Assignment — Angelina (10 page)

"I heard. I'm looking for Angelina. Have you seen her?"

The white-haired old man stood erect and alert. "You look upset, Samuel. Has the bank business anything to do with your business?"

"I think so. Have you seen Angelina?"

"Them people walked in right after nine this morning. Nobody in the bank but old Miss Bunting and Amos Freeling. Kind of mixed up about the number of customers inside at the time. Hear tell they all just went to sleep on their feet for ten, fifteen minutes while the bandits helped themselves." He paused. "Yes, Angelina was here, Samuel. She was looking for you, about an hour ago. She said she had something important to tell you, but she wouldn't say what it was when I told her you were in New Orleans. I don't think you ought to see her, though."

Durell looked at his grandfather. They were both of the same height. "Why not, Grandpa?"

"She's still in love with you, that s why not."

"She was going to marry Pete Labouisse." He knew at once he had made a slip, speaking about Pete in the past tense. The old man was very alert. "Maybe she loves him still, for all I know."

"She won't marry Pete," Jonathan said. "You know that, eh? She told you she changed her mind?"

"Well…" Durell said.

"I didn't teach you as well as I thought, Samuel. You don't play poker the way you should.'

"I never could win from you, anyway, Grandpa."

"What happened to Pete?'

"Nothing you have to know. Where can I find Angelina?"

"She went off to meet Joe Tibault. How come Joe is back from shrimping and Pete ain't around?"

"Where is Joe?"

"When you don't answer a question, Samuel, it means you got an answer you don't want me to have. All right, I won't pry. And you're right, I'm still better at poker than you are, son. Angelina will give you trouble — maybe the Wind of trouble you like, a woman like that — but I keep thinkin' of Deirdre Padgett."

"She's in Europe."

"That's no excuse, Samuel."

Durell was irritated for a moment, then he smiled. "You're right, it's no excuse. Where can I find Joe and Angelina?

"At Mama Juliette's."

"Thanks, Grandpa."

Mama Juliette's was a bar near the shrimp docks in Peche Rouge. It had a tin roof and one of the biggest live oaks in the parish growing right in front of the main entrance so customers had to walk around it in order to get inside. It was air conditioned, Durell noted. He wondered how long it would take for the alarm to spread throughout the country.

Mama Juliette was old and fat, with white hair cut in a masculine style. She was Creole, and most of the time she insisted on speaking French, especially to customers she did not like. She knew Durell very well, and when he stepped into the cool, beery interior, she crooked a fat finger at him and he followed to a table in back of the bar.

"Angelina left a message for you, Sam."

"How long ago?"

"Twenty minutes, maybe. You heard about the bank robbery?" Mama Juliette laughed. "They got over thirty thousand, I hear.

Durell did not correct her. "Where did Angelina go? Did she say what she wanted to see me about?"

"Hey, boy, you want her bad? Don't forget she's spoken for."

"Does she really get around much, Mama?"

Mama Juliette shook her head. "She's a good girl. I shouldn't talk that way about her. It's just the wav she looks, and the way the men look at the way she looks, right? I used to be like that, once. Hard to believe, hey?"

"Was she with Joe Tibault?"

"Sure. They said for you to go to Moon's Fishing Camp and walk light. They'll meet you on the road. What's it all about, Sam?"

"It's an easy way to pull teeth," Durell said.

"What?"

"I was thinking of something else. Thanks, Mama."

"There was a cop around here, couple days ago. He didn't say he was a cop, but he was from the city, and he was asking about Pete and Angelina. It was kind of funny. I mean, funny-strange. I didn't tell him anything. Why should I tell a city man anything about our people?"

"That's right. Mama," he said.

It explained why MacCreedy's men had made no progress.

Moon's camp was a short drive to the west, along a secondary road that bordered a bayou canal. Durell drove slowly along the graveled road. He wondered why Angelina wanted to see him so urgently, and why she hadn't waited for him either at the steamboat or at Mama Juliette's. And why she was with Joe Tibault.

He didn't see her car when he drove past the camp, and he didn't stop there. He went around a narrow bend in the road and then he saw her yellow convertible parked in the brush, partly screened by Spanish moss hanging from the gnarled limbs that spanned across the sky overhead. He stopped alongside and got out. Nobody was in sight. Through the foliage he saw the canal, and a man rowing by in a skiff, a fishing rod hanging over the transom. He didn't know the man, who looked like a tourist, and Durell walked back toward the camp.

The main cabin, containing the bar, was built of rude cypress logs, with red neon signs advertising beer below another sign that simply read:
Moons.
About half the cabins were occupied, to judge by the number of parked cars, and he noted the Cadillac with the California plates at once, but he didn't look that way again. At this hour, in the full smother of the afternoon heat, no one was around.

There were two men in the bar, talking in Northern accents, and Jake Moon himself. Durell knew Moon, but Moon did not remember him. The last time Durell had seen the camp proprietor, he had been no more than twelve or thirteen. He did not see Angelina or Joe Tibault.

He sat down and ordered beer. The normal sounds of the fishing camp came to him. Nothing more. The beer was not as cold as it could have been. Through the fly-speckled window, seen through the tubing of the neon signs, he watched the cabin where the California Cad was parked. The shades were down, and there were no signs of life. He watched it, anyway.

There was no doubt in his mind that the robbery of the bank was the work of Corbin and Fleming. Durell wasn't worried about the stolen money. It was the method of stealing it that interested him. And the further plans that Corbin might have. He tried to project his mind along the lines that Erich Corbin might be thinking, but he could see nothing except a further series of robberies based on this method, a quick wave of assaults that might temporarily disrupt small-town banks with certain types of air-conditioning systems. But it would only be temporary. And Corbin was no fool. From his past record, his moves indicated more to come. Something far more important. He tried to think what it could be, but he couldn't come up with anything.

He felt concerned about Angelina. Where was she? Why had she come here with Joe Tibault?

"Sam?"

He heard her call. Her voice sounded thin and unnatural. He turned his head and saw her beyond the screen door of the bar, standing in the harsh sunlight of the parking area. He got up and went outside to her. She touched his arm briefly and started walking toward the floats along the Peche Rouge canal, where skiffs and pirogues and a few outboards were moored. The sun made glowing highlights on her sleek black hair. Her face was very pale. She wore a full skirt this time, and a man's white shirt, open at the throat.

"What's up?" he asked. "What are you doing here?"

"Joe saw those men," she said tensely. Her breathing was ragged, as if she had been running. He saw by her eyes that she was afraid of something. "The two who met Pete down along the shore and took him away."

"Take it slowly," he told her.

"They were in town this morning, just before the bank robbery. The good-looking one and the hoodlum. He saw them drive away after the robbery, too. He knows they were in the bank when it happened. But Joe didn't know what was happening, you see? I mean, he didn't know they were robbing the bank. He was watching them, and everything was quiet, and he didn't dare go call the sheriff or anybody; he wanted to keep them in sight. And then they came out and he came over to my store and I got my car and we followed them. First to Mama Juliette's. I took a chance and came to your grandfather's, but you weren't there. I got back in time, though. Then they came here. Don't look at that car now, Sam. Did you see it?"

"Yes," Durell said. "Where
is
Joe?"

"They've got him," Angelina said.

Durell halted on one of the docks. A boat shed screened them from the cabins. "Are you listening?" Angelina asked. "Joe is sure those are the men who picked up Pete. Sam, please. What are we going to do?"

"Where did they take Joe?"

"Into one of the cabins. The ugly one saw us on the road, just after we parked. He had a gun. I ran away, but Joe stayed to give me a chance to escape."

"Have you heard anything from inside the cabin?"

"No, not a sound. What are they doing to him?"

"Have you called anyone? The police?"

"Not yet."

Durell thought of MacCreedy, in New Orleans. There was a telephone in Jake Moon's bar. It would take too long, he thought. He thought of the man with the knife, wondering if it was Slago. He knew there was no time to get help. Then he turned to Angelina again. She was biting her lip. He gave her MacCreedy's number.

"Go into the bar the back way," he told her. "Don't take a chance showing on that parking lot again. Call this number, ask for a Mr. MacCreedy. Tell him where we are. Tell him to put a cork in it."

"Put a cork..."

"Hell understand. Go ahead, now."

She looked dubious. "What are you going to do?"

"I'll be around."

She seemed afraid to leave him. He pushed her gently up the slope toward Moon's bar. When she started walking, Durell turned and circled the boat shed and walked up through the tall weeds toward the far end of the row of cabins. The right thing to do, he told himself, was to wait for MacCreedy. Never mind about Joe Tibault. But he didn't like the silence in that cabin. Joe could be dead by now. But maybe he wasn't. If he waited, every minute that went by increased the chances that Joe would join the other victims. Durell had known the shrimp fisherman all his life. He didn't like to think of what might be happening to him right now. And what might happen if he sat tight and waited for MacCreedy to gather his men and post roadblocks around the area. He couldn't wait for that. It would take twenty minutes, maybe half an hour, for the net to start closing. Too long. He couldn't let Joe stay in that cabin for that length of time.

He walked faster. His hand was on the gun in his pocket.

There was a new air conditioner in the back window of the cabin where the Cadillac was parked, and this interested him, because none of the other cabins were so equipped; he was sure Moon hadn't provided it. He began to feel a familiar excitement that came to him when his quarry was near. Durell had every instinct of the professional hunter. All his senses were honed razor-sharp. He paused in the angular shadow behind the cabin next to the one where the Cadillac was parked. A bird he didn't recognize sang in a treetop nearby. Somebody revved up an outboard motor downstream. A faint wind made a rustling sound in the brush, and when it touched him, it felt like the dank breath of a fevered animal.

There were footsteps in the cabin where he paused. A man's voice rumbled something, and something else thudded heavily to the floor inside. The shades were drawn in the window, and he could not look in. He wondered if Angelina had reached the bar.

All at once a heavy, dead silence settled over the place. Then he heard her scream, and everything came apart.

He saw her an instant later, bursting through the front entrance of Moon's bar. She was running, her skirt billowing, hampering her. A man came after her at a dead run. Short and squat, with cropped salt-and-pepper hair, with the musculature of a bull. He moved extraordinarily fast, grabbed at her shoulder, and twisted hard. Angelina fell in the dust of the parking area. She was still screaming. A knife flashed in the man's hand, and Durell's gun cracked almost of its own volition. He had aimed for the man's wrist, and he hit the knife instead. It shattered, spinning away in broken pieces into the dust. The man looked up, his mouth open in surprise. Angelina tried to scramble away, but the man grabbed her and hauled her roughly to her feet, one thick arm around her waist, holding her as a shield.

Durell stepped out between the cabins.

"Let her loose, Slago!"

The man cursed in a gravelly voice. Jake Moon came to the door of his bar and hastily retreated again. Slago began pushing Angelina ahead of him across the open area, advancing toward the Cadillac. Durell took a step and then there was movement behind him and he glimpsed a man behind him, arm upraised, a gun reversed in his hand. He took the blow on his shoulder as he turned, and felt the pain jolt down into his gun hand. He couldn't hold the gun. It fell into the dust and he went down to one knee, still turning, and grabbed for a hold on the man who had surprised him.

It was Mark Fleming. Durell got his arm up to partially block a second blow. The thought flickered through his mind that he had been too intent on Slago and Angelina, and he knew the penalty of carelessness. He tried to get up, but Fleming kicked him expertly, his heel cracking on Durell's chest. Durell went over backward, got to his hands and knees, and drove for the gun he had dropped. Fleming kicked it away.

"Copper?" Fleming breathed.

His gun was coming up, not reversed now. Then a screen door slammed, and from the corner of his eye Durell saw Erich Corbin and a blonde girl come out quickly, moving toward the Cadillac. Slago had Angelina's arm twisted up behind her back, running her toward the car, too. They were going to get away.

There was no sign of Joe Tibault.