pocket. 'Why don't I stand right here and you run and find him and tell him it's important?'
After a little hesitation, he hurried off. He was back in a very short time with a man who looked like a fifteenth-century bishop. He had a regal manner, a spotlessly crisp white shirt.
'May I be of some help, sir?'
I led him a dozen steps forward, out of earshot of the gangplank guard. 'A question of identification, if you wouldn't mind.'
I showed him two of the wallet-sized pictures of Vangie. 'Do I know her? Oh, yes, of course. It is Mrs. Griffin. Mrs. Walter Griffin. She has sailed with us... five times, perhaps six. Over two seasons.'
'Can you describe her husband?'
'Oh, yes, of course. A large man, brown, very strong-looking. A large jaw, small mouth.'
'Have they acted unusual in any way?'
'I would say no, not really. Always the best accommodations, an outside room on the Lounge Deck. Quiet people. Stay to themselves. A table for two they must have. They do not join in the fun, you know? The poor woman, she cannot take the sunshine, so I wonder why she does go on cruises. He would spend much time in the sun. They are generous with tipping. Is there trouble? Perhaps she is the wife of some other person. Believe me, I could not make any statement about such a thing. We cannot get involved in a thing of that kind. It is not our affair.'
'I am not going to ask for a statement.'
'There is nothing more I could tell you. I hope I have helped you. Oh, one thing. They have always taken our shorter cruises.'
'Where is the Monica D. now?'
'On her last Caribbean cruise of this season. We have had our last. Tonight we sail for Italy, perform Mediterranean cruises, and return in late November. The Monica D. will join us in the Mediterranean.' He took out a thick black wallet, leafed through some cards, handed me one. 'This, sir, is the cruise schedule of both vessels this season. Could you now excuse me, please?'
I stood in the shade of the customs shed and found, on the card, the final cruise of the season of the Monica D. It was a seven-day cruise. She had left Port Everglades last Tuesday at ten o'clock in the evening. She had arrived this same Friday at Kingston, Jamaica, at seven in the morning, and would leave at five in the evening today. Tomorrow she would arrive at Port-all-Prince at one in the afternoon and leave at nine in the evening. On Monday she would arrive at Nassau at one in the afternoon and leave at five o'clock--just four hours later. And dock right back here at eight in the morning next Tuesday.
With Ans Terry and Del aboard. Nice quiet people, who'd keep to themselves and occupy an outside room on the Lounge Deck and tip generously.
I decided it would be very interesting to fly over to Nassau late Sunday or early Monday and ride back on the Monica D. At this time of year they would have available space.
Ans and Del might be a little bored. I might liven up the last leg of the journey. But there was one problem to solve, and if the Veronica D. was sailing at five, a little close observation might give me a valuable clue. And it was a situation where I might well use Meyer's disciplined brain.
I found The Hairy One just returning from the beach with two sandy moppets in tow, ages about four and five. He explained that it was a small favor for the mother, a chance for her to go to the hospital to visit the father, who had managed to set up an A-frame to hoist a marine diesel engine up where he could work on it, and then had lowered it onto his right foot.
'It is saddening,' he said, 'to learn how the young are being deprived of their cultural heritage. This pair had never even heard of Little Red Ridinggoose and the Three Bare Facts.'
'He's all mixed up,' the little girl explained solemnly. 'He found a penny in my ear,' the little boy proclaimed. He sacked them out in the bunks aboard the John Maynard Keynes for the obligatory nap, and I heard him explain solemnly that he wouldn't tell on them if they didn't take their naps, but to keep them from being a bad liar, they had to look like people taking naps, so they had to close their eyes, breathe deeply, and make no sound at all for a little while. And as long as they were doing nothing but pretending to take naps, they could be thinking him up a better ending for Little Red Riddinggoose. She deserved better than to be sent off to Yale.
We sat on the cockpit deck under the shade of an awning he had rigged. The sea breeze moved by. We kept our voices down.
I was aware of his careful and intense and questioning stare. He said at last, 'You have the look of having felt a stale cold breath on the back of the neck, Travis. The jocular detachment, that look of the bemused spectator has been compromised.'
'It got very iffy. It got very close in all respects. Somebody who gives you just one small poor chance is very good indeed, and the him or me rationalization is never totally satisfactory. By dawn's early light I buried him on a beach, in soft sand, using a hunk of driftwood, and it keeps bothering me that I buried him face down. It makes no difference to him. But I keep remembering the look of the back of his neck. The one called Griff. And I am not ready to talk about it. Not for a while. Some night, Meyer, in the right mood, I'll tell you.' 'Tell me just one thing now. Will anybody come looking for you?'
'No. He thought it was going to be the other way around. So he made certain nobody would be looking for him. He set it up very nicely. Only the names were changed. And nobody else in the group knows of me or has seen me.'
'And there is still the interesting lure of the money,
'I brought that back.'
'So that's the end of it?' The smile on that massive and ugly face was all too knowing.
'That's what I tried to talk myself into.'
'But then it would keep going on, wouldn't it?'
'And the shape of it is just about what we guessed, Meyer. I keep picking up more details. And, as a reasonable guess, I think they've murdered between thirty and forty men in the past two years. And it would have been going on before that, before Vangie was recruited.'
'I knew the figures would be high.'
He surprised me. 'How could you know that?'
'We estimated the total take. If any single venture netted a really large amount, there would be people tracking down every tiny clue. Whores in hot pursuit of money in six figures would be tireless, and able to pay well for expert assistance. But ten or fifteen or twenty thousand... there would be less furor, and a much longer list of potential victims. Of course you have one curious problem. You're not so naive as to appoint yourself an angel of vengeance, burying them in the soft sand, face down, one at a time.'
'I have to crack one open. So wide open it will stay open, and then I have to hand it over to a cop bright enough to see what he's got, and I have to do it in such a way that I can melt back into the woodwork. I have two candidates. And a little thought or two for each of them. But let me use you on the one problem that baffles me.
'Only one?'
'Only one at a time, Meyer.'
At twenty minutes to five we arrived at dockside in all the confusions of sailing. They were obviously going to have a fairly full ship for the transatlantic run. The literature I had picked up at a travel agency on the way over said the capacity was three hundred plus. Passengers were boarding. They had three gangplanks out. Crew only. Passengers only. Visitors only. We went up the visitors' gangplank. The gate onto the deck was narrow. We were each given a rather dogeared blue card. One crew member gave us our cards and as he did so, he chanted the new head count in Italian, and the crew member standing behind him marked it on a clipboard. We did not go below. We performed little experiments. We tried to leave by the passenger gangplank and were politely turned back. Meyer asked if he could leave the ship for a few minutes and keep his blue card and return. Ah, no, sir. It is so easy, just geeve it now, we geeve it back, eh?
The time grew near. The ship's group of six musicians stood on one of the lower weather decks, playing sentimental Italian songs of sorrow and parting. People threw paper streamers. People ashore behind the wire waved and waved and waved. There was a call for visitors to leave. And another. And a final call. And we watched the jam as they surrendered their blue cards, putting them into the outstretched hand of the crew member. He would count them in batches, sing out the count, drop them into a slot in a wooden box as his companion kept score. Meyer went ashore. I leaned on the rail a dozen feet from the gangplank. The two crewmen conferred. The dock crew was beginning to cast off the first lines. One crew member hurried off.
Over the increased tempo of the music the bull horn blared, 'Please. Your attenzione! One guest is steel aboard the sheep. Please, that guest weel go ashore immediately.'
So I surrendered my blue card and went ashore, and the crew member was slightly disapproving of me. They pulled the gangplank away as Soon as I stepped off it. I found Meyer behind the wire, grinning. He pulled me away from the people and said, very simple, once you figure it out. It makes you wonder what took you so long.'
'If you try to make me guess, old buddy... 'Two visitors go aboard. He takes both cards. He waits for the maximum traffic density of the people leaving, those times when the card collector accumulates a stack and counts them during the next lull. They count cards, not heads. So the two cards, aligned to look like one, get popped into his outstretched hand. All cards issued
