“All she has is a fiber glass outboard,” Jason said. “I don’t think she’d head for Miami in it, not with the possibility of a hurricane coming.”
Benny still seemed concerned. He was obviously a worrier, and Jason was obviously used to his fretting. “Maybe we ought to call Fatboy anyway,” he said. “As soon as all the others report.”
“No,” Jason said. “Not if there’s the possibility of trouble here.”
“Do you think there is the possibility of trouble, Jase?”
“Well, the girl’s out on the water there someplace,” Jason said gently, “and until she’s in our pocket, we haven’t got the town. Until we have the town, Benny, why yes, I think there’s the possibility of trouble, yes.”
The telephone rang.
The clock read seven-thirty.
“Costigan’s Marina,” Jason said. “Yes, this is Jason. Right,” he said, “right. You just keep him happy there.” He hung up. “Ambrosini,” he said to Benny, “secured.” And Benny marked the chart.
Luke watched him. Something was beginning to bother him about that chart. He did not know quite what, but something was wrong with it. The something that was wrong had to do with the fact that Samantha was not in her house, where these men had obviously expected to find her, but was instead out on the water. He began to worry about how they would treat her when she pulled up to the dock. These men were armed; they might react badly to an unexpected situation.
“Got it all doped out, Costigan?” Jason said, and smiled.
“Not yet,” Luke answered.
“Give it time,” Jason said, but offered no explanation.
At seven thirty-five a call came telling Jason that the Hannigan house was secured. As Benny put his check mark in the 735 column, Luke looked at the chart again, and again wondered what was wrong with it. He was beginning to suspect that he had really discovered nothing peculiar about the chart, but was instead playing an intellectual guessing game designed to take his mind off Samantha. The possibility of Jason’s men harming her seemed extremely remote, and yet he felt anxiety gnawing inside him, felt a premonition of dread that terrified him.
At seven-forty the last of what Benny had labeled “the checkins” came through. Jason picked up the phone and said, “Costigan’s Marina,” and waited, and then said, “Hello, Coop, how’d it go? Yes, everything here is under control.” He listened. “All right, tell Leonard to bring them over. What?” He paused, listening again. “Well, that’s a surprise, isn’t it? We’re getting all kinds of surprises this morning. Well, you bring them over, too. Right.” He put the receiver down and turned to Benny. “That was Coop over at the Tannenbaum house. It’s secured. You can check it off.”
“What was all that other stuff?” Benny asked.
“Oh, unexpected company,” Jason said. “The doctor’s son and daughter-in-law are visiting him.”
“How come we didn’t know that?”
“They only got here yesterday,” Jason said, and it was then that Luke realized what was wrong with the chart. He was glad the telephone rang in that moment because he was sure his sudden knowledge showed immediately on his face. And then he realized this call could be about Samantha, and he gripped the edge of the desk as Jason lifted the receiver.
“Costigan’s Marina.” He paused. “Yes, Sy. Yes. All right, Sy. Bring her here. We’d better keep a close watch on her.” He hung up. “The Watts girl,” he said to Benny.
“Is she all right?” Luke asked suddenly.
“She’s fine,” Jason said briefly. He turned to Benny. “The house is secured. You can check it off.”
Benny sighed deeply, relieved. “Then that’s everybody,” he said.
“That’s everybody,” Jason answered.
Luke, sitting behind the desk, said nothing.
There was no listing on Jason Trench’s chart for the Westerfield house across the main road. At four-thirty this morning, when he had begun moving his boats, a light was burning in the upstairs bedroom of that house.
4
The telephone rang in the Key West motel room at exactly seven forty-five. Fatboy, who was dressed and waiting by the phone, lifted it from the receiver at once and said, “Hello?”
“Arthur?”
“Yeah.”
“This is Jason.”
“Yeah?”
“We’ve got it. You can move out.”
“Okay,” Fatboy said, and hung up. He looked across the room to where Andy was studying him with a quizzical expression. “Jason,” he said, nodding assurance. “They’ve got it. We’re to move out.”
“Good,” Andy said, and rubbed his hands together briskly.
“Put the bags in the car,” Fatboy said. “I’ll contact the others.”
“This is good,” Andy said again. “It’s good, ain’t it, Fatboy?”
“I knew they’d do it,” Fatboy said.
“So did I. But... well... things can go wrong, you know that.”
“Not when Jason is doing the planning. Come on, we’ve got to move.”
“Yeah,” Andy said, and he grinned and went into the bathroom.
Fatboy stood by the telephone with his hand on the receiver, motionless, knowing he should make the call to Fortunato, and yet delaying the call, savoring this moment of satisfaction.
His small black eyes were sparkling. He was pleased by the knowledge he now possessed, the fact that Ocho Puertos was in Jason’s hands, and that he and the others could now proceed there from Key West where they had been since last Monday. But he had expected Jason to take the town all along, and he knew this did not account for the major portion of his pleasure. The pleasure was something that went much deeper than the surface accomplishment of Jason’s capturing the town, deeper perhaps than the magnitude of the entire scheme. The pleasure went back as far as 1945, when Fatboy was the only one who had had the sense to lie, the only one who had known instinctively that a careful trap was being set, and that to tell the truth would be dangerous to Jason’s well-being. He had known at once that the questions were being framed to elicit a denial — “You were gambling, weren’t you? There was a big game, wasn’t there?” Every instinct for self-preservation had urged him to shout, “No, sir, we were not gambling,” and then he recognized the trap. That was what they wanted from him, a denial. He was too smart for that. He told them there had been a game, when of course there had not, told them further that it was a high-stakes game, corroborated every lie Jason had previously told — not that it made any difference in the end. But there had been pleasure in knowing he had come to Jason’s assistance, even if he had not been able to save him.
Arthur Stuart Hazlitt had been called Fatboy since the time he was nine years old. In the summer of 1961, when Jason called him from New York City, he said, “Hello, Arthur, how are you?” using Fatboy’s real name, the way he had done from the day they met.
Fatboy smiled. “I’m fine,” he said. “How’re you, Jase?”
They exchanged the amenities, how’s your mother, fine, how’s Annabelle, fine, what kind of work are you doing, all that, and then they reminisced a little, and then there was a long pause. Jason cleared his throat.
“Arthur, can you come to New York?” he asked.
“What for?”
“I need your help.”
“Are you in trouble?”
“No. But I need your help.”
“With what?”
“A plan. I’d appreciate it if you could come, Arthur. I hope to call Alex and the others, but I wanted to talk to you about it first. You’re the first one I’ve called.”