Orchid Beach

Bill spoke up. “I’ve got something I’d like you to hear from the bug in Barney Noble’s car,” he said. “There was a lot of ordinary chitchat that is of no interest, but then this happened.” He set a tape machine on the table and turned it on. There was the sound of the car running, then slowing, then the squeak of brakes and the sound of a car door opening and closing. “Rear door,” Bill said. “Somebody got into the backseat, and you can barely hear him talk.”

“What’s happening?” Barney Noble’s voice said.

There was a mumbled reply.

“She doing anything unusual?”

“Nah,” the voice said. “Routine stuff.”

There was the sound of paper crackling, and Noble spoke again. “Here’s this week’s money. Call me if anything comes up.”

“Okay,” the voice said, then the rear door opened and closed again.

“He must be talking about you, Holly,” Harry said. “It’s got to be one of your people. Did you recognize the voice?”

“No. Play it again, Bill.”

Holly listened carefully to the tape. “Hurd? You recognize anybody?”

Wallace shook his head. “It’s too faint. It could be anybody. Is there any way to enhance it, Bill?”

“Yeah, but I’ll have to send it to Miami,” Bill replied.

“Do that,” Harry said. “And next time, bug the backseat, too.”

“Yeah,” Bill said.

“Rita, how thoroughly were you searched?” Harry asked.

“Thoroughly enough to get groped, but not all that thoroughly. I had already changed out of my clothes into a jumpsuit, and that didn’t have any pockets.”

“Did you keep the jumpsuit?”

“Yeah, they told me to.”

“Bill, take a look at the garment and see if you can hide some bugs in it for Rita to take in.”

“Okay.”

Rita shook her head. “That’s not the best way, Harry.”

“What have you got in mind?”

“Well, nobody looked up my ass with a flashlight, or up anywhere else.”

“I think I see your point,” Harry said.

“Bill,” Rita said, “do you think you can find a canister of some sort, say four inches long by an inch in diameter?”

“Probably.”

“Would that hold some bugs?”

“Four, maybe half a dozen.”

“No sharp corners, okay?”

“Sure, Rita.”

Rita looked around the table. “I’ll shoot anybody who smirks,” she said.

CHAPTER

51

Ham Barker got into bed and turned on the TV, but he couldn’t concentrate on any program, and when he switched it off, he couldn’t sleep, either. He had listened to what was said at the meeting with Harry Crisp, and he was intrigued. He was also a little annoyed at how everybody seemed to be tiptoeing around the Palmetto Gardens problem, instead of doing something about it. “Fucking feds,” he said aloud to himself. If this had been an army problem, it would already have been solved. He lay there thinking for a few minutes, then he got out of bed, got into a bathing suit and a T-shirt, and slipped into some Top-Siders, no socks.

He walked around the cabin, picking up things, looking at them and putting them down again. Then he got a large, zippered plastic bag and started collecting what he needed. He found a waterproof flashlight and taped over most of the lens, leaving an open area about half an inch in diameter, and added that to his bag. He dug a black nylon warmup suit out of his closet, rolled it into a small, tight wad and put it into the plastic bag, along with a pair of black sneakers. Then he went to his tackle box and lifted out the plastic tray that covered the bottom. Under that were two things that he had stolen from the army: one was his standard-issue special forces knife, which was still razor sharp; the other was a small black .22-caliber pistol with a silencer attached that had been issued to him for a mission in Vietnam by a CIA field agent. When, after the job had successfully been completed, the CIA man had asked for the weapon back, Ham had told him to go fuck himself. He had never thought that he would actually need it, but he liked it so much that he’d have been willing to fight the agent for it, which hadn’t been necessary. The man had laughed and told him to keep it. He put the knife and the pistol into the plastic bag, along with a spare clip.

Ham took the gear down to his dock and tossed it into the whaler. Then he got an electric trolling motor from the back porch, clamped it to the stern of the whaler and attached it to the boat’s battery with alligator clips. He fastened his rubber diving belt around his waist, minus the weights, got into the whaler, started the engine and headed out into the Indian River, accelerating to around fifteen knots. There was a moon, occasionally covered by clouds, but it was bright enough to light his way down the waterway.

Twenty minutes of running brought him within half a mile of the entrance to the Palmetto Gardens marina. He cut the outboard, pulled it out of the water and switched on the nearly silent trolling motor. He sat on the bottom of the boat to keep a low profile, and moving silently along at around two knots, he soon reached several acres of marsh just north of the marina entrance. A little creek provided an opening in the marsh grass, and he turned into it, peering ahead into the darkness, heading toward the riverbank. After perhaps three minutes, the bow of the whaler touched the mud, and Ham switched off the trolling motor.

He sat silently in the bottom of the boat and listened for five minutes by his illuminated wristwatch. His eyes were well accustomed to the darkness, now, and he could see that he was perhaps thirty feet from dry ground. He kicked off his Top-Siders and stepped into the water, feeling out the soft mud with his bare feet. He pushed the whaler into the marsh grass, which was a good two feet tall, shucked off his T-shirt, got his plastic bag and waded slowly toward the land. It was another twenty feet to the brush, and he covered it quickly. He sat down on the ground, his back to the dense thicket, and listened again for another five minutes. Once, he heard a vehicle in the distance, but it was driving at a steady speed and soon passed by.

He grabbed some leaves and cleaned the sticky river mud off his feet; then he dressed in the black warmup suit and sneakers, fastened the rubber belt around him, slipped his knife into the scabbard, worked the action of the small pistol and stuck it into his belt, slipping the spare clip into a zippered pocket. Finally, he pulled the jacket’s hood around his head and tied it loosely, so as not to interfere with his hearing.

He walked silently along the thick brush bordering the marsh, occasionally using his hooded light for a second or two, until he found a small break in the vegetation. He pushed his way through for a good fifteen feet and emerged in a stand of pine trees that was well clear of any brush. The schmucks hadn’t bothered with a fence along the river, he chuckled to himself. They had thought the dense brush would be enough. He walked along the edge of the clearing until his flashlight picked up a hint of a trail no more than a foot wide. Deer came this way, he reckoned, and if the ground was mined or, more likely, had security sensors, the deer were not setting them off. Neither would he, on this trail.

He emerged from the trees at the rear of a large, well-lit house, where there was a party going on, to judge from the noise. He found a window and peeked in. Fifteen or twenty people were standing or lying around a large