The Parson said, “Hello. I’m lookin’ for the skipper who was to have taken a young couple to Port of Spain.” The man’s expression did not change. “Brother, you’re lookin’ straight full and at him now.” His voice was a rumbling, dreamy baritone.
“Swell. My name’s Ormond. I’m a friend of the young couple.”
The tanned face beamed. “Glad to know you. Maybe you can tell me when they is comin’ ’board. They’s overdue maybe an hour, maybe more.”
“Oh, so they didn’t show up.”
“That’s correct, mister. I been waitin’ on ’em.”
“Maybe they decided not to go,” said the Parson.
“Mebbe you’re right.”
“Well, if they do come, will you tell ’em to get in touch with me at the Victoria? That’s my hotel.”
“Glad to, mister.”
“Thanks, Cap’n—”
“Deerman is the name.”
“Cap’n Deerman. How do you make a livin’ out of your boat?”
“Little fishin’. Take out parties.”
“And dope runnin, huh?”
“Fishin’s nice out beyond the headlands. You come around some time, mister, and I’ll show you where the tarpon run.”
A cabin door opened and a flood of yellow light flitted across the deck surface. A handsome, full-bosomed young negress stood in the doorway, applying powder industriously to her cheeks from a flat silver compact. As she came toward them, the Parson was aware that her dress reeked of gardenia perfume.
Captain Deerman said, “Tha’s my woman. Narcissa, go ’long in and fetch out the rum bottle. You like a drink, Mr. Ormond?”
“Sure.”
The woman sauntered out, swinging shapely hips. She returned in a few minutes with a plaited straw demijohn and a couple of glasses. The man held the glasses while she poured the liquor. He handed one to the Parson. They drank. Deerman grinned dreamily, sucked at the rim of his glass.
“You in trouble, mister?”
“Hell, no!” the Parson snapped.
“Well, you look like you been banged around some.” He looked out over the broad expanse of water. “That young couple now, they ain’t in trouble, is they?”
The Parson lifted his chin, his mouth hardened, his brows drew together. “What makes you ask that?”
“Why, nothin’ but idle curiosity.” Deerman was undisturbed. “They seemed like nice kids, kinda devoted to each other, like me and Narcissa. I wouldn’t see harm come to them for a thousand pesos! And I’m a poor man.”
The Parson looked at him for a long moment, then drew forth a fat wad of bills and counted off five of them.
“There’s a hundred bucks,” he said grimly. “Not pesos, American money. If you run into them kids, look after ’em.”
Deerman beamed, palmed the money. “Shu’ will, mister.”
“And tell ’em if you see ’em to get in touch with me at my hotel.”
“The Victoria, you said. I’ll do that.”
The shadow left the Parson’s face. His thin, chiseled features cracked into a tight, lopsided grin. He swung on his heel, caught hold of the pier and hoisted himself up.
“ ’Night, mister,” came Deerman’s voice.
“Good-night,” said the Parson.
He turned briefly, saw the handsome young negress stick a shiny, nickel-plated gun back into the bosom of her dress. She had drawn it when she had gone in to fetch the demijohn, held it half-concealed under her armpit when she had poured the drinks. The heady odor of the perfume which saturated her clothing wafted to him briefly, was replaced by the fetid odor of rotted fruit as he paced down the pier toward the street.
Shadows moved away from the dark warehouse, moved with him. The Parson’s hand dropped into his coat pocket, closed on the butt of his Luger. A man moved toward him with a bleak sort of smile, casually stopped about ten feet from him.
The Parson stopped, got set, muscles tense and waiting. The man said, “Take your hand off the gun, pal. I’m a friend.”
He came into the light of the moon, a tall, thin man, dressed in tan gabardine. He held his hands in front of him, palms upward.
The Parson relaxed. It was the man he had seen in the company of the military looking white-haired old gent in the Montecita.
The man said, “I followed you all the way from Jake Mund’s cottage. Carl Dorn and Eva think you’re dead but I’m glad you’re not. It’s a swell night. Mind if I walk with you?”
They walked to the cobbled street, turned in the direction of the flickering lights.
The Parson said, “I didn’t catch your name.”
“Joel Knight. Maybe you’ve heard of me.”
The Parson turned his head sidewise but kept on walking. After a while he said, “Yeah, I’ve heard of you. You were a lawyer back in New York last I heard of you.”
“Truth is, I still am. This is something of a vacation for me. I’m down here representing Major Hugh Amberly Rowe. He owns a couple of railroads, a lake steamship line and three or four continental bus companies. He pays income tax in six figures.”
“That,” said the Parson thoughtfully, “would be the old gent with the handlebar mustaches.”
“Check. I’ve wanted to talk to you for some time, Parson.”
“So you know my name, too.”
Knight grinned indulgently. “Who hasn’t heard of the Parson?” He made a sound with his lips. “Umm. Nothing doing on the little boat, huh?”
“What’d you mean?”
“They didn’t go aboard the boat, did they?”
The Parson looked at him sidewise without checking stride. “If we’re talk-of the same people, they didn’t.”
“We are. Did you like Carl Dorn and lil’ Eva? I thought it was nice that Alex Morton got clipped... the rat. I don’t think Carl Dorn is so tough. But Eva, my! She’s the guts of the outfit.”
“So you were peeking, huh?”
Knight laughed. “Uh-huh. Right through a crack in the drawn shade. I was about to take a hand myself or call copper but that damned Chinese chopper cut loose.”
“That,” said the Parson grimly, “was Soo Gee, Lee Fong’s bodyguard. But don’t blame it all on the Yellow Peril. After all, they murdered Lee first.”
“Who did?”
The Parson shrugged. “Search me. Maybe Carl Dorn, maybe Eva. And maybe Jake Mund. I’m not good at guessing games. Are you?”
“Lousy.”
“Still, I distinctly heard Dorn say that he wondered who had knocked off the Chink, indicating that he hadn’t. What about the major?”
“No. Oh, no. Not the major. I was stationed outside the window when he entered the house. Lee Fong was already dead on the floor.”
“That leaves Jake Mund,” said the Parson.
“And us out in the cold.”
“Us?” said the Parson.
“Sure. I’m cutting you into the deal. We can’t find Jake Mund and Nina, either of us. We might as well not find them together.”
“I could tell more about that if I knew what this was all about.”
Knight stopped short, looked keenly at the Parson. “You mean to say you don’t know?”
“I’m a friend of Jake’s, that’s all. But he told me nothing.”
“Whew!” Knight blew out his cheeks. “Surprised?”
“You could bend me in two with a breath of air. And I was blithely cutting you into the deal.”
“There’s dough in it, huh?”
“Interested? Hell, of course, you are! You got a rep tor keeping your eye on the main chance. Always a money player. I suppose I can bank on that. What say? Can you spare a dime’s worth of time?”
The Parson said, “What can I get out of it?”
“Maybe about fifty, sixty grand. Maybe more. It’ll be a two-way cut.”
“I’ve heard that some place before. Shoot!”
“First, you got to promise you’re in it with me.”