Get Thee Behind Me...

Chapter 2 Let’s Pretend

The boy picked up the empty glasses, handed full ones deferentially to Carla, Billy and the stranger, set one in the sand near the blonde’s elbow.

Cooper said, “Bring me a bourbon and water, boy. A heavy shot and mix it.”

The boy looked at Carla. She nodded. He turned and hurried away, two of the empty glasses tinkling against each other. The venom in Billy’s small blue eyes was as unwinking and contained as the look of a caged snake.

Cooper grinned lazily at Billy. “They shouldn’t let you play with firearms, Luke.”

The boy hissed and gathered his thin legs under him. “Settle down, Billy,” Carla said in a quiet voice. “Allan, this is Bud Schanz.”

Schanz was exceptionally handsome. His features were even and regular without being pretty. His hair was brown and crisp. His body was symmetric, well muscled. It was the eyes, Cooper decided, that gave him away. They were bland and cold and absolutely empty. The eyes of a pure psychopath — a person born without the ability to distinguish between right and wrong — conscienceless, ambitious and utterly dangerous.

“You saved me a trip, Farat,” Schanz said in a soft cultured voice.

“Maybe an unsuccessful trip,” Cooper said.

Schanz looked at him for a moment and yawned like a tawny cat. “I hardly think so.”

“I look easy to take?” Cooper asked.

“Quite,” Schanz said.

“Wake her up, Bud,” Clara said. Schanz reached out a bare foot, planted it on the taffy blonde’s shoulder and shoved hard. The blonde didn’t respond until the third push. Then she muttered angrily and came up onto her elbows, blonde hair across her face. She threw it back with a quick toss of her head. “Say, whataya trying to...”

Her eyes were pallid, robin’s egg blue. They locked on Cooper. The pupils were tiny and black from the sunglare. She looked at him with complete, helpless, desperate horror. She was the girl in the photograph Abelson had showed him. And even while she stared at him, Cooper noted the odd resemblance between her and Barbara Hutcheon. Their faces were the same shape — broad through the high cheekbones, uptilt noses, wide mouths. Yet, while Barbara’s face gave an unforgettable impression of strength, this face was weakness — a China doll, vacuous weakness.

“Allie!” she wailed. “They got you too!”

Billy laughed helplessly. Schanz smiled gently. Carla let out one hoarse yell of laughter.

“Worth the price of admission,” Carla said. “She’s been telling us that sooner or later you’d hit here with a group of boys and tear this place apart and rescue her just like the movies.”

Alice had put her face in her hands, flat against the blanket. Her shoulders shook with the force of her sobs.

“She says she’s too young and too pretty to die,” Schanz said. “She ought to hire somebody to write better lines for her.”

The boy came up with Cooper’s drink. He sat in the sand beside Carla and drank deeply. Alice said, between sobs, a glimmer of hope in her voice, “It’s some kind of a trick, isn’t it, Allie?”

“Sure,” Billy said. “He’s got it all figured out. He’s got an atom bomb in his pocket and a helicopter in his suitcase. Right, Farat?”

Barbara turned up toward the group. “Cut it, all of you,” Carla rasped. “You hear me, Alice?”

“I hear you,” she said in a small dismal voice.

Barbara stopped a few feet away. “What’s wrong with her?” she asked.

“Billy hurt her feelings. He called her a lush,” Carla said.

“That’s right,” Billy said, “didn’t I, Alice?”

“Yes,” she said in a dull tone. She swiveled around and sat up. She reached for a small towel and wiped her eyes. She saw the glass. She grabbed it up, tilted it high and finished it, her throat working, her hand shaking so that some of it spilled from the corner of her mouth and dripped from her chin.

“Swim, Bud?” Barbara asked.

Schanz rose effortlessly to his feet. “Sure thing,” he said.

Cooper glanced over at Carla and saw her mouth tighten. The two of them walked side by side down toward the surf.

“Nice looking couple,” Billy said nastily.

“Shut up, Billy. She’ll be leaving soon. Before Rocko comes.”

“That’s what you’ve been saying right along, Carla. And she’s still here. I got it that Bud is sweet-talking her on the side.”

“I’ll kill him,” Carla whispered.

“Now why do you act like that?” Billy said lazily, his eyes a-gleam. “Bud is a promising guy. Look how Rocko trusts him. Hell, if you weren’t too good for Nick, why should she be too good for Schanz?”

Carla got up without a word and picked up her striped towel and spread it out fifty feet away and a dozen yards nearer the surf. She kept her eyes on the two who were swimming with lazy, long strokes out beyond the whitecaps.

Billy chuckled evilly, stood up and stretched his thin arms. “I’ll go shake ’em up about lunch. Have a fine time, lovers.” He put on the beach coat and walked toward the house.

Alice lay back and rolled onto her side, her cheek propped against her palm. Her body lacked the compactness of Barbara’s. It had a lushness that was overwhelming, even embarrassing. The sea masked her low tones. Carla couldn’t hear at that distance.

“What’re we going to do, Allie?”

“What can we do?” he said.

The pale blue eyes stared widely and solemly at him. She pouted. “You haven’t kissed me yet. You mad or something?”

He looked at her. The blue eyes were faintly narrowed, speculative. To refuse would be out of character, he decided. He kissed her. Her mouth had a soft wet lack of substance, a melting, distasteful looseness. She pushed him away and there was an odd look on her face. She grabbed his wrist with surprising strength, turned his hand palm-up and looked at it before he could think to close his fingers.

“Who are you? You’re not Allie. Who are you?”

“Have you gone nuts, kid? Is the sun getting you?”

Her voice was low. “I’m not that drunk, baby. How many times you think I read Allie’s palm? A hundred times maybe. I know how. Lines don’t change. Not like that. Who are you?”

“Allan Farat, kid.”

“How’d you get his clothes? I know that outfit.”

He yawned. He could hear the quickened thud of his heart, feel the greasiness of the cold sweat on his ribs. “You better go see a good head doctor, honey.”

“Even the voice is wrong now I listen good. And the hair above your ears is wrong. You think I don’t know Allie better than I know myself? Mister, you’re good enough to fool anybody except me. But this is little Alice, friend. Allie’s girl. You can’t fool me.”

“I say you’ve gone crazy, kid.”

She got up onto her knees and sat back on her heels, her mouth going firm. “All right, mister. What have I got to lose? I’ll tell the others. Maybe they can check good and find out you’re a fake. Maybe it’ll be so interesting, they’ll give me a break.”

“Not so loud,” he whispered tensely.

She smiled. It wasn’t a pretty smile. “That’s as good as telling me, isn’t it? Now give with the rest.”

His mind raced. Bad luck she had to be here. Abelson had told him that she would be dangerous. He stood up. “Come on. We’ll take a walk.”

Carla glanced at them as they passed her, then looked back out to where two heads swam close together.

When they were a hundred yards away, Alice said, “All right. Who are you?”

“Police. A federal agency.”

“Where’s the rest of them?”

“There isn’t. Just me. I’m not here to make arrests. I’m here to get information and get out.”

She stopped and looked at him. “And you came walking right in here thinking they’d let Allan Farat walk right back out again?” He nodded. She began to laugh with a hysterical note in it. Her face was screwed up, distorted. He grasped her bare shoulders and shook her, hard.

“Listen, Miss Fane. You’re in danger here, aren’t you?”

“Danger, he says. I’m dead. Standing right here I’m dead, unless Rocko has changed a hell of a lot, or unless the real Allie comes and gets me out of this.” Her face changed. “Where is he? How come you’ve got his clothes?”

“He’s dead,” Cooper said flatly.

“No,” she said. “No!” Her knees gave way and she fell into the traditional pose of helpless grief.

Cooper yanked her back up onto her feet. She was blind with sorrow, loose in his hands. He steadied her and hit her three times, hard, with the flat of his palm. The red fingermarks jumped out on her cheek.

“Do you want to go on living?” he demanded. “Do you?”

“Who killed him?”

“Police. He put up a fight. Answer my question. Do you want to go on living?”

“I... guess so. Anyway, I don’t want to die the way Rocko will want me to die.”

“Then maybe I can help. But can’t you see? They sent me here without enough information. I don’t know what this is all about. I know you were brought here against your will. I know they were going after Allan Farat to bring him here too. It would have to be Rocko’s orders. What’s his grudge against you and Farat?”

Her face was slack. “Oh, just a little thing. You’re a cop. Don’t you know how they got the evidence that deported Rocko?”

“It was a tip,” Cooper said. “That’s all I know.”

“And it told you where to look, didn’t it? And told you what you’d find?”

“I don’t know about that. I was with a different agency then.”

“I was Rocko’s girl. One of Rocko’s girls. Allie was bag man for Rocko, doing the pickups from all the territories. Allie and I, we — got sorta friendly. But Rocko never wanted anything real bad until he found out somebody else wanted it. Rocko began to get wise about Allie and me. I guess we went a little crazy. That was five years ago. I found out where Rocko kept the papers the government wanted and couldn’t find. I told Allie. We worked it out. We timed it just right. They came and got Rocko the night Rocko was waiting for Allie to come with the collections. They got Rocko, and Allie and I ran out with a hundred thousand cash. We hid for a whole year, living pretty good, out on the west coast.

“Then we got a message from Rocko. He’d guessed the whole thing. In the message he said that we didn’t have to worry, that he wasn’t going to have anybody take care of us. He was saving that for himself. It gave Allie and me a creepy feeling. The money went too fast. We dropped a big wad of it on the tables at Reno. Allie had to go back to work two years ago. Before that you people didn’t want him. But you know how things went bad for him when he went back to work. He stepped right into that federal rap and had to run for it. A month ago we got the message that Rocko wanted to see us and thank us here at Carla’s. We decided to split up for a while. I got lonesome. I met Schanz. I thought he was nice. And I went on a binge and here I am.”

Cooper said, “We thought Farat had helped make the arrangements to get Rocko back in this country.”

She laughed flatly. “That’s a funny joke. All you had to do was say ‘Rocko!’ and Allie would jump seven feet in the air. Hell, we were afraid of our own shadows after we got that note.”

“Who is bringing Rocko back? And why?”

“Don’t ask me. They deported him and you know as good as I do what happened to the country they deported him to. I heard Carla talking to Schanz. It sounded screwy to me. Something about how many of Rocko’s friends were coming in.”

“Is Carla financing it?”

“Not her, friend! Rocko’s got something he can use against her. But I don’t think she’s paying the shot. She just has to play ball by letting him come in here.”

“Can we get out of here?”

“Sure. We can dig a hole and go to China. I got out of the house one night. They’ve got all that damn wire and a guy with a rifle at the gate and a guy at each end of the beach. One day I sobered up and tried swimming. They bring that launch around in about twenty seconds and they’ve got a big pole with a hook on the end. The guy with a hook acted disappointed that I climbed in without any argument.”

“Farat couldn’t swim.”

She pursed her lips. “Now that’s an angle. Everybody knew Allie was scared of water. They won’t watch you so close.”

“And I’ve got a gun.”

“Oh, sure. You’ve got a gun. Mister, they even took the nail file out of my manicure set.”

“When does Rocko come?”

“Tomorrow night, they say.” She shivered. “I got to have another drink.”

“Look. Pretend I’m Farat. Tell yourself all the time that I’m Farat. Then you won’t make any slips.”

She tilted her head on one side. “Allie had a meaner look than you got.”

“If you see me doing anything out of character, let me know, will you?”

“Why should I?”

“Because I’m the only chance you have.”

She nodded slowly. “A little bitty chance, but the only one. You’re right.”

They walked back up the line of surf. Barbara and Schanz came out of the water, laughing. Barbara looked at Cooper and Alice Fane. She said politely, “Do you swim, Mr. Farat?”

“I don’t know. I never tried.”

She ignored the rudeness of his tone. “You should learn. It would be very easy in this water, it’s so buoyant.”

“Want to teach me?” he asked.

She gave him a long look. “Not particularly. What’s your business, Mr. Farat?”

Schanz said easily, “Real estate. He has some properties Carla is interested in.”

“How very apt!” Barbara said in a gay tone. “And dear Mr. Susler manages tourist courts, and Billy is an accountant and you, Bud, are an expert on food buying.” She laughed gayly, and her eyes were hard. “Isn’t it odd, Bud, that Susler won’t talk about tourist courts and Billy doesn’t know a debit from a credit and you don’t even know the price of beer? I wonder if Mr. Farat knows as little about real estate. What sort of baby does Carla think I am?”

“A pretty baby,” Schanz said mildly, “who shouldn’t ask silly questions.”

Carla strode down into the group. “Exactly what is going on?” she demanded.

“Little sister doesn’t think I sell real estate,” Cooper said.

“Lunch will be ready soon, Barbara,” Carla said. “I suggest that when you go to your room and change, you also pack your bags. You’ll leave today.”

Barbara lifted her chin. “I will not leave today. I’ll leave when I get ready.”

“You’ll leave today.”

Barbara looked at Cooper and then at Schanz. “Why don’t you have one of these gentlemen hit me on the head and take me away by force? They seem to be the type.” She pushed by Carla and walked up toward the house without looking back.

“Damn, damn, damn,” Carla said softly.

“You’re not kidding her a bit,” Bud Schanz said. “Why don’t you let her in on it?”

“Why don’t you keep your nose out of my family?” Carla said tonelessly. “I’ll handle her.”

“You’re doing great,” Alice said, “Great!”

Carla turned and watched Barbara enter the house. Once the girl was out of sight she turned and hit Alice in the pit of the stomach with a hard brown fist. Alice sat heavily on the sand, gasping and crying. Carla swung a bare foot back. As she started to kick, Cooper pushed her off balance. The kick missed and Carla staggered, nearly fell.

Schanz, behind Cooper, moved quickly. Cooper felt the hard hands on his shoulders. Schanz yanked him back, levered him across one strong hip and dropped him flat on the packed sand. “Let’s all play,” Schanz said gently.