other two are of the same stamp as Miss Bellemer. She called one of them DeeDee Bea, spelling uncertain. There was a strong impression that the operating unit for each venture was a team of two, one woman and one man. For a time she worked with a man named Frankie. More recently her partner has been one Griff. No names of other associates are available as yet.
Logic tells us that the operation was some variation of a confidence game, its success dependent on the allure of the women in the ring. Miss Bellemer admitted in an indirect fashion she had felt sorry for one of the victims, had in fact warned him, even though she knew she was placing herself in grave danger thereby. Apparently, despite her warning, the victim was disposed of. Because Miss Bellemer was sentenced to death by her associates for this lapse, we can assume that the victims of their operations have been disposed of through murder.
There is a strong hint of some persons in a position of authority over these three operating units of one man and one woman each. For the time being, we shall assume there are two, hot headed males, and that one of them was the driver of the car that took Miss Bellemer to the place where she was supposedly drowned.
A check of the cab company owning the vehicle in which Miss Bellemer left this area proved that she asked to be driven to Broward Beach. This matches the labels in the garments she was wearing when rescued from the water. One may assume that she and the man called Griff have been living in the same quarters or adjoining quarters in the Broward Beach area. She left with the hope of enlisting an unnamed bartender, very possibly also of that area, in recovering some $32,000, which she had saved out of her cut of the operation during the past two years. It is possible she intended to trick the bartender into luring Griff away from their quarters long enough for her to retrieve the money she had hidden away and make her escape undetected.
Observations and assumptions of possible pertinence:
1. Miss Bellemer exhibited certain histrionic talents which could presumably be useful in a confidence game. 2. A series of multiple murders can be successful only if the victims have neither friends nor family anxious to conduct an intensive search. 3. This area is a place where lonely and well-to-do men in their middle years come to begin a new life. 4. In casual conversation with Meyer, Miss Bellemer displayed an intensive knowledge of the shopping conditions in the various islands of the Caribbean, from Curacao to Grand Bahama, which might well have been acquired through frequent cruises, then abruptly changed the subject. 5. Disposal of bodies at sea would constitute no problem provided the passenger in question was not known to be missing, but this would seem a curious and difficult situation to arrange. 6. Callous as it may seem, it is not difficult to imagine several people of the same stamp as Miss Bellemer carrying out murder after murder, provided some way had been found to reduce the risk. 7. The operation is continuing and is sufficiently profitable to warrant the swift and merciless execution of anyone who might possibly endanger it. 8. As an estimate of the size of the operation, assuming Miss Bellemer's savings were fifty per cent of her percentage, and that she received twenty-five per cent of the take on each individual operation, we can extrapolate somewhere around $400,000 gross for the three couples during the two-year period. It is more likely she saved but twenty-five per cent, which would indicate a probable total gross of three quarters of a million dollars.
'Meyer,' I said, 'you have a curious mind.'
'And,' he said comfortably, 'some excellent pictures of the bitch.'
'And you forgot that she started to call the driver of that convertible something. Ma.... As in the beginning of Mack, Manny, Manuel and so forth.'
'Forgot that. Another thing I meant to put in. She said she and Griff had to lie low when they got back from an operation. Makes the cruise more of a likely idea.'
'And another item. A guess. They'll have to recruit and train a new girl to work with Griff.'
We had gotten right up to the point of asking the question. It was almost a tangible thing, something that lay puddled on the cockpit deck between our chairs, streaming and stinking in the warm night. I had been saving my tobacco ration, my single evening pipe. I tugged the pouch out of the side pocket of my slacks, unzipped the pipe compartment, took out the Charatan sent me long ago by a lovely and grateful client with superb taste. The shape is Bell Dublin. It is a straight grain of Coronation quality. Before sending it to me from London she had some small silver numbers inlaid in the heavy part of the bit. 724. The twenty-fourth night of a memorable July, a little code which, if her husband Sir Thomas could interpret it, would bring him in search of McGee, complete with horsewhip and incipient apoplexy.
I packed it carefully with carrinmore Flake. Whenever, in the rotation of my small assortment, I work my way around to the Charatan, though it is an excellent pipe to smoke, I feel somewhat pretentious and effete. I can never completely overcome my middle-class reservations sufficiently to take a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar pipe for granted.
I keep kitchen matches and cleaners in the pipe compartment of the pouch. I lit it. The pulsing flame illuminated my face.
An angular girl-shape walking along the dock stopped and said, 'Hey, Trav. Hey, Meyer.'
'How you, Sandy?'
'Oh, just fine. Didn't know you got back.'
'Tied up about dark. What's new?'
'Babs made it. Twins like the doe said it would be. Twin boys. Day before yesterday. And Barney was out on a half-day charter last week, Thursday I think, fifteen miles southeast, and a waterspout ran right over him, over the transom and off over the bow and swung around and nearly got him again. Didn't hurt anybody. Tore the outriggers off, turned his aerial into a pretzel, lifted up all the loose gear and took away. You got to hear him tell about it; honest to God, it's the funniest thing I ever heard. I'm looking for Lew. You seen him?'
'No, we haven't.'
'I was just checking to see if maybe he was having a drink with the Tiger. You see him, please tell him I'm home and that doctor phoned from Orlando and wants to start that three-day charter tomorrow noon, a party of three.'
She walked away into the night. We heard discordances music, night laughter, and somebody firing his fifty-six shooter on television. Meyer went below and returned with 2 cold brews, sat down with a heavy sigh and said, 'What it is, of course, is a question of involvement.'
'Keep talking. I know how I'm going to vote.'
'I wrote that all out to organize it in my mind. She's not aware of how much she told us. Maybe it's enough, maybe not. That's more in your line. You'd know the next step. I don't. That is, if anybody takes that step. Question. Should a reasonable man, knowing what we know, and guessing what we have guessed, involve himself? Going down after the girl into that water was a clear-cut problem, and your response was instinctive. What we are talking about, I suppose, is the lives of a bunch of men we've never seen, men walking around. Thirty people watch a girl get knifed. A man lies dying of a coronary on a New York sidewalk, with the pedestrian traffic parting to move around him, like a stream moving around a boulder.'
'And,' I said, 'you have this button and if you push it you get ten grand and ten thousand Chinamen die. And if a man is dumb enough to get himself mousetrapped'
'And if a tree falls in the desert and there is nobody to hear it, does it actually make any sound?'
'Meyer, I've changed my mind. I was going to vote no. I am not going to vote yes. I am just going to think about that no until this time tomorrow. I have nice green stuff in my lockbox, enough so it will be next Christmas before I have to think of beginning to look around for somebody who needs somebody to handle a little problem. But.'
'Yes indeed. But.'
'Aren't you the one who says that's a dangerous word?'
He ignored the question.
'Our Vangie, case-hardened though she is, got herself involved in something that dismayed her, and her revulsion built until she finally tried to pull down the whole structure. The impulse that made her do it was essentially suicidal. Consider her totally antisocial attitude prior to the past two years, Travis. To her mind, the world was corrupt and indifferent. As a child whore she knew the only imperative was to survive. She probably took some kind of hard pride in thinking herself capable of anything. She tried to tell herself that murder for profit was fine, if you could get away with it. But, over two years, actually being a part of such a thing eroded her false image of herself. And there, my friend, I think we have the reason for all the talk. Woman in search of herself. Trying to explain herself to herself-in front of witnesses. She had been a stoic about being dropped off the bridge because she had a guilt that required punishment. And even while she kept saying she wouldn't tell us anything about the past two years, the little bits kept coming into her monologues. Names. Terry, Griff, DeeDee. Hints and allusions. It was a two-day confessional, Travis. And
I got up quickly. I forgot the lack of headroom aboard the John Maynard Keynes. I whammed my head into the overhead solidly enough to tip the world on edge and flood my eyes with tears. Meyer stared at me in astonishment.
When I could speak I said, 'Leave us not have so much effing celebration about the bitch. Okay?'
'What's wrong with you these two days, Travis?'
'Wrong? How?'
'Sit down. You can't straighten up in
