Dorothy stood up and smiled at Remo. ‘This is Remo, my associate from Mr. Polaney’s campaign. The only other person with enough vision to see that Mac Polaney was what Miami Beach needed.’
‘Save it for your next dog food commercial,’ Remo said. ‘I finally wised up. When I found out why Teri wasn’t at the studio. Did you do it just to capture the city?’
Dworshansky nodded. ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘Can you think of a better reason?’ He talked easily, almost happily.
‘But why kill Farger?’
‘Farger? Oh yes. That was just to remind Mayor Cartwright’s people that we did not look kindly upon defections. Of course, when you disposed of Farger’s body and kept the killing quiet, that eliminated any value we might have gotten from it.’
‘And Moskowitz?’
‘Moskowitz was weak,’ Dworshansky said. ‘I think he would rather have gone to jail than to play in this high-stakes game. We could not chance somebody on the inside cracking.’
‘And you dragged the federal government and the League papers into the campaign because…’
‘… Because it was the only way to keep Cartwright and his thieves out of jail and to get Cartwright re-elected. You see, I figured that the government would be afraid to act against Cartwright if it was, itself, under fire from him.’
‘Good plan,’ Remo said. ‘It tied my hands for a long time, made me afraid to do what should have been done to Cartwright and to you. Too bad you finally lost.’
Dworshansky smiled. A deep white smile in his dark tan face. ‘No, my friend. I have not lost. You have lost.’
He lunged for a small box on top of the sitting room’s piano and answered Remo’s last question.
When he drew out the ice pick, Remo realized that he not Cartwright, not Dorothy Walker, not any of the hired hands—this muscled old man had been the killer. He had wanted to clear that up.
Remo grinned.
Dworshansky charged him. As he got close to Remo, Remo could smell the overpowering aroma of the lilac cologne. Dworshansky wasted no time on preliminaries. He aimed a roundhouse at Remo’s temple, hoping to drive the ice pick in to the hilt. Remo slid back, just out of the pick’s range, then moved forward again, slamming the hell out of his left hand against Dworshansky’s right arm, forcing the pick to continue its giant arc, until it buried itself deep into the left side of Dworshansky’s own throat. The man gurgled, looked at Remo in shock and surprise, then dropped to the floor.
Dorothy Walker stood. She cast only a fleeting glance at her father, then said: ‘Oh, Remo. We can do it. You and I. First this city and then the state.’
‘Not even one tear to shed for your father?’
She moved close to Remo, insinuating her body against his. She smiled. ‘Not even one,’ she said. ‘I’ve always been too busy living… and loving… to weep.’
‘We’ll see what we can do to correct that,’ Remo said. Before she could move or react, her scream was frozen in her throat as Remo calmly shattered her temple. He let her down softly on the floor, next to her father, and closed the sitting room door behind him.
Remo found the yacht empty of crew. He moved the big boat down to the southern tip of Miami Beach and anchored it two hundred yards off shore. The crew, who had been given the afternoon off by Dworshansky, was not likely to happen upon it there. Remo swam into the beach. The next stop on his schedule was Mayor Tim Cartwright.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Mayor Timothy Cartwright opened his upper right desk drawer. Where there would be an opening on a normal desk, here there was a metal slide. Cartwright un-dipped his keychain from the back of his belt, and with a thin steel key unlocked the slide.
He took from the drawer piles of bills, twenties, fifties, hundreds and shoveled them into his briefcase.
How many times, he thought, had losing candidates delayed their appearance before their supporters at campaign headquarters? And how many times had they been too busy to speak, because they had first had to go to their offices to collect the money and get rid of the evidence?
Well, it didn’t matter. He had come in honest and poor; he would go out dishonest and rich. The money in safe deposit boxes around the country; the jewellery and bonds overseas. He would never have to worry about the future. The city had chosen Mac Polaney, so that was their problem. Let the voters live with it. He would be far away.
And when police protection fell apart, when city services became first negligible, then non-existent, when the town was an open city for hoodlums, bums and hippies, and the public clamoured for Tim Cartwright to come back and straighten things out, they could hold their hands on their asses. He would be long gone.
He visualized his headquarters now, awash with tears. How strange. There were more tears shed by one rabid supporter than by all the losing incumbents in the history of the world. Not strange at all, he then realized. The losing incumbent had already gotten his; what did he have to cry about?
‘Going somewhere?’
The voice broke Cartwright’s reverie.
‘How did you get in here?’ he said, knowing that the building was locked and Sheriff Clyde McAdow stood guard at the back entrance of the municipal building.
‘The sheriff decided to take a nap. A long nap. Now it’s your turn.’
‘You’re that Remo, aren’t you?’ Cartwright said. His hand moved stealthily toward a desk drawer.
‘That’s right,’ Remo said. ‘And if your hand reaches that drawer, your hand’ll come off.’
Cartwright froze, then said casually, ‘Why? What have you got against me?’
‘A few things. Farger. Moskowitz. The attempt on Polaney?’
‘You know they were all the marshal’s idea, don’t you?’ Cartwright said. ‘Not mine. His.’
‘I know,’ Remo said. ‘Everything was his idea. The League papers. Killing poor Bullingsworth. Attacking Folcroft. The federal government.’
Cartwright shrugged his shoulders and grinned, the kind of grin mastered best by Irish politicians caught with their hands in the till.
‘So? It was true, wasn’t it? You’re here.’
‘That’s right,’ Remo said. ‘We’re both here.’
‘Now what?’
‘Here’s what. You sit down at that desk and write what I dictate.’
Cartwright nodded. ‘Okay. That’s what you get out of it. What do I get out of it?’
‘You live. That’s one. That briefcase of money. That’s two. A free ride out of the country. That’s three.’
‘Do you mind if I call the marshal?’
‘Yes,’ Remo said, ‘I do mind. He told me he would not accept your call.’
Cartwright measured Remo again with his eyes, then with an almost imperceptible shrug, sat down at the desk, took Mayor’s Office stationery from the center drawer and a pen from the ebony desk set in front of him. He looked up at Remo.
‘Address it,’ Remo said, ‘to the people of Miami Beach.’
Mac Polaney held the paper up in his hands.
To celebrate his new found eminence as mayor-elect of Miami Beach, he had dressed in a pair of full length blue jeans. His white tennis sneakers had given way to open toed leather thong sandals. In place of a red boat-neck shirt, he was wearing a long sleeved pink silk shirt with Catfish Corners Bowling Team embroidered on the back.
‘Copies of this paper are being made ready for you members of the press,’ he said. ‘In it, Mayor Cartwright tells how he tried to confuse the citizenry about the League papers. They were all a fraud, he said. The only purpose was to draw attention away from his shakedowns and extortion, which he freely admits to in the letter.
‘He apologizes to the people of Miami Beach and as the next mayor, I accept the apology for the people of Miami Beach and cordially invite soon-to-be former Mayor Cartwright to the annual Catfish-in-June festival, which will award a hundred dollar prize for the catch of the largest catfish, even if I warn him not to think about winning the money, because I am going to be entered and will probably win. In addition, according to Mayor Cartwright’s statement which I have here in my hand, he doesn’t need an extra hundred dollars. He’s got enough money.’