A Killer is Loose (17 page)

Angers looked at him.

“All you folks going to build hospitals, huh?”

I got it. He was assuming we would play along with him. He was going to humor this guy. That’s what he was going to do. He’d heard Angers was batty, so he’d worked up his nerve and he was going to play along with it. I looked at him, trying to warn him, knowing how useless it was.

“Y’know, that’s a smart move, building a hospital out here. Nice, eh?” He smoked. Angers watched him.

“Hadn’t we better look around some more?” Lillian said.

“No,” Angers said. “Just wait a minute. Mr. Bourney interests me.”

Bourney sensed something.

“Go on, Mr. Bourney,” Angers said. “Tell me some more about it, will you?”

Bourney shrugged. “Just I think it’s a fine idea. I really do.”

“They sent you, didn’t they?” Angers said flatly.

“Sent me?”

“They sent you after me, didn’t they? They thought you could stop me, didn’t they? With your talk.”

“Ralph,” I said. “This is the real-estate man, remember?”

“Sure, pal. I remember a lot of things. That’s what they told me back there. ‘Go home, Ralph—sleep it off,’ they told me. ‘Take a rest, Ralph.’ They didn’t want me around, because they knew I was the one man who could get it done—get that hospital built. See?”

“Oh, please,” Lillian said. It came past her lips, a prayer. “Ralph,” she said, “let’s look around.”

“We are,” Angers said softly.

“Maybe that’s what you should do,” Bourney said. “Why don’t you sleep on it tonight? We could come back in the morning. You can’t build a hospital—”

The gun exploded. Twice, three times it roared in the darkness. I’d had the flashlight on Bourney, turning it there inadvertently as he spoke. A slug caught him in the head, the other two in the chest, and he sat down with the cigar in his mouth, and died.

T
HE ECHO
of the shots struck the apartment buildings down there and rattled back into the night. The sound rippled out across the park and the bay and then it was quite still. The crickets had ceased. Then slowly, one by one, they picked up their chorus again.

“Let’s go back to the car,” Angers said. “There’s no use standing around here.”

Lillian was looking down at the dead man. She had both hands to her face and it was as if she couldn’t bring her gaze away from down there.

The cigar smoldered in the grass.

“Bring the flashlight, pal. We might need it.” He didn’t look at Bourney, lying there on the grass. It made you want to do something, but there wasn’t anything you could do. Unless you were anxious to be there with Bourney. The gun dangled from Angers’ arm like an extra hand.

Lillian turned slowly, still staring, as if it were impossible to believe. It wasn’t.

“They sent him,” Angers said. “That’s what they did. It was probably Dr. Bernstein. He sent him, no doubt. Bernstein always was telling me to take it easy, always telling me I had the wrong slant on the matter. He’s the one who said I was crazy when I talked about transplanting the whole eye. Just because it hasn’t been done successfully—because the books say no. Well, they don’t know. But I do.”

We started back through the grass. He was through with looking at the property. It wasn’t even in his head any more.

“So Bernstein sent him. Tom Bourney.” He shot some of that crazed laughter into the night. It was as if he spat it out of him. “He had me fooled, all right.”

Lillian and I walked together, letting him talk.

“The things we did out there,” he said. “We did things right there on the battlefield that you’d never believe possible. With nothing, nothing. We performed miracles. I did. I performed all sorts of miracles. Right in the mud there, with all the blood. And they say I can’t—” He stopped.

It was becoming much worse. He hadn’t acted this way before. I was beginning to understand a bit more about Angers, but what good was that?

“Pal,” he said, “we’ve got a car now. I’ll have to wire them soon for some money.”

“Yes.”

“They’ll send me all I need.”

“Sure,” I said. “You’ll need plenty, won’t you?”

We came out onto the sidewalk. We were all covered with beggar lice and sandspurs. A car rolled by along the street and a woman’s laughter trailed heady and rich in the soft winds coming across the bay full of salt and fish and freedom. We went on across the street toward the car.

“You know,” he said, “I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what you told me about this fellow who owns the boat. What was his name? Aldercook?”

“Yes. Forget it.”

“Can’t forget him, pal. I’ve been through lots of that sort of thing, pal. I want to meet him. Bernstein was that kind of guy.”

“Never mind,” I said. “Forget it. It’s nothing.”

“I want to meet him. Now. You said he had a boat, didn’t you?”

We reached the car. Lillian stepped up onto the curb and looked at me. I didn’t know what to do. I hoped she was going to be able to stand up under this a little longer. She looked numb, unreceptive.

“Listen,” I said, turning to Angers. “Why don’t you show me the blueprints? We could go someplace and you could show them to me, tell me all about the hospital. Why don’t we do that?”

He shook his head, grinning quietly. “No, pal. I want to meet your friend. Let’s go.”

I looked over beyond him, across the street, at the silent stretch of choking weeds and jungle over there. I wondered how long it would be before somebody found Bourney.

It might depend on the sun.

Driving to the yacht basin where the Rabbit-O was moored was like rolling along in a trance. Lillian and I were in the front seat of Bourney’s car, with me driving again. It was somehow like earlier this evening. And we’d been on the same street, between the palms, with the bay and Tampa far across the waters, lighting up the night sky. Only that was long ago. It was before true consciousness; before you could understand reality and what you were really up against.

I knew it was only a matter of time before he turned the gun on us. I couldn’t figure what had kept him from killing both of us long before. A whim. It would be little more than a whim when one of us finally faced the muzzle of the Lüger and saw the flame and felt the slug.

There would be no warning. There had been no warning for the others. I don’t believe any of them knew what was going to happen. Except the cop. He knew. I still remembered the expression on his face; the suddenly patient return to memory because it was all up with him and he knew it. So he stood there and took his time. Remembering.

I would never forget the expression on that cop’s face.

Now we were returning on the outside of the vicious circle of events that had started with Harvey Aldercook on a morning so long ago. It was a morning when I had no more to worry about than the possibility of raising some cash so I could buy food, and assure myself that Ruby would have the very best of care at the hospital while she had our baby.

What a Ruby she was! I didn’t like to think about it, but I couldn’t help it. I wondered if I still had her. I tried not to remember Bill Watts on the TV screen, saying I was needed at the hospital. What could it have been for? Whatever it was, the time was long past.

We turned down onto the pier by the yacht basin and I parked the car by the curb in front of the slip where the Rabbit-O was moored. A radio pounded from someplace, wild, throbbing music.

“We here already?” Angers said.

“Yes, this is it.”

“Good.”

Lillian stared straight ahead through the windshield. She had her hands folded in her lap and she seemed resigned now. She no longer spoke much and she seemed somehow disinterested.

I looked over toward the Rabbit-O and I didn’t like what I saw and heard.

Angers was leaning against the back of the front seat, and as I turned my head to speak to him, the gun wasn’t more than an inch from my face.

“Listen,” I said. “They’re having a party.”

“Fine.”

“No. It’s not fine. There’ll be too many people there, Ralph. Suppose we go get a room someplace, get some sleep. We all need sleep.”

He said nothing. Lillian just sat there, staring straight ahead. I had hoped she would join me in trying to persuade him.

“We need rest,” I said. “We don’t want to go on the boat now. We could come back here first thing in the morning.”

“Pal, first things first, and I want to meet him.”

“But why? What the hell difference does it make?”

“He owes you some money, you said.”

“Forget that.”

“He owes you two hundred and seventy dollars, doesn’t he?”

I turned back and looked at my hands on the steering wheel. I had tried, hadn’t I? What else could I do?

We opened the wooden gate on the slip and started along the wooden pier. Lillian hadn’t said a word for a long time. She just went along with it. Maybe that was a good thing; I didn’t know.

Angers came along with his roll of paper under one arm, as always, and his gun in his hand.

“She’s a nice-looking boat,” he said.

“Yeah.”

They were having a party all right. And that’s where the music came from. Down there inside the Rabbit-O. Through the windows and out on the stern deck were several men and women, all in various stages of undress and alcoholism. Up on the bow in the shadows lay a man and woman close together, both holding glasses, both in swimming suits. They apparently didn’t notice us as we passed toward the stern.

I caught a glimpse of Harvey Aldercook coming through the cabin with a bottle in his hand. There must have been about six couples.

On the boat on the other side of the pier a man was sitting in a rocking chair, smoking, with a dog lying at his feet. He had figured probably that he wouldn’t get any sleep tonight. He looked at us, but it meant nothing. Even seeing the gun probably wouldn’t have bothered him any, because this was the way to the Rabbit-O.

I didn’t see anything of Spindleshanks. You couldn’t tell about women. They might look like cardboard dolls and at the same time be the hottest nymph that ever backed into a mattress. But I could still remember how she’d cringed against the wheel of the Rabbit-O, frightened out of her wits because I was a nasty old man. What in hell was Harvey? That was a good question.

“Let’s go aboard,” Angers said. His voice right there by my ear startled me.

Just then a woman seated against the stern steps leading to the deck looked up and saw us.

“Harvey,” she called. “Here’s somebody new.” She craned her neck, looking us over, and she saw the gun and called, “Bandits, Harvey. I mean pirates. They’re going to board the ship.”

She stood up. She was the only girl aboard who was wearing a skirt. It was some skirt. Every color there was had been splashed on a very thin cloth, which she then fastened to her naked body. She wore a handkerchief of the same material around her breasts and she was a redhead.

“What?” Harvey Aldercook said. He stepped through the cabin doorway with a glass in his hand. He looked up and saw us and the glass dropped from his hand and shattered at his feet.

He knew.

“No,” Harvey said. “No.”

“Jump aboard,” Angers said. He gave Lillian a push and she landed on the gunwale. She leaped and went to her knees on the deck, by Aldercook. He stared at her, kind of shrinking back into the cabin doorway.

“Go on, pal,” Angers said.

“It’s them,” Harvey said. “It’s them!”

“Who, Harvey? Who d’you mean?” the redhead said. Two men came up behind Harvey and looked over his shoulder.

We went down onto the deck and Angers leaned against the stern of the boat by the bait wells that never got used and looked at them.

“Tell those folks up front to come back here. That man and woman up front—on the bow,” Angers said. He said it to Harvey Aldercook.

Aldercook looked exactly as he had this morning. In the same pants and sweat shirt, with the yachting cap.

“Wilma,” he called. “Wilma and Jack—come on back here.”

“Ah, go take a leap,” a man said from up there.

“Hurry up,” he said. “Something’s happened.”

“Something’s happened up here, too.”

“Get him back here,” Angers said. “And turn off that radio.” He turned to me. “That is him, isn’t it, pal?”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s right.”

Aldercook hadn’t moved from the cabin doorway. He turned his head and said, “Somebody shut that damned radio off.” Then he looked at Angers again. It was as if he were mesmerized.

Angers stood leaning there against the stern by the bait wells with the gun in his hand. Somebody shut the radio off and it was very still. Jack and Wilma came around and jumped down into the stern.

“What the hell is this?” Jack said.

Wilma just grinned behind smeared make-up, her blonde hair tousled. She was a little crocked.

“Now,” Angers said. “Everybody get inside there.”

Somebody laughed. First a man laughed from inside the cabin there, then a woman began laughing. They both laughed. It was very funny and Harvey stood in the cabin doorway watching us. He didn’t know what to do or say.

I didn’t enjoy it. Maybe I should have, but I didn’t.

Jack and Wilma caught the fact that there was something in the wind, but they didn’t know who we were. Neither did the redhead, but she knew something was up, too. All three tried to get by Harvey into the cabin. The rest of them inside were by the door, trying to see what was going on. The man and woman kept on talking and laughing.

“Get inside,” Angers said quietly.

“Steve,” Harvey said. “What do you want?”

I didn’t say anything. Just then I heard her squeal. It was Spindleshanks. She was peering through the screened window looking aft from the cabin.

She said, “It’s that Logan!” She whirled from the window and started frantically telling everybody who we were. Harvey and she must have spent a nice day, following us around by radio. Reading the newspapers about how I was probably dead must have been a pleasure. He wasn’t happy, now, though.

The place in there got very quiet all of a sudden. Lillian pushed by Aldercook and went into the cabin. Angers didn’t move.