The Sentries

1

It was still raining.

There were no stars, no moon. A high keening wind sent dark clouds scuttling across the Miami sky, lashed the waters of the bay against the public dock where the man and woman stood in embrace. A twenty-seven-foot cabin cruiser was tied up at the dock behind them. At the far end of the dock a truck was waiting, its motor idling.

The woman was pregnant. She wore a loose black raincoat and white sneakers. A black kerchief was tied around her head, which she kept ducked into the man’s shoulder, away from the wind. The weather did not seem to bother the man. The rain was light, but the strong wind drove it across the dock in a piercing needlelike spray that was cold and penetrating; the man was wearing only khaki trousers and shirt.

From the truck someone called, “Jason, it’s a quarter to three.”

He did not answer. He simply nodded and then said to the woman, “Will you be all right?”

“Yes.”

“Are you worried?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“Only about you, is all,” she said.

“My part is easy,” he said.

“No. It isn’t. You know it isn’t.”

He smiled. There was assurance in his smile and something more, something she could not easily define, but which had been there since that night several years ago when he had first told her of the plan. She had not liked the plan then, and she was not sure she liked it much even now — but he was her husband.

“If something goes wrong, you’ll call it off,” she said. It was not a question.

“Nothing will go wrong.”

“But if it does. If it does, you’ll call it off.”

“Yes.”

“Fatboy and the others in Key West...”

“They know they’re not to move out until I call them.”

“And you’ll radio us on the boat if we’re to go ahead. Otherwise we’ll come back to Miami.”

“Yes.”

“Jason,” she said, “there’s still time.”

“For what?”

“To change your mind.”

“Why should I?”

“Because even if this succeeds, we can all be dead tomorrow morning.”

The dock went silent. She could hear the wind rattling in the distant palm fronds, could hear the creak of the boat against the dock, and the steady pounding of the waves, and beneath that a tiny sharp rush of air as Jason pulled in his breath.

“It’ll succeed,” he said.

“Yes, but even if it does...”

“Annabelle, we’ve been over this.”

“Yes, but...”

“Annabelle, listen to me. You just listen to me. This doesn’t get called off unless something goes very wrong with my part of it, do you understand? It doesn’t get called off unless something terrible happens when I get down there to Ocho Puertos. That’s the only thing can call this off. This isn’t something where I can say now, standing here on this dock, with everything ready to go — this isn’t something where I can say, Okay, let’s not do it. This is too important.”

“I know, Jason, but...”

“To the world,” he said.

“Jason...”

“Important to the world.”

At the far end of the dock she could hear the idling motor of the truck, the wind flapping in the tarpaulin that covered the rack. She had the feeling that if only she could think of the right thing to say, Jason wouldn’t have to climb into the back of that waiting truck. She would not have to board the cruiser, the plan would not be set in motion, if only she could think of the right thing to say. Give me another moment, she thought, another thirty seconds, and I will be able to explain why we can’t go through with this scheme of yours; give me another twenty seconds.

From the deck of the cabin cruiser, Randy Gambol cleared his throat. “Jason,” he said, “I’d like a word with you.”

“Just a second.” He lifted Annabelle’s chin and looked down into her face. “Go on,” he said, “get aboard. Get some sleep. I’ll be looking for you later.”

“If anything goes wrong—” she began, and he immediately said, “Everything will go just the way we planned it.”

“I hope so.”

“Come on now, give me a kiss and go get some sleep.”

She nodded. “All right,” she said, and she nodded again. “Jason... please be careful. If anything goes wrong, if there’s even a sign that anything is going wrong, promise me you’ll call it off. Even if it means putting the boat in danger. Promise.”

“Go on, get aboard. It’s almost time.”

“Jason, I want to talk to you,” Randy said.

“Go on, Annabelle,” he said, and kissed her. She threw her arms around his neck and returned the kiss lingeringly. Then she turned away from him swiftly and went to the boat, taking Randy’s hand as he helped her aboard, mumbling “Thanks,” and going immediately below. Randy came down onto the dock.

“This is the advisory I called you about at the warehouse,” he said.

“What about it?” Jason said, not taking the sheet of paper from Randy’s extended hand.

“The Weather Bureau’s eight P.M. advisory,” Randy said.

“I know what it is.”

“This hurricane...”

“She isn’t a hurricane.”

“They’ve named her already, Jason. They don’t usually name them until they’re real hurricanes.”

“She’s a tropical storm, that’s all.”

“Then why’d they name her?”

“Randy, there’s a truck waiting for me at the end of the dock there. Now, will you please say what the hell’s on your mind?”

“This is what’s on my mind,” Randy said. He lifted the sheet of paper so that it was close to his face, but there was no light on the dock, and it was clear to Jason that he had memorized its contents, even though he pretended now to be reading. “What’s on my mind is a storm they’ve named Flora, the center of which is fixed near latitude 20.5 north, longitude 77.2 west. Her highest winds—”

“You told me all this on the—”

“Her highest winds have been estimated near hurricane force, extending out a hundred and seventy-five—”

“So?”

“They’ve got gale warnings up,” Randy said, lowering the sheet of paper. “The Golden Fleece is a small craft.”

“I know what it is. Don’t worry about Flora. She plays right into our hands.”

“I just don’t like the idea of putting out to sea when—”

“I spoke to Arthur down in Key West just a little while ago,” Jason said. “He told me the sun was shining there all day long, and the breezes are like an angel’s kiss.”

“Well, the sun wasn’t shining here in Miami,” Randy said, “and the breezes are expected to hit gale force. Now, what do you want me to do?”

“Put out to sea, same as you’re supposed to.”

“With a hurricane coming?”

“Can you think of a better time?”

“Jason...”

“I asked you a question.”

“Yes, Jason, I can think of a better time to be in a small boat than when a hurricane is coming, okay? Yes. If we capsize out there...”

“You won’t capsize.”

“I hope not.” Randy paused. “I just thought that with the seas the way they’re going to be, and considering Annabelle’s condition—”

“Annabelle’s fine,” Jason said quickly.

“Jase, I’m afraid of this, I really am. We really might sink out there if those winds—”

“You won’t sink. Stop worrying.” He glanced toward the waiting truck.

“And even if this part of it works... well, Jase, with a hurricane blowing—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jason said.

There was a note of finality in his voice. He lifted his arm and again looked at his wristwatch. “They’re waiting for me,” he said. “It’s almost three.” He paused. “Do you know what time Alex is coming aboard?”

“Yes. Five-thirty.”

“You know what time you’re supposed to shove off, right?”

“Dawn,” Randy said.

“If everything goes as planned, we’ll radio the boat by eight-thirty, nine o’clock. If you don’t hear from us by ten at the very latest, you turn around and head back. Is that clear?”

“I know the plan,” Randy said wearily. “But I wish...”

Jason extended his hand. “Good luck,” he said.

Randy took it. For a moment the men stood facing each other with their hands in each other’s grip. They could not see clearly in the dark, but something unspoken passed between them. They knew what they were about to attempt, they knew the chances they were about to take, they knew the possible consequences.

“Good luck,” Randy whispered.

Jason smiled briefly, and then nodded and dropped Randy’s hand and walked quickly toward the waiting truck. From inside the truck a pair of hands threw back the tarpaulin flap. Another pair of hands reached down to help Jason up. A voice said something that was unintelligible to Randy. The truck ground into gear and then moved forward. Randy watched its disappearing tail lights. He looked at his watch. It was 3 A.M.

He sighed, wiped his face, and went back aboard the boat.

The Golden Fleece was a custom-built cruiser with her name lettered in a semicircle across her transom, together with the name of her home port: NEW ORLEANS, LA. She was a good-looking boat, newly painted maroon and white and black, the maroon covering the solid longleaf yellow pine of her bottom, the white marking her waterline, the black painted over her African mahogany topside. She had been designed for a British naval officer in the Bahamas during 1953, costing him £3,500 to build, and had been sold only three months ago to Jason Trench for $4,300. She was a good, steady offshore boat, propelled by twin, eight-cylinder, 185-horsepower engines, and capable of a top speed of thirty knots. Randy walked across the open cockpit, listening to the howling wind with misgivings, and then went into the wheelhouse and past the sink and icebox to where the charts were stowed overhead, near the Primus stove. He found the chart he wanted, and then went to the starboard side, unrolling the chart on the flat surface to the right of the binnacle. He flicked on the overhead light in the wheel-house and then glanced below to see if Annabelle had gone to bed yet. She was already asleep in the lower berth on the port side, one of four that hung two abreast on either bulkhead. He watched her for a moment. She was covered with a blanket, and the blanket rose and fell steadily with her even breathing. He wondered how she could sleep at a time like this, and then turned away and looked down at the chart, studying it nervously for perhaps the hundredth time.

On the chart, Ocho Puertos Key resembled nothing so much as a loin lamb chop, its eye tilted to the northeast, its tail straggling down toward Key West. For Randy, the image was instantly transformed into a more easily remembered one of sand and coral, of ocean rolling in against an essentially isolated shore. The drive down from Key Largo was sixty-two miles over a road that spanned the water skewer-straight, piercing island after island — sky, ocean, and bay blending into an incredibly open vista on either side of the highway. Marathon was forty-nine miles from Key Largo, and Knight Key was just beyond it. The Seven Mile Bridge began there, a two-lane span built across the open water and running, as its name made clear, for seven miles to Little Duck Key at the western end of the bridge. There were markers on all the keys leading to Ocho Puertos, each designating the name of the island, each passed in a wink, a network of short bridges connecting uninhabited Little Duck to uninhabited Missouri, uninhabited Ohio, Bahia Honda with its single house on the eastern end — and then the thousand-foot bridge and Ocho Puertos with a fixed bridge on its western end.

Offshore, the chart showed Hawk Channel and beyond that the Florida Reef.

Later today Alex Witten would be navigating through that reef and into that channel. If everything went the way Jason anticipated, they

If.

If, of course, Hurricane Flora did not roar into Miami and the keys sometime today or tomorrow. And if Annabelle Trench, who was eight months pregnant and carrying her baby like a mountain waiting to erupt, if Annabelle did not get sicker than hell in high seas and gale-force winds, and vomit or deliver or some damn thing long before their rendezvous with Jason on Ocho Puertos.

If.

Randy stowed the chart and snapped out the light. He went below and crawled into his bunk. Two feet away from him, he could hear Annabelle’s gentle breathing, and above that and beyond it, the high keening of the wind.

Gale force, he thought.

Alex would be coming aboard at five-thirty. They would put out to sea at dawn. He sighed, rolled over, and tried to get a little sleep before then.

She heard Randy as he came below, and she longed for a moment to talk to him, to voice her doubts about what they were doing and about to do, but then she felt this would be unfair to her husband; she should not express any fears that might later undermine his authority. She turned her head toward the bulkhead. The berth was tight and cramped, her baby kicked inside her, and she grunted and listened to the wind, and wondered where the truck was now. She should have stopped Jason. She should have thought of the right thing to say there on the dock ten minutes ago.

She should have thought of the right thing to say in New York City in the summer of 1961, when he first told her of the plan that had been taking shape in his mind for the better part of three months. He had been turning it over and over, he said, searching for a way to succeed where others had only failed before, and then recognizing that the only hope for success lay in complete failure. They were living on Second Avenue at the time, in a two-room apartment near Houston Street, and all the windows were open because it was one of the hottest days of the year; his voice had automatically lowered as he outlined the plan to her.

“There are two things a person can do, it seems to me,” he had said. “He can sit back and let others shape his destiny, he can let everybody walk all over him and not worry about a thing until the day that bomb falls — that’s one of the things he can do. Right, Annabelle?”

“I suppose so, Jason. But we do have a government, you know. We do have—”

“Why yes, certainly we have a government! That’s my whole point, honey! It’s the government I’m trying to preserve. That’s the whole point.”

“I don’t think I understand you, Jason.”

“Honey, it’s a matter of knowing what this country wants, and knowing how to help this country get what it wants.”

“How do you know what this country wants?”

“If you read the papers, if you read between the lines, you know exactly what it is we want. But more to the point, you know exactly what it is we do not want.”

“Jason, I’m going to make some lemonade,” Annabelle said, and she started to rise from where she was sitting by the window, and it was then that he put his hand on her shoulder and said, “Wait, you just wait,” with his eyes looking directly into hers, his voice so low she could hardly hear him, the heat a stifling, penetrating force that seemed to capture each of his whispered words and hold them suspended in the air like bloated poisonous balloons.

“You love this country?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I love this country, Annabelle, I really do. Why are we here in this lousy city of New York, if not for love of this country, would you tell me that? You think I like this city, with its dirt and its noise and... Annabelle, I hate this city, that’s the truth, you know that.”

“I know that, Jason,” she said quietly.

“But this is where the influence is, right? This is where you have to be if you hope to convince anyone that what you believe in is right.” He paused. His fingers still gripped her shoulder. “Now, we can go along doing what we’ve been doing — I’m not saying that’s bad, Annabelle. I think we’ve had an effect, I think it’s all to the good. But I have the feeling it’s the same thing as watching the world go by and allowing other people to make the decisions for us, other people to shape our destinies. We can go right on doing that, mind you. I’m not saying it’s bad to do that.”

“What are you saying, Jason?”

“I’m saying I would rather shape my own destiny.”

“How?”

“By taking action.”

“What kind of action?”

“More than the leaflets, Annabelle. More than the meetings.”

“Then what?”

“I want to contact the others.”

“What others?”

“Alex and Goody and Arthur and the rest.”

“Why?”

“They’ll help me,” Jason said.

“Help you?”

“With this plan I’ve been working on. Annabelle, I think I know how to get the results this country wants, and I know how to do it with only a handful of men, fifty, sixty men at the most. What do you think of that?”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Annabelle said, and she pushed his hand off her shoulder and rose and walked to the refrigerator. He sat silently by the window while she searched for lemons in the vegetable tray, watched as she cut them and began squeezing them. He sat silently while she mixed the lemonade in a pitcher beaded with moisture. The ice clinked against the inside of the pitcher. Her hand kept moving the spoon in a circular motion as she stirred.

“I’ll contact Arthur first,” he said, almost to himself.

Annabelle said nothing. She poured two glasses of lemonade and brought one to him.

“I was always closest to him,” Jason said, taking the glass. “Of all of them. And he was the only one who realized what was going on, who realized they’d set a trap—”

“Are we going to talk about that again?”

“No, we are not going to talk about that again,” he said.

“Good.”

“Because I know, of course, it bothers you.”

“Yes, it bothers me,” she said.

“Yes, I know that. But it’s too damn bad about what bothers you because I’m going to have to contact Arthur whether it bothers you or not. Arid all the others too. I need help. I can’t do this alone.”

“I don’t know what it is you need help with,” she said. “You haven’t told me yet.”

“This isn’t handing out leaflets on street corners,” he said, and he grinned.

“Then what is it?”

He rose and walked to the window. He looked at her with a curiously boyish expression on his face, almost mischievous, and then he closed the window.

She should have thought of the right thing to say then in the summer of 1961, the first time she heard the plan. But she had listened to him and then had said only the wrong thing. She had listened to him and said, “You sound like a fanatic.”

“No,” he had answered, his eyes serious, his mouth set, “I am not a fanatic.” And then, his voice very low, he had said, “I’m an American citizen who is extremely concerned about the future of this nation.”

He rose and walked to the window, opening it again, making it absolutely clear he would say nothing more about his plan that day.

Now, in the cabin of a boat that would be putting out to sea in a matter of hours to execute a part of that plan, Annabelle rolled over onto her back and looked up at the overhead and listened to the wind and wondered what time it was and wondered where the truck was now and wondered what would happen in the daylight hours to come and wondered if she could do all that was expected of her and wondered why she had not said something back in 1961, when there was still time.

Dawn on Ocho Puertos that Sunday of October sixth was expected at 6:17 A.M.

The truck was a 1964 Chevrolet, her rack fitted with inch-and-a-quarter tubular supports over which hung the tarpaulin cloth that covered the top, front, sides and rear of the rack. The cab, wheel rims, and stakes of the truck — showing only occasionally when a sharp wind lifted the tarpaulin — were painted red. The truck had been rented from the Paley Systems Corporation on South Bayshore Drive ten days ago. Last night the lettering had been stenciled onto the side of the cab. The name and address of the firm had been invented by Jason and together became something of an inside joke: PETER TARE, 832 MISSION.

Goodson Moore was the one driving the truck.

Clay Prentiss was the man sitting beside him in the cab.

They were both wearing khaki trousers and shirts. Neither of them spoke very much. They had made this identical run with a loaded truck exactly seven times during the past week, and they knew precisely how long the trip should take because they had loaded up at the warehouse at 2:30 A.M. each of those times and left Miami at 3 A.M. The warehouse, like the truck, had been rented. Unlike the truck, they had had to take the warehouse for a month, which was not too bad because they had managed to find uses for it during that time. The first time they made the trip down, they had tried changing speeds whenever the speed limit changed, but that had not worked too well because the speed limit jumped to sixty-five miles per hour just outside Cutler Ridge, and Jason had said sixty-five miles an hour was too fast to be driving on those narrow black roads with water on both sides of them, especially once they got past Key Largo. Jason was in charge, of course, so Goody and Clay listened when he talked. The next time down, Goody tried maintaining an average speed of fifty miles an hour, dropping down to thirty-five when the limit called for it, and goosing the truck up to sixty once they had passed Cutler Ridge. Jason said this was still too fast. Jason said they would drive the truck clear into the Caribbean, that’s what they’d do, and that would be the end of the whole damn shooting match. Goody and Clay had listened while he yelled at them — well, that wasn’t quite true; Jason rarely yelled. Jason just stared at you with his cold blue eyes, nothing on his face moving except those eyes, and they seemed to jump right out of his skull to nail you to the wall. They had listened and said, Well, Okay, Jason, how fast you want us to go?

No faster than forty-five at any time, he had said, right? Try to average it out so you’ll be making forty miles an hour. That’ll put us in Key Largo an hour and a half after we leave Miami, and then figure fifteen minutes each to Tavernier and Islamorada, and forty-five more to Marathon. That’ll bring us right to the Seven Mile Bridge about three hours after we start, right?

Okay, they had said, if that’s what you want, Jason.

That’s what I want, Jason had replied.

The truck passed the town of Naranja now, darkly shrouded at the side of the road, and moved steadily southward on U.S. 1, the speedometer needle nudging forty-five, the wind lashing at the tarpaulin cover, a wind that worried Goody. The men’s faces were intent in the light of the dashboard, Goody’s lean and drawn, with gray eyes and blond hair that almost faded completely in the feeble illumination; Clay’s a rougher face, with a harsh cleaving nose and massive cheekbones, dark bushy brows over brown eyes.

“You reckon they asleep back there?” Clay asked.

“Not with Jason watching them,” Goody answered.

In the back of the truck, beneath the tarpaulin cover lashed by strong winds, twenty-one silent men sat opposite each other on two long benches. Jason Trench was the only man wearing khaki. The rest wore dark blue dungaree trousers and pale blue chambray shirts.

He lifted his wrist and peered at his watch in the darkness.

There were hours to go yet.

There were hours to go.

The feeling of isolation was intensified by darkness.

The headlights of the truck picked out the narrow ribbon of road ahead, two lanes that spanned coral and water and sand. On one side of the truck were Florida Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. On the other side was the Atlantic Ocean. There was the persistent feeling that an overelaborate engineering feat had been performed only to link civilization with a scarcely inhabited wilderness. There were forty-two bridges between Key Largo and Key West, but the bridges seemed to connect islands that sometimes supported only a single small house hidden in the mangroves, or a cluster of a half-dozen dwellings along the beachfront, or at best a real community of shops and restaurants and houses complete with a post office and a Chamber of Commerce but built flanking the highway like a two-bit honkytonk town erected overnight. In the darkness the uninhabited keys seemed the same as those that were populated. The truck pushed south and west over the black highway, the water black on either side of it, the towns, the small clusters of dwellings, the uninhabited strips of sand and coral and twisted mangroves all presenting an identical impression of flat silent blackness somewhere at the farthest reaches of the earth.

The water was the first thing to come alive with light.

Long before the sun was up, the water began to take on color, brightening from its total black to a deep and velvety blue, and then changing blue tones steadily as dawn approached, moving upward through the spectrum so that by the time they reached the Seven Mile Bridge there was visible on either side of the truck a vastness of ocean and bay that was overwhelming.

Jason Trench threw back the flap of the tarpaulin cover and looked out at the miles of bridge they had already crossed. The sun had not yet cleared the horizon, but the water on either side of the bridge was now touched with predawn silver, each separate ripple looking like the filigree on a fine medieval tool or weapon. The bridge spanned the sea relentlessly, the highway falling behind the truck as it maintained its steady speed, driving away from the approaching dawn.

Jason looked at his watch. It was five minutes after six, and they had come halfway across the bridge, and dawn would light the sky in twelve minutes. He felt a sudden lurch of excitement as he thought of what lay ahead, and then he lowered the tarpaulin as though reluctant to watch the sky turn pink. Dawn would be the beginning, and he hated beginnings. The departure from the Miami warehouse, the long drive down to the bridge — these were preliminaries to the real beginning that would take place when they crossed those three small uninhabited keys to the west, and then Bahia Honda, and then Ocho Puertos and the sign for S-811, the sharp turn to the left; that would be the beginning. That would be dawn, a dawn in every sense of the word, and he anticipated this beginning with a high excitement that was somehow coupled with a cold gnawing dread. If anything went wrong.

Nothing would go wrong.

And yet, as he allowed the tarpaulin to drop from his hand, as he turned to look at the other twenty men in the rear of the truck, he wondered if this should not have been a nighttime maneuver. Why had he decided on dawn? Suppose the people of that creepy damn town all got up at five in the morning, and were standing there in the road, waiting with pitchforks?

The people of that town don’t get up at 5 A.M., he reminded himself. We know the getting-up and sleeping habits of every person in Ocho Puertos, and we know that on Sunday morning nobody’s stirring before 7:30 A.M. Dr. Tannenbaum and his wife Rachel get up at seven-thirty on Sunday morning and drive all the way to Marathon to have breakfast and to buy the New York Herald Tribune. Only this morning they are going to be awakened by twenty after six at the latest, and they are not going to drive to Marathon or anyplace else. The next person to wake up in that town on a Sunday morning is Lester Parch, and he lives in the first house on the beach, and he sets the alarm for eight o’clock. The waitress and the short-order cook both drive in from Big Pine by eight o’clock, in separate cars, but Lester doesn’t open his diner to customers until nine, too late to catch Dr. and Mrs. Tannenbaum who are usually in Marathon having their breakfast by then. Lester Parch’s wife, Adrienne, sleeps until ten on Sundays. By that time all of Ocho Puertos is usually wide-awake, except for Rick Stern, the bachelor in the third house on the beach, who generally has some poontang with him, picked up in Marathon the night before. He wouldn’t roll out of the hay until eleven, and then he’d roll right back in again ten minutes later to polish off a morning matinee. This morning he was in for a slight surprise.

Jason smiled.

He looked at his watch again, and briefly wondered how many times he had stared unseeingly at its face since they had left the warehouse three hours ago. Then he looked across the width of the truck to where a redheaded youth with a crew cut was sitting staring at the floor, and he said very softly, “Benny, I think it’s time we armed up. We’re almost there.”

Without a word Benny rose and glanced at a huge Negro sitting three places away from him on the bench, toward the rear of the truck. With practiced balance, they both moved spread-legged toward the front of the truck where a painter’s stained dropcloth covered an angular pile beneath it. Benny pulled off the cover and began handing out rifles to the big Negro.

Some of the rifles were new and some of them were used, but they had all been purchased over the counter in gunshops in different states, because there was not a single state in the union that required a license for the purchase or possession of a weapon other than a handgun. The rifles varied in model and caliber from a Mossberg.22 with a seven-shot clip magazine to a .30–06 Savage with a staggered box-type magazine, and ranged in price from a low of $17.25 for a single-shot Springfield.22 to $155.00 for a.243 gas-operated Winchester. The rifles were tagged, and Benny and the Negro — whose name was Harry — handed each rifle to the man whose name tag was on it. As they walked between the benches facing each other, Jason got to his feet.

He could hear the rattle of bolts being tested, of clips being slammed home, of cartridge belts being clasped into place around waists. He cleared his throat.

“We’re approaching Ocho Puertos,” he said.

The men fell silent. A single clip rattled, the rifle was shifted, the clatter of metal, silence.

“In a few minutes this truck is going to swing off the main highway and onto S-811 into the town,” Jason said. “We’ll make all the stops we’ve been rehearsing this past week, but this time is for real. This time we are setting our plan in motion.”

Benny and Harry had handed out all the pieces by the time Jason had finished this part of his speech, and were giving Colt .45s to the two group leaders in the truck, Johnny and Coop. Only nine states in the union required a permit or a license to purchase a handgun, and so it had been comparatively simple to buy the two .45s and the various other revolvers and pistols that were needed. A total of twenty-five handguns of varying calibers had been bought, seventeen for the men who would hopefully be coming up from Key West later, two for the group leaders in the truck, three for the crew of The Golden Fleece, and one each for Jason, Goody, and Clay. Jason’s personal preference had been for a .45, only because he felt the gun looked lethal and would be psychologically effective against small-town hicks.

“You all know what we’re about to do,” he said. “We’ve gone over that enough times. I have no doubt we will accomplish our part of the operation, and be able to carry out the subsequent parts as well. I have no doubt. I have no doubt, men, because I know that what we’re about to do today will change the history of the United States and the world. That is how important I feel our mission is.”

Jason cleared his throat again, and then paused.

“We are the sentries of freedom,” he said, his voice low. A man near the back of the truck coughed. “We are the sentries of freedom, and we are standing on the bulwarks of a great nation and defying the world to challenge our greatness, defying the world to abandon its opinion of the United States as a weak and compromising nation instead of the great and powerful nation it is. That is what we are doing here today in Ocho Puertos. That is exactly what we are doing here today.”

He strapped on the gun, letting the holster hang low on his right thigh. There was an air of excitement in the truck now, and the men began to murmur when Clay turned on his seat in the cab and knocked on the small rear window. Clay pointed dead ahead to indicate they were coming off the bridge. Jason nodded.

“I want that town,” Jason said. “There are seven houses in that town, all on the beach, really eight if we want to count the Westerfield house across the main highway — but that’s empty until December, so we don’t have to worry about it. Seven houses and a diner and a tackle shop and a marina, and that’s it, and that’s our objective. I want that town, and I want it by eight A.M.”

They heard the smoother rumble of the truck wheels as they came off the bridge and onto Little Duck. The inside of the truck went still all at once. They waited, and suddenly the wheels made a brief thudding sound and they knew they were crossing another short bridge, the smooth rumble once more, they were on Missouri Key, they waited, another bridge, there, they were on Ohio now, they held their breaths, it took forever to cross Bahia Honda, the truck tires whined, any moment now, they were crossing another bridge, and then the sound changed again, there was the feel of solid land beneath them.

“Ocho Puertos,” Jason whispered.

2

From where Luke Costigan stood on the deck of the catamaran, he could see the red truck turning off U.S. 1 and rolling past the sign advertising the diner and its good food and drink. The truck came out of the rising sun, almost as though a small red section of the sun had slipped free of the horizon and somehow spilled onto the highway and bounced off onto the dusty cutoff leading to the town. The truck took the turn faster than it should have, but then began slowing almost at once, not quite stopping outside the diner, but dropping speed considerably, and then immediately picking up speed again until it was just abreast of the white shanty that was Bobby’s Bait and Tackle Shop. There was a great deal of dust behind the truck, and for a moment Luke was not quite sure he had really seen two men in the road behind it, both wearing blue. Then the truck was in motion again, and there was a great deal more dust obscuring his vision as the truck gained speed and headed for the marina. Luke watched the truck coming down the road, his eyes squinted, one hand resting on the deck rail. The truck slowed again, just outside the marina, and, as Luke watched, two men carrying rifles dropped from the rear of the truck, bent at the knees as they hit the dusty road, and then sprang erect almost immediately and began running toward the marina with their rifles at the ready. The truck was picking up speed again, heading for the first of the beachfront development houses. Luke glanced only briefly at the moving truck, and then quickly turned back toward the two men, both of whom were wearing dungaree trousers and blue chambray shirts, watching them as they came across the lawn toward the pier, where he was clearly visible on the boat’s deck. He was not at all frightened, not even apprehensive, about the appearance of two men with rifles on his lawn. He was curious and somewhat puzzled, but a part of his mind told him this was only some sort of Navy drill, probably some sailors from the base in Key West.

The first man stopped some four feet away from the boat and slowly lowered his rifle so that the barrel was level with Luke’s midsection. In that same moment Luke caught movement on his right and turned his head only briefly, really turned only his eyes, and saw that two other men in dungarees and chambray shirts were breaking in the door to Bobby’s shop not two hundred yards away. The truck was moving off up the road, raising dust behind it; two men in blue were rushing across the lawn of the Parch house, heading for the front door. Luke Costigan suddenly smelled danger and immediately reached for the socket wrench lying near the ladder.

“Hold it,” one of the men said. He was redheaded and had a crew haircut, and he could not have been older than twenty. He held the rifle steady, his finger inside the trigger guard.

“What is this?” Luke said.

“Just you keep your hands away from that wrench, mister,” the redhead said. “Raise ’em up over your head, go on.”

“What is this?” Luke said again.

“Mister,” the other man said, “this is pretty damn serious, whatever it is. So just pick up your hands, like Benny told you, and put them up over your head.”

“Come on,” Benny said.

Luke hesitated another instant. Curiously, and seemingly without reason, he thought abruptly of Hurricane Donna in 1960, and how she had destroyed the marina he had owned in Islamorada. And then he remembered Omaha Beach and the bullet that had caught him in the right calf, and suddenly the two memories merged, France in June of 1944 and Islamorada in September of 1960. He looked at these two men with rifles in their hands and all he could think of was that he had been hurt twice before.

“Mister, you want me to shoot?” Benny asked.

“No,” Luke said. “No, don’t shoot.” Slowly he raised his hands over his head.

“Anybody here yet?” the man with Benny asked.

“No. I was moving some boats into the cove,” he explained. “There’s a hurricane supposed to be coming.”

“Bobby and Sam ain’t arrived yet, huh?” Benny said, and he grinned at Luke, and for the first time since they had entered his yard, Luke felt a shiver of dread. “We better get inside, huh?” Benny said. “We’re gonna have company soon.” He gestured at Luke with the rifle. Luke began limping toward the side door of the marina office. Beyond his buildings he could see the two other men in blue entering the bait shop, and he suddenly wished that Bobby would not be drunk this Sunday morning.

The battering on the door of the shanty had not awakened him, and neither had the splintering of the wood on the jamb, or the rasp of the lock screws ripping loose. He had blinked only partially awake when he heard the sound of heavy work boots on the loose floor planking, but now a man stood over him, shaking him, and Bobby Colmore squinted up at him and then thought he was having a bad dream, and tried to roll over against the wall. The man’s hand was firm on his shoulder and he could not turn. He opened his eyes wider.

The man was a Negro.

He was wearing a blue shirt and blue pants, and he was holding a rifle in one huge hand, the hand wrapped around the middle of the piece, just about where stock joined barrel. There was a scar across the Negro’s nose, and his eyes looked bloodshot. For an instant Bobby had the notion the man was an escaped convict. For an instant only, he was sure the man would demand food and drink and civilian clothing.

“You awake?” the Negro asked.

Bobby blinked and said nothing. The Negro shook him.

“Don’t do that!” Bobby said.

“You awake?” the Negro asked again.

“I’m awake, goddammit! Stop shaking me.”

He freed his shoulder from the Negro’s grip and sat up in bed. He looked around the room, as though trying to ascertain that this was really the back of his small shop, where he slept every night of the week, those were his nets hanging there, that was his picture of Ava Gardner which he had cut out of a magazine and pasted on the white wooden wall, that was his empty bottle of bourbon lying on the floor next to the bed, those were his flowered curtains leading to the front of the shop, Bobby’s Bait and Tackle Shop, the only goddamn thing he owned in the world.

“Is this a stickup?” he asked.

The Negro grinned and said, “He wants to know if this’s a stickup, Clyde.”

“Tell him, Harry,” the other man said, grinning back. He was white and tall, wearing the same blue clothes, his rifle hanging loosely at his side as though he recognized Bobby Colmore would be no threat to anyone in this room.

“No, sir,” Harry said, “this ain’t a stickup. Now, Mr. Colmore, we would like you to get out of that bed there and put on some clothes, because we has to take you over to the marina.”

“How do you know my name?” Bobby asked.

“We know it,” Harry answered. “Would you put on your clothes, please?”

“Why?”

“Why, because we asking you to.”

“Suppose I don’t want to?”

“Mr. Colmore, we gonna take you over to that marina whether you want to go there or not. Now, it’s entirely up to you whether you leave here dressed up Sunday-go-to-meetin’, or whether we carry you over in your skivvies. I think I ought to tell you, though, there might be a lady or two present. Now, which’ll it be?”

“Suppose I won’t let you take me?”

Grinning, Harry said, “I’d have to shoot you dead, Mr. Colmore.”

Bobby wiped his hand across his mouth and then looked up at Harry. Very slowly he said, “I don’t believe you.”

“Mr. Colmore, the reason we’re taking you over to the marina is because we don’t want you acting like a old drunk, you dig? A old drunk is what you’re acting like right now, which is just what we expected from you. But we can’t take no chances, is why we’re getting you out of this shop. You dig, Mr. Colmore? Put on your clothes.”

“I’m not an old drunk,” Bobby said with dignity.

“I guess our information is wrong, then,” Harry said. “Any case, put on your clothes. We ain’t got time to fool around here with you.”

Bobby Colmore did not answer. He got out of bed and walked to the chair where his trousers and shirt were draped. Silently, sullenly, he began dressing.

The Ocho Puertos Diner was a classic diner in the shape of a railroad dining car, with silvered sides, and a sign running the length of the building. In the entrance box — a small four-sided glass square appended to the main body of the diner — there was a second, smaller sign upon which was lettered the information that Lester Parch was the proprietor of the place. Lester had been proprietor since 1961 when he had floated a building loan and put in his eating place shortly after Fred Carney built the waterfront houses. The marina was not built until later. It had been good for Lester’s business, but he had not counted on it when he built the diner. All he had counted on was the state-maintained road running off U.S. 1. He figured he was bound to catch at least some of the truck traffic heading for Key West, and he was right. Even before Luke built the marina, Lester Parch was taking home a fat paycheck each month.

The entrance doorway to the diner divided it exactly in half. There were four leatherette booths to the left of the entrance, and six to the right. The counter ran the length of the place with twenty stools in front of it. The rest rooms and telephone booth were on the left-hand side of the diner, adjacent to the kitchen which occupied the entire rear half of the building. The men who dropped from the back of the truck and ran to the rear of the diner that morning knew that Lester Parch and his wife lived in the first house on the beach and would not be rising until at least eight o’clock. All they were supposed to do was knock out the alarm wires in the box at the rear of the diner, and then force the lock on the kitchen door and enter. For the remainder of the day, and throughout phases two and three of the operation, they were to stay inside the diner and use it as a makeshift guard post, stopping anyone who tried to enter the town on S-811.

They did not know what kind of wiring the alarm box alongside the rear door contained. They had cased the area near the garbage cans out back on two separate occasions the week before, and knew definitely that the diner was wired, but they could not tell whether they would come up against an open-circuit alarm system, a closed-circuit system, or a combination system. They knew that in an open-circuit system, the cheapest kind, the alarm would sound the moment the current was closed. In order to knock out this type of alarm, they would only have to cut the wires. The closed-circuit system, on the other hand, always had a weak current running through the wiring, which meant that even if the wires were cut, the alarm would sound when that current was broken. The combination system was the most modern and the most expensive, and it combined both the open and closed circuits. The men did not expect to find such an elaborate system in a chintzy little diner on a crumby little island in the middle of nowhere. The first of the two men pulled over a garbage can, climbed onto it to reach the wiring box and then unscrewed the cover, studied the system and discovered that it was closed-circuit. He nodded to his companion, and then smiled.

In ten minutes’ time they had made their cross contacts, cut the wires, and forced open the rear door.

They closed and locked the door behind them, and then walked to the front of the diner. One man carried a Winchester. The other, because he was a group leader, carried a .45. They drew all the Venetian blinds except the ones in the corner booth on the right. Through the wide corner window they could see the full sweeping curve of S-811 as it ran up to U.S. 1. One of the men lighted a cigarette, and the second adjusted the corner blinds to keep the rising sun out of his eyes.

The truck had dropped off twenty of the men, leaving the last two at the Tannenbaum house at the end of the beach, and then gunning the engine and making the steep climb up S-811 to where it rejoined the main highway. Goody Moore, still at the wheel, made the sharp right turn and then stepped on his brake pedal and pulled to the side of the road. He opened the cab door, climbed down onto the road, and then walked swiftly to the back of the truck where Jason was just lifting the tarpaulin flap.

“Here you go,” Jason said, dragging a wooden road barricade to the back of the truck and then handing one end of it down to Goody. In the cab of the truck Clay Prentiss watched the road ahead through the windshield, turning his eyes to the rearview mirror every few seconds to check the road behind. He could see Bahia Honda ahead, and beyond that the Seven Mile Bridge racing off into the sky in the distance, pink and gold, the water stretching on either side of it like cotton candy.

“You got it?” Jason asked.

“I’ve got it,” Goody replied, and the men eased the barricade down and out of the truck. The barricade had white legs and a black-and-white diagonally striped cross support. The words FLORIDA STATE ROAD DEPARTMENT were painted across the side of the cross support, and as Goody set the barricade across the mouth of S-811 where it rejoined the highway, Jason went into the truck again and came back with one of the wooden signs Clay had painted for them. The sign was a white rectangle upon which were the simple black letters:

Goody took the sign from Jason, and then carried it to the barrier where a spike had been driven into the center of the cross support. He hung the sign on the spike and stepped back to admire it.

“Let’s move,” Jason said.

Goody ran forward to the cab of the truck, climbed in, threw it into gear, and drove east on U.S. 1, heading back in the direction from which they had come, toward Bahia Honda and the Seven Mile Bridge. In the rear of the truck Jason leaned on the second barricade and watched the road through the open tarpaulin flap.

The cop had hit him with his club; that was the final indignity. The barricades had been set up on the sidewalk in front of the theater, as though the New York City police were circumscribing a definite area in which citizens of the United States could peaceably state their views. The barricades had annoyed Jason. He had told Annabelle he would not picket within a narrow defined area; you could not limit freedom of speech to an area designated by fascists in the uniforms of policemen. There were a half-dozen pickets in all, including Jason and Annabelle, and they carried signs on long sticks, crudely lettered to simulate a vaguely Oriental calligraphy, huge black letters on a white field. The police insisted that Jason and the others stay within the corridors defined by the barricades, and Jason, who was younger then, and more hotheaded — this was in the spring of 1950, three months after they had come up to New York from New Orleans — told the cop he was a fascist who was trying to limit the rights of free citizens.

“I’m trying to keep this from becoming a riot, you Communist fink!” the cop shouted.

“Me?” Jason asked incredulously. “Me a Communist? Do you know why we’re here? Do you even know why we’re here?”

“Let’s stay inside the barricades,” Annabelle whispered.

“Why? So he can prove his point? Are we supposed to excuse him the way this play excuses the lousy Japs?”

“Jason, we won’t prove anything if they won’t let us picket.”

The others in the group — a fat and ugly girl who was a Political Science major at C.C.N.Y., a pimply-faced boy who was on Ford-ham’s basketball team, a Long Island matron who was in her second month of pregnancy, and a tall and somber-faced boy from Kentucky — agreed with Annabelle that it was best to stay within the barricades. Jason reluctantly went along with them.

They marched along the sidewalk in front of the theater entreating passersby to stay away from the play. Their signs read LET’S REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR and WHY WHITEWASH THE JAPS? and DID OUR BOYS DIE IN VAIN? and the people walking past the small and solemn group marching in a steady oval within the barricades looked up at the signs with smiles of wry amusement, and then glanced beyond the pickets to the posters outside the theater and then up to the marquee where the name of the play was announced together with the names of the actors. One of the actors was a well-known Hollywood star who was Japanese and who had been playing heavies in war movies as short a time ago as 1948, but who was now starring in a vehicle set in a Japanese command post in the South Pacific. Jason had not seen the play, but the reviews had made it abundantly clear what the play was about. The play attempted to show the Japanese position, attempted to explore “the Japanese as human beings caught, even as we were, in the terrible throes of a horrible conflict,” as one of New York’s major critics had put it. In other words, the play was a whitewash of a people, a race, who had been our enemies only five years ago, which fact the producers of the play and apparently the public too — the play was an enormous hit — had already chosen to forget. Jason Trench did not choose to forget anything that threatened the United States of America. The play was a threat to the nation because it lulled people into a sense of security that was dangerous. It was ridiculous to believe that the Japanese had suddenly been transformed overnight into a sweet and loving people who wanted only to tend their gardens and paint their lovely little pictures. It was foolish to believe that, it was dangerous, it was suicidal. If you forgot who your past enemies were, then you were halfway down the road to forgetting who your present enemies were. If you let them get by with a play that took a sympathetic view of a philosophy that was totalitarian and imperialistic, you were opening the door for an acceptance of any ideology, so long as you presented it in terms of “human beings.”

It began to rain as they marched.

The rain, the idea of the play, the idea that such a play could be pulling in throngs of people who were willing to pay to see what amounted to a propaganda vehicle probably sponsored by the goddamn Japanese government, the idea of the barricades that limited Jason’s right to free speech while the author of an atrocity was grandly allowed a pulpit from which he could reach thousands of people every week — all this rankled in Jason. When the cop said, “Why don’t you all go over to Moscow, you love it so much?” Jason raised his sign and swung it at the cop’s head.

The cop was startled for a moment, and then he reacted the way he was supposed to. He lifted his billy and struck Jason on the arm with it. Jason yelled, “You fat Irish fascist bastard!” and the cop hit him again, and Annabelle reached for his arms and tried to restrain him from attacking the cop, and it was then that the others in the picket line began running. Smelling a riot, wanting no part of it, they ran. The police arrested Jason for disorderly conduct, and the court magnanimously allowed him to go free, albeit with a suspended sentence, since disorderly conduct was only a misdemeanor, and since this was his first offense. The funny part of it, he realized later, was that the cop who had hit him with the club and also the judge who had heard the case both thought he was a Communist — that was the funny part of it. They were allowing a play with a fascist point of view to be presented eight times a week, and they were using the methods of a police state to squelch anyone who opposed the play’s thesis, but they were calling him a Communist; that was what got him.

The truck was coming to a stop at the eastern entrance to S-811, the entrance they had used not more than ten minutes ago. Goody made the turn again, from the opposite direction this time, coming off the macadam highway and hitting the oiled road, and then stopping some ten feet in from the highway. By the time he got out of the cab and walked to the back of the truck, Jason had the second barricade in position and ready to hand down. They set it up much as they had the first one, effectively closing the side road to traffic on both ends. Goody got into the truck again, and they drove to the diner. Jason came out of the rear carrying a small cardboard sign. He hung it on the front door and then waved to the drawn Venetian blinds, behind which he knew were Johnny and Mac, covering the road.

Nothing stirred.

With its CLOSED sign hanging on the front door, with its blinds drawn, the diner seemed sealed tighter than a crypt.

The baby began crying the moment the two men entered the house, working much more effectively than the alarm on the diner had, setting up a fearful fuss that could not be controlled by cutting wires or crossing them. The house was the second one on the beach, just beyond Lester Parch’s house. Lester heard the baby go off next door and woke up to find a rifle pointed at his head. He did not say a word. He simply jabbed his elbow hard into Adrienne’s ribs, and she jumped up cursing and was ready to take a good swat at him when she realized they were not alone in their bedroom.

The two armed men standing at the foot of the bed both seemed to be about thirty years old, though the one with the beard looked older. Adrienne studied them unbelievingly, as though somehow Lester had dreamed them and they had escaped from his goddamn head and materialized at the foot of the bed. She looked at her husband furiously, her eyes demanding an explanation. Lester simply shrugged and said, “Well... what’s the guns for, fellers?”

The one with the beard very softly said, “You’re going to spend the rest of the day in this house, Mr. Parch. Would you and your wife kindly get dressed, please?”

“The rest—” Lester began and then closed his mouth. He thought for a few seconds and then asked, “Who’ll open the diner?”

The man with the beard smiled and said, “It’s already been opened, Mr. Parch.”

Next door the baby was wailing up a storm.

Pete Champlin, who was the baby’s father, rolled over, pulling half the sheet off his wife, and then mumbled, “Rosie, you want to get him?”

“No,” Rosie said, “you get him.”

“Forget it,” a strange voice said, “I’ve got him.”

Pete was used to all kinds of kooky things because he happened to be a real estate salesman in Marathon, and he got crazy nuts in the office every day of the week. The craziest nut of them all had been Frederick Carney, for whom Pete had handled this whole waterfront development after buying one for himself at thirty thousand, ten grand less than the next five sold for. He was used to all kinds of strange and mysterious real estate happenings, but he was not used to a man’s voice just outside his bedroom door at — what was it, six o’clock? — on a Sunday morning.

“Did you hear something?” he asked his wife.

“No,” Rosie said.

He probably would have let it go at that if the voice had not said, very loud and very clear this time, “Your son’s pants are wet, Mr. Champlin, and he’s soaking through my shirt. You want to get up and take care of this?”

He popped up in bed immediately and saw a man standing in the doorway of the room with Pete, Jr., slung over his shoulder and with a rifle in his left hand. Right alongside him was another man, and he was holding a rifle too, and looking very, very serious.

“All right,” the second man said, “nobody gets hurt if we all relax.”

“Who is it, honey?” Rosie mumbled beside him.

The men broke in through the French doors leading from the lanai at the back of the house, both of them wearing dungarees and blue shirts, both carrying rifles, both at least three inches shorter and twenty pounds lighter than Rick Stem. They had been warned that the occupant of this fourth house on the beach was six feet four inches tall and weighed two hundred and twenty pounds bone-dry. They had been further warned not to take any chances with him because he had been an Iwo Jima Marine during World War II. At that time he had stormed a Japanese pillbox carrying nothing but a bayonet and two hand grenades. He had flushed out six enemy soldiers while demolishing two machine guns and, just for good measure, a mortar emplacement alongside the pillbox. Jason’s men had been told to shoot immediately if Rick Stem so much as lifted his pinky. So they broke the glass panel on one of the French doors, and then reached in to twist the knob, and then turned one rifle on him as he sat bolt upright in bed, and the second on the girl who was spilling out of the front of her nightgown and getting ready to scream.

“I’ve got the girl, Willy,” the man on the left said, pointing his rifle at her.

“I’ve got the guy, Flack,” Willy answered, and they both stood motionless across the room while the girl decided whether or not she should scream.

“Go ahead, lady, scream,” Flack said. “There ain’t nobody to hear you.” Whereupon the girl immediately closed her mouth and concentrated instead on pulling the sheet up over her exposed breasts.

It was at this point that Rick Stem burst into laughter.

He could not have explained why he began laughing at that precise moment. There was certainly nothing very comical about two snotnose kids busting your French doors and coming into your bedroom where you were entertaining a lady. Nothing was less funny than a Springfield rifle, either, unless it happened to be two of them, one of which was pointed at your lady friend’s exposed left breast — well, exposed until just a moment ago — with the other pointed at a spot about three inches above your own bellybutton. There was nothing terribly funny about Lucy’s dilemma, either, the dilemma being that she was the daughter of Walter Nelson, who was deacon of the church on Big Pine Key, and who happened to be up in Miami on church business, but who certainly wouldn’t have appreciated his holy little flower being in bed with the rake of the Lower Keys, even if the rake happened to be a World War II hero. Oh, no, there was nothing comical about Lucy’s dilemma. Perhaps, then, perhaps what made Rick burst into laughter at this particular tense juncture of his life was the look worn by the intruder on the right, the one called Willy.

Willy was nineteen years old, and he had a little blond mustache and fierce brown eyes. He kept his mouth curled in a sort of sneer that was supposed to be menacing but only managed to look petulant. That was funny enough in itself, but the look that had flashed over his face when he broke through those French doors was worth the price of admission alone. Lucy had popped up in bed, spilling out of the front of her gown, and Willy had frozen to a spot just inside the French doors, his eyes opening wide, his jaw dropping.

It had taken Lucy approximately thirty seconds to get her mouth ready for the scream, during which time she kept sitting up in bed with her open gown pointed right at Willy’s gaping jaw. It had taken another thirty seconds for Flack to deliver his clever little speech about screaming and there being nobody to hear and all that, during which time Willy kept leaning over farther and farther toward Lucy, though still rooted to that spot just inside the French doors. Then at least ten more seconds went by before Lucy decided not to scream and pulled the sheet up over her breasts instead.

It was then that Rick burst out laughing, because Willy just kept right on staring at Lucy as if fiercely willing her to drop that sheet, and his partner, Flack, kept trying to be tough by waving the rifle at Rick and saying, “Don’t try nothing funny, Stern. Our orders are to shoot to kill.”

“Well, well,” Rick said, and wondered immediately how Flack had known his name, but said nothing further. He was already trying to figure a way out of this, because everything in Rick Stern’s mind usually broke down eventually into a matter of logistics, and the logistics of this situation was simply how to disarm and break into little pieces two nineteen-year-old punks who had invaded his bedroom, how to do this without causing harm to our holy flower of Big Pine Key, God bless her.

“All right, what is this?” he asked. “A gag?”

“This ain’t a gag, Stern,” Flack said. Willy, on his right, kept staring at the sheet that Lucy held clutched to her bosom.

“Then what are you doing here? Would you mind telling me?”

“You better get up out of that bed,” Flack said. “We have to tie you up.”

“Why?”

“Because we’ve got to keep you here until—” Flack began, and suddenly Willy nudged him with the barrel of his rifle and said, “Shut up, Hack.”

“What’s the matter, Willy?” Hack asked.

“Don’t tell the bastard nothing,” Willy said, and Rick looked at Willy’s mouth again, curled into a sneer below the silly blond mustache, and wondered all at once whether the menace there wasn’t true enough after all.

“Keep me here until what?” Rick asked.

“Until we decide to let you go,” Willy answered. “Get out of that bed.” He paused and then said, “The girl, too.”

“Uh-uh, Willy.”

“You better listen to me, Stem,” Willy said. “When I tell you to do something, you do it, and fast. You got me?”

“I got you fine,” Rick said. “The girl stays in that bed until we get her a robe. And then she dresses in the bathroom.”

“She dresses where I say she dresses.”

“Over my dead body,” Rick said.

Willy smiled and said, “Any way you want it, Stem,” and then pulled back the bolt on the rifle.

“Don’t make me laugh,” Rick said.

“I’m counting to three,” Willy answered, his finger moving into position inside the trigger guard. “I want you both out of that bed and starting to dress by the time I hit three, you got me?”

“And if we’re not?”

“If you’re not, you’re dead,” Willy said. “One.”

“Save your breath. I’ll get the girl a robe, and she can—”

“Stay where you are,” Willy shouted. “Two.”

“I thought you wanted us—”

“I’m giving the orders around here, not you. You think I’m gonna let her out of this room?”

“The bathroom’s right in the hallway. Your friend can follow her down and stay right outside the door while she dresses.”

“Suppose she busts a window and gets out?”

“There’s no window in the bathroom,” Rick said. “There’s only an overhead vent.”

“The girl dresses right here,” Willy said. He paused and then said, “Three.”

The room went silent.

“You getting out of that bed? Both of you?”

“No,” Rick said.

The bullet took him completely by surprise, smashing into his abdomen, and lifting his behind from the bed, and slamming him back against the headboard. He felt only instant impact and agonizing pain, and then his vision blurred and he felt himself falling forward on the bed, his body bending from the waist, pulling the sheet out of Lucy’s hands as he fell, Lucy clutching for the sheet wildly, trying to cover her breasts, the sheet suddenly turning a bright pulsing red, and Lucy’s scream bursting from her mouth as red and as strident as the shrieking spreading blood. “You killed him!” she shouted. “You killed him, you killed him!” And then unmindful of her naked breasts, she threw herself headlong onto his body and tried to hold him close while his blood and his life drained out of him and soaked into the mattress.

Across the room Willy watched her wordlessly for several moments, his heart pounding in his chest. Then he turned to Flack and said, “Get Jason.”

3

Dr. Herbert Tannenbaum and his wife Rachel were not in their bed; two other people were. The two other people were a lot younger than the Tannenbaums were supposed to be. The girl seemed to be twenty-five or — six, and the man sleeping beside her seemed to be maybe a few years older than that, but where the hell was old Tannenbaum and his wife?

Virgil Cooper took the surprise well. After his first Mongolian cavalry attack in Korea, he was incapable of being surprised any more; he simply gestured to Leonard Crawley to keep the slumbering pair covered while he went out to check the rest of the house. He was coming through the hallway and heading for the other bedroom when he received the second surprise, and the second surprise was Dr. Tannenbaum himself coming from the bathroom at the opposite end of the corridor, tying the strings on his pajama bottoms. Tannenbaum was sixty-eight years old, a tall spare man with a good tan on his arms and his face and spreading up onto his forehead and the beginnings of his bald pate fringed with white hair that clung to the back of his head and formed a narrow shelf above his ears. He had been the orthopedic specialist at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx before he had retired and come to Ocho Puertos with his wife the year before. He came down the corridor now tying his pajama strings, completely unaware of Coop who stood frozen at the opposite end, holding the .45 loosely in his right hand, waiting for Tannenbaum to discover him.

Tannenbaum sensed Coop’s presence before he actually saw him. His step faltered and he raised his eyes first and then his head, and the first thing he saw was the gun in Coop’s hand. He stopped dead in the hallway, his eyes continuing upward to Coop’s face, settling on Coop’s mouth, which was thin and smiling faintly, moving upward to Coop’s eyes, which were pale and vaguely amused. Tannenbaum wet his lips. As though afraid he would wake the sleepers in the house, he said in a whisper, “Who are you? What do you want?”

“Who’s that in the big bedroom?” Coop whispered back.

“My son and his wife. What do you want? What do you want here?”

“Get dressed, Dr. Tannenbaum,” Coop whispered, and then shouted over his shoulder, “Wake ’em up, Leonard!”

In the master bedroom of the two-bedroom house, Leonard Crawley kept his Springfield trained on the bed and watched the young man and woman in the bed come immediately and unbelievingly awake.

Marvin Tannenbaum sat up and stared at what seemed to be a man holding a rifle. He heard Selma gasp beside him as he fumbled for his glasses on the night table. He put them on, blinked at the man, cleared his throat, and said, “What the hell is it?”

“Mister, get dressed,” Leonard said.

“Who are you?” Marvin said.

“Get dressed,” Leonard answered. His eyes searched the room. He picked a blue robe from the armchair near the bed, threw it to Selma and said, “Here, lady. You can put this on.”

“Thank you,” Selma said.

“Pop!” Marvin shouted suddenly. “Pop, are you all right?”

“He’s all right,” Coop called from the hallway. “Shut up and do what you’re told, and nobody’ll get hurt.”

Marvin got out of bed in his pajamas and walked past Leonard to the doorway of the room. He was five feet ten inches tall, but somehow managed to convey an impression of squatness, despite his height, perhaps because his legs were short in proportion to his torso and arms. He had black hair and brown eyes and a peculiarly sensitive and sensuous mouth in a dark and brooding face. His black-rimmed eyeglasses gave him a scholarly appearance that was contradicted by the squat power of his body, as though an ape had accidentally picked up his trainer’s glasses and perched them on his broad flat nose. He looked into the hallway without fear, somewhat sleepily, a man who had been awakened without any reasonable cause and was now trying to get at the root of the problem. Coop turned partially to face him as he peered out into the corridor.

“What’s this all about?” Marvin asked conversationally.

“We’re taking you over to the marina,” Coop answered, just as conversationally.

“What for?”

“We need this house,” Coop said.

“Why?”

“To watch this end of the road.”

“To watch it for what?”

“For anybody who might come down it,” Coop said, and smiled. “You want to get dressed?”

“I don’t get it,” Marvin said.

“You’re not supposed to. Get back in there and hold up a blanket for your wife while she dresses.” Coop looked at his watch. “I want to be out of here in five minutes.”

Marvin nodded, sighed, and went back into the bedroom. “What’s this all about?” he asked Leonard.

“Didn’t you hear what he told you, mister? We want to be out of here in five minutes. So let’s hustle, huh?”

“Yeah, but what’s it all about?” Marvin asked.

“Get dressed,” Leonard said, and Marvin shrugged. He walked to the bed where Selma was sitting upright, fully covered by the cotton nightgown she wore — why the hell didn’t she ever wear nylon like other women did, like Marvin supposed other women did?

“We’d better do what they say,” Marvin suggested. He took the blanket from where it was folded at the foot of the bed and held it up in front of his wife, his arms spread. Selma got out of bed and nodded a small thank-you, and then slipped the nightgown up over her shoulders and head and took her undergarments from the chair beside the bed and quickly began dressing.

From across the room, Leonard Crawley, who was thirty-five years old and whose education had not gone further than the twelfth grade in high school, watched Marvin Tannenbaum’s rigid back and outstretched arms, saw Selma’s pale and expressionless face appear above the top edge of the blanket again as she pulled her dress over her head, and immediately sensed something that had managed to elude the older and wiser Dr. Tannenbaum from the moment his children had arrived yesterday afternoon.

Leonard Crawley, with a gun in his hands and more important matters on his mind, knew immediately and intuitively that something was wrong between these two kids.

“There’s two houses on the beach where we won’t have any trouble at all,” Coop had said. He had said this to Jason immediately after he had first scouted Ocho Puertos Key and was making a preliminary report. “One of them is the second house on the beach, the Champlin house, right here” — pointing to an enlarged map of the key — “and the other is the sixth house down, just before the Tannenbaums.” Coop had paused for effect, the way he had often paused for effect in Korea when he was surrounded by boys his own age whose toes were freezing and who kept slapping their hands against their sides and looking to their sergeant for answers he did not have. He had looked up at Jason and grinned and said, “The reason we won’t have any trouble is that there’s kids in both those houses.”

The kids in the Hannigan house were both little girls, six and eight years old respectively, and they were in the living room in their pajamas playing Chinese checkers when the two men came through the lanai. They looked at the men curiously, without fear, and then got just a little frightened when the men picked them up and carried them into the bedroom where their parents were still asleep. The men put the little girls down at the foot of the bed, and one of them went to the bed and shook Jack Hannigan by the shoulder, and when he woke up, the man said, “Those are your kids there, Mr. Hannigan. We don’t expect any trouble from you.”

There was no trouble.

Jason looked first at Willy, who stood opposite the bed with the rifle hanging loosely from the end of his arm. Then he turned to the bed where the man Stem was lying pitched forward halfway on his side, bent awkwardly at the waist, the sheet sticky with blood and clinging to his stomach and thighs and crotch. The half-naked girl was sobbing against Stem’s shoulder and back, covered with blood herself, unaware of Jason’s entrance, seemingly unaware of anything but the man who lay bleeding beside her.

“What happened here?” Jason said. He did not raise his voice, nor was there any indication in his manner that he was angry. He faced Willy calmly, studying him with a careful, interested look on his face.

Willy smoothed his sparse blond mustache with his free left hand and then looked at the floor first and the ceiling next, and then said, “He wouldn’t do what I told him, Jase.”

“Well, now, let me hear it all, okay?” Jason said, and he smiled a pleasant, encouraging smile. Beside him, Flack nodded in sympathetic appreciation of the way Jason was handling this, without getting excited or anything, just peaceful and calm. Across the room the girl was still sobbing.

“You said we shouldn’t take no chances with this one, Jase,” Willy said. “So I warned him to do what I said, and when he didn’t, I shot him.” Willy shrugged. “That’s all.”

“What was it you asked him to do?” Jason asked quietly.

“Just to get dressed,” Willy said, and shrugged again.

“Mmm-huh. And where does the girl fit in?”

“The girl?”

“Right.”

“Gee, she’s got nothing to do with it,” Willy said, and smoothed his mustache again.

“Get her something to put on,” Jason said, and then quickly, “Not you, Willy.”

Willy checked his forward movement and shrugged. Flack picked up Stem’s white shirt from where it was lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. He brought it to the bed and held it out to the girl. “Miss?” he said. She did not answer him. She kept her face pressed to Stem’s muscular back, her cheek smeared with blood, sobbing. “Miss, you want this?” Flack asked.

“Take it,” Jason said suddenly and harshly, and the girl looked up for an instant and met Jason’s eyes and then slowly sat up and took the shirt from Flack. There was nothing to hide anymore; there was nothing they had not seen. She pulled the shirt on slowly, and then held it closed over her breasts, not buttoning it, her arms folded across its front. She looked at Jason again, and then sniffed once, and then wiped her nose on the long sleeve of the shirt.

“What’s your name?” Jason asked.

“Lucy.”

“Lucy what?”

The girl did not answer. Jason walked to the bed and lifted Stem’s wrist. He felt for a pulse and then turned to Willy and said, “You goddamn butcher, he’s still alive.”

“I thought he was dead,” Willy said.

“He’s not.”

“I thought sure he was dead,” Willy said again, as though that would make it so.

“No,” Jason said. He kept staring at Stem, still holding his wrist.

“There’s a doctor here in town, ain’t there, Jase?” Flack said.

“Yeah.”

“What do you need a doctor for?” Willy asked.

“The guy’s dying,” Flack said.

“Yeah, but the plan—”

“Shut up,” Jason said.

The girl looked up at him. “Are you... will you get a doctor for him?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. He looked again at Stem, and then suddenly frowned. He kept holding Stern’s wrist silently for what seemed like a very long time. At last he let it drop.

“We don’t need a doctor any more,” he said, and the girl began screaming.

Samantha Watts had awakened at five-twenty to the sound of an engine starting. She had supposed Luke was moving his boats into Pasajero Channel, and she further supposed she should go down to the pier to help him, but she lay in bed wide-awake, searching the ceiling, reluctant to rise, and yet unable to sleep. One of the Siamese leaped onto the bed. Although the room was still dark, she knew at once it was Fong, not Fang. She could tell by the gender sound of his purr and the scratchy feel of his tongue, so unlike Fang’s, across her wrist. She took a playful swat at him, and then said aloud, “Oh hell, I might as well get up,” but remained in bed anyway for the next ten minutes. Her eyes were growing accustomed to the predawn gloom. She wondered where the other cats were. She owned ten cats in all.

At five-thirty she got out of bed and took off her pajamas and looked briefly at her tanned and slender body in the full-length mirror on the back of the closet door. She quickly pulled on panties and bra, denim trousers, a pair of tattered sneakers, and an old gray sweatshirt. From the dresser top she took a comb which she put into her back pocket, and a lipstick and her house keys, which she put into the right-hand side pocket. At the back of her mind someplace was the half notion that she would meander down to the marina and give Luke a hand with the boats. Her house was the fourth in line on the beach, between Rick Stem’s — she noticed that all his shades were drawn; that meant he’d picked up a girl in Marathon the night before — and Mr. Ambrosini’s, who was a retired tractor salesman from Des Moines. Mr. Ambrosini’s shades were never drawn, but she saw no sign of him this morning. Mr. Ambrosini was a nice little man who was seventy years old if he was a day.

By the time she had had a cup of coffee and come out through the lanai and into the backyard, all thought of helping Luke with his boats had vanished. It was perhaps ten minutes before dawn, and she scanned the horizon over the Atlantic and then turned in a slow circle, her eyes taking in the Ambrosini house to the west, and then the Tannenbaum house, and then moving in the same slow circle across the highway to the north where the big gray Westerfield house squatted behind its stand of hardwood trees. As she watched, she saw the upstairs bedroom light go out. She was surprised because she had not known the Westerfields were here; they did not usually come down until after Christmas. Well, perhaps the house was being rented; she would ask Luke when she saw him. If he was out moving boats, he had undoubtedly seen the light too. She turned eastward toward Bahia Honda and watched the sky beginning to brighten and wondered why on earth Luke was moving the boats into the cove. She had, of course, heard the Weather Bureau’s advisories the night before, but that certainly did not look like a hurricane sky.

She wondered what it was like out on the water, and then — because she was thirty-one years old and had been directly translating thought into action since the time she was six — she walked rapidly to the dock and jumped down into the boat. She threw off the bowline, and then started the outboard and freed the stem line. She nosed the boat out and away from the dock. The offshore waters deepened quickly, dropping from three feet to eight feet to thirteen feet in the space of half a nautical mile. Beyond the inshore shelf the waters dropped away swiftly to form Hawk Channel, where the depths ran to forty feet and more, enough draft to accommodate an ocean liner. She did not go out as far as the channel. She headed due south for several miles, and then cut the motor and allowed the boat to drift. She figured the water beneath her was some twenty-five to thirty feet deep.

She looked at her watch now and saw that it was five minutes to seven. She stood up in the small boat, stretched her arms over her head, and ran one hand through her close-cropped blond hair. Then, smiling for no reason other than that it looked as though it would be a beautiful day, she started the outboard, and cheerfully headed back toward the island.

The chart was affixed to a clipboard, and the clipboard was resting on Luke’s desk where he could see it plainly, just alongside the telephone. Luke was sitting in the chair behind his desk, and Benny sat on the edge of the desk, his eyes on the telephone. Across the small marina office, the second man in dungarees and chambray shirt idly trained his rifle at Luke’s chest.

The chart had been typed on an inked grid:

Looking at the chart, Luke knew instantly that the numbers-under each name were the last five digits of telephone numbers on Ocho Puertos. His own telephone number was 872-8108, and the second listing for the marina was the number of the outside booth. Bobby Colmore’s number was 872-8217, and Sam’s — which he also knew by heart — was 872-8826. He glanced up at the clock hanging on the marina wall opposite his desk. The time was five minutes to seven.

“Figured it out, Costigan?” Benny asked.

“No, I haven’t,” Luke said.

“Well, stick around. Maybe it’ll come to you.”

“You know,” Luke said, “if you think there’s any money in the safe, there isn’t. I made my bank deposit Friday afternoon.”

“Is that right?” Benny said.

“Yes,” Luke answered.

“My, my,” Benny said, and Luke had the positive feeling he had known all along the goddamn safe was empty. He heard voices outside and then the screen door opening. A moment later the inner door opened wide, and a tall man wearing khakis came into the room carrying an open bottle of Coke which he’d undoubtedly bought from the machine just outside. He stepped into the office and glanced immediately at Luke, and then gave him a wide smile, and then tilted the Coke bottle to his mouth and took a long pull at it, and then walked to the desk and put the bottle down on its top, directly in front of Luke, banging the bottle down hard, and keeping his hand wrapped around it, smiling all the while, and then saying very softly, still smiling, “Morning, Mr. Costigan.”

Luke looked up at the man and said nothing. The man’s eyes were blue and steady, and they studied Luke’s face unwaveringly, the smile still on the man’s mouth, his fist still wrapped around the narrow neck of the Coke bottle. There was unmistakable challenge in the stiff extended arm of the man and the hand curled tightly around the bottle neck. Luke did not know why the challenge was being issued, but there it was, as certain as a dropped gauntlet at his feet.

“I said ‘Good morning,’ Mr. Costigan,” the man said.

“Who are you?” Luke answered.

“Well now, that’s impertinent, isn’t it?” the man said, and turned to the blond man who had followed him into the room. “Isn’t that impertinent, Willy?”

“It sure is impertinent,” Willy said, and then moved his hand up to stroke his mustache.

“I say ‘Good morning’ to a man, and next thing you know he’s asking me who I am. That’s not very good manners, Mr. Costigan.” He smiled at Luke again and abruptly released his grip on the bottle. “My name is Jason Trench,” he said.

“What do you want here, Mr. Trench?”

Jason smiled, and at that moment the telephone rang. He walked to the phone and said, “If it’s for you, Mr. Costigan, I’ll just say you’re out on the water — you won’t mind, right?” He lifted the phone from its cradle. “Costigan’s Marina,” he said. “Hello there, Johnny, how are you? Yep, we’re all set here. Did you see us when we hung the ‘Closed’ sign on the door?” Jason chuckled and then said, “Figured you did. All right, keep in touch,” he said, and hung up. He turned to Benny and said briefly, “That was Johnny at the diner. It’s secured, you can check it off.”

Benny took a pencil from the pocket of his chambray shirt, and in the space alongside the diner’s listing and phone number, under the column headed 700, he put a small check mark. Luke glanced up at the clock. It was exactly 7 A.M. He looked again at the chart. The next call will come from Bobby Colmore’s place, he thought, and it will come at 7:05.

“Is Goody in the phone booth outside?” Benny asked.

“Right,” Jason said, and the office went silent.

At 7:05 by the wall clock, just as Luke had expected, the telephone rang again.

“Hello there, Harry,” Jason said. “How’s every little thing? Well, that’s just fine. You lock up there and bring him on over. Right,” he said, and replaced the receiver in its cradle. “The tackle shop,” he said to Benny. “It’s secured. They’ll be bringing the wino on over.”

The wino, of course, would be Bobby, and for some reason they were going to bring him here to the marina. Luke watched as Benny put a check mark next to Bobby’s name, in the column headed 705. The calls, then, would come into the marina at five-minute intervals and would obviously be reports from Jason’s men scattered throughout the community. The chart went only as far as 755, which Luke now knew was five minutes to eight o’clock. Did this mean the reports would cease at that time? He then noticed that this particular chart was only the top page of a sheaf of papers attached to the clipboard. Was it possible that the sheet under this one began with the numerals 800 and proceeded to 855, and then on through the day, on the next sheet and the one after that, for as long as these men intended to stay in Ocho Puertos?

He listened to the next several calls intently, trying to establish some sort of pattern. Jason took each call in high good humor, chatting briefly with each of his men, giving instructions, and then turning to Benny each time and telling him where to put another check mark. The progression of check marks seemed to be absolutely clear, running down the chart vertically, and across the chart horizontally, the calls coming in order from the diner, the tackle shop, the Parch house, and then the Champlin house. When Jason hung up after the call from the Champlin house, he told Benny to check off the Stern house as well, since he positively knew that was secured. Luke assumed he must have come directly from the Stern house to the marina.

The next listing on the chart was for Samantha’s house.

The palms of Luke’s hands were suddenly covered with sweat.

His hands had begun sweating that day long ago as the landing barges approached Omaha Beach. He had repeated the words over and again to himself, Don’t be frightened, don’t be frightened, but his hands had begun to sweat, and then he was enormously frightened when the ramp went down and he found himself running across the wet sand with the machine-gun bullets spraying the beach. He had wanted to turn and run back into the water, but they were dead and dying behind him, so he threw himself flat on the sand and began to crawl, listening to the shattered screams around him and the roar of the shells and the angry clatter of the machine guns. Nobody ever talked about the sounds of war; nobody ever told you that dying in pain had a terrifying sound all its own. That was when the enemy bullet struck him.

He had been lying flat, so nothing really happened when the slug pierced his calf except that he felt a sharp stinging pain, and then he looked back and saw that his leg was bleeding just a bit above the top of his combat boot. Well, he had thought, it’s over; I get a Purple Heart and a trip home. Then the man crouching in fear not a foot from him in the sand took a slug right in the mouth, the bullet shattering his teeth and blowing away the back of his helmet and his head. Luke felt neither guilt nor relief. He had not asked for the bullet that caught him in the calf, and he experienced no joy when the man lying next to him got killed. Years later he would hear the combat clichés repeated so many times in so many different ways that he would come to believe perhaps he had been overjoyed when the bullet smashed into the soldier beside him. But at the time he only winced when the blood spattered up onto his own hands from the man’s broken face.

He came very close to breaking on that strange beach with a stranger’s blood spurting onto his hands; he began weeping like a baby. In 1960 he again came very close to breaking on the edge of his hurricane-demolished pier in Islamorada. He was thirty-six years old, too old to cry; this was no longer the kid who had trembled in fear on a beach in France. He looked out over the water. Donna had smashed his pier to splinters, taking away each of the slips and even knocking down most of the pilings. She had tom through the big sign he had erected facing the Atlantic — WELCOME TO COSTIGAN’S MARINA, and then had extended her welcome into the marina office itself, destroying it completely. Undiminished, unwearied, she had ripped the sides off three of Luke’s sleeping units and shattered the windows and tom the shingles off all the others. Luckily he had moved his customers’ boats northeast to Windley Key and into Snake Creek the moment he had heard the first advisory. They, at least, had been saved.

His insurance, he knew, would cover only part of his investment.

For the first time since 1944, he was filled with an overboiling sense of unfairness, a choking self-pity that bordered on rage. For the first time since he had been wounded, he came very close to accepting himself as a cripple who just could not make a go of it, the hell with it, the bloody goddamn rotten hell with it.

He kept staring at the debris floating offshore.

I could sell the derrick hoist, he thought. I could get maybe thirty-five thousand for it, less than I paid, but at least I’d be able to settle with the bank.

When Luke Costigan discovered Ocho Puertos in 1961, it was a community of seven beachfront houses on the southern side of the island and one larger house on the northern side. In addition, the community could boast of a diner owned and operated by one of the charter residents, a man named Lester Parch. Luke decided at once that it would be a good spot for a marina. The waters just off Spanish Harbor were full of amberjack and wahoo, king mackerel and yellowtail. Up north toward Bahia Honda Channel, and among the myriad small keys dotting Florida Bay, were tarpon and red snapper, muttonfish and trout. In the Gulf Stream you could expect to pull sailfish or bonita, Allison tuna or dolphin. Luke knew the fish were plentiful; the thing he did not know was whether he could persuade anyone to leave a boat at a small marina on an essentially isolated key. He hoped that he could. He asked the bank for another loan, and they gave it to him.

The new marina was nothing pretentious, but at least it was a beginning. His pier had only thirty-five slips, back-in slips at that, no sleeping facilities, and only a small travel lift. There were three Esso pumps at the end of the pier (two for gasoline, one for Diesel fuel) and also a sign identical to the one that had dominated the marina entrance in Islamorada. WELCOME TO COSTIGAN’S MARINA. The welcome included fuel and docking facilities, as well as the limited amount of marine supplies (lights, flags, bolts, pumps, horns) he carried in the small store behind his office. In addition, there was a locker where he hoped to store boat covers and batteries for his customers, a men’s room and a ladies’ room, a Coke machine alongside the marina office, a machine selling block ice and ice cubes, a telephone booth, and the long repair shop with its big overhead doors where he would work on his customers’ boats. That was it. He watched it rise on the edge of the ocean with a feeling of pride and determination; he would not let this bastard life kick him around and make him the cripple he never was and never wanted to be.

Samantha came into the office the week after the new marina opened for business. It had been in construction for close to six months, but he had never seen her before, and he was surprised when she told him she lived there, fourth house on the beach, right between Stern and Ambrosini.

“I inherited it,” she said. “From my mother, when she died.” She paused. “Do you like it here?”

“Yes,” he said. “Very much.”

“So do I.” She paused. “I’ve got ten cats,” she said. “I have to feed them every day of the week, twice a day. I’m running out of money.” She paused again. “I need a job.”

“I can’t hire anybody right now,” Luke said.

“I wouldn’t expect you to pay me much in the beginning.”

“I couldn’t pay you anything.”

“Okay,” she said. “It’s a deal.”

“Look, Miss...”

“Watts,” she supplied. “Sam. Well, really Samantha.”

“I just don’t need any help.”

“If you start getting customers, you will.”

“I haven’t got a single boat yet.”

“You’ll get them. It’ll be too late then to set up an office system.”

“What do you know about office systems?”

“I used to work for a savings and loan company in St. Pete before my mother died.” She paused. “I know how to run an office. Also, I know most of the boat captains in the area. Once you get going, you’ll need charter boats for fishing parties.”

“Maybe, but—”

“Try me,” Samantha said.

She began work the following Monday, answering mail and telephone, getting out circulars, soliciting customers, contacting boat captains, talking to salesmen. She knew boats. She could discuss them intelligently and affectionately. She harassed and badgered and cajoled all the captains in the area, until she finally succeeded in lining up a dozen of them who agreed to carry charter parties for Luke, giving him first call over the marinas on the bigger islands. She talked to fishermen, learning where the fish were running best and then passing on the information to marina customers. She was tightfisted with money; she constantly argued with salesmen about the price of canvas, or varnish, or block ice. Attractive but not beautiful, she did not scare away the customers’ wives. Instead they enjoyed stopping by the office to ask her about the shops in Key West or Miami, or sometimes to have a glass of iced tea with her, away from boats and the stink of fish. She worked hard in those early days of the business — but more than that, she set a tone of relaxed efficiency that colored the entire operation and was in no small way responsible for its success.

Accepting Samantha on her own terms, of course, was certainly simpler than any attempt to know her as a complex woman would have been. She ran the marina for Luke, and she did it easily and efficiently. He never questioned her about herself. Their relationship was pleasant and businesslike. In February of 1962, some five months after she began working for him, he found himself involved in a way he had neither anticipated nor desired.

The last fishing party had come in at about nine o’clock that night and had paid Luke for the charter boat. He had squared it away with the captain — a one-eyed man who lived on Ramrod and had miraculously escaped being called Popeye — and then, because it was late and because both he and Samantha were exhausted after a long day, he asked her if she would like a drink before she left. He felt a slight pang the moment the words left his lips, as though this puncturing of their businesslike understanding would inescapably lead to complications.

“I’d love one,” Samantha said, and she looked at him steadily and lingeringly, with much the same expression that had been on her face the day she applied for the job and told him she had ten cats to feed.

They drank a great deal that night, and they talked a great deal. They talked in the small marina office, Luke with his feet up on the desk, Samantha curled up opposite him in the battered leather chair that was a survivor of the marina in Islamorada. She spoke softly and easily, the way she seemed to do everything, and he listened to her with growing interest, filling their glasses, watching her intently. She had been married when she was eighteen, she told him, to a man who ran a seaquarium just outside St. Pete. That was where she was born, that was where she had lived most of her life until her mother bought the house down here in Ocho Puertos. He was a very nice man, her husband, older than she; she always seemed to go for older men. She supposed that was because her father died when she was seventeen — Electra and all that jazz, you know. She looked up at Luke and smiled wanly, and then sipped her drink and leaned her head against the side of the chair, burnished blond against black leather. She did not know whether the marriage had been a good one or not, she said. It had seemed very good to her, but that was because she had loved him so much — he had a mustache, one of those very black handlebar things; he took great pride in his mustache.

He had left her when she was twenty-two years old. There was a water ballet company — you know, aquacade swimmers — and he told Sam he had fallen in love with one of the girls in the company. Sam looked her up one day; she was a very pretty little thing with good legs, a swimmer’s legs. Her husband sold the seaquarium to a man from Texas, and left with the swimmer a week after the divorce was final. She had never seen him since. She heard once that he was running a sideshow at the Seattle Fair, but she was not sure it was true.

He had left her five years ago, and she had lived with her mother until two summers ago, when her mother died of cancer. So here she was, a divorced lady of property — she looked up and smiled wanly again — living on the edge of the world “with ten cats, ten, count them.”

She sipped her drink. The ice rattled in her glass.

Without looking at him she said, “I’m very lonely, Luke. I’m so very goddamn lonely,” and began crying.

They made love in his room behind the marina office. He could remember everything they did together, could remember the taste of her mouth, and the softness of her hair, and the gentle sound of her weeping.

He could also remember telling her he loved her.

The telephone rang.

It was seven twenty-five.

Jason lifted the receiver.

“Costigan’s Marina,” he said, and waited. “This is Jason.”

Luke, sitting behind the desk, caught his breath. She’s all right, he told himself; don’t worry about her, she’s all right. He found himself staring at Jason’s shoes, tracing the crisscrossed ladder pattern of his brown shoelaces, and then the knot at the top of each shoe, and then the pale tan socks Jason was wearing. She’s all right, he thought.

“What? What do you mean?” Jason said.

There was, in the next ten seconds, an eternity of time during which Luke felt as though he were sliding toward a black uncertain abyss.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Jason said. “Sy, don’t give me stupid answers.” He paused. “Let’s start from the beginning, right? Did you go into the bedroom? Fine. Was the bed slept in? Fine. Then she was there last night, is that right? Right. Did you and Chuck go through the whole house? You did. And she’s not there. Was her boat at the dock?”

Jason was waiting. Luke, watching him, felt suddenly relieved. It was entirely possible that Samantha

“Sy, was her boat at the dock?” Jason repeated. “What? You what?”

It seemed to Luke in that moment that Jason would tear the phone from its wire and hurl it against the wall. His face went white and his grip tightened on the receiver, and he began trembling with the sheer physical exertion of controlling himself. Very quietly, as though forcing himself to be gentle, as though he would explode into a hundred flying fragments if he did not speak softly, he said, “Well, Sy, suppose you just go out and take a look at the dock now, huh? Would you do that for me? Go ahead, I’ll wait.”

He stood beside the desk with the phone pressed to his ear, waiting. Benny and Willy watched him silently. The fifth man in the room, who was thus far nameless to Luke, continued leaning against the filing cabinets with his eyes closed, as though he were asleep. Patiently Jason waited. At last he said, “Hello, yes, what did you find?” He listened carefully, and then looked up at the clock. “Any sign of her out on the water?” he asked. “Mmm,” he said. He looked at the clock again. “Mmmm. Well, you just sit there on that dock and call me the minute you’ve got her. Right.” He put the phone back onto its cradle.

“What is it?” Benny asked.

“The Watts girl. She must be out on the water. We’ll have to wait till she gets back.”

Benny looked at the clock. “It’s almost seven-thirty, Jase.”

“I know what time it is.”

“Three more calls and the check-ins are done.”

“I know that.”

“When will you call Fatboy?”

“As soon as we get the girl.”

“When’ll that be? She might stay out there all day. Maybe she took the boat out for a long trip. How do we know? She can be heading for Miami for all we know.”

“All she has is a fiber glass outboard,” Jason said. “I don’t think she’d head for Miami in it, not with the possibility of a hurricane coming.”

Benny still seemed concerned. He was obviously a worrier, and Jason was obviously used to his fretting. “Maybe we ought to call Fatboy anyway,” he said. “As soon as all the others report.”

“No,” Jason said. “Not if there’s the possibility of trouble here.”

“Do you think there is the possibility of trouble, Jase?”

“Well, the girl’s out on the water there someplace,” Jason said gently, “and until she’s in our pocket, we haven’t got the town. Until we have the town, Benny, why yes, I think there’s the possibility of trouble, yes.”

The telephone rang.

The clock read seven-thirty.

“Costigan’s Marina,” Jason said. “Yes, this is Jason. Right,” he said, “right. You just keep him happy there.” He hung up. “Ambrosini,” he said to Benny, “secured.” And Benny marked the chart.

Luke watched him. Something was beginning to bother him about that chart. He did not know quite what, but something was wrong with it. The something that was wrong had to do with the fact that Samantha was not in her house, where these men had obviously expected to find her, but was instead out on the water. He began to worry about how they would treat her when she pulled up to the dock. These men were armed; they might react badly to an unexpected situation.

“Got it all doped out, Costigan?” Jason said, and smiled.

“Not yet,” Luke answered.

“Give it time,” Jason said, but offered no explanation.

At seven thirty-five a call came telling Jason that the Hannigan house was secured. As Benny put his check mark in the 735 column, Luke looked at the chart again, and again wondered what was wrong with it. He was beginning to suspect that he had really discovered nothing peculiar about the chart, but was instead playing an intellectual guessing game designed to take his mind off Samantha. The possibility of Jason’s men harming her seemed extremely remote, and yet he felt anxiety gnawing inside him, felt a premonition of dread that terrified him.

At seven-forty the last of what Benny had labeled “the checkins” came through. Jason picked up the phone and said, “Costigan’s Marina,” and waited, and then said, “Hello, Coop, how’d it go? Yes, everything here is under control.” He listened. “All right, tell Leonard to bring them over. What?” He paused, listening again. “Well, that’s a surprise, isn’t it? We’re getting all kinds of surprises this morning. Well, you bring them over, too. Right.” He put the receiver down and turned to Benny. “That was Coop over at the Tannenbaum house. It’s secured. You can check it off.”

“What was all that other stuff?” Benny asked.

“Oh, unexpected company,” Jason said. “The doctor’s son and daughter-in-law are visiting him.”

“How come we didn’t know that?”

“They only got here yesterday,” Jason said, and it was then that Luke realized what was wrong with the chart. He was glad the telephone rang in that moment because he was sure his sudden knowledge showed immediately on his face. And then he realized this call could be about Samantha, and he gripped the edge of the desk as Jason lifted the receiver.

“Costigan’s Marina.” He paused. “Yes, Sy. Yes. All right, Sy. Bring her here. We’d better keep a close watch on her.” He hung up. “The Watts girl,” he said to Benny.

“Is she all right?” Luke asked suddenly.

“She’s fine,” Jason said briefly. He turned to Benny. “The house is secured. You can check it off.”

Benny sighed deeply, relieved. “Then that’s everybody,” he said.

“That’s everybody,” Jason answered.

Luke, sitting behind the desk, said nothing.

There was no listing on Jason Trench’s chart for the Westerfield house across the main road. At four-thirty this morning, when he had begun moving his boats, a light was burning in the upstairs bedroom of that house.

4

The telephone rang in the Key West motel room at exactly seven forty-five. Fatboy, who was dressed and waiting by the phone, lifted it from the receiver at once and said, “Hello?”

“Arthur?”

“Yeah.”

“This is Jason.”

“Yeah?”

“We’ve got it. You can move out.”

“Okay,” Fatboy said, and hung up. He looked across the room to where Andy was studying him with a quizzical expression. “Jason,” he said, nodding assurance. “They’ve got it. We’re to move out.”

“Good,” Andy said, and rubbed his hands together briskly.

“Put the bags in the car,” Fatboy said. “I’ll contact the others.”

“This is good,” Andy said again. “It’s good, ain’t it, Fatboy?”

“I knew they’d do it,” Fatboy said.

“So did I. But... well... things can go wrong, you know that.”

“Not when Jason is doing the planning. Come on, we’ve got to move.”

“Yeah,” Andy said, and he grinned and went into the bathroom.

Fatboy stood by the telephone with his hand on the receiver, motionless, knowing he should make the call to Fortunato, and yet delaying the call, savoring this moment of satisfaction.

His small black eyes were sparkling. He was pleased by the knowledge he now possessed, the fact that Ocho Puertos was in Jason’s hands, and that he and the others could now proceed there from Key West where they had been since last Monday. But he had expected Jason to take the town all along, and he knew this did not account for the major portion of his pleasure. The pleasure was something that went much deeper than the surface accomplishment of Jason’s capturing the town, deeper perhaps than the magnitude of the entire scheme. The pleasure went back as far as 1945, when Fatboy was the only one who had had the sense to lie, the only one who had known instinctively that a careful trap was being set, and that to tell the truth would be dangerous to Jason’s well-being. He had known at once that the questions were being framed to elicit a denial — “You were gambling, weren’t you? There was a big game, wasn’t there?” Every instinct for self-preservation had urged him to shout, “No, sir, we were not gambling,” and then he recognized the trap. That was what they wanted from him, a denial. He was too smart for that. He told them there had been a game, when of course there had not, told them further that it was a high-stakes game, corroborated every lie Jason had previously told — not that it made any difference in the end. But there had been pleasure in knowing he had come to Jason’s assistance, even if he had not been able to save him.

Arthur Stuart Hazlitt had been called Fatboy since the time he was nine years old. In the summer of 1961, when Jason called him from New York City, he said, “Hello, Arthur, how are you?” using Fatboy’s real name, the way he had done from the day they met.

Fatboy smiled. “I’m fine,” he said. “How’re you, Jase?”

They exchanged the amenities, how’s your mother, fine, how’s Annabelle, fine, what kind of work are you doing, all that, and then they reminisced a little, and then there was a long pause. Jason cleared his throat.

“Arthur, can you come to New York?” he asked.

“What for?”

“I need your help.”

“Are you in trouble?”

“No. But I need your help.”

“With what?”

“A plan. I’d appreciate it if you could come, Arthur. I hope to call Alex and the others, but I wanted to talk to you about it first. You’re the first one I’ve called.”

“Well, I certainly—”

“Arthur? Can you come?”

“Well... well, what’s it for, Jase?”

“It’s for America,” Jason said.

There was a silence on the phone.

“I’m not sure I know what that means,” Fatboy said.

“I can’t say more than that on the phone.”

“Well, this... uh... this sounds pretty important,” Fatboy said.

“It is.”

“When... when did you want me to come, Jase?”

“Now. Today.”

“I’ve got a job, Jase. I can’t just—”

“Then come Friday night and stay for the weekend. We can talk about it over the weekend.”

“I’ll see if my mother—”

“I’d rather you didn’t tell her anything about this,” Jason said, and the line went silent again.

“All right,” Fatboy said at last. “I’ll come.”

In the Second Avenue apartment that Friday night, Jason outlined the plan to him. It was not a polished plan at the time; it was instead nothing more than the most rudimentary of schemes, with none of the details worked out. They would need a town, yes, that was apparent, someplace to effect the transfer, but Jason knew only that it should be somewhere in Florida; more than that he had not planned. Fatboy suggested that the Florida Keys might serve their purposes, making his suggestion even before he was completely convinced he wanted to throw in with Jason. Jason said yes, the Keys might be a good place for them, and Fatboy said they could even use one of the uninhabited Keys, hell, there were probably a dozen uninhabited Keys down there. No, Jason said, we need someplace to keep the men, you see; we can’t just have them roaming around loose in broad daylight after the transfer is made. That’s right, Fatboy said, we need a place with buildings, don’t we, someplace we can keep them, that’s right. That’s right, Jason said, but I’m sure we can find the place down there, the Keys might just be the right place for us, I’m not sure yet, it would have to be investigated. Oh, sure, it would have to be investigated, Fatboy said, still not knowing if he wanted to go along with Jason or not, liking Jason a hell of a lot, and respecting him, but not knowing if he wanted to risk, well, his life on a scheme like this one.

He decided to throw in with Jason the next night.

That Saturday night they began by talking about the old days, and the things they had done together, and then Jason started telling him what he had been doing since they had last seen each other in 1946. He had gone back to New Orleans, of course, because that was his home town and that was where Annabelle was waiting for him. He had a college degree, a bachelor of science from the University of Louisiana, well, Arthur knew that (Yes, I knew that, Fatboy said), and he was a trained mechanical engineer, but after what had happened (Well, that, Fatboy said) he didn’t much feel like taking a job working for anybody. He felt there were more important things to be done in the world — here, have some more of this bourbon. (Thanks, Fatboy said.) What he had done was join a volunteer group that called itself The Sons of American Freedom, which he later found out was a racist group, not that he much gave a damn one way or the other. The war had been over for more than a year when Jason joined the group, which was at the time agitating for death sentences for the Nazi war criminals. This was in July or thereabouts, not too long after Lieutenant General Homma, the Jap who had ordered the Bataan death march, was executed, so the group felt it had a precedent and they were running around handing out leaflets and making speeches, while also rousing out a few niggers every now and then, but that was more or less kidding around and the war criminals thing was the important issue. After the verdict came in October, the group got down to its major business, which was keeping the nigger in his place in Louisiana, and a couple of months later fighting broke out in Indochina between the French and the Reds, and it was then that Jason realized just how vast and unrelenting the Communist conspiracy was. He broke with The Sons of American Freedom and joined a group that called itself The Indochinese Assistance Committee, ICAC, which was mostly a fund-raising group, though they did put out some pamphlets that tried to explain what was behind all the fighting in Indochina. Luckily, he had managed to save a little money, plus what he could steal, huh? (and Fatboy laughed here) so he was able to devote almost all of his time to these various committees and organizations, moving from one group to another as the dangers presented themselves: the Communist seizure of power in Czechoslovakia, for example, and the Russians stopping traffic between Berlin and the Western occupation zones in June of 1948, and the Russian veto of an atomic control plan in that same month, and the sentencing of Cardinal Mindszenty to life imprisonment in Hungary, and the revelation by President Truman in September of 1949 that Russia had set off an atomic explosion. That was it, that was when the danger really became clear and present, that was when the Commies were ready to clear the decks for the Korean invasion in 1950, nothing could stop them now, they had the goddamn bomb and nothing could stop them.

Fortunately for this country, there were men around who recognized the danger immediately and who tried to do something about it. In October of 1949, a month after the Russians set off their bomb, Jason organized a group called The McCarthy Men, which independently tried to assist the Wisconsin senator in his early battle against subversive forces within the United States. He went to New York with Annabelle not three months later, in early January of 1950, where he formed a new group called Americans for America, figuring he could distribute his energies more liberally without an organization name that linked him to any single person. Actually, he was ready to assume a leadership of his own at that time, and did not want to seem a follower of anyone, even someone he respected as much as McCarthy. In April of 1950, he had a run-in with the police in New York when he and his new group — there were half a dozen members at the time, including himself and Annabelle — picketed a pro-fascist play with a Japanese leading man, and he was forced to reorganize again in September of that year, with new people — well, Arthur got the picture, didn’t he? It was a constant battle, a constant effort to be heard against the complacent idiots in this country who were unwilling to recognize the fact that Russia was nibbling away at the world, piece by tiny piece, nibbling up the world while it talked of coexistence with a full mouth, swallowing countries or pieces of countries one by one, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, North Korea, North Vietnam, Cuba, half the goddamn new African nations.

“Where does it end, Arthur? Where does it end?”

“I don’t know,” Fatboy said. “Where does it end, Jason?”

“Arthur,” Jason said, “I love this country. I want this country to survive.”

“I do, too.”

“What’s there in the world for men like us, Arthur?”

“What do you mean?”

“What is there for us, unless we make it ourselves?”

“Ourselves,” Fatboy repeated softly.

“Yes.” Jason paused. “Ourselves.” He paused again. “I want action, Arthur. I’m tired of leading groups of mealymouthed malcontents who think we’re agitating for free love or folk singing. We are agitating for a stronger America, the America we fought for, Arthur, the America we risked our lives for. Is all that going to go down the drain? Was all that for nothing? Arthur, I need your help. Say you’ll help me. Say you’ll join me in what can only be a glorious day for America, for our country.”

Fatboy nodded.

“I’ll join you,” he had said. “I’ll help you.”

He picked up the telephone now. He had been the first one Jason called in September of 1961, and he was the first one to be called today, and the knowledge that he was so respected, so trusted, so necessary to the plan, filled him with a pleasure that was almost a religious glow. Quickly he dialed the number of the Magnolia Motel on Simonton Street and asked to talk to Mr. Fortunato. They rang the room and Fatboy said, “Sal?”

“This is Sal,” Fortunato answered.

“Fatboy. We roll.”

“Check,” Fortunato said, and hung up.

Andy came out of the bathroom with two small overnight bags. He waited until Fatboy hung up, and then said, “You leave a toothbrush or anything in the medicine chest?”

“No.”

“Nothing?”

“No.”

“Okay,” Andy said, and went out.

Fatboy dialed the number of the Waterview Motel on Pearl Street. When Rodiz came onto the line, he said, “Rafe?”

“Yes?” Rodiz answered.

“Fatboy.”

“Yes?”

“We roll.”

“Comprendo,” Rodiz said, and hung up. He sat looking at the telephone for just a moment, and then he grinned and rose and walked swiftly to the dresser on the other side of the room, tapped his zippered overnight bag with the palm of his hand, and then called to the bathroom, “Eugene, hurry up. That was Fatboy. We roll.”

There were mornings when everything just went wrong, and it was on those mornings that Amos Carter figured it was a pretty goddamn sorry mess when a Negro found himself living in Monroe County, Florida, just a stone’s throw from Dade County, with a name like Amos to boot, so that every comedian who walked into the diner could say, “Hey there, Amos, where’s Andy?” Very funny, and usually he would reply, “Out back with the Kingfish,” but that was only on days when he was feeling some sort of self-respect as a human being, and could take jokes from white men. On the mornings when everything went wrong, he did not choose to take either jokes or crap from any white man walking the face of the earth, and this Sunday morning was one of those mornings.

It had started with Abby bugging him again about how come he didn’t go to church any more. He had tried to explain to Abby that he had to be at the diner at eight o’clock on Sunday mornings to get the stoves going before Mr. Parch came in at eight-thirty. Abby told him there was a seven o’clock Mass over to the church on Big Pine, and Amos told her that was a white man’s church, and he didn’t want to start his Sunday by having trouble with white men. You afraid of white men? Abby had asked, which had started him off just fine because he wasn’t afraid of no damn white man walking the face of the earth, and yet he was scared to death of every damn white man he’d ever met. But he didn’t like no skinny little girl with her hair all wrapped up in rags to go reminding him about it. She had told him to fetch his own breakfast after he’d given her a clout on the ear, and then he’d burned his damn hand lighting the wood stove, and had left the house without having no breakfast at all, figuring he’d get to the diner just a little early and mix himself a batch of eggs.

Now here he was on Ocho Puertos Key at five minutes to eight o’clock, and there was a goddamn roadblock telling him the road to the diner was closed for repairs. Now, when the hell had they put that damn thing up? He sat looking at the barricade for several moments in silent disbelief, knowing it had not been there last night when he left the diner at six o’clock, and knowing today was Sunday when road gangs didn’t ordinarily work, so how had the barricade got there and what purpose did it serve? Amos scratched his head and got out of the car and walked over to the barricade and studied the sign solemnly, as though suspecting Allen Funt was lurking in the mangroves with his crew and his cameras, ready to pop out and tell Amos this was all a joke. But Allen Funt didn’t pop out, so Amos figured the roadblock was real enough. He looked down the road past the barricade and saw no work gang in sight, but that didn’t necessarily mean they couldn’t be working just out of sight around the bend. Then, because this was only another nuisance on a morning when everything seemed to be going wrong, Amos did a very brave thing for a Negro living in the state of Florida. He moved the barricade to the side of the road, got back into his 1952 Plymouth, drove onto S-811, stopped the car, got out again, and then moved the barricade back where he had found it. You go to hell, he thought, you and your goddamn roadblock; and he got back into the car and drove directly to the diner.

He parked the car behind the diner, facing the beach, and then he walked to the back door, and the first thing he noticed was that one of the garbage cans was not where it was supposed to be. Somebody had moved it closer to the door. He picked up the can and moved it back with the others and was reaching into his pocket for his key when he noticed the scraps of wire lying on the ground near the door. Some of the wires were red and some were yellow, and he could not figure what the hell they were from, unless the telephone company had been here to make some repairs. Seemed like everybody in the world was out making repairs this Sunday, or leastwise putting up signs saying they was making repairs, though he sure as hell hadn’t seen nobody making any, that was for sure.

He was inserting his key in the lock when the door opened.

“Come on in,” the white man said, and Amos took one look at the .45 in his hand and decided three things in as many seconds. He decided to punch the white man right in the mouth because nobody walking the face of the earth was going to push him around this morning when everything else was going wrong; he decided to turn and run like hell before this sonofabitch white man put a bullet in his head; he decided to be sensible and go into the diner, just like the white man with the .45 had suggested.

“Come on, nigger,” the white man said. “I got a itchy finger here.”

Amos, his heart pounding furiously inside his chest, squeezed his eyes shut for just an instant, and then went into the diner.

Ginny woke up at eight-fifteen and, as seemed to be the case more and more often these days, did not know at first where she was. Boston, Norfolk, Baltimore, where? And then she remembered that this was Big Pine, and she rubbed her eyes and wondered why she hadn’t heard the alarm, and then looked at the clock and saw what time it was. Oh my God, she thought, eight-fifteen! Why hadn’t the alarm gone off, or had she even bothered to set it last night? Oh brother, Mr. Parch would take a fit when she walked in. She was supposed to be there at eight o’clock. What was wrong with that darned clock, anyway? She picked it up in both hands and held it close to her face, like a jeweler giving it a checkup, and saw that she had indeed set the alarm for ten minutes after seven, and that she had pulled out the little button on the back of the clock just the way you were supposed to. Oh, brother. She wanted a cigarette.

She got out of bed and walked to the dresser where she had put her bag and her earrings and the nice pin with the turtle on it last night when she’d come in with the fellow from Sugarloaf who started to get fresh the minute he was in the room. Some men were that way; they saw a woman thirty, thirty-five years old and on her own, right away they figured, well, what the hell. Where were the cigarettes?

She found the package — only one left in it, she’d have to get some more at the diner — and she lighted the cigarette and then crumpled the package in her hand and threw it at the wastebasket near the easy chair, missing, and then walked barefoot to the bathroom and looked at her face in the mirror and went “Blaaaah” to herself, and then sat down to smoke the cigarette. She was wearing a shorty nightgown, and she still had good legs at forty-two years old which was what she was, and her breasts were still full, though somewhat pendulous or, to be downright honest with herself, sagging, okay? She took a last drag on the cigarette, rose, and threw it into the toilet bowl. Sagging breasts, she repeated to herself, as if repetition would remove the curse. But good legs, so drop dead, mister.

I’d better call the diner, she thought, tell Amos I’m gonna be a little late.

She went out of the bathroom and to the easy chair over which she had draped her clothes last night after the octopus had decided to leave. The phone rested on a battered end table alongside the easy chair, which was pretty battered itself, but which was as comfortable as an old shoe, if you enjoyed sitting in old shoes. She sat and felt one of the springs poking her in the behind (I wonder if I should have let him, she thought) and she adjusted her bottom and then pulled the phone to her and thought for a moment about the number of the diner, not having really forgotten it, but not remembering it offhand either. She puffed her cheeks out as she thought, letting her breath escape in a slow steady phwwwwh, and then nodded as the number came to mind. She dialed slowly, not wanting to make any mistakes; if there was one thing she hated it was dialing a number twice because she’d made a mistake the first time. She could have let him, she supposed, but what the hell was the percentage? He was a salesman on his way down to Key West. What was in it for her? What was she supposed to be, a free soup kitchen for every bum who staggered through? Yeah, well, never mind that jazz; she’d been had by enough salesmen all up and down the Eastern Seaboard, and there was no percentage in it, no percentage at all, half of them left you hanging anyway. The only decent one had been the guy in Richmond, and he turned out to be married, so what was the.

“Hello?” the voice said.

For a moment she thought she had dialed the wrong number. She looked at the dial and grimaced and then jerked the receiver away from her ear and studied it as though it had played a horrible trick on her.

“Hello,” the voice said again.

She put the phone back to her ear. “Who’s this?” she asked, frowning.

“Johnny,” the voice said.

“I must have the wrong number,” she said.

“What number did you want?”

“Listen, is this the diner?”

“That’s right.”

“The Ocho Puertos Diner?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, who are you?”

“You don’t know me.”

“Where’s Amos?”

“Out back.”

“Is Mr. Parch there?”

“No, he hasn’t come in yet.”

“Well, this is Ginny McNeil,” she said, and paused. “I work there.”

“Okay, Ginny.”

“My alarm didn’t go off this morning, so I’m gonna be a little late. Would you tell Amos to tell Mr. Parch?”

“What time did you plan on getting here, Ginny?”

“Well...” She looked across the room to where the clock was resting. “It’s almost eight-thirty. I guess I’ll be in around nine, okay? Would you tell Amos?”

“Sure, Ginny.”

“Or maybe a little later. Maybe nine-thirty. Yeah, I still have to get dressed and all. Nine-thirty, okay? Tell Amos.”

“I’ll tell him as soon as he gets back.”

“Thanks,” Ginny said, and hung up.

She was taking off her nightgown when she suddenly wondered how this Johnny guy, whoever he was, had managed to get into the diner when the diner didn’t open until nine o’clock on Sundays, and here it was only eight-thirty, not even.

Well, what the hell, she thought. One of life’s little mysteries. She shrugged, and then picked up her underclothing from the chair.

5

Luke Costigan’s pier came out of the Atlantic Ocean like the shaft of a primitive arrow, its triangular head formed by the three buildings of the marina — the storage locker, the shop, and the office. Of these three buildings, the office was the smallest and farthest inland, the tip of the arrow. On the left of the office, facing the ocean, was the windowless storage locker. On the right, also facing the ocean, was the repair shop.

The repair shop was built of plywood with a corrugated metal roof and two huge overhead doors on its seaward side. The building was some seventy-five feet long and forty feet wide, with a door at one end, just beyond the spar rack holding small masts and riggings. The door was marked NO ADMITTANCE, and it opened on the joiner’s shop where Luke and Bobby (and any extra help Luke hired from time to time) did their carpentry work. There was a keyboard just inside the door, containing tagged keys for all the boats in the marina and, to the right of that, shelves containing shafts, and rudders, and gaskets, and other boat parts. Scattered throughout the room were an electric saw, a planer, a sander, and a drill press. The room behind the joiner’s shop was called the engine room, and it was here that Luke and whatever local mechanics he could get worked on inboard engines needing repair. The room was lined with benches containing tools and parts. More often than not, an engine would be hanging from the chain hoist in the center of the room. Along one wall was a spark plug tester, an air compressor that belonged to a mechanic on Saddlebunch, and a part-washing tank.

A half wall, plywood, with wire mesh spreading from the top of it to a beam in the ceiling, divided this section of the shop from the larger section beyond. Luke called that area the paint shop, although more than painting was done there. The overhead doors opening into the paint shop admitted boats up to thirty feet in length, for repairs on their bottoms, for new shafts or propellers, for any job that could not be handled in the water. In addition, the shop doubled as a repair shop for outboard motors and contained a tank for testing. The area was usually cluttered with motors on racks or lying on the concrete floor, with sawhorses and cartons of empty oilcans, with paint cans and bottles of thinner on open shelves, with greasy coveralls hanging on pegs, with empty Coke bottles rolled under worktables, with idle cradles. The carpentry shop was certainly the cleaner of the two, with its smell of sawdust and its feeling of electrical efficiency.

There were eight people in the paint shop section of the building when Willy took Luke over there at rifle point.

Jason had made a call to Key West, first turning to Luke and saying, “You won’t mind if we make a long distance call, right?” and then immediately asking the operator for the number. When he reached his party, all he had said was “Arthur?” (Pause) “This is Jason.” (Pause) “We’ve got it. You can move out.” And hung up. Whoever Arthur was, Luke surmised he was (a) not overly talkative, and (b) capable of understanding the tersest sort of directions from his leader. Obviously, he was in Key West. Apparently, he was now about to move out of Key West. Seemingly, if Luke’s speculations were correct, he would be heading toward Ocho Puertos; otherwise, why had Benny and Jason been so concerned about not having control of the entire town before placing their call to him?

Jason, observing the furrow on Luke’s forehead, perhaps reasoning that Luke was doing a little too much reasoning of his own, had said to Willy, the one with the scraggly blond mustache, “Take Mr. Costigan over with the others, huh, Willy?”

Willy had grunted and shifted his rifle to a sort of overly smart military ready position and then said, “Yezgo, Costigan.”

Luke got to his feet and limped toward the door, and then stopped just before opening it and turned toward Jason and smiled and said, “Sure you can manage here without me?”

He could not have explained why he had felt the need for some rapport with this man, why he had felt the need for an exchange of wisecracks at this point. But he knew he was totally unprepared for what followed next.

Jason turned from the phone lazily, and looked at Luke steadily, no trace of a smile on his mouth. “I don’t think we need a cripple hanging around, Mr. Costigan,” he said, and continued to stare at him without smiling. Luke returned the stare, the smile frozen on his lips, his face gone suddenly pale. He opened the inside door and then the screen door and then limped out of the office with Willy following him. They walked in silence to the repair shop. Luke seemed to be favoring his good leg more than he ever had before.

Willy jabbed the Springfield into his back.

“Inside,” he said, and opened the door marked NO ADMITTANCE at the western end of the building. They walked past the power tools and through the opening in the plywood-wire-mesh wall into the paint shop. The first person Luke saw was Samantha sitting across the shop on the edge of an empty cradle. He almost went directly to her, but something warned him that secrets were valuable here, and that a hoarded treasure could conceivably be something to spend later in the day. Sam seemed to recognize his masquerade and made no gesture or movement toward him. She continued sitting on the cradle’s edge as Willy came into the room and again poked the rifle barrel into Luke’s back. Luke turned and said, “Sonny, don’t do that.”

“What?” Willy said.

“I said don’t do that.”

“You’re telling me what to do, Costigan?” Willy asked incredulously.

“Lay off, Willy,” a Negro standing near the cradled speedboat on the far end of the shop said. He was a big man with immense hands and a bullet-shaped head. There was a scar across his nose, and his eyes were bloodshot, and he seemed capable of lifting the speedboat over his head and hurling it clear across the shop and into the Atlantic.

“You hear what he said to me, Harry?” Willy asked.

“Maybe he don’t like you poking that gun in his back when there ain’t no reason for it,” Harry answered.

The two men stood staring at each other for a moment, Willy seemingly searching for a rejoinder, and Harry waiting for him to reply so he could cut him down again. There was no love lost between them, Luke realized, and wondered immediately how he could use their animosity.

The door at the far end of the shop was opening again.

A small, skinny Negro, perhaps forty years of age, came into the paint shop, followed by a white man holding a rifle.

“Hey, what you got there, Mac?” Willy said.

“Oh, he just wandered into the diner,” Mac said, grinning. “Ain’t that right, Amos?”

“Hey, Amos,” Willy said, “where you got Andy hiding?”

Luke glanced first at Amos, saw the deep look of hatred that flared in his eyes, and then glanced quickly to where Harry stood.

Harry smiled. “Aren’t you gonna say hello to him, Mr. Costigan?” he asked.

“Say hello to who?”

“Mr. Costigan,” Harry said chidingly, “we been casing this town for a long time now. We know exactly who’s who, and who knows who, and even who’s sleeping with who, so don’t give us no snow job, huh? Say hello to Amos and then go on over there and sit with your girl.”

Luke hesitated, and then sighed. “Hello, Amos,” he said.

“Hello, Luke,” Amos replied, and then wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and looked around the room nervously.

Harry turned to Willy. “You supposed to stay here?” he asked.

“What?” Willy said.

“Did Jason tell you to stay here or what?”

“He told me to bring Costigan over.”

“And stay?”

“He didn’t say nothing about staying or anything.”

“Then why don’t you shove off? Clyde and me can take care of this detail.”

“Where you want me to go?” Willy asked.

“Didn’t you have a house assigned to you?”

“Sure,” Willy said, and made a short awkward gesture with his head. “The Stem house, up the beach.”

“Then why don’t you go there?” Harry suggested.

Willy wet his lips. “You think I ought to?” he asked. “Flack’s up there, you know.”

“Supposed to be two in each house, ain’t there?” Harry said.

“Well, yeah, but—”

“Then go on up there. I mean, Jason didn’t tell you to stay here, did he?”

“No, he just told me to bring Costigan over, like I done.”

“Then go on. We got this wrapped up here.”

“Okay, whatever you say,” Willy said, and shrugged and walked to the door. At the door he stopped, turned toward Harry, and asked, “You sure now?”

“What’s the matter with you?” Harry asked suddenly.

“Nothing,” Willy said. “Nothing.” He went out.

“I’m gonna head back to the diner myself,” Mac said. “Johnny’s there all alone.”

“Okay,” Harry said. “Thanks.” He watched as Mac went out, and then he turned to the others and said, “Let’s get some kind of order in here. I guess you’ve all made a count by now and decided there’s only me and Clyde here to watch over you, which makes it odds of four to one against us.” Harry grinned. “These rifles sort of tilt the odds our way, though, and I want to tell you we’re both pretty good shots and have orders to kill anybody who tries to get out of here.” Harry paused to let this sink in. His eyes met with Amos’s across the room, and he suddenly said, “Something troubling you, mister?”

For a second only, Amos seemed not to realize he was being addressed. It was almost as though he was certain the color of his skin would provide immunity from someone who — like himself — was black. But Harry had indeed addressed him, and he looked up at him blankly now, his eyes wide, a dumbfounded expression on his face.

“You hear me?” Harry said.

“You talking to me?”

“I’m looking straight at you, ain’t I?”

“Nothing’s troubling me,” Amos said briefly.

“You looked like something fierce was biting on your behind,” Harry said, and laughed. Clyde burst into laughter at the same moment. Amos, watching them, saw a Negro like himself laughing at him. Worse, he was laughing with a white man.

“Yessir, orders to kill,” Harry said when his laughter had subsided. “Everybody got that?”

Nobody said anything.

“Mr. Costigan? You got that?”

Luke nodded.

“Reason I’m asking you, Mr. Costigan, is because just a minute ago you made believe you didn’t know our colored friend there” — and he indicated Amos with a sideward flick of his eyes — “which makes me think you might be hatching some plans inside that head of yours.” Harry smiled pleasantly. “Forget them, Mr. Costigan. Take the advice of somebody who knows. You got any notion of busting out of here, forget it now. Right, Clyde?”

Clyde nodded and laughed again, plainly tickled by just about everything Harry had to say. Harry, mindful of such an appreciative audience, seemed to deliver each word with one eye on Clyde and the other on Amos, as though challenging Amos to elicit the same respectful laughter from a white man. Amos, instead, eyed him dourly from the opposite side of the shop.

“Anyway, eight people is a little unweedly,” Harry said, “so I’m gonna separate you in groups of twos. How’s that? Nice and cozy, right? Clyde and me here, we’ll be able to keep a better eye on you that way, and avoid any trouble in case some of you get ideas. Right, Mr. Costigan?”

“Whatever you say,” Luke answered.

“Ahh, now, there’s a smart man,” Harry said. “Whatever I say, that’s right, Mr. Costigan. Whatever I say. Okay.” He put down his rifle and looked across the room thoughtfully. “Dr. Tannenbaum,” he said, “I’m gonna pair you up with Mr. Colmore here. Is that all right with you? You know Mr. Colmore, don’t you?”

“Yes, I know him,” Tannenbaum answered. He spoke with a faint Yiddish accent, holding his head high in a manner that was intended to be dignified but succeeded only in looking comically offended.

“Then you know he’s a alcoholic, is that right, Dr. Tannenbaum?”

Tannenbaum did not answer.

Harry’s face became extremely serious. He cocked his head to one side and looked at the doctor balefully and said, “He’s not gonna be drinking none today, Dr. Tannenbaum, so maybe you’d better keep an eye on him, huh? I want you both to pull up one of those empty parts crates and sit right there near the bow of the boat, side by side, and facing me right over here. Go on.”

Bobby Colmore, picking up one of the crates from against the wall, abruptly said, “I’m not an alcoholic.”

“Yes, I know, Mr. Colmore,” Harry said. “You already told us that.”

“I drink a little,” Bobby said.

“Uh-huh.”

“But I support myself, I have my own shop right across the... right across the yard there... and I’m not an alcoholic. I’d like you to remember that.”

“Uh-huh,” Harry said.

“And I’ll thank you not to say it again.” He glanced at Marvin and his wife and said, “There are some people here I don’t know, and I wouldn’t like them to get any wrong impressions.”

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” Harry said with a mock bow, and Clyde laughed.

“And I don’t need any of your sarcasm, either,” Bobby said.

“Bobby,” Luke said gently, “do what he says.”

“I just don’t like him calling me a drunk, Luke.”

“I know.”

“He doesn’t even know me, Luke.”

“I know that.”

“Nothing gives him the right to call me a drunk.”

“You’re right, Bobby.”

“You gonna sit down now, Mr. Colmore?” Harry asked.

“Yes, you just take your goddamn time,” Bobby said. “Don’t play this so big.”

“Sure, they’re big shots,” Tannenbaum said suddenly and angrily. “He’s right, you’re making a big thing out of what? A cheap stickup? What do you want, my watch? My wife’s pearls? What? So take them and go back where you came from, go back in your sewer someplace.”

“Why, I do believe the doctor is getting angry,” Harry said, and Clyde laughed. “Doc, you just sit down there and don’t get yourself all fussed up, huh?”

“Sure, hoodlums,” Tannenbaum said, and sat on the crate alongside Bobby. “With guns, sure,” he said. “Breaking into a man’s house so his family can’t even sleep in peace.”

“Take it easy, Pop,” Marvin said.

“Don’t give me take it easy,” Tannenbaum answered.

“Pop, these men aren’t kidding around.”

“So? Am I kidding around? If they want to shoot me, then let them shoot already. I know snotnoses like them from when I was interning in one of the worst hospitals in New York. I had them come in there with guns, too.” He nodded angrily and then stood up and pointed his finger accusingly at Harry. “You don’t scare me with your guns, mister!”

“Sit down, Pop,” Marvin said.

“Sure, sit down,” Tannenbaum said, and did sit down. He glared at Harry angrily, and then looked to where his wife was watching him reproachfully. “Never mind,” he said to her, and then turned to scowl at Harry again.

“Your father’s got quite a little temper there, ain’t he, Mr. Tannenbaum?” Harry asked.

“Listen to me,” Marvin said slowly. “My father has a bad heart. That’s why he retired and came down here to Florida. I don’t want him to get excited. Can you understand that?”

“Why, sure, Mr. Tannenbaum,” Harry said, opening his eyes wide, “I can understand that. Just what is it you’d like me to do about it?”

“Just don’t provoke him, that’s all.”

“I’ll try not to,” Harry answered, and then smiled briefly, and quickly said, “You take that bench and sit over there against the doors with your mother.”

“What does he want?” Rachel Tannenbaum asked.

“Come on, Mom,” Marvin said. “Over here. Near the doors.”

“There’s a draft near the doors,” Rachel said.

“Mom, this is Florida.”

“Sure, we’ll all catch pneumonia here besides,” Rachel said, but she went to sit alongside Marvin on the bench in front of the overhead doors.

“Mr. Costigan, if you’ll carry another one of those parts crates over near the fantail of the boat, I think you and Miss Watts can sit there. Facing me, please. Good. Now, that leaves only our colored friend and the younger Mrs. Tannenbaum. Amos, you want to move over to where those outboards are standing? You see those five-gallon oil drums?”

“I see them,” Amos said.

“Good. You want to roll them over here, just about across the room from where Mr. Tannenbaum and his mother are sitting? That’ll set us up in sort of a square, huh?” Harry said. “That’ll make a real pretty pattern, huh, Clyde?”

“Mighty pretty,” Clyde said, and burst out laughing.

“I’m glad it’s so funny,” Tannenbaum said. “Everything is so funny, you ought to be in vaudeville, both of you.” He looked at his wife across the room and again said, “Never mind.”

“Pop,” Marvin said, “try to control yourself, will you?”

“You want to sit down now, Amos?” Harry said, turning toward Amos who had rolled the two oil drums over and was looking down at both of them.

“They’re dirty,” he said. “They got oil on them.”

“Oh! Oh, my!” Harry said. “Oh, my, we don’t want to get you all dirty, do we? Oh my, no!”

“We’d better do what he says,” Selma whispered.

“You’d damn well better, lady,” Harry said.

“Tough guy,” Tannenbaum said, and Harry suddenly shoved himself away from the workbench and crossed the room to where Tannenbaum and Bobby were sitting near the cradled bow of the speedboat.

“I think I’ve had about enough from you,” he said. “Just keep your mouth shut.”

“You’re not talking to a woman now,” Tannenbaum said, and he raised his hand and shook his finger at Harry.

“Put your hand down,” Harry said.

“You’re a hoodlum,” Tannenbaum answered vehemently.

“I’m a hell of a lot more than a hoodlum!” Harry said, and he slapped Tannenbaum’s hand aside. He wheeled away and strode across the room, back toward the workbench where Clyde was sitting, the rifle on his lap. He turned again to look at Tannenbaum, and again said, “A hell of a lot more than a hoodlum.” He nodded in agreement with his own words, pleased with their sound, and then — instead of walking back to the bench — began pacing the rectangular area in front of it. As he paced, he glanced in turn at each of his prisoners: Marvin and Rachel Tannenbaum who sat on a backless bench against the overhead doors on the long side of the paint shop; Luke and Samantha, who sat on an upturned crate in front of the cradled speedboat towering above them; Dr. Tannenbaum trembling in anger, sitting beside Bobby Colmore on another upturned crate near the bow of the speedboat; and Amos Carter and Selma Tannenbaum who sat on the third side of the rectangle on the oil drums Amos had dragged over. Clyde, with his gun in his lap, closed the rectangle on the fourth side.

“Okay, we had a lot of fun up to now,” Harry said, pacing. “It’s been a real laugh riot in here, but that’s all finished. I don’t want no more of that. I want everybody quiet, you hear me? We’ll be getting something for you to eat and drink from the diner in a little while, so don’t go telling me you’re hungry, and don’t go telling me what to do about heart attacks or nothing. I don’t want to hear it. You just sit there and shut up, and that’s it.”

He walked back to the workbench.

“Clyde,” he said, “shoot the first one moves.”

“Now or later?” Clyde said, grinning, and Luke had the sudden feeling he was making a grim, prophetic joke.

The seventeen men in their three cars left Key West at five-minute intervals starting at 8 A.M. There were only five men in Fatboy’s car, including himself, the extra room having been decided upon by Jason as an accommodation to Fatboy’s extreme girth. His car was the first to pull out; he called Fortunato just before he left and said, “We’re off, good luck.”

Fortunato waited five minutes and then called Rodiz. “I’m leaving now,” he said.

“Good,” Rodiz answered. “Take it easy, yes?”

Five minutes later, at eight-fifteen, Rodiz and his partner, a tall Bostonian named Eugene Miller, left the Waterview Motel. They were carrying two small overnight bags, each of which contained their toilet articles and a .38 revolver. They put the bags into the trunk of the rented car and then drove through Key West picking up their men, who had been alerted and were waiting outside their hotels and motels with similar overnight bags. They did not drive out of town — past the sign advising motorists that this was the beginning of U.S. 1 at the southernmost point of the United States of America and that the other end was up in Maine someplace — until close to eight-thirty. The men in the car, two on the front seat with Rodiz who was driving, and three more on the back seat, looked like a group of faintly bored businessmen, dressed in tropical suits of various weights and hues, wearing short-sleeved dress shirts and ties. Rodiz was the best-dressed in the lot because he had been born in a tropical climate and wore lightweight clothing with authority. He was sporting a brown Italian silk which might have been a little too heavy had the thermometer registered a bit higher that morning but which, a tribute to his weather sense, was perfect for the day. His shirt was tan, and his tie was a gold-and-brown stripe held to his shirtfront with a simple circular gold pin fashioned from an old Austrian coin. His hair was coal-black, his eyes only a shade less dark, his cheekbones high and massive like those of a San Blas Indian, the taut skin covering them the pale white of a pure Castilian. His fingers were long and thin, and he guided the rented car effortlessly, assiduously observing the speed limit as they came up Truman Avenue onto Roosevelt Boulevard to U.S. 1. The men did not seem overly tense, but they were nonetheless relieved when they moved safely out of the town, which contained too many naval installations for comfort.

It was thirty-five miles from Key West to Ocho Puertos, give or take a few hundred feet, and Jason’s instructions had been to drive slowly and safely. Slow and easy, that was the way it had been outlined. Slow and easy, that was the way Rodiz was handling it.

They got the flat as they were crossing the bridge connecting Sugarloaf with Cudjoe. They had been driving no faster than forty miles an hour, and so there was no question of losing control of the car. Rodiz cursed softly, and Eugene — sitting in the middle on the front seat — said, “What is it? A flat?”

“Mmm,” Rodiz said. He slowed the car. “Should I drive off the bridge or what?”

“I think you’d better,” Eugene said. “It’s pretty narrow here to be changing a flat.”

Rodiz nodded and said nothing. He glanced at his watch. This was going to spoil their time. He started the car and drove slowly off the bridge. The car was rented, but Rodiz held a high respect for property, and it would have pained him to ruin the punctured tire by driving too fast. He pulled to the side of the road some hundred feet onto Cudjoe and then went to the trunk and unlocked it.

“I’m gonna get my clothes all dirty,” he said to no one, raising the trunk lid. “How we gonna reach that spare?” he asked Eugene when he came back.

“Have to take the bags out,” Eugene said.

They took out the men’s overnight bags, and put them in the road behind the car. They lifted the spare out then, and pulled out the jack. Rodiz looked at the flat tire distastefully and then put the jack in place under the bumper. Eugene began loosening the lug nuts while Rodiz jacked up the car. The other four men stood at the side of the road watching the work, wanting to help but knowing this was a two-man job at the most, and knowing there wasn’t much they could do but wait until Rodiz and Eugene were finished.

The car was up on the jack, and the flat tire was off, when they heard the sound of another car coming down the road from the opposite direction.

“Rafe,” one of the men at the side of the road whispered, and Rodiz looked up and nodded, and then went back to wheeling the spare tire into place.

The approaching car belonged to the Florida Highway Patrol.

There were two troopers in it.

It seemed at first that the car would continue right on past and onto the bridge leading west to Sugarloaf. But instead, it stopped on the other side of the road, about a hundred yards past Rodiz where he was hoisting the spare onto the wheel rim. The door on the highway side opened and a tall muscular man wearing a light tan uniform, with a holstered pistol at his side, a mean suntanned look on his face, began walking toward the car. Eugene and Rodiz had wrestled the wheel into place by then and were screwing on the lug nuts. The other four men stood at the rear of the car and slightly away from it, watching the approaching trooper.

“Hi,” the trooper said.

Rodiz looked up, seemingly surprised, and said, “Hello.”

“Need some help?”

“No, thanks a lot,” Eugene said. “We must’ve picked up a nail back there. We drove off the bridge so we wouldn’t block traffic.”

“Mmm,” the trooper said.

The two men continued working on the wheel. All the lug nuts were in place now. Eugene picked up the wrench and began tightening them. Rodiz went back to the jack, ready to lower the car. The trooper went with him, glancing at the canvas overnight bags in the road behind the car, and then nodding and smiling at the four men who stood silent just behind the right wheel, watching.

“You fellows coming up from Key West?” the trooper asked.

“That’s right,” Eugene said.

“Mmm,” the trooper said.

“You can lower it, Rafe,” Eugene said, and Rodiz released the jack. Up the road, the second trooper had come out of the patrol car and was approaching the sedan.

“What was it?” the trooper asked. “Convention or something?”

“What was what?” Eugene asked.

“I mean, all six of you traveling together,” the trooper said, and smiled.

“I don’t get it,” Eugene said, deadpan.

“The six of you traveling together,” the trooper repeated, as if that made it much clearer.

“Well, what’s wrong with the six of us traveling together?” Eugene asked.

“He didn’t say nothing was wrong with it,” the second trooper said, padding up swiftly and silently to stand just alongside his partner, his thumbs looped in his belt.

“We work for the same company,” Eugene said. “We were down in Key West on business.”

“What kind of business?” the second trooper asked.

“Boats.”

“What kind of boats?”

“Inboards, outboards, you name them.”

“What’s the name of the company?” the first trooper said.

“Framingham Boats,” Eugene said.

“Where at?”

“What do you mean?”

“Where’s your home office?”

“Framingham, Massachusetts.”

“You happen to have a business card with you?” the second trooper said, and the highway went silent.

Eugene smiled pleasantly and said, “I don’t understand, officer. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. We were just wondering how come six respectable businessmen are traveling together with only this luggage, that’s all.”

Again the highway was silent. Off in the mangroves Rodiz could hear a bird calling stridently.

“There are six bags,” Rodiz said.

“Six overnight bags,” the trooper said.

“So?”

“So nothing. Six overnight bags, all the way from Framingham, Massachusetts.”

“We’re traveling light,” Rodiz said.

“What’s your name, mister?”

“Rafael Rodiz.”

“You Spanish?”

“Panamanian.”

“You’re from Panama?”

“That’s right.”

“Where in Panama?”

“Colón.”

“Mind if I see your passport?”

“I’m an American citizen,” Rodiz said. “I’ve been in this country seven years.”

“In Framingham?” the trooper asked.

“That’s right.”

“Got any proof of citizenship? Naturalization certificate? Draft card?”

“No, but—”

“All right, mister, you want to open those bags,” the first trooper said, and he drew his pistol. “You fellows get over here on the side of the car, let’s go,” he said, waving the pistol. The second trooper, following his lead, came over to Rodiz with his pistol in his hand and pointed to the bags with it. “Go on, open them,” he said.

Rodiz nodded and kneeled behind the closest bag.

“I don’t understand this, officer,” Eugene said. “Why are you—”

“Let’s just hold the violins a minute, huh?” the first trooper said. “Maybe you don’t see anything fishy about six guys driving along a highway at nine o’clock in the morning, but we do, okay? So if everything’s all right, you’ll be on your way in just a few minutes, provided your friend here can come up with some kind of satisfactory identification. You don’t expect us to—”

The first shot took the trooper between the eyes, and the second one was placed just a trifle lower and to the left so that it passed through his left cheekbone and blew away half of his skull as it exited. The other trooper stood stock-still as his partner collapsed to the highway dripping blood, and then, his reaction time just a few seconds too late, he raised his pistol and was about to pull off a shot at Rodiz when the next three bullets came in rapid succession, each thudding into his chest and sending him reeling back against the trunk of the car. He said something unintelligible — it could have been “Martha,” it could have been “Mother” — and then rolled onto the highway and lay still and bleeding beside his partner. Rodiz looked at them both silently. In the mangroves there was the flutter of wings, and then stillness. The men on the highway stood motionless. Rodiz said, “Get the patrol car, one of you.”

“What do we do?” Eugene asked.

“You, Vinny!” Rodiz snapped. “Get the car, hurry! The rest of you, pull them off the road, behind the car there. Go ahead.”

He threw the .38 into the bag again, zipped it shut, and hoisted it into the trunk.

“The flat,” Eugene said.

“In the back.”

“The other bags.”

“Hurry.”

“Here comes Vinny.”

“Get them.”

“What’ll we do with them?”

“The back. The trunk of their car.”

“Vinny, open the trunk.”

“Which key?”

“Find it.”

“This?”

“I need a hat from one of them.”

“There, it’s open.”

“This doesn’t fit. Give me the other one.”

“There’s blood on it.”

“Hurry.”

“You want them both in the trunk?”

“Yes, hurry. Is this better?”

“It’s all right. You going to drive them?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Into the water.”

“The ocean?”

“No, a swamp. We’ll find a swamp someplace.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. This is the Florida Keys. There’s got to be a goddamn swamp or a marsh someplace, doesn’t there?”

“Rafe, they’re in.”

“Close the trunk.”

“There’s blood on the fender.”

“Wipe it off.”

“What about the road?”

“They’ll think an animal got hit. How does this hat look?”

“Fine.”

“I’m gonna sit behind the wheel. Can you tell I’m not a trooper?”

“Rafe, let’s get moving.”

“In a minute, Vinny. What do you say, Eugene?”

“You look okay. Shall we follow you, or what?”

“You’ll have to.”

“Suppose we don’t find a marsh?”

“I’ll drive them right into the goddamn Atlantic.”

“Rafe?”

“What?”

“You killed them,” Eugene said. “You killed them both.”

“I know I did. So?”

“Nothing,” Eugene said, and shrugged. “Nothing.”

Rodiz got behind the wheel of the police car with his heart pounding and the stupid blood-stained state police hat hanging down over his ears, aware that there were two dead troopers in the trunk behind him and wondering whether or not their blood was seeping through the trunk and onto the highway. He drove at forty miles an hour, and the low speed seemed intolerable; he was sure that everyone in the world knew there were two dead men in the trunk. What the hell had that last marker said? What key was this, Summerland? Was this Summerland already? God, they were getting too close to Ocho Puertos! He began searching for a cutoff and found it at the eastern end of the island, a road marked S-492. Abruptly he made a screeching right turn and headed for the ocean. He recognized at once that he was driving into a community of houses built on long stretches of packed coral and that he could no more dump the police car here than he could in the middle of Key West’s Duval Street. He made a dusty U-turn, passing Eugene and the others in the car behind him, and then glancing into the rearview mirror to see if they had executed the same turn and were still with him. He was beginning to sweat profusely in the Italian silk suit now. He wondered whether he could conceivably pull the car off into the mangroves someplace and hope that it would be hidden from the road. He doubted it. And then suddenly he was on Ramrod Key with the road heading straight for Big Pine and still no place to dump the car, and then he was on Big Pine itself. He wet his lips and became really frightened then because he seemed to remember from the map that Big Pine was just that, a big island with plenty of people and houses and stores, and here he was sitting in a police car with a silly hat on his head and two dead men in the trunk. But wasn’t there a long spit of land here, jutting out into the Atlantic, pointing west? Hadn’t he seen that on one of the charts Randy and Jason had gone over repeatedly in the Miami warehouse? Wasn’t there a beach on that chart? He followed U.S. 1 until it curved right at Bogie Channel to parallel Spanish Harbor, and then continued on down, ignoring the bridge that led to the Spanish Harbor Keys. He drove south and then turned west onto Long Beach. He’d been right; there was a beach. Desperately he began searching for a spot to sink the car. He passed the single house on the beach and then there was only sand and mud and grass. He wished he had one of those charts now, wished he knew how deep the inshore waters were, and then suddenly realized he would have to do something soon, sink or swim, before he reached the end of the beach. He slowed the car, searching for an incline, dropping speed to the point where he almost stalled, and then throwing the car into second and hearing the police radio on the dashboard erupting with a call — was it for this car? He spotted a small shelf of land sloping into what looked like deep grass and mud, and wrenched the wheel sharply until the car was poised on the edge of the drop, ready to plummet below. The radio in the car was still calling when he carefully opened the door and stepped into the road. Eugene had parked the rented sedan some twenty feet behind him. Rodiz looked down the slope again and then threw the borrowed hat onto the front seat and placed his arm stiffly against the door plate and shoved. The car began rolling at once. He watched it silently as it gathered speed going down the slope and then began sinking into the mud.

It sank quickly to the hub caps, sucked up mud noisily into the wings of its fenders and then hesitated a moment as if undecided whether to submerge completely or not. Grass slapped the fenders, and then the car gave a sudden lurch sidewards, like a prehistoric beast rolling over, and seemed ready by sheer weight and bulk to overwhelm the resisting mud and tangled grass.

It did not sink farther.

It sat where it was in the shallow mud, twisted partially onto its side, the left fender lower than the right and covered with mud, the right fender and indeed the entire upper portion of the car jutting out of the slime, the domed red light on the roof clearly announcing that this was a police car.

Son of a bitch, Rodiz thought, and then began running up the road to where Eugene and the others were waiting for him in the rented car.

6

The United States Coast Guard cutter Mercury was a 165-foot vessel with five officers and fifty enlisted men in her crew. Her single armament was a three-inch, 50-caliber gun on her bow, but she was also equipped with mortar flares, and her gun locker on the after bulkhead of officer’s country carried ten carbines, ten M1s, and eight Colt .45 automatics. She was a small ship and not a particularly fast one, her top speed being thirteen knots. Sometimes when she steamed along with her canvas awning flapping over the fantail, she resembled an old-fashioned gunboat on a Chinese river during the Boxer rebellion.

From the bridge deck of the Mercury, in Key West, Lieutenant Commander Nathaniel Cates could see the Androscoggin, WPG-68, where she lay alongside her dock. For a moment he wished the larger cutter were going out on patrol these next six days instead of his own vessel. His longing had nothing whatever to do with the hurricane warnings that were still pouring from Miami’s Weather Bureau into the Coast Guard’s Rescue Coordination Center on Southwest First, and thence into the radio room of every Coast Guard vessel in the area, all traveling with the speed of light and the frequency of gossip. The advisories bothered Cates not at all, because he had seen hurricanes galore and this did not look to him like any hurricane. They could yell all they wanted to, but the fact remained that the real storm was not moving a hair from its position over the center of Cuba, and the winds and rain up there in Miami this morning were probably nothing more than a good solid nor’easter.

The reason Cates wished it were the Andy’s turn to go out and not his own ship’s was that he had a toothache and there was no dentist aboard the Merc. His own dentist was a man named Feldman who had come down to Miami on vacation in 1949 and had stayed on to open an office on Collins Avenue at the Beach. Cates enjoyed listening to Feldman talk about New York. Not that Cates was a New Yorker. His home town, in fact — before he had joined the Coast Guard in 1936 — was a place called Tantamount, Iowa.

He had joined the Coast Guard because the United States of America in that August of 1936 had just barely stopped selling apples in the street, and the salary of an apprentice seaman was twenty-one dollars a month, plus three squares a day and a bed to sleep in every night. He wouldn’t have cared where they sent him, so long as it was away from Tantamount, Iowa; actually, the choice was between the boot camp at Cape May, New Jersey, or the one in Alameda, California. The Coast Guard, reversing the old military principle that it was best to send a man as far from his home as possible, decided on Cape May. He trained there for ten weeks, and then was sent as a seaman second class to a 327-footer operating out of Boston, Massachusetts.

He loved Boston. He loved the city itself, and the surrounding countryside — this was autumn and wild colors claimed the landscape; there was a sudden cruel bite to the air — and he loved the flat nasal speech of the people, and the feeling that at last he was in America, that at last he had shaken the dust of Crackerbarrel Falls, Iowa, and come to grips with what America was really about.

He had yet to discover New York City.

He made his first liberty into the largest city in the world when he was seventeen years old, falling immediately in love with a girl who worked at a club on 63rd Street, falling in love at first with her long dancer’s legs in black net stockings, and then falling overwhelmingly in love with the rest of her the night they tumbled eagerly into bed in her apartment on West 48th Street.

Her name was Celeste Ryan, and she was twenty years old. She told Cates that she had been born in the Bronx, but that she had been living alone in Manhattan for the past two years. She also told him she was still a virgin, and he believed her. Actually it didn’t matter whether she was or not, because Cates very definitely was, and that was virgin enough for both of them.

She loved him.

He was seventeen years old when he met her, and from November of 1936 to June of 1938 he was possibly loved more than he would ever be loved again in his life. He would jump onto that train whenever he had liberty, and then count the minutes into New York, ticking off the station stops — Providence, New London, New Haven, Stamford — and there she was, waiting at Grand Central Station with those magnificent legs signaling wildly to him. She would rush into his arms and shower his face with kisses, and then pull back from him and look into his eyes with her own green eyes wide and questioning to ask each time, “Do you still love me, Nat?” And each time he would say the same thing, “I love you, Celeste,” and then they would go to her apartment and drink some gin and get into the king-sized bed she owned. He spent almost two years aboard the cutter, learning what it was like to live afloat, being promoted to seaman first class and deciding to become a quartermaster striker, and then studying to take his petty officer test in June of 1938. But in all that time, working as hard as he did, he still managed to spend a good many hours each week in bed with a girl who taught him things they didn’t sing about at prayer meetings in Backwater Gulch, Iowa.

Cates had witnessed the death of prohibition, he had seen the NRA eagles in every shopwindow in Iowa, and then Massachusetts, and then New York, and now he felt the country shaking itself alive again, throwing off the desperate gray coils of its long illness, felt its renewed strength coursing into his own expanding muscle. In June of 1938, two weeks before he was to take the test for quartermaster third, Celeste Ryan discovered she was pregnant and asked him what she should do. Cates told her he would marry her on the spot as soon as she gave the word and as soon as he could obtain permission from his commanding officer. Celeste said that she appreciated the gesture, which she thought was very sweet of him and all that, but she really enjoyed being a dancer and she would.

A showgirl, you mean, he said.

Yes, a showgirl, if that was how he wanted to put it; she really enjoyed dancing though, and it didn’t seem she’d be able to do much dancing in the future if she had a baby and was married to a sailor who might be assigned God knew where.

Cates admitted she had a point. To tell the truth, he was a little relieved. He was barely nineteen and just starting his Coast Guard career. He didn’t particularly feel like embarking upon a marital career at the same time, not to mention a paternal one. So he told Celeste the best thing they could do would be to seek an abortion, and she told him she had already checked with a couple of the girls in the line and one of them said she knew a very good woman who did a lot of theatrical work and who could take care of this for three hundred dollars. By this time Celeste was three months pregnant, which made it all seem very fair, a hundred dollars for each month. The only trouble was that Cates and Celeste had been living somewhat extravagantly on his fifty-four dollars a month seaman-first-class salary and her forty dollars a week earned as a dancer-cum-drink hustler. They barely had thirty dollars between them, let alone three hundred. Cates got off a wire to his folks back in Overall Patches, Iowa, saying SEND ME THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS AT ONCE I AM IN DIFFICULTY WILL EXPLAIN LATER. The return wire said THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS ARE YOU KIDDING EXPLAIN NOW. Cates did not explain then — or ever, for that matter. Instead, he went to Celeste and assured her he would rustle up the three hundred dollars somehow, somewhere, just give him a little time, after all he was just about to take the quartermaster test, and he was studying and

Celeste looked into her lover’s eyes and wisely saw neither solvency, solution, nor salvation in them. “Okay,” she said, “do your best, Nat,” and then she went to the owner of the club where she worked and asked him for a three-hundred-dollar advance on her salary, which he gave her at ten per cent interest. The next weekend she got rid of the baby. She called Cates in Boston to tell him it had all been taken care of, and he said something like “Oh gee, that’s great, baby. I passed the test, I’m a quartermaster third. Wait’ll you see my rating patch.”

Celeste never got around to seeing Cates’s rating patch, nor did Cates ever get an opportunity to show it to her, because the next time he went to her apartment her landlady told him she had moved. When he went over to the club, he discovered she was not in the line any more. One of the girls said she had gone to San Francisco with a drummer from the Cotton Club band, who had paid off her debt to the owner. All Cates could think of to ask was “A colored drummer?”

In July of 1938 he was taken off the cutter with his quartermaster rating and sent to the buoy depot in Portsmouth, Virginia. The thing that troubled him all during his two years there, the thing that continued to trouble him after he was transferred onto a buoy tender and promoted to quartermaster second, the thing that bothered him constantly all during the war when he served aboard a Navy AKA, making chief quartermaster in 1945, and finally marrying a girl from Norfolk, Virginia, where he was stationed on weather patrol, the thing that annoyed him constantly was the certain knowledge that he had done something wrong back there — but he didn’t know just what the hell it was.

She had said she didn’t want to get married, hadn’t she?

He had offered, he had told her he would marry her as soon as he got permission, but she had said she wanted to be a dancer. He could remember those were her exact words, because he had corrected her like a goddamn jackass; he had said, “You mean a showgirl, don’t you?” and she had said, “Well, yes, if that’s what you want to call it.” Was that the mistake he’d made? He’d tried to get the money, he’d honestly tried. He’d wired his folks — fat chance of getting anything there in Hayseed, Iowa — and then he’d begun borrowing from every friend of his on the ship and had managed to raise a hundred and thirty-two dollars, but by that time Celeste had called to say it was all taken care of.

“What do you mean?” he’d said on the phone.

“The baby. You know.”

“Well, when—”

“Last week. It’s all taken care of.”

“Well, that’s great, honey,” he’d said. “Hey, I’ll be coming in week after next. Wait’ll you see my patch.”

Late in 1947, Nathaniel Cates entered OCS and emerged from it four months later as an ensign in the United States Coast Guard. Now, at forty-four, he was a lieutenant commander, his hair still brown, his figure somewhat paunchier than it had been back in 1938, his face showing the puffiness of a man who had been drinking gin since 1936 when he was only seventeen. His wife, Helen, was forty-two, a slight blond woman with fine bones and beautiful brown eyes. (Celeste’s hair was black, her eyes were green, there was an Irish sauciness in the switch of her backside, there was a wild promise in her legs, she was the only real woman he had ever known in his life.) His son was sixteen years old and hoped one day to enter the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. His daughter was fourteen; she had won a French medal during her sophomore year in high school. (Tell me about Tantamount, Celeste said. There’s nothing to tell. There’s a gas station and a store and railroad tracks running through, that’s all. Oh, you poor dear baby coming from such a dead town. Kiss me, you hear? Kiss me, baby, I’ll take you out of that horrid little town. Kiss me, baby, I’ll take you where you’ve never never been before.) He had served aboard a 125-footer until June of 1949 when he’d made j.g. Then the Korean War broke out, and he had worked picking up Navy DEs in Green Cove Springs, Florida, ferrying them to the Coast Guard Yard at Curtis Bay, Maryland, near Baltimore, and then across the Pacific to Hawaii where he was stationed until 1953. (When I’m dancing, I feel like I could fly, do you know what I mean, Nat? I feel as if I can kick my legs higher than anybody in the world, that I can kick them right up to the ceiling, the sky! Look at me, baby, I’m flying!) In 1955, Nathaniel Cates made full lieutenant and was assigned to a buoy tender as executive officer. Three years later he was sent to Miami as executive officer of the base on MacArthur Causeway. He did not earn his lieutenant commander’s stripes until April of 1960, and shortly after that he was given command of the Mercury.

He still did not know what the hell he had done wrong back in 1938.

“Excuse me, sir.”

Cates turned. For a moment he looked at the man standing before him without recognizing him, and then realized it was one of his electronics technicians. Quickly he said, “Yes?”

“Captain, shore tie’s broken for water and electricity, and the telephones are all aboard,” the technician said.

“Very well,” Cates said. He turned to his talker, who was wearing sound-powered phones and gazing blankly off to starboard. “Take in three and four,” he said.

“Fantail, bridge,” the talker said. “Take in three and four.”

Cates waited. In a moment the talker said, “Number three aboard, sir.”

“Very well.”

“Number four aboard, sir.”

“Very well, take in number one.”

“Forecastle, bridge,” the talker said, “take in number one.”

Cates glanced at the clock on the after bulkhead. It read 0904.

“Number one aboard, sir,” the talker said.

“Very well,” Cates answered. “Left standard rudder.”

“Left standard rudder,” the helmsman replied.

“Starboard engine ahead one-third.”

“Starboard engine ahead one-third, sir,” the engine order telegraph operator said, and in a moment added, “Engine room answers starboard engine ahead one-third, sir.”

“Very well,” Cates said.

The 165-foot cutter was a ship that responded quickly. He heard the chug-chug of the engines almost immediately and then felt the familiar surge of the ship as she moved forward against the single spring line holding her to the dock. “Port engine back one-third,” he said immediately.

“Port engine back one-third, sir. Engine room answers port engine back one-third, sir.”

“Check two,” Cates said.

“Check two,” the talker said into his mouthpiece. “Forecastle checking two, sir.”

“Rudder amidships. Starboard engine stop. Take in number two. Shift colors.”

Behind Cates the quartermaster of the watch blew a mouth whistle, signaling a shift of the ensign to the after stick. The cutter began backing out of the dock. “Sound three short blasts,” Cates said. He heard them sounding behind him. “All engines stop.”

“All engines stop, sir. Engine room answers all engines stop, sir.”

“Right full rudder. Port engine ahead one-third.”

“Right full rudder, sir. Rudder is right full, sir.”

They were moving out and away from the dock now, past the Naval Station light, the buoys dead ahead marking the Key West main ship channel.

“Rudder amidships,” Cates said to the helmsman. “Steady on course two-zero-four. All engines ahead one-third.”

“Coming to two-zero-four, sir. All engines ahead one-third, sir.”

“Steady as you go.”

“Small boat bearing three-five-zero, range five thousand,” the lookout called down.

“Very well,” Cates answered. “Come right to two-zero-nine.”

“Right to two-zero-nine, sir.”

Cates turned to Michael Pierce, the full lieutenant who was his evecutive officer, and who was standing just a few feet to his left, staring through the wheelhouse windshield at the three-inch 50-caliber cannon on the bow, and past that to the channel beyond. “Someday we’ll cut one of those damn boats right in half,” Cates said, and then turned his head over his shoulder and said to the quartermaster, “Sound one blast.” The whistle sounded in warning, high and sharp and strident on the clear Key West air, telling the small boat that the cutter was coming right. The boat went past on the cutter’s port bow, and the pilot waved up at the bridge. Cates did not return the wave.

“Left to one-eight-three,” he said.

“Left to one-eight-three, sir.”

As the ship began its swing, Cates said, “Move those men off the forecastle and onto the lee side,” and then to Pierce, “No sense getting them soaked out there, Mike.”

The cutter moved slowly down the main channel, changing course and speed as she went, the helmsman watching his compass, Cates peering ahead through the windshield, Pierce silent at his side, the other men in the wheelhouse waiting for sight of the sea buoy. At the buoy Cates said, “Come left to zero-eight-five.”

“Coming left to zero-eight-five, sir.”

“Meet her.”

“Steering zero-eight-five, sir.”

“Steady as you go.”

“Steady as you go, sir. Course zero-eight-five.”

“Secure the special sea detail,” Cates said. “Set the sea watch.”

Into the p.a. system the quartermaster said, “Secure the special sea detail. Set the sea watch.” He turned to Cates. “That’s watch section three, sir.”

“Very well. All engines ahead two-thirds,” Cates said.

“All engines ahead two-thirds, sir. Engine room answers all engines ahead two-thirds, sir.”

“Very well. As soon as we’re relieved up here, Mike, let’s go down to the wardroom for some coffee.”

“I can use some, sir,” Pierce said. “This weather gets in your bones.”

“Quartermaster, ask the engine room when they’ll be able to give us standard speed,” Cates said.

Sitting in the pilot’s seat on the port side of the Grumman Albatross, Frank Randazzo looked off to starboard past his copilot, Murray Diel, and down to where the Keys were clearly visible. He had checked the weather map and the weather reports at the Miami Air Station before takeoff, and so he was not surprised by the visibility here, and yet there always seemed to be something mysterious and magical about the way weather could change in the space of a few miles. He pressed the ICS button under his left thumb on the yoke. He was wearing soft earphones with a boom mike an inch from his lips. Through the static coming from the HF and VHF circuits he said, “We’d better check in with Bluerock, before he calls us.”

“Right,” Diel said.

“Bluerock, this is Coast Guard seven-two, seven-two,” Randazzo said into his mouthpiece.

There was a pause and then the radar station answered, “Coast Guard seven-two, seven-two, Bluerock. Go ahead with your position.”

“Bluerock, seven-two,” Randazzo said. “Long Key at three-seven, one thousand feet. Heading, two-two-six. Speed, one-fifty. Estimating ADIZ at five-seven in position twenty-four forty-five north, eight-oh-four-oh west. Over.”

“Bluerock, roger.”

Randazzo pressed the ICS button and said to Diel, “That ought to hold them for a while.”

“Fuel transfer’s coming off about now, Frank,” Diel said. “We’re reading seventeen fifty in each.”

“Right,” Randazzo said, and watched his gauges as the gasoline was automatically transferred from the 300-gallon drop tanks into the mains. Penner, one of the two mechanics, came into the cockpit with two paper cartons of coffee, handing one to Randazzo and the other to Diel.

“I take three sugars,” Diel said, tasting it. “You always forget.”

“ ’Cause I can’t understand how anybody can drink it so sweet, sir,” Penner said, and went aft again with the carton of coffee. Like every other man aboard the plane, he was wearing a flight suit over his work uniform, and a life vest over that. The flight suit was orange, and the life vest was a bright yellow; the colors were supposed to enable searchers to spot the crew more easily in the water if ever they had to ditch. In addition, and also in the interests of survival, the life vest was equipped with a battery-operated light that could be switched on at night, a shark repellent, a survival knife, a dye marker to spread on the water, and a day and night signal marker. Murray Diel, who had a reputation for thin-bloodedness in a warm climate, was wearing a nonregulation, blue poplin flight jacket over his orange flight suit and under his yellow life vest, and therefore was the most colorful man aboard. The jacket was adorned with two patches. He had brought one of them with him from Floyd Bennett Field where he had been stationed before his transfer to Dinner Key. The Brooklyn Air patch showed a red, white and blue American shield against which soared a brown eagle clutching a yellow rubber life raft in its claws. The Miami Air patch, which Diel wore on the opposite side of his jacket front, showed the Florida coastline in the background in green and, against that, the yellow numeral 7 with an ever-watchful eye painted up near its top, Miami being in the Seventh Coast Guard District, and Miami Air calling itself “The Eyes of the Seventh.”

“Coffee, sir,” Penner said. “Three sugars, sir,” and he grimaced.

The soft rubber earphones against Randazzo’s head erupted with sound.

“Coast Guard seven-two, seven-two, this is Miami Air, over.”

“Miami Air, seven-two, seven-two.”

“You see anything of that cruiser out of Bimini?”

“Nothing yet,” Randazzo said.

“She’s a fifty-footer, twin Cadillacs, overdue three days.”

“Got that before I took off,” Randazzo said drily.

“Thought you might have spotted her. I’m reading you kind of scratchy. Want to give me a short count?”

“Short count,” Knowles, the radioman, answered. “One, two, three, four, five.”

“Still reading you scratchy,” Miami Air said. “Let’s try eight-nine.”

“Shifting to eight-nine,” Knowles said. “Is that correct?”

“Affirmative,” Miami Air said.

By the time Knowles and the air station had decided on a frequency, it was time to call Bluerock again. Randazzo made contact and told them he was checking ADIZ.

“Go ahead, seven-two,” Bluerock said.

“Inbound heading two-three-three,” Randazzo said. “One thousand feet, speed one-fifty. Squawking mode three, zero-six.”

“Roger, out,” Bluerock said.

It was going to be a quiet morning. The ocean below, despite the hurricane advisories, seemed calm and unruffled, glinting with touches of golden sunshine. There were very few small boats out on the water; those damn advisories had probably scared hell out of everybody. Off to port, and far out on the horizon, Randazzo could see what looked like a Russian trawler, but no, the lines were different. Still for a moment it had looked like one. Dead ahead, a tanker plodded down toward Key West, its white masts gleaming in the sunlight. It was going to be a quiet morning.

At 0930, Randazzo contacted the radar plane on UHF.

“Checkmate,” he said, “this is Coast Guard seven-two, seven-two with a position.”

“Go, seven-two,” Checkmate answered.

“Saddlebunch at three-oh. One thousand feet. Estimating Key West at three-four. Relay to Bluerock.”

“Seven-two, Checkmate. Roger your position.”

At 0934, Randazzo swung over Key West, and switched course to Key pat four-alpha, a flight path that would take him farther south of the reef line, and then northeast.

It was going to be a quiet morning.

From the moment he had come aboard at five-thirty that morning, Alex Witten had been making snide remarks. He had hailed Randy from the dock, climbed aboard The Golden Fleece, walked into the wheelhouse where Annabelle was standing in a flannel robe preparing coffee at the two-burner Primus stove, and had immediately said, “Gee, you two are barely out of bed,” and then grinned pointedly at Randy to make his meaning absolutely clear. Randy chose to ignore the innuendo. Annabelle seemed not to catch the tone of Alex’s voice. She turned the flame a little higher and then said, “Excuse me, I want to get dressed,” and went below, closing the slatted swinging doors behind her.

“Did Jason get off all right?” Alex said.

“Yes.”

“What have you heard on the hurricane?”

“Nothing yet this morning. We’ll be under way long before the next advisory is due.”

“Hmm,” Alex said, “well,” and shrugged.

Annabelle came up the ladder wearing the black raincoat. The rain had abated considerably, but there was still a wet sprinkle in the air driven by the wind, more a sharp cold penetrating mist than a real rainfall. Her long brown hair was tucked up under the rubber folds of a yellow rainhat, and the spray in the wet air put an immediate glossy sheen on her cheeks. She was five feet nine inches tall, a big woman, and she carried her unborn baby with all the monumental grace of an Egyptian pyramid. There was about her face with its high cheekbones and narrow slitted eyes, its generous mouth and strong jaw, the suggestion of a hill peasant in Wales or Ireland. This hint of peasant stock was echoed in her body as well, big-boned, full-breasted, wide-hipped, and magnified by her current state of pregnancy. She seemed capable of planting crops and harvesting them, of grinding grain and milking cows and chopping wood. It was perhaps this very impression of something primitive, the country girl in bursting pregnant bloom, that provoked the steady barrage of remarks from Alex.

As she came up the ladder, he said, “Ahh, the lovely bride,” and again glanced at Randy.

“I was just going to pour the coffee,” Randy said. “How do you take it, Annabelle?”

For an instant the slitted eyes in the angular face flared with an intelligence that denied any primitive heritage, that threw aside any false illusions her face and body had permitted. “Black,” she said, and paused for the briefest instant while her eyes flicked Alex’s face like a whiplash. She smiled wickedly. “Like my heart,” she added.

Her voice had dropped a decibel, had become almost a knifelike whisper that slid past the evil smile and across the cockpit to lodge in Alex’s heart. Alex ignored the thrust. He was having too much fun pulling Randy’s leg, and he did not intend to stop now, Jason’s wife or no. He had to admit that her eyes and the sound of her voice back there just a second ago had carried something reminiscent of Jason Trench himself, oh, going away back to when he’d been skipper of the 832, and Alex had been his exec. Even then, though Jason had been only twenty-two, there had been an icy resonance to his voice whenever he snapped a command, and Alex had heard that same distant chill in Annabelle’s voice just now: “Like my heart.” You choose your mate, he thought, and then said aloud, “This is like a little honeymoon cottage, ain’t it?” and enjoyed the look of pain on Randy’s face, and the angry intelligence that flashed again in Annabelle’s eyes, and suddenly wondered if they had.

The Golden Fleece got under way at dawn.

Even coming down the Intercoastal Waterway, shielded as it was from the Gulf Stream by the Florida Keys landmass through which it cut south and then west, Alex felt again the thrill of piloting a vessel on water. It was a miserable gray wet dawn, and he piloted the boat from inside the wheelhouse and wished there were a flying bridge so he could feel the spray on his face and smell all the mysteries of the ocean deeps, smell fish and coral and sunken treasure and dead men floating, smell all that secret teeming life. He piloted a lousy twenty-seven-foot boat down a protected coastal waterway, and felt the same thrill he had known whenever Lieutenant (j.g.) Jason Trench gave him the conn of PT 832, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. There was a big difference between this twenty-seven-foot pleasure craft and an eighty-foot United States Navy motor torpedo boat, and the difference wasn’t so much in the handling as in the knowledge that the two torpedo racks on either side of the Navy boat were capable of wreaking immediate destruction on anything that happened to float into their way. The biggest thing that had ever floated into the way of the 832 was a Japanese minesweeper. Goody Moore had been gunner’s mate second class aboard the boat, and had been standing bow lookout watch when he spotted the Jap vessel far out on the horizon and called it up to Alex, who had the conn. Clay Prentiss, who was the boat’s radioman second, had come up onto the bow and taken the glasses from Goody, verifying the ship as a Jap, and then they had gone below to wake Jason.

There would normally have been no question about attacking. The PT boat carried four torpedoes and was equipped with a pair of twin.50-caliber machine guns, and a 20-millimeter cannon. Her most effective weapons, of course, were her speed and her maneuverability, and normally Jason would have plotted an attack course with Alex and with Fatboy, who was the boat’s chief torpedoman. They’d have made their run then, and dropped their fish, and got the hell out of there before anybody aboard the Jap ship knew what hit them. That was normally. But the boat had been heading back under orders for drydock in Pearl when Goody spotted the minesweep, and the reason she was going into drydock was that a blade was damaged on her screw, which severely limited both her speed and her maneuverability. The question was should they continue on their course which was away from the minesweep’s and heading toward Pearl, or should they alter course and attack?

Jason decided to take the chance.

They had come in on the minesweep’s fantail, on the hunch that the jerrybuilt superstructure there had created a blind spot, and then swung out past the ship and come in abeam for their one and only run, firing two fish almost simultaneously, connecting with both and apparently hitting a storage locker of live mines somewhere below. The Jap ship came out of the water in two pieces, splitting in the center and rising like the steeple of a church, and then cracking and falling back into the ocean while the 832 raced away.

They had taken the chance and won.

That was in 1942, and that was a long time ago.

Almost twenty years later, in January of 1962, they met again in a Second Avenue apartment. There was snow in the streets of New York, and the windows were rimmed with frost, and Goody Moore came into the room blowing on his huge brown farmer’s hands and joking about how it never got this bad down in Georgia, even when the snow froze out all the crops. He had not changed a bit; he was still tall and lean, with ridges radiating out from his gray eyes, his hair almost as blond as when the South Pacific sun had bleached it day after day. They shook hands all around, Jason and Fatboy and Goody and Clay and Alex himself. Then Jason introduced them to Randy Gambol, whom he said he had worked with in a group called America in Distress, and then he’d broken out the whiskey and they sat around reminiscing about the days aboard the 832 while Annabelle went into the bedroom to watch television.

He didn’t get around to telling them about his plan until almost eleven o’clock, and they were still arguing it and discussing it when dawn broke against the frost-rimmed windows at six o’clock the next morning. Annabelle had fallen asleep in the next room with the television set on, and Jason went in to turn it off, and then he came back and put a pot of coffee on the stove and went to where the men were seated and said, “What do you think?”

“It would have to be Florida someplace,” Clay said.

“Well, Arthur has suggested the Keys, as you know,” Jason said.

“It’s pretty isolated down there, isn’t it?” Goody asked.

“Well, that’s the point,” Fatboy said.

“I don’t think that’s the difficult part,” Alex said. “Taking the town, I mean.”

“No, that would be simple.”

“It’s the rest that seems risky.”

“The rest seems just as simple to me,” Randy said.

“Well, you and Fatboy are already convinced of all this,” Alex ventured, “so naturally you’d think all of it was pretty simple.”

“I feel the plan has value,” Randy said, “if that’s what you mean.”

“I didn’t say it had no value.”

“Then what, Alex?” Jason asked.

“Look, if you simply want me to agree with everything you propose...”

“You know that’s not what I want. You’re here because I think your ideas are valuable.”

“All right, then, I’ve got to say I don’t think there’s a chance in hell of the second part succeeding. Not with fifty men, not with a hundred men. I don’t think it would work, that’s all.”

“Why not?”

“Because you wouldn’t get anywhere near her, not with the situation as tense as it is today. Any small boat making an approach would be immediately suspect.”

“He’s got a point,” Clay said.

“And especially a small boat carrying armed men. I’m sorry, Jason, it wouldn’t work.”

“He’s right,” Goody said.

“So there goes your plan,” Alex said. “Without the second part, it’s worthless. Without the second part, there’s no need to take the town. You’d never get to make your transfer at all.”

“Besides, Jason,” Goody said, “even if it was to work, we’re not sure what the reaction would be. We’re not sure we’d get what we were after.”

“I think we would.”

“Yeah, but there’s no guarantee.”

“That’s true. That’s the biggest chance we’d be taking.”

“But don’t you see, Jase? If we can’t be sure, why then all the rest of it is for nothing.”

“I think the reaction will be what we expect,” Jason said.

“Maybe,” Goody said.

“Maybe isn’t enough,” Clay said.

“Then you don’t like the idea, right?”

“I’m a married man,” Goody said.

“All right, then we’ll count you out,” Jason said. “Who else wants—”

“I didn’t say to count me out, Jase.” Goody paused. “You know how I feel about things. Goddamnit, we spent enough time together for you to know how I feel about things.”

“I thought I did, Goody.”

“But you can see how weak the second part is, Jase.”

“That can be worked out.”

“I’m not so sure it can,” Alex said, shaking his head. “That business with the boat—”

“The business with the boat,” Randy said angrily, “is simply a matter of finding an approach that will not be suspect.”

“Like what?” Alex said.

“I don’t know yet. How should I know? This only came up a few minutes ago.”

“It should have come up long ago. It’s the weakest part of the plan. You’re going to risk men’s lives taking a Godforsaken town down in Florida, and you don’t even know how the hell to—”

“I’m sure we can think of a hundred approaches,” Randy said.

“Yeah, you can think of a hundred,” Alex said, “but so far I haven’t heard a single one.”

“We’re not moving on this thing tomorrow, you know,” Jason said. “We’ve got all the time we need. The situation isn’t going to change overnight, you can count on that.”

“What do I tell my wife?” Goody asked.

“Nothing. You tell her absolutely nothing.”

“I just take off one morning, huh? Knowing I might never come back.”

“That’s a possibility,” Jason said.

“And she won’t wonder how come I’m not going out on the tractor. She won’t ask me, Hey, Goody, where you off to? You should’ve heard her when I told her I was coming up to New York for a reunion, Jase.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“Then drop out,” Jason said flatly.

“I let you down once,” Goody said.

The men in the room were silent.

“You don’t owe me any favors,” Jason said. “If you’re thinking I called you because you owe me something, you’re mistaken.”

“He called you because he thought he knew what kind of men you were,” Randy said.

None of the others said anything.

“Well,” Jason said, “the only thing I can do is ask you not to talk about this to anyone.”

“A woman might be able to pull it off,” Alex said suddenly.

“What?”

“The boat. Why don’t we use a woman?”

“It looks as though it’s clearing up,” Annabelle said.

Alex turned his eyes from the water ahead. She had come from below to stand beside him, her belly protruding, the same live intelligence sparkling somewhere behind the slitted eyes, like a fire burning in the depths of a cave.

“I was worried,” Annabelle said. “When Jason radioed to say we should go ahead, I was worried about the weather.”

“I don’t imagine Jason would have set us in motion if the weather was going to be a hang-up,” Alex said.

“Wouldn’t he?” Annabelle asked, and smiled.

“I don’t think so,” Alex said.

“You don’t know Jason.”

“I know he wouldn’t risk the whole thing collapsing.”

“Jason never even imagines anything collapsing,” Annabelle said flatly. “In Jason’s world everything comes off like clockwork, just the way he planned it.”

“That’s sunshine up ahead,” Alex said, and shrugged. “Jason knows what he’s doing.”

The winds around Key Largo had worried Alex, but now as they approached the bay side of Long Key, now as sunshine broke through the overhanging clouds in radiating spikes like a miracle in a religious film, now as sunshine touched the water ahead and set it aglow, now as a milder breeze sifted into the wheelhouse for the first time since they had left Miami, Alex suddenly felt that everything would be all right. The day, the plan, the wheel in his hands, the twin engines humming smoothly belowdecks, the boat’s prow knifing the water and sending a spuming spray back against the sides — everything felt fine, everything was good, everything was going to come off like clockwork, just the way Jason had planned it.

“These cracks you’ve been making,” Annabelle said abruptly.

Alex did not take his eyes from the windshield. He steered into the sunshine, and fantastically thought for a moment that the rays would snap off as the boat passed through them. The wheelhouse was bathed in sudden warmth and light. He squinted and said, “What cracks?”

“You know what I mean, Alex.”

“No, Annabelle, I don’t think I do.”

“Your hints that Randy made love to me last night,” she said flatly.

“Did I hint that?”

“Alex,” Annabelle said slowly and clearly and with an almost painful precision, “if you say something like that one more time, I’m going to kill you.” She kept watching him. His eyes flicked from the windshield and then back to the water ahead. “You hear me, Alex?”

“I hear you,” he answered, “but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Look at me, Alex,” she said. He did not turn. “Alex, look at me.”

She was holding a.22 in her hand. The butt of the small gun rested on her immense belly, and the muzzle was tilted up so that it pointed at Alex’s mouth as he turned to look at her. Her face was unsmiling; the gun was steady.

“Say it one more time, Alex,” she said.

“Say what?”

“That Randy made love to me last night aboard this boat.”

“I never said that, Annabelle.”

“We’re coming to the bridge, Alex.”

“I see it,” Alex said.

“Say it before we pass under the bridge, Alex,” Annabelle said. “That way I can kill you and dump you overboard as soon as we come into the Gulf Stream. Go ahead, Alex.”

“I never meant anything like that, Annabelle.”

“You sounded like that was what you meant.”

They were passing under the Bascule Bridge now, through Channel Five, the bridge some fifty feet above them, momentarily shading the bow and then the wheelhouse and then the cockpit. The boat came out into sunshine again. Annabelle stood alongside him with the gun resting on her belly and pointed at his head.

“What do you say, Alex?” she asked.

“I’m not afraid of you, Annabelle,” he answered.

“No?”

“No.”

“Then you go right ahead and make another crack. Either now or later, or anytime you feel like it. If you’re not afraid of me, you just make another one of those smart cracks of yours.” The wheel-house was silent. Into the silence, with deadly calculation, Anna-belle pulled back the hammer of the.22, cocking the gun even though it did not require cocking before it could be fired. The hammer going back made a tiny ear-shattering click.

“Okay?” she said.

“You’re gonna hurt somebody with that thing,” Alex answered. He was sweating and his throat was dry. He did not believe for a minute that she would shoot him, and yet he was sweating and his throat was dry.

“I’m waiting, Alex.”

Alex nodded briefly. “I won’t say anything else that might upset you, Annabelle.”

Annabelle smiled, and then eased the hammer back down. She lowered the gun.

“Thank you, Alex,” she said sweetly.

7

Even moving as fast as she could, Ginny couldn’t get out of the apartment until almost nine-thirty, and then with a run in one of her stockings which she didn’t have time to go back and change. She pushed the old Chevy as hard as she could, and was about to make the turn onto the Spanish Harbor Bridge when a car came barreling up the secondary state road to make a turn just ahead of her. She jammed on the brakes and yelled “You stupid idiot!” through the open window on her left, but the driver of the other car — a 1964 Ford — had not heard her and was indeed already on the bridge and driving east toward the Spanish Harbor Keys and Ocho Puertos. She continued to nurse her anger as she drove onto the bridge, mixing her full repertoire of swear words with an equal amount of Sunday-driver criticism and also with several devout wishes for accidents that might befall the car ahead, already out of sight. She was completely exhausted by the time she crossed the bridge to Ocho Puertos. Her normal routine was to enter S-811 from its western end, driving past the Tannenbaum house and the other houses on the shore-front road leading to the diner. But this morning, as she approached the cutoff, she saw a car parked just at its mouth, right on U.S. 1. She recognized the car immediately as the one that had cut in ahead of her on Big Pine, the 1964 Ford, and her anger suddenly renewed itself and flared into life again. She slowed her own car and would have come to a stop behind the Ford had not its doors suddenly opened. As she came up behind the other car, three men stepped into the road and walked to the barricade that was across the mouth of S-811. Ginny immediately swung her old Chevy out into the other lane, passed the Ford, and then glanced back to see the three men moving the barricade aside. She had noticed that three other men were in the car, and now, as her own car moved out of viewing range, she wondered what six men in business suits were doing coming off the Long Beach road on Big Pine and racing here to Ocho Puertos where they were moving aside a highway department barricade to enter 811. She suddenly remembered, as though it had been there in a corner of her mind all along, waiting to fall into place, that a strange voice had answered the phone at the diner early this morning, long before the diner was supposed to be open for business.

Ginny pulled the Chevy to the side of the road.

She wanted a cigarette desperately, but she had smoked her last one back in the apartment and was waiting to buy a new package from the machine in the diner. A cigarette would have helped her to think this out more clearly, but she couldn’t get a cigarette until she got to the diner — and the thing she was trying to figure out was whether or not she should go to the diner. Or even onto 811, for that matter. She sat impatiently behind the wheel of her old car with the engine running and probably overheating itself, tapping her painted fingernails on the steering wheel and wondering what she should do. There probably was nothing at all sinister about a stranger answering the diner phone before eight-thirty. It was probably some truck driver, or somebody, who had driven up and knocked on the door, and Amos the nigger had probably opened up for him, even though Mr. Parch wasn’t in yet. After all, the guy had given her his name on the phone, hadn’t he? He had said This is Whatever-His-Name-Was, so there probably was nothing wrong with his being there. A guy doesn’t give you his name if he’s up to something. Of course, nobody said it had to be his right name. Mmm.

Ginny wet her lips and then put her thumb into her mouth and began chewing off the nail polish.

And if she hadn’t seen that Ford coming so fast off the Long Beach road, she probably wouldn’t have thought anything about the three men moving aside the barricade to get into Ocho Puertos. She’d probably have moved the barricade herself — how else could she get to the diner? But where had that barricade come from, anyway? It certainly hadn’t been there when she’d left last night.

Something was funny.

She didn’t know what it was, but she knew that something was funny, the same way she could tell when some guy was going to make a pass at her the minute the door to the apartment was locked. Something was funny, and her first instinct was to call the police, but that would mean driving all the way back to Big Pine, which was where she’d find the nearest phone. Besides, suppose she was wrong? Suppose nothing at all was funny, except maybe a silly middle-aged waitress who was imagining all kinds of crazy things? They ought to make nail polish in different flavors, she thought.

So come on, she thought. How about it?

Well, I could drive back to Big Pine, she thought. And call the police from there. And meanwhile, Mr. Parch’ll be in already and What’s-His-Name who answered the phone would have told him I’d be there at nine-thirty. By the time I get to Big Pine and back, it’ll be ten, maybe ten-fifteen, and I’ll be arriving with cops, no less. That’ll sit just fine with Mr. Parch, the state troopers coming into his place. That’s just what he needs. Though maybe we’ll all have a good laugh at how silly and suspicious women can be, yeah, fat chance. Amos’ll be yelling his bloody nigger head off about the diner being full and nobody to wait on customers — assuming those six guys in the Ford had even gone to the diner. But where else could they have gone? To Luke’s marina maybe, to hire a boat, how about that?

Hey, brainless, what do you say to that?

They’re businessmen who want to rent a boat for the day, get out on the water, fish a little, drink it up.

Ginny shrugged.

Yeah, it’s possible, she thought.

With everybody saying a hurricane is coming?

Mmm.

Maybe I ought to drive back to Big Pine and get to a phone, she thought. But suppose I call the cops and this is nothing? Maybe I’d better check first.

How?

I can’t move the barricade aside and drive the car into town because if something is funny, well, that’d just be asking for it. But I can’t leave it parked here on U.S. 1, either. If everything’s all right in there, all I’ll get is a ticket for my troubles, besides being late and in dutch with Mr. Parch. So where can I.

Hey, she thought.

The Westerfield house.

There’s nobody there this time of year. Myron Westerfield and his wife don’t come down till after Christmas. I’ll just park the car in the driveway, and then cut across the highway into the thicket — probably get eaten alive, but I can’t just go marching down 811, can I? Not if something’s wrong in there. Well, maybe I can work my way along the beach instead. I’ll have to see.

Ginny pursed her lips, thinking furiously. Then she nodded, shrugged, put both hands on the wheel again, glanced into the rearview mirror, and immediately made her U-turn.

Roger Cummings was fifty-four years old, a tall man with hair graying at the temples — he rather enjoyed the cliché of distinction — a well-preserved athletic body, and a manner of speaking that left a person feeling he had been severely reprimanded for a grievous wrong he had committed.

When the car pulled into the driveway of the Westerfield house, Cummings was in the upstairs bedroom, shaving. He frowned and put down the razor and then, because the bathroom window was made of frosted glass, went into the bedroom to take a look from there. He could not see beyond the bend in the driveway, but he was sure an automobile was on the road because he heard the sound of its engine being cut, and then silence.

“What is it?” Sondra said from the bed.

“Shhh!” he said sharply.

The bedroom was silent as they listened. The car did not start again. They heard the sound of birds in the mangroves outside, the sound of water gently lapping against the Westerfield dock, the sound of an airplane somewhere high overhead, the sound of plumbing in the house, and of palm fronds rattling in the backyard — but not the sound of an automobile engine.

“Is it a car?” Sondra asked.

“I think so,” Cummings answered.

“Can you see it?”

“No.”

“Did you order anything, Rog?”

“No.”

“Then who can it be?”

“I don’t know.”

Sondra Lasky sat up in bed, a troubled look on her face. She was a slender girl with features that seemed even more youthful than her twenty years, a palely turned delicate beauty in her face, a narrow mouth, large inquiring eyes. Her neck was long and graceful, her hair blond and clipped very close to her head, exaggerating the impression of extreme youthfulness. Her breasts were small and immature, the nipples suggested rather than defined. There was about her an appearance of vulnerability which was not too terribly far from the truth and which, in part, accounted for her attractiveness to men. Sitting up in bed naked, with the sheets twisted around her long legs and narrow waist, her lower lip caught between her teeth, she seemed the total picture of perplexed innocence.

“You don’t think your wife—” she began, and Cummings immediately said, “No.”

“Then—”

“I don’t know, Sondra. I’ll go down and check it now.”

“All right,” she said, and nodded.

He went back into the bathroom to finish shaving, and then washed his face vigorously, and dried it. Quickly he threw the towel into the hamper and went back into the bedroom to put on a shirt. As he went out of the room, he said, “Get dressed, Sondra.”

“Be careful,” she said.

He would not admit to himself that he was in any way concerned about the unexpected arrival of this automobile. He had not even seen the car yet, and so his mind had an opportunity to create several varied images of its appearance, but none of the images pleased him. The first car he visualized was one driven by an imaginary private detective who had been hired by Faye and who had followed him and Sondra all the way down here to the tail end of the country. The car was a rented automobile and had been waiting for the private detective at the airport in Miami. He had immediately hopped into it, and come after them to Ocho Puertos. He was now making his way up the driveway with a camera and a witness, but Cummings was going to surprise him by meeting him halfway, instead of in bed and on top of Sondra.

The second car he visualized was one driven by the Florida Highway Patrol who had noticed that the Westerfield house was occupied and were wondering why, since Westerfield and his wife never came down until the end of December. They had parked their patrol car at the top of the drive because they didn’t feel like crossing that narrow ditch just before the bend. They were now striding to the front door in suntanned splendor, where they hoped to knock and — in the approved polite manner of cops everywhere — ask just what was going on here. Cummings would then have to explain to the best of his ability what he thought was going on here.

He would have to say that he was a very good friend of Myron Westerfield, who was the tax collector in the small Connecticut town where Cummings owned a large rambling stone house and forty acres of land that his great-great-great-grandfather had fought for in the American Revolution. He would then go on to explain that usually he lived in that house with his wife and his nineteen-year-old daughter when she was home from Vassar on holidays, but that he also maintained an apartment in Arlington, Virginia, because... well, he’d have to be careful about that, he supposed, about mentioning Arlington at all. That’s right, he would leave Arlington out entirely; there was no need to mention it. He would simply say that Westerfield was a good friend of his and that he had given him the house for a nine-day vacation starting yesterday, October fifth, and running through Sunday, October thirteenth, by which time he expected to be out of Ocho Puertos and back North. Maybe he ought to be careful about mentioning his friendship with Westerfield, too. But if they were policemen, he had to tell them something; he had to explain what he was doing in Westerfield’s house.

He had told Faye he would call her at the Connecticut farm whenever he had the opportunity, but not to be upset if she couldn’t reach him during the next week, since he expected to be occupied almost continuously with meetings. His plan was to telephone her from Ocho Puertos on Tuesday and again on Thursday, telling her he was calling from Arlington each time. He wasn’t sure whether or not that part of it mattered too damned much, whether Faye discovering he was an unfaithful husband would change their lives one way or another. Maybe they were already too far gone for that.

The screen door closed noisily behind him. He glanced up at the bedroom window and saw Sondra standing behind the drapes, a blue robe thrown over her shoulders, her blond hair touched with early morning sunshine. For a foolish moment he entertained the hope that the car would turn out to be an Ocho Puertos version of the Welcome Wagon. And then, because he knew the situation had to be faced realistically, he pulled back his shoulders and lifted his head and started up the driveway.

The birds in the mangroves set up an unholy chatter as he continued up the driveway. Up ahead, a huge egret fluttered into the air in an awkward flapping of fuzzy feathers, its long neck bobbing. Cummings, startled, brought both hands up in front of his face, as though expecting an attack. The birds swooped up and then gracefully circled away into the mangroves on the other side of the driveway, vanishing. A new cacophony of bird calls shattered the air as Cummings approached the bend and rounded it.

The car was a green Chevrolet, circa 1958.

It was empty.

Cummings stood staring at the car for perhaps three minutes, unmoving.

He had met no one in the driveway.

Now he wondered if whoever had parked the car wasn’t somewhere in the thicket silently watching the house.

He turned and began walking back.

The incoming security calls from the diner and each of the houses on the beach had been switched to the phone booth outside by nine o’clock, thereby freeing the office phone for any possible calls from Costigan’s clients. Jason had insisted that each of the men on the beach call in at five-minute intervals, right down the line starting with the diner and working west to the Tannenbaum house, and then back to the diner again. In that way, any trouble in any of the houses could immediately be spotted by the simple fact that the security call had not been made. At the same time, he had realized that such an operational plan would effectively monopolize the single telephone in the marina office, and had supplied the alternate number to his men for use after 9 A.M. It was now 10:05, and Willy still had not found the courage he needed to take him back to the Stem house where the girl Lucy was being guarded by Flack. Instead, he stood some ten yards from the glass phone booth outside the office and heard the phone ringing, and saw Goody Moore lift the phone from the hook and say something into it. Willy wiped the sweat from his mustache and walked over to the booth. Goody was just hanging up the phone.

“Everything okay?” Willy asked.

“Fine,” Goody answered.

Willy gestured to the three new cars parked in front of the marina office. “I see they made it from Key West all right, huh?”

“Yeah, last of them pulled in about ten minutes ago.”

“Who was that?” Willy asked.

“Rafe.”

“What took him so long?”

“Didn’t take him too long,” Goody said. He watched Willy for a moment and then said, “Where’re you supposed to be, Willy?”

“I took Costigan over to the repair shop,” Willy answered. “Like Jase said.”

“That must’ve been an hour ago,” Goody said. “Where’ve you been since?”

“Harry said I should go back to the Stern house.”

“So why don’t you?”

“I’ve been there,” Willy said. “I was looking around outside.”

“What for?”

“I was checking the water.” Willy licked his tongue over his mustache. “I figured maybe some of Costigan’s customers might be coming this way, you know. Over the water.”

“Yeah,” Goody said. “But that’s why Clay’s on the end of the dock with binoculars, Willy. To let us know if any boats are heading in. See?”

“Yeah.”

The telephone rang. Goody pulled it immediately from the hook. “Goody here,” he said. “Yep, Walt. Right, thanks,” he said, and hung up. “Walt over at the Ambrosini house,” he said to Willy, and then grinned. “When he busted in this morning, the old guy was on the pot.”

“Who?” Willy said, grinning.

“Ambrosini. He looks up at Walt and says ‘What’re you doing in my toilet?’ ”

Both men burst into high almost female giggles. The laughter helped to ease some of Willy’s nervousness. He fished into his pocket for a cigarette and started to light it. Goody’s laughter trailed. “You better get back,” he said. “Jase won’t like it if he sees you hanging around this way.”

“Back where?” Willy said, puffing on the cigarette as he lighted it.

“To the Stem house. That’s where you’re supposed to be, isn’t it?”

“Flack’s there, you know.”

“I know. Two men in each house, though, that’s the plan.”

“That’s right,” Willy said, and shook out his match. “You want me to go back, Goody?”

“Yeah, you’d better get over there.”

“Right,” Willy said. “See you.”

He started up the road. His heart was fluttering wildly in his chest. He could hear the sound of the surf rolling in against the shore and up on the main road the sound of a truck racing past, but these were almost lost in the pounding of his own heart and the rush of blood to his ears. He could remember the way the girl looked when they had broken in through the French doors, could remember her trying to cover herself with the sheet, could remember the feel of the rifle in his hands and the trigger against his finger and then the gun bucking and the man on the bed jerking back in bloody spasm. He forced himself to walk at a normal pace because Goody was watching him from the booth, but there was a furious propelling force within him — his mind was already in that bedroom with the girl again, his eyes were coveting her breasts, he was watching the steady ooze of bright red blood against the white sheet. He wondered if Flack would object to his taking the girl and then he thought, He damn well better not, I’m the one got him into this; if it wasn’t for me, he wouldn’t even be here.

It was exciting the way Willy and Flack had got involved in this operation; oh, not exciting the way his thoughts of the girl were as he moved steadily toward the Stem house up the road, his heart beating in his chest, not that kind of wild, fluttering excitement, but a different kind of excitement, right from the beginning, right from the first time Clay Prentiss talked to him in Goldman’s drugstore. Even then he’d known something big was about to happen to him. Otherwise, why would Clay — who was an older man and a war veteran and all — even bother talking to him? “Willy,” he had said, “I’d like to discuss something with you. Whyn’t you stop by the agency one day?” The agency he meant was the Buick agency he owned downtown on Columbia Street. Since Willy was about to graduate from high school that June, he figured maybe it was about a job, but there had been something very mysterious about Gay’s manner, something that was exciting even then about the slight pressure of his hand on Willy’s arm, as though they were already sharing a secret; this wasn’t about no job.

He didn’t get around to visiting Gay until Friday of that week. Gay showed him into his private office, and then they sat opposite each other at Gay’s desk, neither of them speaking, Gay smiling, and Willy’s sense of mysterious excitement mounting as the clock on the wall ticked off minutes.

“Willy,” Gay said at last, “I was wandering around uptown, oh, last month sometime, around where the old Porter Theater used to be, you know where I mean?”

“Yes, sir,” Willy said.

“There’s a bookstore on the corner there, do you know the one?”

“I’m not sure,” Willy said.

“Well, the reason I mention it is that you went into that bookstore.”

“I did?”

“Uh-huh. You stood outside looking in the window for a while, and then you went in.”

“Oh yes,” Willy said. “Uh-huh, I remember.”

“I wonder what caught your eye in that window, Willy.”

“A book, I guess,” Willy said, and shrugged.

“What book?”

“I don’t know,” Willy said cautiously.

“It was a book called The Communist Peril in America, wasn’t it?”

“Is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“What’s this all about, Mr. Prentiss?” Willy asked.

“Well, when you went inside there, it seems you asked about that book. And you also asked a few questions about the organization sponsoring the bookstore. Do you remember that, Willy?”

“I was just curious,” Willy said. “I don’t have anything to do with that organization.”

“I know you don’t. But you are interested in Communism, aren’t you?”

“No more and no less than anybody else.”

“Well, certainly interested enough to go in and ask about that book.”

“I only wanted to know how much it cost.”

“Four-fifty,” Clay said.

“That’s right,” Willy said.

“You told the man in the shop that four-fifty was more than you cared to spend.”

“That’s... listen, how do you know all this?”

“Leonard is a friend of mine.”

“Leonard? Who’s Leonard?”

“Leonard Crawley. Working in the bookshop.”

“Oh.”

“Do you remember now?”

“I remember asking the price of a book, yes.”

“A book about the Communist peril.”

“Well, yes, but that don’t mean...”

“What doesn’t it mean, Willy?”

“Nothing.”

“Willy,” Clay said gently, “there’s nothing wrong about hating Communism.”

Willy said nothing.

“Were you thinking of joining that organization?”

“No,” Willy said immediately.

“Then why did you ask questions about it?”

“I was just curious about how come they had only books about Commies in the window, that’s all. I thought maybe it was a Commie organization, that’s all.”

“But it isn’t, as you found out.”

“That’s right, but I still wouldn’t want to belong to it. I’ve read a couple of things about it in the papers and in magazines since then, and I don’t think it’s the kind of group I want to get involved with.”

“Why not?”

“It just doesn’t appeal to me, that’s all.”

“You’re not in favor of Communism, are you?”

“Hell, no! Who said that? Listen, would you mind—”

“I mean, you might be interested in a group that was against Communism, though not that particular group, isn’t that right?”

“No. I’m not interested in any group,” Willy said. “Not that one, and not any other one, either.”

“Oh,” Clay said. “I see.”

“Why? You got a group?”

He put the question flatly and abruptly, leaning across the desk at the same time. Clay’s dark brows lowered for an instant. Then he grinned and said, “Yes. We’ve got a group.”

“Who?”

“Some interested Americans.”

“Some interested Americans interested in what?”

“In the same thing that interests you.”

“Which is what?”

“The Communist peril.”

“Yeah?” Willy said.

“Yes,” Clay answered.

“So?”

“Are you interested?”

“No.”

“You seemed interested.”

“Seems and is are two different things.”

“Okay, Willy, then let’s forget it.”

Willy was silent for a moment, thinking. “What’s the name of this group of yours?” he asked.

“It hasn’t got a name.”

“Who’s in it?”

“A few people here in town,” Clay said, and paused. “And some people elsewhere.”

“Where elsewhere?”

“New York, Chicago, Richmond, Boston, few other places.”

“How many people are in it?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Because I do. Look, Mr. Prentiss, you sent for me, not vice versa.”

Clay seemed to hesitate. Then he said, “All right, six of us started it. There are now twenty of us. We need forty-two.”

“Why forty-two?”

“Why not?”

“It just seems like a funny number to hit on.”

“It wasn’t hit on. It’s what we need.”

“For what?”

Clay smiled.

“For what, Mr. Prentiss?” Willy asked.

Clay continued smiling.

“Mr. Prentiss,” Willy said, “did you want to tell me what this is all about, or did you want to just waste time bullshitting?”

The smile dropped from Clay’s face. Willy listened to the clock ticking in the silence of the room. Very slowly Clay said, “We need forty-two men to prepare for an action that will protect our nation and preserve our American way of life.”

“What kind of an action?”

Clay shook his head and said nothing.

“You’ve got a group thinks it can do all that, huh?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

Again, Clay shook his head.

“What is it, a vigilante group?” He had learned about vigilante groups in Social Studies II. They were supposed to be bad.

“No,” Clay said patiently. “Not a vigilante group.”

“Then what would you call it, Mr. Prentiss?”

“I would call it a group of patriots like yourself who would not like to live under Red domination. That’s what I would call it, Willy.”

“Patriots, huh?” Willy said. “Lots of speeches and slogans, huh?”

“We have no slogans, Willy.”

“What do you have?” Willy asked.

“Guns,” Clay replied.

The office went silent.

“That is,” Clay said, smiling, “we’d planned to do a little target shooting over at the range near the old Granger place, in case you’re interested in joining us.”

“With rifles?” Willy asked.

“Uh-huh. Rifle practice.”

“I wouldn’t mind a little rifle practice,” Willy said. “I’ll probably be going in the Army next few years, anyway, you know.”

“That’s right,” Clay said.

“I wouldn’t mind a little rifle practice at all.” Willy paused. “When did you plan on going up there? To the range?”

“Sunday morning.”

“Could I bring a friend?”

“Who’d you have in mind?”

“Flack. Frank McAllister. We call him Flack.”

“I’ll let you know.”

“What’re you gonna do?” Willy said, smiling. “Check with Leonard to see if Flack was in there asking about some books, too?”

Clay returned the smile.

“I’d have known already if he was,” he said.

Willy saw a sudden burst of white among the pines up ahead.

For a moment he thought it was a large white bird swiftly moving through the tangled vegetation. There was a sudden flutter, like that of wings, and then an unexpected silence — whatever was in the thicket had been observed, but had observed as well. The silence lengthened. He heard an insect buzzing somewhere off to the side of the road, and then there was movement again, lower, more cautious this time, a stealthy measured crawl — that was a human being in there. Willy pulled back the bolt on his rifle and eased a cartridge into the firing chamber.

“Who’s there?” he said.

There was no answer.

He moved down the road quickly, taking up a position near where he had spotted the intruder. He held the butt of the rifle in tight against his hip, the muzzle pointing into the scrub palmettos, his finger curled inside the trigger guard. His thoughts of the girl in the Stern house and his first talk with Clay, and now this unexpected encounter with someone, the prospect that he might within the next few moments be squeezing the trigger again, be killing again, filled him with an almost unbearable excitement.

“Who is it?” he said again, and again received no answer but the whispering friction of someone crawling swiftly through the tangle. He wet his mustache with his tongue, and left the road.

The mosquitoes were upon him instantly. They swarmed up from a thousand hidden pores and filled the air in a dense humming cloud. He swatted at them and swore loudly, tripping on exposed pine roots, pushing his way deeper into the thicket, the muzzle of his rifle brushing aside the fans of palmetto leaves. There was cactus too in the tangled confusion of the thicket, and always the high omnivorous hum of the mosquitoes and beneath that in the distance the sound of a human being pushing steadily toward the main highway. There was a sudden loud crashing sound, a startled moan, the flutter of wings, the strident note of a bird in flight — and then silence.

He’s fallen, Willy thought.

Something quickened inside him. He thought again of the man in the bed, waiting to be killed, daring Willy to kill him, and somehow he equated him with the fallen man ahead. The tangled vegetation became a willful adversary now as he chopped his way through with the muzzle of his rifle, the mosquitoes a formidable enemy determined to overwhelm him as he swatted and slapped and swore and stumbled. There was a patch of white in the clearing ahead. Willy’s heart began pounding fiercely. He swallowed and came closer; his hand on the muzzle of the Springfield was cold with sweat.

He pushed into the clearing.

It was a woman.

She was lying unconscious on the ground, a cut on her forehead, the blood trickling down slowly past her eyebrows and along the side of her nose. She wore white, rubber-soled flat shoes. Her nylons had been ripped by the cactus, tom to their gartered tops which showed where the white skirt of her uniform had pulled back over her thighs.

8

Marvin’s gaze roamed the walls of the paint shop in secret, brown eyes behind black-rimmed glasses, searching. He had never before realized how much junk there could be in a room, and his eyes recorded the trivia as dutifully as a ribbon clerk preparing inventory.

He was looking for something he could use.

He did not know what this was all about, nor did he particularly care. He knew only that he was a prisoner. Being a prisoner, he automatically planned escape. He did not know how he would escape or when he would escape, but he knew that he would. That was the only thing on his mind. Escape.

He knew he would have to do it alone.

He could not count on Costigan because he was a cripple. He could not count on his mother or father, or on Selma, either, though a man was certainly supposed to be able to count on his wife. Nor could he count on the old guy they’d dragged in, who looked like a prime example of a Bowery bum if ever Marvin had seen one. As usual, it got down to a simple fact, and the fact was that Marvin Tannenbaum, B.A., M.A., and working for his Ph.D. at Columbia University in the city of New York, Marvin Tannenbaum, as had always been the case throughout his entire life, from when his father was a general practitioner on Bathgate Avenue in the Bronx, and then after that to when his father began specializing and they moved to the Grand Concourse just off 183rd Street, all those years Marvin Tannenbaum — B.A. from City College, M.A. from Columbia — had been looking out for number one, and there was no one he could count on now but number one.

He had married Selma Rosen because she was a helpless fluttering sort of girl who wouldn’t know which subway to take to school if he didn’t direct her, had loved her for the very scatterbrained cute puzzled way she had of turning life’s simplest matters into vast and complex mysteries. The teen-age girl who was Selma Rosen was very pleasant to have around. There was a nice wholesome quality about her clean-scrubbed face and brushed brown hair, her lithe body, legs long and coltlike, breasts comfortably pleasant but not too enticing to other fellows, almost a shiksa look about her, almost. She was a cute teen-age kid when they got married, nineteen years old and both of them still in college, and he loved the open-eyed innocence of her in bed, the giggling sweetness she brought to the act of love, the kooky college-girl things she said, the odd shocked way she had of laughing at even a mildly dirty joke. She was a frolicsome teen-ager when they were graduated from City College together, twenty-two years old and cute as a button, moving impulsively and with an awkward grace, brimming with plans that were nutty and unrealistic. She was still a frisky little teen-ager — but she happened to be twenty-six years old.

Marvin did not know when he had become a father to the world at large, but he knew he did not enjoy the role. He was twenty-eight years old, and he had been playing father to Selma from the moment he’d met her, and father to the elder Tannenbaum ever since he had had his coronary. Marvin wanted a father of his own who would pick him up in his arms and carry him up the three flights of stairs to their third-floor apartment on Bathgate Avenue; he wanted a father with strong arms; he wanted someone he could go to and say, “Pop, I’m having trouble with Selma. Pop, I don’t love her. What shall I do?”

“What is the trouble, son?” his father would say.

Pop, he would say, she’s still a teen-ager. Pop, I don’t want a teen-ager in my bed any more. I don’t want to come home at the end of the day and listen to all these cockamamie problems she’s made up out of nothing. I’m tired when I get home, I want to rest. She’s always crying, Pop. She cries about everything. If she can’t get the car in the garage she starts bawling. Pop, I can’t stand it any more. That’s why I came down here; I had to talk this over with you. I want to divorce her, Pop. I can’t deal with everything all alone any more, I need some help, she’s too goddamn helpless, I’m sick of it. That big wide-eyed crap in bed. Pop, we’ve been married close to six years. When the hell is she going to become something more than a person I do things to, a person who lies back on the pillow with a shocked awed almost religious look on her face? I’m sorry, Pop, but isn’t marriage supposed to be something special? Isn’t it? Pop, I don’t love her, I want out!

He didn’t have a wife, and he didn’t have a father either.

Oh, God, he wanted to be on a tropical island someplace.

He wanted sixteen girls to wait on him hand and foot and bathe him in oil and feed him coconut and pineapple and make love to him with the ocean murmuring against the shore and the breeze wafting through the palm fronds, balmy. God, oh God, he did not want to carry the whole damn world, he wanted to rest, he wanted to relax, he wanted to escape.

He wanted to escape.

There were a great many tools in the shop. He silently weighed each one against the rifles carried by Clyde and Harry. He had no idea what kind of rifles they were, but they looked uncommonly deadly. He imagined they were capable of putting rather large holes in a person, especially if a person were foolish enough to come charging across the room with something like, well, a monkey wrench in his hand. No, the tools were out, even if he could get to them, which he couldn’t possibly since some of them were on the workbench where Clyde sat and the others were hanging on the pegboard clear across the room behind the racked outboards. No.

“Marvin?” his mother said.

“What is it, Mom?”

“What are they doing here?”

“Who?” Marvin asked. His gaze had moved to a wall calendar to the left of the workbench, advertising a hardware store in Key West and showing a photograph of a seminude girl on a surfboard.

“These men.”

“I don’t know.”

“If it’s a holdup, why don’t they hold us up already?”

“Maybe they’ve got something bigger in mind,” Marvin said.

“Like what?”

Marvin shrugged. His scrutiny had shifted from the calendar to the open door in the half wall, and then to the shelves on the wall beyond. “Maybe a bank,” he said. There were parts manuals on the shelves, and several soiled rags.

“A bank where? There’s no bank here,” his mother said.

“Maybe the next town.” He shrugged again. “Mom, I don’t know what they want.”

“Could it be the post office?” Rachel asked. “There’s a post office next door on Big Pine. They keep money in post offices, don’t they?”

“Uh-huh,” Marvin said. He was examining the outboard motors on their racks now, the socket wrenches spread before them on an open cloth carrying bag. Several packing crates containing parts were against the pegboard wall on the far end of the shop, and a boat’s propeller was resting on its side near some stacked gasoline cans. What looked like a short mast was standing in the corner. Three opened packing crates were near the bow of the boat, excelsior overflowing their wooden edges. The boat on its cradle hid almost the entire wall on the left side of the shop.

“But not so much,” his mother said.

“Not so much what?”

“Money.”

“Where?”

“In post offices.”

“Oh. No, I guess not.”

“Keep quiet there,” Harry warned. “Both of you.”

A closed door with a hand-lettered sign, TOILET, was in the corner of the room behind the boat’s stem, and hanging to the left of the door was a fire extinguisher. The wall where Marvin sat began just there, with the overhead doors behind him and running almost the entire width of the room, stopping some three feet short of the joining perpendicular wall. A short row of shelves occupied those three feet. The shelves were laden with cans of paint and varnish, bottles of what seemed to be either turpentine or paint thinner. On one of the shelves several brushes with drilled handles were hanging in a pan of water.

The workbench was against the adjacent wall. Harry was leaning against one end, near the vise. Clyde was sitting on the bench, his feet off the floor, his rifle across his lap. There were some tools and paintbrushes and wood chips on the bench itself. On the wall behind the bench there were more shelves with cans and bottles. Under the bench there were two Coca-Cola cases, one of them containing only empty bottles. That was it. Several feet past the bench was the hardware store calendar, which was just about where Marvin had come in.

He could see nothing that he could use, and the lack of a weapon, the lack of an idea, the lack of a workable attack frustrated him enormously. Exactly opposite him, across the room on one of the oil drums Amos had carried over, his wife Selma sat against the white pegboard wall, white blouse, white skirt, white against white. She caught his gaze. She looked at him questioningly. For a moment he felt something close to what he must have felt a long long time ago, when Selma Rosen was sixteen years old and a junior at Evander Childs High School. He returned the questioning look, but a larger question was in his eyes, the question that had been troubling him for the better part of a year now, the question he had carried inside him day and night. Where do we go from here, Selma? What do we do with this marriage of ours that has gone stale and rotten? What do we do, Selma? How do we get out of it without destroying each other?

He turned his head aside.

His gaze came to rest on the fire extinguisher hanging alongside the door to the toilet.

He supposed he could reach for the extinguisher and, well, wait, he would need some excuse to take him over to that side of the shop — why not the bathroom? He could tell Harry he wanted to go to the bathroom and then he could grab the extinguisher from the wall and turn it full on Harry’s face and, sure, they’d shoot him full of holes before he even got the damn thing off the wall. And even if he did manage to get it before anyone saw him, he’d still have to come clear across the room with it before he could hope; the hell with it.

He became angry with the stupidity of the idea, and then irrationally angry with the fire extinguisher itself. Because it could not serve his purpose — escape — he immediately berated its ability to serve any purpose whatever. It seemed too small for a room this size, and it probably hadn’t been checked or refilled in years. How could it possibly function effectively if a fire broke out? He moved his eyes toward the shelves of paint and varnish and thinner and turpentine, toward the gasoline cans stacked near the rear wall, toward the oil drums, toward the excelsior sticking out of the packing crates, and his anger at the extinguisher turned to something bordering on anxiety. He suddenly hoped no one was smoking, and he felt instantly relieved when he glanced around the room again and saw no lighted cigars or cigarettes. If a fire broke

Fire, he thought.

It became something more than a word almost at once, flaming into his mind in a self-igniting flash of inspiration.

Fire.

Cautiously, because the idea had been conceived in searing intensity and accepted immediately as workable; cautiously, because he did not wish to arouse the slightest suspicion now that he had come upon something he could use; cautiously, he took his handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose, and allowed his gaze to drift toward the three-foot section of shelves on his right. He discounted the cans of paint at once. Paint was inflammable, yes, but not particularly volatile. He needed something that would give him immediate and sudden flame, something that could be ignited in an instant. For a terrifying moment he wondered whether or not the clear colorless liquid in the half-gallon bottles on the middle shelf was water. No, he thought, please. It’s not water, it can’t be water.

He closed his mind like a trap.

The clear colorless liquid in those two bottles was either turpentine or paint thinner.

“Don’t be so angry,” Bobby Colmore said to Dr. Tannenbaum.

“They make me angry,” Tannenbaum answered at the top of his voice, glaring at Harry.

“It doesn’t pay to get angry with these kind of men,” Bobby said. He was very angry himself. He was so angry that his hands were trembling, and to hide their trembling he had put them behind his back. He had been offering advice to himself more than to Tannenbaum, knowing that every time he got angry he began drinking, and every time he began drinking it only made him angrier. There were two quart bottles of bourbon back in his room on the shelf over his bed near the picture of Ava Gardner, but they wouldn’t do any good if he got angry here in the paint shop. He tried to control his anger by talking to Tannenbaum, but Tannenbaum was so angry himself, with veins standing out on his jaw and with his hands clenched, that it did no good at all to talk to him. In fact, Bobby was afraid that Tannenbaum’s anger would jump right over into his own, like electricity leaping from one terminal to another.

“These kind of men,” Bobby said, “are the kind who push into your lives without any reason. That’s the kind they are. If you get angry at them, you only hurt yourself. Anger is a terrible vice.”

“I know it,” Tannenbaum said. “But I don’t like being pushed around for no reason.” He looked across the room and said, louder so that Harry would be certain to hear him, “I don’t like being pushed around for no reason.”

“Lower your voice, doc,” Harry said. “Clyde here is trying to get some sleep.”

Clyde laughed. His eyes were closed, but he wasn’t sleeping. He laughed and then wet his lips. He laughed at everything Harry said. Bobby wondered if he really thought everything Harry said was so funny.

“What they said, you know...”

“What?” Tannenbaum asked, glaring at Harry, and then turning again to Bobby.

“What they said, it isn’t true,” Bobby said.

“What’s that?”

“About my being a drunk.”

“Oh,” Tannenbaum said.

Bobby’s hands were clenched in tight anger behind the crate upon which he sat.

“I drink a little,” he said to Tannenbaum, “but that doesn’t make me a drunk.”

“Argh, they’re crazy,” Tannenbaum said. “What do you listen to them for?”

“I’m not,” Bobby said. “I’m not listening to them, Dr. Tannenbaum. It’s just we’ve got a little community here, and I don’t want my neighbors to get the idea I’m a drunk just on their say-so, do you know what I mean, doctor?”

“Sure, sure, don’t worry. You think we’d pay attention to what a bunch of hoodlums have to say? Don’t worry.”

“Look, I said I want it quiet in here,” Harry said, “and I mean quiet.”

Bobby glanced at him quickly. Behind him, his hands were still clenched.

The men who had invaded Ocho Puertos, the men who had broken into his shack this morning and pulled him out of bed, had deprived Bobby of an early-morning half tumbler of bourbon and the reassuring knowledge that more was in the back room whenever he wanted it. He was not in the back room now, and his isolation from the bottles made him angry, as did the intrusion of these men who were seriously threatening Bobby’s concept of what a drunk was or wasn’t. You weren’t a drunk if you got drunk in private, if you clung to whatever dignity a human being possessed. These men had invaded his privacy and cut him off from the source of his supply, and this made him angry, and his anger intensified his need for a drink. He could only remember one other Sunday like this, last year, around September it was, when he’d run short and had driven over to Big Pine forgetting it was a Sunday and had found the liquor stores closed. He had come back to town wondering what to do and had gone over to the paint shop where Luke was working on the hull of a small outboard, and had flatly asked Luke for something to drink. Luke had only a pint bottle of Scotch, half full, which was light and smooth and delicious and gone in four seconds flat.

A man is not a drunk, Bobby told himself, if he gets drunk in private and clings to his dignity.

He had waited until Luke left the shop, and then had gone to the shelves near the overhead doors. He had taken a bottle of paint thinner from one of the shelves, and carried it back to his room. In his room he strained the liquid through his handkerchief into an empty can. He had no vanilla extract with which to disguise the taste, so he drank the filtered alcohol neat and hard, and was drunk within the quarter hour. It was not a good drunk; paint thinner had never been a particular favorite of his.

A narrow smile touched Bobby’s mouth now.

He scratched his jaw and looked across the room to the shelves just left of where Marvin Tannenbaum was sitting.

The man was squatting opposite her when she regained consciousness.

Ginny saw first the branches of the pine tree overhead and the sun blinking through in a radiating dazzle. She propped herself on one elbow and saw the bloodstains on the breast of her uniform, and then raised her eyes and saw the man across from her.

She drew her breath in sharply, surprised by his immediacy and surprised too by the rifle in his lap. She remembered then, and all surprise fled, leaving only a cautious fear. He had looked older when she had watched him through the palmettos. She had seen him just as she was about to step into the road, and had immediately turned back into the thicket, but not before the rifle had registered on her mind. She had stopped to study him, crouching behind a thick pine, and had dropped to her knees to hide. When he had yelled “Who’s there?” she had begun crawling through the thicket toward the main highway, anxious to get to the nearest telephone, sure now that something was terribly wrong; a man didn’t carry a rifle in broad daylight unless

“You must’ve hit your head on that big branch up there,” he said.

“What do you want here?” she asked immediately.

“Where, lady?”

“In Ocho Puertos.”

“Oh. I thought you meant here in the woods with you.” The man grinned. “That’s what I thought you meant.”

She followed his gaze, a knowledgeable lowering of his eyes to her exposed legs, and suddenly became aware of her skirt, and lifted herself quickly and pulled the skirt down over her knees. She noticed her tom nylons at the same moment, and thought, Oh, goddamnit, as if the tom stockings were somehow more serious than this young man who sat opposite her with a rifle, more important than whatever was happening in the town of Ocho Puertos.

“What’s your name?” the young man asked.

“What’s yours?” she answered.

“Willy.”

“My name is Ginny McNeil. I work in the diner.” She paused. “What’s going on?” she said.

“You always come to work through the woods, Ginny?”

“No.”

“Then how come you did this morning?”

“Because there’s a barricade up on the road.” She paused again. “I couldn’t bring the car in. So I parked it and decided to walk down, that’s all.”

“Oh?” he said.

She felt immediately that she had told him the wrong thing, that if only she had said the right thing to him he would have let her go. She could see him frowning as he thought it over. He nodded, and then suddenly smiled.

“You brought a car to work, huh?”

“Yes. It’s a 1959—”

“Where’d you leave it?”

“Up there,” she said, and made a vague gesture with her head. She had decided to be very careful about what she told him. She had not liked the way he had studied her legs; well, she had good legs but that didn’t mean some young kid could look at them that way. And she didn’t like the way he was smiling now, which was somehow more frightening than when he had been frowning and thinking.

“Where up there?” he asked, and made the same vague gesture in imitation.

“Off the road.”

“Where?”

“I parked it in the Westerfield driveway.”

“Where’s that?”

“Across U.S. 1.”

“Anyone apt to see it there?”

“Well...”

“Yes or no?”

“It’s about ten feet off the road, I guess.”

“Mmm,” he said.

“I’ll go move it if you like,” she said.

He gave a short mirthless chuckle and then got to his feet, holding the rifle in one hand and dusting off the seat of his dungaree trousers with the other. “We’ll both go move it,” he said. “Get up.”

He watched her legs as she rose awkwardly, grasping one of the branches for support. “My head still hurts,” she said.

“You gave yourself a good whack,” he answered. He had apparently been considering what she had told him earlier because he then said, “Did Mr. Westerfield see you park the car?”

“There’s never anyone there this time of year. The house is empty.”

“Oh?” he said again, and again he nodded and the smile came back onto his face. “Let’s go get the car, huh?”

“I feel a little dizzy.”

“You’ll live.”

As they moved out of the small clearing and into the thicker growth, the mosquitoes attacked again in force, swarming over Ginny’s arms and legs and the back of her neck. She swatted at them and swore under her breath, and then turned to look over her shoulder.

“Aren’t they biting you, too?” she asked.

“They’re biting me,” he said flatly. “Let’s just move a little faster, okay? Then we won’t get bit so much.”

It was twenty minutes after ten when they reached the main highway. Ginny looked at her watch in much the same way she had earlier looked at her torn nylons, registering the time, and thinking how late she was going to be, and then wondering if the diner were open at all.

“It’s across the road there,” she said.

“Go on,” Willy told her. “Hurry up before we get traffic.”

They ran across the highway and into the Westerfield driveway. Willy glanced over his shoulder and then said, “Get in the car. Quick.”

“Are we going back to town?”

“Yes. Get in.”

They got into the car, Ginny behind the wheel, Willy beside her with the rifle. She started the engine, and then said, “I’ll have to back out into the road.”

“No, I don’t want you doing that,” he said. “Drive on up ahead. If there’s a house up there, there ought to be a turnaround.”

She nodded and set the car in motion.

At first she was only aware of his eyes on her legs. She tried to pull her skirt down, but her extended leg on the accelerator made this impossible. She pulled back her hand quickly, grasping for control of the wheel. The driveway was badly rutted, and the car bounced and lurched as they came closer to the distant gray house. She could not have said exactly when his interest turned to genuine excitement, but she felt it in the automobile suddenly, like an overpowering animal stench, primitive and wild, felt his excitement beside her as surely as if they had just entered her bedroom and locked the door. She drove with her legs widespread, the skirt pulled back over her knees, the car lurching and bouncing. From the corner of her eye she could see his hands moving along the stock of the rifle. She dared not glance at him because she did not want to encourage him in any way, and yet she was tempted to look at him, to see the excitement on his face and on his body; did he have a hard on?

She was suddenly frightened.

“How old are you, Ginny?” he asked.

She decided to lie, and then changed her mind and said, “Forty-two.” She had begun trembling. Her legs trembled, and her hands on the wheel trembled. She was sure he could see her trembling, and sure too that her fear, if it was fear, was exciting to him.

“You’re preserved pretty good for forty-two,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“What?”

“I said thank you.”

“Yeah, you got pretty good legs there,” he said.

“There’s the house up ahead,” she answered. “We can make the turn.”

She pulled the wheel to the left as they approached the house, swinging into the circle before the front door, making the turn in a wide lazy arc.

“Just a second,” he said.

“What is it?”

“Pull over there a minute, will you?”

Ginny braked the car to a slow, gliding stop. She put her hands in her lap and sat quietly beside him. She could hear the gulls shrieking over the bay.

“Let’s take a look inside,” he said.

“What for?”

“Just to check. I didn’t even know there was a house here.”

“It’s probably locked,” Ginny said.

“Well, let’s try it, huh?”

“I’ll wait here,” she said.

“Well, now, that’d be pretty silly, wouldn’t it?”

“I won’t go anywhere.” She pulled the key from the ignition. “Here,” she said, and turned partially on the seat to hand it to him.

“Why, thank you,” he said, accepting the key.

“I’ll wait here.”

“Mm,” he said.

“I won’t go anywhere.”

“Mm.”

“I’ll just sit right here.”

“Mm.” He smiled and nodded and said “Mm” again and then said, “I think you better come along with me, Ginny.”

“I told you I—”

“Get out of the car,” he said.

“I... I want to stay here.”

“Why?”

“I want to.”

“You afraid of me?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t be afraid, honey.”

She looked up into his face to find the same fixed smile there. He was young and strong and frightening and she could smell sex on him, and sweat, and viciousness. Her eyes lowered inadvertently. She turned away quickly but too late to stop her own sudden unbidden response, hot and rushing. Her hands were trembling violently now.

“Get out of the car,” he said slowly.

He had said only that he wanted to check the house, but as she opened the car door and prepared to slide off the seat, she turned her head over her shoulder and whispered, “What are you going to do to me?”

He did not answer. He only smiled and nodded.

She got out of the car silently and walked ahead of him to the front door of the house, silently, and then waited for him to try the knob.

“It’s locked,” he said.

“I figured it’d be.”

He drought for a moment, and then said, “Get back in the car.”

“All right,” she said.

“Hey.”

She turned to look at him.

“I know where we can go.”

Fatboy was pacing the small marina office. “Where did you leave it?”

“On Big Pine.”

Fatboy glanced to where Jason was standing alongside the filing cabinets. The television set in the corner was on, the sound lowered. An old cowboy movie was showing.

“Where on Big Pine?”

“The road leading to the beach.”

“Long Beach?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t like it,” Fatboy said. He was now wearing a khaki shirt and trousers similar to Jason’s. A .45 was hanging in a holster on his right thigh. “What do you think, Jason?”

“He had no choice,” Jason said, and shrugged.

“I’m only arguing with the way he disposed of the car,” Fatboy said.

Jason nodded. “You should have brought it here, Rafe,” he said.

“With two dead men in it?” Rodiz asked.

“There are two dead men in it where you left it, right?”

“Yes, but that’s over on Big Pine, not here. Suppose they start looking for that car? If I’d brought it here—”

“We could have hidden it here,” Fatboy said.

“How?”

“In the paint shop. There’re two big overhead doors on the south wall. We could have driven it right in there.”

“I didn’t think of that,” Rodiz said.

Fatboy would not let it go. “This way, as soon as they find that car in the mud, they’ll come looking.”

“So what?” Rodiz answered. “They won’t find anything, will they?”

“They’ll find a town full of armed men.”

“They’d have found that even if the car was in the paint shop.”

“You don’t seem to under—” Fatboy began.

“Take it easy,” Jason said.

“He doesn’t seem to understand there are two dead cops in that car,” Fatboy said angrily.

“I understand that fine. What did you want me to do? Let them take us in? Our whole operation would have—”

“I’m saying you should have brought the car here. You panicked, that’s what happened. You weren’t thinking straight.”

“I’m saying it doesn’t make any difference.”

“It makes a hell of a lot of difference,” Fatboy said. “When they find that patrol car, they’ll also find two dead men. That makes it murder, you understand? That means if cops come here, they come here investigating a homicide.”

“If I’d brought the car to the paint shop—”

“Yeah?”

“It’d have been the same.”

“No. Because then the car would only be missing, you understand? Missing. And headquarters would think maybe they’d had a flat, or their radio was out, something like that. The other cars’d just be cruising the roads looking for it, that’s all. They wouldn’t stop to ask questions, they’d never get anywhere near that paint shop.”

“And if they did?”

“They wouldn’t,” Fatboy said. “This way, somebody’s gonna stumble on that car sooner or later, sticking out of the mud like that. The whole damn police force’ll come looking for a murderer.” He shook his head. “I don’t like it, Jase.”

“Neither do I,” Jason said.

“What do we do?”

“We wait.”

“For the cops to get here?”

“If they’re coming,” Jason said.

“They’ll come, don’t worry about that.”

“I did what I had to do,” Rodiz said. He looked at Jason. “I followed your orders, Jason.”

“I know you did.”

“You should have brought the car here,” Fatboy insisted.

“Lay off,” Jason said.

“I’d just hate to see this thing get screwed up,” Fatboy said. “Especially now, when this part of it’s gone so—”

“...for the latest news on Hurricane Flora.”

“Hold it,” Jason said, and moved quickly to the television set, turning up the volume.

“This is the eleven o’clock advisory from the Miami Weather Bureau,” an announcer said. “Hurricane Flora is still centered near latitude 20.4 north, longitude 78.4 west. This position is about seventy statute miles south-southwest of Camagüey, Cuba, and three hundred and eighty miles south-southeast of Miami. Flora is moving westward about four miles per hour.”

“Jason, do you think—?”

“Shh!”

“Highest winds are estimated at a hundred and ten miles per hour near the center. Gales now extend outward in occasional squalls some four hundred statute miles in the northern semicircle, two hundred miles in the southeast quadrant, and a hundred and thirty miles in the southwest quadrant.”

“What the hell does he mean?” Fatboy asked.

“...will move very little during the next twelve hours. Since a large portion of the circulation will remain over Cuba, little intensification is expected. The threat to South Florida has not increased significantly, but gale warnings are up along the Florida coast from Stuart to Everglades City. Seas are very rough throughout the Western Antilles, in the southeast Gulf of Mexico, and in the Atlantic off the Florida east coast. Small craft in these areas should remain in safe harbor. All interests should keep in touch with further advisories. While little movement is expected during the next twelve to eighteen hours, some radical changes in the direction of movement are probable thereafter. The next regular advisory will be issued at five P.M. Eastern Standard Time, with an intermediate bulletin at two P.M.”

Jason turned off the set.

“What do you think?” Fatboy said.

“I think we’ll be all right.”

“You think the water’s okay?”

“I think so.”

“I mean, I was wondering about The Golden Fleece.”

“I know.”

“It won’t be too rough, will it?”

“Alex knows how to handle a boat in rough water.”

“Yes, but...”

“Don’t worry,” Jason said. “They’ll get here.”

9

The boat seemed to be adrift.

Murray Diel was the first of the six crew members to spot her, and he immediately passed the information to Randazzo over the plane’s intercommunication system. “One o’clock,” he said. “About two miles. On the water.”

Randazzo glanced off to his right and grunted. They were still maintaining an altitude of one thousand feet on this leg of the patrol back from Key West, and the boat below was clearly visible.

“She looks to be adrift,” he said to Diel.

“That’s what I thought.”

“Let’s go down for a closer look.” He paused, pressed the ICS button again, and said, “Photographer, pilot.”

“Aye?”

“Samuels, there’s a boat at one o’clock, about two miles, seems to be adrift. We’re going down for a look. Want to get some pictures?”

“Wilco.”

“She’ll be on our starboard side. You can shoot when I bank. After station, stand by.”

“Standing by, sir.”

“Look sharp. We’ll compare stories after the pass. Let’s go, Murray.”

He shoved forward on the yoke, and the plane began its descent, sunlight flashing on its wings. The boat below loomed closer as the plane dropped. Randazzo could see the numbers on her bow, could see a man standing in the cockpit, waving his arms. The plane banked to the right and began climbing again.

“We’ll make another pass,” Randazzo said. “Across the stem this time. Knowles?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Want to try to raise them?”

“Aye, aye,” Knowles said. “Sir, this isn’t that boat out of Bimini, is it?”

“I don’t think so,” Randazzo said into his mouthpiece. “Murray, what was that boat out of Bimini?”

“Blue fifty-footer, twin Cadillacs,” Diel answered.

“Sir?” Penner said.

“Go ahead, Penner.”

“This one isn’t no fifty-footer.”

“I figured thirty, thirty-five,” Randazzo said.

“Twenty-seven, sir,” Penner said.

“Maroon hull and black trim, sir,” Acadia, the other mechanic said.

“Roger. Anybody get the numbers?”

“6024, I thought,” Diel said.

“That’s what I saw, too. Samuels, did you get your picture?”

“I think so, sir. You going to be banking to the right again?”

“Affirmative.”

“Standing by, sir.”

“Here we go,” Randazzo said, and brought the plane around for its second pass. He came in over the stern, some fifty feet above the water and the boat, and then banked to the right and began climbing.

“Name’s The Golden Fleece, sir,” Penner said.

“That’s what I saw, too,” Acadia said.

“Out of N’awlins,” Diel said with a phony accent, and then laughed.

“What do you think, Murray?”

“I think she’s in trouble. The guy was waving his arms on this pass, too.”

“Sir, he was wearing a life jacket, did you notice that?”

“Yeah. Knowles, any luck raising her?”

“Negative, sir.”

“Let’s drop a message block. Penner?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Want to bring some paper up here?”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“You’ve got it, Murray,” Randazzo said, and released the yoke and pulled a pencil from the long slit pocket on the sleeve of his flight suit. Penner came forward immediately with a sheaf of papers attached to a clipboard. Diel had the controls now, and Randazzo put the clipboard on his lap and wrote:

“Message block, sir,” Penner said.

Randazzo took the six-inch-long, hollow, balsa block and pulled the cork from its end. He folded his message, stuffed it into the block, and then sealed it again. “Better get a red streamer on that,” he said.

“Aye,” Penner answered.

“We’ll come in over the stem again,” Randazzo said, “give you a nice long target. I expect you to drop it right in his lap, Penner.”

“I’ll try, sir,” Penner said, smiling, and started aft with the message block.

“You want to take her down, Murray?”

“Rog, I have it.”

“Standing by the after station, sir,” Penner reported.

“Got your streamer on?”

“Affirmative.”

“Take her down, Murray.”

The plane began its descent again. It came in directly over the stern, some forty feet above the boat.

“Bombs away!” Penner called over the ICS.

“Did you get him?”

Penner, who was looking back at the boat from the open hatch in the side of the plane, did not answer for a moment. The block with its trailing red streamer fell like a bleeding gull. “Right in his lap, sir!” Penner shouted.

“Okay, we’ll give him a few minutes to read our love note, and then we’ll make another pass. Hold it here, Murray. Just circle above her, about three hundred feet or so.”

“Wilco,” Diel said.

“He’s still reading our note, sir,” Knowles said as the plane gained altitude.

“He must be a lip-reader,” Acadia put in.

“Doesn’t want to make any mistakes,” Randazzo said. “Wants to make sure he raises the right number of hands.”

“Lucky thing he’s only got two, sir,” Penner said, and everyone laughed.

“You want me to get this back to base, sir?” Knowles asked. “Well, let’s see what he tells us first, okay?”

“Roger,” Knowles said.

The plane circled over the boat like a giant patient bird.

“One thing I always hated doing,” Randazzo said.

“What’s that?”

“Circling.”

“How come?”

“I don’t know. Makes me feel stupid. As if I’m not going anywhere.”

The plane continued its lazy circling.

“Shall we take her down?” Diel asked.

“Guy’s had time to read War and Peace,” Randazzo said. “Let’s go”

The plane began dropping.

“He’s standing in the middle of the cockpit, sir,” Penner said.

“I see him.”

The plane was coming in low now, a hundred feet above the water, seventy-five, fifty, forty. “Pull her up,” Randazzo said.

“He had both hands over his head, sir,” Penner said.

The radioman first class who took the message in room 1021 of the Coast Guard’s Rescue and Coordination Center in downtown Miami immediately went into the room next door and handed it to the chief quartermaster who was on duty. The chief, whose name was Osama and who happened to be a full-blooded Cherokee, read the message slowly and almost tiredly and then waited for his superior officer to get off the phone. His superior officer was Lieutenant Abner Caxton, and he was talking at the moment to an admiral who wanted to know just what the hell that damn hurricane was doing. Caxton was trying to explain that Flora seemed to be sitting still at the moment, but the admiral kept asking Caxton why it was sitting still, and what the Coast Guard was doing about its immobility. Caxton finally succeeded in mollifying the admiral only to hang up and find Big Chief Osama looking at him dourly.

“What now?” Caxton asked.

“Boat adrift, sir, needs medical help,” Osama said.

“Where?”

“Twenty-five miles, zero-nine-zero radial of Key West OMNI.”

“Get me latitude and longitude,” Caxton said. “Do we need a chopper?”

“I don’t know, sir. The message doesn’t say how bad the situation is.”

“Who’d it come from?”

“The seven-two, sir.”

“Who’s flying?”

“Randazzo.”

“He’s a good man,” Caxton said generously. “If his message doesn’t give details, then there aren’t any to give. Where’s the Merc right now?”

“Don’t know, sir. She won’t be reporting until 1500.”

“Tell Di Filippo to raise her. Go ahead, I’ll finish that.”

He went to the charting table. A sign on the door of the message center warned that the area was restricted to authorized personnel only. Caxton watched the chief disappear through the doorway and then leaned over the chart. The chief, he saw, had already positioned the plotting arm on its proper bearing. Caxton counted off the twenty-five miles from Key West and put a dot on the chart. Latitude 24.33.8 north, longitude 81.19.2 west. He looked at the big clock hanging on the wall above the status board. It was 1107. The Merc had left the base in Key West at 0900, and she was probably traveling at eleven knots or so, just outside the reef line, which would put her at about, oh, somewhere south of Summer-land Key. That was, mmm — Caxton consulted the chart again, moving the plotting arm and marking off the area beyond the reef — well, somewhere around latitude 24.30 or .32, and longitude, oh, 81.27, he would guess. He put another small dot on the chart, and then lighted a cigarette and waited for Big Chief Osama to come back with the Merc’s actual position. If the Merc was indeed where Caxton thought she should be, there’d be no need to send out a helicopter. She could be alongside the disabled boat within a half hour, probably sooner if she really poured it on.

Unconcerned, Caxton smoked his cigarette and waited for the chief to return.

The message was received in the radio room of the cutter by Curt Danby, a radioman second. He immediately hit his buzzer, and the quartermaster on the bridge heard the three buzzes, knew there was a radio message, and dispatched the coxswain to pick it up. The coxswain brought the message to Ensign Charles Carpenter, who was O.D. on the forenoon watch. Carpenter walked over closer to the porthole to read it by the light streaming through the glass.

“Very well,” he said, and initialed the original. The coxswain went into the chart room and attached a copy to the clipboard there. He was on his way down to the captain’s cabin when Carpenter picked up the sound-powered telephone.

“Captain here,” Cates said, answering.

“Captain, we’ve got a proceed-and-assist from Miami. Coxswain’s on his way down with it now.”

“I’ll be right up,” Cates said.

“Yes, sir,” Carpenter answered, and the captain hung up. He had been lying on his bunk on the starboard side of the small cabin (he had shared larger quarters as chief quartermaster aboard the Navy AKA) and he sat up now to put on his shoes. The knock sounded on his door just as he was rising. “Come in,” he said, knowing it would be the coxswain. He read the message quickly, and then initialed it and went out of the cabin into the passageway, and then up the ladder to the bridge.

“Where are we now?” he asked Carpenter.

“I’ve plotted the position of the boat, sir, as well as our own. Would you like to see the chart?”

“Yes, I would,” Cates said, pleased by his first lieutenant’s efficiency and foresight, but nonetheless suspecting him of being a first-rate ass-kisser. He studied the chart, and then went back into the wheelhouse.

“How does she head?” he asked the helmsman.

“Zero-seven-zero, sir,”

“Our speed?”

“All ahead standard, sir.”

“Come right to zero-nine-zero,” Cates said. He paused only an instant, and then said, “All engines ahead full.”

It was almost 1145 by the time they reached the boat. They spotted the circling plane first and Cates ordered his radiomen to try to raise it, and then they saw the boat out on the horizon, bobbing on the waves soundlessly, moving in an eccentric drifting pattern. Cates’s hospital corpsman was a second-class petty officer named Emil Bunder, whom everyone aboard — including Cates — called Doc. Bunder had prepared his emergency kit, not knowing what to expect once he got to the boat, and now he stood by, waiting to leave the ship, holding the kit in one hand and — in the other — a portable FM radio in its canvas carrying bag. The ship was equipped with two boats, a twenty-foot pulling dinghy on its port quarter, and a twenty-foot motor launch on its starboard quarter. For the trip to the disabled cruiser, the motor launch would be used. The seas were not rough, and the three men who would accompany Bunder in the launch were all skilled boat handlers. Bunder himself detested boats and was prone to seasickness, a failing which had led him to choose medicine (offering proximity to all sorts of pills) as his line of work in the Coast Guard.

The ship slowed to a stop some five hundred yards from the drifting cabin cruiser, and the crew lowered the launch into the water, hand over hand. A Stokes litter was passed down into the launch. The seaman serving as line handler cast off from the mother ship. The chief bosun turned the bow out, and the launch began moving across the water. Bunder, sitting alongside the engineman in the stern sheets, hoped he would not get sick. He also hoped the person needing medical assistance hadn’t been cut or shot or anything like that because he hated the sight of blood, which was one reason he’d almost decided against a life of medical adventure, in spite of his tendency toward seasickness. He also hoped the passengers wouldn’t turn out to be bare-assed, dirt-poor Cuban refugees half dead of malnutrition. Bunder had been aboard the Merc long enough to have answered a hundred and twenty-nine calls for assistance. More often than not, these small refugee boats were authentic distress cases even before they left Cuba. Equipped with makeshift sails or propelled by oars, they put out into the Gulf Stream overcrowded and undersupplied, hoping somehow to reach the United States. The last distress call the Merc had answered was only two weeks ago. They had overtaken and come aboard a fifteen-foot sailboat thronged with twenty-two sick and starving refugees. The stench of vomit had almost caused Bunder to jump overboard. The search party had gone through the boat looking for weapons, and then the Merc had taken all twenty-two passengers aboard, abandoning the rotting sailboat to the sea.

“Nice-looking boat,” the bosun’s mate said. “Custom job.”

“The Golden Fleece,” the engineman said, reading from the transom.

“Yeah,” Bunder said. “Chief, are you coming aboard to make a search?”

“You know it,” the bosun’s mate said.

They could see a man standing in the cockpit now, wearing an orange life jacket, and waving his arms at them as they approached.

“He doesn’t look sick to me,” Bunder said.

“Must be somebody else aboard,” the engineman said.

They were approaching the drifting boat rapidly now. They could make out the face of the man in the boat. He was a good-looking man; they were close enough to see the color of his skin now; he was not a Cuban, his eyes were blue. The bosun cut the engine and allowed the launch to drift alongside. The line handler hauled himself into the cockpit of the other boat, tied them together and then dropped a rope ladder over the side. Roxy, the bosun’s mate, came aboard and Bunder followed him up the rope ladder.

“Thank God,” the man in the cockpit said.

“What’s the trouble, sir?” Roxy asked.

“We’ve got a pregnant woman down below,” the man said. “Did you bring a doctor with you?”

“We don’t carry a doctor,” Roxy said. “Bunder, you want to go down there?”

Bunder nodded and went below. Roxy looked at the man standing before him, obviously recognizing him as an American, and wondering whether he should go through a routine search anyway.

“Are you an American, sir?” he asked.

“What?” The man seemed surprised. “I’m sorry, what did you—?”

“I asked if you were an American, sir.”

“Yes. Yes, of course,” the man said.

“What’s your destination, sir?”

“Ocho Puertos. But you see—”

“How many people are aboard, sir?”

“Just the three of us.”

“Who’s that, sir? The three of you.” Roxy had taken a small green book out of his jacket pocket, and he opened it now and poised his pencil over a clean page.

“I’m Alex Witten.”

“Yes, sir. Is that W-i-t-t-e-n?”

“That’s right. And Randolph Gambol, G-a-m-b-o-1.”

“Yes, sir,” Roxy said, writing. “And you said there was a pregnant woman aboard. Is she your wife, sir?”

“No. No, she’s not.”

“Is she Mrs. Gambol then?”

“No. Her name is Annabelle Trench. Mrs. Jason Trench.” Roxy looked up, puzzled. “Mr. Trench is an associate of ours,” Witten explained. “He’s in Ocho Puertos at the moment. In fact, that’s why we were going down there from Miami. To join him. We figured—”

“I see,” Roxy said, and paused. “Sir, I wonder if I could see some identification.”

“What for?” Witten asked. Again, he seemed surprised.

“Regulations, sir.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sir, we get a lot of Cubans up this way.”

“Do I look like a Cuban?”

“Sir, we get lots of Cubans who look just like you and me, and who were educated at Harvard.”

Witten sighed and reached into his back pocket for his wallet. He rummaged through it for a moment and then handed Roxy his driver’s license. “Is this all right?” he asked.

Roxy studied it for a moment, and then looked up. “Where do you live, sir?” he asked.

“In New York City.”

“Where?”

“1130 East Sixty-fifth Street.”

Roxy looked at the license again. He looked up at Witten’s hair. He looked at the license again. He looked up at Witten’s eyes. He handed the license back. “This your boat, sir?”

“No.”

“Mr. Gambol’s?”

“No.”

“Whose?”

“It belongs to Mr. Trench.”

“What’s its registry?”

“New Orleans.”

“Whose name?”

“Jason Trench. Or maybe Annabelle’s, I’m not sure. We can ask her later. Look, maybe you don’t understand. That woman below is—”

“Sir, the doc’s with her and doing his best, I’m sure. Can you tell me—”

Roxy heard footsteps on the ladder behind him, and turned. The man coming up the ladder was wearing white duck trousers and a life jacket over a pale blue windbreaker. He was suntanned and good-looking, but there was a harried, frantic look about his eyes and his mouth.

“Are you in command here?” he asked immediately.

“Yes, sir,” Roxy said.

“We’ve got a woman below who needs help desperately,” he said, and then turned to Witten and said, “I knew we shouldn’t have put out, Alex. I knew it.” He swung again to the bosun’s mate and rested his hand on Roxy’s arm, as though confiding something terribly personal to a good and trusted friend. “She’s expecting the baby any minute. When the engine went out—”

“Are you Mr. Gambol, sir?” Roxy asked.

“Yes, that’s right. Randolph Gambol. How—”

“Didn’t either of you gentlemen know there were gale warnings up when you left Miami?”

“Yes, but we’d talked to Jason... to Mr. Trench... and he said the weather was clear down this way. We thought—”

“What time did you leave Miami?” Roxy asked.

“At dawn,” Witten answered.

“We thought we’d be in Ocho Puertos by now,” Gambol said.

“But she conked out, and we haven’t been able to get her started again.”

“We’ve got plenty of gas.”

“It read full when we left this morning.”

“It still reads half. Take a look at it yourself.”

“Yeah,” Roxy said, and grunted.

In the sleeping compartment below, Emil Bunder looked at the huge belly of the woman in the upper starboard berth and immediately swallowed and then wet his lips. The woman was breathing through her mouth. Her eyes were closed. Her face was sweaty, and each breath she took seemed to send a ragged shudder through her enormous body.

“Ma’am?” he said.

The woman grunted and then suddenly gripped her stomach and opened her eyes wide, and squinched them shut again almost immediately, her fingers twisted into the covering sheet. “Oh my God!” she said, and Bunder wet his lips again, and again said, “Ma’am, can you... is it... are you in labor?”

“Yes,” the woman said. “Oh my God, please help me.”

Bunder tried to remember if the Coast Guard had ever taught him anything about the delivery of babies, and the only thing that came to mind was the need for timing the frequency of the labor pains. He turned to the engineman who had come below after him, and nervously said, “Time her pains, Jack.” Then he opened the canvas carrying bag of the PRC/59, lifted the telephone-like receiver and radioed the ship.

“You’d better get me the captain personally,” he told the radioman who answered aboard the Mercury.

“Stand by,” the radioman said, and Bunder waited with the receiver to his ear, and the woman lying at his elbow, groaning and writhing. She suddenly gave a convulsive shudder, her hands gripping the edges of the bunk.

“There’s another one,” he said to the engineman. “How many minutes was that?”

“Four.” The engineman looked up into Bunder’s face. “Is that good or bad?”

“Well, it gives us a little time, anyway,” Bunder said.

“I’ve already broken water,” the woman advised him.

“Yes, ma’am,” Bunder answered, embarrassed.

“I’m soaking wet,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What does that mean?” the engineman whispered into his ear.

“What does what mean?”

“Breaking water.”

“I don’t know,” Bunder whispered back.

“Quicksilver One, this is Quicksilver. Over.”

“Go ahead, Quicksilver,” Bunder said into the phone.

“Doc, hold on, here’s the captain.”

“Mm,” Bunder said.

The captain’s voice came onto the line immediately. “Doc? This is the captain.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s the situation there?”

“Sir, I’ve got a pregnant woman here who’s already in labor. Her pains are about four minutes apart.”

“There’s another one,” the engineman said.

“There’s another one, sir,” Bunder said into the phone.

“Tell him about the water,” the engineman whispered.

“Sir, she’s been breaking some water,” Bunder said, embarrassed.

“What do you advise, Doc?”

“Sir, I’ve never delivered a baby before, and I’d rather not try it here. I’m below with the woman now, and this sleeping compartment is about maybe six by eight, sir, with two bunks on each side and a passageway of about a foot between them, sir. She’s in the upper starboard bunk, and there’s maybe two, two and a half feet between her bell — between her and the overhead, sir. So I don’t think this is the place to go delivering a baby, sir, especially since I’ve never done this kind of thing before.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I’d like permission to take her back to the ship, sir. And I’d suggest, sir, that you get the wardroom set up for an emergency delivery, and ask around aboard the ship, sir, for any of the men who’ve had experience with this sort of thing and who can lend me a hand.”

“Very well, bring her back.”

“Yes, sir. And, sir, we’re going to need someplace to get her ready for the delivery. I was thinking someplace in officer’s country, sir, maybe Mr. Pierce’s cabin or—”

“She can have my cabin, Bunder,” Cates said. “Get back here as fast as you can.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Bunder?”

“Sir?”

“Is she an American?”

“Yes, sir,” Bunder said.

“Very well. On the double.”

“Yes, sir,” Bunder said, and put the receiver down. “We’re taking her back to the ship,” he said to the engineman.

“What did he say about that water she busted?”

“Nothing,” Bunder said, and shrugged and went topside. “Who’s this lady’s husband?” he asked.

“Why? What is it?”

“Are you her husband?”

“No, my name’s Gambol. I’m a close friend. What is it?”

“Well, we want to take her aboard ship. She’s in labor, and—”

“All right, let’s do it,” Gambol said.

“Well, that’s just it, sir. I wanted to get permission from her husband.”

“Her husband isn’t aboard, Doc,” Roxy said. “He’s in Ocho Puertos.”

“Oh. Then I guess I’ll have to get permission from her.”

“Look, would you mind—” Gambol began.

“We’ll probably need a release, too. Don’t you think so, Roxy?”

“Yeah, most likely.”

“What kind of release?”

“She’s coming aboard government property, Mr. Witten,” Roxy said.

“What’s that got to do with—”

“We wouldn’t want to be held responsible if anything—”

“I never delivered a baby before,” Bunder said.

“Can’t you take care of a release after she’s aboard?” Witten said impatiently.

“Yeah, we’ll have to check it with the captain,” Roxy said. “You want to use the stretcher, Doc?”

“I don’t know. Let me ask her if she can walk.” As he went down the ladder, he paused, and then said, “She may not be able to with all that broken water, you know.”

The engineman looked up as Bunder came down the steps into the sleeping compartment.

“How’s it going?” Bunder asked.

“Every three minutes,” the engineman said.

Bunder squeezed past him, nodded and bent so that his mouth was close to the woman’s ear. “Ma’am?” he whispered.

“Mmm?”

“Can you walk?”

“I think so.”

“We’re going to take you aboard ship, ma’am. We’ll be able to help you better there.”

“All right.”

“We’ve got a stretcher and we can use that if you like. But it’s kind of tight down here, and if you can walk, I think we’ll save a lot of time. What do you think, ma’am?”

“I think I can walk.”

“Okay. Ma’am, I think we’d better hurry, if you know what I mean, because three minutes apart is getting kind of close. We don’t want to deliver the baby here under these conditions.”

“No,” the woman said. She wiped her hand across her mouth and opened her eyes, and sat up as far as the low overhead would permit, leaning on one elbow. “Would you help me down, please?” she said.

Bunder and the engineman helped her out of the bunk, one on each side of her, and then guided her to the ladder. She came up into the wheelhouse and the cockpit, the back of her skirt wet, moving like a ponderous mountain, her size magnified even more by the life jacket she wore over her black smock.

“How do you feel?” Witten asked anxiously, the moment she was on deck.

“Weak,” she answered, and then suddenly clasped her hands over her belly, her face twisting in pain.

“Get her in the launch,” Roxy said. “Hurry it up!”

They lifted her over the side of the boat, three men above her, three men below her, guiding her gently and slowly into the waiting motor launch below. Witten and Gambol kept murmuring assurance to her, kept snapping instructions to the sailors who, for the most part, ignored the two civilians and concentrated on getting the woman into the launch safely and with as little discomfort as possible.

“Can one of us come with you?” Gambol asked.

“Go ahead,” Witten said. “I’ll stay here with the boat.”

“I don’t know,” Roxy said. “What do you think, Doc?”

“Look, let’s just get started, huh?” Bunder said testily. “I mean, let’s not cut this goddamn thing too close, okay, Roxy? If he wants to come, let him come, for Pete’s sake!”

“Hop aboard,” Roxy said, and started the engine. Gambol leaped into the launch. As it pulled away from the cruiser, Witten shouted, “If you can send a machinist over to take a look at the engine, I’d appreciate it.”

“I’ll ask the captain,” Roxy said, and the launch swung out in a wide foaming arc toward the cutter.

“How is she?” Gambol asked.

“I’m all right, Randy,” the woman answered. “Don’t talk about me in the third person. It makes me sound as if I’m dead already.”

“That’s nothing to say, ma’am,” Bunder said, and wiped sweat from his upper lip.

“Oh my God,” the woman said, and clutched her abdomen.

“Annabelle?”

“Shhh, shhh, shhh,” she said, rocking with the pain. “Shhh, shhh, shhh.”

The men fell silent.

The woman’s eyes were closed.

There was only the sound of the launch’s engine, the gentle slapping of waves against the boat’s sides.

“Ma’am?” Bunder said.

“Annabelle?”

“Yes, I’m all right.”

“Sir, what... what is her last name, sir?” Bunder asked.

“Trench,” Gambol said. “Mrs. Trench.”

“Thank you, sir.” Bunder was beginning to feel a little sick. He did not know whether the sickness was caused by the motion of the launch or the certain knowledge that this delivery would necessarily be accompanied by blood and afterbirth. “Mrs. Trench,” he said, “have you... uh... have you ever had a baby before?”

“No,” she answered.

“Oh, then...” he began, and fell silent and tried to control his rising queasiness.

“We’re almost there,” Roxy said.

Aboard the cutter, the p.a. system announced, “All hands not actively on watch lay to the starboard side to pick up the number one boat,” and then repeated the announcement as the launch came closer.

“Stand by,” Roxy said to the line handler.

“Standing by,” the handler answered, and Roxy guided the launch alongside. A line came down almost immediately from the ship to the boat. The handler secured it to a thwart, and the boat rode the sea painter into the ship, coming up gently against the hanging fenders. As the men in the launch and on the ship prepared to hoist the boat aboard, Bunder sat beside Mrs. Trench and timed her labor pains. “Hooked on forward!” someone shouted. He hoped he’d have time to get her ready before they brought her into the, God, would he have to shave her? “Hooked on aft! Heave away together!” and a sudden bowel-trembling fear caught hold of Bunder, chasing away whatever sickness he had been feeling only a moment before.

The boat was leaving the water. The men on the deck responded to each command quickly and efficiently; the boat was coming up higher and higher, “Handsomely now, handsomely.” He would sure as hell have to shave her; should he try the delivery without anesthesia? Weren’t you supposed to leave the woman awake? Wasn’t there something about her being unable to bear down if she was unconscious? “Ohhh! Ohh, you son of a bitch!” the woman said, and clutched her stomach, three minutes on the dot, almost as if the baby were wearing a wristwatch. “Two blocked!” came the order from the deck. “Let’s get her out of here,” Roxy said.

“How is she?” It was Captain Cates.

Bunder nodded. “All right, sir,” he said, and swallowed.

“The wardroom’s ready for you,” Cates said.

“Thank you, sir.”

Two stretcher bearers were waiting on the starboard side. They lifted the woman immediately and started forward with her. Bunder walked alongside the stretcher, his right hand inexplicably twitching at his side.

“One of our cooks has four children,” the captain was saying, “and helped deliver two of them. He’s washing up now.”

“Yes, sir. That’s very good, sir.”

“And I’ve asked both our technicians to assist.”

“Sir?”

“Our electronics technicians,” the captain said.

“Thank you, sir,” Bunder said, and hurried to open the bulkhead door for the stretcher bearers. This is fine, he thought. I’ve got a cook and two electronics technicians to assist me. What the hell does this son of a bitch think we’re doing here? Baking a cake? Fixing a radar set?

“Go right in,” the captain said as they approached his cabin. Bunder threw open the door. “Put her on my bunk there,” the captain said. “I’ll get some brandy.”

The stretcher bearers helped Mrs. Trench into the captain’s bunk. “Thank you,” she murmured.

“Sir, I’ll need a razor,” Bunder said, embarrassed.

“You can use mine,” the captain said as the stretcher bearers went out. “How much time do we have, Bunder?”

“Still... still three minutes apart, sir.”

“Oh?” the captain said, and turned from the chiffonier where he was opening his safe.

“Yes, sir.”

The captain took a two-ounce bottle of medicinal brandy out of his safe and began pouring the contents into a coffee cup.

“Sir?” Bunder said.

“Yes?”

“Sir...” Bunder said, and swallowed. “Sir, could... could I have one of those, sir? I... I think I’m going to need it.”

“Very well,” the captain said, and looked up as a knock sounded on his door. “Come in.”

The door opened. Bunder looked at the man in the doorway and then said, “It’s Mr. Gambol, sir. He’s the lady’s friend, sir.”

“Come in, Mr. Gambol,” the captain said. He handed Bunder a water tumbler partially filled with brandy. “Here you are, Bunder. I haven’t given you much. Do you feel all right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How is she?” Gambol asked, closing the door behind him and leaning against it.

“She seems all right, Mr. Gambol,” the captain said. He picked up the cup of brandy and carried it to the bunk. Bending, he said, “Madam?”

Bunder was not watching the captain. Bunder was turned slightly away from the bunk, tilting the water tumbler to his lips. But in the silence that followed the captain’s gently spoken “Madam?” he suddenly knew that something was wrong. For a heart-stopping instant he thought, Oh my God, she’s dropped dead, and he turned swiftly, expecting the woman to have gone pale and limp, expecting the captain to be standing beside her with a shocked and numb expression on his face.

The woman was holding a.22 in her hand.

10

Cates looked into the barrel of the gun the woman had pulled from inside her life jacket. It was a small gun, and he wondered if he should try to take it away from her. The woman swung her legs over the side of the bunk. Moving faster than he had ever seen a pregnant woman move in his life, she backed away to where he couldn’t possibly reach the gun without being shot first.

“Don’t move, either one of you,” she said. “Randy, lock the door.”

There was a sharp sudden crack in the stillness of the cabin, the sound of the bolt being thrown.

“It’s locked, Annabelle,” Randy said.

“What—”

“Shut up, Captain,” Annabelle said.

Cates looked at her and again wondered if he should try to charge her and try to wrest the gun out of her grip. There were only two of them, and if he could get the gun away from her, even if she shot him first, why then Bunder

He had the feeling all at once that he was about to make a mistake almost as serious as the one he’d made with Celeste back in June of 1938. He thought it was funny for him to be thinking about a young black-haired Irish girl when a gun was being pointed at his heart, but the notion that he was going to make another mistake loomed large and frightening in his mind, and the terrible thing about it was that he didn’t know what the mistake would be or even how he could prevent it. Would it be a mistake to jump her? Would it be a bigger mistake to hear her out and delay any action until he knew what the full score was? He didn’t know. It was 1938 again, and every fear he had ever nurtured sprang full-blown and weedy into his head, like Jack’s beanstalk, leading to a giant who devoured confused sea captains. The giant was a pregnant woman holding a tiny little gun and staring at him with the deadest eyes he had ever seen on any human face.

“Do you have a gun in this cabin?” she asked him.

He debated lying. It seemed to him that every decision he made in the next few minutes could be the one that plunged him into that spinning nightmare of error executed but not understood.

“Yes,” he answered.

“Where?”

“The safe.”

“Randy,” Annabelle said, and he moved quickly to the open safe door and reached into the safe and pulled out a holstered Colt .45. He took the gun out of its holster and waved it at Bunder.

“Get over there,” he said.

Cates watched Bunder as he moved to the chair Randy indicated. He could have sworn there was a look of immense relief in the corpsman’s eyes, almost as if he were delighted he no longer faced the prospect of delivering a baby. He sat heavily in the chair near Cates’s bookrack and blinked vapidly at the .45 in Randy’s hand.

“What do you—” Cates began.

“Just shut up, Captain, and do as you’re told,” Annabelle answered.

“What do you want? How—”

“And remember one thing, Captain,” Annabelle said. “I won’t shoot you, if you try anything funny, but I will shoot your pharmacist’s mate there.”

“Hospital corpsman,” Bunder corrected, and then blinked and looked apologetically at Cates.

“You wouldn’t want to sacrifice a man, would you, Captain?” Annabelle asked.

“No.”

“Good. That’s very smart, Captain. Especially since we don’t intend to harm anyone aboard this ship... provided you do exactly what we tell you to do.”

“And what’s that?” Cates asked.

“First, you will answer anyone who knocks on that door, or calls down on the voice tube or the sound-powered telephone. You will answer in your normal voice, and you will give no indication that anything at all is wrong. If you attempt a signal of any kind whatsoever, I will immediately kill the corpsman. Do you understand that?”

“Go on,” he said.

Annabelle smiled. She was very pretty when she smiled. He noticed the difference the smile made on her face, and then remembered again that she was holding a gun in her hand and threatening murder.

“Do you understand it, Captain?”

“I do,” he said.

“Good,” she said. “Randy, give him the first sheet.”

Randy reached under his life jacket and into the pocket of his windbreaker. He took out a folded sheaf of papers, unfolded them, consulted the top sheet, and then handed it to Cates.

“Read it,” he said.

Cates glanced at the typewritten sheet:

“That’s what you’re going to call up to the bridge in just a moment, Captain. What’s your O.D.’s name?”

Again he was tempted to lie. The O.D. was Lieutenant Forman, who had relieved Carpenter at 1145. But if he called the bridge and asked for Mr. Carpenter instead, would they

No. Forman would only inform him quickly and politely that this was Mr. Forman, sir, was there anything he could do?

“His name is Forman,” Cates said.

“What do you usually call him?” Annabelle asked.

“Mr. Forman.”

“See that you call him that when you give him this message. Read it just the way it’s typed, Captain, and don’t say anything that isn’t on that sheet of paper. Go ahead. Call him. Use the voice tube; we want to hear his answers.”

From the other side of the cabin Randy said, “I’ve been briefed on shipboard voice procedure, Captain. No tricks, please.”

Cates nodded and went to the voice tube. He lifted it from its clamp, blew into it, and said, “Bridge, this is the captain.”

“Bridge, aye,” Forman’s voice answered.

“Mr. Forman, the boat out there has engine trouble. You will maneuver to pick her up—”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“—and secure her to the fantail for towing.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“Bring her passenger aboard and show him to my cabin.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Cates replaced the voice tube on its clamp.

“That was very good, Captain,” Annabelle said. “Don’t you think it was very good, Randy?”

“Very good,” Randy said.

“We don’t really have engine trouble, Captain,” Annabelle said, smiling. “But that was our story, you see, and we wouldn’t want any of your men to begin wondering. Give him the second sheet, Randy.”

“Would you mind telling me—”

“Shut up, Captain. Give it to him, Randy.”

Cates glanced at Bunder, who was sitting wide-eyed on the edge of the bunk. He sighed then and took the extended sheet of paper.

Skip Forman had relieved the deck at 1145. It was now 1230, and he stood on the bridge and watched as the Merc maneuvered closer to the disabled cruiser. He was grateful for the activity. He did not know what there was about the afternoon watch, but he considered it the longest watch anyone ever had to stand, even longer than the midwatch. All this business with the pregnant woman and the disabled boat, though, had made the past forty-five minutes speed by. He wondered if they’d taken her to the wardroom yet. He could just imagine Bunder deliver.

“Bridge, this is the captain.”

Forman put his mouth to the voice tube. “Bridge, aye.”

“Mr. Forman, we’re going to have to change our plans here. This woman is not as close to giving birth as we seemed to think she was.”

“Very well, sir,” Forman said.

“I do not think we will have to attempt a delivery here at sea.”

“Very well, sir. What shall I do with the men standing by in the wardroom?”

There was a long pause.

“Sir?” Forman said, and then waited.

In a moment the captain’s voice came over the tube again. “You’d better secure them, Mr. Forman. We definitely will not be attempting the delivery.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“I would like to put the woman ashore,” the captain said, “but it would take us several hours to get back to Key West, and I would not want to risk that.”

“Yes, sir,” Forman said, and frowned at the voice tube. The captain sounded funny as hell, as if he.

“Nor do I feel her condition is serious enough to warrant radioing for a helicopter,” the captain was saying, and Forman glanced at the helmsman to see if he had noticed anything strange in the captain’s manner. The helmsman was gazing placidly through the windshield, probably dreaming of all the teen-age girls he knew in Kansas City. Forman wondered when anyone aboard this tub had ever called a helicopter a helicopter, and then realized the captain was still speaking.

“...closer perhaps.”

“I’m sorry, sir. Would you say that again, please?”

“We may have to put in closer perhaps.”

“Yes, sir,” Forman said. “Where did you have in mind, sir?” Again there was a long silence. “Sir?” Forman said. “Captain?”

“I haven’t decided,” the captain said.

“Very well, sir.”

“Have you picked up the disabled boat yet?”

“Yes, sir, and securing her to the fantail now.”

“Very well. Is the passenger aboard?”

“Should be on his way to your cabin, sir.”

“Very well,” the captain said, and Forman heard the click of the voice tube being replaced on its clamp. He turned to the helmsman. “Farringer,” he said, “what do you call a helicopter?”

“Sir?”

“What do you call a helicopter?”

Farringer shrugged. “A helicopter, I guess, sir.”

“Farringer, don’t be a jackass!” Forman said.

“A chopper you mean, sir?”

“Thank you, Farringer,” Forman said, and nodded and began nibbling his lower lip. He tried to remember whether he had ever heard the captain call a chopper a helicopter, tried to remember whether the captain always sounded like such a stuffy.

Oh, wait a minute, he thought.

Of course.

The old man had company aboard. A woman — and pregnant, at that. Which was probably why he hadn’t come up to the bridge personally to maneuver for the pickup. He preferred staying below and showing the civilian types how cordial and charming the U. S. Coast Guard could be in any kind of emergency, even though it turned out not to be an emergency at all.

Forman nodded.

Of course.

The reason the captain hadn’t taken the conn was just that. He was too busy impressing his guests with his precise clipped speech and his elocution course commands. Well, it didn’t matter. Forman had maneuvered up to the disabled boat and they’d thrown her a line and taken her passenger aboard. Forman had not been as charming or as courteous as the captain, he supposed; he had not left the bridge to greet the gentleman. But he had sent the quartermaster of the watch back to welcome him aboard and to lead him to the captain’s cabin.

Roxy, the chief bosun, came into the wheelhouse. “Boat’s secured aft, sir,” he said.

“Aye. What do you call a helicopter, Roxy?”

“A chopper,” Roxy said. “I understand she isn’t going to have the baby, after all. Is that right?”

“Well, not right now, anyway,” Forman said.

“We taking them back to Key West?”

“I don’t know,” Forman said.

“She sure seemed ready to pop when we were on the boat.”

“Well, you can’t always tell with these things.”

“I knew a girl in Fort Worth used to pop out babies like watermelon seeds,” Roxy said. “Why’d you want to know about a chopper? Are we going to need one?”

“Captain says no.”

Roxy looked up to where the amphibious plane was still circling. “What do we do with the fly-boys?” he asked.

“Send them on their way, I guess. Soon as the captain decides what we’re doing next.”

“Well, I’m gonna get down below,” Roxy said, and left the bridge.

At 1304 the captain’s voice came over the tube.

“Bridge, this is the captain.”

“Bridge, aye.”

“Mr. Forman, we’ll be getting under way for Ocho Puertos.”

“Ocho Puertos, yes, sir,” Forman said.

“We’ll want to go past Looe Key and into Hawk Channel.”

“Into the channel, yes, sir. I’ll—”

“These are your approximate headings, Mr. Forman.”

“Sir?”

“These are your approximate headings,” the captain said again, and Forman could have sworn he was reading from a sheet of paper. “Two-zero-five will take us to Looe Key and the channel mouth. Come right to three-three-zero at Looe Key. Inside the channel, steer zero-six-five.”

“Zero-six-five, yes, sir.”

“A boat will meet us, Mr. Forman.”

“Sir?”

“A boat will come out to meet us.”

“To meet us, sir?”

“To meet us, Mr. Forman.”

“What kind of boat should we be looking for, sir?”

There was a long silence.

“Captain?”

“It’ll be coming out from the marina,” the captain said.

“Yes, sir,” Forman answered and the tube went dead. He looked again at the helmsman. He could not understand why they were taking the ship into Hawk Channel when they had never as long as he had been aboard gone anywhere inside the reef line on patrol. Well, all right, the captain wanted to put the woman ashore; that was reasonable. She was pregnant and they’d even thought for a while she was going to have the baby right here on the ship. Well, okay, grant the old man his gallant gesture. He was going to take her right into the channel, and maybe clear up to the island itself — no, he couldn’t do that; the inshore waters were probably too shallow.

“Quartermaster, let me see a chart for Hawk Channel, Ocho Puertos, around there.”

“Yes, sir,” the quartermaster answered.

That’s probably why the boat is coming out, Forman thought. Our draft is nine feet, six inches, which means we won’t be able to come in too close; well, the chart’ll tell me just how close, but I’ll bet it won’t be less than four or five miles. Which is why the boat is coming out. If the old man wants to put that woman ashore, a boat would have to.

“Here you are, sir,” the quartermaster said, spreading the chart on his table. Forman walked to the table and bent over it.

“Mmm,” he said. “Better than I thought.”

“Sir?”

“We can come in as close as a mile offshore. Closer in some spots.”

“Offshore where, sir?”

“Ocho Puertos.”

“We’re going inside the reef line, sir?”

“Looks that way,” Forman said.

“I thought only the forty-footers went in there.”

“Mmm,” Forman said, and frowned and looked at the chart again, wondering why the captain had thought it necessary to give him all those headings. Forman wasn’t as experienced a ship handler as either the captain or the exec, but he could see nothing on the chart that looked even remotely difficult or dangerous. Well, yes, there were some rocky spots to the east of Looe Key, but even they were deep enough for safe passage. Besides, any experienced navigator would automatically enter the channel just west of Looe Key. Once inside the channel, there was nothing that could cause the slightest possible difficulty. So if the captain had decided not to take the conn himself (which was understandable since he had guests aboard and since maneuvering into the channel was a very simple job), why had he read off all those headings? Either he trusted Forman to handle the ship, or he didn’t. And if he didn’t, then he should have taken the conn himself, or given it to the exec.

“Take a look at this chart, Bannerman,” he said to the quartermaster. “Our position’s about here. Show me how you’d take us to Ocho Puertos.”

Bannerman leaned over the table for several moments, and then placed his forefinger on the chart. “I’d go back here, sir, to Looe Key, and then come right, into the channel. Then I’d steer right again, down the center of the channel.”

“Uh-huh,” Forman said. “Thank you.”

And another thing, Forman thought. How did the captain know a boat was going to come out of the marina when there hadn’t been any radio messages or signals of any kind? How in hell did he know?

“Bridge, this is the captain.”

Forman went into the wheelhouse. “Bridge, aye,” he said into the tube.

“Let’s get under way, Mr. Forman. Is that plane still orbiting overhead?”

“Affirmative, sir.”

“Tell her the situation is under control, and she may carry on.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“Do that by radio, if you can.”

“I think we were able to raise her earlier, sir.”

“Very well. And send me a messenger.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

The ship got under way at 1330, on a heading of two-zero-five, just as the captain had ordered. Standing on the bridge, Forman gave his commands to the helmsman and the engine order telegraph operator, and watched the amphibious plane dip its wings in farewell, and then begin climbing and moving in the opposite direction, back toward Miami.

As the ship steamed past Looe Key and turned right, into the channel, the coxswain walked into the radio room with a clipboard. He went directly to the transmitter, where Danby was reading Erskine Caldwell.

“Hey, man,” the coxswain said. “Captain wants this to go out right away.”

“Check,” Danby said. He put down his book, and looked at the message:

Danby was not in the mood for cut-and-dried reports to Miami, not after Erskine Caldwell. He looked at the message again, reading it over briefly in preparation for sending, and hesitated a moment when he saw the word ZUG preceding the text. He almost asked Reiser, who was a radioman first class and his superior, whether he should send the message just this way. But Reiser was over on the other side of the radio shack, talking to one of the ship’s cooks, probably about getting some pies for the radio gang if he would only pipe into the galley some of that corny country and Western music the cooks liked so much. Danby looked at the message again. Well, he thought, it’s in the captain’s handwriting, I guess he knows what he’s doing. His finger hesitated over the transmitter key only an instant longer.

Then, rapidly, he began sending.

A copy of the message was brought to Forman on the bridge a few minutes before the boat came alongside. Forman read the message and initialed it, and then asked the coxswain, “When did this go out?”

“Few minutes ago, sir.”

The message did not bother Forman at all. There was something unassailable and trustworthy about the bold capital letters of a radioman’s typewriter. If anything, the message seemed to clarify and simplify all the events of the past few hours. Moreover, the boat about to come alongside imbued all of the captain’s earlier commands with an almost poetic inevitability.

“You’d better lay to the starboard side, coxswain,” Forman said. “Roxy may need a hand there.”

“Aye, sir.”

The boat came alongside at a minute before 2 P.M.

She was a thirty-four-foot cabin cruiser with two men on the command bridge, and another four men in the cockpit. The bridge was perhaps twelve feet above the boat’s waterline, so that Forman had to look down on the boat from where he stood just outside the wheelhouse of the Mercury. The two men on the bridge were wearing khaki. The men in the cockpit were wearing dungaree trousers and chambray shirts. For a moment Forman felt as if he were looking at some Coast Guard officers and enlisted men who had accidentally put to sea in a Chris-Craft.

“Ahoy,” the man sitting at the wheel said. “My name’s Clay Prentiss. We’re supposed to pick up a woman here and take her back to shore.”

“That’s right,” Forman called down. “Stand by a minute, will you?”

He went back into the wheelhouse and picked up the sound-powered telephone. He waited until the captain answered it, and then said, “Captain, the boat’s alongside.”

“Very well, ask them to come aboard for the woman.”

“Will we need a stretcher, sir?”

“Negative,” the captain said, and hung up.

He thought he had handled it well up to now. He thought he had got by without making the mistake he’d been dreading ever since the pair had come aboard. He still did not know what they wanted, other than passage to Ocho Puertos. Well, he’d given them their goddamn passage, taken them through the channel and close to the beach, and now their boat was alongside and they’d be going ashore.

He thought he had handled it well.

The two men came up the rope ladder on the starboard side of the Mercury. Lieutenant Forman, having been relieved of the deck, had come down from the bridge and now stood just aft of the forward stack, waiting to greet the men. Roxy, the chief bosun, crouched to the right of the ladder and offered his hand to the first man as he reached the top rung. The man took Roxy’s hand, sprang onto the deck and began reaching into his shirt just as the second man’s head showed above the deck.

Forman saw the quick motion of the first man’s hand, and knew instantly he was reaching for a weapon.

“Roxy!” he shouted. “Watch it!”

Roxy turned at the sound of the lieutenant’s voice and saw the gun coming out of the man’s shirt. For a moment he was too stunned to move, and then the opportunity for movement, the opportunity for action, was gone. The second man had reached the top of the ladder. His elbows were clear of the ship’s side and resting on the deck; there was a pistol in his hand. Don’t, Roxy thought, you’re too late, and then ignored his own advice to himself and kicked out at the gun. The man with his elbows on the deck wasn’t fooling around. He fired twice, catching Roxy in the groin with the first shot and in the stomach with the second shot. Roxy, caught by the momentum of his own powerful kick, knocked backward by the force of the high-caliber slugs, performed an awkward sliding fall, one leg high in the air, the other slipping back in the opposite direction as he skidded across the deck and then fell backward onto his own arm.

Forman grunted and closed his hands around the first man’s throat and then gasped in surprise at what felt like the flat end of a railroad tie being slammed into his stomach. The blow sent him spinning back some five feet to collide with the bulkhead of the radio room. He reached for the grab rail, suddenly unable to breathe, and then looked down and saw that the front of his khakis was covered with blood. More armed men were scrambling up the rope ladder. An armed man came out of the passageway leading from the captain’s cabin. The door to the radio room opened. There was another shot. Forman saw Danby, the radioman who had come rushing out of the radio shack, suddenly clutch his hand to his face and pull it away and fall back with a giant red smear between his eyes. Oh my God, they’ve killed me, Forman thought; there’s a hole in my belly.

He staggered toward the ladder leading to the bridge, wanting to blow the whistle or use the p.a. system or warn the captain that the ship was being overrun by armed men, but as he walked, he realized there was no strength in his legs, his legs were giving out under him. He dropped to his knees on the deck and shouted, “Man your...” and nothing else because he fell face forward, dead, in the next instant.

“The ship is in our hands!” a voice said over the p.a. system. “We’re armed, and we’ll shoot to kill! Resist and you are dead. Resist and you are dead. Resist and you are dead.”