Murderers' Row

by Donald Hamilton

  Abruptly, the schooner turned left for what seemed an hour, leaning over hard; then it came upright. The sound of flapping canvas reached us from above. I looked at Teddy.

  “We’ve rounded up into the wind,” she said. Her voice was strained. “They must be—taking somebody on board.”

  Something thumped against the side of the ship. We heard footsteps overhead. Suddenly Robin Rosten’s voice was speaking in the passageway.

  “Straight ahead. Not in there, that’s the head— bathroom to you. It’s the cabin to starboard. No, no, on your right, you lubber. Throw him in and let’s get topside and give Nick a hand before we drift onto the shoals.”

  The man who opened the door had a seamed, whiskery face and a meaty nose. Remove the whiskers, and it was a face I’d seen in the files, but I couldn’t recall the name that went with it. Well, I’d figured he’d be somebody reasonably familiar. Robin had got my code name from the conversation I’d had with Jean; but the name Matthew Helm hadn’t been mentioned in that hotel room. She had to have got that from somebody who knew the two names went together.

  He’d seen my face somewhere, too, and he was glad to see it again. “Mister Helm,” he said. “How nice to make your acquaintance. I have been looking forward to it. You are not as pretty as the lady we were expecting, the one with such a deplorable fondness for liquor, but I’m sure my superiors will not complain...”

  “Stow it, Loeffler,” Robin said, behind him. “Never mind the corny dialogue. Just shove in the doctor and secure the door.”

  “Secure? Ah, you mean fasten—”

  The man called Loeffler—which wasn’t the name we had him filed under—got a grip on the sagging figure supported between him and Robin, and propelled him forward for me to catch. The door closed, and I was standing there with Dr. Norman Michaelis in my arms, the man I’d come to silence. I remembered Mac’s words clearly: How to achieve this result is left entirely to the discretion of the agent on the spot. Do you understand?

  I’d understood perfectly then, and I understood just as well now. It was a moment of triumph, in a way. I’d broken discipline and disobeyed orders to get here. I’d played gangster and let myself be drugged and imprisoned. I might never get out alive, but at least my job was finished. Jean’s job was finished. I was here, and so was the subject I’d come to find. The rest, for a man of my training, was just a technical detail.

  21

  “Is he—going to be all right?”

  That was Teddy, behind me, trying to get a look at her parent as I put him into the bunk beside Louis. It was a damn fool question. Probably none of us were going to be all right. Certainly Dr. Norman Michaelis wasn’t, not if I could help it.

  He looked about as you’d expect a man to look after being imprisoned for a lengthy interval in a ruined cellar. He seemed to be wearing slacks, a sport shirt, and rubber-soled shoes. I remembered that he’d vanished while out sailing. The mechanics of it had never been explained to me, and didn’t really matter. I wasn’t about to wake him up to ask him.

  The clothes were filthy, his hair was long and tangled, and he had a beard like a hermit. He looked half-starved to boot. He was out cold.

  “What’s the matter with him?” Teddy wailed. “Why doesn’t he wake up?”

  I said, “They’ve got him under drugs. It’s the lazy man’s way of keeping a prisoner quiet. Besides, the right drugs used long enough affect the will to resist. I guess they were softening him up for the interrogation experts.”

  My voice sounded dry and pedantic and far away. It would have been such an easy job if I’d been alone with him; it would have been over already. He was drugged, weakened by exposure and hunger; it would have been no more trouble than blowing out a candle.

  His lips moved. “AUDAP? I don’t know anything about—no, no, I won’t tell—you can’t make me tell!”

  He was wrong. They could make him tell. They could make almost any man tell almost anything—unless the man were dead. I thought of the odd-looking nuclear submarines with their incredible loads of destruction upon which, Mac had been told by the Navy, depended the safety of the nation and the peace of the world. Even if the picture was a little exaggerated—I’d never yet met a military man who was entirely objective about the importance of his own service—the decision wasn’t mine to make. I had my orders.

  I stuck my elbow into the kid crowding against me. “Get over by the porthole, Teddy. Tell me if you can see anything. Brief me.”

  “But—”

  “Snap into it. I’ll look after him.” I’d look after him, all right.

  She moved away reluctantly. I was aware of her leaning forward to wipe at the glass—and there was my chance. The little death pill was in my hand. I hated to part with it, I might need it myself pretty soon, but it was the best way. All I had to do was slip it into his mouth and make him swallow. She’d never know. He’d simply have died in his drugged sleep, as far as she was concerned.

  Her voice hit me like a sonic boom. “We’ve turned back north; we’ve got the island off the starboard. We’re close-hauled, beating out of Mendenhall Bay. We’ll have to tack as soon as we’re clear of the island to make open water. I hope that woman’s got her bearings straight. We can’t have much room to play around in here, in a boat this size.”

  My voice still came from far away. “Why would Mrs. Rosten come clear in here, in the first place, instead of picking them up on the seaward side of the island, where we had plenty of room and couldn’t be seen from shore?”

  “Don’t be silly, she had to get in the lee to bring them aboard. They’d never have been able to get a rubber boat out to us seaward, not against this wind. There must be a mile of breakers on that side tonight.” Teddy leaned forward. “We’re still holding on; we’ve got a ways to go yet before we can come about and clear the island on the port tack...”

  I looked at the man on the bunk. Stop stalling, you spineless jerk! I told myself. I leaned forward and made a show of drawing back the eyelid to look at the eye, like a TV doctor. I picked up the wrist to check the pulse. I dropped the wrist and leaned forward again to put my hand to his mouth. Teddy spoke behind me.

  “What are you doing, Matt? What are you giving him?”

  I didn’t even jump. I guess I’d known it wouldn’t work out right. Maybe I hadn’t even wanted it to work out right. But it was all of a pattern, I thought grimly: the woman who’d died when she wasn’t supposed to and the man who was alive five minutes after he should have been dead. I should, of course, have done it the instant they threw him into my arms, as I’d planned, and to hell with who saw what. I might even have got away with it, then.

  I turned my head slowly. “Benzedrine,” I said. “To bring him around.”

  She was frowning at me. I don’t put much stock in feminine intuition; she’d have been a real dope if she hadn’t sensed something, after the fumble-witted stalling I’d done.

  “Let me see it,” she said in an odd little voice, and I showed it to her on the palm of my hand. She asked, “How do you happen to have—”

  “Hell, we always carry bennies to keep us awake on a tough job.”

  “But are you sure that’s the right thing to give him?”

  Her voice had an absent sound, as if she wasn’t really interested in the question she was asking. She was still frowning, not at the pill, but at me. Her blue eyes were narrow and wondering. She knew that something was wrong, terribly wrong, but the idea that had come into her mind was too far-out to put into words... She did it without a hint of warning. She just grabbed the pill out of my hand and started bringing it to her mouth; and I swung without thinking, slapping it away before it reached her lips. I guess I’d have done the same thing even if I’d had time to think.

  The pill rolled away across the teak floor, and then came back towards us as the Freya heeled over. It reminded me, somehow, of one of the pearls from Jean’s broken necklace. I got up and picked it up. I went into the john, dropped it into the toilet, and p
umped it out of sight. When I came back, she was still standing stiffly by the bed.

  “No!” she said breathlessly. “Stay away! Don’t come near him!”

  She was staring at me as if she had never seen me before. Perhaps she hadn’t. “You—were going to kill him!” she whispered.

  I laughed. “You’ve got murder on the brain, small stuff. I told you, it was a benny.”

  “Then why didn’t you let me swallow it?”

  “You’re crazy enough without being hopped up on benzedrine. Now cut out the melodramatics, Teddy, and—”

  “That’s why you wanted us to wait until he came aboard, so you could kill him. So he couldn’t tell anybody—and I thought you were being so brave and generous!”

  I said, “For the love of Pete, cut it out! Don’t throw a wingding on me now.”

  She said fiercely, “You’ll have to kill me, too! You know that, don’t you? If anything happens to him, anything at all, you’ll have to kill me, too!”

  I looked at her grimly, wondering what I’d done to be punished by having to deal with this unpredictable little bundle of cowardice and courage, of nonsense and sense.

  I said wearily, “It will be a pleasure to assassinate you, Peewee, as soon as we’re out of this. Just call on me any time. But right now, will you get to that damn window and tell me—”

  “Porthole,” she said mechanically. They’ll never let you call any part of a ship by the wrong name, even if the bucket’s sinking under you.

  “All right, porthole!” I said. “Now snap out of it. Nobody’s going to touch your old man. At least I’m not. So get over there—”

  The Freya changed course sharply. I heard the thunder of flapping canvas overhead as she came to an even keel. Teddy glanced at me warily and darted to the porthole.

  “We’re coming about!” she said. She sounded shocked. “I don’t understand! Mrs. Rosten can’t possibly hope to lay a course out past the island yet, with the wind in this quarter. She’ll put us aground on—what’s that?”

  A vibration went through the schooner’s hull. For a moment, I thought we’d struck bottom; and I saw the same thought in Teddy’s eyes. We stared at each other dumbly, forgetting everything else. The vibration settled down to a strong, steady rumble that shook the lights and made the door rattle. I drew a long breath.

  “She’s just started up the mill, that’s all,” I said.

  “We’re still swinging!” Teddy said, bewildered. “She’s bearing off before the wind, back into Mendenhall Bay.” Her small face lighted up. She whirled to grab me by the arm. “Matt, we’re saved! There must be somebody out there, heading her off, to make her turn back like that. She’s started the auxiliary because it doesn’t matter who hears her now, don’t you see? But she’s trapped inside the island. They’re bound to catch her!”

  We leaned forward together, peering out. There was nothing to be seen except darkness and water—black, foam-flecked water, hissing past. We were traveling faster than we’d gone all day.

  “She’s really pouring the oil to that diesel,” I said. “Just how far can she run in this direction before piling up?” Teddy didn’t answer. I glanced at her, and saw that her elation had faded as suddenly as it had come. Her face was quite white. “What’s the matter, kid?” I asked.

  Teddy licked her lips. “She’s going to try the channel. She—she’ll kill us all!”

  “Channel?” I said. “What channel?” Then I remembered that Robin herself had said something about a tidal channel between the island and the mainland. She’d also mentioned a mile of shoals, I recalled.

  Teddy said dully, “It’s very simple. She’s just going to take ten feet of draft through an eight-foot channel at fourteen knots, that’s all. Listen! They’re running up the foresail again. They had it down for a while.”

  “Translate,” I said. “Never mind the damn sail. What’s this about eight feet and ten feet?”

  “Well, the channel’s supposed to be eight feet at mean low water. If the tide is high, she may have ten or even twelve, but even so—”

  “So she could make it?”

  “No, you don’t understand!” she protested. “It’s a narrow channel; it isn’t dredged; it isn’t buoyed; it just goes where the tide goes. It changes with every storm. It says eight feet on the chart, but that doesn’t mean anything. There could be a sandbar clear across it tomorrow—or tonight!”

  “Skip the could-be’s,” I said. “Obviously she thinks she’s got a chance or she wouldn’t try it. But suppose she does, what does it get her? I mean, this is just a glorified sailboat, after all. You said fourteen knots just now, and she’s giving it everything she’s got—sail, power, everything. Right?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But, hell!” I said. “I don’t know much about boats, but I do know that fourteen knots is nothing, even on the water. A knot is only a fraction over a mile per hour, isn’t it? A fast twin-screw cruiser can do forty and better, can’t it? We’ve been spotted and somebody’s chasing us, obviously. If it’s the Marines or the Coast Guard, they’re going to have something reasonably speedy, aren’t they? They aren’t apt to be patrolling the area in a rowboat. Even if Mrs. Rosten makes it out through the channel at a lousy fourteen knots, she’ll be run down in a couple of miles, won’t she?”

  “You don’t understand!” Teddy said plaintively. There seemed to be a lot I didn’t understand. “There’s a gale blowing out there already; it will be worse before morning. You heard Louis. On a reasonably calm day, any little outboard motorboat could catch us, but the Freya is a seagoing schooner, Matt! She’s built to stay out and take it. Very few powerboats are, certainly not here on the Bay. Nobody’s going to chase us at forty knots in this weather, or fourteen knots, either. Not out past the shelter of Mendenhall Island, they aren’t. In a wind like this, no small craft is going to catch an eighty-foot schooner on a reach, as long as the masts stay in her.”

  “I see,” I said. “So once the lady gets clear of the land, she’s home free.”

  Teddy nodded. “Unless the Navy gets a destroyer out of Norfolk to look for her; and with the tail end of a hurricane to hide in, she has a very good chance of slipping out to sea, anyway, radar or no radar. Getting back home again after the weather has cleared will be another matter, but that won’t help us a bit.” She glanced at the porthole and gulped. “That is, assuming she can get us through that silly little channel. If she can’t she’ll drown us all!”

  “I knew I should have learned to swim better,” I said.

  She looked at me for a moment, and remembered she didn’t trust me, and drew away a little. “It doesn’t matter much does it? We aren’t any of us going to swim very far, in here with the door locked.”

  The schooner gave a sudden lurch, throwing us against the bunk. It wasn’t anything, just a gust of wind; she rose again, shuddering and vibrating, driving hard towards the unseen channel ahead, fleeing the unknown threat astern. I had a mental picture of my cruel pirate queen at the wheel. Big Nick would be forward as lookout, maybe out on the bowsprit, scanning the water ahead. Loeffler and his unidentified associate would be huddled in whatever shelter they could find against the spray, commending their souls to some Marxist god, unless they were better sailors than I thought...

  The kid did something that caught my attention, I didn’t quite know why. She’d been bending over the bunk to help her father, who’d slid down on top of Louis, to leeward; and suddenly she’d done something quick and sneaky. Now she was turning away guiltily, hiding something. I grabbed her and swung her around. Her hand came up, striking at me with something, in a panicky way. I parried the blow and got the thing away from her. It was a rusty wrench.

  22

  I stared at the wrench for a moment. Then I looked at Teddy, who was rubbing her bruised wrist.

  “It was—in Louis’ sock,” she said, glaring at me. “You didn’t have to break my arm!”

  I didn’t bother to ask why she’d tried to hide it. T
he answer was in her face. She’d been going to wait until my back was turned and slug me with it, after which, presumably, she’d have rescued Papa somehow, from me as well as from the people on deck.

  I looked at Louis. The rolling around had worked his pants leg up towards the knee, but of course I should have looked there when I first searched him. I’d had hours to go over him thoroughly, but I’d taken for granted there wasn’t anything to find. I’d assumed that he’d never really meant to get us anything useful, that he hadn’t had time, or even if he’d got it, that he’d told all about it and had it taken away from him.

  I’d made the mistake that’s so easy to make in this business: I’d sold a guy short because I didn’t trust him or like him. Louis had given me what I’d asked for. He’d even kept quiet about it through a brutal third degree. I’d passed it up because I’d been too smart to really look for it.

  Well, it was no time to start counting my shortcomings; that would have to wait until I had a week or two to spare. The funny thing was that I felt pretty good, suddenly. I looked at the kid, standing there defiantly, and at Dr. Michaelis, lying in the bunk behind her; and I knew that I’d had it, I was through, and it felt fine. I knew I wouldn’t have killed him if he’d had the secret of the universe locked inside his unkempt head.

  I was remembering what Mac had said happened to men whose business allowed them to kill and get away with it. I was remembering Jean dying in my arms, and the hasty knife going into Alan, and the careless way I’d almost put a bullet through young Orcutt’s head. Mac had been right, and Klein, the psychiatrist. It was time I got the hell out of the lousy racket...

  First, of course, I had to get the hell out of here. I looked at the wrench. It was no beauty, but it was in working order. I pulled off my belt. The rectangular buckle wasn’t as big as I’d have liked—Lash Petroni hadn’t been the type for wide, cowboy-style belts—but under the leather covering it was of hardened steel with sharp edges, built to come in handy in emergencies.