Carny kill

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Carny kill Page 14

by Robert Edmond Alter


  Now we were on her ground. She laughed and called me naughty and went rump-twitching on about her business. I spent a few seconds meditating on her locomotion, as viewed from the rear, and then I thought about _Treasure Island_ again.

  The big clincher moment in the tale had been when Jim Hawkins and John Silver, George Merry, Tom Morgan and the lad known as Dick arrive at Flint's treasure cache and find that the map they have carefully followed is wrong. The treasure had been moved.

  _There never was such an overturn in this world_, Stevenson had written about the pirates' shocked emotion.

  I finished my coffee and went back to my stand and still nothing happened. Bill Duff had been giving me peculiar stares for about an hour, and finally around eight or so he strolled over and said hi.

  "Bill," I replied. I showed him the little pea and covered it and made a right-over-left pass and he tapped the right shell with his finger. I didn't palm it because there was no profit in it. Anyhow, he had something on his mind and I didn't want to derail his train of thought.

  "You want your orchid gift wrapped?" I asked him.

  "Keep it for your bitch," he told me.

  I was curious about what had brought him over to see me so I didn't get mad at that. Duff didn't look at me. He toyed with one of my walnut shells.

  "I've been thinking, Thax, that you and I are a couple of saps."

  "I'll go along with half of that," I said. "I've been thinking that one of us was."

  He gave me the lovable old Duff dagger look.

  "No, I'm serious. We've been at loggerheads when if we had any brains we'd be a team. You know what I mean?"

  "Uh-huh, and it's a funny thing. I said the same thing to Ferris not so long ago."

  "You did?"

  "Uh-huh. A slapstick team. You slap a pie in my face and then I plaster your face."

  "No, no, for godsake. I don't mean the cutthroat way we've always acted. I mean we should start putting our heads together. You know?"

  "Like the two-headed calf in the illusion show."

  He gave me an aggrieved but patient look and said, "Will you knock off the hilarity? I'm serious. And you know what I'm talking about. I figure together we could both do ourselves some good. Some real good."

  "Well, Bill, everybody's opinion is worth something. Even a clock that's stopped is right twice a day. What is it that you want to share with me?"

  "C'mon," he snapped. "You know as well as I do what the score is. There's a fortune in it"

  "Um. I said that to a man last night and nearly got my head blown off." I started to rotate the walnut shells.

  "The trouble with you, Bill, is you want to go fishing with my bait. You're seeing about a yard beyond Ferris' view- while I'm looking at the whole vista. No deal."

  I raised my head and started a spiel.

  "This way, ladies and gentlemen! The one cylinder ballbearing ride is about to start again. Three little tepees with a little white medidne ball. Step aside, mister, let the little lady with the pretty face see the white rabbit." I looked at Duff.

  He gave me an icepick look and walked away.

  The funny thing is that for the first time in the seven years I had known Duff, I felt sorry for him. A little. He, like most of us, had a hunger that could never be gratified in this life. But for a brief moment he had had a glimpse at the menu-just before I slammed the door in his face and hung out the Closed Indefinitely sign.

  "The little lady's shriek of delight is a wail of woe in the gambler's ear," I said as I handed over a dime-a-dozen orchid to the girl with the pretty face.

  The Viking horn moaned and the marks started their noisy, confused, semi-happy evacuation. There would probably be much misbehaving in the cars in the parking lot that night and you could risk a guess that there would be a few inevitable results in about nine months and maybe even a few venereal catastrophes a hell of a lot sooner.

  But as far as I was concerned nothing had happened.

  I went up to the treehouse to dig out my spare shirts and shorts and socks. The truth was, I felt a little sad about leaving Tarzan's hut. Maybe I was too much like those who wouldn't let youth slip by, like Peter Pan or Mike Ransome. Maybe I was doomed to bumble through life without ever realizing total maturity.

  "Well," I thought, "it doesn't matter, does it? So I like to live in a tree house. What's so goddam wrong in that?"

  I pulled out the Coke bottle carton which I kept my spare shirts and underwear in and I stared at it in the brilliant light of Terry Orme's Coleman lantern. And with an odd sense of unreality I felt the world turn back twenty-some years-back to the first time I read _Treasure Island_ and came to the part where Blind Pew put the piece of paper in Billy Bones' rum-palsied hand.

  A little round piece of paper was pinned to my top shirt. It was black on one side and white on the other; words had been printed on the white side.

  _One o'clock_.

  17

  _But what is the black spot, captain?_ Jim Hawkins had asked. _That's a summons, mate_, Billy Bones had answered.

  And that's what this black spot was-a summons for me. Because the person who had planted it on my shirt knew me. Knew my immature sense of the dramatic. Knew I wouldn't call cop.

  And he was right. Like John Silver I had to bullhead a bad deal out to the bitter end. I touched the plastic butted reassurance of the fortyfive under my jacket and grinned.

  "Nobody," I thought, "ever got the best of Silver. Not even Ben Gunn."

  I left the tree house and went down to the Admiral Benbow. The Hispaniola was moored for the night against Treasure Island. The stern windows were open and a blocky shaft of light was jabbing through them and making an orange puddle on the shallow water under the schooner's counter. Soft music throbbed over the dark manmade lake.

  I got in a boat and rowed to the island.

  The cabin door flew open and Mike Ransome stood in the flood of light grinning at me.

  "Thax! I've been expecting you."

  I held out the black spot to him and made another stab at quoting Silver.

  "Look here. This ain't lucky. You've gone and cut a Bible. What fool has cut a Bible?"

  Mike took the black spot and chuckled.

  "It was Dick," he said, quoting loosely, "and he can get to prayers. He's seen his slice of luck, has Dick, and you may lay to that."

  "Amen," I said.

  Mike made a gesture inviting me in. Then he took a quick look behind me before he closed the door.

  "Come alone, Thax? I rather thought you would."

  "Sure. Just like you said the first time we met, Master Gunn-'Him that comes is to have a white thing in his hand and he's to come alone.' Remember?"

  I took a casual turn around the cabin. The hi-fi was still purring soft mood music. There was a triangular wardrobe in the angle between the forward bulkhead and the starboard wall. It was faced with two louver doors and I got the impression that the righthand door shifted slightly as I walked by. I went to the stern and parked my prat on one of the open window frames, folded my arms and smiled at Mike.

  He wagged the black spot at me. "It really was cut from a Bible, Thax. I always keep one around for laughs. I thought it was the perfect touch. You agree?"

  "That's right. I couldn't resist it. You must be uncanny, Mike. You seem to know me like a book."

  Mike looked delighted. "Care for a drink?"

  "Uh-no thanks. That last one I had out here was murder. I mean that in the literal sense."

  Mike chuckled and went over to the hi-fi and killed the music.

  "You put something in that gin, didn't you?" I said.

  He was enjoying himself immensely. He nearly danced over to the hotplate.

  "I'm going to have some coffee. You? No? Well now, Thax-why would I want to put anything in your drink?"

  "Because I bunked with Terry Orme, and because you wanted me blotto when you paid our tree house a visit that night."

  Mike's eyes watched me brightly over the rim of his co
ffee cup.

  "You can tell a story better than that, surely. You mustn't start in the middle, you know. That's using the narrativehook form and that's cheating."

  I was agreeable. "All right, I'll back up to the beginning. You fell for May. Or maybe I should extend that and say you fell for May and her husband's money. But the husband was in the way. To eliminate him was no great problem. The rub was that as soon as he turned up murdered everybody would immediately point the finger at May-because of the money motive. So in your somewhat warped ingenious way you worked out a neat little scheme."

  Mike sipped his coffee and smiled at me. He said nothing.

  "You would murder Cochrane and you would frame it to fit May. But the frame would be so goddarn obvious that even a blindman would be able to recognize it when it started to smell. Why would she use her own knife? And why would she leave her knife in the body? And why would she be so damn careless as to drop her earring by the body? And why wouldn't she at least have enough sense to get herself an alibi for the time of the murder?"

  I shook my head.

  "It would be too much for anybody to swallow. The law would play with it for a while and then they would set her aside and start looking around for another suspect with a motive. May would be a nice innocent rich widow-all for you."

  I looked at him.

  "You like it?" He flashed a grin at me. "I always did. But go on. You're telling it."

  "Well, you realize I'm just fumbling over the finer details now. This is mostly guesswork, so stop me if I'm wrong."

  "You're doing fine, just fine, Thax."

  "I don't think you had set an actual date for Cochrane's murder. You were probably still trying to iron out the various wrinkles in your bent little brain-until the day I showed up. You knew my past history and I must have looked like a natural to you. The jealous ex-husband, deadbroke and with a vengeful heart. Good. You decided to hit Cochrane that same night."

  I took out a cigarette and rolled it between my fingers.

  "Guessing again now, I think you made a date with old man Cochrane for after closing time. Probably told him you had a brand new scheme for Treasure Island and you wanted him to meet you and kick it around. He agreed. He'd come out to the Hispaniola late that night. But you didn't want to do him in that close to your homebase. So when he came down to the Admiral Benbow dock, you were already waiting for him in the tearoom."

  Mike watched me, beaming expectantly.

  "The lights would be out, of course," I said, thinking about it.

  "You would call him over to the tearoom on some pretense or other. He steps through the door into pitch darkness and you're there waiting with the knife. Bingo."

  "Do you need a light for that cigarette, Thax?"

  "It's all right. I've got one."

  "Don't let me interrupt you, then. It's fascinating."

  "Isn't it? And it gets better." I fished out a match and lit up.

  "So. Then you tote him into one of the rowboats and you row across the lake in the dark and you cart him over the little stretch of land and dump him in the Swamp Ride. With May's knife still in him, of course. And you remember to plant May's jade earring in the mudbank where any stumble-bum cop will find it. Then back to the Hispaniola and the black coffee and insomnia."

  I grinned at him. "You know, I couldn't quite pin you at first."

  "How's that, Thax?"

  "I mean all the highstrung energy. It's obvious that you're on something, but I never put you down as needle nuts. It's Bennys, huh? Or Dexamyl or Dexedrine? That's the reason for all the black coffee. It keeps activating the pep pills. How do you keep going without sleep though?"

  He placed a hand over his heart and spoke dramatically.

  "A man in love needs no sleep." Then he laughed at himself. "As long as you've interrupted your narration, let me ask you this. Why didn't I just leave the body in the tea room?"

  "Um. That's one of the things that started me thinking about you as a possible suspect. Look what happened in _Treasure Island_. Everyone figured the treasure should be in Flint's cache because all the facts pointed to that conclusion. But when they got there they drew a blank, because foxy old Ben Gunn had already picked up the loot and moved it somewhere else. Dandy joke."

  I said, "That's your style, Mike. You love a good laugh at other people's expense. That business of leaping out at me like Ben Gunn, and of boasting about jumping out on all the little girls and making them wet their panties. You like to shock people, Mike. You like to hit 'em with a startling surprise and then stand back and laugh. And you love a risk. You're the kind of nut who actually enjoys living on the edge of disaster. Like that gamble you took with Bill Duff in the poker game. That was pure brinksmanship."

  Mike laughed delightedly.

  "Will you ever forget the look on Bill's face? Good old Bill! But go on, Thax. I'm enjoying this."

  I knew he was. Because the whole thing, the way he had laid it out-was another big risk. And I had an idea that he had an ace in the hole. I even thought I knew the color of the ace.

  "There was no reason on earth to move that body," I said. "You did it for pure shock value. If you'd left it in the tearoom the first waitress who opened up in the morning would walk in and see it and go Gaa! Not much fun in that. Just one person. But if you dumped it in the Swamp Ride you could really raise the roof.

  "Just picture it," I said. "A whole boatload of happy marks ohing and ahing along the waterway. Then they turn the bend and what do they see floating in the water?"

  Mike laughed and slapped his hands.

  "Beautiful!" he said. "And I'm still sick it didn't work."

  "Yes," I said dryly, "what a shame that freckle-faced kid squelched all the fun." I pitched my cigarette butt through the stem window and said, "So now we come to Terry Orme.

  "Just when you figured you'd pulled a perfect crime, blackmail walked in and put the screws on you. So you knew there had been a witness but you didn't know who. Then I accidentally gave you a tip when I told you Orme bunked in the tree house. Sure, you figured. Orme is always climbing around in the dark, peeking in on other people's business. Orme had to be the witness. So…"

  "So you helped me out by walking in here and asking for a drink."

  "Uh-huh. And you doped it and I passed out and then you laid for Orme in the treehouse."

  "And then?" Mike prompted me.

  "There isn't much more," I said. "Right after Terry took the big drop is when I put on my thinking cap and my thoughts slowly turned me in your direction. So I had to be eliminated next."

  Mike was smiling at me. He said nothing.

  "But that was the big slipup," I said. "Because you didn't handle it. If you had, I'd probably be one day dead right now."

  "Go ahead," Mike said. "Tell us why I didn't handle it."

  "Because I figure you didn't even know about it, Mike. And the person who did was already too panicky to have a third murder turn up on the lot. So she hired some big city badboys to do the deed in some far-out remote spot."

  I looked at the louvered wardrobe across the cabin.

  "Is that right, May?" I said.

  There was a pause and then both louvered doors swung noiselessly open and May stood there as gorgeous as a George Petty picture, in a bright, tight red outfit that accentuated her flame hair. She was holding one of her pearlhandled knives.

  18

  "You're so goddam smart, darling," May said to me in her stainless steel voice. "It's simply breathtaking to listen to you."

  "Maybe I can get a job with Ferris," I said.

  "I don't see how, darling," May said. "I really don't. Because I don't think you're going to be for hire much longer. Hasn't your brilliant mind figured out why we lured you out here tonight?"

  "Um. I think I can make a guess as to how both of you thought I'd react once I saw Mike's summons. You figured I'd rush out here and tell you all I know-which I have just done-and then I'd make a play at holding you up for blackmail. Which isn't a par
t of my plan."

  Mike raised his brows at me. "Is this a rib, Thax? You honestly never intended to make a stab at blackmail?"

  "I honestly never did, Mike. Oh sure, I'd like a big chunk of May's dough for keeping my mouth shut, but it won't work. The deal has already gone sour. There's too many angles to it. Too many people have tried to climb on the bandwagon. Sooner or later it's bound to come apart at the seams. I don't want to be inside the bag when it does."

  I watched May's hand-the one with the knife.

  "Let's face it," I said. "You baited the trap with blackmail when you drew me out here tonight. But we all know you have something more practical in mind. Like a man I knew said: murder and blackmail are two divergent businesses."

  "Then why did you come out here, Thax?" Mike asked.

  "Because he's a damn fool!" May said sharply. "He's always been a damn fool. He thinks he can talk his way out of anything."

  "That's just about the truth," I admitted. "You see, Mike, I never actually finished anything I ever started to do in my life. But this time I made up my mind I'd see this deal out to the end. And speaking of the end…"

  I leaned forward as if to stand up. In the next instant I had May covered with the automatic.

  "Better drop the knife, May," I said.

  Mike lowered his coffee cup to the table. He said, "You wouldn't really kifi us, would you, Thax?"

  I watched May. "Well, turnabout is fair play, isn't it? May-didn't you hear what I said?"

  "Certainly, sweetie," May said. She started to raise the knife.

  You don't try to talk a rattler out of striking. I pulled the trigger at her.

  The hammer said click. I was all tensed for the expectant blast and the stupid thing said click!_

  Mike grinned at me.

  "Wet powder, Master 'Awkins?" he asked in an Israel Hands voice.

  I looked at May. She was smiling and her lips were very moist and scarlet and her eyes very bright. She cocked the knife over her shoulder.

  "Catch, May!" I flipped the automatic to her underhand.

  The knife went thh-ok in the stempost by my head as I went out the window-going right on over in a backwards somersault through the moon-swerving night and crashing feet-first into the black shallows.

 

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