The Scarlet Ruse Part 19

... Hirsh might remember if Jane Lawson had taken a package along that day and mailed it. She could have been given the package by a girl too sick to go to the bank that day. "Please mail it for me, Jane honey."

... The poisoning episode was increasingly hard to buy. She had to claim it happened, because that meant Jane Lawson had arranged it when she was ready to make the switch. How do you measure exactly how much emetic to give a big healthy girl, an amount that will render her too ill to go to the bank but not so ill as to have to be taken home? Banks have phones. Fedderman would have left a message for Sprenger. Sickness is easy to fake. A hunk of soap slides down easily. Send Jane off to the bank this time, and make the switch in July, at the next visit. Sprenger would probably call the signals. Easy for him to lean across the table and point down to one of the new purchases and ask Fedderman a question about it. Plenty of time for her to switch the books.

... Miss Moosejaw had said Jane Lawson would have added up how it was probably accomplished and had tried to test her theory. By asking a question? And the old lady had not thought Mary Alice morally incapable of robbery that devious, just mentally unable to plan and carry out something so complex. But with Sprenger to plan it, could she carry it out?

... If Sprenger was worried about somebody trying to get cute, was it hard to figure out who he had in mind?

I stood up. I wished I could somehow stand up and leave myself still stretched out on the couch. I wanted to shed myself, start brand new, do better.

Had I been spending the last many years selling real estate or building motels, I could not be expected to recognize that special kind of kink exemplified by our Mary Alice McDermit. There are a lot of them, and they come in all sizes, s.e.xes, and ages. They are consistently attractive because they are role players. Whatever you want, they've got in stock. They are sly-smart and sly-stupid. They would much rather tell an interesting lie than tell the truth. Never having experienced a genuine human emotion, they truly believe that everybody else in the world fakes the emotions too, and that is all there is.

I once knew an otherwise sane man who became hopelessly infatuated with the peppy, zippy little lady with the bangs who used to do the Polaroid commercials on television. He bought every kind of camera they make. He took pictures of her picture on the tube. He cut her picture out of magazines. He wrote and wrote and wrote, trying to get a name and address. He went to New York and made an a.s.s of himself visiting advertising agencies and model agencies. It took a long time to wear off. It was totally irrational.

I had seen somebody I had invented, not Mary Alice. I explained away her inconsistencies, overlooked her vulgarities, and believed her dramatics. And so it goes. It is humiliating, when you should know better, to become victim of the timeless story of the little brown dog running across the freight yard, crossing all the railroad tracks until a switch engine nipped off the end of his tail between wheel and rail. The little dog yelped, and he spun so quickly to check himself out that the next wheel chopped through his little brown neck. The moral is, of course, never lose your head over a piece of tail.

Goodbread merely pretended a vast stupidity. Mine, nourished by the blue eyes and the great body, had been genuine. But last night some strange kind of survival instinct had taken over. The body seems to have its own awareness of the realities. In the churny night, the tangly bed, abaft that resilient everlasting smorgasbord, body-knowledge said "Whoa!" And whoa it was, abruptly. One just doesn't do this sort of thing with monsters. Not with a big plastic monster which would kill you on any whim if it was certain it would never be caught, and if it antic.i.p.ated being amused by the experience. Body-knowledge said she'd killed Jane Lawson. Not at the moment of Whoa. Afterward, in a growing visceral realization.

She had mousetrapped Sprenger somehow, and it was probably within her power to make him look like such a fool, the people he served would feel a lot better if he were on the bottom of the Miami River. w.i.l.l.y Nucci had explained the occupational hazards to me and to what lengths Sprenger would go to cover up any indiscretion, any violation of the code. The parties at interest had brought in the hard man from Phoenix to police one of their neutral areas, and after six years of service, he had gone sour. Over a woman. And that was his vulnerable area, right? Right.

I had set it in motion, knowing that if Sprenger ignored Meyer's information, all my guesses were wrong. So I could wait for him or run. I could bring Mary Alice into it all the way or use her as bait. I could try to negotiate with him or hit first.

I tried to guess what I would do if I were Frank Sprenger, but I found I did not know enough about the situation, the relations.h.i.+ps. Mary Alice could tell me, but I did not like to think of the ways I might have to use to make sure she was telling me all of it. There was no way to appeal to her, except through her own self-interest. She was afraid of being hurt. She had said so after I had mended the flap of elbow skin. Not the casual b.u.mps and bruises and abrasions. But really hurt, with infections and drains and IVs. And that I could not do.

Chapter Eighteen.

I found her snapping the catches on her train case. She had changed to pale pink jeans and a light blue work s.h.i.+rt with long sleeves. She had tied her head up in a blue and white kerchief. She wore new white sneakers. found her snapping the catches on her train case. She had changed to pale pink jeans and a light blue work s.h.i.+rt with long sleeves. She had tied her head up in a blue and white kerchief. She wore new white sneakers.

She straightened and looked at me almost expressionlessly. There was a little contempt there. Not much else.

"I'm splitting," she said.

"You've thought it all over, eh?"

"You blew it, baby. You really blew it. It could have been okay for us. Frank will have guys watching every place for five hundred miles where you could dock this boat. I don't give a d.a.m.n what what you do." you do."

"Where are you going?"

"You know something? That's dumb. That's really dumb. All you are going to know is that you put me ash.o.r.e back by that bridge where the cars were. When Frank wraps wire around your dingus and plugs it in and starts pus.h.i.+ng the b.u.t.ton, you're going to wish to G.o.d you had something you could tell him about where I went."

"Why should he care where you go?"

"Oh boy. He can talk his way out of how I could run when he wasn't looking and how he'll find me and so forth. But he can't risk what I'll say to the McDermits about him. How long before it gets dark here?"

I looked at my watch. "Little over an hour."

"How long would it take the little boat to get back to that place where the bridge is?"

"Fifteen minutes."

"I'm taking the train case and this suitcase and leaving this other junk. I want it to be a little after dark when you let me off. You better put on better clothes for the bugs out there. You got some kind of repellent to put on?"

"What's he got to do with the McDermits?"

"Huh? Oh, I'm married to Ray. He's the middle brother. They got him on tax fraud and conspiracy and a couple of other things over five years ago, and he's in Lewisburg. He's doing easy time. Except he can't do any balling in there, and he's as s.p.a.ced out on it as old Frank is. Ray was going to get out last year on parole. But the silly jacka.s.s got into some kind of mess, and it will be at least another year. Maybe two. Are you going to change?"

"This is probably as true as the last version you told me."

"So forget the rest of it. All right?"

"And forget the boat ride, M.A."

She had the little automatic tucked into the waist band of her jeans on the left. It was not an especially deft draw, that cross-draw recommended to the FBI agents, but it was fast enough for somebody six feet away too stupid to antic.i.p.ate it.

"We will definitely not forget the boat ride, friend," she said. She backed away, aiming more carefully. "I can't run the d.a.m.ned thing, and I am definitely not going to ruin you so bad you can't run it. Unless you get cute and I make a mistake, and then I'll try to run it. It can't be a lot different than a car. I'd rather you run it. What's the best place? Right up there over your collarbone, maybe. Through that big muscle that comes down from the side of your neck? You want to hurt while you run the boat, or do you want to be okay and feel good and say goodbye nicely?"

"You read me wrong," I said. "I said forget the boat ride, because according to the tide tables, there shouldn't be anything out there now except mud flats and sand flats and a trickle of water here and there. Can't you feel how solid the deck feels under your feet. And the little list? We're aground, and so is the Muequita Muequita."

I watched her expression and her eyes. She glanced toward the port. She couldn't see from that angle. She sidled to her left, and the instant her eyes swiveled away from me, I took the long step, the long reach, caught her by the wrist and by the elbow and gave the funny bone a powerful tweak. She yelped as her hand went dead and the gun fell. I yanked my eyes and face back just in time, and her hooking slash with her left hand left four bleeding lines high on my chest and packed her fingernails with tissue. I shoved her onto the bed so hard her legs rolled high and she almost went over the other side. I picked up her automatic and swiveled the little safety up into the notch on the slide and put it into my pocket.

She sat on the side of the bed, and the tears rolled as she looked dolefully at me. "I'm sorry. I'm so's-scared, honest, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm sorry, darling."

"That doesn't work either."

"What?"

"Sprenger wants you. So if I want to maintain good relations with him, the easiest thing to do is wrap you up and hand you to him. I'll say, 'Frank, old buddy, she conned both of us, but here she is.'"

The tears had dried and stopped in moments. She sat scowling in thought, nibbling her thumb knuckle. "No. I'm trying to give it to you absolutely straight. It would finish the both of us, not just me, because he couldn't be sure of how much I told you. He can't afford any part of it getting out."

"So the more you tell me, M.A., the more dangerous I am to Frank, and the more chance I might want to play it your way."

She studied me and then gave a little nod as something seemed to go click way back in those blue eyes.

After Ray was sentenced, she said, it became obvious that there were some people in Philadelphia who believed he had done some talking to make his sentence lighter, and they were willing to get back at Ray McDermit through his young wife. Ray didn't want her visiting him. He said it drove him up the walls. Sprenger kept an eye on the McDermit interests in the Miami area. He was new then, about a year in the area. He flew up and brought Mary Alice back down. She was to find a job where she would stay out of trouble. The McDermits provided rent on a handsome apartment and the utilities, a car, but no cash in hand. Ray had said it was his wish that if he wasn't getting any, he wanted to be certain Mary Alice wasn't giving it to anybody else. She said he was called "the crazy brother." He wasn't crazy, but it was hard to guess what he would do. From inside prison he exercised a lot of power with the threat of revealing the damaging information he had in his head.

"I thought I could cut it," she said. "Besides, Sprenger wasn't about to get careless about keeping an eye on me. And if I goofed, I had no idea what Crazy Ray would want done to me. But I knew it would get reported back and whatever he wanted done would get done. I got to like the store and the stamps and all, sort of. And I practically killed myself at the Health Club, but I got awful restless. I really did."

She had figured out, finally, that Sprenger was the key to her personal freedom. She worked on him for a long time. He was very cool and cautious. Finally desire was stronger than circ.u.mspection.

"Those cats that have the choice of a couple hundred girls, the one they want the worst is the one they shouldn't have," she said. "I knew the leverage it gave me once we started, and so did he. What I was afraid of, he'd have me killed and have it look as if I just packed and left. He couldn't be expected to be able to keep me from splitting. He set up our dates, you'd think it was a CIA operation. If it ever got back to the McDermit brothers, you can imagine. A man who'll rip off your wife when he's supposed to be keeping her on ice will cut a piece of your money too. I was afraid once he had all he wanted, I was going into a ca.n.a.l, car, clothes, and everything. So I told him I had confided in a certain person, who would never never tell, unless, of course, I disappeared or something. And then I had him between a rock and a hard place. If he hurt me to make me tell who, I'd make a phone call to Philadelphia, and he was dead. He was right on the hook, and he knew it, and he had no way of stopping anything I wanted to do. And what I wanted was money of my own, and I told him if he'd become a client of Fedderman, between us we could take him for what he was worth, which I figured at four hundred thousand, from things he had said. He explained to me he was supposed to have good judgment, and I wanted him to make a stupid, dangerous, amateur investment in postage stamps, for G.o.d's sake. He said Fedderman would go to the law if he got swindled, and the name of Frank Sprenger would come into it, and some people would come and take him swimming. I made him talk to Fedderman. I made him check it out that there's a steady market for rarities. He found out there's no duty hardly anywhere in the world on importing or exporting rare stamps. I had the leverage, and I kept at him. He had to use his own money. He went over just how I wanted to do it, and he figured out better ways. After we started, I found out Ray wasn't getting out and might even have to go the whole ten years. Which would make me an old bag, thirty-three d.a.m.n years old, and the h.e.l.l with that that noise. So it made it more important to me to take Fedderman." noise. So it made it more important to me to take Fedderman."

I could see how neatly she had trapped Sprenger. But I wondered that he had not arranged a fatal accident or a fatal illness so plausible the confidant would have felt no need to make a report.

I could guess at his dismay in investing a fortune in little colored bits of paper.

She got up and went and looked out the port. "There's enough water out there to run the little boat, right?"

"Right."

"You're pretty tricky."

"Keep talking."

She sat on the bed again, choosing her words carefully, explaining to me that it was her guess that by now Frank Sprenger had reported her missing, and with whom and how, to the McDermits. He would have to do that to take the edge of plausibility off any report the confidant might make. There wasn't one, but he had no way of knowing. Or maybe now there was one. Me. The only way Sprenger could feel completely safe would be to arrange the private, efficient, anonymous deaths of Mary Alice McDermit and Travis McGee, and recover the fortune in rarities with which Mrs. McDermit had fled. "They're aboard?" She nodded. "Show me." She snapped the tram case open. I went over and stood over her, tensed for any unpleasant surprise she might bring out of the dark blue case. She took out the top tray, and under it were three six-by-nine manila clasp envelopes, with cardboard stiffening, each filled to about a half-inch thickness. She opened one and eased some pliofilm envelopes out and spread them on the bed. I saw blocks of four and six stamps, still in Hawid and Showguard mounts, showing old dirigibles, old airplanes, black cattle in a snowstorm, portraits of Chris Columbus, with and without Isabella.

"All here," she said. "Years and years of the good life. It will last forever in the right places. I cleaned some goodies out of the safe too, stuff he has for stock.

"Where'd you get the junk you subst.i.tuted?"

"Indirectly, by Frank, through an independent agent-buyer in New York. I made new inventory lists without any description of quality. He bought junk. Stained, torn, thinned, repaired, regummed, faded, rejoined, even forgeries. They cost a little over twelve thousand, I think. I took them to my apartment and mounted them and put them into the duplicate book. Then when we were close enough to all the traffic could stand, Frank distracted Hirsh, and I switched books and shoved the good one into that box Frank got me that I showed you. We went out together, and I mailed it. Frank thought it was coming to him, but I'd changed the label. G.o.d, was he ever irritated! But what could he do?"

"What could he do?" I wanted to go further with it, but sensed that this was not the time to push. I picked one of the transparent envelopes up and looked at a block of six showing a mob scene around Columbus in chains.

"Careful!" she said. "That's thirty-five hundred at least."

"Anywhere?"

"Practically." She gathered the stuff up and put it back into the envelope. She closed it, hesitated, put the other two back into the train case, and handed me the one she had just closed.

"What's this?"

"It's worth about forty percent of the whole thing, that envelope. I think we should be entirely honest with each other. You've got to forgive me for trying to do a stupid thing. I need your help. Do you have a pa.s.sport?"

"Yes. Aboard."

"And some money?"

"Yes."

"I can really be a very loving person, dear. That's at least a hundred and sixty thousand dollars in that envelope in your hand."

"You mean, leave us flee together, Mrs. McDermit?"

She looked annoyed. "Well, why the h.e.l.l not? What else have you got working for you? It's what we were going to do anyway."

"Only at some port of call with an airstrip, I was suddenly going to find you missing."

"I thought of it. I thought I might, after a long long time alone with you."

"With me, the great lover?"

"That would probably never never happen again, and if it does, you shouldn't be so silly about letting a person help."

"But now we start going by air right away?"

"What's the best way to do it?"

"Oh, probably take the Muequita Muequita right across the stream to Bimini. It might jar your teeth and kidneys loose. Top off the tanks and run to Na.s.sau. Tie up at Yacht Haven and take a cab into town and get a visa for London or Rome or Madrid and go out to the airport and wait for something going our way." right across the stream to Bimini. It might jar your teeth and kidneys loose. Top off the tanks and run to Na.s.sau. Tie up at Yacht Haven and take a cab into town and get a visa for London or Rome or Madrid and go out to the airport and wait for something going our way."

"That easy?"

"The first part of anything is usually easy."

"I always wanted to see the Islands. I really did. I just hate missing the Islands. Maybe we can come back some day."

Yes indeed. I would have truly enjoyed showing her the islands. How the big aluminum plant and the oil refinery of Amerada Hess blacken the stinking skies over St. Croix. Maybe she'd like the San Juan Guayama and Ybucoa areas of Puerto Rico where Commonwealth Oil, Union Carbide, Phillips Petroleum, and Sun Oil have created another new industrial wasteland where the toxic wastes have killed the vegetation, where hot oil effluents are discharged into the sea and flow westward along the sh.o.r.eline in a black roiling stench, killing all sea life.

She might be impressed were I to cruise into Tallabea Bay and describe to her the one and a half billion tons of untreated wastes from Commonwealth-Union Carbide which put a two-foot coat on the bottom of the bay. Or we could take a tour up into the mountains to watch how the trade winds carry the bourbon-colored stink of petrochemical stacks through the pa.s.ses all the way to Mayaguez, ninety miles from the refineries. While in the hills, we could check and see if Kennecott Copper and American Metal Climax have started to strip-mine the seven square green tropic miles of high land which they covet.

It might have made quite an impression.

"Can we start now? Can we?"

"It's full dark on an outgoing tide. The morning is good enough. In the morning I can take the Flush Flush back out the way we came and leave her in storage at Regal Marine. Abandon her and it attracts too much attention. The Coast Guard would get in the act and Civil Air Patrol and guide boats and so on. Then we can go on from there." back out the way we came and leave her in storage at Regal Marine. Abandon her and it attracts too much attention. The Coast Guard would get in the act and Civil Air Patrol and guide boats and so on. Then we can go on from there."

"Okay. I feel so much better. I'm so glad we had this frank talk, darling.

"I guess we accomplished a lot."

"Oh, we did!" She lifted the train case back out of the way and hitched over to me and put a shy kiss near my mouth. I held her and looked past her hair at the manila envelope I still held in my right hand.

Poor helpless little critter. Sharing her wealth, but only on a temporary basis. Only until she could find the right time and place to slip an icepick into my brain through whatever orifice seemed handiest.

"Shouldn't we have a drink to celebrate?" she asked.

Of course, of course. She trotted to the galley to make the drinks. I changed into khakis and a white T-s.h.i.+rt and went to the lounge. As she came smiling in with the drinks, I said, "If Frank were to come here tonight..."

She jerked and lost some of my drink on the back of her hand and on the carpeting as she was handing it to me. "Jesus! Don't come on like that, will you?"

"Hypothetical question. Would he come alone?"

She sat opposite me and pondered it. "I don't know. It depends. He's the kind of guy who likes all the odds his way. I'd say this. If he didn't come here alone, he'd leave alone. There isn't any such thing as trusting people, not when it's worth money to them to put a knife in your back. What he'd probably do, he'd fake one of his slobs into thinking it was some other kind of deal, and when it was done, he'd drop the slob right beside us."

"Is he really as rough as you seem to think?"

"You've got me nervous. Is it okay to pull those curtains across? I don't like all that black looking in at us."

"Go ahead."

She pulled all the heavy curtaining and turned off two of the four lights. She sat beside me and said, "That's a lot better." She touched my gla.s.s with hers. "Happy days," she said.