and showed us into a big, shabbily-furnished room. He had tried to take the suitcase and the golf bag, but when I told him I was giving my muscles some exercise, he gave me a dismal smile as if he were sure I was going to gyp him out of his tip. I gave him a dollar after he had proved the plumbing worked and he went away, happy.
I sat on the bed while Raimundo took the only armchair.
Before arriving at the hotel we had driven past the Imperial Hotel and past the apartment block, under construction. We had luck as the night traffic was heavy and we could crawl without attracting attention. We even got into a solid jam of cars right outside the apartment block. I was able to take a good look at the building. Part of my Army training was to sum up a situation. I probably saw a lot more than Raimundo did. He was driving as I wanted to examine the set-up I was going to walk into.
Along the sidewalk in front of the entrance to the apartments was a line of parked cars. As we crawled by them I spotted a Buick in which two men were sitting. There was no one hanging around the entrance to the block which was in darkness. To the left of the block was a builder's crane, its long steel arm stretching up to the top floor positioned immediately over the roof. The feet of the crane were in a vacant lot, high with weeds, and there was a big hoarding announcing another apartment block was to be built there.
'How do you see it, soldier?' Raimundo asked.
'I'll climb the crane.'
He gaped at me.
'You'll never do it. That goddam crane is twenty storeys high.'
'That's the way I'm going. It's the only way.'
'You think Savanto's men haven't thought of that?'
'Sure. So what do they do? They put a man or a couple of men in the
vacant lot to see no one gets near the crane.' I looked intently at him. You and I will fix them . . . then up I go.'
'It's a pipe dream, soldier. You'll never get up there.'
'I'm going to bed. We do the job tomorrow night. By that time the guards will have got slack. It's tricky, but it can be done.'
When we got back to the hotel, I stripped off and took a shower. By the time Raimundo had taken his shower I was asleep.
I have this knack of relaxing before a dangerous operation. During my years in the Army I had schooled myself to sleep. I had all day tomorrow to think about what I had to face the following night : now was the time to sleep.
I came awake with a start to find Raimundo shaking me. The morning sunlight was coming through the faded blind, making me screw up my eyes.
'Wake up! Listen to this !' Raimundo was saying and the note in his voice brought me fully awake.
A voice was talking on the radio on the bedside table.
'Mr. Bill Hartley claims he saw the killing,' the voice said. 'When the police arrived with Mr. Hartley after he had raised the alarm the bodies he claimed to have seen had disappeared. There was no evidence that the shooting had occurred. The police are continuing their enquiries but Chief of Police Terrell has hinted that this could be a hoax. We have Mr. Bill Hartley with us in the studio.
'Mr. Hartley, you tell me you are a bird watcher and you often go to the Cypress swamp early in the morning to observe wild life. That is correct?'
A voice like gravel going down a chute said : 'Yeah. I don't give a damn what the police say. I saw this killing. I was up a tree with my glasses and I saw these two . . .'
'Just a moment, Mr Hartley. Could you give us a description of these two people you saw?'
'Why, sure. I told the police. There was a man and a woman. The man was a giant. He looked around seven foot to me: thin, swarthy and wearing a pair of black cotton trousers. The woman was blonde and pretty and she was wearing a white bra and white slacks. The thing I particularly noticed about her was her hair was cropped short like a boy's. Well, these two were running along the sand. He was hanging on to her hand, dragging her along . . .'
'Mr. Hartley, how far do you reckon you were from these two?'
'How far? Five hundred yards, perhaps a little more. I use very powerful glasses.'
'They were running along the beach. Did you get the impression that they were running away from someone?'
'I certainly did. They looked like frightened people and they were running like hell.'
'Then what happened, Mr. Hartley?'
'They got shot. There were only two shots. The first shot hit the woman. It was a head shot. She fell down and rolled into the surf. The man went down on his knees beside her and there was a second shot. He was hit in the head. I saw the spray of blood and he dropped face down on the woman. It was a hell of a thing to see.'
'What did you do, Mr. Hartley? You didn't see the killer?'
'No, I didn't see him, but from the sound of the gun he wasn't far from me. I was scared and shocked as you can imagine. The tide was coming in fast. After five or six minutes, I got down from the tree. It took me half an hour to reach a phone. I called the police. They came out pretty fast. I took them to the place where these two were shot, but by that time the tide had come in. There were no bodies, no footprints, no nothing. The police think I'm a nut, but . . .'
I turned off the radio.
Raimundo said quietly, 'I warned you, soldier . . . I'm sorry.'
