Operation Fireball

CHAPTER SIX

Twenty minutes before Erikson and Slater were due to arrive in the morning, I called downstairs to the bell captain’s desk and had a card table sent up to my room. When it came, I set it up in the center of the room so that it would be the first thing visible to anyone entering the room.

Then I went to the bureau drawer and took out the wrapped package of Hazel’s money. I stripped off twine and paper, fanned the thousand fifty-dollar bills out in a crisp semicircle, and placed the fan on the card table so that the corner of each bill could be seen individually.

When their knock came at the door I let them in, Slater eyed the display greedily, Erikson impassively. The blond man extracted a bill from the center of the fan, held it up to the light and examined it, crackled it sharply several times, then returned it to the pile. “Afraid of counterfeit?” I asked Erikson.

“That’s right,” he said. “Counterfeit would have been a complication we couldn’t use on this job.”

“Pretty pictures,” Slater said approvingly. He was still eyeing the bills. “Pretty, pretty pictures. Well, I guess that’s the last hurdle.” He glanced at Erikson who nodded in confirmation. “Where we meetin’ in Key West, Drake?”

“At a bar called The Castaways. It’s on Margaret Street, near the docks. It has rooms on the second floor we’ll take over so we can stay out of sight.”

“We should travel to Key West separately,” Erikson said. Nobody disagreed. “So I suggest that the money be split in half. I’ll buy the components of the shortwave radio and other electronic gear we’ll need. I’ll buy it in different places and assemble it in Key West. I’ll also put up the deposit on the fishing cruiser as soon as I get there and check it out.” He looked at me. “You can finance Slater’s expenses to Key West.”

“One correction,” I countered. “We’ll all check out the cruiser when the time comes, and I’ll put up the deposit. That way you won’t need to burden yourself with half the cash.” Erikson started to say something, but I pitched my voice above his. “I told you before I want to make sure it’s not only my money that gets to Cuba.” I separated forty fifty-dollar bills from one end of the semicircle on the table and stacked them together. “Can you spend more than two thousand on the radio?”

Erikson was holding his temper with difficulty. “I’ll need sophisticated calibration and testing equipment,” he said after a moment in which he had plainly considered saying something else.

I added twenty more bills to the stack, then handed it to him. “Will that get you to Key West with the gear?”

He nodded again, but his lips were a thin line. He wasn’t used to having his decisions questioned. “I still think—”

“See you at The Castaways,” I interrupted him. I separated ten more bills from the half moon and handed them to Slater. “You, too. Never mind planning on hitchhiking to save the cash.”

“Never crossed my mind,” he protested. He thumbed the bills before placing them carefully in his wallet. “Damn near forgot how that size denomination feels. Well, we all set?”

Erikson spoke before I could. “Don’t get carried away,” he said to Slater. His tone was dry. “Keep thinking of the bill-size denomination you’ll be feeling in Havana.”

“No problem,” Slater said. “See you both in Key West.” He cocked an eyebrow. “When?”

“No later than a week from today,” I said. I intended to be there sooner than that myself.

“A week it is.” Slater started for the door. “Confusion to the enemy, boys.”

“Keep your nose clean!” Erikson called after him. It was delivered in a quarterdeck type of voice.

The door closed behind Slater with no further word from him. “There’s a problem?” I asked Erikson, who wouldn’t be leaving the room until Slater had a five-minute start.

“He drinks. Not when I’m around, though.”

“Plan on being around,” I invited him. “That kind of situation we don’t need.”

There was a moment’s silence while Erikson debated his next words. I felt I knew what was coming. “Granted that you’re taking a financial risk none of the rest of us are, Drake,” he began smoothly; “you’ll get your share along with the rest of us. Distrust will get us nowhere. The project needs a leader whose decisions should be unquestioned.”

“And you should be the leader?”

“Yes.” It was said without hesitation.

“I don’t see it that way,” I replied. “Slater and the fishing boat captain may be under your thumb, but I do my own thinking. You can lead in the areas where you’re qualified, like communications. Otherwise, don’t crowd me.”

He didn’t like it, but he didn’t have a ready answer to it. Now that I’d made my point, I didn’t want him any madder than necessary. “How about a drink to the success of the expedition?” I proposed.

For a second I thought he was going to refuse. Then he must have decided that it would look too ungracious. “A small one,” he said.

I went to the bureau and removed a three-quarters-filled bottle of bourbon from a drawer. Bent over the drawer, I could feel the impression of my holstered revolver against my rib cage. I’d put the holster on before I spread the $50,000 on the card table. I took two glasses from the plastic tray on the bureau top, splashed booze liberally into them, then carried them into the bathroom to add tap water.

Above the sound of the running water I heard a knock at the corridor door. Slater’s come back to try to talk me out of a little more cash, I thought. Then I realized that Slater would have double-checked to make sure that Erikson had left. I turned off the water and listened.

In the same second I heard the sound of the door opening I had a mental image of fifty-dollar bills spread out on the card table. I put down the glasses and moved quickly to the partly closed bathroom door behind which I was concealed. I peered out through the crack near the hinged side. A pillow was lying carelessly atop the card table, concealing the money. Score one for Erikson, I thought. “Yes?” he was saying at the outer door. I couldn’t see who was standing in the corridor.

“I’m lookin’ for Earl Drake,” a western voice drawled. “I’m Deppity Sheriff Ed Calkins of White Pine County.”

I reached across my chest and drew the Smith & Wesson.

“I’m Drake,” Erikson said. He opened the door wider. “Come in.”

Before I could react either to Erikson’s claiming to be me or the invitation to come inside, a lanky individual in a tightfitting business suit and carrying a dun-colored Stetson in his left hand moved into the room. “What can I do for you, Sheriff Calkins?” Erikson continued.

“Answer a few questions,” the deputy said. He had weather-beaten features and a capable look.

“Questions?” Erikson’s tone changed. “Is this an official visit? Should you be informing me of my legal rights?”

“I thought we could keep it friendlier’n that.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Erikson said. His tone was freezing.

Through the crack in the door, I could see Calkins sizing him up. Whatever the deputy had expected to find, it plainly hadn’t included the impressive-looking, six-foot-four-inch blond Viking confronting him. Calkins’ manner was wary and his tone conciliatory. “We had a little ruckus up our way a bit ago, Mr. Drake,” he said. “On the ranch of a woman named Hazel Andrews who lives north of Ely.” He waited, but Erikson said nothing. “Do you know Hazel Andrews?”

“I’ll reserve my answer to that until I know the purpose of your question.”

A touch of steel came back into the deputy’s voice. “It was the type of ruckus that don’t get into the papers much, but the kind the law can’t turn its back on. A bunch of snotty-nosed kids got way out of line and like to killed a man. Maybe they did — there’s still wranglin’ goin’ on about the autopsy — but the point is the kids collected a load of lead from someone who caught ‘em at the job. Maybe they had it comin', Mr. Drake, but we don’t hold with vigilantes in White Pine County.”

“The kids were killed, too?”

“No. This unknown party dealt ‘em a bullet apiece slick as you please. By the time we were called in on it, there was no one at the ranch but Mrs. Andrews. It was her stepfather who was killed, an’ she climbed my boss an’ turned him every way but loose. She can handle a gun but not like that. Besides, we got a description from the kids of the man who did the job.”

“And I fit the description?”

“Not by six inches an’ fifty pounds.”

“Then, why are you wasting my time?”

“Because I followed Mrs. Andrews from her ranch right straight to this hotel,” Calkins said doggedly. “She came in, but she didn’t register. I did some nosin’ around an’ I found out she talked an assistant manager into lettin’ her into your room here, Mr. Drake.”

“So it seems I’m not unacquainted with Hazel Andrews,” Erikson said. “But I don’t fit the description—”

“You might know who does.” Erikson was silent. “Mr. Drake, do you know a man five-ten, a hundred seventy pounds, ruddy complexion, who’s capable of goin’ up to Mrs. Andrews’ ranch an’ puttin’ on a turkey shoot like Bill Cody never saw in his Wild West days?”

“Why didn’t your boss tell you to ask Mrs. Andrews that question, Deputy Calkins?”

“Mrs. Andrews is the biggest taxpayer in the county, Mr. Drake, an’ my boss is plannin’ for reelection next year. He’s got to do what’s right, but he don’t figure he’s got to stick his neck in the wringer to do it.”

Erikson’s attitude turned crisp. “I’ll state categorically that I didn’t do the shooting in White Pine County. When was it, did you say?”

“A month ago. Lackin’ a day.”

Erikson looked at his calendar wristwatch. “Then, if I were to prove to you that a month ago lacking a day I wasn’t within two thousand miles of White Pine County, wouldn’t that conclude your conversation?”

“Unless maybe you might want to be helpful,” Calkins conceded.

“My topcoat is in the cloakroom in the lobby,” Erikson said. “I ran upstairs to take a long-distance call. Let’s go down and I’ll show you evidence that will take me out of the picture entirely.”

“You could still know—”

“I don’t. But let’s go downstairs. I want to relieve your mind of its last lingering doubt about me.”

Erikson shepherded Calkins through the doorway. The instant it closed behind them, I bolted into action. I reholstered the.38, dashed into the bedroom, grabbed my overnight bag from the closet, dumped the remainder of the $50,000 into it, threw in my clothes on top, and walked out the door carrying the bag with my coat slung over it.

I had the good luck to find a bellboy on the elevator. “Here,” I said, thrusting bag and coat at him. “Hold these at the bell captain’s desk for me. I’ll pick them up in half an hour.” I gave him two dollars.

He handed me a thin metal disc and I watched while he attached its counterpart to my bag. The boy got off in the lobby, carrying my things. I rode the cab down to the basement and walked back up the stairs. At the lobby level again, I walked directly into the bar and selected a stool that gave me a full view of both the lobby’s cloakroom entrance and the bell captain’s desk. There was an element of risk in leaving the money in the unlocked bag, but I wouldn’t be out of sight of the bag.

I sat and watched the cloakroom door. Erikson could have got rid of Calkins already, or they could still be inside. Erikson had gone up a couple of notches in my estimation. If I’d been him, I don’t know if I’d have had the wit to claim to be Drake. It had taken the sword right out of Calkins’ hands when the two descriptions failed to match. It irked me, though, that I had had to be rescued by Erikson, the amateur. And it had been a rescue. Without him, I might easily have had to shoot my way out of that hotel room.

Five minutes went by and I was beginning to think they had left already. Then Erikson and Calkins emerged together from the cloakroom. Calkins went directly to the front entrance and walked outside to the street. I was too far away to see his expression, but he could hardly have been happy with the result of his investigation.

Erikson came into the bar. Without breaking stride he continued on to the men’s room. I gave it two minutes and followed him. There was one other man inside. I washed my hands until he left. Then Erikson and I stood with Erikson halfway into one of the private toilets so he could step inside and close the door if anyone else happened to enter.

Now that I was rid of Calkins, I really had only one other thing on my mind. After having his nose rubbed in the subject of Hazel Andrews just now, and in circumstances that left neither Hazel nor me looking particularly bright, what was Erikson’s reaction going to be when he found Hazel behind the stick at The Castaways?

Erikson spoke first. “The deputy is satisfied that he’s run into a stone wall. He’s not as unhappy about it as you might expect. He let it slip that he felt the sheriff had given him a job to do that the sheriff had felt it politically inexpedient to take upon himself.” Erikson was studying me. “From the sound of things, you ought to get yourself a less conspicuous woman. Calkins spoke of her size, her looks, her money, and her temper. It was hard to tell which impressed him most.”

He said it almost jovially. I couldn’t understand it. Then it came to me. Just as it had been a relief to me to find that Erikson could handle himself capably in an emergency, he must be feeling the same way about me after learning from the deputy the details of what had taken place at the ranch. Before, he’d been taking me strictly on Slater’s word.

I ignored the remarks about Hazel. “Before you leave the hotel right now, Mr. Drake,” I said to Erikson, “I’d appreciate your stopping at the front desk and checking out.” I handed him two one-hundred-dollar bills from my thin reserve fund. I didn’t want him to think I had been dependent upon the $50,000 now that he might have a different idea about where it came from.

“In case someone has Calkins watching the desk, you mean?” I nodded. “I don’t believe he has, but it’s not a bad move. What about your things?”

“I cleaned out the room.”

“So where to now?”

“Key West.”

“There’s something you can do for me first if you will. One of the items we’re going to need on the cruiser is a combination scanner-transmitter to raise hob with the Cuban radar. There’s a place in San Francisco where components can be bought — some of this material is still classified — but I don’t want to appear there personally. I’ll write out for you what we need, and I’d appreciate it if you’d pick it up and bring it to Key West with you.”

“Okay.” It seemed little enough to do.

“See you soon.” Erikson smiled — I realized it was the first smile I’d seen from him — and left the men’s room.

Two minutes later I picked up my bag at the bell captain’s desk and left the Hotel Aztec and San Diego.

The first thing I noticed about Key West was the heat.

At Miami after the flight from San Francisco the temperature had been 82°. At Key West International Airport it was 87°, and it was a humidity-boosted increase. I could feel my clothes beginning to stick to me during the short walk from the terminal to the cabstand.

The September-afternoon flight from Miami to Key West in an elderly DC-3 was picturesque. The color alone would have sent an artist to an LSD pill in an effort to duplicate it. A thousand variations of blues and greens tinted the waters of the Atlantic and the Gulf on either side of the scimitar-shaped line of tiny islands extending down to the tip of the Keys.

The majority of the key islands seen from the air were covered with a dense growth of pine trees and fringed at the water’s edge with a brief skirt of white sand. Many keys appeared uninhabited, but occasionally a glimpse of a white house amid the pines or a boat at a dock could be seen. The overall impression was one of silent isolation.

“Take me into the center of town,” I told the cabbie, a yachting-capped native with a Spanish cast to his features. I didn’t want to make my first appearance at The Castaways in a cab. The air coming through the cab windows was warm, damp air. There was no hint of a breeze. The landscape was flat as a pool table. Trees grew in profusion in backyards and in parklike areas. I saw Australian pine, date palm, banyan, jacaranda, and tamarind.

The driver took me to the La Concha Motor Inn on Duval Street. The lobby had a deserted, off-season look. My footsteps echoed hollowly on tile as I approached the front desk. As I registered, I had the feeling I could have any room in the house. “Sorry our restaurant is closed, sir,” the clerk apologized. “The Mermaid Tavern adjoining is open, though.”

A boy took my bag aboard the elevator. He stopped at the second floor and we picked our way around a welter of beams and braces extending into the corridor. A second elevator shaft was being sunk beside the first. The boy turned on the air-conditioner in my room. The resulting blast of frigid air all but stiffened my wilted collar. I fiddled with the adjustment after the boy accepted my tip and left the room, then stretched out on the bed and breathed lightly until I stopped dripping.

I didn’t intend to, but I fell asleep. I’d lost an extra day in San Francisco while I waited for the electronics warehouse to chase down some obscure part on Erikson’s list. I hadn’t spent the time with my hands folded, and I’d flown out too soon afterward for my system to have a chance to recover.

When I awoke, it was almost dark. I showered, but even after a cold rinse my skin felt clammy. I had only long-sleeved white shirts in my bag. I rolled the sleeves, dispensed with tie and jacket, checked the set of my wig in the mirror, and walked down the single flight of stairs to the lobby.

No one was in sight, not even the clerk or the bellman. I went to the front entrance, opened the glass door, and stepped out onto the sidewalk. The first breath was like being hit in the face with a steamy dishrag. The humidity must have been at least ninety. I could feel my skin prickling as moisture built up subcutaneously.

I walked west on Duval Street, toward the docks. While studying a map of Key West I had been surprised to find how compact it was. Within the business district everything was within walking distance. Flowering trees overhung the sidewalk. I recognized cereus and frangipani. They would have been bushes or shrubs anywhere except in this tropical atmosphere. Foliage was junglelike in its density and in the riot of color given off by outsized blossoms.

I had dinner at the New England Restaurant, which was on the waterfront with a view of the Key West Bight. When I left the restaurant, I had my course charted. I backtracked a block on Front Street, turned left on Ann, crossed Green, and turned left on Caroline. I passed Peacock Lane and William Street before coming to Margaret. From the intersection I could see the glitter of neon announcing THE CASTAWAYS.

I walked the half block and turned into its entrance which I was amazed to see had no door. The humid night air drifted inside to mingle with the air conditioning. Hazel was behind the bar. She had on her usual sleeveless buckskin vest. I couldn’t see the rest of her, but I was sure she would be wearing her working uniform of Levis and silver-conched cowboy boots.

She looked up at my entrance but gave no sign of recognition. There were fewer than a dozen customers in the room, from their looks commercial fishermen. A flight of stairs led up to a second floor, and at its foot a battered table held an open journal that evidently functioned as a guest registry.

“Jim Beam,” I said to Hazel as I sat down on a bar stool. She served it to me on the rocks, at the same time cutting her eyes toward the end of the bar. After a sip of my drink I looked down that way. A wiry-looking man in khakis was sitting on the end stool with his back to the wall so he could watch the entire room.

His skin was dark, whether naturally or from the sun I couldn’t tell. He had black hair, shiny with oil. He was handsome in the pretty-boy style that can still look dangerous. There is a type in the Keys, native to the area, known as a conch. Part-Spanish, part-Indian, part-everything-else, they’re great watermen, raised on the channels and inlets. This man looked the part. He had a half-filled glass with a liquid dark enough to be rum, but his eyes were doing the drinking. He was focused on nothing except Hazel’s movements behind the bar.

The conversations in the room were so quiet I could hear the drone of the air conditioning. On the walls I could see the fresh paint that Hazel had ordered. She stooped swiftly beneath a hinged flap on the bar top, which permitted her to reach the main floor area near the stairway. She ran upstairs lightly and disappeared around a corner that concealed the second floor landing.

I slid from the bar stool, crossed the room, and climbed the stairs. Hazel was waiting at the top. I patted her back as she hugged me. “What about the piratical-looking type at the end of the bar?” I asked her.

“He’s one of ours.” She kept her voice low.

I glanced at the closed doors of the rooms leading off the second floor corridor. “Anyone up here?”

“No. Sound carries downstairs.”

“How do you know he’s one of ours?”

“Erikson told me.”

“Erikson is here already?” I hadn’t intended that Erikson would beat me to The Castaways. I had a mental image of Karl Erikson sizing up Hazel behind the bar. “Did he give you a hard time?”

“Not at all. The one downstairs is Chico Wilson. He’s the boat owner. He’s drinking a hundred-fifty-four-proof Demarara rum. Straight.” Hazel smiled. “Drinking and trying to make me.” She was looking down the stairwell behind me. “Here he comes.” Her voice rose. “Watch it! He has—”

She placed a palm in my chest and shoved. I staggered backward until my shoulders hit the wall behind me. I could see the Latin-looking type from the bar moving noiselessly up the last few stairs. In his right hand was a curved fishing knife.

“Take care thish one f’ you, doll,” he assured Hazel. I thought it was funny until I saw his eyes. They were glazed.

“Now, listen, Chico—” Hazel tried to bar his progress. He moved right through her as if she weren’t there. Considering her size, it was quite a trick.

“Teach ‘m not horn in ‘f not invited,” he muttered, confronting me in the narrow space.

“Does the name Erikson mean anything to you?” I said.

It slowed him, but it didn’t stop him. His thinking processes were submerged under a quart of rum. He continued to herd me into a corner, where I couldn’t escape his knife. I wasn’t wearing my gun, since with only a shirt on it would have been impossible to conceal the outline of the holster. I was lining up a spot on his anatomy to plant my heel when Hazel came up behind him and rabbit-punched him. She really let him have a bunch of knuckles at the end of a full-armed swing.

It would have floored an ordinary man. All it did to him was spin him around in her direction. “Th’ hell you doin', doll?” he growled at her. The hand with the knife in it massaged the back of his neck.

“That’s my fella you’re fixing on carving,” Hazel informed him. “He’s one of us.”

He blinked at her several times. I couldn’t tell if it was from the rabbit punch or the news. He turned full around to examine me for a deliberate moment. Plainly he wasn’t impressed by what he saw. He turned back to Hazel again. “Your fella o’ny because you haven’t known me long,” he told her. The knife disappeared in some sleight-of-hand too rapid for me to follow. I couldn’t even tell if it went into his shirt or his pants. “Shorry. Buy drink for ‘s all, okay?”

“Okay,” Hazel agreed. She shepherded him toward the stairs. “Come on, Earl,” she said to me.

“Pleased t’ meetcha, Earl,” Wilson said over his shoulder from the middle of the stairs.

“We shouldn’t be seen in the bar together,” I reminded Hazel.

Wilson turned around and started back up the stairs. “You refusin’ to drink with me?” he demanded belligerently.

“I’ll bring the drinks upstairs,” Hazel said hastily. “Go into the first room there.” She motioned to the door on the left.

“Okay,” Wilson said with a drunk’s sudden change of direction. The first thing he did upon entering the pleasantly furnished room was to turn off the air conditioning. “Too cold,” he said. I sat and sweltered for twenty minutes while Wilson drank rum and talked to Hazel during the intervals when she wasn’t running downstairs to take care of the bar customers. Wilson crossed me off his list as soon as he found out I didn’t know anything about boats. Hazel, though, he liked. “Me’n you’s gonna get real friendly,” he said to her. “I’m gonna screw you till your belly button turns red, white, an’ purple.”

Hazel smiled. Wilson stood up and went into the bathroom. For all the rum, he was still walking in a straight line. “If you’re waiting for him to pass out, forget it,” Hazel said to me. “I’ve seen his type before. He can go for three days and stay as sharp physically as a razorback hog.”

“Don’t underestimate the slob,” I warned her. “I’ve seen his type, too. They’re like rattlesnakes. If you cut them in two, the end with the head gets stronger. You sure you’re all right?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Then, I’ll leave. I’ll be back in the morning to stay.” Wilson came out of the bathroom. “Good night, everyone.”

He accompanied me to the door, the most genial of hosts, but he remained in the room while Hazel and I went downstairs. I pointed to the absence of a door at the front entrance. “Are you trying to air-condition all of the keys?”

“It’s the custom of the country,” she replied. “Like New Orleans. No doors. We put a grill up for closing.”

“Is Erikson staying here tonight?”

“He said he had something to do but that he would be back tomorrow.”

“Right. See you then. Keep an eye and a half on friend Chico.”

“If he flashes that knife again, I have a powder for his rum,” she said. “But I won’t need it. He’ll concentrate now on waiting for me to beg him to take me to bed.”

She gave me her big smile, and I went out the doorway.

During the walk back to the La Concha Motor Inn, I came to two decisions.

The first was to try to find out what Karl Erikson’s business was in Key West that kept him away from The Castaways that night.

The second was not to appear in the handsome Chico’s presence again without having my.38 available.