But I wouldn’t know. That was the terrible part of it. I’d never have any idea at all what was happening until the hour they came after me.
I had to get out of here. I was thinking swiftly now. Quit, and tell Carter I was going to New York. Sell my car, buy a bus ticket, get off the bus somewhere up the line, and come back. Buy the boat, under another name, of course. In three days I could have it ready for sea. We’d be gone before they even came looking for me. If they did.
It didn’t occur to me until afterward that never once in all of it did I ever consider the possibility of not buying the boat and not taking Shannon Macaulay.
Suddenly, I had to see her. For the first time in a self-sufficient life I was all at once terribly alone, and I didn’t know why, but I had to see her.
That reminded me. The watchman had said that a woman had called. I was still holding in my hand the slip of paper he had given me. It was a telephone number, the same one she had given me in the bar. Maybe something had happened to her. I ran toward the car.
Calling from the watchman’s shack would be quicker, but I didn’t want the audience. I slowed going through the gate, and the graveyard watchman lifted a hand and nodded. I noted bitterly that old Chris had gone home at last.
I pulled up at the nearest bar and called her. She answered, finally, her voice tense. We put on the lovers’ rendezvous tone to take care of possible listeners. She arranged to meet me at the cocktail joint we’d drunk at earlier in the day.
I was sitting in the car in front of it when she pulled up and parked her Caddy. If she were being followed I didn’t want to go inside where they might get a look at my marked-up face. I eased alongside. She saw me, and slipped out on the street side and got in. It had taken only seconds.
I shot ahead, watching the mirror. There were cars behind us, but there was no way to tell. There are always cars behind you. I was conscious of the gleam of the blonde head beside me, and a faint fragrance of perfume.
She noticed my face and gasped. Tell her? What kind of fool would tell anybody? I had known her less than twenty-four hours; I knew practically nothing about her; I knew she had gotten me into this mess; yet I would have trusted her with anything. I told her. I brushed off her sympathetic offerings, but I didn’t find them unpleasant.
I had been watching the mirror carefully. By this time we were well out on the beach highway and traffic had thinned out considerably. There were three cars behind us. One of them stopped. I shot ahead fast, dropping the other two well behind me. As they disappeared momentarily behind some dunes, I slowed abruptly and swung away from the beach. We were some 50 yards from the road, well out of range of passing highlights. I shut the headlights before we stopped rolling.
She started to light a cigarette. “Not yet,” I said. Both cars went by, their tail-lights slowly receding down the road.
I lit her cigarette.
“All right, listen,” I said. I told her what I was going to do. “There’s only one catch to it,” I finished. “You’ll have to give me the money for that boat with no guarantee you’ll ever hear from me again. The word of a man you’ve known for one day isn’t much of a receipt.”
“It’s good enough for me,” she said quietly. “If I hadn’t trusted you I would never have opened the subject in the first place. How much shall I make the check?”
“Fifteen thousand,” I said. “The boat is going to be at least ten, and there’s a lot of stuff to buy. When we get aboard I’ll give you an itemized statement and return what’s left.”
“All right,” she said.
“Pick a name,” I said. “How about Burton? Harold E. Burton.”
She wrote out the check. I held it until it dried, and put it in my wallet. “Now. What’s your address?”
“106 Fontaine Drive.”
“All right,” I said, talking fast. “I should be back here early the third day. This is Tuesday now, so that’ll be Thursday morning. The minute the purchase of the boat goes through and I’m aboard I’ll mail you an anniversary greeting in a plain envelope, just one of those dime-store cards. I don’t see how they could get at your mail, but there’s no use taking chances. Other than that I won’t get in touch with you. I’ll be down there at the boat yard all the time. It’s in another part of the city, and I won’t come into town at all. I’ve only been around Sanport for about six months, but still there are a few people I know and I might bump into one of them. I’ll already have everything bought and with me except the stores, and I’ll order them through a ship chandler’s runner—”
“But,” she interrupted, “how are we going to arrange getting him aboard?”
“I’m coming to that,” I said. “After you get the card, you can get in touch with me, from a pay phone. It’s Michaelson’s Boat Yard; the name of the sloop is Ballerina. I’m just hoping I can get her. She was still for sale last night. But if something happens and she’s already sold by the time I get back, I’ll make that card a birth announcement instead of an anniversary greeting, and give you the name of the one I actually do buy. All straight?”
“Yes,” she said. She turned a little and I could see the blur of her face and the pale gleam of the blonde head. “I like the whole plan, and I like the way your mind works.” She paused for a moment, and then added quietly. “You’ll never know how glad I am I ran into you. I don’t feel so helpless now. Or alone.”
I was conscious of the same thing, but probably in a different way than she’d meant it. There was something wonderful about being with her. For a moment the whole mess was gone from my mind.
“You were good on the phone, too,” she said. “Thanks for understanding.”
In other words, keep your distance, Buster. I wondered why she thought she had to warn me. We both knew it was only an act, didn’t we? Maybe I was always too aware of her, and she could sense it. “All right. Now,” I said curtly. “That leaves the problem of getting him aboard. I’ll have to work on that. He’s in the house, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” she said, surprised. “How did you know?”
“Guessing, mostly. You said they’d searched it while you were gone. They wouldn’t have had to tear it up much, looking for a grown man. So maybe he told you they had.”
“You’re very alert. He heard them and told me.”
“Why is he hiding there? And how?”
She leaned forward a little and continued. “I’ve been wanting to get to this. Here’s the whole story, briefly.
“About three weeks ago my husband spotted them on the street and knew they’d caught up with us again. He had a plan for getting to Central America and losing them completely, for the last time. It was about completed. It involved a man who’d been a close friend of my husband’s in college. He lives in Honduras and is a wealthy plantation-owner with considerable political influence. He’s also a rather passionate flying fan. He’s always buying planes in the States and having them flown down to him, and my husband was to take this one to him. It would get him out of the country without any trail they could follow, you see? He’d merely take off without filing a flight plan, and disappear. It would be illegal, but as I say this friend of his had political connections.
“However, he had to go alone. It was a light plane and its cruising radius with the maximum amount of fuel was still a little short, so he’d added an extra tank. I was to come later, making sure I wasn’t followed. I was to do it over the Memorial Day weekend, and it involved about five different zigzagging commercial flights with the reservations made considerably ahead of time. On a long holiday like that they’d be sold out, you see? Anyone trying to follow me might catch a no-show at one or even two of the airports, but not all of them.