Cargo for the Styx (5 page)

I
WAS HALFWAY
from the front door to my heap when Bonnie Minos popped into sight. She wig wagged me over to a clump of shrubbery that screened off the view from the house. She was wearing her best smile and the same two scraps of cloth as before.

There was no smile in her voice. “Thanks for that story,” she said. “And for backing me up.”

I said, “I came here thinking Aggie had set those goons on you. Then I wasn’t so sure. I had to figure something that would give you an out and give me some information.”

I glanced toward the house. There was no sign of activity from that direction. I said, “Just how am I backing you up? What’s this surprise business?”

“I’m buying Aggie a new sloop for our anniversary,” she said.

I had to grin. “I told Aggie you’d come to consult me about buying a boat, so it fits.”

“He asked me about that,” she said. “That’s where I got the idea to buy him a boat.” Her smile was as dazzling as the summer sunshine. “Now everything is fine.”

I said, “Everything is just great—except that you owe me something for helping you keep your nose clean with Aggie.”

The blue-gray eyes measured me judiciously. “I didn’t know I affected you that way, Zane.”

I said, “Damn it, I want some answers, not a roll in the bushes.”

She sighed. “Spurned again.”

I said, “Listen, Mrs. Minos —”

She put a finger to her lips. “I’ll talk to you later, Zane,” she whispered. “I think I hear Aggie coming.”

I couldn’t hear a thing, but I whispered anyway. I said, “At my office. One o’clock.”

Her nod said that would be fine. She disappeared into the bushes. I went on to the heap. I wasn’t happy. I was tempted to go to Aggie and have a showdown. But there was something refreshingly annoying about Bonnie Minos. I decided to give her one more chance.

I rolled down the driveway to the street. I braked sharply as I caught a glimpse of the tail of a black car taking a curve ahead. It could have been the two-door. I would have been surprised if it wasn’t.

I took my time going down the hill to Harbor Way. I was trying to tie Bonnie Minos into some kind of logical knot. But she kept slipping loose. Every time I stacked one of her actions against another, I came up with a contradiction.

I came to the tunnel of live oak trees. I was in the middle of an S curve when the black two-door came squealing uphill. I yanked my wheel to the right as the two-door swung wide on the curve. I jammed on the brakes. The two-door stayed on my side. I heard the crunch of metal. I felt the jolt as fenders kissed. The heap leaped the curbing with a front wheel. I stopped.

I shouldered open the door and stepped to the street. Otho climbed from beneath the wheel of the two-door. He was alone in it. He grinned at me.

I didn’t waste words. I needed my breath for my work. I pulled Clarence’s sap out of my pocket. Otho kept on grinning. He made no move. He stood flat-footed, waiting for me. I lifted the sap. I was going to feint with it and push my left into the middle of his grin.

Vann wasn’t in sight, so I forgot to think about him. I was too eager to get at Otho. I started remembering Vann when I heard the scuff of a shoe sole on pavement. The sound came from behind me. I twisted my head. Vann was riding my back. I tried to duck aside. His hand chopped down. The hard edge caught me at the base of the neck. I went down slowly.

Vann said in his flat voice, “Get him in the back of his car, Otho. You know where to take him.”

Otho lifted me. My hundred and ninety didn’t even make him grunt. He held me with one hand and opened the rear door of the heap with the other. He shoved me face down on the floor.

The motor of the heap ground into life. I bounced around as Otho took the remaining curves down to Harbor Way.

The car jolted over gravel and stopped. Another car pulled alongside. Vann called out, “No one around. Get him aboard. I’ll go bury this clunker of his. Stay with him until I get back here.”

Otho grunted something I took to mean ‘yes.’ He opened the rear door of the heap and lifted me out. He put me on my feet. I swayed off the perpendicular.

He said, “Start walking, Zane. There ain’t nobody around, so don’t waste my time.”

The watery feeling in my joints was beginning to go away. I started walking. I went down on my own dock and aboard my own boat.

Otho steered me forward. He grabbed my collar and heaved me onto my bunk. Irma had made it up. I could smell the fragrance of her faintly. I hoped Otho couldn’t smell it.

Otho wanted to tie me up. I didn’t feel like arguing with him. He was pretty good with knots. When he finished with me, I was roped with my wrists together and my ankles together. He ran the remainder of the rope to the bunk stanchions. The only way I could move was up. When I did that, ropes sawed at my skin and tension tried to pull my joints from their sockets. I lay still.

I heard Vann come in. He said, “He should keep for a while. All right, finish him up.”

Otho finished me up. He wrapped one of my own neck scarves over my eyes and shoved the handkerchief out of my pocket into my mouth. He tied the handkerchief so that I could breathe around it but couldn’t push it out.

Vann said, “Fine.” I was glad he liked it. I thought about showing him just how glad I was someday.

Vann said, “All right, let’s roll. Without his jalopy parked outside, no one will think he’s here. He’ll keep until we want him again.”

“I had an idea,” Otho said. He sounded proud of himself.

“Save it and let’s get moving,” Vann said.

“This is a real good idea,” Otho insisted. He was bound to give his idea to Vann. “It gets dark, see. Then we come in a speedboat and take him away. Then nobody catches us.”

“Where do we get the speedboat?” Vann said.

“I’ll borrow one,” Otho said.

Vann said, “I’ll think about it. Right now, let’s get busy and take care of that dizzy dame.”

They clumped away. I lay and thought about how Zane had walked right into this. At the moment, I didn’t have much respect for him. He deserved everything he’d got.

But that didn’t make him like it.

I tried thinking of something else. I thought about the “dizzy dame” Vann was on his way to take care of. Bonnie? She fit the description. Irma? Maybe from Vann’s point of view, she was dizzy. I used different adjectives when I thought of her.

It didn’t matter which one Vann had in mind. I didn’t want him taking care of either of them. I didn’t like the way he took care of people.

I lunged at the ropes, arching my body. I flopped back on the bunk. I’d achieved quite a bit—rope burns and a bent spine. I lay panting and sweating.

I tried yelling. All that came out around the gag was a gurgle. The sound reminded me of a bottle being emptied.

I began to get thirsty. I stopped thinking about bottles. I tried playing a game with myself. I thought of a question. Then I thought of an answer. I didn’t score points for just any old answer. I had all the time I needed to come up with a good one.

Question: “Why did Vann want me kept in cold storage until later—when he ‘wanted me again’?”

Answer: “Vann didn’t know how much I’d learned. He didn’t know how much I’d passed on to Marine Mutual. Before he could get rid of me, he had to find out just how much I knew and how much of what I knew I’d passed on.”

Queston: “How do you know Vann is concerned with the
Temoc
? Your answer makes no sense unless he is.”

Answer: “Nothing anyone has done lately makes any sense unless the
Temoc
is involved.”

Question: “Why was Prebble killed?”

Answer: “Because he had something to show me, something that was connected with the
Temoc
.”

Question: “Who killed Prebble?”

Answer: “That was a damn fool thing to ask. If I knew, I wouldn’t be where I am now.”

I threw myself out of the game for asking silly questions. I went back to being thirsty. I was thirsty for quite a while. Then I fell asleep.

I woke up to a bell ringing. It was the telephone on the shelf above my head. It was the most frustrating noise I ever heard. It kept ringing and frustrating me. Finally I went a little off the beam.

I lunged upwards. Only this time I was throwing my head and not my body. I felt the underside of the shelf crack the top of my skull. The telephone ring skipped a beat. I heard the receiver lift out of the cradle and fall back in.

I lunged again, harder. The shelf flattened the top of my head a half inch out of round. But the ringing stopped. It stopped because the telephone was lying on my chest. The receiver was out of the cradle and a good six inches from my face.

I gurgled. I gurgled until my throat ached and until the dryness in my mouth got too much for me. I heard a voice. It said, “Hello? Hello, Zane?”

The blood was pounding in my ears. I couldn’t recognize the voice. I could only make out the words.

I gave a last gurgle. I closed my eyes. I’d had it.

H
AVE YOU
ever been temporarily blind? It’s a sensation like nothing else you could ever experience. I’d rather face Jack the Ripper on Friday the thirteenth and with my hands tied. I told myself I didn’t mind getting killed, but I wanted to see it happen.

Lying on that bunk with the scarf over my eyes, I couldn’t see anything, not even a faint hint of light. But I could hear.

I could hear the soft, almost hesitant footsteps that moved along the dock, that made the boat rock gently as weight came down into the cockpit. I could hear the strange clicking sound that followed. It took me a moment to place that sound. I realized that Vann had padlocked the hatch leading into the lounge. That way, any casual passerby looking for a free drink would think I was ashore and not bother to come aboard. Now, someone was picking the padlock.

The same someone who had called me on the telephone? Probably not. No one had come yapping, “Zane!” and bent on rescue. The person picking that lock was being carefully quiet.

So far it wasn’t too bad. Then I heard the lock click back. The slow, cautious footsteps moved into the lounge. They came forward with that same agonizing slowness. I thought I was dehydrated, but I could feel the sweat popping out all over me.

I’d heard that a person who can’t see can tell a lot by sounds. I couldn’t tell a damn thing—except that someone was pussyfooting in my direction. The footsteps could have belonged to a male or a female. Or, for all I knew, to a bear.

I heard the steps climb into the wheelhouse. They crossed it. They started down into my cabin. They stopped. They began to retreat. They retreated all the way to the lounge. I listened to the sibilant sound of drawers sliding out and back in again. I heard the rustle of papers. My personal possessions were getting a thorough going over.

I was still sane enough to guess why.

The footsteps moved forward again. They stopped in the galley. The refrigerator door clicked open. I heard the clink of glass on glass. My throat began to feel like a dustbowl farm. Someone was raiding my ice-cold beer.

Another sound. The rattle of my cutlery drawer. The footsteps came my way again. Into the wheelhouse, across it, down to stop by my bunk.

I couldn’t even get a sound around the gag that filled my mouth.

I felt the knife blade. It was cold against my wrists. The sensation of that chilled steel against my skin nearly knocked me out. It took a long, agonizing minute for me to realize that I was feeling the side of the blade, not its edge.

My ropes were being hacked loose. In another minute I would be free. I could get the blindfold off my eyes. I could begin to live again.

The ropes around my wrists came loose. I sat up. I reached behind my head to untie the blindfold. I had no fingers, only numb stumps of frozen flesh. A hand not belonging to me moved up behind my head and jerked the knot loose. The blindfold fell away. The dim light in the cabin beat against my eyes painfully. I enjoyed every bit of that pain.

The same hand untied the rope holding the gag in my mouth. I pushed it soggily out. I blinked my eyes until I could begin to see.

And I saw Bonnie Minos. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. She held two beautifully damp bottles

“I had an idea you’d be thirsty. Otho does a pretty goon tie-up job.”

“I had an idea you’d be thirsty. Otho does a pretty good tie-up job.”

I showed her just how right she was.

I handed her my empty beer bottle and climbed down out of the bunk. After a few stomps my legs and feet did what I told them. I said, “Do you mind taking your beer aft? I want to shower off.”

“Men are so damned modest,” she remarked. She took herself and her beer aft.

I stripped down and got into my robe. It smelled faintly of Irma just as the bed had. I reached for the telephone. Bonnie had put it back on the shelf. I reminded myself to ask her if she’d called me.

I dialed Irma’s office number. I got the voice of her secretary, a chubby brunette with a slightly dowdy look. I said, “This is Martin Zane. May I talk to Miss Wilson, please?”

“Miss Wilson left a message, Mr. Zane.”

I remembered leaving Irma earlier. I remembered agreeing to meet her at one for lunch. I also remembered agreeing to meet Bonnie at one in my office. My watch said that it was now two o’clock.

I said, “Okay, let’s have it.”

The girl’s voice was prim and faintly disapproving. “Miss Wilson asked me to tell you that she was sorry you couldn’t meet her for lunch. She accepted an invitation from Mr. Clift as she has to be there this afternoon to make a final check of the cargo manifest.”

I said, “If you see her first, tell her I was tied up.”

I hung up. I dialed another number. I got Jasper Clift on the end of the line. I said, “Is Irma Wilson there? This is Zane.”

“Miss Wilson? Not yet. I expect her sometime this afternoon.”

I said, “You didn’t have lunch with her?”

Clift gave a kind of bark that I decided was a laugh. “Lunch with a dame today? This is the day I sail, Zane. I’m busy.”

I opened my mouth and closed it again. I took a deep breath. I said, “Okay, thanks.” I hung up. I had begun to sweat all over again. A different kind of sweat this time.

A shower washed me down a little, but it didn’t make me feel any better. Neither did my fresh clothes. I went into the lounge still struggling into my jacket, my shoelaces flapping.

Bonnie Minos had her nose in a beer mug, one of my Tyrolean ones. Three empties sat on the floor beside her chair.

I said, “That’s eleven per cent stuff from Mexico. Better go easy.”

“I’m used to it,” she said.

I didn’t have time for more chit chat. I said, “Did you telephone me a little while before you came here?”

She shook her head. “I went to your office. I waited around a while but you didn’t show up. I started back home. When I passed your moorage I had an idea.”

I said, “So you stopped to see what you could find?”

“I couldn’t find anything in the office,” she said. “I thought maybe you kept it here.”

“Kept what here?”

“Whatever it is some people seem to want from you.”

I said, “Are those your goons? Did you sic them onto me to keep me out of your way for a while?”

“If they were mine, would I have turned you loose, buster?”

I said, “Maybe they’re Aggie’s boys and you cut me loose to keep him from getting in too deep.”

“In where too deep?” she demanded. She lifted the beer mug and drained it. “And if they were Aggie’s, I still wouldn’t turn you loose. It isn’t my job to mess up my husband’s business.”

I said, “What is your job?”

She hiccupped. I said, “When you cut me free you made some crack about Otho doing a pretty good tie-up job. What makes you think Otho had anything to do with tying me up?”

She closed one eye and surveyed me with the other. It was slightly glazed. “Who else around here is big enough to do that to you, Zane?”

I felt as if I was trying to wade through stiff molasses. I said, “We made a date to talk. I’m a little late for it, but let’s talk anyway.”

She tried to snap her fingers. There was no crack. She frowned and tried again. She shrugged and dropped her hand to her lap. She said, “Speaking of dates, you got a phone call right after I got to your office.”

I said, “Irma?”

“A Miss Wilson. Is that Irma?” I nodded. She said, “She wanted to know where you’d got yourself to. I told her I wanted to know the same thing.” She waggled a finger at me. “Your ideas are too big for one man, buster. You can’t date two women at the same hour.”

I said, “Let’s cut the horseplay. What did Irma say?”

“You mean, what did she say besides what she called you?”

I said, “Yes, besides that.”

“She said ‘good-bye,’ “ Bonnie announced.

I said, “Look, when those goons left here Vann said they had to hurry up and take care of ‘that dizzy dame.’ Irma’s secretary told me she’d gone to have lunch with Jaspar Clift. He says she did no such thing. He hasn’t seen her.”

Bonnie murmured dreamily, “Busy boys, aren’t they. This morning it was me they wanted. Now it’s another woman.” She frowned. “They’re fickle.”

I said, “Why did they want you in the first place?”

“I didn’t ask them.”

I said, “Does Aggie really think you’ve been horsing around with me or with Clift? Did he put them on you to scare you?”

She stared in amazement. “Don’t talk through the side of your head, Zane. Aggie knows how I feel about him. He trusts me.”

I said, “I could tell him a few items that might change his trust.”

She got up. “Go ahead and try. I squared him away after you left this morning. Anything you say won’t even get a listen.”

She had all her bets coppered. She had an explanation—or a dodge—for everything. I retired from the field—on my shield. I said, “How about giving me a lift down to the
Temoc?
Vann swiped my car.”

“Do you think Jaspar is holding the fair Irma for ransom?” She smiled sweetly at me, closed one eye, opened it, closed the other, and hiccupped. She said, “Keys in my bag. Help yourself.”

She put her head against the back of the chair and went to sleep.