Night Walker (17 page)

Young glanced at her again. She was leaning against the counter on the far side of the kitchen. She had put away her own gun as well as the gun she had found in the drawer, tucking them both inside the snug waistband of her shorts. The brace of pistols gave her — with her slim, bare legs, bright hair, and rakish boy’s cap — something of the air of a musical comedy pirate; but there was no corresponding gaiety in her small, freckled face. Young put the skillet off the hot burner and moved across the room to put two slices of bread in the toaster on the table in the breakfast nook.

He spoke quietly. “Why don’t you wake up, Red?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” he said, “that I think you’ve been played for a sucker; and that’s giving you the benefit of the doubt.”

“Giving
me
the benefit —!” The small girl by the door straightened up angrily. “What the hell are you talking about, anyway?”

Young said, “When Larry Wilson needed a place to hide out, he went to his wife, not to you. Think it over, small fry.”

“I don’t believe it!”

“You don’t believe that he came here? Then where did this hypothetical murder take place? Is it your theory that he was killed some place else and brought here just to use up a stray piece of mooring chain that was lying around? That chain’s your only evidence of murder, Red; you’d better stick to it.”

She flushed beneath the freckles. “Well, if Larry did come here, it wasn’t to hide out. He had nothing to be ashamed of.”

“The Navy Department seems to have thought different when they fired him.”

“That doesn’t mean anything, and you know it!” she said angrily. “If you know anything at all, you know why he was fired. He wasn’t fired for anything
he’d
done; he was fired because they couldn’t have a man in a sensitive position whose wife was mixed up in—”

“Oh,” Young said. “I see! That’s what he told you, that it was all Elizabeth’s fault!”

“You’re damn right it was all her fault!” Bonita Decker cried. “And if Larry hadn’t been so damn soft-hearted; if he hadn’t been looking for a way to
protect the little tramp just because he happened to marry her in a weak moment—!”

Young waited for her to go on, but she did not, and he said, “I wouldn’t say that Larry Wilson was a softhearted person, but then I’m prejudiced. Being beaten up with a tire-iron does that to me.” He held up his hand quickly, as she started to protest. “Never mind, Red. I know you don’t believe that, although it happens to be true. You don’t believe anything you don’t hear direct from our soft-hearted Mr. Wilson’s gentlemanly lips, do you? The guy’s a pretty convincing talker, I’ll admit. I had a chat with him myself, and found him persuasive as hell. But let’s take a look at a few facts. Wilson came here that night; you’ll grant that much?”

“I — I suppose so,” she said reluctantly, as if afraid that the admission was a tactical mistake.

“All right,” Young said. “He came here. We won’t specify the reason, since we can’t agree on it. Let’s just see what happened next. Wilson and Elizabeth had a disagreement. He got rough, and she grabbed a gun and put a bullet into him—”

“So she
did
shoot him!”

“That’s right,” Young said. “She did. But he came to in the boat on his way to a watery grave, all wrapped up in that chain you’ve been worrying about. He was kind of mad about the whole deal, I gather. He bullied Dr. Henshaw, who’d been drafted
for the burial detail, into putting him ashore and keeping quiet about it. Henshaw says the bullet just laid our boy’s scalp open for an inch or two and stunned him for a while; as far as I’m concerned, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer fellow. He’s still one scalp wound and a broken nose up on me.... Anyway, Henshaw was scared silly and did as he was told. He dumped the chain and kept his mouth shut, letting Elizabeth go on believing that she was a self-made widow. And now we come to the interesting part, Red. Here is our hero, wounded, dressed in some odds and ends of clothes that happened to be aboard the boat — they’d pulled my uniform off him and burned it, thinking he was dead... What’s the matter?”

Bonita Decker said scornfully, “Am I supposed to be believing this fairy tale? What’s Larry supposed to have been doing in your uniform?”

Young said, “Never mind that for the moment. Stay with this. The man’s been shot; he hasn’t much in the way of money or clothes, so what does he do? Does he go running to his little red-haired girlfriend who has lots of money and a nice cruising sailboat for him to hide aboard?” He looked at her. “Well, does he?”

She said, “You know I don’t believe any of this.”

Young said, “And I don’t have to believe that you’re innocently involved, either, Red. You’ve been
doing an awful lot of snooping and an awful little bit of going to the police with what you’ve dug up. Don’t get on your high horse with me; at least I’ve called the F.B.I. As far as I know, you haven’t called anybody. There’s only one thing in your favor, and that’s the fact that apparently Larry Wilson hasn’t got in touch with you at all since he’s been back here; and of course I don’t even know that’s true.”

The toast popped up, startling them both. He turned to take it out.

“And suppose it is true,” the girl said defiantly, “what difference does it make?”

“Well,” Young said, “I’d say it indicates that he knows you wouldn’t have any part of what he’s been doing, which is the only reason I’m talking to you like this, Red. Wake up, will you? Don’t you realize the runaround you’ve been getting? He came to you with some sob story and got you to have that boat built, didn’t he? And then the two of you spent a lot of time on it together? Everybody around here thought you were having a hot affair — even Elizabeth pretended that she thought you were lovers — but it wasn’t anything like that, was it? You were just doing a favor for an old friend, weren’t you; helping him out of a jam? You were giving him a hand in clearing his name... I don’t know why it is that every time they get the goods on one of those boys, there’s always some idealistic sap ready to carry the ball for him.”

He finally located the butter occupying a little compartment all its own in the big refrigerator. He kicked the door shut. “Wake up, kid!” he said without looking at her. “They were both in it together, Elizabeth and our boy, Larry. If they disagreed, it was only because she has a habit of losing her head in a pinch; maybe she was threatening to sell him out. Listen, I know that girl; she couldn’t conduct an operation like this if her life depended on it. She’s brittle; she cracks, when things get tough. When the Navy clamped down on Larry Wilson, he had to find somebody else to help him cover up and still give him an excuse for hanging around the water. You were elected.” He looked at her standing there, and he saw that he had shaken her. But she was not convinced; she started to protest. He shook his head quickly. “Don’t jump down my throat yet,” he said. “Let’s eat first.”

He poured a second cup of coffee for each of them, watching the girl, across the small table of the breakfast nook, cleaning up her plate with a youthful appetite seemingly unaffected by disillusionment or heartbreak. Her suspicion of him did not, apparently, reach to the food he had cooked. Seeing the way things were going, he shoved two more slices of bread into the toaster.

“It looks,” he said, “as if you hadn’t eaten for a while.”

She spoke without taking her attention from the business at hand. “I told you I spent the day in Washington; and when I drove past this place on the way home it was all dark... I sneaked down the drive and saw that her car was gone. Well, I didn’t feel like doing any poking around in the dark in a dress and high heels and without a gun; and when I got home everybody’d had dinner and the cook was still in the kitchen and she raises hell if I help myself and more hell if I ask her to fix something for me, and then Mother asks if I can’t be a little more considerate
about mealtimes and Mark shoves his big oar in —” She drew a long breath, swallowing. “Anyway, I figured I’d meet up with a hamburger or something sooner or later, so I just changed my clothes and came here. Your light was on, so I drove right up... You scramble a mean egg, sailor. Is there any more of that toast?”

“Coming up,” he said. “So you’re a Navy junior, Red?”

“Yes, but I didn’t know it showed.”

He said, “You said something about seeing an old shipmate of your dad’s in Washington. I suppose there’s a lot of Navy people around here; after all, Annapolis is right down the Bay.”

“That’s right,” she said. “Yes, Dad was Navy. Captain. Class of—”

Young grinned. “Don’t waste that Academy routine on me, Red. U.S.N.R., remember?”

“Dad was killed in the war,” she said, rather stiffly.

“Sorry,” Young said; and after a moment he added deliberately, because he wanted more information about her, “He must have had plenty of insurance.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your mother isn’t buying you yachts and convertibles on a service pension, is she?”

“Mother married again,” she said. “If it’s any of your damn business. Mark’s kind of a lemon, as far as I’m concerned, but the money’s nice.” There was
silence between them for a while; then she moved her shoulders briefly, as if to dismiss her momentary annoyance at his prying, and leaned back comfortably in the seat facing him. “I could use a cigarette while that toast’s making.”

“Sorry,” he said, patting his empty shirt pocket. “I haven’t been smoking; my nose hasn’t felt up to it. There’s probably some of Elizabeth’s around.” He saw a pack on the kitchen counter and started to rise.

Bonita Decker said, “Never mind. I wouldn’t smoke one of hers if I was on a desert island.”

Young said, “Relax, Red. Save your adrenalin. Don’t take it out on Philip Morris; he hasn’t done anything to you.” He brought her the pack and waited, standing over her with the matches; presently she shrugged irritably, took a cigarette, and let him light it for her. Then the toast popped up and she turned away to take care of that, while he sat down again.

“You’re a funny guy,” she said at last, glancing at him sideways. When he did not react to this, she said, “I thought you were crazy about her.”

“Elizabeth? What makes you think I’m not?”

“The way you were talking about her a little while ago. Telling me she’s brittle—”

Young said, surprised, “Well, she is, but what’s that got to do with it?” He grinned quickly. “Lots of men
like their women brittle and helpless, Red; something you might kind of keep in mind. It makes a man feel big, to have somebody depending on him.”

She turned to regard him critically across the table.

“You’re pretty big already, sailor. I shouldn’t think you’d need a helpless female around to make you feel bigger.” He colored slightly under her scrutiny. She said, very young and positive, “I know I could never love anybody I couldn’t respect.”

Young said, “People are good and bad. You can love the good and make allowances for the bad. What about you and Larry Wilson?”

She said, “There are only two things wrong with that argument: first, Larry isn’t bad, and, second, I’m not in love with him.”

“Then why are you sticking your neck out for him?”

“Because he’s a good friend of mine,” she said. “Of course, you’re probably the virile type who can’t understand a man and a girl being friends... Because he’s a good friend, and because he was swell to me once when I needed somebody very badly.” After a moment, she went on: “Of course, I’ll admit I was mad about him for a while when I was a kid — honest, I idolized the guy — but, well, it sort of does something to your faith in a man to see him make a complete jackass of himself over somebody you can tell with half an eye is going to be just a total loss to the
community, if you know what I mean. I mean, it makes you kind of take a deep breath and wonder just what the hell he’d be seeing in you, if he should ever look at you the way he looked at her. Not that Larry ever did. I don’t think he’s yet caught on to the fact that I’m almost old enough to vote....”

Suddenly she was telling him all about Larry Wilson, asking him to understand Larry Wilson as she understood Larry Wilson. The picture that emerged from her description, of a gentle and kindly young man whose only flaws were a tendency to take himself and his family a little too seriously, and a habit of babying a boat through a squall instead of driving her as a real racing skipper should — not from lack of courage, the girl hastened to point out, but just from a love for boats — this picture was somewhat difficult for Young to reconcile with his own impression of Wilson as, even at best, a rather hearty and loud-mouthed type. He said as much.

Bonita Decker said, “Well, that’s just what I mean. Larry’s fundamentally a shy person, and he compensates in front of strangers by putting on an act like that. He never really learned how to get along with other boys, if you know what I mean. His mother kept him in Little Lord Fauntleroy suits till he was twelve. I don’t know how he ever managed to get her to let her precious boy go out on the nasty water where he might get wet or even drown.” She shook
her head quickly. “I used to make fun of him myself, the way kids do; I mean, he’s kind of a prissy person. You should see the way he keeps his boats; he’ll have a fit when he sees the way the
Amberjack’s
been let go this spring... He called me up one day after Dad had been killed,” she said with an abrupt change of tone. “I was hanging around the house wishing I was dead, too. I didn’t even know he knew me from the other teenage kids around here; this was during the war, remember, and he was already out of college and working in Washington, commuting every day with a bunch of other men who couldn’t find a place to live here. He said he was sailing a Comet in the Sunday races and needed a crew, and somebody’d told him I knew the difference between a square knot and a bowline.

“I knew what somebody’d told him, of course. They’d told him that the little Decker girl had been moping around like a sick cat ever since the news came about the Captain. It made me mad; I told him to stick to his work in Washington and stop trying to build up the morale on the home front, I was doing fine, thanks, without any help from him. He said he wasn’t worrying about my morale, he was worrying about his boat, and did I want to help him sail it in the series or should he get somebody else? I went, and pretty soon he had me slaving over that damn little boat of his all week while he was in Washington,
and Sundays we’d race. We trimmed the pants off them, too. Two years running.”