Murders' Row

EIGHTEEN

WHEN I WAS brought on deck a couple of hours later, the shoreline from which we’d departed was a low, misty mass off to the right, the way we were heading-to starboard, if you want to be technical about it. I knew it was our shoreline because I’d been keeping track of it through the cabin porthole when Nick came to get me. There was another vague land mass off to the left, presumably the opposite shore of Chesapeake Bay, although it could have been an island.

There seemed to be a moderate breeze from behind us, but strangely enough, the waves were coming from ahead, moving up the Bay to meet us in long, oily swells that made the schooner pitch and roll uneasily as she plowed southward under power.

When I emerged from the hatch or companionway or whatever sailors call the opening in the deckhouse that leads up and out from the main cabin, Louis Rosten was doing something seaman-like at the mainmast. He didn’t look at me. Big Nick guided me towards Robin, at the wheel. This was located at the aftermost end of the cockpit, a sunken Roman bathtub sort of depression in the wide deck, with seats all around. Under the seats were slat-front lockers labeled LIFE PRESER VERS. Well, it was nice to know where to look in time of need.

I’m neither a seaman nor a weatherman, but those big rollers coming in against the wind didn’t make me very happy. I couldn’t help remembering that, according to the newspaper, a tropical disturbance was moving up the coast, and that Nick had said we might run into a bit of weather. The Freya looked very big to be handled efficiently, in a serious blow, by the few people visible on deck, one a prisoner.

“Here he is, ma’am,” Nick said.

Robin looked up from the compass, and took in my tight, sporty Petroni slacks and flashy zipper jacket. “Well, that’s a slight improvement, but you still look like a racetrack tout,” she murmured. There was a small silence, while we both remembered, I guess, various intimacies that had passed between us before I lost interest in my surroundings the night before. Anyway, I did. She patted the schooner’s steering wheel. “Take the helm. That’ll keep your hands busy,” she said, and laughed. “Take the helm, Helm.”

I stepped forward and took the spokes in my hands. It was like taking the reins of a spirited horse. I felt the surging pressures of the rudder and the throb of the big diesel-if I hadn’t already learned, from Washington, that the Freya had a diesel auxiliary, I’d have known by the stink of the exhaust blowing in over the stern.

Robin backed off, reached down, and picked up the handsome double-barreled shotgun with which she’d threatened me last night. She was wearing jeans, I noted, not the newfangled whitish kind, but the old-fashioned blue, and a navy blue turtleneck sweater. There was a bright scarf tied over her hair. Women in pants leave me cold as a rule, but she looked tall and handsome and piratical, a queen of the Spanish Main. She sat down at the side of the cockpit with her weapon across her knees, aimed at me.

“Hold her a little east of south, about 160 degrees magnetic,” she said to me, and to Nick, “I’ll watch him. You go help Mr. Rosten set the main. Sing out when you’re ready and we’ll bring her into the wind…Watch your course there, quartermaster!”

I’d let the Freya swing off, deliberately. Well, let’s say the big schooner had wanted to go and I’d let her. She was the most boat I’d ever handled. Under other circumstances, it would have been kind of exciting to steer her- not that there wasn’t a certain amount of excitement here. I glanced at the steady muzzle of the shotgun and spun the wheel the other way.

“Easy, sailor,” Robin said. “Just a few spokes at a time. You can’t throw an eighty-foot schooner around like a sailing dinghy. There. Hold that. Watch your compass. Meet her when she starts to swing… That’s better. We’ll make a helmsman of you yet, Mr. Government agent.”

“Yes’m,” I said. “Or should I say aye-aye.”

“Matthew,” she said, “or whatever your name is.”

“Yes, Robin,” I said.

“You should have known. You should have known I’d never encourage a cheap Chicago hood to put his hands on me.”

“If that’s flattery,” I said, “I thank you.”

“Would you have gone to bed with me? As Petroni?”

I said, “Do people have names in bed?”

“Then you would,” she said. “You’d have gone that far.”

“You’ve gone pretty far yourself, Robin,” I said. “You’ve got a lot of people very upset.”

“I guess I have.” She was silent for a moment. “Like your little blonde roommate, for instance. How is the little idiot?”

“Mad at me, scared of you, and sorry for herself,” I said.

Robin glanced forward to where her husband, with Nick at his side, was still working away at the nautical mysteries surrounding the base of the tall mainmast.

“So it wasn’t Louis who wanted me dead, after all,” she murmured. “You let me think-”

I kept my face expressionless. I saw Louis throw a glance our way, obviously wondering what we were talking about. His eyes were afraid.

“I never said it was Louis,” I reminded Robin. “You were so positive, why should I argue? As Petroni, I protect my clients, lady.”

She laughed. “Your client? That silly, unbalanced little girl? And you’re not Petroni now, so stop calling me lady.”

“Good God,” I said. “I never met a bunch of people so sensitive about what they were called.”

She was watching my face. “You really made a very unconvincing gangster, Matt Helm.”

I grinned. “You made a very handsome mermaid, Robin Rosten.”

She grimaced. “You didn’t have to be so damn drastic. You didn’t have to throw me in the water, and get my car stuck, and leave me to dig it out alone. You deliberately arranged for me to make a gruesome spectacle of myself in front of-” She stopped. “Oh, I see!”

“Right,” I said. “It had to look good; it had to look as if I were really getting rough, to separate the sheep from the goats. It worked, didn’t it? The Michaelis kid broke under the strain and showed she didn’t really want anybody killed, for all her big talk. The people I was after wouldn’t care who I killed; they’d killed before. We lost a man named Ames down here a while back. Remember Ames, Robin? He liked portable radios. He was also pretty good at cooking over a campfire.”

“I remember a man with a radio,” she said calmly. “He wasn’t going under that name. He never got a chance to build a fire, if that’s what he was doing on the beach at night. We thought he had something else in mind.”

I looked at her for a long moment. I guess I was saying good-bye to some hope; I guess I’d been waiting for her to deny knowing anything about Ames.

“Anyway,” I said, “my demonstration was convincing enough, and humiliating enough, that you didn’t want anymore. You dropped the respectable mask and fed me a mickey to stop me, like any movie conspirator.”

She laughed. “You flatter yourself, Matt, darling, if you think your silly hoodlum antics frightened me into revealing myself.”

“All right, then you got mad and lost your head; it amounts to the same thing. I got you to show your hand. You could have kept me busy for days trying to figure out if it was you I wanted, or Louis, or somebody else, but you didn’t. You came right out into the open. That’s what counts.”

She looked at me curiously. “Why, you sound quite pleased with yourself.”

“Why shouldn’t I be pleased?” I asked confidently. At least I hoped I sounded confident. “As long as you were the rich and respectable Mrs. Louis Rosten, and behaved accordingly, I couldn’t do much except harass you a bit, hoping you’d betray yourself-if you were the one I was after. Now I know you are; I’ve even got you to stick your neck out.” I glanced at her. “It’s a real pretty neck; it’s going to hurt me to use the axe. But that’s the way the stick floats, as the old mountain men used to say. Do you know what my boss said when he sent me on this job?”

“No.” Her voice had hardened. “What did he say?”

“We were talking in Washington, only a few days ago,” I said. “The chief told me, ‘There are some people not forty miles from here who have to be taught not to monkey with the buzz saw when it’s busy cutting wood.’” I shook my head sadly. “You shouldn’t have interfered, Robin. The man Ames was after, well, we took care of him later, overseas. So what good did it do him, your helping him get away? As for Ames himself, you amateurs are all alike. You get a good racket going, and then you start killing the wrong people. It’s too bad. Bye, bye, Robin.”

She got to her feet, facing me, with the shotgun ready. “Don’t you mean bye, bye, Matthew, darling? You seem to be forgetting something.” Her voice was harsh. “You seem to be forgetting who’s got what. I’m the one who’s got the axe, darling. Right here in my hands, if I choose to use it.”

I grinned at her cockily. “Amateur, just amateur. Waving a gun and talking loudly, just like all the rest of them. Robin, I’m ashamed of you. Don’t be a two-bit Borgia, honey, do it big. If you’re going to shoot me, pull the trigger, for God’s sake. Get blood all over your pretty teak deck. Go ahead!” I laughed. “That’s what I thought! I’m a pro, Robin, I’ve seen a million of you, and you’re all alike. You talk a swell murder, but when it comes to a cold-blood showdown-pffft. Like a toy balloon with a pin in it. Just pffft.” I made a very rude noise.

Her face was tight and pale under the smooth tan. “You take some awful chances, darling. Let me tell you something: the only reason I don’t kill you is that I have other plans for you. There may even come a time when you’ll wish I had pulled the trigger!”

“Talk,” I said. “Just talk. Blah, blah, blah. There’s something about holding a loaded gun that gives all amateurs verbal diarrhea. Just what is this terrible fate you have in store for me?”

She started to speak angrily, and checked herself, realizing, I guess, that I’d been deliberately trying to make her lose her temper. There was a little silence, broken by a shout from Big Nick.

“Ready with the main!”

Robin glanced that way, drew a long breath, and turned back to me. “All right, sailor. Let’s see what you’ve learned. Bring her around easy, right up into the wind.”

I swung the schooner’s bow around, and the two men at the mast cranked up the big mainsail by means of a winch, and ran forward to set some other sails, while two thousand square feet of canvas, more or less, danced and flapped over my head, supporting a varnished spar the size of a telephone pole: the main boom. It was the biggest timber I’d ever seen swinging loose like that, and it made me very nervous. The tall mast and the immense sail didn’t add to my peace of mind.

“Aren’t you kind of shorthanded to handle a boat this size under sail?” I asked. “Three people don’t seem like much of a crew.”

She was watching the progress of the work forward. “We’ll pick up three more tonight,” she said absently, not really thinking. “Well, two that can help work the ship-” She stopped, and glanced at me quickly. “Damn you!” she said. “Well, now you know.”

“Yeah,” I said. “The guy who can’t help is named Michaelis, I suppose, the missing Norman you were telling me about last night. I heard about him in Washington. Well, that’s none of my business until I’m told differently.” I hoped my voice sounded easy and casual. She had to be made to think Ames was my big concern, not Michaelis. “I suppose that’s why we’re setting the sails, so that tonight we can cut the motor and run into Mendenhall Island silently and pick him up with his jailers. That’s the place, isn’t it, the one you told me about last night?”

“Yes,” she said, “that’s the place, darling. I had to say something to keep your mind off your drink.”

“And after Mendenhall,” I said, “where?”

She didn’t answer at once. She’d stepped off to one side so she could see clearly. “Belay, there!” she shouted. “You’ve got it fouled! Slack off the peak halfway… All clear, hoist away.” Then she turned to look at me deliberately. “We’ll head out through the Chesapeake Capes. A freighter will meet us at sea. They’ll take all of you on board-you, Matt, in place of the woman I promised them, the one you killed. They’ll be very glad to have you, I assure you… Nick, come here. Take him below.”