Carny kill

17

_But what is the black spot, captain?_ Jim Hawkins had asked. _That's a summons, mate_, Billy Bones had answered.

And that's what this black spot was-a summons for me. Because the person who had planted it on my shirt knew me. Knew my immature sense of the dramatic. Knew I wouldn't call cop.

And he was right. Like John Silver I had to bullhead a bad deal out to the bitter end. I touched the plastic butted reassurance of the fortyfive under my jacket and grinned.

"Nobody," I thought, "ever got the best of Silver. Not even Ben Gunn."

I left the tree house and went down to the Admiral Benbow. The Hispaniola was moored for the night against Treasure Island. The stern windows were open and a blocky shaft of light was jabbing through them and making an orange puddle on the shallow water under the schooner's counter. Soft music throbbed over the dark manmade lake.

I got in a boat and rowed to the island.

The cabin door flew open and Mike Ransome stood in the flood of light grinning at me.

"Thax! I've been expecting you."

I held out the black spot to him and made another stab at quoting Silver.

"Look here. This ain't lucky. You've gone and cut a Bible. What fool has cut a Bible?"

Mike took the black spot and chuckled.

"It was Dick," he said, quoting loosely, "and he can get to prayers. He's seen his slice of luck, has Dick, and you may lay to that."

"Amen," I said.

Mike made a gesture inviting me in. Then he took a quick look behind me before he closed the door.

"Come alone, Thax? I rather thought you would."

"Sure. Just like you said the first time we met, Master Gunn-'Him that comes is to have a white thing in his hand and he's to come alone.' Remember?"

I took a casual turn around the cabin. The hi-fi was still purring soft mood music. There was a triangular wardrobe in the angle between the forward bulkhead and the starboard wall. It was faced with two louver doors and I got the impression that the righthand door shifted slightly as I walked by. I went to the stern and parked my prat on one of the open window frames, folded my arms and smiled at Mike.

He wagged the black spot at me. "It really was cut from a Bible, Thax. I always keep one around for laughs. I thought it was the perfect touch. You agree?"

"That's right. I couldn't resist it. You must be uncanny, Mike. You seem to know me like a book."

Mike looked delighted. "Care for a drink?"

"Uh-no thanks. That last one I had out here was murder. I mean that in the literal sense."

Mike chuckled and went over to the hi-fi and killed the music.

"You put something in that gin, didn't you?" I said.

He was enjoying himself immensely. He nearly danced over to the hotplate.

"I'm going to have some coffee. You? No? Well now, Thax-why would I want to put anything in your drink?"

"Because I bunked with Terry Orme, and because you wanted me blotto when you paid our tree house a visit that night."

Mike's eyes watched me brightly over the rim of his coffee cup.

"You can tell a story better than that, surely. You mustn't start in the middle, you know. That's using the narrativehook form and that's cheating."

I was agreeable. "All right, I'll back up to the beginning. You fell for May. Or maybe I should extend that and say you fell for May and her husband's money. But the husband was in the way. To eliminate him was no great problem. The rub was that as soon as he turned up murdered everybody would immediately point the finger at May-because of the money motive. So in your somewhat warped ingenious way you worked out a neat little scheme."

Mike sipped his coffee and smiled at me. He said nothing.

"You would murder Cochrane and you would frame it to fit May. But the frame would be so goddarn obvious that even a blindman would be able to recognize it when it started to smell. Why would she use her own knife? And why would she leave her knife in the body? And why would she be so damn careless as to drop her earring by the body? And why wouldn't she at least have enough sense to get herself an alibi for the time of the murder?"

I shook my head.

"It would be too much for anybody to swallow. The law would play with it for a while and then they would set her aside and start looking around for another suspect with a motive. May would be a nice innocent rich widow-all for you."

I looked at him.

"You like it?" He flashed a grin at me. "I always did. But go on. You're telling it."

"Well, you realize I'm just fumbling over the finer details now. This is mostly guesswork, so stop me if I'm wrong."

"You're doing fine, just fine, Thax."

"I don't think you had set an actual date for Cochrane's murder. You were probably still trying to iron out the various wrinkles in your bent little brain-until the day I showed up. You knew my past history and I must have looked like a natural to you. The jealous ex-husband, deadbroke and with a vengeful heart. Good. You decided to hit Cochrane that same night."

I took out a cigarette and rolled it between my fingers.

"Guessing again now, I think you made a date with old man Cochrane for after closing time. Probably told him you had a brand new scheme for Treasure Island and you wanted him to meet you and kick it around. He agreed. He'd come out to the Hispaniola late that night. But you didn't want to do him in that close to your homebase. So when he came down to the Admiral Benbow dock, you were already waiting for him in the tearoom."

Mike watched me, beaming expectantly.

"The lights would be out, of course," I said, thinking about it.

"You would call him over to the tearoom on some pretense or other. He steps through the door into pitch darkness and you're there waiting with the knife. Bingo."

"Do you need a light for that cigarette, Thax?"

"It's all right. I've got one."

"Don't let me interrupt you, then. It's fascinating."

"Isn't it? And it gets better." I fished out a match and lit up.

"So. Then you tote him into one of the rowboats and you row across the lake in the dark and you cart him over the little stretch of land and dump him in the Swamp Ride. With May's knife still in him, of course. And you remember to plant May's jade earring in the mudbank where any stumble-bum cop will find it. Then back to the Hispaniola and the black coffee and insomnia."

I grinned at him. "You know, I couldn't quite pin you at first."

"How's that, Thax?"

"I mean all the highstrung energy. It's obvious that you're on something, but I never put you down as needle nuts. It's Bennys, huh? Or Dexamyl or Dexedrine? That's the reason for all the black coffee. It keeps activating the pep pills. How do you keep going without sleep though?"

He placed a hand over his heart and spoke dramatically.

"A man in love needs no sleep." Then he laughed at himself. "As long as you've interrupted your narration, let me ask you this. Why didn't I just leave the body in the tea room?"

"Um. That's one of the things that started me thinking about you as a possible suspect. Look what happened in _Treasure Island_. Everyone figured the treasure should be in Flint's cache because all the facts pointed to that conclusion. But when they got there they drew a blank, because foxy old Ben Gunn had already picked up the loot and moved it somewhere else. Dandy joke."

I said, "That's your style, Mike. You love a good laugh at other people's expense. That business of leaping out at me like Ben Gunn, and of boasting about jumping out on all the little girls and making them wet their panties. You like to shock people, Mike. You like to hit 'em with a startling surprise and then stand back and laugh. And you love a risk. You're the kind of nut who actually enjoys living on the edge of disaster. Like that gamble you took with Bill Duff in the poker game. That was pure brinksmanship."

Mike laughed delightedly.

"Will you ever forget the look on Bill's face? Good old Bill! But go on, Thax. I'm enjoying this."

I knew he was. Because the whole thing, the way he had laid it out-was another big risk. And I had an idea that he had an ace in the hole. I even thought I knew the color of the ace.

"There was no reason on earth to move that body," I said. "You did it for pure shock value. If you'd left it in the tearoom the first waitress who opened up in the morning would walk in and see it and go Gaa! Not much fun in that. Just one person. But if you dumped it in the Swamp Ride you could really raise the roof.

"Just picture it," I said. "A whole boatload of happy marks ohing and ahing along the waterway. Then they turn the bend and what do they see floating in the water?"

Mike laughed and slapped his hands.

"Beautiful!" he said. "And I'm still sick it didn't work."

"Yes," I said dryly, "what a shame that freckle-faced kid squelched all the fun." I pitched my cigarette butt through the stem window and said, "So now we come to Terry Orme.

"Just when you figured you'd pulled a perfect crime, blackmail walked in and put the screws on you. So you knew there had been a witness but you didn't know who. Then I accidentally gave you a tip when I told you Orme bunked in the tree house. Sure, you figured. Orme is always climbing around in the dark, peeking in on other people's business. Orme had to be the witness. So…"

"So you helped me out by walking in here and asking for a drink."

"Uh-huh. And you doped it and I passed out and then you laid for Orme in the treehouse."

"And then?" Mike prompted me.

"There isn't much more," I said. "Right after Terry took the big drop is when I put on my thinking cap and my thoughts slowly turned me in your direction. So I had to be eliminated next."

Mike was smiling at me. He said nothing.

"But that was the big slipup," I said. "Because you didn't handle it. If you had, I'd probably be one day dead right now."

"Go ahead," Mike said. "Tell us why I didn't handle it."

"Because I figure you didn't even know about it, Mike. And the person who did was already too panicky to have a third murder turn up on the lot. So she hired some big city badboys to do the deed in some far-out remote spot."

I looked at the louvered wardrobe across the cabin.

"Is that right, May?" I said.

There was a pause and then both louvered doors swung noiselessly open and May stood there as gorgeous as a George Petty picture, in a bright, tight red outfit that accentuated her flame hair. She was holding one of her pearlhandled knives.