“We’re going ahead?”
“Yes.”
“Half a million is a fortune, Mrs. Carton.”
Her eyes burned at the thought of the loss. “Don’t remind me, Kincaid! We can’t take any further risks trying to recover the money. We’ll have to accept the loss.”
“We, Mrs. Carton? When I got in touch and braced you with the idea, the deal was...”
“I know what the deal was, Kincaid! I have another half million — and another... and another.” She was almost screaming at him. “Does that satisfy you?”
“Sure, Mrs. Carton. Business is business. If you keep details clear as you go along, there can’t be any misunderstanding.”
“We won’t have a misunderstanding,” Emily Carton told him, “so long as you do precisely as I say.”
“Okay, Mrs. Carton. Your word is good enough for me.” He motioned with the revolver. “How about we move out, Rivers? I’m sure Mrs. Carton has looked at your kisser long enough. Mrs. Carton, please take his gun. Then get my shoes.” She lifted my gun, tossed it on a chair.
She fetched his shoes and jacket from the next room. He slid his feet into the shoes without taking his eyes off me. She kneeled and tied the laces.
He slipped a flashlight from his jacket pocket when we were outside.
“To the left, Rivers. The back of the house.”
A black sedan of a low-priced make was parked behind the house out of sight.
“You in front,” he said.
As I slid under the wheel, he eased into the back seat. I felt the muzzle of the revolver touch the back of my neck.
“Take the bay road, and don’t break any traffic laws.”
As we rolled along with stars looking at themselves in the vast sweep of bay water, the revolver eased from my neck. But I knew it was there. And how quickly Kincaid would strike.
“Too bad you went to all that trouble, Rivers, and ended up without the half million bucks.”
“You think that was my motive?”
“What else?”
“How can you be sure I haven’t got the money?”
“Don’t try to string me,” he said. “If you’d found the money, you’d have stopped sticking your nose in.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know.”
“Not interested. If Mrs. Carton’s willing to write off the loss, so am I. Before dawn we’ll be at sea. We won’t care what happens on the mainland after that.”
He was saying that they’d have no fears from the mainland. I was the only person with the tip-off, the truth about the Sprite’s mission, for the authorities. Kincaid intended to see that the truth wasn’t told.
“Who is the man?” I asked.
“Man?”
“In Cuba.”
“Oh, there are a lot of head cheeses in Cuba, Rivers. There are big head cheeses and smaller head cheeses. The fellow we’re interested in is pretty much a chief head cheese. He got that way largely through what he did to R. D. Carton. Carton had trusted that guy with his life, too. Can you blame Mrs. Carton for feeling the way she does?”
I approached the turn-off, slowed at Kincaid’s bidding, and drove past the bait camp on the pot-holed asphalt road.
The outlines of the Scanlon cottage swam into the edges of the headlight beams.
As I braked the car in the corner of the sandy yard, Jack Scanlon came around the far side of the house. In the full glare of the headlights, he was sweaty, disheveled. His face had lost its lazy look. His black hair was lank, plastered to his forehead and temples with sweat.
“Who’s there?” he called, a touch of panic in his voice.
“Kincaid. Watch it. I’ve got Rivers in the front seat.”
Scanlon ran to the side of the car.
Kincaid said, “What’s the matter with you?”
“It’s Maria. She’s off there in a thicket. She won’t come out.”
“Well, go in and get her. A psycho wife is your problem.”
“I’ve tried. I can’t catch her.”
“We’ve too many other things to think about,” Kincaid said, his voice low and savage. “What’s she doing hiding like that?”
“We had a fight.”
“What about?”
“I’m going to leave the stinking cow,” Scanlon said. “I can’t stand her any longer.”
“You’re going to get her out of there,” Kincaid told him. “That’s what you’re going to do.”
“Listen, you can’t make me stay with...”
“I’m telling you, Scanlon.”
“And I’m telling you,” Scanlon said. “This whole idea has blown up.”
“No, it hasn’t.”
“Like hell. And I’m out, see? Count me out. The money’s gone. We can’t find it, and things have been getting hotter with every passing hour.”
“And your feet have been getting colder. But there’s money. Plenty of money.”
Scanlon looked at Kincaid’s shadow in the back seat. “What do you mean?”
“Mrs. Carton is taking the loss. Now you get your wife under control and head for the Sprite.”
Scanlon stood in an awkward position, forearm half-raised to his sweaty forehead. He turned jerkily, cupped his hands about his mouth. “Maria,” he said in a louder than normal voice, “I didn’t mean it.”
She didn’t answer.
“Maria... honest... I wasn’t myself. I didn’t mean those things... my nerves... They’re on edge from the pressure of the past few days.”
A rustling sound came from the thicket beyond the front yard.
“Please, Maria... I’m sorry... I’ll make it up to you, darling...”
Because she wanted so very much to believe, she believed.
She came slowly out of the thicket. Blocky, bovine, her drab hair stringing about her face, she came slinking forward. She was on her feet, of course, but she had the attitude of a person crawling on the belly.
“Jack... I couldn’t stand it without you.”
“I know, hon. I’m sorry.”
“When you threw those jewels back in my lap, I thought I’d lost you for good.”
“What jewels?” Kincaid muttered quickly.
With a bare turn of his head in the direction of the car, Scanlon said, “She had some jewels in a safe deposit box in New Orleans. She hopped over and back.” To Maria, he said: “I was just shook up, baby, from the waiting and all. You’ll never lose me.”
She held out her arms then and rushed forward. Scanlon, with a distaste she missed, put his arm about her shoulders.
“Okay,” Kincaid said. “Get moving.”
“How about Rivers?”
“I’m going to kill him,” Kincaid said.
Maria Scanlon started. Jack tightened his grip on her shoulder.
“Don’t you think about it, Maria,” Scanlon said. “Kincaid knows what he’s doing.”
A brief desire to help me showed in her eyes. But she yielded to the pressure of her husband’s arm, and they moved away in the night.
Chapter Nineteen
Kincaid waited. It seemed to me an incredible amount of time passed. I heard the slow, hard coursing of blood through my head. I felt as if a fog of steam were smothering me. The steam did nothing for the dried-out stiffness of my mouth and throat.
The gun stayed inches from the back of my head.
“All right,” Kincaid said, satisfied at last with the utter silence of the night. “Get out.”
I got out. A brief trembling passed through my knees.
“There’s a marshy place beyond the yard, Rivers. It will do. They’ll be a long time finding you.”
He motioned with the gun for me to turn around. “Keep your hands shoulder high. Now move.”
I walked down the long beam of light from the car with the eerie feeling that my feet weren’t touching the ground.