My approach was cautious until I came close enough for the moonlight to let me see who he was. It was my turn to stop. I didn’t give him back his smile.
He said, “Good evening, Zane. Long time no see.”
He had his hands in his pockets. The right pocket seemed very full. He had small hands. I said, “A long time, Aggie.”
He had the most persuasive voice I ever heard. It was as soft as a muted organ. He said, “Do you remember what you said the last time we met?”
I said, “I remember.”
He quoted me: “Drop around for a drink, Aggie—when you get out. If you ever get out.”
I discovered that I was holding my breath. I let it out gently. I said, “I overlooked a detail. You never went in.”
“But you pushed me so close to jail that I felt it wiser to retire. At first that was almost like being in jail. Did you know that, Zane?”
I said, “I never tried either one of them.”
His smile twitched at the corners. I was glad he found me a funny fellow. I wasn’t glad that he kept his right hand in his coat pocket. He said, “But after a while, I got used to the quiet life. I thought I’d drop around for that drink and to thank you.”
I didn’t believe him. I’d never yet believed anything he told me. This was Aggamemnon Minos, with a specialty I could never appreciate. He made a living, an amount usually called a fortune, by systematically defrauding insurance companies. He was the slickest I’d ever met. And I met quite a welter of fraud artists in my days with Marine Mutual.
Aggie Minos was different from the others. He was a true artist at his work. He polished every detail, set up a defense against every contingency. He was never tagged. For eight years we played our game of chess. Then I thought I had him heading for ten at San Quentin.
But Aggie moved a pawn I hadn’t counted. The pawn took the ten. Aggie took his profits. He also took a fair amount of cash from Marine Mutual on threat of bringing suit for false arrest, defamation of character, and other assorted items that later escaped me.
Instead of going to San Quentin, Aggie went to Mexico. And Martin Zane went to LaPlaya, no longer an associate of Marine Mutual. Aggie Minos lived handsomely in his retirement. Martin Zane lived badly until Marine Mutual forgave him enough to retain him for their local cases.
I said, “Come aboard.”
He handed me the old, soft smile that came from the big, liquid, dark eyes. He hadn’t changed a great deal. There was the same smooth olive skin, the same curling hair touched with gray, the same fashion-plate clothing. He carried forty-five years as elegantly as he had thirty-five, at our first meeting.
He hadn’t changed at all. I said, “You first, Aggie.”
CHAPTER III
AGGIE WALKED ahead. He moved like a sleek cat padding after a bird. He reached my thirty-six feet of floating home. I said, “Go on aboard. Nobody ever locks anything around here.”
Aggie seemed to like my home. “Nice,” he said. He stayed on his feet. He kept his right hand in his pocket.
I said, “Why the gun, Aggie? You never used muscle when you were working.”
He took his hand out of his pocket. He brought up a gun. It was a smaller model than the one the blond packed. That made it no less deadly. Aggie looked down at his hand. He dropped the gun back into his pocket. He left it there without the hand to warm it.
I said, “Scotch as usual?”
“Still the same memory, Zane.”
“I never forgot a thing connected with you, Aggie.”
I brought him his drink. I suggested he sit down. He sat. I made a bourbon ditch for myself. I took my chair, the one under the reading lamp.
Aggie sipped his drink. He nodded approval. “Isn’t this the same boat you had when you worked out of L.A.?”
“The Saltspray,” I said. “The same. Two years ago I almost lost it.”
He smiled. The smile said that he still didn’t like me any better than I liked him. It said that he was happy to hear I’d had troubles. It said that he hoped I’d have more troubles soon.
“All I keep is a little sloop,” he told me. “My wife has a catamaran.”
I began to realize what he was angling for, perhaps why he had come. I made it easier for him. “A catamaran painted turquoise?”
“I thought you’d met Bonnie,” he said. “Tonight was the first time?”
Prebble had been right. The big blond was Aggie’s wife.
I nodded.
He asked, “What did she want?”
I said, “She wanted to buy a boat.”
“You don’t sell boats, Zane.”
“Someone told her a character named Zane knew boats. So she came to see me. I set her straight. She left.”
“It took forty minutes to set her straight?”
He wasn’t buying it. He didn’t look as if he’d buy anything I had to sell. He said. “When my wife left, you burned rubber getting down to the Temoc. Hook me up, Zane.”
His voice had begun to lose its soft inflection. It was taking on the hard flatness of blued steel. The kind of steel put in gun barrels.
I said, “How long have you lived in LaPlaya, Aggie?”
“We moved up from Mexico a month ago.”
“And checked on me. That’s one of the first things you’d do once you learned I was in the same town. So you know what my line of work is.”
“I checked,” he said.
“So you know what my business is with the Temoc and Jaspar Clift.”
“But not your business with my wife.”
I said, “Were you tailing your wife or me tonight? Me, I think, since you had someone else tailing her.”
He frowned. “I don’t keep a rein on my wife, Zane.”
“What do you call the character in the black two-door, a bodyguard?”
He said, “Play that through again. I missed the melody.”
I said, “The black two-door, about a year old, that tagged your wife’s Ferrari when she left me tonight.”
He looked down into his glass. He couldn’t seem to find anything in it. He raised his soft eyes to me. “I was parked in the alley across from your building. I missed that one.”
He emptied his glass. “I never have had my wife tailed, Zane; I’ve never had to worry in the year we’ve been married.” He put his hand in his pocket. He came up with cigarettes. He selected one. He murmured, “Until tonight.”
I watched him light the cigarette. “Until tonight you never worried?”
“Until tonight I never tailed her.”
I said, “But you did worry. Was she hanging around the Temoc too much?” I thought of Jaspar Clift, thirty, husky, good features made better by a thin line of scar running down the left side of his face. Some women found a scar romantic.
Aggie said, “I never shot a man, but I could shoot you for saying that, Zane.”
I wondered if there was a connection between Bonnie Minos hanging around the Temoc and her interest in my report on same. I didn’t put the idea into words. I said, “Do you know Jaspar Clift, Aggie?”
He surprised me. He answered. “I knew his father. When Jaspar came down here, I looked him up. Don’t make any more out of it than that.”
I said, “How deep are you into the Temoc deal, Aggie?”
He was smiling again. His voice took on its normal softness. This was the kind of game he knew. This was the kind he played best. He said, “I retired two years ago. I’m still retired. I like it that way.”
I said, “Aggie, I just finished recommending to Marine Mutual that they give a final okay to Clift’s application for insurance and to the application for insurance on the cargo.”
“So if anything should go wrong, you’re in trouble, Zane?”
“I’m out a client. My one big client. And I’m out of business.”
His smile grew softer. “If I remember my dealings with Marine Mutual, they’ll have got a fat premium from Jaspar and from the shipper. If you called up Marine Mutual now and told t
hem to cancel you’d be asking them to give back money they already have in the bank. Ted Winters never did like to do that.”
He paused long enough to put out his cigarette. “Jaspar tells me that he may have a long term hook-up with this shipper. So a cancellation could drive him to another company. Marine Mutual might lose a lot of potential business. You’d better make sure there is trouble before you call Winters, Zane.”
“You’re here. I’m sure.”
He chuckled. He had a small belly. When he laughed from down inside the belly shook. “You wish you were sure. You’re in one hell of a spot, Zane.”
“Aggie, if you’re using Clift as a front man in a fraud set-up, I’ll find out. And this time I’ll crucify you.”
“I’d hurry up then,” he said. “Jaspar sails tomorrow night.”
He was enjoying himself.
I reached into the grab-bag and came up with three possible answers. Either Aggie and Clift were in on a deal to defraud Marine Mutual of something between a hundred thousand and three hundred fifty thousand dollars, or Aggie had the deal for himself and was using Clift as a patsy, or the set-up was strictly as legitimate as my investigation had found it and Aggie was having fun making me sweat.
I amended that last idea. Aggie never did anything without a profit in sight. He could have the idea of needling me into a move against him or Clift. If I did that and the deal was legitimate, then he or Clift could do what he’d done to me two years before.
Aggie rose. He said, “Thanks for the Scotch. Come up and see my new house and have a drink on me sometime.” He obligingly gave me his address. It was on The Point.
I watched him go. I opened the ports to let in the night breeze. It didn’t cool me off as it usually did.
I nursed my drink and worked at thinking. Aggie had given up asking me questions about his wife. That could mean he’d sent her to see me just to get me started worrying, to force me into a false accusation.
If so, I didn’t dare go to Clift and even hint at fraud; Marine Mutual wanted his good will.
But I didn’t dare let the case ride as it was, either. Wherever Aggie Minos went, the stench of fraud went with him.
CHAPTER IV
I TOOK MY bourbon and myself to the telephone. I put in a call to Theodore Winters in Los Angeles. He answered. In a faint aside he said, “Just hold it a minute, baby.”
I said, “I’m holding it.”
“What?”
“The sack,” I said. “I’m holding it.”
He said, “This is Zane.” It wasn’t a question. He was sure.
In the background I could hear music and laughter. I said, “I had a visitor tonight. Aggie Minos.”
I don’t know what I expected: silence, heavily pregnant; a medal, airmail? I got: “I said, just a minute, baby. Relax.” The voice was aimed somewhere but not at me.
“Minos,” I repeated. “M as in mulct, I as in …”
“I heard you.” The voice was stronger. But it wasn’t excited.
“He’s been seeing Jaspar Clift,” I said.
“Why shouldn’t he see Jaspar Clift? He set old man Clift up in business over twenty years ago. They were partners.”
“Did Aggie use Clift in his bunco games?”
“Aggie pulled out of the partnership before he started them.”
I said, “Then why should there all of a sudden be interest in my investigation?”
“Interest by whom?”
“Aggie. His wife. At separate times.”
He said, “It sounds like you’re being set up like you were two years ago.”
I said, “I thought of that. But I can’t take the chance. How about holding up the deal until I can check this out?”
“You cleared Clift already,” he reminded me.
“I cleared him twice,” I admitted. “There’s another report coming your way tomorrow. But that was before I met Aggie.”
“Did he give you some kind of proof that he plans to pull the rug out from under us?”
“No, but …”
He said, “We can’t afford to delay a policy just because you met Aggie Minos. We can’t afford to hold up the sailing, either. The cargo insurance includes penalty payments for delay of delivery. We can’t afford to pass up potential business because you’ve got a thing about Minos.”
Voice aside again: “Yes, baby. Ted is coming.” Laughter and music in the background.
I said, “What do you want, a deposition from Aggie that he intends to cut himself a piece of the Temoc?”
“I want proof.” He was yelling now. “Solid, tangible, hardrock proof.”
“So what if he sails and something does happen?”
He stopped yelling. He became suavely vice-presidential. “Then we’ll remember who cleared Clift down in LaPlaya.” Distant screech. Voice aside: “Yes, baby, Ted wants to play. Just a minute!”
It was my turn to yell. “Go play with baby while three hundred and fifty thousand gets away from you!” I rammed down the phone.
I took a walk. Six paces forward, six back. Proof he wanted. I had a “thing” about Aggie Minos. The hell I did.
Or did I?
Winters was right. I did.
A quarter of a million dollars rode on the cargo. I said, “I’m Aggie Minos. I like the sound of two hundred and fifty thousand. How can I get that much out of Marine Mutual?”
I couldn’t answer myself. The cargo was being shipped by a nation-wide company. It was even a reputable company. So was the receiver of the shipment.
I said, “I just don’t have the criminal type mind.”
I went back to the telephone. I checked my Pocket Telephone Guide (patented). I dialed.
The answering voice whispered, “Hel-l-o-o.” It was a voice out of the dim reaches of a summer garden, moonlit, surrounded by honeysuckle.
I said, “I’d like to speak to Irma Wilson, please.”
“Speaking.”
I needed a minute for psychological readjustment. I thought of Irma Wilson mostly in terms of Electronic Suppliers. In terms of semi-tailored suits and dresses; of attractive but somewhat severe hair styling; of crisp efficiency in voice and manner. Attractive? Definitely. Interesting? I admit I’d speculated. But idly, to while away odd moments.
I said, “This is Martin Zane, Miss Wilson.”
“You sound formidably business-like.” It was a complaint.
“It is business.”
“I like to do business between nine and five.”
I said, “I have a couple of questions that need answering—so I can finish my report. Then I promise to leave you alone.”
“Promise? That sounds more like a threat.”
I decided that the moonlit, honeysuckle-surrounded garden where the voice was coming from also had a portable bar close by. I said, “Miss Wilson, does the name Aggie Minos mean anything to you?”
Enough pause for her to think about it. Then, “No. Should it?”
I said, “I don’t know. One more question. Is there any possible way for anyone but your firm to collect the cargo insurance? On the Temoc cargo, that is.”
“Do you mean is there any way for an individual to collect?”
“Yes.”
“Good heavens, no. Not unless there is someone with the name Electronic Suppliers and he can steal the policy. If anything should happen, Marine Mutual would pay directly to the head office.”
Another pause. “Isn’t that a strange question, Mr. Zane?”
I said, “I didn’t think so when I asked it. Thank you, Miss Wilson. Good night.”
Her good night was reluctant. Or maybe it was just puzzled. It had no air of finality. But I hung up anyway. I wanted to do some more thinking.
I couldn’t think of anything to think about. There was no way for Aggie Minos or anyone else to make a profit on the Temoc deal. No way that I could see.
That left one answer: Aggie was trying to maneuver me into giving him or Clift a bad time. Then he might have me in a position to
bring suit. That kind of suit would wind me up for good in this business.
Would even Aggie Minos go to so much trouble just to get revenge? Revenge for what? Because I’d been doing my job.
Aggie would. The criminal mind has strange convolutions.
That was the answer. And I could beat Aggie by ignoring him. By closing the case. By leaving it where it was when Bonnie Minos came calling.
It took me thirty minutes to decide that. My watch told me it was eleven o’clock. I carried the dregs of my drink and a book to my chair. I adjusted the reading lamp. Aggie had had it. I’d wash him out of my mind by forgetting his existence.
I read to page three. I closed the book. I laid it down. I set my glass beside it. I listened.
Live on a boat for a while and you get accustomed to certain sounds—the gentle slap of water against the hull, the creakings and soft rubbings of joints and rigging, the fingering of the wind ghosts. After a time you don’t hear these sounds; they are part of your refuge.
The boat moved under me. This wasn’t the movement brought by the wake of a passing ship. This was the sensation when someone heavy steps on board.
I tried to remember whether I’d left my gun in the office file closet or in my locker. It didn’t matter. Doors were swinging softly open. A thick bulk was moving down into the lounge. I stepped toward it.
A lighter noise came from the wheelhouse forward. It moved to the galley. I turned in its direction. A smaller bulk was cat-footing toward me. I was an olive caught in a pair of tongs, ready to be dropped into a martini.
Two years of no Aggie Minos, of the slow pace of LaPlaya, had taken the edge off me. I’d forgotten how to respond quickly to this kind of situation. I’d forgotten the feel of air charged with danger.
The bulk coming from the cockpit had a voice. It said, “You’re dead, Zane. You got a gun, toss it this way.”
CHAPTER V
“NO GUN,” I SAID.
The smaller bulk coming through the galley had a voice, too. It said, “He can’t shoot both of us. Turn on the lights.” It was a voice without inflection, completely flat.
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