“Whatcha mean?”
“You were walking down the dock toward my boat last night when Abel jumped you. You sort of ruined Abel, and I covered up for you, but that’s not the point. The point is, why were you coming to see me?”
“Aw, hell, I was gonna tell you about followin’ me.”
Sail coughed some, deep and low, trying to keep it from moving his ribs, then got up on his feet carefully.
“All right, now we’re being honest with each other, and I’ll tell you a true story about a yacht named Lady Luck.”
Andopolis crowded his lips into a bunch and pushed the bunch out as far as he could, but didn’t say anything.
Sail said, “The Lady Luck, Department of Commerce registration number K9420. She belonged to Bill Lord of Tulsa. Oil. Out in Tulsa, they call Bill the Osage Magician on account of what he’s got that it seems to take to find oil. Missus Bill likes jewelry, and Bill likes her, so he buys her plenty. Because Missus Bill really likes her rocks, she carries them around with her. You following me?”
Andopolis was. He still had his lips pooched.
“Bill Lord had his Lady Luck anchored off the vet camp on Lower Matecumbe last November,” Sail continued. “Bill and the missus were ashore, looking over the camp. Bill was in the trenches himself, and is some kind of a shot with the American Legion and the Democrats, so he was interested. The missus left her pretties on the yacht. Remember that. Everybody has read about the hurricane that hit that afternoon, and maybe some noticed that Bill and his missus were among those who hung on behind that tank car. But the Lady Luck wasn’t so lucky, and she dragged her pick off somewhere and sank. For a while, nobody knew where.”
Sail stopped to cough. He had to lie down on his back before he could stop, and he was very careful getting erect. Perspiration had most of him wet.
“A couple of weeks ago, a guy asked the Department of Commerce lads to check and give him the name of the boat, and the owner, that carried number K9420,” Sail said, keeping his voice down now. “The word got to me. Never mind how. And it was easy to find you had had a fishing party down around the Matecumbes and Long Key a few days before you got curious about K9420. It was a little harder to locate your party. Two guys. They said you anchored off Lower Matecumbe to bottom-fish, and your anchor fouled something, and you had a time, and finally, when you got the anchor up, you brought aboard some bow planking off a sunken boat. From the strain, it was pretty evident the anchor had pulled this planking off the rest of the boat, which was still down there. You checked up as a matter of course to learn what boat you had found.”
Andopolis looked as if more than his tooth hurt him.
Sail kept his voice even lower to keep his ribs from moving.
“Tough you didn’t get in touch with the insurance people instead of contacting Captain Abel Dokomos, a countryman who had a towing and salvage outfit and no rep to speak of. You needed help to get the Lady Luck. Cap Abel tried to make you cough up the exact location. You got scared and lit out for Bimini. You discovered I was following you, and that scared you back to Miami. You wanted a showdown, and when Cap Abel collared you on the dock as you were coming to see me, you took care of that part of your troubles with a knife. But that left Abel’s lady friend, or whatever she is, and her brother, Blick. They were in the know, too. They tried to grab you last night in the park after you fixed Abel up, and you outran them. Now, that’s a very complete story, or do you think?”
Andopolis was a man who did his thinking with the help of his face, and there was more disgust than anything else on his features.
“You tryin’ to cut in?” he snarled.
“Not trying.”
“Then what—”
“Have.”
The sun was comfortable, but mosquitoes were coming out of the swamp around the road to investigate.
“Yeah,” Andopolis said. “I guess you have, maybe.”
Sail put his shirt on, favoring his chest. “We’ve got to watch the insurance outfit. They paid off on Missus Bill’s stuff. Over a hundred thousand. They’ll have wires out.”
Andopolis got up and held out his hands for the belt to be taken off, and Sail took it off. Andopolis said, “I thought of the insurance when I got Cap Abel. We used to run rum. The Macedonian tramp!”
“There’s shoal-water diving stuff aboard my bugeye,” Sail said.
“You don’t get me in no water! Shark, barracuda, moray, sting rays. Hell of a place. If I hadn’t been afraid, I’d have done the diving myself. I thought of that, believe me.”
“That’s my worry. It’s not too bad, once you get a system.” Sail felt his chest. “I guess maybe these ribs will knit in a while.”
Andopolis looked much better, almost as if he had forgotten his tooth. “It’s your neck. Okay if you say so.”
“Then let’s get going.”
Andopolis was feeling his tooth when he got into the car. Sail had driven no more than half a mile when both front tires let go their air. The car was in the canal beside the road before anything could be done about it.
The car broke its windows going down the canal bank. The canal must have been six feet deep, and its tea-colored water filled the machine at once. Sail had both arms over his middle where the steering wheel had hit. So much air had been knocked out of him, and his middle hurt so, that he had to take something into his lungs, and there was only water. He began to drown.
The water seemed to be rushing around inside the car, although there was room for no more to come in. Sail couldn’t find the door handles. The broken windows he did find were too small to crawl out of, but after exploring three, he got desperate and tried a small one. There was not enough hole. He pushed and worked around with the jagged glass, his head out of the car, the rest of him inside, until strange feelings of something running out of his neck made him know he was cutting his throat.
He pulled his head in, and pummeled the car roof with blows that did not have strength enough to knock him away from what he was hitting. It came to his mind to try the jagged glass again as being better than drowning, but he couldn’t find it, and clawed and felt with growing madness until he began to get fistfuls of air. He sank twice before he clutched a weed on shore, after which the spasms he was having kept him at first from hearing the shots.
Yells were mixed in with the shot sounds. Andopolis was on the canal bank, running madly. Blick and his sister were on the same bank, running after Andopolis, shooting at him, and having, for such short range, bad luck. They were shooting at Andopolis’ legs. All three ran out of sight. Sound alone told Sail when they winged Andopolis and grabbed him.
Sail had some of the water out of his lungs. He swam to a clump of brush which hung down into the water, got under it, and managed to get his coughing stopped by the time Blick and Nola came up hauling Andopolis. Andopolis sobbed at the top of his voice.
“Shoot his other leg off if he acts up, Nola,” Blick yelled. “I’ll get our little fat bud.”
Sail wanted to cough until it was almost worth getting shot just to do so. Red from his neck was spreading through the water under the brush.
“He must be a submarine,” Blick said. He got a stick and poked around. “Hell, Nola, this water is eight feet deep anyhow.”
Andopolis babbled something in Greek.
Blick screamed, “Shut up, or we’ll put bullets into you like we put ’em into your car tires!”
Andopolis went on babbling.
“His leg is pretty bad, Blick,” Nola said.
“Hell, let ’im bleed.”
Air kept coming up from the submerged car. Sail tried to keep his mind off wanting to cough. It seemed that Blick was going to stand for hours on the bank with his bright little pistol.