Donald Westlake - High Adventure

That put the steel in Innocent’s backbone. Rearing up, eyes sparking, Innocent said, “When I retire, Kirby, you’ll be the first to know. And when I don’t retire, you’ll be the first to know that , too.”

What a nerve that man has got, Innocent angrily thought, as he watched Kirby swagger away down the street amid the pedestrians and the bicycles and the rump-sprung big American cars and the dusty pickup trucks and the dope dealers’ shiny-bodied black-windowed Broncos. To do what he has done, Innocent bitterly thought, and show his face in this town again.

Valerie Greene. A vision of her fine white rump grasped between his two hands came unbidden into his mind, and he sighed. Her guileless big eyes and happy wide smile shone on him like a memory of the sun in the rainy season down south. But this rainy season would never end; the sun was gone for good. There was hardly any doubt in Innocent’s mind any longer that Valerie Greene was dead, and just as little doubt that Kirby Galway had done it.

He himself was also guilty, of course, if only in a small way. He had trusted that poor girl to a very bad man. He had trusted her to him because he was a very bad man, but a very bad man whom Innocent believed he could control. And now see what had happened.

Valerie had never returned to her room at the hotel. The Land Rover had never been brought back to its garage. The driver had never showed up at his home in Teakettle.

The Fort George, seven days ago, had packed up Valerie Greene’s luggage and stored it away. The day before that, the Transportation Section had reported the Land Rover stolen. Over the last 11 days, Innocent had left messages for the skinny black man at all his usual haunts, and some unusual haunts as well, but no answer had as yet been received. Nor had the stolen Land Rover been found. Nor was there the slightest trace of Valerie Greene, alive or dead.

On Monday, thinking the land might tell him something about Valerie’s disappearance, or about whatever the hell Kirby’s scheme was, Innocent had driven out there, looking fruitlessly all the way for signs that the Land Rover had been in an accident. He’d brought Vernon along, to be a second person in case a witness was needed, or if there was trouble, and that was when he first became aware that Vernon was apparently in the middle of a nervous breakdown.

Another unnecessary complication. Vernon was too conscientious, that was the whole trouble, in a nation where the lackadaisical was the norm. Innocent told him so, on the drive out: “You work too hard, Vernon,” he said. “You don’t have to prove to me how valuable you are, I already know it. I know you’re trustworthy, and I guarantee you’ll be sitting in my chair some day. You’ve got a bright future, Vernon, you’ve worked hard for it and you deserve it. A man’s reputation is everything, and yours is grade A. If you just don’t overwork and make yourself sick, man, you’ve got it made.”

You’d think all that would have perked Vernon up a little, but no, just the reverse. The more Innocent tried to make him feel better, the more jumpy and unhappy and pessimistic Vernon became.

Out at the land, it was even worse. Innocent hadn’t told Vernon much about what they were doing there, so the young man could have had no idea what he was looking for, but he spent the whole time running up and down that hill, looking here, looking there, frantic and urgent and searching like a man who just lost the winning lottery ticket.

As for the land, it had been exactly the same, of course, which made Innocent mad at himself. What had he expected out there, an entire Mayan temple, one he’d failed somehow to notice all the years he’d owned this parcel?

But if there was no Mayan temple here — and there was no Mayan temple here — then what the hell was everybody so excited about? What had that expert Lemuel thought he was looking at? What was that conversation recorded by Witcher and Feldspan all about? And what had Valerie seen, when she’d come here?

Valerie. Poor sweet Valerie. Poor sweet dead Valerie. Though Innocent tried to continue to hope against hope, by now, 11 days after she and her driver and her vehicle had all disappeared, what other possibility was there?

All right, it wasn’t the end of the world. Well, it was the end of her world, obviously, but it wasn’t the end of Innocent’s. It was time to get back to his own concerns. And if, in dealing with his own concerns, it so happened he could poke a sharp stick into the eye of Valerie’s probable murderer, so much the better.

Meaning Kirby Galway.

It all fit. According to Lemuel’s story, there had been a minute or two when Kirby had been with the people at the Land Rover before Lemuel joined them; he could have paid the driver then to do the job. Or, after unloading Lemuel in Belize City — by air, remember, by air— Kirby could have flown back and intercepted the Land Rover still on the way.

Which was, of course, why Kirby had been so thoroughly out of sight the last 10 days. Naturally afraid his plot would fall through, or be exposed, he’d lain low until he was sure there was no more danger. And now here he was again, walking the streets of Belize City as big as you please, cocky and smiling, going so far as to taunt Innocent that he should retire! Retire !

Surly, unhappy, unwilling to admit that his confidence in himself had been shaken, Innocent glowered after the departing Kirby. “Retire,” he muttered. “I’ll show you a thing or two about retiring.”

His real estate office was over on Regent Street. Walking there, feeling unusually heavy, oddly stiff in his joints, he went in to find a telephone message from Vernon in Belmopan. “Hmmm,” he said, and went back to his office, switched on the overhead light and the ceiling fan, sat down at his mahogany desk, and phoned.

“Oh, Mister St. Michael,” Vernon said, sounding terrible, worse than ever, “the police called.”

Innocent’s eyes widened. He sat upright, hand squeezing the phone. Which of his many many plots and scams had come unglued? “Yes?”

“They have found that Land Rover,” Vernon said. The man sounded as though he were actually weeping. “You know the one I mean, the one we—”

“I know the one! They found it?”

“In pieces.”

“An accident ?” Innocent was flabbergasted.

“No no,” Vernon whimpered. “Taken apart. Somebody took it apart all last week, down by Punta Gorda. They sold the parts down there, to different people. The police got onto it Saturday night when there was an accident, and the radiator—”

“Yes, yes, never mind police procedure. Do they have the man?”

“No, sir. They think they got about a quarter of the parts now, they want to know should they go on looking.”

“What do I care?” Innocent yelled, raging. “Am I their nanny?” He slammed the phone down on Vernon’s mewling, and sat glaring at the maps of nation and city decorating the opposite wall.

Punta Gorda. The city at the very southern end of Belize, where eastern and western national borders fold toward one another, meeting at the Bay of Honduras. From Punta Gorda it is no distance at all to the border. From the border it is 30 miles across Guatemala to Honduras. And from there lies the entire world.

The driver was gone. He fled in the Land Rover, disassembled it and sold the parts in Punta Gorda to finance his flight, then left the country. He would never return.

The last dim hope was gone. Valerie Greene was dead.

Cynthia stood on her left wingtip and looked down through the warm air to the top of Kirby’s barren hill. Then Kirby slid her out of the roll, eased down the far flank of the hill, and pushed the knotted face towel out the small side-flap window as he approached South Abilene. Dancing children came scampering up out of the huts, chasing the towel as it tumbled down through the sky. They would bring it to Tommy, who would already know the message inside, but who would carefully undo the knots anyway, open the towel, find the little plastic film canister, pop the top off that, and read the scrawled note on the tom-off piece of manila envelope: “Bring out the goods.”