The Sailcloth Shroud

13

I was on him before it came clear. His chair went over backward under the two of us. I felt the tug of the wires connecting me to the lie-detector as I came out to the end of their slack, and I heard it crash to the floor behind us, bringing the table with it. Flowers gave a shrill cry, whether of outrage or terror I couldn’t tell, and ran past us toward the door.

Slidell and I were in a hopeless tangle, still propped against the upended chair as we fought for the gun. He had it out of his pocket now. I grabbed it by the cylinder and barrel with my left hand, forcing it away from me, and tried to hit him with a right, but the wire connected to my arm was fouled somewhere in the mess now and it brought me up short. Then Bonner was standing over us. The blackjack sliced down, missing my head and cutting across my shoulder. I heaved, rolling Slidell over on top of me. For an instant I could see the couch where she had been sitting. She was gone. Thank God, she’d run the second I’d lunged at him. If she had enough lead, she might get away.

We heaved over once more, with Bonner cutting at me again with the blackjack, and then I saw her. She hadn’t run. She’d just reached the telephone and was lifting it off the cradle and starting to dial. I heard Bonner snarl. Slidell and I rolled again, and I couldn’t see her, but then I heard the sound of the blow and her cry as she fell.

My arm was free now. I hit Slidell in the face. He grunted, but still held onto the gun, trying to swing it around to get the muzzle against me. I hit him again. His hold on it was weakening. I beat at him with rage and frustration. Wouldn’t he ever let go? Then Bonner was leaning over us, taking the gun out of both our hands. Beyond him I saw Patricia Reagan getting up from the floor, beside the telephone where Bonner had tossed it after he’d pulled the cord out of the wall. She grasped the corner of the desk and reached for something on it. I wanted to scream for her to get out. If she could only understand that if one of us got away they might give it up and run . . .

Just as he got the gun away from us she came up behind him swinging the 35-mm camera by its strap. It caught him just above the ear and he grunted and fell to his knees. The gun slid out of his fingers. I grabbed it, and then Slidell had it by the muzzle.

“Run!” I yelled at her. “Get away! The police!”

She understood then. She wheeled and ran out the front door.

Slidell raged at Bonner. “Go get her!”

Bonner shook his head like a fighter who’s just taken a nine count, pushed to his feet, and looked about the room. He rubbed a hand across his face and ran toward the back door.

“The front!” Slidell screamed. He tore at the gun and tried to knee me in the groin. I slid sidewise away from him, avoiding it, and hit him high on the side of the face. Jagged slivers of pain went up my arm. Bonner turned and ran out the front door. I jerked on the gun, and this time I broke Slidell’s grip. I rolled away from him and climbed to my feet. My knees trembled. I was sobbing for breath, and the whole room was turning. When the front door came by I lunged for it. But the wreckage of the lie-detector was still fast to my right arm; it spun me around and threw me off balance just as Slidell scrambled up and hit me at the waist with a hard-driving tackle. We fell across the edge of the table the instrument had been on. Pain sliced its way through my left side and made me cry out, and I heard the ribs go like the snapping of half-green sticks. The table gave way under us, and when we landed the gun was under me. I pulled it free, shifted it from my left hand to the right, and hit him across the left temple with it just as he was pushing up to his knees. He grunted and fell face down in what was left of the table.

I made it to my feet, and this time I remembered Flowers’ beloved machine. I tried to unwrap the pressure cuff from around my arm, but my fingers were trembling and I couldn’t half see, so I stepped on the machine and pulled upward against the wire. It broke. The one to the tube around my chest had already parted. I ran to the front door. A steel trap of pain clamped shut around my left side. I bent over with my hand against it and kept going.

The sunlight was blinding after the dimness inside. I saw Bonner. He was a good hundred yards away, near the mailbox, running very fast for a man with his squat, heavy build. I started after him. She wasn’t in sight from here, but he turned left, toward the highway, when he reached the road.

My torso felt as if it had been emptied and then stuffed with broken glass or eggshells. Every breath was agony, and I ran awkwardly, with a feeling that I had been cut in two and the upper half of my body was merely riding, none too well balanced, on the lower. Then I saw her. She was running along the marl road less than fifty yards ahead of him. He was gaining rapidly. Just as I came out onto the road she looked back and saw him. She plunged off to the right, running through the palmetto and stunted pine to try to hide. I would never get there in time. I raised the gun and shot, knowing I couldn’t hit him at that distance but hoping the sound would stop him. He paid no attention. Then he was off the road, closing in on her.

I plunged after him. For a moment I lost them and was terrified. It wouldn’t take him more than a minute to kill her. Why didn’t she scream? I tore through a screen of brush then and saw them in an open area surrounding a small salt pond. She ran out into it, trying to get across. The water was a little more than knee-deep. She stumbled and fell, and he was on her before she could get up. He bent down, caught her by the hair, and held her head under.

I tried to yell, but the last of my breath was gone. My foot caught in a mangrove root and I fell into the mud just at the edge of the water. He heard me. He straightened, and looked around. She threshed feebly, tried to get up, but fell back with her face under water.

“Pick—pick—” I gasped. “Lift her—”

He faced me contemptuously. “You come and get her.”

I cocked the gun, rested it across my left forearm, and shot him through the chest. His knees folded and he collapsed face down. When I got to her the water around him was growing red, and he jerked convulsively and drew his legs up and kicked, driving his head against my legs as I put my arms around her shoulders and lifted. I got her out somehow, up beyond the slimy mud, and when she choked a few times and began to breathe I walked another few steps and fell on my knees and was sick.

After a while we started out to the highway and a phone. When the police got back to the house they picked up Slidell over in the pines trying to bridge the switch on their rented car. The keys were in Bonner’s pocket.

A doctor in Marathon taped my side, and by that time the FBI men were there. They took me to a hospital in Miami for X-rays and more tape and a private room that seemed to be full of people asking questions. They said Patricia Reagan had been examined and found to be all right, and she had gone to a hotel. I finally fell asleep, and when I awoke in the morning with a steel-rigid side and a battered face through which I could see just faintly, there were some more FBI men, and after they were gone Bill came in.

“Brother, what a face,” he said. “If that’s the only way to become a celebrity, include me out.”

Soames, the FBI agent in Southport, had found the letter. It was in the door of the Topaz’ refrigerator, in the electrical shop at the Harley boatyard, along with a large Manila envelope containing $19,000. It was a thick door, wood on the outside and enameled steel inside, and packed with insulation. Keefer had taken out some screws, pulled away the steel enough to remove some of the insulation, and put in the envelope. That wasn’t what caused it to need repairs, of course; the trouble was in the refrigeration unit itself and had begun the first day out of Panama. If Keefer hadn’t been an indifferent sailor who never paid any attention to what went on aboard a boat he might have known I’d have it overhauled when we got to the yard.

Reagan had worked it out very cleverly. The letter was in a separate airmail envelope, stamped, addressed to Paula Stafford, but not sealed. The money was in this large Manila deal he’d found on the boat; it had originally held some Hydrographic Office bulletins. But he hadn’t merely stuffed the money in, by single bills or bundles; he had packed it in a dozen or more individual letter-sized envelopes and sealed them, so that when the big one was closed it felt like a bunch of letters. It was sealed—or had been until Keefer tore it open.

The letter read:

Yacht Topaz

At Sea, June 3rd

My Darling Paula:

I don’t really know how to start this—I write it with a heavy heart, for if you read it at all it will only be because I am dead. The truth is that I have been troubled by angina for some time, and yesterday I suffered what I think was a coronary attack. And while there is no reason to think I might have another before we reach port, I felt I should write this just in case one did cause my death before I had a chance to say my last good-by to you.

I am afraid this has changed my plans for the future that I wrote you about, but if I arrive safely in Southport we can discuss new ones when we are together. I still have all your precious letters that have meant so much to me. They are in an envelope in my bag, which will be sent to you in case I have a fatal attack before we reach port.

My darling, I hope you never receive this letter. But if you do, remember that I love you and that my last thoughts were of you.

Forever,

Wendell

“Very neat,” Bill said. “This one would have been open in the suitcase, so you’d read it to find out whom to notify and where to ship his stuff. And naturally you wouldn’t open a sealed package of old love letters. Inside the sealed envelope with the money there was another note to her, this one signed Brian, saying he’d put the other suitcase in a bonded warehouse of the Rainey Transfer and Storage Company in New York. Enclosed was the storage receipt and a letter signed Charles Wayne authorizing the Rainey people to turn the bag over to her. He told her to get it, but if Slidell caught up with her to turn it over to him rather than try to run any longer.”

I nodded. It made my face hurt. “Apparently we were wrong, though, about Keefer’s first seeing the money when he went to search the bag for medicine. The big envelope was already sealed then. So he must have seen Reagan when he was fixing it up.”

Bill grinned. “Well, it’s lucky old Nosy Keefer smelled even more and bigger money in the letter and decided to hang onto it too. If he’d thrown it overboard, you might have been an old man before it was settled to everybody’s satisfaction that Reagan did have a bad heart. Think of trying to run down the doctor who wrote the prescription for those nitro pills, with the places Reagan had been and the names he’d used the past two months.”

“Lay off,” I said. “It still scares me. Have they found out yet who Slidell is?”

He lighted a cigarette and gestured toward the paper. “Big-shot hoodlum from Los Angeles. Several arrests for extortion and a couple for murder, but no convictions. The bonds came from three or four big bank robberies in Texas and Oklahoma. They’re not sure yet whether Slidell actually took part, or just planned them. Ran with the cafe-society set quite a bit, or what passes for it in Southern California, and owned a home in Phoenix. Funny part is he came from about the same kind of family background Reagan did, and was well educated, even a couple of years in medical school. Bonner was his bodyguard and hunker and general muscle man. The FBI was able to talk to the Stafford woman last night, and they got the suitcase out of the warehouse in New York, but they’re still buttoned up as to how much it was. They’re pretty sure she didn’t know anything about where it had come from, or that her boy friend’s real name was Clifford Reagan. When he closed the book, pal, he closed it.”

I looked out the window. “What about Bonner? Nobody’s said anything yet.”

“Justifiable homicide, what else? They took her statement this morning. Were you supposed to stand there and watch him kill her?”

I didn’t say anything. In the movies and on television, I thought, you point the gun and everybody obeys, but maybe they didn’t run into Bonners very often. There hadn’t been any choice. But it would be a long time before I forgot the horror of that moment when he kicked out with his legs and nudged his head against me in the reddening water. If I ever forgot it.

I was waiting impatiently when Patricia Reagan finally came to see me that afternoon. She’d gone back to close the house and get her things. She was fully recovered, and looked lovely except for a little puffiness on one side of her face. I wanted to pay for the damage to the furnishings and having the phone reinstalled. We argued amicably about it and finally decided we’d share the responsibility. We talked for a while, sticking pretty closely to boats and sailing, the things we both knew and loved, but it trailed off and she left.

She came back again, the following afternoon, and it was the same thing. I was waiting eagerly for her, she seemed prettier each time, and apparently was glad to see me, she smiled, we talked happily about the Bahamas and about her future in photo journalism, and how we’d go out to the Islands where she could shoot some really terrific pictures, and then it began to trail off and we grew polite and formal with each other.

Just before she left, Bill and Lorraine showed up. Bill had already met her, but I introduced her to Lorraine.

After she’d gone, Lorraine looked at me with that old matchmaker’s gleam in her eye. “There’s a really stunning girl, Rogers, old boy. What’s between you two?”

“Her father,” I said.

I had a card from her after she’d gone back to Santa Barbara, but I never saw her again.