Darker Than Amber (17 page)

"My God! What are you trying to do to me!"
"Lower your voice! I'm trying to give you Tamie's message. She was going to make a run for it. You can see she didn't get into the clear. She tried to sneak back to pick up the money she had stashed away, and probably ran into Griff, whoever he is. She was afraid of running into him. She said to tell you to run. She said that all of a sudden they found out the law was getting too close, and they decided to close out the operation. And because you three hustlers are the way they'd tie the others into it, and because it is a murdering situation, they made a policy decision to kill the three of you. And it looks as if you're the only one left, Del."
"But they... wouldn't!"
"Read the clipping. Kiddy, they hit her so hard with that murder car it splashed her up against the second story of a stone building." When I saw the sickness, I followed it up by taking her wrist and saying, "It smashed one whole side of her head flat, all the way to her nose. And from the waist down she was just a sack of busted meat."
She gagged, swallowed and said, "But I'd find out about it when.. "When you get back? Who'll give you a chance to read last week's newspapers? They'll turn you off before you can unpack, lay low a few months, then recruit new girls."
"I've got to tell Ans! We've got to get away from here!"
I bore down on her slender wrist until pain changed the shape of her mouth. "Smarten up fast, or I can't help you, kiddy. That Monday night before you sailed, dear old Ans wired a cement block to Tami's ankles and heaved her off a highway bridge below Marathon. It was after midnight. Mack drove the car. She was conscious. What they didn't know, there were fishermen under the bridge. They got her up in time. She came to me in Lauderdale. Here I am taking this lousy risk of getting mixed up in this stinking thing, and you come on stupid. They thought she'd be dead. They talked in front of her. Griff and Ans made a sentimental deal. Ans was to drown Tami, and in return Ans turns you over to Griff. Tami said please warn you without Ans knowing. I owed her the favor. She was shook. She'd been sunk into twenty feet of black water with her ankles wired. So I flew over here and I'm booked back on the Monica D. I didn't know I'd locate you ashore, from Tami's description. Maybe even with a warning you don't stand a chance. But I made the try. Stay stupid and you're soon dead, because you've been in a business where that's the only way they retire you, sweetie."
It glazed her. She stared wide-eyed into the middle distance, the fat little mouth agape, exposing the gleamings of even little white teeth.
"He's been acting so funny," she whispered. "Jumpy. Cross all the time. And there wasn't any other cruise he drank so much. And mean to me this trip. Nasty mean. He gave me such a thumping! The thing that started it, I asked him when we could quit. First it was going to be just three or four. Then it got up to ten. And this was number fourteen and I said to him that no matter how smooth it went, if you kept it up and kept it up, you were pushing your luck. I said I was getting sick of having such a strain all the time, and how much better everything was when there was just the two of us in the little apartment in Coral Gables, and I worked the conventions over on the Beach. That was no real reason for the thumping he gave me. He's had lots better reasons. I've been with him seven years. This is big money, but... when I can't sleep, sometimes I keep thinking about those poor guys. I just can't believe Ans would. let them do that to me. "No, of course not. He is a very sentimental guy. He wants to keep you alive and well, so the cops can pick you up and let a whole swarm of people make identifications, so they can bring you to trial for murder first and let you make a deal with the law and help them nail everybody else. Use your head, kiddy. They know DeeDee would make a deal. Vangie would make a deal. Why should they trust the third hooker to keep her mouth shut?"
She bit down on her thumb knuckle. "Tuesday morning it was, he didn't get back to the place until way after three. Then he sat out there drinking, and he wouldn't come to bed. You know... I guess it would really bother him to have to do that to Tami. I guess it was hard on him."
"And Griff is going to cry big tears when he tucks you into some swamp.
She shuddered. "Please stop doing that, huh? I have to think. God, I don't know what to do. You can guess how much bread Ans lets me have. I don't have a hundred dollars in the world. I've never been on my own at all. I've been with Ans since I was sixteen. I was third runner-up for Miss Oceanside Beach and he was third runner-up for Mr. Body. He was twenty-seven. We teamed up like to help each other, and we went a billion miles in that old car, I bet, just barely making out on the contests, a whole year of it, and then he got so sick there in Chicago, and I was working waitress and telling my troubles to a girlfriend, how he was in a charity ward, and the medicines so expensive, and my feet hurting all the time from those damn tile floors, and then my waitress girlfriend took me on that double date, and the guy put fifty bucks into my purse, under the table."
She shook her head slowly, frowning. "When he found out for sure about the hustling, it racked him up. He cried and cried. When he got better we tried to make it the square way, him pumping gas, but he got an allergy and his hands swelled so bad he couldn't work, and I went back to hustling, and it didn't bother him so much, and finally it didn't bother him at all."
She frowned at me and said, "He's weak, kind of. He's scared. He could do that to Tami from being scared. It must be killing him inside to think I've got to be killed too. That's why he's so mean and jumpy and drinking and"
All The tiny childish voice trailed off. In the quiet of the empty lounge she sat with head lowered, hat brim concealing her face. Her hand, resting inert next to the ashtray, was small, plump, with short fingers and a thick palm, the nails nibbled so close to the quick her fingertips looked deformed. She wore a narrow gold wedding ring set with small diamond chips, and a little gold wristwatch shaped like a heart, the strap fashioned of thin black fabric cords. It had shifted from its customary position and I could see where the light tan of the wrist surrounded the pattern of a heart in the white untanned skin. The wrist of a woman and the small tidy forearm always seem to me to have some tender and touching quality, a vulnerable articulation unchanged from the time she was ten or twelve, perhaps the only part of her that her flowering leaves unchanged.
The shaded light was on the paneled wall above us, the glow of it yellow-orange. She turned her head toward me, looked up from under the white straw brim, green eyes in shadow.
"He knows I didn't want to get into this. But what he had done, you see, he had listened to too much about it, and they told him that we knew so much it wouldn't be healthy not to get into it. I guess it isn't so healthy now. Not for anybody. I bet he knows what he can expect too. It could be making him drink so much. He's always been too proud of his body to drink so much. If they're closing the store, how long will Ans and Frankie Loyal last?"
"She didn't mention Frankie."
"He works with DeeDee. Worked with DeeDee. He's more like Ans, sort of. Jittery, kind of nervous about the whole deal. Griff is different. He's closer to Mack and Nogs. Griff is more like helping run the thing, and he worked with Mack and Nogs before, and I think he gets cut in on all three teams too. There's one thing about Griff, he isn't nervous about a thing. A person to him is a bug, and if it is where your foot comes down, that's the way it crumbles. At least, if he gets me, he will make it just as easy for me as he can. I know that. He's always liked me. He's hinted a couple of times we could change the teams around."
"What kind of a name is Nogs?"
"I don't know his real first name. It's some kind of a joke about eggnogs and a Christmas party years and years ago. Nogs Berga is his whole name. I heard Mack say Nogs has a lot of things going for him, a lot of things straight things, like monkey jungles and 'gator farms and frontier towns, and Mack runs our operation for him, getting the credit reports on the guys we line up, and saying what boat to get the tickets on, and fixing it so the postcards get mailed from faraway places from those guys so it won't be a lot of guys disappearing from around this area, which could make a lot of heat after a while. What am I going to do? What do you think I should do?"
"Can you handle yourself so Ans won't suspect you now?"
She gave me a quick glance, with an ugly twist to her fatty little mouth. "There's been plenty I haven't wanted him to suspect, friend."
"But if he does and thumps it out of you, it could put me in the bag, Del."
She shrugged. "I'd tell him I was in a place where a radio was on Miami news, and I heard about Tami and DeeDee and figured it out from the funny way he's acting. Anyway, if you don't want to, why take the boat? You found me. You did the favor. I don't even know your name. Fly back."
"The name is Travis McGee, and I am in Stateroom Six on the Lounge Deck, and I can give you one idea of what you could do. Will he drink enough to pass out?"
"That's the way it's been going this trip, and he's getting a good start while we're talking."
"Leave him a note. Say you heard the Miami news and figured it out. So you've decided to go over the rail. That would cover you in case Griff has orders to meet the ship and take over right away."
"So then what?"
"So then I give a good piece of money to the room steward, and he'll know a way to fix it so you don't have to disembark with the others. We'll give him a reason he can appreciate. Like a husband waiting outside the customs shed with a gun. Ans Terry isn't going to show anybody that note, not with what you say in it. There'll be a short count on the passengers getting off. Short by two, you and me. But the steward can use a piece of his piece of money to keep anybody from getting agitated. Ans will take your stuff off through customs, and I have an acquaintance on board who'll take my gear off. Then when the whole turmoil is over and everybody gone, we walk off."
She took her hat off and laid it aside, patted her hair, stared into her new drink with narrowed eyes, and drummed her plump fingers.
"Sure. He'll show them the note. I didn't get off. So they'll believe it. They'll believe I took a jump. It gives me a chance to run."
"I can give you a start. A couple of hundred bucks." With eyes still narrow she said, "Why?"
"Favor to Vangie. I promise a favor, I like to go all the way with it."
"She never said anything about knowing anybody named McGee in Lauderdale."
I got the inscribed photograph from the wallet. She studied it. "Like that, huh? Where'd she know you from?"
"Way back."
She handed the photograph back. "What do you do for bread?"
"I call it salesmanship. But sometimes the mark doesn't mind letting his friends and family know how stupid he was, and then they call it extortion or conspiracy to defraud."
"You got a nice tricky way of figuring things out. I guess you'd make out pretty good in con work, looking more like you race boats or build roads or used to play ball or something. Is there any reason you have to stay in Lauderdale?"
"Why?"
"Maybe you could think up something that would use me for bait. God knows I've had enough practice putting on an act for those guys."
"Fourteen acts."
She lifted her shoulders slightly. "I wouldn't want that kind of an ending, not ever again."
"Let me put it this way, Del. I keep things clean. If you try a rough line of work, you take too big a fall if it goes sour. Almost every con operation is a partnership thing. Sure, I could use you. It might be a good time to move along. It would be a good time of year to go up and work the Jersey shore. But what if these people down here found out somehow you got away? Somebody would come after you. I might be crossing a street with you when they run you down Why should I take a chance like that? And the law isn't going to believe you took the jump. If they are unraveling it, you could be near the top of their list, and there is a large fall for helping a murderer escape."
"I never killed anybody! I couldn't!"
"You just lured them into the situation, so Ans could do it. Fourteen times. They wouldn't electrocute you. Not a pretty young woman. They almost never do. But they'd hang consecutive sentences on you so that the way you'd finally leave would be out the back gate in a box. And I could get five or ten for harboring a fugitive. Kiddy, I'm walking around free as a bird because I don't take bad risks."
She turned completely to face me, fastened her short fingers around my wrist and went to work on me with those green eyes. It was not an unwavering stare. She moved it around, up and down and across, pausing at my eyes each time. She put an old fuzzy edge on the clear silver of her voice.
"Since I was sixteen I've been sizing guys up. The way I am, dear, I got to belong to somebody. Ans was weak, and that was why it wasn't ever the greatest. McGee, you threw all this at me fast. I know you're strong. And I know we react good to each other. There's that feeling you can't miss. So the only choice I've got, dear, is you. I've got to trust you. I've got to let you take charge and get me out of this mess. That's the way things are between us, and maybe it comes out better luck than we could guess. What I can be, when I have somebody, is absolutely level all the way. I'll help you any way you want help, and food, clothes and a roof is all I'll need. And I swear to God that if anybody finds me, I'll convince them you didn't know a thing about anything. I can be a help. I can do the college-girl bit or the housewife bit or the model bit, or be a young widow or whatever. And the day you say go, I'll go. No strings, no tears. So take a chance, huh?"
But I couldn't get fourteen men out of my mind, men who'd been snookered by the business with the eyes, the dear little voice, men who'd sucked at that plump little mouth, been enclosed between the long warm clasp of those thighs, men who'd marveled at the luck that had brought them in their middle years the heats and devotions of such a spectacular young girl, and had gone cruising with her and hadn't lived past the first night aboard, to have their reservation taken over by an aging Mr. Body.
"Maybe," I said. "I'll think about it. Maybe I can come up with an idea which will give me some insurance. It's after four now. When can you shake loose from him?"