Crime of Their Life (18 page)

CHAPTER 17

Johnny Liddell sat disconsolately at a comer table in the Midnight Sun bar, nursed a scotch on the rocks. In his mind, he was checking out the names on the list found in Harry Landers’s belongings.

Maurie Handel and his wife, traveling as the Keens, had eliminated themselves to all intents and purposes when they jumped ship at Grenada. Besides, knowing Handel’s fear of discovery by the organization, Liddell was inclined to discount the possibility of the disbarred lawyer being involved in anything that might concern the underworld.

He was ready to scratch Martin Sands and his “niece” but decided to withhold judgment pending the report from Acme. Traveling as a married couple without benefit of clergy could be an effective cover-up.

He found a cigarette, stuck it in the comer of his mouth, touched a match to it. He gazed over to the table occupied each night by Carson Eldridge and his party.

Tonight there was no attempt being made to cover the fact that Carson and Robin Lewis were engrossed in each other. Both had been frequent passengers on the
Queen
in the past, both were in an ideal position to be the smuggler. His daughter’s obvious frumpiness during the early days of the cruise, the use of Lewis Herrick as a beard to disguise Carson Eldridge’s interest in Robin Lewis, all could have been part of an elaborate misdirection, like a magician calling attention to what he was doing with his right hand while he set the trick up with his left.

His eyes continued their circuit of the smoky barroom. Harry and Belle Doyle were sitting where they had sat the night before, heads together, oblivious of the other passengers. It seemed highly improbable that they could be good enough actors to play the parts of such out-and-out farmers on a first cruise. That was a point that could be easily checked when the report came in. He’d be surprised if they were anything but what they appeared, two young people from Three Rivers, Wisconsin, on the first trip away from home and anxious to get back.

Mrs. Hilda Phelps, with her preoccupation with young men, her henna hair and bad make-up, had made enough trips on the
Queen
to qualify. But there was the question of Harry Landers’s murder and the improbability that she could have been responsible for his going over the side.

That left the Conways and the McDowells, both of whom had been passengers on previous cruises. Liddell found the “I” trouble of the oil man increasingly annoying, and was able to sympathize with the henpecked Conway. The two men appeared to dislike each other and the two women seemed to have trouble hiding the fact that they loathed each other. This, too, could be a bit of legerdemain to conceal the fact that they were working in concert. It would be interesting to see if their paths had ever crossed before this trip.

Liddell sighed, balanced his cigarette on the edge of an ash tray, lifted his glass to his lips, took a deep swallow. The evening had begun to drag. He debated the advisability of getting some sack time. Ingrid hadn’t shown at the Midnight Sun tonight and by now, the fourth night out, the oil and water among the passengers had separated, little cliques had formed. He had consciously avoided getting entangled too closely with any group, had preferred to stay on the perimeter as an objective observer.

A uniformed page entered the bar, walked over, whispered to the bartender. The man in the white jacket pointed to where Liddell was sitting. The boy worked his way through the tables.

“Mr. Liddell?”

Johnny nodded.

“There’s a radio telephone call for you in the radio shack, sir. Can you take it?”

“Be right with you.” Liddell drained his glass, set it on the table, dropped a bill alongside it. He nodded to the page, got up and followed him to the door leading out onto the deck. He slid his hand under his jacket, felt the reassuring touch of the butt of the gun he had tucked in his waistband. He followed the page down the deserted deck, his eyes searching the shadows, his ears attuned for any sound.

The boy pushed open the door to the aft companion-way, stepped through. Liddell followed him to the waiting elevator cage. The boy pushed a button, the doors closed noiselessly, the cage whooshed gently to the upper promenade deck. When the doors slid open, the boy pointed to a closed door on which was stenciled
Radio Telegraph.
He accepted the folded bill Liddell handed him, waited until Johnny had pushed open the door to the radio shack before he took the cage down.

Inside the room there was a small waiting area, a glass partition behind which a man sat with a green eye-shade on his forehead. He looked up from the sheaf of telegraph blanks he was checking as Liddell closed the door behind him.

“My name’s Liddell. You have a call for me?”

The man with the eyeshade looked back to where two engineers were fussing with dials, trying for a level. He turned back to Liddell, nodded. “Yes, sir. But we’re having a little trouble with transmission. An awful lot of static tonight.” He used a pencil to point at a closed door. “If you’ll wait in there, sir, we’ll put the call through as soon as we can clear some of the static.” His eyes dismissed Liddell, he went back to his sheaf of blanks.

Johnny walked to the door, opened it. The room beyond was soundproof, empty. Two telephones were visible in two partitioned booths, there was no window in the room. Liddell stepped in, closed the door behind him. He took up a position against the wall where he could cover the door, waited. It seemed he was waiting hours, but it couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes when the buzzer in one of the booths sounded. He started at the unexpected sound, then backed into the booth, kept the door covered as he lifted the receiver off its hook.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, sir. We have your call now,” the disinterested, metallic voice of the operator came through.

“Liddell?” a familiar voice greeted him. “Red Daniels at Acme.”

Some of the tension drained out of Johnny. “You scared me half to death. What’s the idea of phoning at this hour of the night?”

“I got lonesome sitting here with your secretary on my knee,” the Acme operative told him. “Besides, you’re paying for it.”

“That’s what’s got me scared half to death. How you coming with the report?”

There was a screeching and yowling of static that made the other man’s voice inaudible. When it died away, “What was that?”

“Static. I didn’t get a word you said. How about the report?”

“On its way. Should be in Curaçao by morning.”

Liddell nodded his satisfaction. “Good. Anything interesting?”

The static was back. It reached for a high note, died away. Red Daniels’s voice was back. “Sounds like a real dull bunch. Why you’d leave something like Pinky here for them—” In the background. Liddell could hear a girl giggling.

“Cut that out. This is costing money. I’d better hang up. See you when I get back. If I get back.”

“Even you wouldn’t go to that extreme? Getting yourself killed just to stiff us out of our bill.”

“Tell Pinky if she thinks I’m paying her overtime to sit holding your hand this hour of the night, she’s crazy. So long.” He dropped the receiver on its hook, stepped out of the booth. He walked to the door, opened it a crack.

The anteroom beyond was empty, the man behind the partition was still working on his forms, the engineers fiddling with their knobs.

The man with the eyeshade looked up as Liddell walked out into the anteroom.

“Everything okay, sir?”

Liddell nodded. “A little noisy. But okay.”

The man behind the partition shrugged. “Must be a storm between here and New York. Been like that all night. The boys haven’t been able to clear it up completely.”

“It was okay.”

Liddell walked out of the radio shack, out onto the darkened deck. He debated the advisability of making a few circuits of the deck, remembered the captain’s warning.

He decided to head for his cabin, get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow could be a big day.

The crew’s infirmary on the
Queen Alexandra
is high in the bow of the ship. Tom Conway contemplated the three-story walk-up, decided it would be safer than to risk meeting some junior officer in the elevator who might later start wondering what he was doing so far from the passenger area.

This portion of the ship was a startling contrast to the luxury of the passenger area. It was spotlessly clean, but no effort had been wasted to make it attractive. There was no carpeting on the iron stairs, the walls were painted a battleship gray rather than the highly decorative colors of the salons, companionways and smoking rooms of the rest of the ship.

By the time Conway knocked at the door marked
Infirmary
he felt as if he could use one. Ingrid opened the door, smiled at him, motioned him in. There were four neatly made beds inside, two treatment tables against the wall, a door leading into a lavatory.

“Those three flights of stairs are quite a gimmick,” Conway panted. “More effective than a chastity belt.”

“But not as permanent,” the blonde assured him. She closed the door behind him, turned the key in the lock. “It’s Conway,” she raised her voice.

The door to the lavatory opened. Jack Allen, the cruise director, stepped out. He shoved his hand out at Conway, got a halfhearted grip in return.

“Glad you could make it.”

Conway grunted. “I nearly didn’t. Gave my wife the slip at the buffet. She’s going to be as sore as a boil. I thought we were supposed to give each other a wide berth?”

Allen’s quick, trained smile cut white trenches in the tan of his face, his teeth gleamed whitely. “No one will see us together here. A few things have come up that I think we ought to talk about.” He indicated one of the beds. “Why don’t you sit down? You look bushed.”

Conway walked to one of the beds, dropped down on the side of it. Ingrid crawled onto the bed facing him, jackknifed her legs up under her.

“Anything wrong?” Conway asked anxiously.

The cruise director considered, shook his head. “Nothing to worry about.” He turned to Ingrid. “Have you told him about the new passenger?”

The blonde shook her head.

Allen turned back to the man on the bed. “This Liddell, the guy who joined the cruise at Barbados, is a detective. He’s picking up where the other one left off.”

Conway started to rise from the bed, permitted himself to be waved down. “You’re sure?”

Allen nodded. “We had a look through his things last night. He’s a private detective, licensed in New York. He had Hans Reynders’ name written on the back of an envelope. He wouldn’t have that if he wasn’t working on the same case as Landers.”

Conway dug a handkerchief from his breast pocket, patted at the thin film of perspiration that gleamed at his hairline. “You think Landers had a chance to pass along what he knew?”

Allen shook his head. “Landers sent no messages back, either by phone or cable. Besides, according to the boys States-side who fingered him for us, Landers was a loner. He didn’t like to share credit, so he kept everything he knew to himself.” He smiled, tapped his head. “He kept it all up here. Liddell couldn’t know what he knew unless he can use a Ouija board.”

“But Liddell has Reynders’ name.”

“Landers had more than a name. Look at all the good it did him. It’s one thing having a name, and another thing talking to the man whose name it is. I don’t think Liddell is going to make it.”

The perspiration was forming in tiny bubbles on Conway’s jowls and upper lip. He swabbed at it. “Not another one, Allen. I’m not up to it. Smuggling—that’s one thing. Murder—that’s another.”

The cruise director shrugged. “They can only hang you once.” He shook his head. “But you don’t have to worry about this one. This one will be on the house. We’ll have the most perfect alibi in the world for it. No one could point a finger at us.”

The handkerchief in Conway’s hand made a circuit of his face. “This is it, for me, Allen. I’m cutting out after this trip.”

Allen shrugged. “That’s not for me to say. Or for you either. We’re just errand boys. Maybe the boys in New York won’t accept your resignation.”

“Why not? Like you said, we’re just errand boys. They can get other errand boys—”

“Not one with your peculiar qualifications. Besides you’d be walking around knowing a lot of things that could give them an awful headache.”

“I wouldn’t talk. You know that. I’m in no position to.” Allen bobbed his head. “I know that. Me, I trust you. I have to, just like you have to trust me. But with them it’s different. They’re not that sure they can trust either of us. They’ll tell us when we can quit. We won’t tell them.” Ingrid stirred impatiently on the bed. “Let’s not worry about what’s going to happen in the future. We’ve got enough worrying about right now. What’s the program? Do we go through with it or forget it for this trip?”

Allen scowled at her. “You crazy? We go through with it. Nothing’s changed. So a man got washed overboard. Prove something different. So they suspect somebody’s bringing diamonds in. That’s not new.” He turned to Conway. “We don’t change a thing. It’s worked without a hitch in the past, it’ll work again. As often as we want it to.”

“I don’t know. I got a funny feeling this time.”

Allen flashed a look at the blonde, she nodded imperceptibly. She unfolded her legs, got to her feet, walked over to where Conway sat, dropped down alongside him. “Allen’s right, Tom. Nothing’s changed. Landers stumbled on what we were doing accidentally. He’s gone. Lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place. Liddell will never figure out in a couple of days what it took Landers a year to.” She watched the indecision on the man’s face. “Besides, our share of this trip added to what’s already coming to us will put us on easy street. You’ll be your own boss, not living off that wife of yours. That’s not living. That’s just existing. You said so yourself.”

“But where’s it going to end?”

The blonde reached up, ran her fingers through his hair. “The men we’re working for aren’t fools. They know it can’t last forever. Just a few more big takes and they’ll be ready to walk away. Then we can, too.” She looked over to where Allen stood. “The chief steward may start wondering why neither of us are at the buffet, Jack. Why don’t you go on down, be seen around?”