in the semidarkness against the building, and waited.
Friar Tuck came hurrying around the curve, breathing hard, and walked straight into a pistol butt between the eyes. He made a small sound in his throat and fell over sideways off the path.
Grofield put the pistol away again, dragged Friar Tuck farther from the light, and hurried back to do a better job on Casey.
He found Casey out in front of the main building, looking pale and staring this way and that. Grofield hurried up to him, his hand in the side pocket of his coat, and leaned close enough to say. ‘If I killed you you wouldn’t like it. Let’s go for a walk with no static.’
Casey said, ‘What’s the point? What do you get out of it? We won’t bother you, so what the hell?’
‘I hate people who read over my shoulder. Let’s just move forward. Towards the dormitory, pal.’
Casey went, reluctantly, and all the way he kept trying to explain to Grofield that Grofield didn’t have to do any of this. Grofield took him around into the darkness beside the dormitory and hit him with the pistol butt and Casey lay down on the ground and stopped explaining things.
He looked at his watch: five after ten. Parker and Ross would be on their way in, would be landing in five minutes. Plenty of time.
Grofield moved on around behind the dormitory heading for the boathouses. Now he’d take out anybody on guard there, so Parker and Ross could land unseen.
But he went around the back of the building and there were two guys there with T-shirts on their backs and automatics in their hands, and one of them said, ‘That’s far enough, Grofield. Now you come with us.’
Grofield recognized them, and knew they were not Feds, they were Baron’s men. And they knew his name. They talked and acted as though they knew everything. They talked and acted as though the operation was suddenly as sour as a brand new lemon.
The one that talked said, ‘Put your hands on top of your head, Grofield, while we frisk you. Then we all go talk to Mr. Baron.’
Grofield took his pistol out and started shooting. So did they. He emptied the pistol into them, felt the stinging here and there on his body, threw the empty pistol at their heads as they went down, and went running off into the jungle.
4
BARON paced back and forth, back and forth. He was smoking, the cigarette stuck into a long black holder with innards guaranteed to remove all harmful elements from the smoke. Cigarettes tasted bland, lousy, awful, smoked through this holder, and usually he managed to forget to use it, but tonight he felt danger around his head, and feeling danger around his head made him remember to use the health-protecting holder.
Steuber was in the room with him, sitting stolid and patient in his regular chair. Heenan was there, too, and complaining about it. ‘I don’t want them to see me,’ he kept saying. ‘I got troubles enough with those guys.’
‘You will have no more trouble with them after tonight,’ Baron told him. ‘No one will.’ But he was distracted even while he was saying it.
It had to be tonight. Every night since Heenan had pointed the two of them out, the ones called Grofield and Salsa, the anticipation and alarm and apprehension had been building in Baron, until now it was almost a relief to know it was over, that tonight had to be the night.
He’d been sure of it at quarter to ten, when the word was passed to him that the man called Salsa was in the process of getting rid of the two policemen who had been following him around the island every night. ‘Let him do it,’ Baron had said, the nerves tingling in his stomach. ‘Let him do it to both of them, and then watch him to see what he plans next. Stop him from doing any harm to anyone or anything else, just wait till you see what he intends to do, and then disarm him and bring him up here to me. And keep watching the other one, Grofield.’
That was at quarter to ten. By ten of ten Salsa had divested himself of his police followers, and a minute later he had disappeared. Everyone was apologies, excuses, bafflement. ‘We don’t know how he could have done it! Into a shadow, and through it, and gone!’
‘Find him!’ Baron screamed. ‘He’s on the island, find him, find him, find him!’ And took out his long black cigarette holder with fingers that trembled.
Heenan began to whine, and Baron told him to shut up, but it took Steuber’s hand to convince Heenan to be quiet. Then Heenan sat and sulked, like a stubborn child forced to sit in a corner.
At two minutes to ten Salsa was found, on the dancing field, moving in the arms of an ugly fat fifty-year-old matron to the strains of a Viennese waltz. Two staff members fidgeted at the edge of the field till the waltz was finished, then collared Salsa and brought him upstairs.
Salsa’s eyes went first to Heenan. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Now I understand. You work for everybody, Heenan.’
‘Don’t believe a word he says,’ Heenan shouted, telling Baron there was something to learn about Heenan if Baron was interested.
Baron was not interested. Other matters concerned him. ‘Where have you been? What were you doing?’
‘I have been dancing.’
‘Steuber. Quickly, quickly, we don’t have much time.’
Salsa said, ‘What time is it?’
‘Ten o’clock.’
‘Then it no longer matters,’ Salsa said, and the phone rang.
Baron picked it up, his hand shaking. ‘Yes? What is it?’
It was Rudi, downstairs, telling him Grofield had started, just as Salsa had started. ‘Watch him,’ Baron said. ‘Keep him in sight.’ He hung up and turned back to Salsa. ‘Where were you? What were you doing?’
