“Yes, but how are you going to stop him from following me the second time? Bill, they’re dangerous.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “He won’t even see me. When he gets out to follow you on foot I’ll fix his ignition wires. By the time he tumbles to the fact his car’s not going to start, you’ll already be down at the other end of the row and in my truck. When the picture’s over, we just drive out, along with everybody else.”
“All right. But you’ll be careful, won’t you?”
“Why?” I asked. I couldn’t help it.
“Couldn’t we put it this way – if anything happens to you we wouldn’t get away.”
“We’ll call it that.”
“Yes,” she said. Then she added, “That, at the very least.”
She hung up.
I sweated it out. It was eight-fifty when I reached the neighborhood and cruised slowly to time it right. I was betting a lot on just a flashlight and a black panel truck. The thing was to give him just a little time to look it over, so I wouldn’t spring it on him too suddenly. He’d be able to see what I was doing, and as I passed under the street light at the intersection of Fontaine Drive he’d see the black sides of the truck. My headlights would cover the Louisiana license plate. At 9:18 I eased away from the curb.
Switching on the flashlight, I held it in my left hand and shot the beam into dark places under the trees and back among the hedges as I came slowly down the street. After I crossed Fontaine I could see him. He was in the same place, facing this way. I flashed the light into another hedge.
I had to calculate the angles fast now. I was well out in the center of the street, watching the mouth of the alley on his side. He was parked just beyond it. I stopped with my window opposite his, and at the same time I threw the light against the side of his car but not quite in his face.
“You seen anything of a stray kid?” I asked, as casually as I could with that dryness in my mouth. “Boy, about four, carrying a pup—”
It worked.
I could feel the breath ooze out of me as a tough voice growled from just above the light. “Nah. I haven’t seen any kid.”
“Okay. Thanks,” I said. I felt along the edge of the window frame in the opposite door. Hurry. For the love of God, hurry.
My fingertips brushed across a hand. I inhaled again.
I let the truck roll slowly ahead three or four feet, and said, “If you see a kid like that, call the station, will you? We’d thank you for it.”
I moved the light away from him. He wouldn’t be able to see anything for twenty or thirty seconds, and Macaulay was on the far side of the truck, walking along with me. But he had to be in it before we hit the street below Fontaine, under the light. I slipped the clutch and hit the accelerator a couple of times, shooting the flashlight beam along the sidewalk. The door opened soundlessly, and he was sitting beside me. He closed it gently.
There was no outcry behind us. I wanted to step on the gas. Not yet, I thought. Easy. I still hadn’t seen him at all. He was only a dark shadow beside me as we rolled on toward the intersection. Then a cigarette lighter flared.
I jerked my face around, whispering fiercely. “Put that—”
“It’s all right,” a smooth voice said. “Just turn at the corner and go around the block.”
I saw a lean face, and tweed, and the gun held carelessly in his lap. It was Barclay.
We turned. I was numb all over and there was nothing else to do.
“Park at the mouth of the alley, and do it quietly,” Barclay said.
“Mrs Macaulay?” I asked mechanically.
“She’s in the house.”
“Is she all right?”
“Yes.”
I swung around the next corner, and we were on Fontaine, under the big, peaceful trees. “Then you finally killed him, didn’t you?”
“Oh. Yes,” he replied, almost as if talking to himself. “Too bad.”
There was no point in asking what he meant. I was too far behind now to catch up in a week. We parked at the mouth of the alley. Across the street I could see the red tip of a cigarette in the other car. Bitterness welled up in me. I’d fooled them, hadn’t I?
Barclay opened the door on his side. “Go in. We’ll be leaving soon.”
“Leave?”
“Sail. Ballerina sleeps four, right?”
He stepped aside in the darkness and followed closely behind me. My mind turned the parts of it over and over with no more comprehension than a washing-machine tumbling clothes. Sail? Four of us? Macaulay was already dead, that was what they’d wanted, wasn’t it?
It was – unless she had been lying all the time. I tried to shove the thought out of my mind. It came back. How would they have known I was coming by in the truck unless she had told them?
Maybe I could have got away from him in the alley, but I didn’t even try. The whole thing had fallen in on me, and I didn’t have anywhere to go. I wanted to see her, anyway. She had lied about it, or she hadn’t lied about it. I had to know.
I had wanted to see Macaulay and when I finally saw him he was a corpse on the floor of his living room. He’d been dressed according to the instructions I’d given Shannon. She was there, shocked and speechless, barely able to keep herself together when Barclay escorted me in. Two of his friends were there, too. He gave his instructions tersely.
“Very well. We’re finished here,” he said. “Who has the keys to her car?”
“Here.” The big blond guy fished them from his pocket.
“Give them to Carl,” Barclay directed crisply. “You’ll go with us in the truck.”
He shifted his gaze to the other man. “Take the Cadillac downtown and park it. Meet us on the southeast corner of Second and Lindsay. We’ll be going east, in a black panel truck, Manning driving. Get in the front seat with him. When we go in the gate at the boat yard Manning will tell the watchman you’ve come along to drive the truck back to a garage. If Manning tries any tricks, don’t shoot him; kill the watchman. As soon as we’re all aboard the boat, take the truck to some all-night storage garage and leave it, under the name of Harold E. Burton, and pay six months’ storage charges in advance. Then pick up the Cadillac, drive it to the airport, and leave it. Take a plane to New York, and tell them we should be in Tampa in three weeks to a month. Tell them about Macaulay, but that we have her and it’s under control. You got that?”
“Check,” Carl said. He took the keys and went out.
I could see a little of it now. They were hanging it on her quite neatly. The police already wanted me, and they’d be after her now too, for killing Macaulay. I didn’t know what Barclay wanted with her, but he had her from every angle. There was nowhere we could run.
We boarded the Ballerina the way Barclay scheduled it and he used my loading plan perfectly. The watchman never suspected a thing. Carl drove the truck off the pier and that was it. I could have jumped over the side and possibly escaped, but he knew I wouldn’t. I had nowhere to go, with the police looking for me, and I couldn’t leave her. The big one helped her down into the cockpit.
On deck, Barclay said, “Let’s sail.”