I carried the overnight case inside. With the case securely wedged between me and a wall of the booth, I lunched on an excellent shrimp creole.
With the overnight case firmly in my grip, I paid the check, went out of the restaurant, and moved the short distance to my car. With my free hand, I was reaching in my pocket for the car keys when a hard object jabbed me unpleasantly in the back. It felt exactly like the business end of a gun barrel, an item with which I’d had previous experience.
“Easy! I’m not resisting,” I said with dry-throated candor. My gaze flicked to the surrounding cars. All were empty, their occupants inside eating, talking insurance and real estate and fishing and bird hunting.
“How about we use my car, Mr. Ramey?” the man behind me said.
The voice was vaguely familiar. I turned my head slowly, looking over my shoulder. I saw—really saw—the face of Johnny, the bellhop, for the first time. It wasn’t a bad-looking face at all, even features, dark hair growing to a slight widow’s peak over a high forehead. But the dark eyes were too calm, too quietly determined to quench the acid of alarm that was stinging through me. The face reminded me a great deal of my own.
The eyes went a shade colder. He was carrying the gun in his jacket pocket. He nudged me with it “This way, Mr. Ramey.”
The primary moment of nauseating surprise had passed. The eruptions of the shrimp creole became less violent. I made a casual move to drop the overnight case into my car.
He laughed thinly. “No, Mr. Ramey. We’ll take the case along—and keep the other hand in the pants pocket until the gun is safely out of the shoulder holster.”
“All right, Johnny,” I said pleasantly. “We’ll do it your way, for the moment.”
“I won’t need many moments, Mr. Ramey.”
“You may not have many,” I reminded him.
Herding me toward a five-year-old Ford a short distance away, he said, “I’ve thought about it, waited for it a long time. I’m willing to take the gamble. It’s a big country. I can lose myself easily. ”
He reached cautiously around my body, lifted my gun. A prod from his weapon forced me into the car on the right-hand side.
“Now slide across the seat,” he instructed. “You’ll drive, while I have a look at the case.”
I started the car. It was as clean inside as a new one. The engine hummed with vibrant, leashed power. It was evident the car had received meticulous care from hands with an aptitude for mechanics.
“Drive north,” he said, resting the overnight case on his knees, while he held his gun steadily on me.
I eased the car onto the highway. Traffic northward on the two-lane macadam was just about nonexistent. Insects hummed over the palmetto fields. In the distance, tall pines and cypress stood lonely and gaunt against the backdrop of glaring, tropical sky.
“I assume,” I said, “that you located me simply by following me.”
“Right,” he said. “I had the horse waiting near the employees’ entrance at the Diamond Shores. All I had to do was fall in behind you. ”
“Maybe you were spotted.”
“You kidding?” he laughed. “Who sees the coming and going of a bellhop? It’ll take awhile for even the bell captain to realize I’m not around the hotel. You know, it was good of you to drive sensibly this morning.”
“Watchfully, too, Johnny,” I said on a hollow note.
“Sure,” he grinned, “but not for an old car that showed behind you a time or two. Guess you figured it was a farmer’s car.”
My reply was a bleak silence. The truth is, I hadn’t noticed the old Ford at all. Nobody who was questionable to Gervasi and me in Miami, or anyplace else, drove an old Ford.
“Don’t let it get you down, Mr. Ramey,” Johnny said in enjoyment “We all make mistakes now and then.”
“A good point for you to remember, Johnny.”
“Thanks, I will. But up to now I haven’t made any. I had plenty of time to change from the monkey suit in the back seat of the car, while you were having lunch. It was really simple. I just sat on the rear bumper of the car next to yours and rested until you came out.”
“It will get less simple, Johnny.”
“Oh, sure.” He patted an imitation yawn.
My hands were in hard knots on the wheel. A drop of sweat crept into the corner of my eye and began stinging and making me blink. “Johnny, you’re very young to start out like this.”
“Younger the better.”
“You ought to think of the years ahead.”
“Now you dig, pops,” he said warmly. “Now you’re getting with it I’ve thought of nothing else for a long time.”
“You’re a nice, clean-cut young man, Johnny, with a future. Unless you…”
“This?” he said in mock horror. “This? Coming from you?”
“Why not from me, Johnny?”
“Oh, nuts!” he said, slouching slightly against the car door. “Now don’t start boring me.”
“What do you think you know about me, Johnny?”
“I don’t think. I know. I know that I know! Most all of us know.”
“Most all of us, Johnny?”
“You wouldn’t dig. You’ve never been a hotel employee. We’re not quite real people. Never really there. You know? Like unseen hands keeping a big, luxury palace afloat. Like spooks with a world all our own, the bellhops, cooks, waitresses, linen women, maids, maintenance men. We eat together, talk together, party together, live together. We got bitter enemies and bosom pals in our own ranks. You know?”
“I don’t think I ever really thought anything about it, Johnny.”
“Who does?” he asked. He was silent a moment; then he laughed softly. “Sometimes we know more about you than you know yourselves. Waitresses overhear those bitter, whispered arguments of elegant people at dinner. A switchboard girl knows the origin of a secret phone
