Эд Макбейн - Learning to Kill - Stories

“Who is he?” David asked.

The man didn’t turn. “Tell the dame to put up the gun, will you?”

“Put it up, Wanda.”

Wanda lowered the gun. The man against the sink made a motion to turn—

“Stay where you are,” she snapped. “If you turn around, I’ll shoot you.”

“The dame’s nuts,” he said, shaking his head. “I come aboard and she pulls a gun on me.”

“Who invited you?” David asked.

“I come aboard to see if I could rent her. She’s a fishing boat, ain’t, she? I heard they was bitin’ like crazy. I figured the owner of the boat wouldn’t mind making a fast buck.”

“I’m the owner,” David said. “I’ve already got a party.”

“Then I’ll be goin’,” the man said. He turned around, and Wanda brought the Luger up and pointed it at his navel.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Frank Reardon.”

“Where are you from?”

“Tampa.”

“Why’d you come all the way down here to fish?”

“I heard they was bitin’. Hell, they ain’t even swimmin’ in Tampa Bay.”

“How’d you find the boat?” David asked.

“What do you mean, how’d I find it? I come looking for a good boat, so I come down to the docks. I spot this one, and she looks clean, so I come aboard. What the hell did I stumble into, anyway? A Russian spy ring?”

“Okay,” David said. “Get ashore. And don’t come back.”

“Don’t worry,” Reardon said. He looked tentatively toward Wanda and the Luger. “Okay, sister?”

“Go on,” she said lowering the gun. Reardon looked at her queerly, shook his head, and mounted the steps. David walked up after him, watching him until he was ashore, then went below again.

“Is someone about ready to tell me what the hell’s going on?” he said.

Neither Grew nor Wanda answered.

“Why are they after you?”

Wanda smiled a bit tremulously.

David stared into the silence. “One thing I hate,” he said, “is talkative fishing parties. Come on, we’d better get under way.”

He gassed her up and then took her out past the rocks. He had no real idea where he should go, no real idea where he should take the fugitives. He vaguely surmised, however, that any chase party would assume they’d head into the Gulf, and so he chose Boca Ciega Bay as the place least likely to encourage pursuit.

He still could not understand his own reasons for having taken them aboard. But there’d been something pathetically appealing about the underweight Grew, and he could not deny the obvious attractiveness of Wanda Meadows. It wasn’t every woman who could handle Pitman and a Luger with equal ease.

He opened the throttle a little wider, and the Helen rushed past Villa del Mar in a burst of flying green and gray and white spray. He kept her nosed into the channel, past the shallow flats and the grass, past Mud Key Point and Mud Key Cutoff and Big McPherson Bayou, heading for the open waters of the bay.

He looked back toward the seat aft near the fishing boxes. There was a locker under that seat, and there was a rifle in the locker, and there was also an Army .45 there, and the .45 had a fresh clip in it. He’d once shot the head off a barracuda with that .45 after a careless fisherman had lost two toes dangling his feet in the water. The way things were going, he surmised there might be more to shoot than barracuda this trip.

He heard a clicking from below, and for a moment he couldn’t place the sound. Then he realized it was a typewriter, and he silently congratulated Grew on his capacity for concentration. Even in the midst of headlong flight, the man could find time to dictate letters to his secretary. He wondered what type of business Grew was in. He didn’t look like a man who got entangled with people like Harry Williston. The typing stopped abruptly. Grew was coming up the steps from the cabin.

“Nasty up here,” Grew said.

“Yes,” David replied.

“How fast will she go?”

“Twenty, twenty-five knots.”

“No faster?”

“This isn’t a destroyer, Mr. Grew.”

“More’s the pity,” Grew answered.

“Getting off some correspondence?”

“What?”

“The typewriter,” David said.

“Oh.” Grew hesitated. “Yes.”

“What line are you in, Mr. Grew?”

Grew hesitated for another moment. He smiled broadly then, as though pleased with the answer he had formulated. “Communications,” he said.

David pulled the throttle out a notch, realizing at the same instant that the typewriter below had stopped when Grew came up on deck,

“Your secretary’s goofing off,” he said.

“Eh? Oh, is she?” Grew seemed to remember something. “I’d better get below.”

He went below and in a moment the typewriter started again. A gull swooped low over the boat, decided it was not carrying any fish, and went screaming off.

Suddenly David felt Wanda’s presence beside him.

“How does it feel?” she asked.

“How does what feel?”

“Being a sailor.”

“Like being a millionaire,” David said, smiling. “Minus the million bucks.”

Wanda sucked in a deep breath and threw back her head, the ponytail trailing down her back. “It smells good,” she said. “The water. You can smell the salt and the fish.” Suddenly she pointed off the starboard bow and said, “Look!”

David followed her finger, picking out the yellow speck in the sky. “Coast Guard helicopter,” he said.

Wanda took off her glasses, squinted, reached for a handkerchief in the pocket of her trench coat, began wiping off the lenses of her glasses. He studied her eyes. They were slightly tilted, almost Oriental, a deep gray reflecting the somber water, flecked with chips of white.

“You’re prettier without them,” he said.

“Thanks,” she answered. “I’m also blind as a bat without them.” She put the glasses on again, peered out over the water to where the helicopter was closer now, its roar filling the sky. David watched the craft as it dropped closer to his boat. He saw an enlisted man in the cockpit toss out a rope ladder, and then an officer in grays climbed over him and started down toward the boat. The enlisted man wrestled with the controls, trying to keep the plane hovering over the boat. The officer was a lieutenant j.g. He clung to the last rung of the ladder for an instant, then dropped to the Helen’s deck.

“You David Coe?” he asked.

“Yes,” David said.

The j.g.’s eyes flicked Wanda briefly. “Hate to break up your party,” he said.

“What is it, Lieutenant?” David asked, miffed by the j.g.’s implication.

“The Sun City Police would like to see you, pal. Seems you talked to a Sam Friedman this morning on the telephone?”

“What about it?”

“You were the last guy to talk to him. He was shot to death about an hour ago. They found him with eight bullets in his head and chest.” The lieutenant paused long enough to see the shock spread across David’s face. “You better pull into Madeira Beach,” he said. “The cops sounded kind of impatient.”

The room could have been a broom closet. There was a square, scarred desk with a chair behind it. There was a bulletin board and a battery of green metal filing cases. There was a shaded lightbulb hanging over the desk and there was a window with dust-covered Venetian blinds hiding it. There was a door with a frosted-glass panel, and on the other side of the frosted glass were lettered the words DETECTIVE DIVISION. A narrow wooden plaque on the desk read: LIEUTENANT MAUROW.

Maurow was a big man with a thatch of red hair. His eyes were pale blue, as cold as a swimming pool in January. He had thick lips and a mole close to the deep cleft in his chin. He studied David and his eyes said nothing and his mouth said nothing. He picked up a pencil and tapped it on the desk.