At Meyer's three solid knocks upon the stateroom door she jumped violently. I'd worked out a code with Meyer, based on several of the plausible things you can call out when somebody knocks.
"Yes?" I called. That let him know our guess was right and she had simplified things by leaving Fourteen unlocked and it was safe to leave Ans his little keepsake.
"Sorry. Wrong room," he rumbled.
I kept her going. She balked now and again, such as when I demanded she put down the specifics of the most recent murder. He had been a fifty-four year old divorced chemist from Youngstown, Ohio, taking a vacation alone, and they had come aboard on separate tickets at separate times as Mr. and Mrs. A. B. Terry, and he had twenty-six thousand dollars in cash in a money belt, the proceeds of the sale of some bonds and the cash value of his insurance policies. Ans Terry was now wearing the money belt, and Mr. Powell Daniels was sticking out of the silted bottom somewhere west-southwest of Miami, wearing under his resort clothes an entirely different sort of belt, one of those designed for scuba diving, with every compartment snapped shut on its wafer of lead.
She explained it to me. "I'd tell him to just wander around until he was sure our luggage had been brought in. We had to come aboard separate on this one on account of crew people knowing me. He came to the cabin and I gave him a celebration drink. It would really knock them out, that stuff. Then I'd let Ans in. You could count on four or five hours before you could slap them half awake. We know where the best place is on this boat, from before. It's on the Promenade Deck about thirty feet forward from where the deck stops. It stops at the doors to the dining room. I guess it is about the middle of the ship. Right there there's no place above you where people can look over. There isn't any rail there or side deck on the Lounge I deck, and up on the Sun Deck there's a lifeboat in the way. It's the same on either side of the ship. You do it about three in the morning. They aren't really awake. But they sort of walk, if you hold them on both sides. We sing and ask him if he's feeling better if there's people. I go and stand at the nearest stairway and if nobody is coming, I click my tongue, and Ans picks them up like you pick up a sleepy kid, and leans out over the rail and drops them."
I dictated it back to her. Meyer had figured out the visitors' pass system perfectly.
I was curious about how so many apparently intelligent men could be gulled so readily.
"Oh, you mean always tell the ones worth a try, and out of those, the ones you can get to take a real interest in you. The marrieds you brush off. Also the ones who know their way around too good. You work to get the name and home address and local address, and if they have to leave right off, that's no good. Sometimes you can go ten days without finding one worth turning in the name so Mack can get him checked out. And then a lot of times from what he found out he'd say no. Like if the guy was too important and had too much money, it would be no just as quick as if he had no chance of raising the minimum twenty thousand. When you get a go-ahead, then you keep right on with the tease, letting him get close sometimes. We all worked it just the same. You cry a lot. You say you shouldn't see him at all, that it's too dangerous. You make him meet you at hideaway places at weird times. Then you confess your ex is a mental case and he's going to kill you. You tell the guy your ex has found out about him, and you make him move to another place under another name. Then you start putting out, and you butter him up by going kind of crazy and telling him it's never been like that before. After they start getting it, they'll believe any damn fool thing you tell them, and do any fool thing you ask. So you fake an attempt on your life, and you say the only way to get away is tickets under a fake name on a cruise ship and bring lots of money, because you have an old friend in Kingston or St. Thomas or somewhere the ship is going who has a remote cottage somewhere and she can fix it so the two of you can stay there under some other name indefinitely. By then, because of the way he worked the postcard bit, any relatives he has and some friends and business partners have been getting cards from him from Spokane or Toledo or Albuquerque or some place like that, and that's where they start hunting when they don't hear anything else ever. We always worked it the same exact way, but DeeDee would handle a guy different than Tami or me, and I would use a different approach than Tami. The thing is, as sOon as he thinks he's going to get to spend sack time with you on a cruise ship, he hasn't got eyes for anything else. And making him believe you don't dare be with him in public makes it a lot safer. I'd always bring one suitcase full of Ans's things aboard with my stuff. How quick you could get him tuned up all the way kind of depended. One ran out on me the day before sailing. They gave me a terrible ride about that, DeeDee and Tami did. I think, all things considered, DeeDee could do the best and fastest job of nailing them down, but if in the beginning you let them think you're going to be easy to get, you spoil it. Lonely men over forty-five, they all, every one of them, have this fantastic thing about young women, and that's what you work on."
It took a long long time to flesh it all out. She became resigned to it, to the extent she did not try to drag her feet when I requested she list the fourteen. Nine was the best she could do, and she wasn't sure of two of their names. She estimated the total take of just herself and Terry at close to four hundred thousand dollars. It was after two o'clock when she said in a tired whine, "Honey, my hand is going to drop right off, honest. It's all full of cramps."
"Take a rest while I read it over."
There were fifteen pages in her unformed backhand, all the lines sloping up toward the right side of the sheets. It would give any investigator more than enough. There was little point in pulling any more details out of her. Her head sagged slowly, jerked upright. She was emotionally and physically exhausted.
"Okay, Del. Just a little bit to wind it up. Ready? New paragraph. I am not going to tell Ans about this letter. I am going to leave him a note... saying I have killed myself. Period. I will pin it to my pillow... after he passes out tomorrow night. Period. I am sorry about what. we did to those men. Period. I am glad I have written. this letter. Period. May God have mercy... on my soul. Period. Sign it, Del."
I was looking down over her shoulder as she wrote her name Adele Whitney. She hesitated. "When I was booked a few times, like in Chicago, it was my right name."
"Put that down too."
"Jane Adele Strusslund," she wrote. She dropped the pen, making a spray of ink on the paper under her signature. She stood, turning as she stood, to come up in the circle of my arms. She yawned deeply, shuddered, rested her forehead against my chin.
"Do I get a gold star, teacher?"
"Solid gold, Jane."
Her head jerked back. "Please don't call me that."
"Okay."
She yawned again. "I'm pooped something awful, darling. Would you like to undress me, maybe?"
"We'd better both rest up. Tomorrow could be rough."
Her glance was coldly inquisitive. "The times I've been turned down you could count on one hand, friend. You gay or something?"
I slowly folded the bulky confession, stuffed it into an envelope. The Monica D. made a larger pitching motion, moving us both off balance, both taking a sideways step to catch ourselves, like the beginning of an improvised dance. The compartmentation creaked, and I knew we were well into New Providence Channel, where we would take the sweep of the weather.