Someone wanted me dead. Sabrina had set me up for the attack, but she was just an agent. I’d known from the beginning what was happening when, on our way to her house, she’d taken every opportunity to walk me under the lights. If anyone was watching us, he’d gotten a good look at me.
The lagoon curves in toward the footbridge. There is one exceptionally tall weeping willow at the small point that juts out into the water right there. It’s eight to ten yards from the steps that lead up onto the bridge itself. The footpath goes under the bridge. At that point, it’s only a few feet wide, with the stone buttresses of the bridge on one side and the water of the lagoon on the other.
I backed away under the bridge so that he would be able to come at me only from the front. One step at a time he advanced, the lead pipe in his big fist swinging threateningly from side to side, his body crouched to make it difficult for me to lunge at him.
There was one moment when we faced each other in the darkness under the bridge when it seemed that the whole world had paused in silence to await the outcome of our duel. There was no one walking on the bridge over our heads. The few nighttime noises of the city were too far away to break the deadly quiet. There was only the sound of a lone cricket nearby and the sound of my assailant’s breath coming in gulping heaves as he dragged air into his lungs. Mano a mano. One on one.
But he wanted me dead and I wanted him alive — if possible. The advantage was all on his side.
As he began to pull back his arm for another swipe at me, I spun away on my heel and ran a dozen yards. In front of the wooden dock where the swan boats are tied up at night, I stopped abruptly and whipped around again. He’d taken the bait and had run after me. He was off balance when I sprang at him. My left arm knocked the lead pipe to one side, my right forearm slammed him across the throat as he tried to swing the pipe. I wasn’t quite fast enough to evade it completely. It sideswiped me just above the left ear. Suddenly the sky was full of more stars than I’d ever seen before.
Staggering backward along the wooden planks of the dock, I tried to clear my head. His shadow was huge and ominous. The pipe was still in his hand.
By now we were only a foot or two from the edge of the dock. There was no place left for me to go, except onto the nearest swan boat itself, and its metal-framed wooden-slat seats were too close to each other to give me room to maneuver.
I realized that my chances of taking him alive were pretty slim. At this point, it was a case of saving my own life.
He took a moment, to measure me for what he probably thought would be a last crippling blow. As he ran at me, the pipe came up head height and then flashed down.
I moved a hairsbreadth to one side. The bludgeon missed me by inches. As his hand and arm came across my chest, I seized his right forearm in one hand and clamped the other behind his elbow. Pivoting from the waist, I slammed my hip into his and bent myself almost double. His momentum is what did it. That and the leverage I exerted on his locked arm.
Involuntarily he rose up off the ground in a giant arc, swinging over my head, flying over the end of the dock to come crashing down on the hard, unyielding edges of the metal and slat seats of the swan boat.
Under the impact of his more than 200 pounds, the swan boat dipped sideways in the water, bobbing up again and then down before it returned to a level keel. Ripples spread out in concentric arcs across the still water of the pond. He lay in a broken, unnatural attitude, his head and neck supported by one seat edge, his knees and legs by the seat back in front of him.
Panting, I moved slowly onto the swan boat, waiting for him to stir. He made no movement. I pulled Hugo from his sheath and pressed the blade gently against his throat, ready to shove hard in case he was feigning unconsciousness.
He wasn’t. He was dead. The back of his neck had come down with the full weight of his body on the thin edge of the back of the seat and crushed the vertebrae.
His face was toward me. The man was in his middle thirties. His slacks and shirt were expensive and tight fitting. Heavy facial features were topped by a shock of lank blond hair that fell across his forehead.
I turned him so that I could reach into his hip pocket, pulling out his wallet and putting it away in my own pocket. I’d look at it later. Right now I had to make him look like the victim of an ordinary mugging attack. His wristwatch was a Patek Phillipe. The least expensive models cost several hundred dollars, and this one was far from the least expensive in their line. I took his watch, too.
And then, suddenly, I changed my mind. I decided I wanted his death to attract more than ordinary attention. I wanted word to get back to the opposition that he’d failed to carry out his assignment. I wanted them to send someone better for the job — someone I could track back to the top. I was going to stir up public attention. If Bradford — whether or not he was in the conspiracy — hated publicity, then the others must share the same feeling.
Well, I’d give them publicity. The morning papers would carry the story of the tourist who’d had his head blown off by a camera. Tomorrow’s evening rags were going to have an even juicier item.
I looked around. There was still no one in sight. Considering the lateness of the hour, that wasn’t unusual. I bent and heaved his heavy, limp body across my shoulder. Stepping back onto the dock, I struggled to the far end of the boat.
It took a few minutes to do what I had to do. When I finished, I knew it would make the front page of every newspaper in town.
He looked quite natural.
It had taken a lot of effort on my part, because you just don’t heave around an inert 200-pound body without exertion, but it was worth it. He now sat on the bicycle seat between the great white wings of the wooden swan. I’d lashed him upright with the tiller ropes, and I’d put his feet on the pedals and tied them there. Except for his head drooping forward onto his chest, he looked as if he were waiting for morning to come, ready to propel the swan boat filled with children in a quiet, pleasurable ride around the islands of the lagoon.
One final touch. On his chest, buttoned to his shirt by a tear in one corner of the paper, I had fastened the list of five names that Calvin Woolfolk had given me.
I took one last look at him and walked away, up the steps to the stone footbridge, across to the path that leads directly to the far exit of the Gardens. There is a temporary link fence at the end of the path at Arlington Street, but there is a two-foot gap between it and the permanent cast iron picket fence. I squeezed through it onto the sidewalk.
The Ritz Carlton is just across the street, its blue awning with white piping looking crisp and elegant and welcoming.
Exhausted, I headed for the front entrance and my room.
By the time I closed the door to my room behind me, the left side of my rib cage was throbbing with a sharp ache and my head felt swollen to twice its size.
I undressed, took four aspirin tablets and a long, hot shower, letting the water pound on me with the faucets full open. After about twenty minutes of steaming, I began to feel more like myself again.
I was about to climb into bed when my glance caught the wallet and wristwatch lying on top of the dresser where I’d dumped them along with my own belongings. I went through the wallet quickly. A Massachusetts driver’s license, four credit cards and $350 in cash. The driver’s license was in the name of Malcolm Stoughton. So were the credit cards. I put them aside, picking up the Patek Phillipe watch. The case and the expandable metal strap were of eighteen carat gold. On the royal blue face of the watch, the numbers were picked out by tiny chip jewels, small but perfect garnets, glowing a deep red.