The Revengers (31 page)

“Where are we going?” I asked.

Peterson took us away with a flourish that was wasted on a family sedan. I mean, yanking the lever of an automatic transmission dramatically into DRIVE isn’t nearly as impressive as working your way expertly through the gears of a five-speed box.

“Islander Marina,” he said. “They went over to see a boat that’s docked there, to find out who’s on board.”

“A fifty-footer called Ser—Jan, I suppose,” I said sourly, and he nodded. “What the hell steered you there?” I asked.

“Well, you did, really,” he said a bit maliciously. “I mean, all we had was a story about a mysterious powerboat about that size; and then we talked to your agent, who’d been following us. Elly insisted on getting in touch with you after we’d heard what Kettleman had to say. The black boy checked home base to see where you were, and his wife said you were on your way. She also mentioned that you’d been inquiring about just such a boat and she’d located it right here in Nassau. . . . Well, you know how Elly is when she’s on the trail of a story. Wild horses couldn’t have stopped her from going over and taking a peek at the damned boat while she waited for you to arrive.”

“Fred ought to learn to keep his mouth shut about official business,” I said. “But I wouldn’t call him a black boy where he can hear you.”

“Well, anyway, she should be safe with him, he has a gun,” Peterson said, unimpressed. “I had to leave mine in Miami.”

I didn’t tell him I had his well-traveled revolver under my belt; he was enough of a menace unarmed. “Just what did that Kettleman guy tell Elly, anyway?”

Peterson hesitated; then he shrugged and said, “A hell of a story, is what he told us. He said the ship ran down a sailboat and the whole world blew up.”

I frowned. “Go over that again, slowly. Are you saying that Kettleman told you—told Elly—that the
Fairfax Constellation
was involved in a collision with a sailing yacht? The third mate with the oddball name, Jurgen Hinkampf, never mentioned a collision to her, or anybody else, as far as I know.”

“Well, would he?” Peterson was scornful of my stupidity. “Think, fella. I mean, he was responsible, right? It was his ship and his watch. Was he going to announce to the world that he’d been writing a letter to his girl or something and his seaman-assistant had been taking a snooze or something while that goddam great tanker was crashing along on autopilot with nobody looking—and running down a yacht in the dark? Hell, it would have meant Hinkampf’s career right there; and probably a court trial and prison as well. But nobody on board had seen that goddam sailboat except him and Kettleman, and he thought Kettleman was dead, so he just kept quiet about it.”

I said, “Tell me about the collision. What’s Kettleman’s story?”

Peterson moved his muscular shoulders in another shrug. “Well, normally you’d hardly call it a collision from the tanker’s standpoint; a big ship like that would go right over an ordinary yacht without anybody on board noticing a thing—like a loaded semi squashing a bug on' the freeway —except that Kettleman just happened to remember that he was supposed to be on watch. He got up and took a casual look through the bridge windows as they smashed along at fourteen knots; and there, dead ahead of the ship, were the weak running lights and the dim little white sails of the yacht. He yelled for the officer, the third mate, who came running; but it was too late. There was nothing they could do. Those things take three or four miles to stop— hell, the really big ones take eight or nine—and they even take a good part of a mile to just start toning after you crank the steering wheel hard over. So the two of them just stood there frozen, out on the wing of the bridge, watching those little sails disappear under the bow, expecting maybe to feel a tiny jar or crunch and suddenly . . . KABOOM! The whole works went up like that volcano, Mt. St. Helens. Kettleman was blown clear off the bridge into the water and left behind—the ship was still doing thirteen or fourteen knots, of course, even if it had just been blasted wide open forward—but he found a hatch cover that had gotten blown overboard at the same time and crawled onto that. He saw the ship finally come to a stop a couple of miles away, sinking by the bow and burning like a torch.”

When he paused, I asked, “What was that you were saying about a motorboat?”

Peterson made an irritable gesture. “Don’t rush me, fella! Let me tell it, huh? Naturally, Kettleman tried to paddle toward the ship, hoping at least one of the lifeboats had gotten launched and would pick him up. Then he heard a distant roaring sound and looked around to see a big sport-fisherman coming up fast—throwing a bow wave like a destroyer, Kettleman said. There was a funny thing, it was running without lights, he said; just the spidery superstructure against the sky and the black shadow of the hull and that white bow wave. But he didn’t think too much about that at the time; he was just waiting for it to get close enough for him to attract its attention. He thought, of course, that it was racing to the rescue of the burning ship and would pass right by him. Instead, it slowed down before it got to him and circled around as if it was looking for something. Kettleman saw a light winking in the water, and the boat stopped and took something aboard. Kettleman said it was big and black and shiny; he thought it was a man in a wet suit. Then the sportfisherman swung around and roared back the way it had come, leaving the ship to sink and the crew to drown. Kettleman was pretty bitter about that. He kept drifting farther and farther away. In the morning, when the official rescue craft arrived on the scene, he could see them on the horizon but they never saw him. Two days later a fisherman almost ran him down, and got him aboard, and took him to a little village on one of the outlying cays of the Bahamas. Communications were lousy and it was almost a week before arrangements could be made to have him moved to Nassau for better treatment of his burns.”

It was an interesting story, but at the moment the most interesting thing about it, to me, was that Mr. Warren Peterson, who didn’t like me at all, would bother to tell it to me in such minute and loving detail. Even if Eleanor had asked him to bring me up to date as we drove, in order to save time, I’d have expected a brief and surly synopsis instead of this lengthy saga of the sea that had now brought us clear through the city of Nassau proper and onto the bridge that led across the harbor to Paradise Island. Peterson stopped to pay the toll. As we came off the bridge I asked him to pull into the first likely parking spot for a moment. The warning I’d been given was still very clear in my mind: Over and out. I’d been doing some careful thinking.

“Look,” I said, “I don’t know what the hell we’ll be running up against, but everything indicates that the people on that sportfishing boat aren’t very nice. So I guess you’d better have this back.”

I held out the Colt .38 Special with the four-inch barrel. There was a moment of suspense as he took it and looked at it, recognizing it; then he tucked it away and said sulkily, “It took you a while to get around to mentioning you had it, fella.”

I said, “We didn’t have a hell of a lot of fun the last time you had it, fella.”

“Okay, okay, so maybe I was a little hasty when we first met up in Elly’s hotel room. You got one, too?”

I showed him the pipsqueak .25. “If they don’t just die laughing at the gun maybe I can tickle them to death with the bullets,” I said. “Well, let’s hope we won’t need all the firepower. Let’s go see what Elly and Fred have been up to that they shouldn’t.”

Peterson started the car again and soon turned onto a curving park-like drive that swung gracefully through the trees to a parking lot overlooking a small marina. The basin was tiny compared to the giant installations popular in the States, but the boats it sheltered were big and flashy. There were several expensive sportfishermen with long outriggers that looked like sailboat masts complete with rigging, and tall tuna towers that looked like oil derricks. I remembered fishing out West as a boy. My equipment had consisted of a pair of patched rubber boots and a battered fly rod. These characters seemed to be going at it the hard way—at least the expensive way—but, hell, it’s not for me to tell somebody else how to get his kicks. Or her kicks.

“There’s the taxi,” Peterson whispered. “Looks like your Freddie-boy is waiting for us. I don’t see Elly.”

I said, “Hell, the brash way she operates, she probably got herself invited aboard for a breakfast interview. Which boat?”

“Number three from the sea wall, over on the right. The one with the dark blue hull.”

I studied the craft for a moment, seeing no lights in the cabin and no signs of life on board. I said, “Okay, park on this side where we’re not so conspicuous, and we’ll slip across and hear what Fred has to say.”

The lot was not very big and it was considerably less than half full of cars. The taxi Peterson had pointed out to me—another anonymous medium-sized American sedan—was parked facing the water, giving Fred a good view of the basin below. As I started across the paved open space with Peterson close behind me, I noted that a hint of dawn was visible through the trees to my left; but the boats below were dark and the cars around us were dark. There was no breeze and nothing moved; and Fred still hadn’t looked around. Okay.
Over and out
. Reaching the taxi, I knocked on the door on the driver’s side, and got no reaction. I did what was expected of me: I grabbed the door handle and opened the door, and Fred’s body spilled out limply onto the pavement of the parking lot. I gave the gasp of shock and horror appropriate to the occasion, recoiling sharply. Something touched me in the back.

“Drop the gun,” Peterson said behind me. “Drop it and raise your hands. Sorry about this, fella, but I had to make the deal. I give them you and they give me Elly, right? Thanks for making it easier by returning my gun.”

“What happened to Fred?”

“Your black boy tried to reach the phone to tell his wife to warn you, regardless of their threats. He fought so hard they had to use a knife. . . . Stand still! I told you to drop that gun. . . ."

He was still talking as I turned around and shot him with the .25. I was aware that we were no longer alone in the parking lot. Shadowy figures were closing in, but first things first. Warren Peterson was looking at me, startled and reproachful: once more I was breaking all the rules he’d learned from the silver screen. He’d pointed a gun at me, that symbol of power, that magic wand, again he’d pointed a gun at me, and I still hadn’t done what he’d told me to do. The TV formula just wasn’t working at all and he was very distressed about it.

Then the dreadful truth dawned on him that he was being shot at, hell he was being shot, and he was holding a gun. He was supposed to be shooting back. In fact, he was supposed to have started shooting when I first turned, before that first shocking little bullet went into him. Now my second bullet hit him and at last he made an effort to aim his .38 my way—re-aim it my way—but it was too late now and his heart really wasn’t in it. One of the no-kill kids. My third bullet struck him and he went down, dropping the powerful weapon he’d never fired.

After three, the little .25 remembered it had been swimming and jammed; but where I’d put them, three would be enough. It’s not really a toy, even though it looks like one. They were closing in on me now. I turned and heaved the jammed pistol at one, and another one sapped me expertly from behind.

She was a square brown girl with short black hair. She looked oddly fuzzy around the edges; but careful consideration inclined me to the theory that it was my vision that was fuzzy, not the girl. At first glance she seemed like just a sturdy, rather attractive, tomboy type, the kind who’ll take you on and probably beat you at any sport you choose; but you’ll have to run her down with dogs to put a dress and high heels on her—and then she’ll deck you with a hard right to the jaw if, in an amorous moment, you try to get them off her, later; because she hasn’t quite discovered, yet, what being a girl is all about.

But at second glance, it became apparent that this husky young woman belonged in the special category of those who’d made the earthshaking discovery, all right, but hadn’t liked it. She had an athletic, well-shaped body, deepbreasted and full-hipped, obviously in very good condition. Her face was handsome, too, deeply and smoothly tanned with good features, good enough to survive and even thrive in the company of the short mannish hairdo, if there is such a thing as a mannish hairdo these unisex days. She was wearing white tennis shoes, the kind with the deathgrip yachting soles; white sailcloth shorts that weren’t so snug you couldn’t stand it; and one of the elastic tops, strapless, that look like giant, glorified Ace bandages. This one was red and made her bare shoulders look very brown and strong. Her bare legs were brown and strong, too. I had a particularly good view of them since I was lying on the floor—excuse me, cabin sole—at her feet.

I thought about it for a moment and decided that if there was a cabin sole there had to be a cabin, and if there was a cabin there had to be a boat. Very good reasoning, Helm. Intelligence seems to be returning. Now that you’ve gotten yourself located on a boat, can you figure out how to get yourself off it? With the person you came here to liberate, of course; assuming she’s somewhere around?

But that was rushing it. For the moment it was enough to know that I was on a boat, a powerful motorboat by the sound and vibration and, yes, the boat was under way. I also knew, from Brent’s description and the snapshots in the Lorca file I’d finally got around to studying on the plane, that the muscular young lady standing over me was Miss Serena Lorca, daughter of Senator George Winfield Lorca, also known in days past as Manuel Sapio or Kid Sapio or The Sapper. And I remembered with a sudden pang of regret and guilt that I had lost somebody of importance. I had lost a guy named Fred, who’d died fighting on my behalf, and now we’d never settle that old disagreement between us. . . .

“Can you sit up?”

It was the deep female voice I’d heard once before over the phone, in Giuseppe Velo’s penthouse. It seemed like a lot of voice for so young a girl. Not trusting my own voice yet, I nodded, but that was a mistake, reminding me that I’d recently been hit on the head with a sap or kindred object.