by Unknown
Andopolis was a man who did his thinking with the help of his face, and there was more disgust than anything else on his features.
“You tryin’ to cut in?” he snarled.
“Not trying.”
“Then what—”
“Have.”
The sun was comfortable, but mosquitoes were coming out of the swamp around the road to investigate.
“Yeah,” Andopolis said. “I guess you have, maybe.”
Sail put his shirt on, favoring his chest. “We’ve got to watch the insurance outfit. They paid off on Missus Bill’s stuff. Over a hundred thousand. They’ll have wires out.”
Andopolis got up and held out his hands for the belt to be taken off, and Sail took it off. Andopolis said, “I thought of the insurance when I got Cap Abel. We used to run rum. The Macedonian tramp!”
“There’s shoal-water diving stuff aboard my bugeye,” Sail said.
“You don’t get me in no water! Shark, barracuda, moray, sting rays. Hell of a place. If I hadn’t been afraid, I’d have done the diving myself. I thought of that, believe me.”
“That’s my worry. It’s not too bad, once you get a system.” Sail felt his chest. “I guess maybe these ribs will knit in a while.”
Andopolis looked much better, almost as if he had forgotten his tooth. “It’s your neck. Okay if you say so.”
“Then let’s get going.”
Andopolis was feeling his tooth when he got into the car. Sail had driven no more than half a mile when both front tires let go their air. The car was in the canal beside the road before anything could be done about it.
The car broke its windows going down the canal bank. The canal must have been six feet deep, and its tea-colored water filled the machine at once. Sail had both arms over his middle where the steering wheel had hit. So much air had been knocked out of him, and his middle hurt so, that he had to take something into his lungs, and there was only water. He began to drown.
The water seemed to be rushing around inside the car, although there was room for no more to come in. Sail couldn’t find the door handles. The broken windows he did find were too small to crawl out of, but after exploring three, he got desperate and tried a small one. There was not enough hole. He pushed and worked around with the jagged glass, his head out of the car, the rest of him inside, until strange feelings of something running out of his neck made him know he was cutting his throat.
He pulled his head in, and pummeled the car roof with blows that did not have strength enough to knock him away from what he was hitting. It came to his mind to try the jagged glass again as being better than drowning, but he couldn’t find it, and clawed and felt with growing madness until he began to get fistfuls of air. He sank twice before he clutched a weed on shore, after which the spasms he was having kept him at first from hearing the shots.
Yells were mixed in with the shot sounds. Andopolis was on the canal bank, running madly. Blick and his sister were on the same bank, running after Andopolis, shooting at him, and having, for such short range, bad luck. They were shooting at Andopolis’ legs. All three ran out of sight. Sound alone told Sail when they winged Andopolis and grabbed him.
Sail had some of the water out of his lungs. He swam to a clump of brush which hung down into the water, got under it, and managed to get his coughing stopped by the time Blick and Nola came up hauling Andopolis. Andopolis sobbed at the top of his voice.
“Shoot his other leg off if he acts up, Nola,” Blick yelled. “I’ll get our little fat bud.”
Sail wanted to cough until it was almost worth getting shot just to do so. Red from his neck was spreading through the water under the brush.
“He must be a submarine,” Blick said. He got a stick and poked around. “Hell, Nola, this water is eight feet deep anyhow.”
Andopolis babbled something in Greek.
Blick screamed, “Shut up, or we’ll put bullets into you like we put ’em into your car tires!”
Andopolis went on babbling.
“His leg is pretty bad, Blick,” Nola said.
“Hell, let ’im bleed.”
Air kept coming up from the submerged car. Sail tried to keep his mind off wanting to cough. It seemed that Blick was going to stand for hours on the bank with his bright little pistol.
“He musta drowned,” Blick said. “Get that other leg to workin’, Andopolis. You didn’t know we been on your trail all night and all mornin’, did ya? We didn’t lose it when this Sail got you, either.”
Andopolis whimpered as they hazed him away. Car sound departed.
Captain Chris, wide-eyed and hearty and with no sign of a chill, exclaimed, “Well, well, we began to think something had happened to you.”
Sail looked at him with eyes that appeared drained, then stumbled the other two steps down the companion into the main cabin of Sail and let himself down on the starboard seat. Pads of cotton under gauze made Sail’s neck and wrists three times normal thickness. Tape stuck to his face in four places, and iodine had run out from under one of the pieces and dried.
Young bony Joey looked Sail over and his big grin took the warp out of the corner of his mouth.
“Tsk, tsk,” he said cheerfully. “Somebody beat me to it.”
Sail gave them a look of bile. “This is a private boat, in case you forgot.”
“He’s mussed up and now he’s tough!” Joey said. “Swell!”
“Now, now, let’s keep things on an amiable footing,” Captain Chris murmured.
Sail said, “Drag it!”
Joey popped his palms together, aimed a finger at Sail. “You got told about Lewis finding human blood in that fish mess on the dock last night. But try to alibi the rest. There was wet tracks in this boat. That was all right, maybe, only some of the tracks were salt water and the water spilled on the galley floor was fresh. We got the harbor squad diver down this morning. He found a box on the bottom below this boat with live fish in it. He found a bathing suit with a sinker tied to it. And this morning, a yachtsman beached his dink on the little island by Pier One and found a dead Greek. We sat down with all that and done our arithmetic, and here we are.”
Sail’s face began changing from red and tan to cream and tan, although the bandages took away some of the effect.
Captain Chris said, “Joey, you’d make a lousy gambler, on account of you show your cards.”
Sail said in a low voice, “You’re gonna get your snouts busted if you keep this up!”
Captain Chris looked unconvincingly injured. “I didn’t think we’d have any trouble with you, Mister Sail. I hoped we wouldn’t. You acted like a gentleman last night.”
Sail had been seated. He got up, bending over first to get the center of gravity right. He pointed a thumb at the companion. “Don’t fall overboard on your way out.”
“I bet he thinks we’re leaving!” Joey jeered.
A string of red crawled out from under one of the bandages on Sail’s neck. His face was more cream than any other color. He reached behind himself into the tackle locker and got a gaff hook, a four-foot haft of varnished oak with a bright tempered-steel hook with a needle point. He showed Joey the hook and his front teeth.
He said violently, “I’ve got a six-aspirin headache and things to go with it! I feel too lousy to shy at cops. You two public servants get the hell out before I go fishing for kidneys.”
Joey yelled happily, “Damn me, he’s resisting arrest and threatening an officer!”
Sail said, “Arrest?”
“I forgot to tell you.” Joey grinned. “We’re going to—”
Sail asked Captain Chris, “Is this on the level?”
“I regret that it is,” Captain Chris said. “After all, evidence is evidence, and while Miami is noted for her hospitality, we do draw lines, and when our visitors go so far as to use knives on—”
“I’m gonna hate to break your heart, you windbag!” Sail said angrily.
He took short steps, and not very fast ones, into the galley, and
took the rearmost can of beer out of the icebox. He cut off the top instead of using the patent opener. When the beer had filled the sink with suds, he got a glass tube which had been waxed inside the can. He held out the two sheets of paper which the tube contained.
Joey raked his eyes over the print and penned signatures, then spelled them out, lips moving.
“This don’t make a damn bit of difference!”
Captain Chris complained, “My glasses fell off yesterday during one of them infernal chills. What does it say, Joey?”
“He’s a private dick assigned to locate some stuff that sank on a yacht. The insurance people hired him.”
Captain Chris buttoned his coat, pulled it down over his hips, set his cap by patting the top of it.
“I’m afraid this makes it different, Joey.”
Joey snorted. “I say it don’t.”
Captain Chris walked to the companion. “Beauty before age, Joey.”
“Listen, if you think—”
“Out, Joey.”
“Mister Homicide, any day—”
“Out!” Captain Chris roared. “You’re as big a goddamn fool as your mother.”
Joey licked his lips while he kept a malevolent eye on Sail, then took a step forward, but changed his mind and climbed the companion steps. When he was outside, he complained, “Paw, you and your ideas give me an ache.”
Captain Chris sighed wearily while he looked at Sail. “He’s my son, the spoiled whelp.” He hesitated. “You wouldn’t want to cooperate?”
“I wouldn’t.”
“If you get yourself in a sling, it’d be better if you had a reason for refusing to help the police.”
Sail said, “All I get out of this is a commission for recovering the stuff. Right now, I need that money like hell.”
“You’d still get it if we helped each other.”
“Maybe. But I’ve cooperated before.”
Captain Chris shrugged, climbed three of the companion’s five steps, and stopped. “This malaria is sure something. I could sing like a lark today, only I keep thinking about the chills due tomorrow. Did you say a special quinine went in that whiskey?”
“Bullards. It’s English.”
“Thanks.” Captain Chris climbed the rest of the way out.
When the two policemen reached the dock, Sail came slowly on deck and handed Captain Chris a bottle. “You can’t buy Bullards here.”
“Say, I appreciate this!”
“If my day’s run of luck keeps on the way it has, you’ll probably find your knife man in a canal somewhere,” Sail said slowly.
“I’ll look,” Captain Chris promised.
The two cops went away with Joey kicking his feet down hard on the dock boards.
There was a rip in the nervous old man’s canvas apron, and he mixed his words with waves of a pipe off which most of the stem had been bitten. He waved the pipe and said, “My, mister, you must’ve had a car accident.”
Sail, holding to the counter, said, “What about the charts?”
“Yeah, there’s one other place sells the government charts besides us. Hopkins Carter. But if you’re going down in the keys, we got everything you need here. If you go on the inside, you’ll want thirty-two-sixty and sixty-one. They’re the strip charts. But if you take Hawk Channel, you’ll need harbor chart five-eighty-three, and charts twelve-forty-nine, fifty and fifty-one. Here, I’ll show—”
Sail squinted his eyes, swallowed and said, “I don’t want to buy a chart. I want you to slip out and telephone me if either of certain two persons comes in here and asks for chart twelve-fifty, the one which has lower Matecumbe.”
“Huh?”
Sail said patiently, “It’s simple. You just tell the party you got to get the chart, and go telephone me, then stall around three or four minutes before you deliver the chart, giving me time to get over here and pick up their trail.”
The nervous old man put his pipe in his mouth and immediately took it out.
“What kind of shenanigans is this?”
Sail showed him a license to operate in Florida.
“One of them private detectives, huh?” the old man said, impressed.
Sail put a ten-dollar bill on the counter.
“That one’s got twins. How about it?”
“Mister, if you’ll just describe your parties. That’s all!”
Sail made a word picture of Blick and Nola, putting the salient points down on a piece of paper. He added a telephone number.
“The phone’s a booth in a cigar store on the corner. I’ll be there. How far is this Hopkins Carter?”
“Two blocks.”
“I’ll probably be there for the next ten minutes.”
Sail, walking off, was not as pale as he had been on the boat. He had put on a serge suit more black than blue and a new black polo. When he was standing in front of the elevator, taking a pull at a flat amber bottle which had a crown and a figure 5 on the label, the old man yelled.
“Hey, mister!”
Sail lowered the bottle, started coughing, and called between coughs, “Now”—cough—“what?”
“Lemme look at this again and see if you said anything about the way he talked.”
Sail moved back to where he could see the old man peering at the paper which held the descriptions. The old man took his pipe out of his teeth.
“Mister, what does that feller talk like?”
“Well, about like the rest of these crackers. No, wait. He’ll call you bud two or three times.”
The old man pointed his pipe at the floor. “I already sold that man a twelve-fifty. ’Bout half hour ago.”
Sail pumped air out of his lungs in a short laugh which had no sound except the sound made by the air passing his teeth and nostrils. He said, “That’s swell. They would probably want a late chart for their X-marks-the-spot. And so they’ve got it, and they’re off to the wars, and me, I’m out ten percent on better than a hundred thousand.”
He had taken two slow steps toward the elevator when the old man said, “The chart was delivered.”
Sail came around. “Eh?”
“He ordered it over the telephone. We delivered. I got the address somewhere.” He thumbed an order book. “Whileaway. A houseboat on the river below the Twelfth Street causeway.”
Sail put a ten on the counter. “The brother.”
He was a fat man trying to hide a big face behind two hands, a match and a cigar. He said, “Oof!” and his dropping hands dragged cigar ashes down his vest when Sail prodded him in the upper belly with a fingertip.
Sail said, “I just didn’t want you to think you were getting away with it.”
The fat man turned his cigar down at an injured angle. “With what?”
“Whatever you call what you’ve been doing.”
“There must be some mistake, brother.”
“There’s been several. It’ll be another if you keep on trying to tail me.”
“Me, tailing you! Why should I do that?”
“Because you’re a cop. You’ve got it all over you. And probably because Captain Chris ordered me trailed.”
The plainclothesman sent his cigar between two pedestrians, across the sidewalk and into the gutter. “Mind telling me what you can do about it?”
Sail had started away. He came back, pounding his heels. “What was that?”
“I’ve heard all about you, small-fat-and-tough. You’re due to learn that with the Miami Police Department, you can’t horse—”
Sail put his hand on the fat man’s face. The fingers were spread, and against the hand’s two longest fingers, the fat man’s eyeballs felt wet. Sail shoved out and up a little. The cop did not yell or curse. He swung a vicious uppercut. He kicked with his right foot, then his left. The kicks would have lifted a hound dog over a roof. He held his eyes. The third kick upset a stack of gallon cans of paint.
Sail got out of there. He changed cabs four times as rapidly as one cab could find another.
Whi
leaway was built for rivers, and not very wide rivers. She was a hooker that couldn’t take a sea. A houseboat about sixty feet waterline, she had three decks that put her up like a skyscraper. She should never have been built. She was white, or had been.
Scattered onshore near the houseboat was a gravel pile, two trucks with nobody near them, a shed, junk left by the hurricane, a trailer with both tires flat, windows broken, and two rowboats in as bad shape as the trailer. Sail was behind most of them at one time or another on his way to the riverbank. There was a concrete seawall. Between Sail and the houseboat, two gigs, a yawl, a cruiser and another houseboat were tied to dolphins along the concrete river bulkhead. Nobody seemed to be on any of the boats.
Sail wore dark blue silk underwear shorts. He hid everything else under the hurricane junk. The water had a little more smell and floating things than in the harbor. He kept behind the moored boats after he got over the seawall, and let the tide carry him. He was just coming under the Whileaway bow when one of the square window ports opened almost overhead.
Sail sank. He thought somebody was going to shoot or use a harpoon.
Something large and heavy fell into the water and sank, colliding with him, pushing him out of the way and going on sinking. He had enough contact with it to tell the first part of it was a navy-type anchor. He swam down after it. The river had two fathoms here, and he found the anchor and what was tied to it. The tide stretched his legs out behind as he clung to what he had found.
Whoever had tied the knots was a sailor, and sailor knots, while they hold, are made to be easily untied. Sail got them loose.
It would have been better to swim under the houseboat and come up on the other side, away from the port from which the anchor and Nola had been thrown, but Sail didn’t feel equal to anything but straight up. His air capacity was low because of his near drowning earlier in the day.