I moved casually away, but not entirely out of range. I was considerably more alert. I had an uncomfortable feeling. Like a herd animal, shuffling along with the group, and gradually beginning to wonder what that faint thudding and screaming means, way up at the head of the line. I was growing points on my ears and walking softly on my toes. I found Connie talking to a big broad balding fellow with tiny eyes and a large damp mouth and considerable affability. She introduced him as George Wolcott, introduced him in a way that told me she did not know him and found him boring.
“What kind of a boat are you going to help this lovely lady find?” he asked me, chuckling though no joke had been made.
“Just a comfortable day cruiser of some kind. Displacement hull. A good sea beam. Nothing fast or flashy.”
“I suppose you got all the licenses to run one. Heh, heh, heh.”
“To run a charter boat for hire, with Coast Guard blessings, Mr. Wolcott.”
“Good. Heh, heh, heh. What kind of a boat do the Simrnins have?”
“It is a great big gaudy vulgar Chris Craft,” Connie said. “It’s called the Not Again! Excuse us please, Mr. Wolcott.”
He chuckled his permission. His loose smilings did not alter the dead bullet look of his eyes. I was getting hyper-sensitive. When we were far enough away from him, I asked her who he was.
“Oh, he’s part of that Doctor Face deal. Chairman some goddam of arrangements or rifle drill or thing.”
“He asks a lot of questions.”
“I think it’s just Dale Carnegie. Show an interest. Keep smiling. Remember names. Darling, how much of this can you take? My God, this music is hurting my teeth. I’d much rather take you home to bed.”
“Give me another half hour here.”
I turned her over to Rhoda Dwight for some more infighting, and wandered on. The sun bunny appeared at my elbow, showing teeth that looked brushed after every meal. But she seemed uneasy.
“I never was with the Rams,” I said.
“I know. Look I have to tell you something. Not here. Okay? Go down to the deck and over to the end, to the right as you go out onto the deck.”
Without waiting for my answer, she walked away. Suspicion confirmed. There can only be so much coincidence in the world. So I went where requested. I had that end of the deck to myself. I looked at the night view. She hissed at me. I turned and saw her looking out of a dark doorway. I went to her. “This way” she said. It was a wide corridor in the bedroom area, a night-light panel gleaming.
She opened a corridor door and said in a low voice, “I didn’t want to be seen talking to you. We can talk in here.”
She walked in first, into darkness. I hesitated at the doorway, and went in. But I went in at a swift sidelong angle, and something smashed down on the point of my right shoulder, numbing my arm. I went down and rolled to where I thought the girl would be. The room door slammed. I rolled against her legs and brought her thrashing down, got an arm around her throat and one hand levered up behind her and stood up with her just as lights came on.
Claude Boody stood with an ugly gun aimed toward us, and I turned the sun bunny quickly into the line of fire. But there was the faintest whisper of sound behind me, and before I could move again, a segment of my skull went off like a bomb and I fell slowly, slowly, like a dynamited tower, with the girl underneath. I was vaguely aware of landing on her, and of her strangled yawp as my weight drove the air out of her, and of tumbling loosely away.
I was not out. I retained ten percent of consciousness, but I could not move. The room was at the far end of a tunnel, and the voices seemed to echo through the tunnel.
“Oh God,” a girl whined. “I’m all busted up inside. Oh God.”
“Shut up, Dru.”
“Both of you shut up,” an older male voice said, enormously weary. “You let him get a look at me. It’s a brand new problem.”
“I’m hurt bad,” the girl moaned.
Hands fumbled at my pockets, shifting and hauling. Down in my trauma drowse I had the comfy awareness they would find nothing. I was entirely clean, just in case. My cheek was against a softness of rug. They hitched and tugged at my clothing.
“Nothing,” the tired voice said. “This stuff must belong to the Melgar woman.”
“It’s a Miami label in the suit. That mean anything?”
“Chip, I could be dying! Don’t you care?”
“Lie down on the bed, Dru. And shut up, please.” Chip, Claude and Dru. Three voices from far away. I heard the click of a lighter. A moment later, I felt a little hot area near the back of my hand.
“What are you doing?” Chip asked.
“Let’s see how good you got him. Let’s see if he’s faking.”
Heat turned into a white stabbing light that shoved itself deep into my brain. Pain was like a siren caught on a high note. Pain cleared away the mists, but I would not move. I caught a little drifting stink of my own burned flesh.
“He’s out,” Chip said. “Maybe I got him good enough so there’s no problem.”
“Or a worse one, you silly bastard,” Claude said. “Depending on who he is.”
“Isn’t anybody going to do anything?” Dru wailed.
They were kneeling or squatting, one on each side of me, talking across my back. The girl was further away.
“You slipped up on this one,” Claude said. “I don’t mean here and now. I mean down there.”
“I told you, I wondered about him down there. So I had Dru check him out. She’s no dummy. She has a feeling for anything out of line. You should know that. She threw the Garcia name at him and didn’t get a thing back. He was with a woman down there. Gardino. And that was what it looked like, to be there to be with the woman and she looked worth it. And that was the same woman who had the bad luck. Honest to God, it was a one in a million chance, but she caught it. I’m still sick about that. It seemed like a hell of a big charge to me when I wired it in, but your expert was supposed to know what he was doing when he put it together. We were long gone by then, but still that woman didn’t have any part of…”
“Shut up! The problem is finding out who this bastard is and what he. wants.”
“Honest to God, Claude, when Dru spotted him and pointed him out to me about forty minutes ago, you could have knocked me over with a pin.”
“Shut up and let me think. This is beginning to go sour. I don’t like it. He’s no fool. Coming here with the Melgar woman was almost perfect cover. And he made some good moves in this room. He nearly got out of hand. And he had good cover down there too, good enough to fool you and Dru, boy. So who is he working for? How did he trace it back to here? I thought we closed the door on that whole operation. I thought everybody who could make any connection was gone-Almah, Miguel, Taggart. But now this son of a bitch comes out of nowhere. I don’t like it.”
“And you know who else isn’t going to like it.”
“Shut up, Chip, for God’s sake!”
“Why don’t you drop it in his lap?”
“Because he doesn’t like things fouled up. Let’s come up with some kind of answer before I tell him.”
“One answer,” Chip said, “is to make this character talk about it. The name he used down there was McGee. Tonight it’s Smith. God knows what it really is.”
The girl made a groan of effort, as though struggling to sit up. “Jesus, he ruined me. Chipper, you get him tied up and let me get at him with that little electric needle thing, and I’ll make him talk about things he never heard of.”
“Shut her up,” Claude said.
There was a sudden movement, a solid and meaty slapping sound, and then the girl’s muffled and hopeless sobbing. “Goddam you, Chip,” she sobbed.
“Hasn’t he been trying to work out something with the Melgar woman?” Chip asked.