“And you are a match for him, Mr. Coe?”
“I don’t intend to find out. But if I have to use a gun, I’m going to charge you for the service.”
They went into the grocery and loaded up with meat and canned goods. They carried the food out in three shopping bags, David carrying two and Grew carrying the remaining one. They were passing the post office when Grew stopped dead in his tracks.
“Let’s cross over,” he whispered.
David followed Grew’s glance. Harry Williston was leaning against the wall to the right of the post office entrance, and David figured he’d stationed himself there on the assumption that anyone wanting his mail in this general delivery town would have to come here for it. David took Grew’s elbow, and they started across the street against the rain.
Williston looked up and spotted Grew. He walked out into the gutter.
“Get going,” David told Grew. “Head for the boat!”
“No,” Grew said firmly, and David glanced at him curiously, then shifted his attention back to Williston. Williston was walking across the gutter in an apparent collision course. He stopped about a foot from them, his big feet planted in a wide, wet puddle. They started to walk around him, but he moved over again, blocking their path.
“You’re in our way,” David said. Williston ignored him. He looked straight at Grew and said, “Well. Hello there. Long time no see.”
Grew pulled back his shoulders. “Get out of our way,” he said.
“Have you started it yet?” Williston asked.
“That’s none of your business,” Grew answered.
“Put it this way,” Williston said. “It is my business.”
“We’re driving out of here,” Grew said. “We’ve hired a car and we’re leaving this afternoon and you can’t stop us. I wouldn’t try if I were you.”
“Where’s the girl?” Williston asked.
“She’s going with us,” Grew said.
Williston indicated David. “This your chauffeur?” he asked, smiling.
“Yes,” David answered. “I’m his chauffeur.”
“I should have broke your arm back in the diner.”
“You should have,” David told him. “Now you’ll never get the chance.”
“You know who you’re chauffeuring around, mister?” Williston asked.
“Yes, I do. Get out of our way, Harry. We’re in a hurry.”
“Mr. Williston to you,” he corrected.
“Gee, I’m so sorry,” David said, and then turned to Grew and said, “Come on.” Together they walked away from Williston who stood in the center of the street, in the rain, watching them.
“Away from the docks,” David whispered.
They began walking back toward the center of town.
“You accomplished nothing,” Grew said breathlessly. “There are others. He isn’t alone. They’ll find Sam Friedman, and he’ll tell them about you, and then they’ll know we’re on a boat. Wanda and I were senseless to run. We should have stayed put.”
“This way,” David said, and ducked into an alley.
They walked for a while in silence, circling back toward the docks. Williston was nowhere behind them.
“They don’t know you’re on a boat,” David said at last. “If they look up Sam, he won’t breathe a word to them. You have nothing to worry about. This’ll all blow over.”
“Will it?” Grew said. “Will it?”
And he gave a short, hollow laugh that ran the length of David’s spine.
The gentleman stood against the sink with his hands up over his head. He was wearing Army khakis and a tan windbreaker and he was a slim man with a shock of fiery-red hair. Wanda Meadows sat on the port side of the cabin on one of the dinette seats, and the Luger was in her fist and pointed at the gentleman’s back. Her legs were crossed demurely, and she held the gun as steadily as if it were a cup of tea.
Grew and David came down into the cabin, and the first thing they saw was the slim gentleman, and the next thing they saw was Wanda with the gun. David looked at Wanda. Her eyes were cold and the coldness had turned the gray two shades darker. Her full lips were taut across her teeth.
“Who is he?” David asked.
The man didn’t turn. “Tell the dame to put up the gun, will you?”
“Put it up, Wanda.”
Wanda lowered the gun. The man against the sink made a motion to turn—
“Stay where you are,” she snapped. “If you turn around, I’ll shoot you.”
“The dame’s nuts,” he said, shaking his head. “I come aboard and she pulls a gun on me.”
“Who invited you?” David asked.
“I come aboard to see if I could rent her. She’s a fishing boat, ain’t, she? I heard they was bitin’ like crazy. I figured the owner of the boat wouldn’t mind making a fast buck.”
“I’m the owner,” David said. “I’ve already got a party.”
“Then I’ll be goin’,” the man said. He turned around, and Wanda brought the Luger up and pointed it at his navel.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Frank Reardon.”
“Where are you from?”
“Tampa.”
“Why’d you come all the way down here to fish?”
“I heard they was bitin’. Hell, they ain’t even swimmin’ in Tampa Bay.”
“How’d you find the boat?” David asked.
“What do you mean, how’d I find it? I come looking for a good boat, so I come down to the docks. I spot this one, and she looks clean, so I come aboard. What the hell did I stumble into, anyway? A Russian spy ring?”
“Okay,” David said. “Get ashore. And don’t come back.”
“Don’t worry,” Reardon said. He looked tentatively toward Wanda and the Luger. “Okay, sister?”
“Go on,” she said lowering the gun. Reardon looked at her queerly, shook his head, and mounted the steps. David walked up after him, watching him until he was ashore, then went below again.
“Is someone about ready to tell me what the hell’s going on?” he said.
Neither Grew nor Wanda answered.
“Why are they after you?”
Wanda smiled a bit tremulously.
David stared into the silence. “One thing I hate,” he said, “is talkative fishing parties. Come on, we’d better get under way.”
He gassed her up and then took her out past the rocks. He had no real idea where he should go, no real idea where he should take the fugitives. He vaguely surmised, however, that any chase party would assume they’d head into the Gulf, and so he chose Boca Ciega Bay as the place least likely to encourage pursuit.
He still could not understand his own reasons for having taken them aboard. But there’d been something pathetically appealing about the underweight Grew, and he could not deny the obvious attractiveness of Wanda Meadows. It wasn’t every woman who could handle Pitman and a Luger with equal ease.
He opened the throttle a little wider, and the Helen rushed past Villa del Mar in a burst of flying green and gray and white spray. He kept her nosed into the channel, past the shallow flats and the grass, past Mud Key Point and Mud Key Cutoff and Big McPherson Bayou, heading for the open waters of the bay.
He looked back toward the seat aft near the fishing boxes. There was a locker under that seat, and there was a rifle in the locker, and there was also an Army .45 there, and the .45 had a fresh clip in it. He’d once shot the head off a barracuda with that .45 after a careless fisherman had lost two toes dangling his feet in the water. The way things were going, he surmised there might be more to shoot than barracuda this trip.
He heard a clicking from below, and for a moment he couldn’t place the sound. Then he realized it was a typewriter, and he silently congratulated Grew on his capacity for concentration. Even in the midst of headlong flight, the man could find time to dictate letters to his secretary. He wondered what type of business Grew was in. He didn’t look like a man who got entangled with people like Harry Williston. The typing stopped abruptly. Grew was coming up the steps from the cabin.