«Anchored?» I asked him, pointing.
He looked around the end of his booth, wrinkled his nose with contempt.
«Hell, that’s the gambling boat. The Cruise to Nowhere, they call the act, because it don’t go no place. If Tango ain’t crooked enough, try that. Yes, sir, that’s the good ship Montecito. How about a nice warm puppy?»
I put a quarter on his counter. «Have one yourself,» I said softly. «Where do the taxis leave from.?»
I had no gun. I went on back to the hotel to get my spare.
The dying Diana Saint had said «Monty.»
Perhaps she just hadn’t lived long enough to say «Montecito.»
At the hotel I lay down and fell asleep as though I had been anaesthetized. It was eight o’clock when I woke up, and I was hungry.
I was tailed from the hotel, but not very far. Of course the clean little city didn’t have enough crime for the dicks to be very good shadows.
TEN
It was a long ride for forty cents. The water taxi, an old speedboat without trimmings, slid through the anchored yachts and rounded the breakwater. The swell hit us. All the company I had besides the tough-looking citizen at the wheel was two spooning couples who began to peck at each other’s faces as soon as the darkness folded down.
I stared back at the lights of the city and tried not to bear down too hard on my dinner. Scattered diamond points at first, the lights drew together and became a jeweled wristlet laid out in the show window of the night. Then they were a soft orange yellow blur above the top of the swell. The taxi smacked in the invisible waves and bounced like a surf boat. There was cold fog in the air.
The portholes of the Montecito got large and the taxi swept out in a wide turn, tipped to an angle of forty-five degrees and careened neatly to the side of a brightly lit stage. The taxi engine idled down and backfired in the fog.
A sloe-eyed boy in a tight blue mess jacket and a gangster mouth handed the girls out, swept their escorts with a keen glance, sent them on up. The look he gave me told me something about him. The way he bumped into my gun holster told me more.
«Nix,» he said softly. «Nix.»
He jerked his chin at the taxi man. The taxi man dropped a short noose over a bitt, turned his wheel a little and climbed on the stage. He got behind me.
«Nix,» the one in the mess jacket purred. «No gats on this boat, mister. Sorry.»
«Part of my clothes,» I told him. «I’m a private dick. I’ll check it.»
«Sorry, bo. No checkroom for gats. On your way.»
The taxi man hooked a wrist through my right arm. I shrugged.
«Back in the boat,» the taxi man growled behind me. «I owe you forty cents, mister. Come on.»
I got back into the boat.
«Okay,» I sputtered at Mess Jacket. «If you don’t want my money, you don’t want it. This is a hell of a way to treat a visitor. This is —»
His sleek, silent smile was the last thing I saw as the taxi cast off and hit the swell on the way back. I hated to leave that smile.
The way back seemed longer. I didn’t speak to the taxi man and he didn’t speak to me. As I got out on to the float at the pier he sneered at my back: «Some other night when we ain’t so busy, shamus.»
Half a dozen customers waiting to go out stared at me. I went past them, past the door of the waiting room on the float, towards the steps at the landward end.
A big redheaded roughneck in dirty sneakers and tarry pants and a torn blue jersey straightened from the railing and bumped into me casually.
I stopped, got set. He said softly: » ’s matter, dick? No soap on the hell ship?»
«Do I have to tell you?»
«I’m a guy that can listen.»
«Who are you?»
«Just call me Red.»
«Out of the way, Red. I’m busy.»
He smiled sadly, touched my left side. «The gat’s kind of bulgy under the light suit,» he said. «Want to get on board? It can be done, if you got a reason.»
«How much is the reason?» I asked him.
«Fifty bucks. Ten more if you bleed in my boat.»
I started away. «Twenty-five out,» he said quickly. «Maybe you come back with friends, huh?»
I went four steps away from him before I half turned, said: «Sold,» and went on.
At the foot of the bright amusement pier there was a flaring Tango Parlor, jammed full even at that still early hour. I went into it, leaned against a wall and watched a couple of numbers go up on the electric indicator, watched a house player with an inside straight give the high sign under the counter with his knee.
A large blueness took form beside me and I smelled tar. A soft, deep, sad voice said: «Need help out there?»
«I’m looking for a girl, but I’ll look alone. What’s your racket?» I didn’t look at him.
«A dollar here, a dollar there. I like to eat. I was on the cops but they bounced the.»
I liked his telling me that. «You must have been leveling,» I said, and watched the house player slip his card across with his thumb over the wrong number, watched the counter man get his own thumb in the same spot and hold the card up.
I could feel Red’s grin. «I see you been around our little city. Here’s how it works. I got a boat with an underwater bypass. I know a loading port I can open. I take a load out for a guy once in a while. There ain’t many guys below decks. That suit you?»
I got my wallet out and slipped a twenty and a five from it, passed them over in a wad. They went into a tarry pocket.
Red said: «Thanks,» softly, and walked away. I gave him a small start and went after him. He was easy to follow by his size, even in a crowd.
We went past the yacht harbor and the second amusement pier and beyond that the lights got fewer and the crowd thinned to nothing. A short black pier stuck out into the water with boats moored all along it. My man turned out that.
He stopped almost at the end, at the head of a wooden ladder. «I’ll bring her down to here,» he said. «Got to make noise warmin’ up.»
«Listen,» I said urgently. «I have to phone a man. I forgot.»
«Can do. Come on.»
He led the way farther along the pier, knelt, rattled keys on a chain, and opened a padlock. He lifted a small trap and took a phone out, listened to it.
«Still working,» he said with a grin in his voice. «Must belong to some crooks. Don’t forget to snap the lock back on.»
He slipped away silently into the darkness. For ten minutes I listened to water slapping the piles of the pier, the occasional whirr of a seagull in the gloom. Then far off a motor roared and kept on roaring for minutes. Then the noise stopped abruptly. More minutes passed. Something thudded at the foot of the ladder and a low voice called up to me: «All set.»
I hurried back to the phone, dialed a number, asked for Chief Fulwider. He had gone home. I dialed another number, got a woman, asked her for the chief, said I was headquarters.
I waited again. Then I heard the fat chiefs voice. It sounded full of baked potato.
«Yeah? Can’t a guy even eat? Who is it?»
«Carmady, Chief. Saint is on the Montecito. Too bad that’s over your line.»
He began to yell like a wild man. I hung up in his face, put the phone back in its zinc-lined cubbyhole and snapped the padlock. I went down the ladder to Red.
His big black speedboat slid out over the oily water. There was no sound from its exhaust but a steady bubbling along the side of the shell.
The city lights again became a yellow blur low on the black water and the ports of the good ship Montecito again got large and bright and round out to sea.