But he couldn’t help remembering what the psychiatrist had said at the army hospital. “If you avoid tension and irritating situations, there is no reason why you shouldn’t live a normal, happy life.”
He’d used the wrong word. Happy. George Cooper had existed. Nothing more.
And now the knowledge was clear — dredged up from the depths of Abelson’s brown eyes — George Cooper might very probably cease doing even that. A hell of a man to send on this sort of a deal.
But Abelson had covered it. “You see, Cooper. There’s no one else.”
Catboat Key was six miles south of the center of Sarasota, stretching a narrow way into the Gulf. It wasn’t as developed as Siesta Key or Longboat Key. Now, with the destination close, he felt a curious and deceptive calm. Abelson’s maps had been thorough. Maps in the modern manner which were made by a loafing plane of the pleasure type, equipped with camera.
He knew where to turn off the pot-holed concrete onto the sand road even without the help of the neat green and bronze sign which said “Carla Hutcheon”. The road curved down through a thick growth of mangroves and scrub to the causeway pictured on the map. It was hardtop laid on a hundred yards of fill across a bay. As he drove across the causeway he could see, on either side of the closed gate, the tall fence enclosing the bay side of the little island, a cabin cruiser moored at the left. He stopped with the front bumper almost against the closed gate and pressed the horn ring in a long loud blast that sent up a flapping circle of birds.
An old man in stained khakis ambled into sight, heading for the gate. A sparse white beard was stained lemon at the corners of his mouth. The heels of his shoes dragged in the dust as he walked. Cooper remembered his acquired character in time to give the horn another long blast. The old man shifted into a jerky trot, frowning with annoyance.
Near the gate he swerved over to a phone box fastened to a palm bole.
“What’s your name, mister?”
“Farat. Open up or I’ll bunt it down, Luke.”
“Got orders, mister. Got to phone the house.”
“Make it fast, Luke. We got a hot sun out here.”
“Farat you said?”
The old man phoned. It seemed to take a long time. Cooper blasted the horn again and the old man glared. “Can’t hear with you doing that, mister.”
He hung up and came over and opened the gate. Cooper started fast enough to make the old fellow jump to one side. He drove around a few bends and down through a narrow lane of trees that opened up with surprising suddenness. The house lay squarely ahead, just beyond a big concrete parking apron. It was long, low, sprawling, theatrical. Vertical redwood and white limestone, acres of glass and roof-decks with bright umbrella-ed tables. It followed the line of a crest and beyond it the white sand sloped down to the dancing blue and soap-sud crests of the Gulf.
Cooper was overly conscious of the shutting of the gate behind him. At any time on the trip down he could have turned back. Even while waiting for the phone call to be put through, he could have twisted the car around and roared away. But now it was done.
He turned the ignition key off with the feeling of performing an irrevocable act. He got out and stretched the stiffness out of arms and legs. A picture out of the file on Farat appeared. He was a curly blond with narrow shoulders, red pulpy mouth, tiny hard blue eyes. He stood there and the shock was evident in those blue eyes. He wore swimming trunks and a beach coat with matching design of bright red sailfish on a white background. The carbine in the crook of his arm was completely out of place in the sun glare.
“Hi, Billy,” Cooper said idly.
Billy shifted the carbine. It was aimed at Cooper’s middle and a thin tan finger was through the guard. “I thought it was a gag,” Billy said. “I thought somebody was doing it for a laugh. What’s your angle, Farat?”
“No angle, Billy. I’m just here to say hello to Rocko.”
Cooper couldn’t figure it out. Billy Lemp seemed to be undone by something beyond his comprehension.
“How long does this go on, Luke?” Cooper asked.
Carla Hutcheon came quickly out of a door that opened onto the parking apron. When she saw Farat she stopped dead and all expression left her face. Cooper had memorized her history. She was in her middle forties. Once upon a time she had been very lovely. Nick Floria had found her dancing in a small Chicago club. For six years she had been Nick’s girl. When Nick had a slight difference of opinion with the Syndicate and ended up in the lake with cinderblocks wired to his ankles, Carla demonstrated unexpected executive talent by whipping Nick’s lieutenants into line and taking over his territory, after convincing the Syndicate that she could handle it.
She had grown in many ways. Profits were invested in legitimate enterprise, and she hired bright and honest young men to run them properly. There were resort hotels and a chain of deluxe tourist courts. She was cold, competent and thorough. A big hard-mouthed brunette with pretty eyes, mahogany tan over a body gone to fat.
“Have you gone completely crazy, Allan?”
“Got a nice room for me, Carla?”
Billy appealed to her. “What the hell will Rocko think?”
“Shut up, Billy. Let me think. It looks as though he thought that by coming here he could make that other business look like a frame. But even Farat isn’t that stupid, are you, Allan? Tell mama, Allan. What’s on your sly little mind?”
“You know better than that, Carla. I’ll do my talking to Rocko.”
“How many words do you expect to say? Three? Four?”
“It’ll look funny,” Billy complained. “Him here like this. Like we were crossing the Rock.”
Billy moved closer. Cooper’s mind was racing while he tried to keep his expression calm and untroubled. The file had been incomplete. There was something Abelson hadn’t known. There was evidently a very good reason why this was the last place the genuine Farat would have come to. And this deviation from expected behavior by the fraudulent Farat had caught them flatfooted.
“Rocko knows me better than that,” Carla said.
“Let me take him over in the woods,” Billy said. “It’ll look better. We can show him to Rocko.”
“Not with Barbara here, stupid!” Carla snapped.
Billy moved another step closer. The eagerness was in him. Cooper could sense the slow upward spiral of the diseased mind that would seek any rationalization to justify killing. Abelson had warned him about Billy.
Carla still seemed indecisive. Cooper felt the claw and drag of fear, like a cat that swung from his flesh. The hot sun felt cold on the back of his neck. Fear gave his muscles explosive speed. He slapped the carbine barrel up and to the side with his left hand, feeling the whip-crack of air against his cheek as the carbine spat flatly, and then chopped his right hand over and down onto the exposed angle of jaw. The carbine clattered onto the concrete. Billy took two wild running steps away from Cooper and went down onto his face, the beach coat flapping up to cover the back of his head.
Cooper snatched up the carbine, held it flat out on both hands and presented it to Carla as she backed away. “When it’s due,” he said, “I don’t want to get it from little Willy there.”
Her face changed. The reluctant smile spread heavy lips. “All right, Allan. You may have gone crazy, but you still move the way I like to see. Stand the gun inside the hallway there. And put your top up. It gets damp at night.”
“What was that shot, Carla?” a clear young voice asked.
They both looked up. A young girl stood on the edge of the sundeck over their heads, outlined against the deep blue of the sky. She wore a one-piece strapless bathing suit of aqua velvet, and hair like some new amalgam of copper and gold hung warmly to tanned shoulders. She stood poised there and Cooper saw the broad forehead, level eyes, wide firm mouth below the small tilt of nose. In stance and pose, above him as she was, Cooper thought of some statue erected to that one year of strengthened promise and untried beauty that each woman has in her lifetime.