When I paused, Mac said, “You are, of course, thinking of the Michaelis case. The lady’s name, as I recall, was Mrs. Louis Rosten. As you say, she was officially declared dead—after some pressure was exerted by her husband who, as you undoubtedly recall, had very good reasons for wanting her dead.”
“Yes,” I said, “like a busted face, a broken arm, and a million-odd dollars, now legally his, I suppose. Well, I guess Louis earned it the hard way. That black henchman of his wife’s really worked him over that last night. Nick, that was the big guy’s name. I don’t suppose she’s forgiven me for Nick or any of the rest of it.”
“Obviously not, or she wouldn’t be trying to have you killed—if your assumptions are correct, and Robin Rosten is actually the person you have to thank for it.”
“She’s the one,” I said definitely. I stood there for a moment, remembering a big schooner roaring through a stormy night with a dark-haired woman at the wheel and a black giant stalking me through the rigging… I shook my head quickly. “To hell with it,” I said. “It was just the old cobra reflex, sir. I cost Robin Rosten a great deal. She was a fine society lady living on a great estate; and on account of me—well, her own behavior had something to do with it; but she’d disregard that—she wound up a nameless fugitive crawling ashore on a dark coast with nothing but the wet clothes on her back. So she spotted me and took a crack at me, or had somebody else take a crack at me, so what? We got Pavel Minsk out of the deal; a guy we’d been wanting a long time. Actually, she did us a favor. To hell with Robin Orcutt Rosten, whatever she’s calling herself these days. Let her sit in the Florida Keys and wonder when I’m coming after her. Forever, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Eric—”
“Goddamn it, sir,” I said, “I can take care of myself. There are quite a few folks who’d like me dead, and you, too, sir; are we going to track down every one of them? Unless she’s threatening the safety of the country in some way, and I’ve heard nothing about it, for God’s sake leave the dame alone! I’ve seen enough dead females to hold me for a while; and if you send me after this one I’ll probably wind up having to arrange for her death in some devious, Machiavellian way—”
“I see,” he said, regarding me thoughtfully.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “I’m just another sentimental, chivalrous slob like Fred. The only difference is that I wait until they’re dead before I commune with my goddamn conscience.”
“I’m afraid,” Mac said slowly, “that you are going to have to disregard your goddamned conscience here, Eric.”
“Why?” I demanded. “It’s all over. It was a very simple Moscow deal to eliminate two agents they found embarrassing: one of ours, me, and one of theirs, Minsk. It’s finished.”
“There are three important personages still missing—”
“That’s got nothing to do with this,” I said. “We were wrong in thinking there was a connection—except insofar as a missing boat, and the general reputation of the area, gave the Rosten and her associates the notion of cooking up a disappearance of their own involving a poor little girl searching for her lost brother, just the right sucker bait for the notoriously susceptible M. Helm.”
“You feel quite certain that it was a coincidence, Eric? That Moscow has nothing to do with the other disappearances?”
“Well, one stimulated the other, as I just said,” I told him, “but I’d be willing to bet a large sum that the people who kidnaped Lacey Rockwell so another girl could take her place haven’t the slightest idea what happened to the two millionaire yachts…” I stopped. “Wait a minute! Young Rockwell wasn’t all that important, except to his sister. You said three important personages?”
Mac nodded. “Yes. We just got word that a private plane flying a wealthy French politician to Martinique has failed to arrive. We can’t be certain, yet, that it’s another Phipps and Marcus case; but there were no radio messages of distress, although the fuel would have come to an end several hours ago, so the plane must be down somewhere.” He paused, and went on: “All governments involved are seriously concerned, Eric. Washington has congratulated us on disposing of Pavel Minsk; but he is now a minor detail—”
“Sure, we’re all minor details when we’re dead,” I said sourly.
“The fact is that we—you—seem to have a finger on one feeble thread that might, just possibly, lead to an explanation of all these disappearances.”
“My hunch, and I’m a pretty good huncher, is that it won’t,” I said. “Okay, so somebody is apparently, as I said before, making a collection of seagoing—and airgoing—millionaires, but Lacey Rockwell wasn’t one of them, and neither was her brother; and the collector isn’t Robin Rosten.”
“Then Mrs. Rosten is in a very unfortunate situation,” Mac said smoothly, “because she will soon be questioned intensively by people acting on the assumption, not really as implausible as you make it sound, that she is connected with these disappearances. And the minute she is investigated, her true identity will come out, and no matter what else happens, she’ll be brought back to Maryland to face several old charges including, I believe, one that reads accessory to murder.” Mac paused significantly. “That is, of course, unless the interrogation and investigation are conducted by somebody more or less sympathetic to the lady’s cause.”
I drew a long breath, regarding him grimly. “I don’t believe it,” I said. “I hear it, but I don’t believe it, sir. You are actually trying to blackmail me into doing a job that’s really none of our concern by threatening a woman who tried her damndest to kill me?”
Mac said dryly, “One must work with what one has, Eric. And if what one has is a self-styled sentimental, chivalrous slob—”
12
The Florida Keys are an ecological disaster perpetrated, or at least initiated, by a gent named Flagler who had the crazy notion of running a railroad—Flagler’s Folly, it was undoubtedly termed at the time—a hundred miles out to sea, island-hopping his rails from the Florida mainland all the way out to Key West. His project, after actually functioning for a while, was wiped out in a hurricane, but the eager-beaver highway builders, always looking for places to spread their sticky asphalt, promptly followed his lead.
As a result, a string of lovely tropical islands has been transformed into what may be the longest motel-and-filling-station blight in the world, very similar to what you’ll find leading into, any big city, except that there’s water on both sides of it. At least that’s the view from the Overseas Highway, so-called: a long, rough, suicide strip interrupted by endless narrow bridges that serve, I suppose, the worthy purpose of helping to reduce overpopulation in the area to a slight, bloody degree.
Off the dismal, crowded highway, however, there are still quite a few pleasant green pockets of privacy more or less untouched by the greasy fingers of progress. (Actually, as I’d learned staying here with Laura earlier in the year, the best part of the Keys is getting off them in a boat—the farther you get from them, either on the deep Atlantic Ocean on one side or the shallow Gulf of Mexico on the other, the better they look. When they’re barely visible on the horizon, you can imagine what this oceanic paradise was like before the dredges and concrete mixers and paving machines moved in.)
The Faro Blanco Marine Resort, to give it its full name, was such a palmy waterfront enclave in a hostile, hamburger-and-hotdog environment. It was a big, parklike place on the Gulf of Mexico side of Key Vaca—the north side—with guest cottages scattered at random under the shady trees. Stopping outside the office, I got out of the rented car that had been waiting for me at the Marathon airstrip, where I’d been deposited by the small plane that had first dropped off Mac at the Miami airport to catch a flight north.
“Be careful, Eric,” he’d said as we parted. “On the record, that’s a fairly dangerous woman.”
“I hope so, sir,” I’d said. “I’m counting on it, in fact.”
Well, he was halfway to Washington by now, if he’d made his connection; and I was here,
about to renew my acquaintance with a lady who’d twice almost managed to have me killed. I went into the motel office to register.
“Mr. Helm?” said the pretty brunette girl behind the desk. “Oh, yes, here we are. Matthew L. Helm. You have cabin 26. Just follow the driveway around behind the office and you’ll find it on your right, about halfway down to the marina.”
“I was thinking of doing some fishing,” I said. “A friend of mine recommended a guide here named Robinson. A lady guide, he said.” I laughed. “Anyway, it’ll be a new experience, if she can take me out. How do I get in touch with her?”
The girl said, rather stiffly: “And why shouldn’t a woman be able to locate fish for you as well as a man, Mr. Helm?” Then she laughed quickly. “Ouch, I guess my Women’s Lib is showing. You’ll probably find Cap’n Hattie down on one of her boats, either the open twenty-two-foot Mako tied up near the dockmaster’s office—that’s the building like a lighthouse, out on the pier—or the forty-footer she lives on; the first boat in Charter Row, just across from our bar and restaurant. She’s got a sign up: the Queenfisher, Captain Harriet Robinson. You can’t miss it.”
I didn’t miss it; but first, after tossing my suitcase into my cabin and turning on the air conditioning because the place was stuffy, I drove down and checked on the dock-master’s office built like a lighthouse, out of curiosity. It was just that: a tall white tower out on the pier, with a revolving blue beacon on top. Inside was the usual marine-store collection of fishing tackle, charts, boat supplies, sunglasses, guidebooks, and sunburn lotions, plus a tanned gent in a yachting cap who pointed out Cap’n Hattie’s two boats to me.
He said he thought she was on board the cruiser, but I stopped to inspect the empty, smaller vessel first, since I had to walk right by it. It was a good-sized craft for an open boat, about as big as they come, aside from Navy workboats and such. Instead of placing the helmsman and windshield up forward, runabout fashion, it had the arrangement currently popular in boats built for fishing, with the controls located on a console amidships. There were two comfortable pedestal chairs behind the console. The rest was just wide-open cockpit with plenty of walk-around space for casting, or fighting a fish standing up. If you were the lazy type who preferred to battle sitting down, the starboard chair had a rod socket, or gimbal, for the purpose.
Across the stern, forming a bench seat ahead of the motors, were the built-in bait-well and fish-box. There were gaffs, outriggers, a radio antenna, an auxiliary gas tank for extended running, and neatly furled awnings fore and aft that could, presumably, be erected to protect the paying guests from hostile elements, wet or hot. There was also a slender Fiberglas pushpole about fourteen feet long held in clips along one gunwale—a common sight on small fishing boats plying the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico and Florida Bay, where the fish are often stalked silently by poling, but unusual on a craft this big.
On the transom, tilted out of the water, were two large Johnson outboard motors marked a hundred horsepower each. My amateurish estimate was that this amount of power, assuming for the moment that the markings were correct, would put the top speed close to forty knots, which is moving right along on the water, as I’d learned recently in the much smaller vessel of a very similar type which had been assigned to me for my previous job in these parts. I frowned down at the big, tilted motors and exposed propellers, wondering just how far the similarity extended…
I shook my head quickly. Guesswork was a waste of time when the answers to all questions were close at hand. I strolled along the waterfront to where the big charter fishing boats were docked. The first one in line was a shiny white craft with the customary outriggers and flying bridge. The deckhouse, under the flying bridge, had blinds drawn against the sun and seemed to be air-conditioned. The hatch in the cockpit was open for access to the twin engines; and a narrow figure in khakis was prone on the deck, reaching down to work on the machinery below.
I said, “Captain Robinson?”
There was a small space of silence; then a female voice I remembered said: “That’s me. Hand me that wrench, will you, Helm?”
I stepped down into the cockpit and, rather cautiously, placed the only wrench in sight into the slender, grimy hand that reached up for it.
“What’s the problem down there?” I asked.
“What do you care?” asked the familiar voice that brought back memories, not all unpleasant, of a distant time, and a place far north. “You didn’t know much about boats the last time we met. I don’t suppose you know a hell of a lot about motors, either… Now the screwdriver, please. Thanks. That’s got it.”
She backed herself up and out, and sat on her heels to look up at me. I saw that she hadn’t changed very much. She’d always been a slim, handsome, dark lady with a style all her own, and she still had it, even in well-worn khakis with grease on her hands and a smudge on her cheek.
“Alone?” she said.
“How many does it take?” I asked. “Particularly now that you haven’t got Nick to help you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why remind me of that, darling? You’d never have got Nick if you hadn’t been using a goddamn club—”
“And all he had was about fifty pounds extra weight, and you at the wheel doing tricks with that damned schooner to help him while we fought it out. Poor Nick. And poor Renee… Oh, yes, we traced her, finally, the kid you just sent after me, or had sent after me. Renee Schneider, alias Lacey Matilda Rockwell. Where’s the real Lacey Rockwell, Mrs. Rosten?”
“Don’t call me that,” she said, rising. She looked at me hard. “I don’t know how you do it, Helm,” she said. “You’re not very smart, not really. You’re not very strong; Nick could have broken you in two. You’re not very attractive. And you’re a lousy seaman, if it matters. And still, damn it, you always come out on top.” She shrugged. “Well, to hell with it. Let me wash my hands and—”
“Robin,” I said, as she turned toward the closed and shuttered deckhouse.
“What?”
“Don’t,” I said.
She frowned. “I don’t know what—”
“Whether you’re planning to take a handful of barbiturates, blow your brains out dramatically, or dive out a porthole, don’t do it,” I said. “And don’t try to blow my brains out, either. You’ll never make it. Renee tried, and she was a trained agent, and I’m still here. At blowing out brains, I’m a pro, and you’re just a lousy amateur. At least, before you do anything drastic, wait until you hear what I have to say, please.”
She studied me for another second or two. “My apologies,” she said quietly. “Maybe you are half-smart after all. Okay, darling, I’ll wait. But you’ll never put me in jail. You know that.”
“Nobody’s said a damned thing about jail except you,” I said. “Wash your hands and let me buy you a drink across the road and speak my piece. After that, if you want, you can slit your throat and welcome. I’ve got a nice sharp knife in my pocket. Be my guest.”
The place across the road—actually one of the paved driveways of the extensive resort complex—was a pleasant restaurant with a bar in the shadowy back corner. We picked a table nearby and had the drinks brought to us. She was a bourbon girl, as befitted a former native of Maryland.
“Okay,” she said. “Talk.”
“I’ve got a deal for you,” I said. I’d had time to do some thinking on the flight from Nassau; and I thought I’d figured out a way this wild-goose chase on which I’d been sent to keep Washington happy could be made to show a profit. It involved a lot of guessing and a lot of luck, but then, most operations do.
Captain Harriet Robinson, to give her her local name, sipped her whiskey thoughtfully. “What’s in it for me?” she asked.
“Forgetfulness,” I said. “A total lapse of memory on my part and that of my chief. Robin Rosten’s bones remain buried in the silt at the bottom of Chesapeake Bay. Captain Harriet Robinson carries on with her Florida fishing-boat business undisturbed. That is, of course, assuming s
he can control her homicidal impulses in the future.”
The tanned woman facing me drew a long breath. “It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now… How many years has it been, Matt? Too damned long to keep a good hate going. Okay, that’s what I get out of your deal. What do you get?”
“Five things,” I said. “Lacey Rockwell. Wellington Phipps and his daughter Loretta. You can throw in the wife, Amanda, if you’re feeling generous. Sir James Marcus. Baron Henri Paul Lavalle.”
There was a lengthy silence. Cap’n Hattie closed her eyes tightly and opened them again, drawing another lengthy breath. “I’m a fool,” she said. “Of course you have to tease the captured animals a bit. I should have expected it; but I really thought you were serious. I thought you really intended to give me a chance—”
“I do.” After a moment, I said, “You’re not denying that you do know something about Lacey Rockwell, are you?”
“I’m not denying or admitting anything right now, darling.”
I said, “We know the brother, Harlan Rockwell, spent a good deal of time right here at this marina getting his sloop, Star Trek, ready for a round-the-world jaunt. He wasn’t really flush, and from time to time he made a little money by helping out on the local charter fishing boats. He worked on your big boat several times when you had a party to take out and your regular mate had tied one on and couldn’t drag himself out of bed. Our information is that you became quite friendly with the boy, gave him advice and help on matters nautical, and maybe slept with him a few times, or maybe not. On this point, our intelligence is a little shaky.”
The Intimidators Page 10