It's a Sin to Kill (12 page)

From a safe distance, Ferris asked, “Are you going to let him get away with this?”

“He won't get far,” White said. “Remember? We're out on the beach. If he does get away, all we have to do is block the causeways.” He looked back at Ames. “Better lay that gun down, Charlie.”

Ames shook his head. “No. Give Mary Lou the key.”

White took the key to the handcuffs from his vest pocket and gave it to Mary Lou. “You'd best talk to him,” he told her.

Mary Lou took the key with fingers that shook so badly she almost dropped it in the sand and walked over to her husband. “You shouldn't have, Charlie,” she said. “We haven't done anything wrong.”

“That's the idea.” Ames said. “Stand to one side of me and see if you can get these things off.” He added, “Please. Believe me. I know what I'm doing.”

Mary Lou did as she was told. She got the key in the lock of the left cuff and unlocked it.

Ames allowed the cuff to swing free. “That will do, for now. Put the key in my pocket and head for Sheriff White's car.”

Sayers was back on his feet. His eyes on the gun in Ames's hand, he walked a few steps through the sand toward the man backing away from him. “You'll never make it, Ames. You'll have to shoot me first.”

Ames continued to back toward the big blue and white police car. “I'd put on my trousers if I were you. Your underpants are showing.”

Sayers bunched his muscles. “I think you're bluffing,” he
said. He took three quick steps forward and fell on his face in the sand as Shep Roberts thrust out his foot.

The grizzled charter boat captain was apologetic. “Oh. Excuse me.”

Sayers sat on the sand and cursed.

“That's goin' to cost you time, Shep,” White said.

“I've done a lot of time,” the charter boat captain said meekly. He continued apologetic. “Hit gives me time to catch up on my settin'.”

A small laugh rippled through the crowd.

Red-faced with anger now, Camden said, “This is ridiculous. You may be afraid to stop him but I'm not. He killed my wife. His wife killed Celeste.”

He took half a dozen quick steps toward Ames, the skirt of his robe flapping in the wind. Ames fired a shot into the sand at his feet and the cosmetic executive stopped as if he'd run into a wall. The blood drained slowly from his face leaving it fish-belly white.

“Then, on the other hand,” Shep said.

The crowd laughed again, louder now.

It was a twenty minute run from Palmetto City to the beaches. Ames could hear a siren far away as the car for which Gilmore had called sped toward the scene. Ames opened the door of the cruiser.

“Get in,” he told Mary Lou.

“I'm going with you?”

“For apiece,” Ames said.

Mary Lou got into the car.

Ames slipped in back of the wheel, resting the barrel of the gun on the rolled down window while he felt for the ignition switch.

Still sitting on the sand, Sayers jeered. “Ya, ya, ya. Go ahead and start it, fellow. The keys are in my trousers.”

The disappointment was too great. Ames thought he was going to faint.

“Better call it off, Charlie,” White said. “The other boys will be here in a minute. Lay the gun on the seat and come out with your hands up.”

Ames sat a moment, sweat dripping down his face.

Her voice small, Mary Lou asked, “What are you going to do, Charlie?”

“Make a run for it,” Ames said. “We haven't got a
chance this way. White's as dumb as Ferris thinks he is. Is the suitcase on the back seat?”

“Yes.”

“Is the money Ben gave you for the
Sally
still in it?”

“Yes.”

“Open it and get me two hundred dollars. No. Better make it three.”

Mary Lou knelt on the seat and opened the case. “Why don't you take it all?”

Ames spoke without turning his head. “No. Three hundred will be plenty.”

Mary Lou peeled some bills from the flat roll.

“Stuff them in my pockets,” Ames said. “Use the rest for a lawyer. Do like I told you before. They'll have to let you make a phone call. Call Judge Barker. Ask him to recommend a lawyer.”

Mary Lou began to cry. “I wish you wouldn't do this, Charlie.”

“I wish I didn't have to.”

‘They'll hunt you down. They'll shoot.”

Ames opened the door on his side. “That's a chance I'll have to take.” The germ of an idea began to gnaw at his mind. “About that business on the pier. I mean you being slugged. Are you sure it was a woman?”

“No.”

“Could it have been a man wearing woman's clothes? Could that have been what gave you the impression it was a woman?”

“It could have been.”

Ames wanted to kiss her good-bye. He'd never wanted anything so badly. It might be the last chance he'd ever get, but he didn't dare to turn his head. Sheriff White's right hand was in his capacious coat pocket now. The chances were he had a gun in that pocket.

Ames stepped from the car to the drive. The wail of the oncoming siren was louder now. A hundred feet away, on the beach road, a steady stream of morning traffic was flowing south toward the causeway that led into Palmetto City and north toward the causeway that led to Seminole Rocks.

“Good-bye, honey,” he said.

“Please, Charlie,” Mary Lou sobbed.

Ames backed away from the car and down the drive,
stiff-kneed. The tight little knot of men who'd been held at a distance by the gun quickly surrounded the car. Sheriff White leaned against the front fender. His voice continued gentle, like a father reproving a headstrong son.

“You're bein' very foolish, Charlie.”

Ames continued to back to the road. “I didn't kill Helene Camden. And Mary Lou didn't kill Celeste.”

“Let the law prove it.”

“The hell with the law,” Ames said.

He turned and ran for the road. As he did, there was the sound of a shot behind him. A small geyser of shell erupted, as a bullet dug a hole in the drive a half-inch from his left foot.

“That's once,” Sheriff White called.

Still running, Ames glanced back over his shoulder. His left arm extended as if for balance, his right arm cocked, White was holding a short-barrel revolver with its muzzle pointed to the sky. Ames started to shoot back and couldn't He didn't have anything against White. Instead of shooting, he cut across the lawn to gain the dubious protection of a Phoenix palm.

A second shot severed a palm frond so close to his right ear that Ames could hear the whistle of the bullet as it passed him.

“That's twice,” White said.

“Please, Charlie,” Mary Lou shouted. Her voice was hysterical with fear for him.

Ames wiped the sweat from his eyes with his left hand and ran for the road. Several drivers, intrigued by the sound of shots, had stopped their cars. Ames wrenched open the door of a Buick Roadmaster driven by a gum-chewing youth.

“What gives, pal?” the youth began. Then he saw the gun and the dangling handcuff and stopped chomping on his gum. “Now wait a minute, fellow.”

Ames thrust the muzzle of the gun against the youth's side. “I haven't time,” he panted. “Get me out of here. Fast.”

The boy looked at the gun and depressed the accelerator of the car. The big machine leaped forward and around the car in front of it. “You have the gun,” he said.

Ames doubted that White would fire a third time. He would be afraid of endangering the driver. There was no third shot.

The wail of the siren grew fainter. The youth drove well
and fast, weaving in and out of traffic. They passed the new realty development on Frenchman's Creek, then the road to the Seminole causeway. Beyond that point there were few cars on the road. The bay side was heavily fringed with mangrove. There were a few cabbage palms and sea grape on the Gulf ‘side. Between them, with the exception of an occasional small house, there was nothing from the bay to the Gulf but the road and a vast expanse of sand and sea oats.

The young driver began to work on his gum again. “What they want you for, fellow?”

Ames told him. “Murder.”

The youth swallowed and was silent.

Ames added, “But you've no reason to be afraid. All I want from you is the ride.” He fished a package of cigarettes from his pocket and used the lighter on the dash.

The driver glanced at him sideways. “I make you now. Your picture was in the morning paper. You're the charter boat captain who killed that rich broad.”

“So they say,” Ames said.

The phrase reminded him of Camden. He wanted a talk with Camden. He meant to have one as soon as it was dark, if he wasn't interrupted first. Ames wiped his face with the sleeve of his coat. Meanwhile, there was the day to pass. He'd have to hole up somewhere. He couldn't run the roads. The road he was on dead-ended. The causeways were blocked by now. He was stuck on the narrow spit of land that extended eighteen miles from Palmetto Point to Cat Cay Pass with the Gulf of Mexico on one side and Boca Grande Bay on the other.

“I suppose,” the youth said, “you know this road dead-ends in about five miles.”

“Yes. I know,” Ames said.

He found the key Mary Lou had dropped in his pocket and unlocked the handcuff on his right wrist.

The youth hesitated, asked, “That true what it said in the paper about you?”

“What did it say?”

“That you used to play trumpet in Honey Boy Evans' band.”

Ames rode, fighting waves of fatigue.
That was a long time ago
, he thought.
A thousand years ago
. “Yeah,” he said aloud. “I was with Evans for three years. Why?”

“I beat skins for Maxie Ambler,” the youth said. “We just finished eight weeks at the Jockey Club in Miami. Now we're laying off one, then opening at the Sky Room in Tampa. That's how come I'm over here. Me and the canary are shacked up on the beach. So help me. She'll never believe me. I just came out for a bottle of cream.”

Ames wasn't really interested.

The youthful drummer asked, “What happened to you? I mean this charter boat business.”

“I lost my lip,” Ames said. “A geek tried to beat it in with the butt of a rifle on Iwo. And I guess he did a pretty good job. Oh, I can still blow a horn, but I can't cut the hot stuff.”

“A shame,” the youth sympathized. “You must have been pretty good if you played with Honey Boy.”

“I got by,” Ames said.

He rode, eyeing the fringe of mangrove and the tops of the tall trees rising out of the bay behind it. It could be he could hide out on Pine Key if he could reach it. He knew the island like he knew the deck of the
Sally
. He doubted if White would search the upper bay, at least immediately. The sheriff would concentrate on the causeways, then comb the beach foot by foot.

Ames said, “Stop right there where you see that clump of sea grape, will you, please?”

The driver braked in front of the clump of sea grape. “Know something, fellow?”

“What?”

“You're a hell of a killer.”

Ames followed the younger man's eyes. When he had unlocked the handcuff, he'd laid Sayers' gun on the seat between them. It was still lying on the seat. “Yeah. I guess I am,” Ames admitted.

“That and saying please.”

Ames made certain no other cars were in sight, then got out and stood on the shoulder of the road. “Anyway, thanks. Thanks a lot, Skins.”

“Think nothing of it,” the youth said.

He maneuvered the car in a sharp U-turn and drove back the way they had come. Standing in the shelter of a clump of sea grape, Ames watched the big car out of sight. His choice of a car to commandeer had been the only break
he'd gotten since he'd awakened in the cabin of the
Sea Bird
.

He doubted if the youthful drummer would go to the law. In the first place, most musicians were basically good guys. In the second place, by his own admission, the drummer was shacked up with the band's canary and neither of them would want any publicity.

Ames tried to light another cigarette and couldn't. Reaction had set in. His hands were shaking so badly he couldn't bring the lighted match to the tip of his cigarette. He let the match wave itself out. Then when the trembling had subsided, he waded the field of chest high sea oats to the fringe of dark green mangrove rising out of the shore of the bay.

Breathing became less of an effort. For the time being he was safe. More important, he was in a much better position to help Mary Lou than he would be in a cell in Sweetwater jail.

A
MES PARTED
the mangrove and looked out over the water. The upper bay was twelve miles wide at this point, but the tall trees of Pine Key were less than half a mile from shore. A flock of great white heron were feeding in the shallows. Three hundred yards down the bay toward the Seminole Rocks causeway, a fisherman in a rowboat was fishing the trout flats off Mermaid Point.

Even at high tide, except for the swash channel and possibly a few pot holes, the deepest water between him and the island would be only chest high. He could walk most of the way. Ames undressed slowly and laid his rolled clothes on a tangle of aerial roots. The silence was complete and drugged with heat. He tried again to light a cigarette and succeeded. He stood ankle deep in the water, smoking, letting the sun beat on his bare body, absorbing the silence. The heat of the sun felt good. Some of his tension left him. He realized he hadn't eaten for hours, but he wasn't hungry. He'd been under too much of a strain, he was still under too much of a strain for food to be important.

Now that the drug had worn off and he was no longer jumping at shadows, he was satisfied in his own mind that
he hadn't killed the Camden woman. He hadn't done anything to Helene Camden but give her a cup of coffee. More, despite the derogatory remarks her husband had made about her morals and the fact that her maid had testified that Mrs. Camden had confided in her that she intended to spend the night with a handsome young charter boat captain, Mrs. Camden had been a lady. She hadn't made one improper suggestion or said one improper thing. All she had wanted to know was how much he would charge to skipper the
Sea Bird
down to the Keys and up the east coast inland waterway to Baltimore.