So Lush, So Deadly

CHAPTER 10

He drew up in front of the marina office and tapped his horn twice. Sally ran out and jumped in. She was wearing a skivvy shirt and the briefest possible shorts. She tumbled against him and hugged his arm. Shayne reminded himself that she was not for him, and began to cruise along Palmetto Drive, looking for a place to leave the Buick. A car pulled out and he beat a Cadillac to the opening, braking hard and reversing savagely, forcing the Cadillac driver to move fast to avoid a crumpled fender.

“Sensational!” Sally exclaimed. “I knew you’d be ruthless.”

After leaving the car she said more seriously, “Mike, kidding aside. What if it’s a bomb?”

“It could be, but it probably wouldn’t be wired to a detonator. The chances are it’s a listening device.”

“That’s what I thought at first, but things are so keyed up on that boat-”

“Keyed up how?”

“I mean, we’re all on top of everybody else and the only way you can operate is by being half-way cordial. If they don’t want people to talk to them, why come to this kind of place? You’re going to think I’m a busybody, but there’s a garbage collection every day, and really, people who drink as much as they do and don’t want their neighbors to count the bottles ought to dump them at sea. Mike, they average three whole fifths a day, the two of them. I don’t see how they do it.”

“Do they sleep in separate cabins?”

“How should I know? I’m no peeping Tom.” She added with a laugh, “I don’t know what I’m being so defensive about. Yes, they sleep in separate cabins, but they’re shut up in her cabin together the rest of the time. What I meant by keyed up-yesterday Paul came storming out after being in there with her for a couple of hours. He had a pencil in one hand and he snapped it in two. He saw me looking at him and he tried to smile, but it was like cracking ice. He was holding the rail with his other hand so hard I could see the white lines through his tan.”

“You make a good witness, Sally.”

“Mike, what are you doing for them, can you tell me?”

“I was hired to find her husband. I found him just before you called me.”

“You actually talked to him?” She sounded disappointed. “I guess I read too many mystery stories. Do you know what I thought? I thought they-”

“You’re not the only one.”

Approaching her boat, they fell silent. After boarding she took his hand and led him to the side facing the Nefertiti. There was a light in the salon. The record player was going, the volume turned low. It was an anti-war folk song. Shayne stumbled against an air mattress and nearly fell.

“After he swam off where did you see his head come up?”

Her breast touched his arm as she pointed toward the next marina, a hundred yards to the north.

“But I couldn’t be sure, Mike.”

Shayne began to undress.

“Mike, are you doing what I think you’re doing? That’s a wonderful idea. When two people feel like doing it I think it’s hypocrisy not to-”

He continued to undress without replying. When he had stripped to his shorts she came in against him.

“I know you’re working now,” she said, giving him a quick hug. “But will you keep it in mind for later? I’m better than you probably think.”

“It’s lucky for you I know you don’t mean it.”

He swung over the rail and dropped to the catwalk. She whispered alter him fiercely, “I do mean it!”

He slipped into the water, feeling the immediate pull of the tide. It was running strongly. Two silent strokes took him to the Nefertiti’s stern. He waved his hand gently until he touched the wire, and followed it to the little amplifying pick-up which had been attached by suction to the Nefertiti’s planking.

It was no bigger than a half dollar, and nearly as thin. He had tested Japanese units this same size and shape, and if it was in good working order it could pick up every murmur and rustle inside Mrs. De Rham’s cabin.

He followed the wire into the water. Pulling it up as he went, he swam slowly away from the boat. The neoprene coating slipped smoothly between his fingers. In a moment he touched a cluster of weights that had been clamped to the wire to keep it far enough below the surface not to foul the propellers of passing boats. There was considerable slack.

The incoming tide carried him easily across the open water separating the two marinas. Three-quarters of the way across, the wire twisted out of his loose grasp. He dived quickly and recovered it as it sank. After that he continued more carefully.

It led him to a Chris-Craft sports fisherman, a thirty-footer, moored in the second berth from the end of its row. Like the Nefertiti, it carried its own generator, and lights were burning aboard. Shayne swam to the end of the catwalk and pulled himself out of the water.

He stepped onto the deck. Both starboard and port windows of the main cabin had Venetian blinds, and the slats were closed against him. He listened until he heard a voice say, “I’m not picking up a thing. Nothing but static.”

Stepping down to the cabin door, Shayne turned the knob gently to be sure it was unlocked. Then he pushed it open and stepped inside.

Teddy Sparrow, a gargantuan Miami private detective, was sitting in a British officer’s chair, wearing earphones and smoking a long cigar. He operated on the outer fringes of the business, usually on assignment from the larger agencies who needed a man in a hurry. He was sometimes surprisingly effective, in spite of his great bulk, because people found it so hard to believe that he was actually a detective.

There was a tape recorder on a table beside him. An Aqua-Lung and a face mask lay on the floor. He was half-facing away from Shayne, and the electronic noises kept him from hearing the door open.

“I don’t even hear anybody moving. If this thing don’t work after what they charged me for it-Jack, did you moisten the suction cups the way it said?”

A voice answered from the head, “I carried them in the goddamn water. Don’t you think they got wet? Give it a little time, for Christ’s sake.”

“Here’s some music, hey.”

A man Shayne hadn’t run into before came out of the head. He stopped short, seeing Shayne’s dripping figure. He was in bathing trunks, and looked like a professional fighter. The resemblance extended to a broken nose and a damaged ear.

Teddy caught the difference in the atmosphere and looked up. The sight of Shayne jolted him back and the chair collapsed. He hit the floor with a crash, his arms and legs splayed awkwardly.

“Don’t rock the boat, Teddy,” Shayne remarked. “It can’t be yours.”

“Mike Shayne,” Teddy whispered.

The other man stayed where he was, looking watchful. Teddy wrenched off the earphones.

“Jack, you can’t even do a simple thing like planting a bug without-”

“I didn’t see nobody. I was quiet.”

Shayne said, “I’m glad it’s somebody I know, Teddy. No reason we should have any trouble. I could use a towel.”

Teddy rocked forward and struggled to his feet with a.38 in his fist. “Stand right there, Mike,” he said in an excited voice.

“That’s not a gun,” Shayne said scornfully. “You’re a two hundred fifty-pound hallucination. You’re not pointing a gun at me.”

Teddy swallowed. The gun wavered, then held steady. “The hell I’m not, Mike.” He checked with his left hand to make sure he had taken off the safety. “I won’t kill you because I know I couldn’t get away with that, but I’ll sure as hell put a slug in your leg if you make a move.”

“Teddy, listen,” Jack said, “I didn’t contract for-”

“Shut up. This happens to be the Beach. I got a better odor over here than Shayne does, and for a slug in the meaty part of the leg I can get let off with a reprimand. And I’ll do it, too!” he insisted, waving the pistol.