Ed Lacy - Blonde Bait

It was after midnight when I stepped off at Red Bank. I still had over ten dollars and I took a taxi to the first open bar I saw in Long Branch, had a beer, and started walking the remaining four or five miles to Asbury. Except for passing cars I didn't see a soul. It was a clear night with enough wind, and the smell of salt and the sight of the ocean made me feel fine. Yet, all the time I had a feeling it was too easy, that “they” were playing with me. This was the most important part of the chase. Was I leading them to Rose and the boat? I circled the block leading to the boatyard, waiting in the shadows. I didn't see anybody but I still had this strong hunch. I waited a full fifteen minutes, then sprinted the last hundred yards, jumping the gate and lumbering across the dock like a ton of bricks.

The Sea Princess looked beautiful as could be. I ran aboard, crouched in the cockpit and listened for any following footsteps. Rose stuck her head out of the cabin hatch, her face becoming a large smile of relief. As she came forward to hug me, I pushed her away, told her, “Get out the carbine and hurry it up!”

She dived into the cabin. There wasn't a sound on the dock, not even a light in the boat house. Rose came back and handed me the gun. “Mickey, are you...?”

“Are we squared away with the yardman?”

“Yes. Oh, honey, is...?”

“I'm going to start the motors. Hop up oh the dock, ready to throw off the lines.”

“Mickey, you don't know how happy I am to see you. I...”

“Later. Stand by the ropes,” I barked, raising the motor hatch.

The engines worked on the first try. Rose loosened the lines and leaped aboard. Seconds later we were following the channel buoys out past the breakwater, the Sea Princess starting to dance to the rhythm of the waves.

“Hon, are you okay? Were you hurt?” Rose asked, a dream even bundled in a suit of oilskins. “What happened all this....?”

“Take the wheel while I raise the sails. Keep her headed as she is.” I had the bow aimed straight toward Europe.

When the Sea Princess was racing along under full sail I cut the engines and sat at the wheel, watching the starlit sky for a plane, or twisting to look aft for boat lights. There was a large tug off our port but she wasn't making for us. Rose started to ask again what had happened and I told her to keep still. I was still too scared to kiss her, still afraid that something else would happen. She cried, “My God, you think I've had a cinch waiting on the boat? Going crazy with fear...?”

“Later, honey,” I said, listening to the sound of the wind in the rigging, the regular gurgle and slap of the waves; straining my ears for the throb of a speedboat.

Calling me a name Rose went below. I screamed at her not to turn on the cabin lights. I sat by the wheel, feeling better by the second. The ocean was my backyard, the Sea Princess my home. I waved in the cold darkness as we passed the tug, hundreds of yards to port. Feeling in my pocket for a cigar, I touched the private badge, the billy: and tossed them over with a laugh.

An hour later, when land was part of the blackness on the horizon and not a ship in sight, I lashed the wheel and went below. Rose was in her bunk and I could smell whiskey. When I touched her face in the darkness she hit my hand. I jerked her up and into my arms. Kissing her, I whispered, “Now we can talk. It's all over, baby. Nothing will ever come between us again, honey.”

With a sigh she returned my kiss, warm lips demanding, her hands digging into my neck. “Mickey, Mickey, you frightened me so! You acted so hard—and strange. I was afraid you thought I was responsible for whatever happened to you. We should never have come to the States.”

“Coming to the States was the smartest move we ever made. Things are going to turn out very fine. We... Easy with the fingers, honey, my head is busted—a little.”

“Oh, God, Mickey, you're hurt!”

“I'm fine although I was hit with everything but the custard pie. That's why I wanted to get the boat going, be free of all the—the—mess we stepped into, before I kissed you.”

“Mickey, all the time I was alone on the boat, down here in the cabin, I did nothing but remember how we had it at Ansel's. Swimming, lounging around, enjoying each other. All I could think of was how much I wanted that again! What dopes we were to give it up, risk this.”

“We'll have all that again, Rose, and even better. I know what this is all about, and soon we'll be able to stop running. Hon, let's go on deck and talk.”

She tried to pull me down to the bunk, whispering, “It's cold on deck. And since when did you get to be such a talker?”

“Baby, we're only a dozen miles offshore, and there's bound to be boat traffic. After what we've been through, I wouldn't dare cross a street without waiting for the green light, much less sail blind.”

We bundled up and sat beside the wheel and I was still talking when dawn lightened the sky. I went over everything that had happened to me; Jock's explanation. When I was finished Rose asked, “But how did these college kids know about you?”

“I figure they're on one of the Arab sides, and somehow they had a guy planted in Sowor's house. Maybe a roomer there. Or could be the old jockey was playing both sides of the street, tipped them off the same time he called the oil detectives. Actually not much of a deal. They tell the old guy it's worth fifty bucks or so to phone them if anybody comes asking for Sowor. Or, as I said, these kids had to live someplace, so maybe they had a room in the house. And me, shooting off my big yap about Me-Lucy, brought everybody on the run.”

“If the detectives saw you at the railroad station, you think they followed you out to your friend's house and back? And you didn't believe me when I said I'd been hounded by an army of dicks!”

“No army. Soon as they got this hot tip, the agency probably put a few guys on it. When they lost me they did the obvious thing: covered the rail stations, bus and plane terminals, for that night. But the hell with that, it will be over now we know the score.”

Rose shook her head. “I don't even know why I held onto those letters—the diary—except they were with the money.”

“It wouldn't have made any diff if you'd known and torn 'em up. They—all of them—would still have thought you had the diary, still chased you. In fact, not having it would leave us worse off.”

“One thing I don't understand: that Fed wanted to shoot me. And those detectives who tried to run me down with their car. If I was dead, how would they have got the diary? What was their angle in trying to knock me off?”

“Rose, what happened to you was part real and partly your imagination. They never...”

“My God, after what you've been through how can you still go with that imagination kick?”

“It's because I have been through the mill that I can say it was part imagination— now. Sure, I saw that clown in Atlantic City loosen his gun, but he never drew it or tried to use the rod, so I have to figure he probably did it to frighten you. When you're frightened silly, everything becomes distorted. Remember I told you how I slugged an innocent janitor, all because he wore a feather in his hat? The way my imagination was cooking, if I'd been packing a gun I might easily have killed him. When you're on the run, scared stiff, the least sound or shadow becomes magnified in our hysterical minds into a million other things—most of them phony— but all of them real to us. Another point: as Jock said, the police in their own way, unofficially, thought they were doing the right thing. They probably didn't even know what or why you were wanted—only that some big apple asked to see you. In short, we were being hunted by a half a dozen different guys and groups, each with their own angle. With some it was duty, or their job, and with others, the fast buck. But now you have only one more decision to make and then it will be over for us.”