He caught a quick glimpse of all three faces above him just before he let himself sink beneath the surface. The tall man was horrified. The bulky man for once had lost his expressionlessness and was looking startled. Ellen, who knew there was nothing in the water to attack him, merely looked wary.
Faraday gave a powerful thrust with his legs and shot underwater beneath the curved bow of the boat. He surfaced on the other side and pulled himself aboard all in the same motion. He stood dripping muddy water and getting his breath back, blocked from the view of those on the other side of the boat by the cabin.
He slipped into the door of the passageway between the galley and the bunk rooms and came out the other side. Not more than fifteen seconds had elapsed since he submerged, and all three people were still staring down into the water, the two men in stunned shock, Ellen because she was following instructions.
His bare feet making no sound on the deck, Faraday glided forward. One arm went about the tall man’s shoulders, the other about the bulky man’s, and he hurtled overboard, carrying both with him.
As they went beneath the surface, his legs scissored about the bulky man from behind and his hands probed for the other’s right hand. Finding it empty, he pushed the man away, wrapped his left arm about the man’s neck and groped for his gun with his right.
The man still gripped it, but in his terror at being in what he thought was alligator infested water, he offered no resistance when it was jerked from his grip. It slipped from Faraday’s hand and sank.
Faraday released his scissors grip, put a foot into the middle of the man’s back and pushed. Surfacing, he took three powerful strokes and pulled himself aboard the houseboat.
By now the boat had drifted out about twenty feet into the channel. The two men, in water to their waists, were floundering in panic for the island. They clambered ashore and stood with clothes dripping, staring at the boat.
“We’ll send the FBI to rescue you,” Faraday called. “Unless you don’t want to wait. You can probably get halfway to shore before the alligators get you.”
He went aft to start the engine. As they chugged along the channel southward, the two men were still standing gazing after them.
If they remained quiet long enough, Faraday knew, the channel would again soon be dotted with the narrow, snaggle-toothed heads of gars sunning themselves.
He doubted that the men would be gone when the FBI arrived.
Nice Guy
Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, November 1969.
We got the case instead of the Robbery Squad, because when somebody gets hurt or killed during a holdup, it’s Homicide’s baby. The place was a small jewelry store in the eight hundred block of Franklin Avenue. All the shops in that area are small, mostly one- or two-man businesses. The jewelry store was bracketed by a pawnshop on one side of it and a one-man barbershop on the other.
Gilt lettering on the plate-glass window read: Bruer and Benjamin, Jewelers. A squad car was parked in front and a muscular young cop in uniform stood on the sidewalk before the shop door. A few bystanders were clustered before the pawnshop and barbershop, but the area in front of the jewelry store had been cleared.
I didn’t recognize the cop, but he knew me. He touched his cap, said, “Hi, Sergeant,” and moved aside to let me pass.
Inside, the store was long and narrow, with display cases on either side and with only about a six-foot-wide aisle between them. There was another short display case at the rear of the room, with an open door beyond it.
Another uniformed cop, this one of about my vintage, was inside the store. I knew him. He was a twenty-year veteran named Phil Ritter, and also a sergeant.
I said, “Morning, Phil.”
He said, “How are you, Sod?” then jerked his thumb toward the rear display ease. “Victim’s lying back there.”
I nodded, then looked at the other occupant of the place, a mousy little man of about sixty who stood nearby with an expression of numbed shock on his face.
“Witness,” Ritter said briefly.
I nodded again and continued on back to the rear of the place. There was a space on either side of the rear counter. I walked behind it to look down at the still figure on the floor. The man lay on his left side with his knees drawn up in a fetal position. He was lean and thin-faced, with long sideburns and a hairline mustache which made him resemble the villain of some mid-Victorian melodrama. I guessed he had been in his late forties.
His right arm blocked the view of his chest, but a thin trickle of blood running from beneath the arm indicated that he had a hole in it. There wasn’t much blood, suggesting he had died almost instantly.
I came back around the counter and asked Sergeant Ritter, “Doctor look at him?”
“Just enough to verify he was dead. A Dr. Vaughan in the next block. Mr. Bruer here called him.” He nodded toward the little man. “He had to go back to his office, but he said you could contact him there if you want. He also said to tell you he didn’t move the body.”
“Good.”
I looked at the little man. He was only about five feet six and weighed possibly a hundred and twenty-five pounds. He had thinning gray hair, wore steel-rimmed glasses and the expression of a frightened rabbit.
I’ve been accused of intimidating witnesses with my sour manner. This one looked so easily intimidated that I deliberately made my voice as pleasant as possible when I said, “I’m Sergeant Sod Harris of the Homicide Squad. Your name is Bruer?”
“Yes, sir,” he said in a shaky voice. “Fred Bruer. I’m one of the partners in the jewelry store.”
“He was the other one?” I asked, nodding toward the rear.
“Yes, sir. Andrew Benjamin. This is awful. We’ve been business partners for ten years.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “I know this has been a shock to you, Mr. Bruer, but we’ll do the best we can to get the person who killed your partner. You were here when it happened?”
“Yes, sir. It was me he held up. I was out front here and Andy was back in the workshop. I had just made up our weekly bank deposit — I always go to the bank on Friday morning — and was just drawing the strings of the leather bag I carry the deposit in, when this fellow came in and pulled a gun on me. I guess he must have been watching us for some time and knew our routine. Casing, they call it, don’t they?”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “What makes you think he had cased you?”
“He seemed to know what was in the bag, because he said, ‘I’ll take that, mister.’ I gave it to him without argument. Then he came behind the counter where I was, emptied the register there into the bag, then went behind the other counter and did the same with that register.”
I glanced both ways and saw identical cash registers centered against the walls behind each counter. “Which counter were you behind?” I asked.
He pointed to the one to the right as you faced the door. “I can tell you exactly how much he got, Sergeant.”
“Oh?” I said. “How?”
“I have a duplicate deposit slip for the cash and checks that were in the bag, and there was exactly fifty dollars in each register in addition to that. That’s the change we start off with in each register, and we hadn’t yet had a customer. We’d only been open for business about thirty seconds when the bandit walked in. I always make up the deposit before we unlock the door Friday mornings.”
“I see. Well, you can hold the figure for the moment. First, get on with what happened. How’d he happen to shoot your partner?”
“I think he just got rattled. He was backing toward the door with the deposit bag in his hand when Andy suddenly appeared from the back room. Andy didn’t even know a holdup was in progress. I imagine he came out to take over the front because he knew I would be leaving for the bank at any minute. But he opened the workshop door and stepped out so abruptly, he startled the bandit. The man shot him and fled.”