Дональд Уэстлейк - Forever and a Death

Bleak, he now did face Curtis’s bleak eyes, and said, “You might have someone else, someone in all your great organization who’s better qualified than I am.”

“But no one else is here,” Curtis said. He was almost kindly, explaining the situation. “Only you, master of this fine vessel, which I know you enjoy. Don’t you?”

“Yes, I do,” Zhang agreed. “Very much.”

“So here we are, out at sea,” Curtis said, “and you’re the only one I can count on. I can count on you, can’t I?”

Zhang was silent. He wanted to speak, but he couldn’t.

“I need to count on you,” Curtis said, his voice a little raspier, a little harsher. “I need word about our patient, Captain Zhang. I’ll be leaving after lunch, if that storm out there holds off. I’ll need word about our patient before I go. Do you see what I mean?”

Miserable, “Yes,” Zhang said.

Manville, having slept little, got up early and went looking for Curtis. He saw him, up on the bridge, in tense conversation with Captain Zhang, and thought he might know what the subject was. So he waited in the forward lounge, below the bridge, where he would be sure to intercept Curtis when he came down.

Standing by the big windows, seeing the flattened island off to starboard and the beginnings of storm clouds to port, far off at the horizon, he thought about what he would do and how he would go about it. There was very little question in his mind that Curtis knew the girl was alive, but he felt, at least at the beginning, he had to give the man the benefit of the doubt. Because if Curtis knew she was alive, but had announced last night that she was dead, it could only mean he was determined to make her dead, and his motive would be the hobbling of Jerry Diedrich.

Could that be reason enough for murder? Or was Manville about to make a serious mistake, at the very moment his career was assured?

I’ll have to say it to him straight out, he thought, and see how he reacts. I’m no good at subtlety, anyway, I’ll just have to be myself, and I’ll know, I’m sure I will, the instant I see his reaction. And here he comes now.

Manville turned at the sound of footsteps coming down the outside stairs. Curtis came through the swing door into the lounge, his expression grim, deep in thought, and he abruptly switched to an enthusiastic smile when he saw Manville: “Good morning!”

“Morning, Mr. Curtis.”

“Going in to breakfast?”

“In a minute,” Manville said.

Curtis looked at him more closely. “Something wrong, George?”

“I looked in on the girl last night,” Manville said.

Well, he’d been right: He would know instantly from Curtis’s reaction. Curtis stared at him for a second, then looked very angry and seemed about to yell something, and then just as quickly gave up anger, shook his head in exasperated defeat, and said, almost pleadingly, “Now why did you do that?”

“I felt responsible,” Manville said. “I thought she was dead, and I’d done it, and I—”

“ You? For God’s sake, why you?”

This isn’t the right subject, Manville thought, but he found himself saying, “The fail-safe device, I should have thought to—”

“All right, all right.” Curtis, always a fast study, understood immediately what had gone through Manville’s mind. “You felt responsible. So you went down there to apologize to a corpse...”

“And she’s alive.”

“She’s very badly hurt, you know,” Curtis said. “She’s still alive, but Captain Zhang isn’t at all confident she’ll—”

“She’s improving,” Manville said. “I’m not claiming any great medical knowledge, but anybody can see she’s improving.”

“If she were bleeding internally, we wouldn’t—”

“She’d be feverish by now,” Manville said. “Her skin would be clammy. She’d show the signs.”

Curtis looked increasingly annoyed. He said, “George, this isn’t our expertise, neither of us. You do what you’re good at, and I’ll do what I’m good at, and that girl will live or die, and neither of us can say which it will be.”

Manville said, “If she’s dead when we reach Brisbane, I’ll have to tell the authorities that she didn’t die as a result of what happened to her in the water.”

Curtis frowned at him. “What could you prove?”

“I don’t have to prove anything, Mr. Curtis,” Manville told him. “I only have to tell them there’s a problem. They’ll do their own proving.”

Curtis stood thinking, clearly trying to figure out how to handle this situation. Then he said, “Are you particularly hungry, George?”

“For breakfast?” Manville asked, surprised. “Not very much, this morning.”

“Neither am I,” Curtis said, and touched Manville’s arm, and gestured at the cluster of soft maroon swivel chairs over by the windows. “Sit with me a minute, listen to what I have to say.”

“All right.”

They sat in adjacent chairs, turned slightly away from one another, and Curtis leaned forward, hands on knees, to say, “I’ve already told you, I have another use for this soliton of yours.”

“Yes.”

“Something far better than just clearing land to build a resort. Something much more ambitious. And lucrative.”

“All right.”

“I told you it had to be a secret, and it still does,” Curtis said, “but I didn’t tell you why. The fact is, I’m not as rich as people think I am. Not anymore.”

“You aren’t poor,” Manville said.

Curtis smiled. “No, not poor. But I’ve borrowed a lot, from a lot of banks. No one has seen an accurate financial statement from me in three years, not since before they threw me out of Hong Kong, because an accurate financial statement would show I owe probably four times as much as I’m worth.”

Manville, surprised, gestured to include the Mallory , Kanowit Island, everything. “But, how can you... then how can you do all this ?”

“Front,” Curtis told him. “I’m spending to create the perception that I’m rich because only the perception that I’m rich will permit me to borrow the money to go on spending.”

“That’s a—” Manville started, and across the way Captain Zhang entered from the outside staircase, his medical kit hanging from his left hand. He turned aft, and Manville looked at him.

Curtis looked from Manville to Zhang, then called, “Captain!”

Zhang turned around. His face was gray and unhealthy and deeply worried. “Yes, sir?”

“Why not see your patient a little later?” Curtis suggested. “After George and I have had our talk, I’ll come up and we’ll have a word.”

Zhang looked confused, as though he wasn’t sure whether this was a reprieve or not. “Yes, sir,” he said, but seemed for a few seconds unable to reverse his motion. What he’d been going to do was so deeply fixed in his mind — because it was so difficult? — that he found it hard to give it up. Then, with a kind of lurch, he did turn around, and go back out through the swing door, and Curtis turned to Manville to say, “You were going to tell me, I think, that what I’m doing can’t last, that eventually I’ll be so deeply in debt there’ll be no way to hide the fact, and that already I’m probably so deeply in debt I’ll never get clear.”

Manville said, “Are you?”

“Yes,” Curtis said.

Manville leaned back. He didn’t know what to think, couldn’t even imagine why Curtis was telling him all this. Bewildered by what Curtis was saying, he found he was thinking mostly about himself. Had he hitched his wagon to a falling star?

Curtis said, “At first, I thought it was only a temporary expedient, I could dance on the edge of the cliff until I got everything back the way it used to be.” Pointing off to starboard, he said, “Fifteen years from now, Kanowit will be a money machine, but I don’t have the time to wait for it. I have other money machines, but they all require too much priming of the pump, too much money going in before any comes out. And even with all of my efforts, I’m doing most of this for other people. Do you know how much of Kanowit is mine? Ten percent. My three partners here, each of them thinks he’s the only one with thirty, that the other two have ten each and I have fifty. And each of them thinks the other two have been lied to, have been told that he has only ten percent instead of thirty, so none of them will ever compare notes.” With a bitter smile, he added, “None of them will go to apologize to a corpse.”