until he realized his eyes were open and his ears were straining. The awareness that he was indeed awake and the voices no dream startled him, and he reached instinctively down beside the bunk to reassure himself that the shotgun was still there.
He did not know what time it was. The outside world was as black as the cabin and he could tell now that two men were talking in low tones from somewhere along the dockside, that the voices seemed to move slowly away in the direction of the city. He did not know how long he lay there after the sounds had gone because his next awareness of himself came much later and he felt he had been asleep a long time between the two intervals of consciousness.
This time the darkness seemed tinged with gray and there was the sound of an automobile engine idling some distance away. Not understanding this but reassured when he realized that whatever the trouble it could not come so openly from anything King Hubbard might devise, he had again drifted into sleep to awaken finally with a sudden movement of the Cay Queen that made him sit up as he realized someone had just stepped aboard. There was light outside now to tell him it was some time after dawn and the sound of footsteps in the cockpit ended with a knock at the companionway door.
“Yeah?” he said with some irritation. “What is it?”
“Police, Mr. Sanford. Could you come out, please?”
“Okay. Just a minute.”
He slipped into his slacks and thrust bare feet into an old pair of sandals. He took time to unload the shotgun and lock it in the cupboard before he unhooked the companionway door and went up the three small steps to the cockpit. He recognized the man who was waiting, a chunky Negro with a round head and a black, intelligent-looking face, neatly dressed now in a medium-gray suit and polished black oxfords. His name was Larkin and he was second in command of the C.I.D. under Superintendent Kirby.
“Hello,” Sanford said. “Inspector Larkin, isn’t it?”
“That’s right, sir.”
“Trouble?”
“Bad trouble.” Larkin turned and stepped up on the seawall. “Come with me, please.”
As Sanford followed the inspector round the end of the fence which helped to make the narrow alleyway leading to the street, he realized that his last minutes of sleep must have been sound ones before the unaccustomed movement of the boat awakened him. For there were two cars parked at the edge of the next lot with its shed-like building and pieces of rusty machinery. One was a police Land Rover; the other was an ambulance, its rear doors open and the driver and attendants standing by. There were other officers, plainclothed and uniformed, who stood around something on the ground next to a skiff that had been left there months before, paint peeling and its planking sprung and rotting in the sun. A small man with a doctor’s bag came to his feet and stepped back and now Sanford saw the still, sprawled figure on the ground beside the skiff.
The last few reluctant steps accelerated the feeling of foreboding that had been planted by Inspector Larkin and Sanford made no further attempt to ignore it. He saw the others step aside to let him move closer and suddenly he knew without yet seeing the face that the man on the ground, apparently beyond help of any doctor, was Police Constable Pierce.
After that the shock and sickness that struck so swiftly at his insides left no room for conscious thought or understanding. He knew as he swallowed against his rising nausea that Pierce’s cap lay beside him, that his night stick was still in his belt, that the front of the blue-black uniform cloth had been stained a different color. When, finally, he became aware of the silence about him and the coolness of the early morning air on his bare torso, he turned to Larkin and swallowed again before he could speak.
“What happened to him?”
“A knife.” Larkin watched the doctor signal to the ambulance men to bring a stretcher. “Could you tell us when, doctor? Approximately?”
“I may be able to do better after the p.m.” the doctor said. “The best guess I can make now would be to say he was killed somewhere between ten and twelve last night.”
Sanford glanced away while the ambulance men did their work, the sickness still showing in his dark eyes and his jaw tight. He stayed that way, staring sightlessly across the waterway until he heard the car leave. He knew Larkin was talking in low tones to some of his men and he waited for the inspector to come back.
“What was he doing here?” he said, still not turning and knowing now why Pierce had missed the eleven o’clock stop at the hotel the night before.
“We think he was dragged here,” Larkin said. “It probably happened nearer the seawall.” He pointed at the abandoned skiff. “This was used to cover the body. That’s why it took so long to find him … You slept aboard your boat last night?”
“That’s right.”
“And you heard nothing unusual?”
“I woke up twice. The first time I thought I heard someone talking and moving around but—” He let the sentence dangle and said: “He was killed before eleven.”
“Why do you say that?” Larkin was at once attentive.
“He didn’t stop at the hotel. I waited for him until nearly twenty after.”
Sanford had been looking at the other officers and now he recognized Williamson. “Do you know about my talk with Superintendent Kirby yesterday? About Williamson and me? … Cou
ld we talk about it on the boat?” he added when Larkin nodded.
Back on the Cay Queen Larkin settled himself on the port bunk and Sanford started to shave. He explained why he had dismissed Detective Constable Williamson the night before and how he expected to walk back here with Pierce. He said he had known the dead constable well and that he had an arrangement with him to keep an eye on the Cay Queen the nights that he, Sanford, was not aboard.
“Then you came back here alone somewhere around twenty minutes after eleven?” Larkin said.
“But not down the alleyway. I came around by the road and past the customs house. You can check with Willie, the watchman. Do you think Pierce caught some prowler trying to steal something?”
“No.” Larkin shook his head. “His truncheon was still in his belt. He either knew the killer or it was someone he would not ordinarily be suspicious of. We started to look for him when he missed his usual check with the patrol car at twelve twenty. He did not report at eleven twenty either but this sometimes happened so no one thought too much about it. We put two men on his route to see if we could locate him—”
“I must have heard them the first time I woke up.”
“Later we used the car but it was not until daylight—”
Again Larkin broke off the sentence in the middle and Sanford did not become aware of the ensuing silence until he had dried his face. He glanced round and, held by something in the intent and immobile attitude of the inspector, he frowned and stepped back to see what Larkin was staring at. At first he only knew that the other’s gaze was directed at the deck and now, moving a little more, he noticed a small dark and irregular blotch near the base of the centerboard trunk. At the same time Larkin came slowly off the bunk, went to one knee, and touched a finger to this stain that Sanford had never seen before.
“What is it?” he said, an odd tingling starting to work on his nerve ends.
Larkin examined the tip of his finger and probed again. Without answering, he came to his feet, stepped to the companionway and called to someone ashore. He was joined a minute later by another man, and when both re-entered the cabin Sanford saw the camera and equipment case the newcomer carried.
With Intent to Kill Page 9