She said, in a voice full of lost wonder. “The day he swam out to that rocky island he wore tennis shoes so he could cross the reef.”
“It isn’t proof,” he said.
As she looked at him, she was like somebody coming awake. “What else do we need?”
“There’s timbers down there, bits of old rigging. Spanish, I’d say. Their treasure ships used to sail out of Veracruz, full of Aztec gold. Hurricanes out of the Caribbean used to drive them onto this coast, onto these reefs. Most of the gold is gone for good, buried over, lost. The reef helped protect this one. Maybe it was uncovered by one of the storms. What I heard last night gave me the clue. What I heard, and a rusted old hand-forged ringbolt. They’ve been working it. Diving with Aqualungs, bringing the stuff up, and Corson has been melting it down. There’s a profitable illegal traffic in gold. I bet Winkler’s peddling it all over Latin America. Corson melts it right there, I imagine, with one of those little lab-size electric furnaces.
“Lord knows how they happened to stumble across it. Maybe while spear fishing. Then Winkler knew he had to have a base that was handy. I don’t know how they would have worked it if I’d been around. But they had it easy. A woman alone, and a woman who was emotionally vulnerable through loneliness, and not very brave. Donny got close to her, and found out she could be frightened, and then they scared her into selling, and she decided her penalty would have to be to get out of my life.”
“And Eddie,” she said, “found out too much, and they — just killed him...”
He stood up and picked up the mask. “I’d like to get a piece of the gold, if I can find any.”
She took the mask from him. “Let me. I’ve got to help.”
His strength was coming back too slowly for him to protest. Unself-consciously, she pulled off the soaked dress and spread it out on the engine hatch. She wedged her feet into the swim fins, adjusted the mask, slipped over the stern. He saw her locate the buoy, then turn down in a quick surface dive. He saw a last flutter of green fins, then nothing.
He stood and watched the water, legs braced against the slow rise and fall of the Baby Barnacle.
She was staying down a long time. Too long. There was a drone like that of a mosquito, far away, and he did not notice it until it seemed to grow heavier, drumming in the air over the sound of the wave wash on the reef. He turned sharply, cursing his own inattention.
Winkler’s cruiser was coming hard and fast, white bow waves sparkling in the sun. It was about four hundred yards away. Even if he had had the anchor up and the slow engine chugging, it was far too late to hope for escape. He turned and looked again at the surface of the water. Just as he turned. Linda broke through the surface, gasping, smiling at him, holding up a dark object the size of a plum. She looked past the Baby Barnacle and saw the cruiser bearing down on them.
She reached the transom in two strokes, and he hauled her up and into the boat. He hoped Winkler didn’t have glasses on them. He snatched the surprisingly heavy piece of metal out of her hand, shoved the engine hatch over, snatched up the pistol, and placed both down beside the engine, out of sight.
“Get your dress on, and don’t say anything,” he said.
They came up at full speed, and at the last possible moment Winkler, at the wheel, shifted into full reverse. The cruiser lugged down, and the water boiled astern. The battered craft eased gently to within ten feet of the Baby Barnacle.
Donny stood at the stern of the cruiser, one of the rifles held across his thighs. Winkler headed into the tidal current, and the heavy marine engines turned over slowly, just matching the drift.
“Any luck?” Winkler asked. Paul decided it was something in the way they stood, something in their eyes, something in the set of their mouths. He had seen that look before.
“Where’s your fishing party?” Paul asked.
“We got a little ship-to-shore. Corson got us word. Little code word that means company. That’s the boat belongs to that bum that runs the tavern, isn’t it?”
“This is Al Wright’s boat,” Paul said steadily. “And I’m the guy whose wife you turned Donny loose on, Winkler. And this is the lady whose husband you killed. And today is the day you run out of luck.”
“I make my luck, Rayder.”
Donny moved close to Winkler. Winkler gave instructions in a low tone that Paul could not hear. Donny did not take his eyes from Paul as he listened. Paul felt as if every nerve in his body were being pulled slowly through his skin. His hands were wet. It was a familiar feeling, adrenalin in his blood. That patrol feeling, when your ears magnify the night sounds, when your eyes see more than ever before.
Winkler took the rifle, held it easily in one hand, the other on the wheel. Donny uncased binoculars and climbed to the cabin roof, braced his feet, and methodically searched the shore line, the surrounding horizon.
“Nothing I can see, Moss.”
The big, red-bodied man bit his lip. Paul could sense the deep uneasiness in him and tried to increase it by giving the impression of calm. He glanced at Linda. She stood easily in the drying dress, and he saw that she never took her eyes from Winkler’s face. He knew there was fear in her, and knew also that she would never show it.
“Toss her a line, Donny.”
The coiled line rattled aboard. Winkler said, “Girl, make that fast to the bow.”
Linda looked at Paul, and he nodded. She went forward with the end of the line and made it fast.
“Now, girl. Heave up that anchor. And then sit down in the bow. You, Rayder, sit on the engine hatch.”
Donny stood in the stern of the cruiser with the rifle Winkler had given back to him. The engine sound deepened, and the cruiser began to move straight out away from the reef. The line tautened and pulled the bow of the Baby Barnacle around, and the smaller boat began to waddle busily in tow after the cruiser.
There had been, as yet, not the slightest opportunity for escape. And Paul realized, with a sudden chill feeling, that if Winkler wanted to play it safe all the way, there never would be an opportunity. With the island blocking the view and the boats far out on the horizon, too far away to be of any help or even to be aware there was trouble, it would take merely two quick shots, the flat sounds lost in the sea sound, and two weights and some wire, and casting the Baby Barnacle adrift. Winkler would be enormously stupid to kill the two of them. It would focus enough attention on him as to inevitably lead to too many questions and not enough answers.
And yet there would be a supreme futility in saying, “Don’t kill us, please, because it really isn’t terribly bright of you, old boy.” And no matter how deep the water was off the island. Winkler would not be impressed by the fact that corpus delicti means not the body of the deceased but the body of the evidence.
He saw Winkler turn away from the wheel and bend over a compartment to his right. He straightened up with a twin to the weight that anchored the buoy line, only larger. A two-gallon pail full of concrete with a ringbolt set in it. Linda attracted Paul’s attention with a furtive motion of her hand. Paul saw that she had found a heavily rusted fish knife. Winkler turned in a slow curve around the island and cut the engines. The cruiser drifted to a stop. The Baby Barnacle drifted toward the stern of the cruiser, the tow line going slack.
“There’s a hundred feet of water here,” Winkler said in the sudden silence.