Джон Макдональд - The Last One Left

It was a time of mutual appraisal, as Kayd offered belated sympathies about the Senator, said how pleased he was to find her still living here, had phoned on the off chance, killing time between the flight from the Bahamas which had brought him into Miami International and his jet flight to Houston, where his own plane and pilot would meet him to take him back home to the Valley.

She was alert to all familiar nuances in the male attitude. He had that automatic courtliness, that appreciative manner of the self-confident man who finds himself alone with an attractive woman. She considered, and dismissed, the possibility he had come to check the possibility of sampling wares he had found interesting back when Ferris Fontaine’s presence made all curiosity academic. It was not that sort of visit, nor was it a social call.

Finally he gobbled a cracker, wiped his fingers on a paper napkin, took a large swallow of his drink and, hunching forward, lowered his voice to what, for most people, would have been the normal conversational level.

“Fer Fontaine was a damn careful man, Crissy. That’s why it was a pleasure doing business with him. That and having his handshake worth anybody else’s notarized signature. That’s how I know if you were the kind that runs off at the mouth, he wouldn’t have kept you around a week, much less all the time he did keep you. And he wouldn’t have left you fixed up pretty good like this, with the house and all. So I can ask your help in a little private problem I’ve got.”

“I’ll help any way I can, Bix.”

“Fer wouldn’t have had anybody around who wasn’t solid. So the times we did business aboard that boat of his, that fella I chatted with, that captain that ran it, with the chunky little wife who could cook up a storm, they had to be just as reliable as you. For the life of me, I can’t remember his name.”

“Staniker.”

Kayd snapped his fingers. “Right! Larry? No. Garry. And is her name Jane?”

“Mary Jane.”

“I remember him telling me about knowing every foot of water in the Bahamas. Do you know if he’s still in this area? Do you think you could locate him?”

“I don’t think it would be difficult.”

He lowered his voice a little more. “When you find him, you tell him Bix Kayd wants to hire him and his wife for six weeks, maybe a little longer, starting sometime after the middle of April, to work aboard my boat for a long cruise in the Bahamas. Tell him it’s a fine boat, fifty-three foot, custom built in North Carolina, twin diesels, every extra and navigation aid you can dream up, comfortable crew quarters. Name of it is the Muñeca. Soon as I get back, we’re going to get her ready to go and take off. She’s in Brownsville, Texas, right now, and me and my boy Roger will bring her around the Gulf, and my wife and daughter will be aboard, maybe a friend of Stel’s too. Stella is my daughter. Once we get here, we’ll buy some kind of runabout and take her in tow, so we can get to places too shallow for the big boat, and so the kids will have something to horse around with, skin diving and water skiing and so on.

“Now I know that a man as good as Staniker around boats must be working for somebody, and to get loose, he’d have to locate somebody reliable to take his job while he’s with me. So when you talk to him, you tell him I’ll pay him three thousand for the six weeks, him and his wife, and if it runs longer, I’ll pay him at the same rate. You line it up for me, and I’ll phone you from New Orleans or Biloxi on the way around the Gulf, and I’ll give you a little present for your trouble, Miss Crissy.”

“You don’t have to do that! I’m glad to do it, for old time’s sake, really. But...”

“What’s bothering you?”

“You know what he’s going to say. He’s going to want to know why you’re willing to pay so much.”

She got up and took his empty glass and her own over to the drink cupboard. He remained silent and thoughtful. When she handed him his new drink he said, “My pretty little wife is itching and aching to see the Bahamas. I’ve been too busy for a vacation. Stel and Roger are my kids by my first wife. I’ve got an interest in some resort land over there. Trying to do business with some people who aren’t what you’d call eager to take the bait. You tell Staniker I might have to meet some of those people on the sly, maybe on one of the Out Islands, and offer a little sweetening their partners might not get to know about. So I’d be paying extra for I’d guess the same thing Fer wanted, a real bad memory about where we went and when we went and who might have come aboard. I remember him being bright enough to buy that.”

“I’m sure he is.”

Kayd looked troubled. “There’s one thing he doesn’t have to know. But it’s the reason I want a man Fer was willing to trust. It isn’t likely Staniker would ever have to know, but there’s always the off chance him or his Mary Jane might find out somehow that I’ve got all that sweetening aboard, a stack of it I sure wouldn’t want to risk having a pick-up captain or ship’s cook knowing about.”

“And there’s no point in letting even Staniker know about it if you can avoid it.”

He looked at her warmly and appreciatively. “Fer sure found himself a smart gal. Don’t ever tell anybody one word more than they need to know. Decided to tell you because what I want you to do, if there isn’t enough, I authorize you to boost it on up to where he’ll say yes. But not over five. I pay for what I need, but I don’t want somebody trying to guess what the traffic will bear. If you know all my reasons, you can do a better job on Staniker. Maybe, later on, if things work out right, and you’ve got the time, you could go over there to Nassau on a little vacation once in a while and do me a little favor now and then. You’d get some little presents. Enough so as to know you weren’t wasting your time.”

“Little favors?”

“A man on my payroll with some cute ideas about what he can get away with, seeing as how I’m so far away, might want to put on the brag to some pretty tourist gal who never heard of Bix Kayd. Or some old boy who didn’t land a contract to barge building materials to one of the islands I hope to buy, might tell the big-eyed tourist gal how the boy who did get the contract is making kick-backs to the builder. When I get to wondering about something I get to fretting about it. A smart, pretty woman is the best pair of ears a man can buy. I’m into a lot of things, scattered here and there. I get the big sell from these investigation firms. They want me to put in what they call a security system. Screening, lie detectors, concealed microphones, psychological tests, plant some investigators on the pay rolls. Know what they never understand? Why should I pay some outfit forty or fifty thousand a year to find out everything about what I’m doing? Who do they sell that information to? I have a few smart gals here and there. They do little favors. I make a little present. They like it, the smart ones. It’s kind of a game. And nobody knows they’ve got any connection at all with Bix Kayd. It’s a little excitement. Something different.”

He looked at his watch, gulped the remainder of his drink, put the glass down and stood up. “Don’t want to miss that flight.” He took an alligator billfold out of his inside jacket pocket, fingered ten hundreds out of what he was carrying, said, “Here. Give it to Staniker so he’ll know we’ve got a deal.”

“I hope he isn’t off somewhere on a cruise, Bix.”

“Do your best, Miss Crissy.”

She thought about it all night long. Staniker did not come by. She paced and thought and drank and nibbled at the knuckle of her thumb. She would stop and study herself in her mirrors. The excitement kept starting in the pit of her belly, coiling up through her to burst like bright rockets in her skull, dazing her. In the bright dawn she closed the draperies and went to bed to sleep heavily for several hours.