on the night stand. I made the bed look as if I tried to sleep. I left the note pinned to the pillow. I wrote it like you said, dear, about hearing on the radio about DeeDee and Tami and realizing why he was acting so strange. You have to lock the door with the key, so I had to leave it unlocked. So I folded the note and pinned it that way and wrote his name in big letters. And I said that I just couldn't live with my conscience any more, after what we'd done. Oh, he'll have no doubt! So here I am, all for you, without a dime, and just this outfit that I wouldn't be caught dead in, usually. I bought it so I wouldn't look like me at all. See? Short little green walking skirt, and this kind of dumb Fauntlery blouse and flats and little-girl stockings. Let me show you the full effect.'
She hurried to her new purse and took out a comb and seated herself in front of the mirror. She unpinned her hair, let it fall long, and, biting her lip, combed the pale thick weight of it. She fashioned it into a high ponytail, fixing it so most of the weight of it fell forward across the front of her right shoulder. With pink lipstick she widened her mouth. She put on a new pair of sunglasses, dainty frames and a pixie tilt, then stood up and faced me, smiling for inspection.
'This is the way I walk off this Eyetalian sheep.'
'The walk will give you away.'
She trudged over to the door and back, toeing out, slouching, swinging her arms too freely. 'Will it?'
'Okay. You're eighteen. A backward eighteen.'
She took the glasses off, planted herself, looked up at me with her head cocked. 'You've decided yes. I can tell.'
'On one condition.'
'Anything!'
I put the sheaf of ship's stationery and my pen on the glass of the dressing table. 'Sit here and write what I tell you to write.'
When she had seated herself and picked up the pen, I told her to date it yesterday. 'To the Police Department, Broward Beach, Florida. Dear sirs..
'Hey! What are you'
'Write it. You can tear it up if you want to, if you don't understand why it has to be done. You can tear it up, and then you can get out of this stateroom.'
She hunched over the paper like a schoolgirl and wrote.
I dictated. 'I have decided to take my own life by jumping into the sea before this ship gets to Florida. I am going to give this letter to someone to mail to you.'
'Just a little slower, please.'
'I would rather kill myself... than wait and have them kill me the way they did Evangeline Bellemer. Period. I think that everybody connected with this should pay for their crimes. Period. That is why I... am making a full confession... at this time. I will tell you where... you can find them all... and what we have been doing.. for the last two years.'
I waited. She finished the final words and turned and stared at me. 'You sure do want a hell of a lot of insurance.'
'Use your head, woman. Insurance for you too. They'll break Ans Terry down in five minutes and he'll verify you jumped overboard. The cops will pick up everybody who was in on it, and there'll be nobody left to come after you if they ever did get any clue. Nobody will be looking for you, nobody from either side.'
'I... I guess you're right. But I just hate to put it down on paper. Couldn't we do it later? You could trust me to write it all out after we're safe, dear.'
'When you've written the whole thing out and signed it and I have it in my hand, addressed and stamped and sealed, then we'll talk about how much I trust you, Del.'
'Jesus, you're hard, aren't you?'
'And free as a bird, and planning to stay that way. If you don't like it, go take your chances with Terry and Griff.'
She spun back and snatched the pen up. 'All right, all right, damn you! What next?'
'Miss Bellemer was living at... Eight Thousand Cove Lane, Apartment Seven B, Quendon Beach... under the name of Tami Western. Period. What's Griff's name?'
'Walter Griffin.'
'Walter Griffin lives at the same address in Apartment Seven C. He very probably arranged to have her killed by being struck by a car, when ordered to do so by... what's Mack's name?'
'Webster Macklin.'
At Meyer's three solid knocks upon the stateroom door she jumped violently. I'd worked out a code with Meyer, based on several of the plausible things you can call out when somebody knocks.
'Yes?' I called. That let him know our guess was right and she had simplified things by leaving Fourteen unlocked and it was safe to leave Ans his little keepsake.
'Sorry. Wrong room,' he rumbled.
I kept her going. She balked now and again, such as when I demanded she put down the specifics of the most recent murder. He had been a fifty-four year old divorced chemist from Youngstown, Ohio, taking a vacation alone, and they had come aboard on separate tickets at separate times as Mr. and Mrs. A. B. Terry, and he had twenty-six thousand dollars in cash in a money belt, the proceeds of the sale of some bonds and the cash value of his insurance policies. Ans Terry was now wearing the money belt, and Mr. Powell Daniels was sticking out of the silted bottom somewhere west-southwest of Miami, wearing under his resort clothes an entirely different sort of belt, one of those designed for scuba diving, with every compartment snapped shut on its wafer of lead.
She explained it to me. 'I'd tell him to just wander around until he was sure our luggage had been brought in. We had to come aboard separate on this one on account of crew people knowing me. He came to the cabin and I gave him a celebration drink. It would really knock them out, that stuff. Then I'd let Ans in. You could count on four or five hours before you could slap them half awake. We know where the best place is on this boat, from before. It's on the Promenade Deck about thirty feet forward from where the deck stops. It stops at the doors to the dining room. I guess it is about the middle of the ship. Right there there's no place above you where people can look over. There isn't any rail there or side deck on the Lounge I deck, and up on the Sun Deck there's a lifeboat in the way. It's the same on either side of the ship. You do it about three in the morning. They aren't really awake. But they sort of walk, if you hold them on both sides. We sing and ask him if he's feeling better if there's people. I go and stand at the nearest stairway and if nobody is coming, I click my tongue, and Ans picks them up like you pick up a sleepy kid, and leans out over the rail and drops them.'
I dictated it back to her. Meyer had figured out the visitors' pass system perfectly.
I was curious about how so many apparently intelligent men could be gulled so readily.
'Oh, you mean always tell the ones worth a try, and out of those, the ones you can get to take a real interest in you. The marrieds you brush off. Also the ones who know their way around too good. You work to get the name and home address and local address, and if they have to leave right off, that's no good. Sometimes you can go ten days without finding one worth turning in the name so Mack can get him checked out. And then a lot of times from what he found out he'd say no. Like if the guy was too important and had too much money, it would be no just as quick as if he had no chance of raising the minimum twenty thousand. When you get a go-ahead, then you keep right on with the tease, letting him get close sometimes. We all worked it just the same. You cry a lot. You say you shouldn't see him at all, that it's too dangerous. You make him meet you at hideaway places at weird times. Then you confess your ex is a mental case and he's going to kill you. You tell the guy your ex has found out about him, and you make him move to another place under another name. Then you start putting out, and you butter him up by going kind of crazy and telling him it's never been like that before. After they start getting it, they'll believe any damn fool thing you tell them, and do any fool thing you ask. So you fake an attempt on your life, and you say the only way to get away is tickets under a fake name on a cruise ship and bring lots of money, because you have an old friend in Kingston or St. Thomas or somewhere the ship is going who has a remote cottage somewhere and she can fix it so the two of you can stay there under some other name indefinitely. By then, because of the way he worked the postcard bit, any relatives he has and some friends and business partners have been getting cards from him from Spokane or Toledo or Albuquerque or some place like that, and that's where they start hunting when they don't hear anything else ever. We always worked it the same exact way, but DeeDee would handle a guy different than Tami or me, and I would use a different approach than Tami. The thing is, as sOon as he thinks he's going to get to spend sack time with you on a cruise ship, he hasn't got eyes for anything else. And making him believe you don't dare be with him in public makes it a lot safer. I'd always bring one suitcase full of Ans's things aboard with my stuff. How quick you could get him tuned up all the way kind of depended. One ran out on me the day before sailing. They gave me a terrible ride about that, DeeDee and Tami did. I think, all things considered, DeeDee could do the best and fastest job of nailing them down, but if in the beginning you let them think you're going to be easy to get, you spoil it. Lonely men over forty-five, they all, every one of them, have this fantastic thing about young women, and that's what you work on.'
It took a long long time to flesh it all out. She became resigned to it, to the extent she did not try to drag her feet when I requested she list the fourteen. Nine was the best she could do, and she wasn't sure of two of their names. She estimated the total take of just herself and Terry
