Murderers' Row (15 page)

I sat up and looked around. My bunk could be called a tight double or a roomy single. It was equipped with a hinged board at the side which could be raised and locked in place to keep the occupants from being tossed out in rough weather. The cabin was exactly as long as the bunk. It was as wide as the bunk plus a built-in three-drawer dresser. This, at the foot end, took up some of the floor space, leaving only an area of about two feet by four for standing, opening the doors, and pulling on your pants in the morning. Everything was painted white except the woodwork, which was rich mahogany, beautifully varnished, and the floor, which was smooth, unfinished teakwood.

I already had my pants on, as well as the rest of my number two Petroni outfit, somewhat the worse for being slept in. I tried using the handsome teak floor for standing purposes, therefore, and it worked. Whatever my dark sea-goddess had given me last night, it had practically worn off. I felt pretty good, physically speaking.

Mentally speaking, of course, I felt pretty foolish. I mean, as a man, I couldn't very well help thinking of the silent laughs Robin Rosten must have had, last night, playing up to my tough gangster act in her best boudoir regalia, knowing all the time that I was a phony and that she was going to slip me a mickey at the first convenient opportunity. Well, it's always nice to know you've brought a bit of gaiety into somebody's life; and I'd been at this work too long to be sensitive about making myself ridiculous. The sensitive agents, full of pride and dignity, die very young.

I grimaced at my face in the dressing mirror. On the whole, I was doing all right, in my clumsy and blundering way. After all, my job had been to take Jean's place, one way or another. Well, I'd done it, hadn't I? I'd spotted her contact; I was on my way. The train was back on the tracks after temporary derailment. After much maneuvering, we finally had an agent in the hands of the enemy.

Of course, according to plan, Jean would have come aboard with her arm in a cast, containing certain interesting and useful objects embedded in the plaster of Paris. She'd have come aboard as a deserter from our side, presumably trusted to some extent by the other. She might even have got a cabin with a wooden door and a less powerfully strong bolt. I had no trust and very few tools to work with; I was a prisoner instead of a potential ally. Still, I should have been pleased with my progress. It was no time to be thinking of a woman with long, dark hair.

I looked at my face in the mirror above the dresser and didn't like it much. It was, I decided, the face of a ruthless man who'd carry out orders ruthlessly. At least it had better be if I was going to get out of this alive. I went into the bathroom, or head, which was the size of a broom closet. The tiny lavatory drained into the toilet bowl, which in turn could be emptied by means of a couple of valves and a long lever with a shiny brass handle.

There were instructions in German on a shiny brass plate, and in English on a printed card addressed
TO OUR LANDLUBBER GUESTS
, and enclosed, under glass, in a neat frame above the apparatus. I remembered wrestling with similar pumping equipment on a converted yacht in a storm in the North Sea a good many years ago, at a time when the North Sea wasn't exactly a healthy place to be in any weather. I was interested to see that everything still worked the same, if it worked. The other gadget hadn't.

I performed the usual early-morning operations, cleaning up as well as I could without a razor. I started to follow the printed instructions and stopped, remembering that ignorance was a weapon and a watchword. I went out, leaving the mess sloshing around in the toilet bowl with the schooner's motion.

Presently there was a knock on the door, and Big Nick's voice said, “Lie down on the bed, man.”

I lay down on the bed. “All clear,” I said.

He opened the door and looked in cautiously. Seeing me flat on my back—a position from which it would be hard to jump him—he opened the door fully and reached back into the hall or passageway outside, and produced a suitcase that I recognized as my own, or Lash Petroni's.

“How'd you get that?” I asked.

He showed me his grin. I was losing faith in that grin. I didn't think Nick was really a nice friendly man. I was remembering an agent named Ames, who'd been found dead on a lonely beach with a broken neck. Robin Rosten didn't quite have the hands for that job, but Nick did.

“Man,” he said, “when Miz Rosten sends a Cadillac with a uniformed chauffeur to check out a guest that's going cruising with her, nobody asks no questions.”

I said, “I bet you look real sharp in a chauffeur's cap, Nick.”

He gave me a quick suspicious glance, and said coldly, “Miz Rosten say for you to shave and put on something that don't make you look like a tinhorn gambler—something shipshape, like. And a pair of rubber-soled shoes. She wants you on deck as soon as we're under way.”

I said, “My compliments to Mrs. Rosten, and will you forward my apologies for forgetting to bring my yachting cap?”

“Never mind all the caps,” he said, unsmiling. “Just remember the shoes, man. She don't allow no leather shoes on her nice teak deck.”

“Sure,” I said. “I guess I've got a pair of gumshoes somewhere. Before you go, brief me on how to flush that damn john. I couldn't make it work.”

He glanced into the bathroom and looked at me grimly. Obviously landlubbers were a cross he had to bear, but he didn't have to like it.

“I told you, before you pump, you've got to open the cocks, both of them. One lets the waste out; the other lets seawater in to flush it clean.” He looked at my uncomprehending face. “Seacocks,” he said wearily. “Like valves, man.”

“Oh, valves,” I said. “I dig you now, man. I didn't know what the hell you were talking about. Cocks, for God's sake. But why not just leave them open?”

“If she heels over hard in a breeze, she might take some water aboard.”

“You mean the damn boat could sink just because somebody went to the can? That doesn't seem like very good planning.”

He showed me his big teeth. “Don't you go getting ideas. You ain't going to scuttle her just by leaving those seacocks open. It just kind of splashes around and gets things wet if there's a sea running. So when you're through, you close them, hear, after you've pumped out all the water. There's bad weather down the coast and we might get a little blow—”

A distant voice that I recognized, Robin's voice, called from somewhere above us. “Nick, come here!”

“Coming, ma'am.” He moved quickly to the door, and looked back. “Remember the shoes,” he said. “She's mighty particular about that deck, Miz Rosten is.”

After he had left, bolting the door behind him, I moved to look out the porthole over the bunk. There was gray daylight outside; the sky was overcast. I was looking straight at the high, flaring bow of the power cruiser called
Osprey,
which was rolling quite heavily even in the sheltered harbor. I wondered where the waves were coming from. There didn't seem to be that much wind blowing.

A man ran shoreward along the dock. He was wearing tennis shoes, white ducks, and a yachting cap. I recognized Louis Rosten. Apparently he'd come home, regardless of his fears. Reaching land, he vanished from sight behind the bulk of the powerboat. A moment later a small sports car that I recognized came into view with Rosten at the wheel. It drove up the hill and out of sight past the big house.

While I was puzzling over this, I heard footsteps in the passageway outside. The door opened. I turned to see Robin Rosten standing there with Nick behind her. In front of her was Teddy Michaelis with her arm twisted up between her shoulder blades and tears of pain running down her small face. Robin gave her a shove that sent her across the cabin.

“There's company for you, my actor friend,” Robin said to me. “You can have a lot of fun explaining to her that you're an agent named Helm working for the U.S. Government. She seems to be under the impression that you're a killer named Petroni whom she's hired for some nefarious purpose she now regrets. She came here to warn me against you. I think it's really very sweet of her.” The taller woman turned to Nick. “Lock them up. We'll shove off as soon as Louis comes back from hiding the little fool's car.”

When I was brought on deck a couple of hours later, the shoreline from which we'd departed was a low, misty mass off to the right, the way we were heading—to starboard, if you want to be technical about it. I knew it was our shoreline because I'd been keeping track of it through the cabin porthole when Nick came to get me. There was another vague land mass off to the left, presumably the opposite shore of Chesapeake Bay, although it could have been an island.

There seemed to be a moderate breeze from behind us, but strangely enough, the waves were coming from ahead, moving up the Bay to meet us in long, oily swells that made the schooner pitch and roll uneasily as she plowed southward under power.

When I emerged from the hatch or companionway or whatever sailors call the opening in the deckhouse that leads up and out from the main cabin, Louis Rosten was doing something seamanlike at the mainmast. He didn't look at me. Big Nick guided me towards Robin, at the wheel. This was located at the aftermost end of the cockpit, a sunken Roman bathtub sort of depression in the wide deck, with seats all around. Under the seats were slat-front lockers labeled
LIFE PRESERVERS
. Well, it was nice to know where to look in time of need.

I'm neither a seaman nor a weatherman, but those big rollers coming in against the wind didn't make me very happy. I couldn't help remembering that, according to the newspaper, a tropical disturbance was moving up the coast, and that Nick had said we might run into a bit of weather. The
Freya
looked very big to be handled efficiently, in a serious blow, by the few people visible on deck, one a prisoner.

“Here he is, ma'am,” Nick said.

Robin looked up from the compass, and took in my tight, sporty Petroni slacks and flashy zipper jacket. “Well, that's a slight improvement, but you still look like a racetrack tout,” she murmured. There was a small silence, while we both remembered, I guess, various intimacies that had passed between us before I lost interest in my surroundings the night before. Anyway, I did. She patted the schooner's steering wheel. “Take the helm. That'll keep your hands busy,” she said, and laughed. “Take the helm, Helm.”

I stepped forward and took the spokes in my hands. It was like taking the reins of a spirited horse. I felt the surging pressures of the rudder and the throb of the big diesel—if I hadn't already learned, from Washington, that the
Freya
had a diesel auxiliary, I'd have known by the stink of the exhaust blowing in over the stern.

Robin backed off, reached down, and picked up the handsome double-barreled shotgun with which she'd threatened me last night. She was wearing jeans, I noted, not the newfangled whitish kind, but the old-fashioned blue, and a navy blue turtleneck sweater. There was a bright scarf tied over her hair. Women in pants leave me cold as a rule, but she looked tall and handsome and piratical, a queen of the Spanish Main. She sat down at the side of the cockpit with her weapon across her knees, aimed at me.

“Hold her a little east of south, about 160 degrees magnetic,” she said to me, and to Nick, “I'll watch him. You go help Mr. Rosten set the main. Sing out when you're ready and we'll bring her into the wind... Watch your course there, quartermaster!”

I'd let the
Freya
swing off, deliberately. Well, let's say the big schooner had wanted to go and I'd let her. She was the most boat I'd ever handled. Under other circumstances, it would have been kind of exciting to steer her—not that there wasn't a certain amount of excitement here. I glanced at the steady muzzle of the shotgun and spun the wheel the other way.

“Easy, sailor,” Robin said. “Just a few spokes at a time. You can't throw an eighty-foot schooner around like a sailing dinghy. There. Hold that. Watch your compass. Meet her when she starts to swing... That's better. We'll make a helmsman of you yet, Mr. Government agent.”

“Yes'm,” I said. “Or should I say aye-aye.”

“Matthew,” she said, “or whatever your name is.”

“Yes, Robin,” I said.

“You should have known. You should have known I'd never encourage a cheap Chicago hood to put his hands on me.”

“If that's flattery,” I said, “I thank you.”

“Would you have gone to bed with me? As Petroni?”

I said, “Do people have names in bed?”

“Then you would,” she said. “You'd have gone that far.”

“You've gone pretty far yourself, Robin,” I said. “You've got a lot of people very upset.”

“I guess I have.” She was silent for a moment. “Like your little blonde roommate, for instance. How is the little idiot?”

“Mad at me, scared of you, and sorry for herself,” I said.

Robin glanced forward to where her husband, with Nick at his side, was still working away at the nautical mysteries surrounding the base of the tall mainmast.

“So it wasn't Louis who wanted me dead, after all,” she murmured. “You let me think—”

I kept my face expressionless. I saw Louis throw a glance our way, obviously wondering what we were talking about. His eyes were afraid.

“I never said it was Louis,” I reminded Robin. “You were so positive, why should I argue? As Petroni, I protect my clients, lady.”

She laughed. “Your client? That silly, unbalanced little girl? And you're not Petroni now, so stop calling me lady.”

“Good God,” I said. “I never met a bunch of people so sensitive about what they were called.”

She was watching my face. “You really made a very unconvincing gangster, Matt Helm.”