by Basil Copper
“We’re working on it,” I said. “I wanted to check with you first. The English police can’t move without a warrant and there was no sense in alarming these birds. Looks like you can scrub Melissa off your records. Just a question of time before we break the map reference. But there’s a lot of difference between proof and suspicion. If we tip our hand too soon these characters will take off. And there’s nothing we can do about it.”
I could see Barney nodding to himself at the other end of the phone. I gave him a description of Lloyd, the man who owned The Gay Lady.
“That doesn’t ring a bell,” he said. “Could fit anybody. But the name means nothing. Have you checked on the yacht registration?” I repeated the question to Clay.
“We sent to Nassau,” he said. “We still haven’t had a reply.”
He sounded aggrieved, like I’d caught him out in a gross piece of inefficiency. I finished off the call by telling Barney that I’d check out with him in a couple of days. Clay nodded to indicate that he would lay it on again for midday. As I finished Ian Phillips came down a staircase on the other side of the room waving a piece of paper and smiling. He quietened down as Clay shot him a warning glance. I thanked Barney and rang off.
“I got this position pin-pointed,” Phillips broke in enthusiastically.
“And I got news for you,” I told Clay.
“Before we do anything else we’ll go back in the office,” he said primly. The sergeant turned back to his desk and the little group round the switchboard broke up with exaggerated haste and started bustling about the office.
Clay led the way back into his own room. When we had all settled ourselves the Colonel said, “I see you’ve had a profitable call, Michael.”
“The news is this,” I said. “Johnny Melissa, the real name of this Grosvenor character, was the treasurer of the Chicago branch of the Mafia. The word is that he left town with their life savings.”
The Colonel blew out his breath with a sudden, sharp explosive sound. Ian Phillips sat staring at me for a moment before he remembered himself and shut his mouth with a snap.
“Did they say any amount?” said Clay at last.
“The figure mentioned was somewhere around a quarter of a million dollars,” I said.
The Colonel blinked. “That’s about £85,000 in real money,” he explained to Phillips.
“A sizeable piece of change in any language,” I said. “Enough to get Grosvenor killed anyways.”
The Colonel turned back to me. “So his colleagues followed him out here and finished him off,” he said.
“But without finding where he’d stashed the money,” I said. “That ties in Otto Schultz and Scarpini. Mr. Lloyd and The Gay Lady could bear some looking into.”
“Probably an alias,” said Phillips.
“I daresay,” said Clay. “They obviously haven’t found out where the money is or they’d have made a move before now. Where was that map reference, by the way, Ian?”
“Place about ten miles up the coast, sir,” said Phillips. “Not very deep water but a mile or two off shore.”
“Which means that the money isn’t there,” I said. “He probably dropped a waterproof package over secured to an underwater marker.”
“The contents giving information on the whereabouts of the cash,” said the Colonel approvingly. “Most ingenious.”
“A safe deposit box, a bank or some hideout in the States,” I said. “I think we can leave that to Uncle Sam once we locate it.”
Phillips was frowning. “Question is, did Melissa have an accomplice or is he a navigation expert? I mean, whoever plotted this position must have been pretty good or he’d never find what he’d dropped overboard.”
“Believe it or not, Melissa served for a period in the U.S. Navy during the war,” I said. “He was a navigation officer aboard a battleship until they caught him misappropriating the ship’s funds. Even then there was a considerable sum involved. He was dismissed the service and sent to gaol for six months.”
Clay rubbed his hands. “It all seems pretty clear-cut,” he said. “The only trouble is we haven’t a scrap of proof against these people on the yacht. That’s where you come in, Michael.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” I said.
Phillips grinned and Clay permitted himself a shadow of a smile.
“What I can’t see, sir, is why we don’t just sort these people out,” said Phillips. “At the moment we’re sitting here and they’re sitting out there in a sort of stalemate.”
“I’ve already partly answered that,” Clay told him. “If we go off half-cock on this thing there’s nothing to prevent The Gay Lady sailing once we lift the ban. And we can’t hold all these people up more than another day or two. We’ve still got about fifty boats to check.”
“I think I’ll have to pay an informal call before then,” I said.
“We don’t know that, officially,” Clay said, intently studying the ceiling of the office.
“Check,” I said. “Which is why I shall leave your police authorisation with you for the time being.”
I took the document out of my wallet and handed it to Phillips; he passed it over on to Clay’s blotter.
“Very diplomatic, Michael,” the Colonel went on. “We can’t afford to get mixed up in any unofficial proceedings. But we’ll give you every help in an undercover way.” “I thought I might take a trip some time tonight,” I said. “We could go over it later this afternoon if you’ve got time.” Clay nodded and got to his feet as I stood up. “I can’t persuade you to stay to lunch, I suppose?” “Thanks, but I’d better get back to the Catamaran,” I said. “I’ve been neglecting Stella the last day or two.” “I’m free, sir,” said Phillips brightly.
“You won’t have time,” Clay told him crisply, “with all the paper work I’m just going to give you.”
Phillips chuckled as I went on out. As I went through the door Clay called, “Give my regards to the young lady.” “Right. Back about four,” I said. Outside, I put on some dark glasses I’d bought earlier in the week. They made me look like something out of a B gangster movie, but they were necessary; driving is hard on the eyes in these parts. I got into the Caddy and tooled gently along the jetty, past the painted backdrop of the harbour with its sea-shimmer and soon left the tarmac roads behind. Once outside Stanley Bay the country became rugged and primitive, with stone outcrops, green scrub, palms and thick vegetation which came down close on to the dusty road.
I had gone about two miles when I came on a big blue sedan parked at the side of the road; a girl was bending over the open bonnet and one of the car doors was open. I went by in a swirl of dust before I realised that she hadn’t parked but was in trouble. I started reversing and she looked up and waved as I got closer. There was something familiar about her and then I recognised Diane Morris.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Mr. Mandrake
1
SHE WAS wearing a cream linen suit and there was a warm flush to her face. She bent over the bonnet of the car with an exasperated expression and then straightened up as she heard the Caddy coming back. I saw a thin smear of oil on her forehead; she was already patting her hair into place. I stopped the motor, set the handbrake and got out of the driving seat.
“Having trouble?” I said.
She smiled. “Sort of.”
I walked across the few yards that separated us.
“Perhaps I can help.”
“Not unless you make a better score than you done so far,” said a third voice. A big, beefy figure materialised on the other side of the sedan; there was a smaller figure beside him. It was Otto, the bedroom midget and his side-kick. He didn’t have his gun out. He didn’t have to.
“That’s the last time I stop for a lady,” I said to no-one in particular.
Diane Morris flushed. She bit her lip, looked as if she was about to say something, then slammed the bonnet shut viciously and busied herself fixing her face in a wing mirror.
“That
’s the truth, snooper,” said Scarpini seriously. “’Cept she ain’t no lady.”
“What can I do for you boys?” I said.
“We’d like to take a little trip together,” said the one Diane Morris had called Otto.
“Supposing I don’t want to go?” I said.
Otto shrugged. “Won’t make no difference,” he said simply. Very likely. He had a god point there.
“What’s this all about?” I asked.
“Mr. Mandrake wants to see you,” Otto said.
“The name means nothing to me,” I said.
Scarpini sniggered.
“He knows all about you,” he said to Diane Morris’ back, biting off his words with care, like they cost him a dime a time. Otto walked around the car and opened the rear door on my side.
“It’s a nice afternoon for exercise,” he observed. “Coming?”
“Why not,” I said. “It’s too hot for gymnastics and I got my best suit on.”
He laughed. Scarpini looked disappointed and took his hand out of his pocket. He went around to the driving seat of my Caddy and stood waiting. I threw him the keys. He caught them with an expert back flip of his hand, got in the car, started up the engine and turned her around. He came on back towards us and sat with the engine idling.
Diane Morris got in the driving seat of the blue sedan; I got in back and the big fellow got in beside me. I noted that the door catch of the nearside rear door was in the locked position. Not that it would have made any difference. Otto had his hand in his pocket and his eyes didn’t miss a trick. Diane started up the engine, turned the big car in a perfect three-point movement and softly idled down the track in front of Scarpini, who had stayed behind in the Caddy. We drove back down the road towards Stanley Bay.
I kept silent and the big fellow didn’t look in a talkative mood; nothing was alive in his face except his eyes and they followed my slightest movement.
“Mind if I smoke?” I asked.
He nodded. “But take it easy. Make it real slow.”
I reached carefully for a pack in my pocket. I put the cigarette between my lips. He already had a match lit. He held it to the tip of the cigarette. The flame burned rocksteady.
“Thanks,” I said and blew it out. He put the burned-out match in the ashtray on the back of the front seat. All the while his eyes never left my face.
I could see Diane reflected in the big visor mirror set in the centre of the windshield. She kept her face down towards the road but she looked worried. Occasionally she bit her lip. We all three acted like it was a funeral. That was another sobering thought. We went through the outskirts of Stanley Bay. She drove slowly, never more than twenty miles an hour; there wasn’t much percentage, with these sort of roads, but even when she hit tarmac she didn’t increase the speed.
The big sedan went right through the centre of town. When the Police Office started coming up I looked in the mirror and saw Scarpini had stopped my car farther back along the jetty. He slotted it in near the Harbour Master’s office. He got out quickly, glanced around and then walked off. We went on past the Police H.Q. and just when I thought we were about to take a nose-dive off the end of the jetty, she throttled down to a crawl and turned the car at right angles and I saw something I hadn’t noticed before.
There was a long stone-flagged walk which continued the harbour; it looked like the older part of Stanley Bay. There was hardly room for two cars to pass but the whole purpose of the manoeuvre was the high screen of buttonwood, sapodillo and mastic trees which fringed this part of the quay. These, with the palmettos at the back effectively hid our arrival from Colonel Clay and the other occupants of the Stanley Bay Police Office.
Diane tooled the sedan to a gentle stop right up against a high stone wall; she pulled in so close we had to get out on the opposite side of the car.
“No tricks, mind,” Otto breathed at me softly as he backed out his door. He stood facing me, his broad body seeming to block out most of the panorama of the harbour. A moment later Scarpini re-joined us from the other end of the jetty; he must have cut across a back way to avoid the Police Office. We didn’t have long to wait. We had hardly got out of the car before the putt-putt of an outboard motor reached us and a large dinghy came in from the big yacht out in mid-harbour.
It put in smartly at the bottom of the ladder and Scarpini caught the painter which was thrown up to him by the helmsman; he was the only man in the boat. A small, good-humoured looking Chinaman with gap teeth. He was dressed in a white sweat shirt that looked like someone had been wiping his boots on it and his jeans had seen better days too. I got down the ladder and into the stern of the boat. Scarpini, the girl and Otto followed. The Chinaman gave me an ear-splitting grin. “Welcome to Gay Lady, mistah,” he said in a high-pitched voice and immediately went off into a shrill, whinnying laugh.
“You’d be a natural for Saturday-night TV programmes,” I told him. He tittered again, then revved up the motor as he put the tiller over; Otto shoved off at the stem and we headed out from the jetty back to the yacht.
Diane Morris sat down in the bow on a bench near Scarpini who sat and watched me; Otto came down into the stem and sat across from me and watched both me and the steersman.
“This here’s Charley Fong,” he said, jerking his head at the Chinese, who broke out one of his grins again.
“He does the cooking aboard, such as it is.”
He spat reflectively overside; I didn’t know whether the gesture was a comment on the cooking or not, but it didn’t seem to bother Mr. Fong any. I thought his lips were going to meet round the back of his neck.
We rounded the yacht a short while afterwards; there was a small chop running here and we shipped a spoonful or two of water over the bow as the little man ran the boat alongside The Gay Lady. She was a bigger vessel than I had thought and her sheer towered a long way above us. Charley Fong throttled the motor back and it died to a throaty chuckle, re-echoed by the slap of the exhaust on the water as he tooled the boat in to a teak and brass ladder, a swell affair, that led up to the deck of the yacht.
Scarpini tied up the bow of the boat to the ladder and we all got off and went up on deck; Scarpini led, Diane Morris followed, then I went up and Otto and the Chinaman fetched up the rear.
Up here there was a welcome breeze to dilute the heat of the sun; I could see the whole curve of the harbour and Stanley Bay, particularly the Union Jack fluttering from the flagpole outside the Police Office. I wondered if Clay knew I was aboard; I could imagine the scene if Phillips was busy with his binoculars.
I stepped down off the gangway on to the wide planking of the deck; the yacht was beautifully kept. The timbers were scrubbed white, the teak rail shone with fresh varnish; even the lanyard lashing on the canvas covers of the ship’s boats was pipe-clayed. I could smell money; it spoke in the gleaming brass fittings, in the stainless steel rigging and above all the wheelhouse.
Through the broad, glassed windows I could see a radar set and all the latest navigational gear; somewhere a generator whined and there was a faint compound in the air that you only get aboard such a vessel—a subtle blend of salt, diesel oil and champagne. Scarpini led the way amidships and we went down a wide companionway, ducking under a canvas cover. Here the deck fittings were re-echoed in teak and mahogany; the overhead deck lights winked on brass and chrome. The corridor carpet was a good inch thick.
We trod noiselessly on as we walked for about a block and a half until Scarpini brought up against a pair of big sliding doors. They went back almost noiselessly, in perfectly oiled and carpentered runners. He waved us through. We were in a large saloon that must have occupied most of the upper midships of the yacht. It was about fifty feet long and twenty wide. Scarlet carpeting made a vivid lawn of the deck under our feet; leather divans of a dull mushroom colour spread along under the wide panoramic windows which surrounded us on three sides.
A vivid wedge of blue sky shone down through deckhead hatches in the middle of the mahogany
panelled ceiling; a crystal chandelier depended from a big beam which ran transversely across the centre of the saloon. It was braced and protected by disguised cables running into the deck-head, which repeated the motif of the chandelier itself.
Charley Fong had disappeared somewhere but Scarpini was still with us; he went and sat on one of the leather divans and played with a fruit knife he picked up off one of the tables as we went by. There was a colossal bar let into one side of the room; everything in it was fiddled and strutted to prevent bottles and glasses from flying about in heavy weather.
At the far end of the saloon, at the bow end of the boat where the big windows made a kind of windscreen backed by distant views of the harbour, was an alcove. It was surrounded on three sides by the saloon windows and fringed by three enormous divans; these were of black leather. They surrounded a large and highly polished mahogany table which was secured to the deck by heavy brass fittings at the foot.
Fans moved silently in fixed arcs from their positions on the bulkhead every eight feet or so. They only succeeded in re-distributing the torpid air. The coolness came from the breeze which filtered in from the half-opened panoramic windows.
One of the features of the saloon was the set of heavy duty glass fish tanks set about the room. There were four in all. Two in the bulkheads, one each side of the saloon. These were mainly for effect. They had fluorescent lighting inside and I had to admit they made an attractive Jules Verne study from a seated position. It would be even better at night, giving the viewer the impression he was in a submarine.
There were two other tanks set down the saloon, right about where the centre of stability would have been. These were of thicker glass than the others. They were taller too, and the water came only about three quarters of the way up their sides. The tops were closed over with specially designed vents which would admit air but would prevent water from slopping out of them when the ship was under way in rough weather.