"Guess I'm just a slow learner," I grunted.
Bearing Schuster's only son took a couple of steps toward the stern and stopped. "I guess it was sheer futility to hope you'd heed my advice after we had our little talk back in Clearwater. It seems quite obvious you didn't take me seriously."
His eyes, partially hidden by his nor'easter, continued to dart back and forth and up and down the Sloe Gin. Logic told me he already knew we had retrieved the cylinders. I could only assume he was counting.
''Actually, Elliott, you are to be commended. Despite your demonstrated ineptness, I see that you have been able to recover my father's cylinders."
"Perserverance pays off," I shot back at him.
Schuster studied the oblong metal cylinders much like a man making a choice from a supermarket display case. "All in all, considering the fuss that's been made over them, they are a rather unimposing looking prize, wouldn't you say?"
I didn't bother to reply.
"Which one is supposed to contain the key to immortality?" He grinned, revealing the sizable investment in caps his daddy had made in a time before it was the thing to do.
I shrugged. "You tell me."
"Well, there's only one way to tell. I'll just have one of my men pry one of these tin cans open and see what's in it."
A cold chill ran up my back. If my theory about the real contents of the cylinders was even partly right, popping one of Bormann's metal containers open could mean a certain and horrible death for all of us.
"You know something, Elliott? You, these damned cylinders and my father are getting to be a real pain. You've cost me a lot of time and money, and you've caused me such great inconvenience, probably far more than necessary if I had only followed my first instinct."
"Which was?"
"Which was to put a bullet in your stupid little head and be rid of you once and for all. But I decided to play it cautiously, hoping you and your team of amateur treasure hunters would get tangled up in your own underwear and mess the whole mission up." He shook his head.
"Don't you just hate it when everything turns to shit?" I taunted.
Marshal glowered. "Alonzo was right, you know. He hasn't trusted my father for a long time."
"Your father?" I sputtered. "Bearing Schuster is tied up in this?"
Marshal's flabby face took on a pained expression. "My God, Elliott, it's a wonder you ever got through graduate school. Of course my father is involved. Bearing Schuster is too greedy not to be. Why do you think he allowed me to turn our mothballed Deechapal research facility over to someone like Zercher?"
I was not only stunned but had egg on my face, too. My only consolation was that I figured he also had conned Cosmo.
"The only thing my dear old daddy doesn't know is that I cast my lot with Zercher as well."
"Then why the hell didn't Zercher let your old man recover the cylinders himself? It could have saved everyone a lot of grief."
Marshal shook his head. "Alonzo has no desire to see Bearing Schuster prolong his already too long life any more than I would. We both have better things to do with our time and money. Besides, no one really believes Bachmann's process works."
"If you really don't think Bachmann's process works, why don't you just step aside and let me deliver these to the old boy?"
"That's a fair question, Elliott. The problem is — what if, by some remote happenstance, it does work? What if, by some bizarre set of circumstances, that old German crackpot actually developed a process that would enable them to reanimate my father? And it's that one long, lone remote possibility that makes it absolutely imperative that my father never even gets a chance to examine those cylinders."
"You feel strongly enough about this that you'd actually kill?"
"I already have, Elliott, I already have. And I have no intention of letting you stand in the way, either." Marshal continued to stare at me and ugly little wrinkles began to play with the corners of his pig eyes. "Alonzo has one reason for not letting Father get his cylinders, and I have quite another. But the important thing is we are both in agreement on one very critical issue — and that issue is you. We both agree that your tiresome meddling has cost us enough, and that you have to be stopped.
You, my dear fellow, have become quite a nuisance."
"Like I always say… into each life…"
"Come, come, Elliott, I know how difficult it must be for someone with your rather limited concept of wealth to understand, but my father measures his wealth not in the millions but in the hundreds of millions. His holdings in Schuster Laboratories alone make him one of the world's wealthiest men. It's really very simple — why should I wait?"
Marshal Schuster hadn't changed much, only the extent to which he was willing to go to get what he wanted had. Some 30 years ago it was stealing; now it was murder.
"You see, Elliott, things just aren't going according to plan. As you've no doubt deduced by now, the Cartel has suffered a rather serious setback. The viability of our operation has been damaged by the tragedy in Deechapal. Our contacts in Columbia have had to turn to other sources, and that has cost us a very pretty penny. Then there is the little matter of the inventory stored in Deechapal at the time of the disaster. That inventory is not currently accessible. Our associates are disturbed about that as well.
They want their money, and we want their goods. As the situation stands, neither has neither."
"Why don't you just go in and get it?" I shot back at him.
Schuster let out a coarse little laugh.
"You'd like that, wouldn't you, Elliott? You'd like us to pump millions of dollars worth of contaminated inventory into our supply line."
Bingo! Marshal had just let the cat out of the bag. Another piece of the puzzle had jumped into place. Neither Zercher nor young Schuster knew what was behind the Deechapal disaster, and in not knowing, they thought it possible that their inventory on Deechapal was contaminated.
Suddenly it was as clear as the water racing down Marshal Schuster's sagging jowls. Lady Luck had dealt him a fistful of bad cards in a high stakes game. Bachmann's process, once discovered, had captured his father's interest, and worse yet, most of what would or could validate the process turned out to be on a wrecked freighter smack dab in the middle of Alonzo Zercher's Caribbean clearing house. Marshal Schuster was caught playing both ends against that middle. Zercher could ill-afford to have a bunch of intrepid salvage experts thumping around his domain and had assigned Marshal the chore of keeping the world out while he bought time to cover his losses. On the other hand, Marshal had to make certain Daddy Bearing didn't get his cylinders on the outside chance that the process just might work well enough to keep young Marshal from ever laying his hands on his father's money.
Marshal Schuster, it appeared, was everywhere — and nowhere.
"Okay, you still owe me one. How did you know Poqulay double-crossed you?"
"Never leave anything to chance. Always cover your flank, Elliott, you know that. When our own efforts to recover the cylinders failed, we made certain we knew if and when you did."
"Byron Huntington?"
The nervous little man, who was still standing by the cylinders, looked up, surprised.
Schuster began to laugh. "You constantly amaze me with your pedestrian logic, Elliott. Of course it isn't Mr. Huntington, is it… Maggie?"
Lady long legs moved away from Hannah and stood beside Schuster. "They never suspected a thing," she said, smiling.
For a moment I was too stunned to say anything.
"Well, Elliott, now that I've filled in all the blanks for you, you've no doubt figured out that all of this information is just a little too sensitive to let you and your pathetic little band of would-be salvage experts carry this mission any further."