“Yes sir. Between you and me I think there’s always ways to get around these little problems. If a man’s willing to spend a little money here and there. I wouldn’t be here talking to you if I didn’t intend to spend a little money. I mean what else is the stuff for?”
Maddox smiled gently and watched him. Kendig took the flat wallet from his inside pocket and counted off ten one-hundred-dollar bills and placed them neatly on the arm of his chair. Then he put the wallet away. “I’m on my way down to Houston, a meeting tomorrow afternoon, and then I’ve got to be back in Topeka by Friday. I’d rather you didn’t get in touch with me—I’d better get in touch with you.”
“I’ll tell you what. If you’ve got a few hours to spare right now why don’t you wait around the club a while or come back later tonight. I might be able to help out. I happen to know a charter pilot here in town who’s done a few discreet chores for me from time to time. Why don’t you check back with me in about, say, two hours?”
Kendig stood up. “That’s mighty kind of you.” He shook hands—Maddox didn’t get up—and went to the door; and hesitated with his hand on the knob. “My name’s not Murdison of course.”
“Didn’t think it was, Mr. Murdison.”
“Jim-Bob likely never heard of anybody called Murdison from Topeka. If you were thinking of checking me out with him.”
“I don’t guess that’ll be necessary now, Mr. Murdison.” Maddox smiled coolly and nodded and Kendig went out.
They were shooting straight pool on a nine-foot table in a paneled room off the kitchen and he watched the play with a glass of bourbon in his hand. He wasn’t partial to bourbon but it went with the Murdison image. The two contestants were good, each trying to outhustle the other before the big money got laid down. Pool wasn’t Kendig’s game; it was too mathematical; but watching was a way to pass the time.
By half-past eleven the two hustlers had concluded their ritual courtship dance and by general consent everyone took a break before the commencement of the big game. Kendig went back to the clubroom with the rest. Both players retired into the men’s room to spruce themselves like actresses before an opening curtain; the predictability of it amused him. He took a seat behind a lonely little table and a woman three tables away drew his attention because she was striking and because a curious defiance hung in an aura around her. One of the pocket billiard spectators was trying to join her and she wasn’t having any; she didn’t look at the man. Kendig saw the man’s lips move: Could I buy you a drink?
I’ve got one.
But the man stayed where he was and kept his hand on the back of the empty chair until the woman lifted her eyes slowly and fixed him with a flat stare of contempt that sent him away shaking his head.
The waitress moved by, stopped at the woman’s table and spoke; she was indicating Kendig with a dip of her head; and the woman got up from her table and came toward him. She had a supple spider-waisted little body and short dark hair modeled to the shape of her Modigliani face.
She let him have his look before she said, “You’ll know me again.” Her voice was cool, low in pitch—more smoky than husky. She pulled out the empty chair and sat down. He guessed she was thirty-five; she was attractively haggard. “You’re Murdison?”
“Could be.”
“Maddox said you want to hire a plane.”
“Do you work for a charter outfit or are you just taking a survey?”
“Neither. I fly my own airplane.”
That made him readjust his thinking. She’d taken him by surprise and he rather enjoyed that. It didn’t happen to him very often.
“I’m Carla Fleming,” she said. “It’s Mrs. Fleming.”
“Jim Murdison.”
They shook hands across the table—rather like pugilists before the bell, he thought. “Did Maddox fill you in?”
“Round trip to Saint Thomas, two or three weeks between, and very private. When do you plan to go?”
“Early October, I think. I can’t fix a date right now.”
“If you expect me to hang around waiting my time comes pretty high, Mr. Murdison.”
“All right,” he said. “The way we’ll do it, you’ll fuel up and draw your overseas papers at Miami International. File a flight plan to Charlotte Amalie. You fly out at not more than four thousand feet until you’re off the screen of their radar control. Then you swing down to the old landing field at Coral Key. You know it?”
“I know where it is. I imagine it’s pretty overgrown.”
“It’s serviceable.”
“Then I pick up you and a lady.”
“And fly us to Charlotte Amalie. Your flight plan will check out—you’ll be about an hour late, that’s all.”
“And the same number coming back?”
“That’s right, ma’am.”
She watched him with direct amusement. “It won’t be cheap, Mr. Murdison—since I don’t know what we’ll be carrying.”
“I’m not smuggling anything.”
“I hear you saying it.” She was poised, neat, confident; she knew how to sit and what to do with her hands and she was sitting there working out exactly how high she could bill him before he balked at the price. “I fly a Bonanza,” she said. “Executive charters generally run fifty cents a linear mile—that’s for the plane, not per passenger. But this will run you more than that.”
“How much more?”
“Half again. Seventy-five cents a mile. And you’re paying for the two trips I’ll have to make empty. Two round trips, that’s about forty-four hundred miles. Thirty-three hundred dollars, Mr. Murdison.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to buy your airplane.”
She smiled. “If you want a better price why don’t you try one of the commercial outfits down in Miami? Actually I think the airline fare to Saint Thomas is about sixty dollars.”
“Three thousand,” he said, “in cash.”
“That’s agreeable but I get two hundred a day for me and the plane while I’m waiting for you in Miami.”
“All right,” he said. “Be there on October third. Where do you usually lay over?”
“There’s a motel called the Flamingo a few blocks from the airport gate.”
“Fine. Check in with the desk every two hours after noon on the third.”
He dipped the fingers of his left hand into the flat wallet inside his jacket, extracted the envelope from it and put the envelope on the table. “That’s five hundred. I’ll give you another fifteen hundred when you pick us up at Coral Key and the rest when you pick us up at Charlotte Amalie for the return flight.”
“I guess that’s fair enough. If you’re making any deals with Maddox about papers you’ll have to do that personally with him—I don’t want to know anything about it.”
“I didn’t say anything about papers, Mrs. Fleming.”
“So you didn’t.” She put the envelope in her handbag; snapped the clasp shut and put the bag on the floor by her feet. “Now you may buy me a drink. Scotch mist, with Dewar’s.”
At half-past one he was in her apartment without quite being sure why. “There was a Mr. Fleming,” she said. “He’s a nice guy. One day we just decided neither one of us would be worth looking at across a breakfast table for the next thirty years.”
But she was vulnerable; it was evident in the way the apartment looked. It was a very personal place, she’d made it hers. The furniture looked Mexican: pale wood, very heavy with thick comfortable cushions. There were a couple of wicker armchairs with Indian patterns dyed into them. She had Navajo rugs on the walls and they looked as if she’d had them for a long time; the lower edges were frayed where cats had sharpened on them. The single painting was a limited-edition Georgia O’Keeffe reproduction. She had an air race trophy on an end table and the LP jackets by the stereo were thoroughly used clues to a taste in music which was catholic but not undiscriminating: she had Toscanini but not Fiedler, Ray Charles but not Bob Dylan, Sgt. Pepper but not the Stones, MJQ but not Brubeck.