He snorted. “Past the guard out there?”
“I’ve got a boat tied up alongside. I could have had all your suitcases off here thirty minutes ago if I’d wanted them.”
He made no reply. He went on up the ladder and I heard his footsteps going forward along the deck. Well, I’d tried. Then, miraculously, he was coming back. He stepped down the ladder and stood looking thoughtfully at me.
“So you don’t steal suitcases. Just work boats,” he said. “Go ahead and make me cry.”
“I’m going to put the boat back,” I said. “And I was going to leave the money here to pay for the suitcase—if I didn’t find what I was hoping to. The money’s in my left hip pocket.”
He lighted a cigarette. “And what was it you wanted?”
“I’m trying to find a man named Ryan Bullard.”
“And you thought he might be in that suitcase?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“You wouldn’t be short a few of your marbles, would you?”
“No. I mean it,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I think he is in there. There’s a photograph—but never mind. There’s nobody on here named Bullard?”
“No.”
“Then he may be using another name. Or the guy I’m looking for may not be Bullard at all, but I still want him. Is there a big joker about six-three or six-four, heavy all the way up and down, black eyes, flat nose, mostly bald, with a fringe of black hair?”
He nodded. “That’s Ernie Boyle.”
I felt the stirrings of excitement. Maybe I was getting somewhere at last. “He’s the one I’m after.”
“Then you must be crazy, Jack. I mean like crazy crazy. You better let me call those cops. If I’d broke open his suitcase, I’d be screamin’ for ‘em.”
“I know what he’s like,” I said. “I’ve already run into him once tonight. But with the trouble I’m in, anything Boyle does to me is just a short-cut.”
“Who are you, anyway? And why did you come out here in a boat?”
“I’m Foley,” I said.
His eyes widened. “Oh. That tanker third mate that killed the cop.”
“I didn’t kill the cop.” I explained about the fight and how I’d left Stedman’s apartment. It was impossible to tell what he thought of it.
“And you think it was Boyle?”
“I think he had something to do with it.”
“Wait a minute, Foley. When was this cop killed? It was about a week ago, wasn’t it?”
“Last Tuesday.”
“Uh-uh. That’s what I thought. We didn’t even get in port till Friday.”
I’d been afraid of that. “And he was aboard last trip?”
“Yeah. And Tuesday we’d still be on the Campeche Bank, about four hundred miles from here.”
“I didn’t say he did it,” I said. “I know who that was. But I think he had something to do with it. Did you ever hear him mention the name Frances Celaya?”
“No-o. It’s new to me.”
“How about the name Danny?”
“No dice.”
“What’s yours?” I asked. “Raoul Sanchez.”
“All right, listen, Raoul—” I told him about the ambush by the playground and about Frances Celaya’s being killed. “This guy Boyle is mixed up in it some way and I’ve got to find out how. There may be something in that suitcase. So how about untying me?”
“Sure. That’d be great. And when he gets back I’m sitting here watching while you go through his gear? So he’ll kill both of us instead of just you? Try again.”
“Cut it out,” I said. “When he starts down the ladder, jump me and fake a fight. Say you just got here and caught me.”
He thought about it for a moment. Then he shrugged and began loosening the knots. “All right, but don’t try anything, Foley. I can take you, any day in the week. I was a pro for a couple of years.”
“Thanks,” I said. I sat up and moved my arms. “Then you must figure this Boyle is a wrong one yourself?”
He sat down in one of the bunks and crushed out his cigarette in a sardine can ashtray. “Maybe. But I don’t bother him.”
I strode over to the suitcase in the opposite bunk. Picking up the Luger, I checked to see if it was loaded. It wasn’t. I started to turn, still holding it in my hand, but paused when I saw the expression on his face.
There was anger in it and chagrin. “Pretty cute trick, ladron. And I went for it like a sucker, huh?”
I caught on then. “Here,” I said, and grinned. I tossed the Luger to him. He caught it, staring at me unbelievingly.
“It’s not loaded,” I said. “But if you hear Boyle coming, point it at me. Say you just got here and took it away from me.”
“Hmmm,” he said. “I guess you’re really telling the truth, Foley. But you’d better see if you can find some ammunition and load this thing, and keep it yourself. That’s the only thing that’ll save you if he comes back.”
“I don’t want to have to shoot him,” I said. “He may be the only person in the world who knows I didn’t kill that cop. As long as he’s alive there’s one chance in a million he might talk. But if he’s dead—” I turned back to the suitcase again.
The photograph was first. The man in it was definitely familiar, but the girl was somebody I’d never seen before. She was Latin and very pretty, but she wasn’t Frances Celaya. I passed it to Sanchez. “Is that Boyle?”
He nodded. “Yeah. But it must have been made several years ago. When he still had most of his hair.”
“That’s what I thought,” I said. “And it’s the same guy that opened the phone booth to get a look at my face. Where would you say it was taken? Havana?”
“It could be,” he said. “Or it might be Vera Cruz. They have cafes like that too.”
“Did Boyle ever talk about Cuba?”
He shook his head. “Boyle never talks much about anything. But he speaks Spanish like a whiz, I know that.”
It all added up a little at a time, I thought. Bullard was supposed to have done time in a Cuban prison. I went on ransacking the suitcase. The filthy pictures I disregarded; Havana wasn’t the only place you could buy those. In another envelope I found three small photographs of a boat. There were no people in the pictures, and nothing written on the back to indicate where they had been taken, or when. It was a sailboat with a ketch rig, apparently forty to fifty feet long.
And that was all. There was nothing else beside the usual clothing and toilet articles. I went through it again, just to be sure, and even investigated the pockets in the clothing and checked to see if the bag had a false bottom or hidden compartments. There wasn’t even any ammunition for the gun.
Nothing remained except the three letters. I looked at the envelopes. Two of them were postmarked last October and the third in November. All three had been addressed to Sr. Ernie Boyle in care of a Señora Jiminez in Ybor City, Florida, but the last one had been forwarded from there to Boyle on the Marilyn in care of the Tinsley Seafood Packing Co. of Sanport. I slid out the first letter. It was written in Spanish in a none too legible hand. I’d had one year of the language in high school, but I’d forgotten what little of it I’d ever learned, and combined with the poor script it was hopeless. I checked the other two. They were the same. The only thing I learned was that they were all from the same girl. She signed herself Cecilia.
Then I shook my head, and wondered how stupid I could get. I handed them across to Sanchez. “Will you read these letters and tell me what they say? I can’t read Spanish.”
He grinned. “This’ll kill you, Foley. Neither can I.”
“What?”
”Oh, I can puzzle out a word of it here and there. That’s all.”