She weaved to a small deck table and picked up a glass and bottle.
Lessard edged forward a couple of steps. “Rivers, you’re not a totally unreasonable man.”
“Meaning?”
“I’ve never met a man yet who didn’t have his price.”
“Maybe you’ve always been in the wrong company.”
“Surely there must be a way we can come to terms.”
“There is,” I said. “You do have a price, then?”
“In this instance — yes.”
“Good. Name it.”
“A murderer,” I said.
Chapter Twenty
“That’s great, Ed,” D. D. said over the rim of her glass. “Real great. The killing’s to be in Cuba... in the future.”
Lessard opened and closed his hands and looked as if he wished his daughter’s neck were between them. “Shut up, D. D.!”
“She hasn’t told me anything I don’t already know,” I said. “Maybe the murder hasn’t taken place yet — but a pair of others have already, here in Tampa. Bucks Jordan and a dwarf named Gaspar the Great. I wish I’d never heard of either of them. I wish you people had never crossed my path. But we don’t always get our wishes, do we?”
“You think one of us killed the both of them?” Maria asked.
“Isn’t she a dumb cow, Ed?” D. D. giggled. “Why else would you be out here?”
“Do you know which one of us?” Maria persisted.
“Yes,” I said.
“How much more do you know?” D. D. inquired. As her father started to speak, she shushed him with a gesture. “No, papa darling. I want to hear. I want to know how a man like Rivers operates.”
“I know most all of it,” I said. “A few of the minor details are obvious assumptions from the larger facts.
“Emily Carton’s life was wrecked by her husband’s death. Things that had been important in the past became meaningless, money, social position, even personal grooming.
“I’m sure that Kincaid, learning of Carton’s execution and knowing the widow’s temperament, sought her out and showed her the possibility for revenge — at a price.
“She took a new grip on life, a warped and evil grip. Her money was again useful — for an unholy purchase. She would put up whatever amount was necessary, a half million dollars, if it would bring death to the man in Cuba responsible for the execution of her husband.
“The next scene takes place between a couple of Caribbean vagabonds. Kincaid and you, Lessard. I don’t imagine you were strangers to each other.”
“Real pals,” D. D. said. “They once ran some cocaine out of Brazil.”
Lessard seemed not to hear her this time.
“Kincaid has got himself a guy to do his dirty work, Henry Smith. But Henry doesn’t exactly qualify for an assassination. Lessard knows a man who does, a man who barely missed a firing squad after a Latin American revolt.”
“Sounds like you’re talking about me,” Scanlon said.
“No kidding! How much did they promise you, Scanlon? Ten thousand? Fifteen, maybe?”
“You’re telling the tale,” Scanlon said.
“Simple enough, too. Emily Carton had Cuban contacts. They helped her flee the island. They’d assist with this. The Sprite would put into a cove at night. You’d go ashore, Scanlon, and meet the Cuban contacts. They’d help you in and out. In to kill the man Emily Carton was after, out when the job was finished.
“Everything was going beautifully — and then the double-cross. The money disappeared, a cool half-million dollars Emily Carton had put up to finance the expedition.”
“Bucks Jordan,” D. D. said, “took the money, darling.”
“That’s what you think.”
“He took it and passed it on to someone else,” D. D. said with alcoholic persistence.
“That’s the way it was supposed to appear.”
“Really? I’ll bet he passed it on to you, after all. You convinced Kincaid and Smith he hadn’t, but I’ll bet you were being terribly clever.”
“D. D.,” Lessard said heavily, “will you shut!”
“Certainly I won’t, father. I believe Ed is a rich man and has come out to finish us all off for his own safety.”
“My safety doesn’t lie in finishing you off,” I said, “but in nailing down a murderer.
“You’ve thought Bucks Jordan passed the money to someone else who killed him because he could identify that person. Perfectly logical, on the face of it. Bucks was killed at the first opportune moment to make you think exactly that, to make it appear absolutely certain that he had stolen the money and become the victim of a double-cross.
“After Kincaid and Smith decided I hadn’t received the money, the search continued for an unknown person, someone known only to Bucks. Still logical.
“Your efforts to find this shadowy stranger, this unknown, have failed because there has never been any such person. Bucks failed to get the money. He never had his hands on it.
“Sure, he came after it with a midget named Tina La Flor. He slid her through the porthole of your cabin, Alex. She got out with a package. She thought she had the money. The only thing she had was a ringer.
“Someone else had already gained entry to the cabin in the same manner, using a dwarf named Gaspar the Great. Later, this person had to kill Gaspar when the dwarf saw the pressure building, showed signs of breaking, and became a danger.”
The silence of the sea came over us for a short moment.
Maria Scanlon said almost gently, “A double murderer...”
“Yes,” I said, “and we know, don’t we, Maria?”
“I—” Her hand raised to her throat. Involuntarily, she moved closer to Scanlon. She looked at him and swayed. He caught her arms above the elbows, his face dark with revulsion, distaste for her.
“I... don’t feel very well,” she faltered.
“I’m sure you don’t,” I said, “knowing how you feel about him. But he’s never wanted you, Maria, only what he could get from you. Now he doesn’t need that. He can throw your remaining wealth, your jewels, back in your face. He’s got plenty, a cool half-million dollars. Of course, it cost him about twenty-four hundred. He had to make up a dummy package to keep the theft from being known. The ringer that Bucks and Tina took from Lessard’s cabin — after Scanlon and Gaspar had lifted the real package and left the dummy.”
Lessard took a step toward the larger man. “Scanlon — you!”
“Don’t pay any attention to Rivers,” Scanlon said. “Can’t you see he’s lying to save his own skin?”
“Get a load of laughing boy,” I said. “I’m guilty — so I come out here, stick my neck out, tell a lie I can’t back up.”
“Let’s hear you do some backing,” Lessard said, his voice a quivering cork against the eruption inside of him.
“Okay,” I said. “It shapes up simply enough. Scanlon cares for nothing or nobody. He recognizes no ties in any bargain. He got to thinking about that money and the risk he was going to take for a small piece of it.
“He wanted the money, all of it, and none of the risk of a Cuban killing. But how? If the money simply disappeared from your cabin, Lessard, the rest of you would immediately recognize an inside job. He’d never get away from you. He knew he was dealing with people who’d hound him to the ends of the earth to get that money back.
“There seemed one safe and certain way for him to do it. He must definitely make it appear that an outsider had stolen the money. Then the outsider must die, apparently killed by a second, unknown outsider. You’d run yourselves ragged. He’d string it along until the delay and pressure gave him an excuse to back out of the whole Cuban deal. He’d take his leave of you, give Maria the boot, hie himself to climates unknown, and live like a king the rest of his life.”