Джон Макдональд - The Last One Left

“Sorry.”

“Why be sorry? It’s way too hot in here anyway. I was going to make a gesture. Like gratitude. It’ll keep.” She smoothed the seat of the dress with the backs of her hands and sat back where she had been before.

“What comes next?”

“Don’t you remember? It’s like we said. You stay holed up here. We can’t be seen together by anybody ever.”

“It’s over. What difference does it make?”

“Don’t be so dull! Somebody was in that deal with Bix. People like Bix, like the Senator, like those other buddies of his, they don’t trust anybody or anything. They’ll think it was some kind of cute way to get the money. And when they can’t find you, they’ll back track you to me. I can lie much better than you can, and I can size up the situation. Did anybody follow you, or try to follow you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You didn’t forget to do like we practiced, did you?”

“No. I did it. I felt like a damn fool, but I did it.”

“I’m not sure anyone was following me. But there could have been. I thought I kept seeing the same car. We are not going to take any chances. This is the time to be most careful, Garry. Believe me. Somebody may be adding up two and two and trying very hard to get seven. Believe me and trust me.” She patted his ankle. “You’ve done so beautifully so far. Remember, it could be my neck too. Be a good boy. I know this is very very depressing, but I’ll sneak down here and keep you cheered up. Think of how we’re going to get the money.”

He got up slowly and went to the bureau and took the Banner check out of the drawer and handed it to her.

She stared at it and then up at him, her eyes narrow. “Just exactly what the hell is this!”

“For my personal exclusive eye witness story of the ill-fated cruise of the Muñeca.”

“Are you out of your mind! ”

“What are you so hot about? Look, it kept the rest of the people out of my hair. Once I was sewed up they knew there was no point in asking questions.”

“But you don’t plan to do it!”

“Why not?”

“You idiot, we want the whole thing to be forgotten just as soon as possible. And what makes you think you need the money?”

“I thought it would be — kind of a natural thing for me to do.”

They argued for a few minutes. He told her about his promise to Hal Wezler, and where he was staying. She was silent and thoughtful for a few minutes and then she said, “You can’t do it, Garry, because I’ve decided we don’t really have to wait so long to go after that money. It’s too much risk to leave it on that same island where they found you. You were supposed to take it to a better place. When we made our plans, we thought it was going to be in a better place.”

“How soon then?”

“Maybe — next weekend?”

She watched his face. He sat on the side of the bed. Finally he said, “We didn’t do much talking about after. Except we’d split.”

“Because we could no longer afford each other, honey.”

“I better know how you figure on handling it, Criss. From then on.”

“Is it any of your business?”

“If somebody gets interested in how you got rich all of a sudden, it could turn out to be my business.”

“They won’t. I sold the last decent piece of jewelry. A damned fine emerald. So I’ve got a stake. I’m going to put the house on the market, and set the price low enough so it will move. I’ve got the bill of sale on the emerald to show how I happen to have cash. And I am going to turn the house money into cash. And then, dear boy, I am going to go from bank to bank, and I am going to turn that emerald money and house money into certified checks, just as many times as I have to to unload my share of the loot. Cashier’s checks. I learned that little trick from Fer. I’m going to sew them into the lining of something and fly to Italy and rent something rather nice on the Italian Riviera. As soon as I’m settled, I’m going to drive up to Zurich and open a lovely account with those checks and have those shrewd little men invest in very safe income things for me and deposit the income in another account I can draw on as I need it. I am going to swing just as long and hard as I want to, and I am going to grow old very very gracefully, and I am not going to have to beg any son of a bitch in creation for anything ever. I should be worrying about you, instead of you worrying about me. You’re more likely to fumble it, Captain.”

“I’ve been thinking.”

“That in itself is...”

“Shut up, Crissy,” he said in a tired voice. “While that Hal Wezler was giving me a ride out to Parker’s he kept looking at me whenever we had to stop for a light. Finally he said he was going to take a chance on something. He said he was going to stick his neck way out and recommend they make a lot more use of me than they’d figured on. He said that while he was doing the book from the tapes, I should go out to the Coast and he’d get me lined up with some people who’d — teach me how to handle myself in — public exposure situations. Create a celebrity image, he said. Then if I’ve got what he thinks I’ve got, it would be a bigger thing than just plugging the book and getting me on things like the Today show, things like that. He said I had a good chance of coming up with such a bankable image, it might even help swing a movie deal on the book, with me playing myself. He said I... project something that if it comes through on the screen, it could be big. He said the housewives were hungry for a more mature type guy and...”

“Are you serious? For the love of God, are you trying to have me on, Staniker?”

“I figured it out this way. That money. I could rent a deposit box under another name and pay three years ahead. I could just let it sit there. Then suppose it’s like Hal said, and I happen to hit? Why should he kid me anyway? They’ve signed me up for what they want. So I could make good money at it. I could buy the kind of motor sailer I was telling you about. Then pick up my share and I’m off around the world in it, enough to keep going on as long as I live. If I don’t hit, the money is still there, and I think of some other way.”

“Oh boy,” she said. “You are really it! You didn’t want money after all. You wanted to be a celebrity. You were getting too beat to line up the really first class tail the way you used to, but this way you can start getting it again, as much as you need whenever you need it.”

“When we split,” he said sullenly, “what we do is our own business.”

“They get you into a corset and cap your teeth, you’ll look just darling.”

“Get off my back, Crissy!”

She slid close to him. “Let’s not pout. People with that lovely raw wad of money don’t have to pout. We have to be a ways and means committee. Can you still borrow that fast boat from your old buddy?”

“The Bertram? Sure.”

“And it will get all the way over there and back?”

“Almost. Oversize tanks. Lay an extra thirty gallons aboard in five gallon cans and it’s no sweat.”

“Garry, how fast could you make the round trip in the dark?”

“There’s a weather factor. Give me a fairly flat sea, and allow time to go ashore and get the suitcase, add a reasonable safety factor — ten hours, eleven say. Leave at seven and be back by six in the morning. But when we were planning it, you kept talking about the risk of coming back here and finding a reception committee.”

“That’s why I’ve been taking sailing lessons.”

“You what?”

“You can run more southerly on the way back and come to Biscayne Bay below Cape Florida, Captain, and when you pass a blonde in a yellow bikini sailing her Flying Dutchman, you drop the pretty suitcase off. Maybe with a float tied to it just in case. She picks it up and sails home and puts the cash in her wall safe, and that night, after you’ve returned the boat and driven back to this charming hideaway, the blonde brings you your share of the bread. A sailboat has such an innocent look, don’t you think? I hired a boy to teach me. The poor dear has the most terrible crush on me.”