The Intimidators (9 page)

“I’m also a little dubious about the intrepid young Mr. Rockwell. Why would anybody go to the trouble of molesting a penniless kid in a more-or-less homemade boat, when there are more millionaires around for the picking?” I shrugged. “Of course, we’re just playing guessing games. We don’t have any real leads, unless you do.”

“No,” he said, “but you do. You have Haseltine—”

“Who doesn’t know anything, even after spending more money than you and I see in a year.”

Pendleton glanced at me sharply. “Are you naïve, Helm, or are you hoping I am?”

“You think the Texan does know something?”

“I feel there’s something melodramatic and theatrical about the way the man has flung money around and, apparently, even persuaded a very secret agency of his government to lend him assistance, to unravel the mysteries of what would seem, at first glance, to be a very ordinary shipwreck in an area where such incidents are common. He looks to me like a gentleman with guilt on his conscience trying to impress everybody with his innocence. And remember, he was already searching busily and noisily for his lost Loretta weeks before there had been any other incidents of the same nature. An ungenerous person might say that he knew there had been foul play involved long before there was any real reason to think so.”

I looked at the Britisher with respect. He’d put into words what had been only a vague uneasiness on my part. I said, “Okay, I’ll admit the guy has possibilities, but he’ll be a tough nut to crack.”

“You also have another lead, Miss Lacey Rockwell, who undoubtedly does know something, or somebody wouldn’t be trying to ensure her permanent silence.” Pendleton paused to drain his glass. “I am about to do something reprehensible, old chap. I am about to ask for your cooperation, in spite of the fact that, as you say, my chief does not care for you very much. I would like to be kept informed of what you obtain from these people. In return, I can promise to let you know anything we turn up, not to mention making things easy for you as long as you’re here in the Islands.”

I said carefully, “I have nothing against international cooperation,
amigo
; but don’t overestimate my resources. Getting something on Haseltine isn’t going to be easy, even assuming there’s something to be got. The Rockwell girl undoubtedly does know something, and I’m certainly going to make a stab at finding out what it is, but I haven’t
got
her, as you put it.”

“But you’re wrong, old chap,” said Pendleton calmly. “You most certainly do have her. Go up to your room and see.”

She was lying on the bed fully dressed, which was a relief in a way. I don’t mean to imply that I object seriously to naked women in my bed, but one likes to meet a lady with a little originality. That nudie act has been pretty heavily overdone.

There were a number of melodramatic responses I could have made, from raping her to heaving her out into the hall, but after all, I’d made my point. The hostility routine had served its purpose. I merely stood over her, therefore, until she decided to go through the motions of waking up and discovering, to her shocked amazement, of course, that she was no longer alone. She sat up quickly. After a moment, she smoothed down the jacket of the white pantsuit I’d seen before, and pushed the long, Alice-in-Wonderland hair out of her eyes. She was really quite a pretty girl, in a bouncy, blue-eyed sort of way, and I bad all the normal impulses I was supposed to have, finding her like that, but I repressed them firmly.

I said, “You’re a persistent little bitch, aren’t you, Miss Rockwell?”

She licked her lips, looking up at me. “I am,” she said, “a scared little bitch, Mr. Helm.”

“What scares you? Paul Menshek was buried yesterday, I’m told.”

“You know that’s not the end of it, not for either of us,” she said. “If Menshek was a paid assassin, as they claim, that means somebody hired him, doesn’t it? And if somebody hired one killer, he can hire another, can’t he? And if he’s mad enough at having his homicidal plans interfered with, he might even hire two, or give his one gunman a few extra bullets to use on you.”

“The word is cartridges, doll.”

“What?”

“A bullet by itself is just a small, inert hunk of metal, of no use to anyone. For homicidal purposes, it requires gunpowder to drive it, a primer to fire it, and a brass case to hold it all together until the time comes—in other words, a complete cartridge. I don’t know too much about firearms, but I do know that much.”

She said stiffly, sitting there: “You’re making fun of me.”

“Who, me? Make fun of an innocent girl who’s merely trying to scare me out of my pants, or get me out of them by other methods? Now, I wouldn’t do a thing like that, ma’am, not me!” She licked her lips once more, and didn’t speak. I went on: “Frankly, if there is a homicidal mastermind at work here, which hasn’t been proved, I figure he’s got too much sense to take on every casual citizen who happens to get involved in the action. Whether Menshek was just hired for the occasion, or was a permanent fixture on some Communist payroll, as the police seem to think, I have a strong hunch he was considered expendable and nobody’s likely to feel obliged to avenge him in spite of the fact that everybody’s trying to frighten me to death with the possibility, for one reason or another.”

“Everybody? Who else—”

“That friendly Mr. Pendleton used just about the same line. I figure he hoped that if he got me scared enough, I’d be more likely, wanting police protection, to spill my guts. He made just one slight miscalculation. I don’t have any guts to spill. Just as you’re miscalculating, Miss Rockwell. It’s no use your trying to seduce me or terrify me. I haven’t got what you want, either.”

She was on her feet, facing me. “Really! If you think I came in here to—” She stopped. I didn’t say anything. After a moment, she blushed very nicely and gave a half-embarrassed, little-girl giggle. “Well, at least I wasn’t obvious about it. I did keep all my clothes on, didn’t I?” I still said nothing. She said, “I’m being followed, Mr. Helm. Everywhere I go, there’s a man behind me.”

“Probably the Nassau police, making sure nobody takes another crack at you in their bailiwick. It should make you feel nice and safe.”

“He doesn’t
look
like a policeman.” After a moment, she said, “You said you didn’t have what I want. How do you know what I want, Mr. Helm?”

“Hell, it’s obvious,” I said. “You want a unique combination of Hercules and Einstein, the former to protect you and the latter to figure out what to protect you from. You’ve more or less indicated that you’re even willing to go to bed to get it. Well, I appreciate the offer, doll, but I’m just a plain old camera-journalist, and I don’t accept the work if I can’t deliver.”

She said, “You don’t have to be crude!”

I grinned. “Who’s crude? You didn’t find me draped invitingly over anybody’s bed, did you? There’s also another principle involved. I never take a job if I can’t trust the client, Miss Rockwell. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to take a shower. There’s something about a hospital—”

She said, “You’re still mad about those silly microphones, aren’t you? What was I supposed to do, in a foreign country, tell all those foreign policemen to go to hell?”

“What was I supposed to do, in a foreign country, tackle a professional foreign gunman with my bare hands, for a girl I didn’t even know?”

Her tongue made the round trip of her lips once more. “You didn’t know he was a professional gunman when you did it!” she snapped. Then she went on quickly: “I’m sorry. You did a brave thing and I shouldn’t belittle it I’m grateful, Mr. Helm, I really am!”

“Sure,” I said. “You just picked a funny way of showing it.”

Anger flared in her eyes once more. “You’re supposed to be a respectable photo-journalist. I checked. So why are you so sensitive about policemen? What I did didn’t hurt you a bit!”

“I could ask you the same question,” I said. “Why are you so sensitive about cops, Miss Rockwell? Sensitive enough that you were willing to betray a heroic chap who'd just got shot saving your life, merely to stay on the right side of the fuzz?” Her eyes wavered, and I went on: “Could it have something to do with this missing brother of yours that you’re supposed to be looking for so hard?”

“Supposed to be? I
am
looking for Harley—”

“Cut it out,” I said. “Your brother’s boat was last sighted a couple of hundred miles to the east and south, still doing fine. If he foundered or was sunk by a freighter or a whale or something—the funny thing is, several yachts have been sunk by whales recently, did you know that?—it happened well out in the Atlantic. But you’ve been flying around in a hired airplane, I’m told, all over the Bahamas, places where Harlan Rockwell couldn’t conceivably have sailed, drifted, swum, or crawled from his last reported position in any reasonable length of time.”

“I’ve been looking for a white light.”

Her voice was very soft, almost inaudible. I stared at her for a moment; then I shrugged, and said scornfully: “Sure, the great white light of understanding.”

“Or a white lighthouse. It’s something Harley said over the phone, long distance, just before he shoved off from Nassau. He said, if anything should happen to him, I should check around the white light. Or lighthouse. Afterwards, I couldn’t really remember exactly.... Mr. Helm, do you know how many white beacons and navigation lights there are in the Bahamas and up and down the Florida coast?”

I said, “It sounds screwy to me. If you think you’re going to intrigue me with some mysterious gimmick out of the late-late show—”

“I can’t help being a real lousy heroine,” she breathed. “I always wanted to be brave and strong but.... It was just too much, Mr. Helm. I’d almost been murdered, I’d had to look at one man with a smashed head and another with blood all over his face, I’d been badgered by policemen and told that if I just cooperated a little maybe we’d learn something that made sense of this... this crazy attack on me....” She stopped, and made a defeated little gesture, and let her hands fall. “Help me,” she said.

I looked at her bleakly. “That was really very good, doll,” I said. “Very good indeed. The despairing gesture, the tears you put in your voice—lovely, just lovely. No, damn it, don’t cry. We’ll just assume that you cry real pretty, too.” I paused, and went on slowly, “And we’ll assume that I’m just a sucker for a crying woman. I mean, as they say in the law courts, we’ll postulate that for the record, so we don’t have to waste time going through it all in detail.... Just what the hell do you expect me to be able to do for you, anyway?”

There was a long silence. At last she smiled faintly. “You’re a brute, Mr. Helm,” she said.

“And you’re a phony, Miss Rockwell,” I said.

“Of course I am,” she said. “But Harley really said that about the light. And I really am scared. And there really is a man following me; and if you take me to dinner at the Café Martinique, I’ll show him to you....”

Older descriptions of Nassau refer to Hog Island, the lengthy offshore strip of land that forms and shelters the city’s harbor, but you’ll find no geographical feature by that name on current maps. The developers got hold of it, had a tollbridge built out to it, and... well, you can’t expect people to invest several million dollars in a hunk of real estate named for pigs, can you? It is now referred to as Paradise Island. One of these days I suppose we’ll see Cape Cod—Codfish Cape, for God’s sake, how unromantic can you get?—renamed Perfection Promontory, or Angel Point.

For a short bridge, the toll was steep, two bucks, but the black taxi driver, who wasn’t Fred—I had Fred engaged in work unrelated to transportation—assured us that this entitled us to get off the island as well as onto it.

“The casino is right up the hill there, sir, just a few steps through the trees, if you and your lady would care for a little action after dinner,” he said as he pulled up before an impressive mansion. “Even if you’re not gambling folks, it’s worth seeing, and you can pick up a taxi easier up there than you can down here.”

“Thank you, driver,” I said, and gave him an adequate tip with the fare.

“Thank
you,
sir.”

I turned to escort Lacey into the place. She looked prettier and more fragile, having changed into a dress—the same abbreviated, sleeveless number I’d seen one morning at the hospital. Nevertheless, small as she was, she was still far from giving the impression that the first breeze would waft her away. Inside, a dignified white gent in a somber suit led us to our reserved table in the main dining room of the converted old luxury residence. Lacey had wanted me to ask for a spot out on the porch that overlooked the water of a nearby canal or inlet. She’d described it as very pleasant and picturesque, and I could now see that it was, but I’d pointed out to her that in view of her fears it wouldn’t really be very smart of us to make targets of ourselves outdoors, unnecessarily.

I was relieved to see that the clientele of the place, like the head waiter, was predominantly white. It was not a question of intolerance, quite the contrary. I simply needed a rest. It’s exhausting to be so very damned careful not to use a single word or phrase that could possibly be misconstrued as prejudice, particularly since they all seem to have convinced themselves that all slighting or fearful references to darkness or blackness in the English language are of racist origin, forgetting that fear of the black and hostile night, as opposed to the bright and friendly day, is basic to a lot of primitive cultures and some not so primitive. Hell, I used to be scared of the dark, as a kid, long before I ever saw a man with a black skin.

Among these light-skinned tourists I could relax and be my rude, crude self once more. “What do you think they are?” I asked my blond companion as we waited for our drinks. “Schoolteachers from Indianapolis, or millionaires from Miami Beach?”

She didn’t smile or answer the question. “Did you see him?” she asked instead.

“The guy in the Volkswagen, behind us? Sure I saw him. What makes you think he’s not just a cop keeping a friendly eye on you?”