The Intimidators (29 page)

Considerably later in the day, standing on the flying bridge beside Harriet after docking in the familar marina, I watched Mr. and Mrs. Phipps, after expressing their gratitude once more, moving to a parked car with their daughter, whose costume still consisted of a borrowed windbreaker below which dangled some intriguing rags and ribbons of sheer blue nylon. Back in civilization, in the presence of her parents, Loretta hadn’t had much to say by way of goodbye. Well, it wasn’t as if we’d spent the past hours of peril in each other’s arms.

“She’s pretty,” Harriet conceded reluctantly. “I didn’t gather from what Bill said that she’s too damn bright, however.”

I said, “Cut it out, Hattie. You’re not jealous, so why be snide?”

She laughed. “The old cat instinct, I guess,” she said. Her smile faded. “No, I’m not jealous,” she said. “Not of you and another woman. Not ever, Matt. Not after what you did to me down there.”

“What did I do?” I asked innocently.

“You got yourself into that comer deliberately, counting on me—on my softheartedness—to bail you out.”

“That’s right,” I said. “More or less.”

“In other words, you played me for a sucker.”

“Call it that,” I said. “Actually, the original script was slightly different. I was counting on Haseltine to take the other boat out of there with the innocent bystanders. He knew enough to do it. You and I would have waited in the outboard—you tied hand and foot, if necessary. Either you’d have come through with some life-saving suggestions before the time was up, or we’d have gone to hell together. That was the way I had it figured, loosely; but Miss Phipps and Mr. Haseltine loused me up by running off to play hide-and-seek at the critical moment; so I put on my hero-martyr act for you instead, and fortunately it worked just as well, or maybe even a little better. You might have got stubborn, the other way, and decided to die just so you could take me with you.”

Her eyes were hot and angry. “You admit that you faked—”

“Faked, hell!” I said sharply. “What was fake about it? The lousy run had to be made by somebody, goddamn it, and I didn’t notice a long line of volunteers standing by, did you? What was so wrong about my trying to restack the deck slightly in my favor, after you’d worked hard to shuffle it the other way? Sure I did my damnedest to look brave and noble and bring tears of admiration to your eyes, not to mention words of wisdom to your lips. What the hell was I supposed to do, just drive that lousy boat out of there and get us all shot up in modest silence, when you probably had some gimmick that would give us a bit of a chance?”

She checked an angry retort, hesitated, and said, “That’s another thing. How did you know I could help, at that point, even if I wanted to?”

“You said it yourself the other night,” I said. “You’re not a pro at killing, you said, but you are at seamanship. I have great faith in pros, Hattie. If it involved boats and water, and you wanted to badly enough, I knew you’d come up with some kind of an answer. And you did.”

“Nevertheless,” she said, “you counted on being able to crack me, and you did, with your phony dramatics. I meant to have you killed, and instead I got sentimental and saved your crummy life, like any mushy ingénue.”

That was what she hated me for now, I realized; the fact that I’d shattered the image she’d had of herself as an efficient and ruthless avenger on the trail of the man who’d wronged her.

I grinned. “And then you came out and found me and hauled me ashore.”

She said, rather sulkily, “Hell, that’s a good little boat. I couldn’t just leave it drifting out there, could I?” She drew a long breath. “I’m through with you, Matt. That sounds corny, but it’s accurate. You’ll never have to worry about any danger from me again. On the other hand, I don’t ever want to see you again.”

“Why?” I asked. “Because I’m the one person who knows that beneath that tough lady-skipper exterior beats a heart of pure gold?”

She said, “Get the hell off my bridge, you sonofabitch!”

I looked around as I walked away along the docks, wondering about the
Red Baron,
but the souped-up sex-barge was nowhere to be seen. I also wondered, a little, about a girl named Lacey Rockwell who, I’d been informed, had wandered into a Key West police station yesterday with an outlandish story of being kidnaped and held prisoner for weeks, for no reason she could imagine. Well, she had good news to sustain her: her brother had turned up. After spending a month out in the Atlantic bucking adverse winds and getting nowhere, young Harlan Rockwell had apparently given up his plan for a preliminary cruise through the Caribbean and headed westwards, ducking through the Windward Passage and pausing in Kingston, Jamaica to send his sister a reassuring postcard, which had just caught up with her, along with one from Panama, telling her the wide Pacific lay ahead and the great South Seas adventure was well on its way....

Mac was waiting in my cabin when I walked in. He was really giving this one the personal touch.

“What’s the bad news now, sir?” I asked.

“Good news first,” he said. “Various important people are eager to thank, personally, the heroic operative whose reckless courage...” He stopped. “You know, Eric, that’s not a trait we try to foster in our agents. Anyway, they want to meet you and shake your hand, sirs and barons all.”

“I can hardly wait,” I said. “Now that I’m properly prepared, how about the bad news?”

“Washington is perturbed, as usual,” he said. “Did you have a pleasant voyage?”

“Not bad,” I said. “Scratch one millionaire; no other

serious casualties.” I drew a long breath. “Delete that. He wasn’t a bad guy, particularly in a tight spot. Where the hell would a high-priced character like that learn to work a chopper like an expert?”

“Korea,” Mac said. “He was in the Marines.’'

“What’s Washington perturbed about?”

“Some favored U.S. oil companies had the inside track as far as some Caribbean oil was concerned. The new and rather shaky island government was promised that, in return for various contracts and concessions, certain revolutionary, or counterrevolutionary, elements would be taken care of. Well, they were taken care of, all right; at least one important group of them. However, a firm with connections behind the iron curtain, as it used to be known, is claiming the credit for removing this thorn in the side of the party in power. Furthermore, it is documenting its claim with very sharp and gory color slides in great numbers. It looks as if this concern may, as a result, be given favored treatment where the offshore petroleum is concerned, an outcome very distressing to Washington, particularly since large amounts of expensive high explosives seem to have been wasted in an attempt to achieve the same purpose—although of course nobody is saying exactly how or where they were employed.”

“I was looking the other way, sir,” I said. “I’m afraid I can throw no light on the subject.”

“To be sure. There have also been some wild accusations in Cuban circles, concerning sinister capitalist aggressions against Communist territory.”

“Jeez,” I said. “I sure missed a lot, out fishing like I was, didn’t I, sir?”

He looked at me for a moment. “Well, maybe some day they’ll learn. Security is all very well, but if we are not told where the sensitive toes are located, we cannot very well be held responsible for stepping on them, can we, Eric?”

It was very nice of him. It meant that, although I was the big brain who’d had the genius idea of getting help from Hattie’s Communist friends—thus unwittingly giving them a crack at some desirable oil properties—he was backing me all the way. Well, he usually does. Maybe that’s why we stay with him, instead of moving to the glamor agencies where you’re apt to find yourself hastily offered up as a sacrificial goat any time there’s a breath of trouble in Washington.

Mac said, “Oh, you may be interested in hearing that a gentleman named Manderfield has been arrested for the gangland-type slaying of one Henry Morgan Valeski, usually known by his middle name, reputed to be a syndicate enforcer of some renown.”

I said, “I don’t know what we’d do if we didn’t have the syndicate to blame things on. So they reeled in Manderfield? It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy, but do you want to know something funny, sir? He didn’t know, either.”

“What do you mean?”

“Their security had kept him in the dark, just as ours had kept me. He didn’t know there was important oil involved, any more than I did. He was strongly opposed to making any kind of a deal with me, because he couldn’t see what they had to gain by it. Nobody’d told him. Since we’ve got to live with it ourselves, it’s nice that they’re considerate enough to handicap themselves the same way, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Very nice,” Mac said, rising. “One more thing. The lady with former Maryland connections. Would you say a kind of amnesty was in order there? As much as can be arranged unofficially and discreetly?”

I thought of the handsome lady charterboat captain telling me to get the hell off her bridge, and grinned. “All the way, sir,” I said. “All the way.”

He left. An hour later, shaved and bathed and respectably attired, for a change, I started out to get something to eat and drink. Although it wasn’t quite dinner time yet, I seemed to have a fairly constant craving for nourishment There had been no real hardships; but the emergency stores on Hattie’s little boat had been rather lacking in variety, and what I’d managed to grab from the galley of her big boat, after being rescued, hadn’t been quite gourmet fare either. I was reaching for the doorknob when somebody knocked. I hesitated, thought of guns and knives and things, said to hell with it, and opened.

“Yes?” I said to the strange girl in the smart yellow dress who stood there. Then I recognized the windbreaker jacket she carried over her arm, and I looked again and said, “Oh, it’s you. I didn’t recognize you with your clothes on.”

I’d got kind of fond of, or at least accustomed to, the damp, seminude, stringy-haired kid with whom I had, for a day or two, shared a platonic shipwreck, if you want to call it that. This was somebody else entirely. This was the lovely blonde creature whose selfconscious snapshot had convinced me that she’d never mean anything to me, no matter what she might mean to a guy named Haseltine. Well, I’ve been wrong before. I took the jacket she handed me and tossed it on a nearby chair.

“I’m hungry again,” said my glamorous visitor. “I thought you might be, too. Matt.”

“What?”

“I told you I’d let you know when I found out. Well, I’ve found out. With your help and... and Bill’s, and maybe even Leo’s. I’m really Loretta Phipps at last. I’m not just anti-Amanda-Mayne; I knew it the minute I saw her at the dock. She was just a nice lady who was my mother; not something I had to fight to break free from. Do you understand?”

“Not really,” I said. “But we can have lots of fun while you explain it to me.”

We did.