'I'm betting he is,' I said.
'I'm a gambling man myself,' Mars said. 'Got a boat coming.'
'How soon?'
'Be patient, soldier, takes a little while. Let's all just settle back here in the sun and sip something cold.'
Blondie went into the shack and bought some ginger ale and went to the car and got a pint of good bourbon and brought it back and we poured it into paper cups that the geezer provided and added ginger ale and had a drink. The geezer looked at it like a drowning man eyes a lifeguard, but Mars ignored him.
'I spent a little time thinking about how you found this place,' Mars said, 'and I figure you had to be tailing Bonsentir.'
'Yeah.'
'How long you been on him?'
'About three days,' I said.
'No help?'
'No.'
Mars shook his head and grinned. His grin had all the warmth of a pawnbroker examining your mother's diamond.
'Got to hand it to you, soldier. You work at it.'
I had nothing much to say to that, so I let it pass and sipped a little of the bourbon and ginger ale. Out around the yacht some gulls rode easily on the waves, waiting for something to turn up. We sipped our drinks. Blondie made us a second one. We sipped some of that. Around the point from the north came a big cabin cruiser with a flying bridge and a swordfishing rig off the prow.
'That's us,' Mars said.
It was no more noticeable than a crocodile in a bathtub.
'Be no problem sneaking up on them,' I said.
'It's not that easy,' Mars said, 'to come up with a boat on short notice. This one belonged to a guy used it to smuggle before he got old. Got a lot of engine.'
The cabin cruiser churned in past Randolph's Ranger and slid up alongside the float at the foot of our pier.
'All aboard,' Mars said and finished his drink. We went on down the pier and down the ladder and onto the cabin cruiser. It was old, but it was well kept. The brass was polished and the teak and mahogany gleamed with years of hand-rubbing. At the wheel was a tall leathery specimen with a straw hat tilted way forward over the bridge of his nose. He held the boat easily against the landing float while we climbed on board. On board with him was the pug with the clubbed ear and broken nose that I'd seen before, and three other hard-looking characters that I didn't know. None of them looked like fishermen. Mars nodded at the helmsman and he eased the boat away from the pier with a deft movement of his hand. We were barely idling as the boat moved back toward the yacht.
'You got a plan, soldier?' Mars was leaning on the rail with one hand in his pants pocket, thumb out, manicured nail gleaming.
'We should sit offshore a little and wait. If they move we'll follow them. Otherwise, when it gets dark I'll go aboard.'
'Alone?'
'Yeah. We all go aboard and it'll be a gunfight and I don't want Carmen caught in the middle.'
'She'd love it,' Mars said, staring out at the water. 'She'd giggle and suck her thumb and probably wet herself.'
'I wasn't hired to get her shot.'
'How much do you go for?'
'This job, a dollar.'
Mars laughed.
'Well, you earn your money, soldier.'
'Yeah. I can't wait to invest it.'
'How you planning to get over to the yacht?' Mars said.
I nodded toward the skiff, stored upside down on the foredeck.
'I figure someone can row me over.'
'And they'll pipe you aboard?'
'Maybe they won't notice,' I said. 'Let's find out.'
Mars shrugged.
'Keep the yacht in sight,' he said to the helmsman in the hat. Then he went back to looking at the horizon. We idled south of the cove and hung off the point, staying steady against the wind. The yacht stayed put and the day dragged on, the minutes dawdled by like reluctant schoolchildren. Mars studied the horizon. I studied the yacht. The guy in the hat kept the bow into the wind, and the rest of the crew played cards. Marlowe and the pirates.
