A crowd was gathering. The cop tugged at her and she came along with him, through the circle of people. She did not look up. The cab driver was standing with his hands on his hips.
Another patrol car had arrived. I had not seen it appear. Other cops were talking to him and I saw him shrug and point at the drugstore. Two of them marched n with him, hoping no doubt to nail me in a phone booth. They were slipping her into the rear seat of the first patrol car.
I said an exceptionally ugly word with an exceptionally ugly emphasis, and backed out and drove to the highway, and turned north, toward the broad boulevard which would take us over to Bahia Mar.
After a block of silence I said to Merrimay in the bucket seat beside me, "Excuse the language."
"I think we may have said it simultaneously, Travis. "All three of us," Meyer said.
"Merrimay," I asked, "how come you just stood there when Terry was coming at you?"
"I guess the cameras were rolling, and when you have all those extras in one scene, you don't want to run into a lot of retakes. I guess it just wasn't real to me, somehow. I was Vangie, and he had tried to kill me, and the instant he got over that fence, I was going to rip most of his face off with my fingernails." She shifted and recrossed her legs. "I guess he was... out of his mind."
"Beyond his mind," I said. "He was over into an area where his mind couldn't work any more."
"Then... my impersonation did what you wanted."
"Beyond my wildest dreams, Miss Merrimay. All I wanted to do was get him so rattled he'd make mistakes. I didn't hope for such a convenient arrest. They've got him now, and they ought to get a very interesting reaction when they let him read what the girl wrote. Meanwhile, I offer a steadying drink aboard the Flush."
"I'd like that," she said. "I hope my next acting job gets that big a reaction." Once we were settled aboard in the lounge, the airconditioners laboring to bring it back down to a lower setting, drinks in hand, our gear transferred from Merrimay Lane's car to our respective boats, Meyer said, "Something puzzles me, nought, nought, six and seven-eighths. That poisonous little chippy is going to keep mentioning your name at every opportunity. You are not entirely unknown to the local gustapo. And how do you expect to stay out of it?"
"Out of what? Nobody saw her in my stateroom. Do you think anybody on that boat will admit they can be bribed to let people stay aboard until customs has folded its tent and gone home? Miss Merrimay Lane, a client of a dear friend, met us both when customs had cleared us. We came back here. Who was the dark-haired girl who left off the confession and made the phone calls? I wouldn't have any idea. Oh, how did the blonde get my name? Hell, boys, I struck up an acquaintance yesterday afternoon on Bay Street and talked her into a friendly drink. Wouldn't you? We traded names. Mrs. Del Terry. But I didn't continue the acquaintance aboard ship, not after I got a good look at the shoulders on that guy. Boys, believe me, I never heard of any Tami Western in my life, or any Vangie. What I think, she's trying to smoke screen the issue. Maybe I look a little like the guy who met her at the boat and took off with her, and she's covering for him by giving you my name. Con man! Are you out of your mind?"
Merrimay put her empty glass down and stood up. "Dears, don't say it hasn't been interesting. But I have an afternoon date in Miami with some sweaty old leotards. I love your lovely money, and I love your generous little ways. And it's good for the glands to get terrified once in a while. But most of all I love the luck. I love the way you showed up and got Uncle Jake to take a better look at me. And if I have to tell lies for you, I'll have the widest most innocent brown eyes you ever did see."
She patted Meyer and kissed him on the forehead. I walked her out onto the stern deck, to the little gangplank that crosses over to the pier.
She put her hand lightly on my shoulder and studied me with intent brown eyes. "And you, McGee. If my luck starts running bad, do you keep a fresh supply?"
"At all times."
She tilted her mouth up against mine, quite briefly, her lips soft and leaving an impression of coolness. "I might be by for some someday."
I watched her walk briskly toward her car, the red skirt swinging against good legs. She did not glance back.
Meyer surrendered the belt. I put the twenty-six thousand in my watery vault. Later, in the news stories, I found the information I wanted, the address of Powell Daniels' divorced wife and their twin fifteen-year-old sons. I wrapped up the money. I used a ruler to print the name and address. No handwriting expert in the world can make any identification of block letters, all caps, printed with a ruler. I sent it parcel post, special handling, from Miami's main post office.
And by then, of course, they had them all. Terry, Loyal, Berga, Macklin, the Barntree woman and the Strusslund woman, and they were searching the continent from Hudson Bay to Acapulco for Walter Griffin. Macklin said Griff shoved Vangie into the speeding path of the stolen car, and that she was so terrified she was only semiconscious. Macklin had been driving the car. Nogs had given the order. Drowners, Incorporated, was the name some reporter stuck on them. Despite all the frantic efforts of the tourist industry in the Broward Beach area to get it handled with the same emphasis as a parking ticket, the whole thing, as you will remember, was page one, prime-time shrillness for day after day, with much editorializing about greed, callousness and the decay of moral standards.
Before the grand jury returned the indictments in record time, I was summoned up to the women's wing of the Broward Beach jail for a confrontation with the Strussland woman. Though they'd had her only ten days, her discreet tan had faded to paste, and all the life had gone out of the hair of cream, so that it hung in dulled strands. She wore a baa gray cotton dress without a belt and paper shoes. There were deep violet smudges under her eyes.
The sweet little kiddy-ice was unchanged. "Why did you do that to me! Why?"
"Do what? Buy you a drink in Nassau?"
We had a large interested audience. "Honey, please! You tricked me into writing the confession. My God, tell them how it was, darling! You made promises! You were going to take me to Jersey."
"Wish I could help out, girlie. But I don't know what your angle is. It doesn't make any sense. I don't have a twin brother, and the last time I ever saw you, until right now, was in the ship's dining room. I don't see how it can do you any good trying to bring me into this. Either you did what you wrote down or you didn't."
"So it's going to be like that, you bastard?"
"It's going to be what happened, that's all."
First she made a pretty fair attempt to get her thumbs into my eyes, but the matrons caught her and held her in restraint. As they took her out, that fatty little mouth opened into a round horror-hole. In a candy.sweet chant she said words and phrases that seemed to fume and smoke in the jail air, to give off a tangible aroma of rot. She ejected that last few over her shoulder as they dragged her out, and when the sound had faded, some very professional officers of the law took out handkerchiefs and mopped their faces.