Darling, It’s Death

A Shell Scott Mystery

Richard S. Prather

For Reynard and Louise Anderson

and for Dru, too.

1

I WAS LOOKING at the lovely blonde in the one-and-one-half-piece swimsuit, thinking that if she got any curvier she'd be banned, and then, just as if she knew exactly what I was thinking, she got up and started walking toward me. Possibly to slap me.

I'd been soaking up hot afternoon sun alongside the amoeba-shaped pool at the Hotel de las Américas in Acapulco, wearing a pair of violet trunks decorated with big red passionflowers, which were fine for starting conversations that might lead to almost anything, and sipping a coco fizz from half a huge coconut while I wished I'd ordered a plain bourbon and water and feeling somewhat silly, what with passionflowers and coco fizzes.

It was one of Acapulco's beautiful days; sun splashed from the bright yellow hibiscus and red bougainvillea around the pool and filtered down through the limbs of the royal poinciana trees. It was hot, with only a little breeze, and I could feel rivulets of sweat trickling down my bare chest. A few people were in the pool, more around the sides and in the shaded open-air bar a few feet beyond the pool's shallow end. There was a lot of garish, exotic color and a constant buzz of conversation laced with sudden laughter. It was peaceful and beautiful, but over it all the shabby dark vultures, which are as much a trademark of Acapulco as the plush hotels along Las Playas, dipped and soared with an ugly grace.

My Los Angeles office with "Sheldon Scott, Investigations" lettered on the window seemed as far away from Mexico as Mars, but the blonde might have stepped right off Wilshire Boulevard or out of Earl Carroll's. And she was still stepping.

She came toward me with a walk that wouldn't have been allowed back home on Hollywood Boulevard. And even if it had been allowed, I doubt that anybody else could have duplicated it. She went this way, and then she went that way, and most important of all, she kept coming my way. All she did was put one foot forward, then the other foot forward, but at the same time there were about a dozen other lovely little movements that it was difficult to watch at the same time, and all of it barely concealed by the wisp of bandanna floating on her breasts and the equally wispy piece of printed fog that did its inadequate chore around her hips, if that could be called a chore. She had long blonde hair that brushed her shoulders and a nice smooth tan that you wanted to touch, and she stopped right in front of me.

She smiled. "Hello, there." In a way her voice seemed tanned, too; warm and smoky.

She looked so good from the angle I had on her that I hated to stand up and change it. But I did. "Hello. Care to share my sidewalk?"

"Thank you." She sat down gracefully, curling her smooth legs under her, and beamed at me when I sat down beside her.

I didn't get it. I'm a shade less than six-two and weigh 206 full of tacos, but there were a number of better-looking guys around the pool. My nearly white, inch-long hair sticks up in the air like a white cowlick, and the white eyebrows like toppled L's that slant up over my gray eyes and fall down at the outer ends don't add up to Cesar Romero. The slightly bent nose doesn't enhance my beauty, either. It couldn't have been simply that she liked them big. There were more big, beefy guys around the pool this afternoon than I'd ever seen at one pool in my life before. I'd been wondering—and worrying—about those hard-looking characters before I noticed the blonde; it was peculiar. Usually around the pool at any luxury hotel like this one you see so many fat old pappys and shriveled dowagers that the place looks like a museum, or nauseum, with pool. But these big boys were built like weight lifters.

The lady was still looking at me, so I said, "Down for the fishing? Or just a vacation?"

"Vacation mostly. Wish that were the only reason." She paused. "And you?"

"Just . . . loafing." I wasn't loafing. I was on probably my most important case in more than six years of private detective work. I wasn't about to mention the case, and I hoped this lovely's question was idle conversation. "Nice place to loaf," I said. "You staying here at Las Américas?"

"No, but my husband's business keeps him here most of the time, so I use the pool. Rest up and get a tan, get back in shape."

Get back in shape. That was a kick. If her shape got any better it wouldn't do her any good; nobody would believe it. It was the other remark that jarred me, though. That "husband" bit. But I should have guessed. With her chassis she should have had about eight of them; one for each day of the week, and—you know about Sunday.

"Your husband, huh?" I said brilliantly. "You've got a husband, huh?"

"Not for long if I can help it. That's what I wanted to see you about, Mr. Scott."

I blinked. I'd never seen this gal before, yet she knew my name; also she wanted to see me about her husband. Usually it's the other way around.

"Lady," I said, "how did you know my name? And I'm pretty sure I don't know your husband. It's a good guess that I don't care to know your husband."

She laughed merrily, waving her eyelashes at me like fans. "You're just like they said you were," she gurgled. "Only you're meaner-looking." Her voice dropped lower. "Now, Mr. Scott. Did you actually think I came over here just because I like your muscles?"

"I, uh . . ."

She smiled. "I do like your muscles—the ones I can see." She laughed. "But that wasn't the only reason. It wasn't even the main reason. I want to hire you."

"Hire me? For what? And how come you know so much about me?"

"I don't, really. My husband and I were in the bar last night when you came in. He told me who you were, and then I remembered seeing your picture in the papers. I'm from Beverly Hills." She shrugged and her face got serious. I noticed her eyes were green, wide-set under arched, tawny eyebrows. She said, "You're about the only man around here that I know isn't some kind of hoodlum."

That puzzled me a little, but I looked around the pool again and her meaning got clearer. I'd thought quite a bit about those beefy boys ever since yesterday afternoon, when I'd checked into the hotel and recognized a couple of big-time racketeers out front. And there'd been several other faces that looked familiar, but hadn't rung any bells. Across the pool from me was a white-skinned guy in brown trunks, with a bald head and a face like a carved mushroom. All of a sudden, looking at him, I remembered who he was: Mushy Ostrowski, head of gambling and protection in the San Francisco area. I started feeling a little nervous.

"OK," I said. "So I'm not a hoodlum. It's pretty obvious you know I'm a private detective. Why do you want a detective?"

She grinned. "Maybe I like your muscles." Then the cheerful look went away and she said, "Seriously, I do need some help. I want to leave my husband."

"You don't need a detective for that. Pack up and go." I grinned at her. "Go to Los Angeles."

"I'm afraid if I leave, he'll . . . kill me."

I almost wanted to watch her walk again. Away from me. I said, "Lady—and what do I call you besides Lady?"

"Gloria."

"I'm enjoying a vacation, Gloria. And I can't take on a client just because she doesn't like her hubby."

"It's not that; it's a lot more than that. I'm afraid all the time—not just of him, but of his friends, too."

"What'd you do? Use an ax on somebody?"

"I haven't done anything. Except maybe listen to people who talk too much. Including my husband. All I want you to do is keep an eye on me till I can get away. Be sort of a bodyguard."

I grinned at her. "Honey, there's nothing I'd rather keep an eye on, and no body I'd rather guard. But I can't take on a job now."

She frowned, then looked up at a guy in green trunks who'd strolled alongside us. "Hello, George."

I craned my neck around and looked at George. I hadn't seen him before, but I noticed he went up quite a distance. He was a hell of a good-looking guy, except that he looked nearly as intelligent as Goofy.

"Oh, George, this is Shell Scott," Gloria said.

I got to my feet and stuck my hand out. "Hi, George."

He looked at my hand, but kept his own paws down at his sides. There are few things that make a man feel sillier, and I could feel a little burn starting inside me.

"Shell Scott," he said. "Ain't you that lousy April-fool copper from L.A?"

"I'm Shell Scott," I said. "Just like the lady told you. Want me to tell you again?"

His face looked sullen for a moment, then he grew a big grin on it. He was nearly my size and about thirty, my age, with sandy-colored wavy hair, a perfectly straight nose, a big square chin. He was smiling at me. He had good teeth, too, so far.

Still smiling, he said, "A man after my own heart. Shake."

He stuck out his hand and I grabbed it in that peculiar convention men observe, and grinned back at him. So we'd let bygones be bygones. Maybe he had an ulcer.

One thing was sure. He had a damn strong grip. He was making up for missing my hand the first time. He kept grinning at me.

"Shell Scott?" he asked me pleasantly. "That what you said?" His grin got wider.

I relaxed my grip, but he just turned on more pressure. I felt pain grinding into the bones of my hand and tightened my grip again.

"Look," I said tightly. "Isn't this a little silly? Now let the hell go."

Then he really poured it on. He wasn't any stronger than I was, but he'd got my knuckles pinched together when I relaxed my grip, and very soon he was going to break something. It was obvious that was what he had in mind.

So I waited a couple of seconds longer, then said, "OK," and swung my hand up high and to my left, pulling his arm up with it. I stepped forward, ducked under his arm, then sidestepped behind him and grabbed his left shoulder with my left hand. His right arm was twisted behind him, and if he wanted to play break-bones, we'd play. If I hadn't been so hot I might not have done it, but he'd let himself in for it, so I jerked his hand up behind his back and a big "Aaargh!" ripped out of his lips just as I let go of him, put my bare foot on his fanny, and shoved him toward the pool. He took three stumbling steps, the first two on cement and the third on water, then he went splashing down out of sight. That was fine; I hoped he stayed down there.

In a couple of seconds, though, his head bobbed up again and he started paddling back toward me, using only one hand. He'd continue using only one for a while because the other one would be sore for a while. So would he, from the looks of things.

He got to the edge of the pool and started swearing at me, clinging to the pool's edge with one hand. I knelt near him and said softly, "Keep a civil tongue in your head or I'll jump in there and drown you. Now beat it—and keep out of my way. I don't like the games you play."

He stopped sputtering, but tried to haul himself over the edge at me. He couldn't make it with one hand, and finally he edged along to the cement steps at the shallow end of the pool and climbed out. On the cement again, he stood for a moment facing me and started to raise his right hand, then winced. Still staring at me with hate in his eyes, he lifted his left hand and started pawing at his left shoulder.

I thought, What on earth is the moron trying to do? Pull off his chest and throw it at me? And then, all of a cold, clammy sudden, I figured it out. The Las Américas management doesn't approve of people who wear guns to their pool, but George had apparently forgotten that in his anger. He stopped pawing finally, then wheeled around and walked to the far edge of the pool and turned to his right.

I looked around. I'd forgotten the mess of people out here taking the sun, but not too many had noticed what was going on. It hadn't been noisy, and it had been fast. But there were some looks coming my way I didn't like. One look was from Mushy Ostrowski. He lamped me good, then got up and walked toward George, standing now at the far corner of the pool diagonally across from me. I got a little shock when I saw George again.

He wasn't alone any more. Two of the big beefy characters I'd been

wondering about earlier were talking to him now, and right after Mushy joined the crowd two more Gargantuas got there. Pretty soon it looked like half the L.A. Rams grouped in the corner, taking turns looking at me. I didn't like a bit of this. Perhaps I'd been a wee bit hasty.

I sat down by Gloria again, but kept taking peeks at the football huddle in the corner. I said, "The nasty man seems to have some nasty friends, Gloria. Who is the slob?"

She stopped nibbling on her lower lip. "George?" she asked me wide-eyed. "Why, that slob is my husband."

2

I STARED AT HER for a moment, not feeling good at all. "Lady—Gloria. What's the rest of your name?"

"Madison. Gloria Madison."

Madison . . . George. No, it couldn't be. "Gloria," I said, "your husband couldn't possibly be little Georgie Madison? The George Madison?"

"Yes. How did you know?"

"Well, ha, ha," I said. "Old Sudden Death Madison." I looked at the giants grouped around Georgie. "Gloria," I said, "I can't be your bodyguard until I get a bodyguard."

I knew who George Madison was, all right. From what I'd heard about him, his boyhood idol was Dracula. He'd killed several men. Nobody knew how many except George, and he probably couldn't count that high. He'd been triggerman for a couple of the top men of the U.S. crime syndicate, and was noted for his efficiency and stupidity. He was possibly the only man alive who walked, talked, and pulled a trigger without a brain.

"Excuse me," I said. "I think I need a glass of water. Or bourbon. Or poison." I started to get up. I know when I'm outnumbered. Just George outnumbered me.

Gloria put a hand on my arm. It was the first time she'd touched me, and even in the state I was in it sent an electric tingle running up my arm and down into my spine, and elsewhere. I looked at her face and it was twisted, pleading.

"Mr. Scott," she said tightly. "Please. Somebody's got to help me. You're the only man around here who might be able to. I was serious all the time; I just didn't quite know how to ask you. And . . . you can see now why I'm frightened, Mr. Scott."

I hesitated. "Yeah. I can see that with no trouble. And, honey, you might as well call me Shell while I last."

"Will you help me? I'd be so grateful."

This was one lovely who looked as if she could be grateful to excess. And some excesses I'm excessively fond of. But I honestly didn't know what to tell her.

Right now I already had as a client one of the most important men in the entire United States. If I mentioned his name, you'd know him, so from here on in he's just plain Joe. That was one of the conditions imposed when he hired me: that I forget his name. Even in our first conversation, I called him Joe. That's how important the case was, and he was. Joe is one of the top labor leaders in the States. I can't even tell you what union he heads; that would be the same as shouting his name.

I couldn't tell Gloria I was on a case, because Joe had set it up so that it would look as if I'd come to Mexico on a different case entirely, a jewel theft now allegedly wrapped up, and I was supposed to be on vacation, in case anybody was curious. And then I got the inkling of an idea. Just before I'd come to Acapulco yesterday I'd found one of the people I was after. I'd found him dead, a bullet in his brain, but he'd been headed for Acapulco. Then I hadn't known why, but now, with all the hoods who seemed to be in town, I was getting that inkling. I mulled it over a bit, then turned to face Gloria.

I hadn't been sure exactly what I'd say to her, but when I saw the pose she'd taken I finished making up my mind. Her legs were under her, and she was sitting on her heels, leaning forward a bit and looking earnestly into my face. The little wisp of cloth over her full breasts had slipped more than it was supposed to, and the bright sun was golden on the tanned skin, dazzling against the strip of white that was usually hidden from the sun.

Looking at that, I said, "OK, Gloria. I'll do what I can."

She sighed. She sighed so heavily that I became actually eager to help her. "Oh, Shell," she said, "I . . ." She let the words trail off.

"But understand this," I said. "I won't be able to spend much time hanging around you, much as I'd like that. I'm—I've got something else on the fire. And I probably can't do you any good anyway. Hell, I don't even know what you want me to do."

"I'm not sure myself, Shell. I just want somebody on my side, somebody who isn't George's kind of man. I feel surrounded, you know what I mean. And I just want to get away from here alive; after that I'll take my chances. And I'll pay you—"

I interrupted. "I'll expect to be paid, but not in money."

She started to smile a wicked smile and almost said something to that, but I stopped her. "And don't get me wrong. I want you to start out by shoving me into the pool."

She frowned, puzzled. I went on, thinking about that inkling of an idea I'd had a moment ago, "And I'll want to know a lot more about your trouble, and about George and his friends over there." I jerked my thumb at the hideous group across the pool.

There were, actually, about eight or nine men there, including Sudden Death Madison, and as I looked at them I saw a back I recognized. Just a back, but that's the kind of back it was. The guy turned around and looked at me, but I had known who he was before he turned. He was from Hollywood, my usual stamping grounds, and he occupied about the same position in the racket hierarchy there that Mushy Ostrowski did up in Frisco. His name was Garvey Mace, and I'd run head-on into him several times during one interesting Hollywood caper concerning naked ladies and pictures of naked ladies, and he had knocked me on my fanny with little trouble. He would knock anybody on his fanny with little trouble.

Mace grinned and waved at me. I waved back feebly. The Hollywood caper had wound up OK, and Mace had been so pleased with his end of it that he let me live. More than that, we'd since become about as chummy as two guys on opposite sides of the racket can get. I didn't like the way he made his money, but I liked Mace. However, he made one more big-time hood in Acapulco, and that I didn't like. With all these hooligans around here, there was bound to be trouble brewing for some poor sucker—and I couldn't leave.

Mace waved again and started walking around the pool toward me. I said to Gloria, "I'll finish what I started to say later."

She looked puzzled. "What's this about pushing you into the pool?"

I didn't answer her; I was looking at Mace. He was exactly six feet tall, but for some reason he looked as big as any two of the other guys. His shoulders were fantastic, and the only reason he didn't have more muscles was that there wasn't room for any more. He came around the corner of the pool and walked toward me, clump, clump, clump, like an outsized steel monster, and it seemed surprising that his feet didn't leave jagged holes behind him in the concrete.

He stopped in front of me and his lips split in a big grin, moving a thick brown mustache riding his upper lip like two wire brushes. "I'll be damned," he rumbled in his deep bass. "Shell, the Boy Scott. How the hell are you?"

He stuck out his big paw and I grabbed it, grinned, and said, "Hi, you crook. Please don't play Georgie's game; I need the arm."

He let out a laugh that sounded like beer barrels rolling down an alley. "That was beautiful. I saw it all from the beginning. I should have told Georgie you're an ex-Marine." He glanced at Gloria. "Hi, doll."

She said hello, and I told Mace, "Maybe I'm an ex-detective pretty quick. I didn't know who the guy was. Thought he was just another clown."

Mace laughed. "Ex-detective. Clown." He rolled some more beer barrels. He actually thought it was hilarious that Georgie might shoot me. "What you doing down here, Scott?"

"Just a vacation—up till now. Taking life easy."

"That's what Georgie does, Scott: takes life easy." He roared so loud at his crack that every head around the pool turned toward us. That was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. That was, of course, only his opinion. He said, "You know how he makes his living, don't you, Scott?"

"Yeah. Out of dying. Other people's dying. How about you, Mace? I mean, what you doing down here? And all those other characters?"

He stopped laughing. "Take a tip, Scott. Don't even ask. Everybody's on vacation. It's not healthy to ask."

"Yeah, I see." I let it ride, but I was getting very damned curious. We shot the breeze a little longer, then he shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, I gotta get back, Scott," he said. "Because I like you, I'll do what I can." He shrugged again. "But I'm only a little wheel." He turned and clumped off.

Little wheel, huh? As far as I was concerned, he was a big one. I sat down again by Gloria and said, "Honey, I've got a feeling I'm going to be no help to you at all, and you might as well know it. But I'm on your side. From here that looks like two against the world."

I thought about how to phrase the next part. The way things were shaping up, it seemed likely that I could use a gal with Gloria's apparent connections. I said, "How come you've got trouble, and how'd you wind up with Madison in the first place?"

She leaned back with her elbows behind her, raising merry hell with the little strip of bandanna, and started talking. She'd been working as a waitress in Beverly Hills when George spotted her and started rushing her a little over two months back, and she'd swallowed his story that he was in the olive-oil importing business. Right away he'd asked her to marry him, promising her a honeymoon in Acapulco in April and May, when he had to come here on an olive-oil deal, he'd said. She was now on that honeymoon, not liking it a bit. When she learned how George actually got his money, and that it had nothing to do with olives, that tied it. She'd been sick of him even before that, she said. And, drunk, he'd bragged and talked enough—after she found out the truth about him—so that he couldn't afford to let her walk out on him and maybe spill what she knew to the wrong people.

She kept talking, giving me incidental stuff about George and her that wasn't especially important, and I thought back a little bit, wondering what, if anything, this might have to do with the case I was on. The guy I'd originally been after—the one I'd found two nights back with a bullet hole in his head—was, or rather had been, almost a living legend at the age of forty. He was one of the greatest con men who ever lived, and he'd pulled off some of the most spectacular and breathtaking capers of the century. His name was Wallace Parkinson, called Gunner, and being a criminal, he might have been meeting some criminal chums down here. Hardly the kind of torpedoes I'd seen so far, though, because Gunner was a true genius in his own line, and if he hadn't started on the fast buck, he'd undoubtedly have been a success in whatever else he tried. Gunner was the boy who took a Texas oil man for $350,000 on the wire, then took him for another $200,000 two months later on the rag. He was the guy audacious enough to blackmail my client. He was, to the confidence game, what Billy the Kid was to outlaws and Jack the Ripper to mass killers. I couldn't help feeling a little sorry that he'd been murdered.

I heard Gloria saying, "So I'm stuck," and I brought my mind back to George Madison, shuddering. She went on, "It was just one of those things. He's an awfully good-looking guy, and I didn't really know him when we got married. We went everywhere, night clubs, parties. He was always loaded with money, and we did a lot of drinking. Maybe if we hadn't it would have been different. God, he's so stupid when he's sober."

"He's brilliant when he's drunk?"

She smiled. "No, but I drank when he drank, and didn't notice so easily. Two more months of his conversation and I'll be a lush. He says, 'Yeah,' and his repartee is over."

"Yeah," I said.

"And that's about it. He turns my stomach, now, but he made me come down here with him. Says if I try to leave he'll kill me. But I'm going to try. So here I am, Shell. Not a very pretty story."

"Not very much we can do, either. I can't shoot the guy for you." I thought a minute. It could very well be that Gloria's problem was exactly what she said it was, and I was the handiest and most logical choice for her to work on. But I was getting into something big here, and there was a chance she was giving me a line, trying to find out why I was in Acapulco. She had some very shady friends—but maybe that was all to the good.

I said, "What's George doing down here, Gloria? And Mace, and all those other heavies?"

She nibbled on her red lower lip for a moment. "I'm not sure, really. It's something about some union thing or other, I think, but I don't know for sure. Why?"

"Just curious." Union thing. I had a hell of a time keeping my face blank. "Incidentally, where you staying?"

"El Encantado. It's on the Calle de Tambuco, not far from here. I'm in Cottage Twenty-seven."

"I know where it is. OK. How about this, honey? You make me look silly, then trot back to your loving husband. Play up to him. Tell him you told me who he is and I almost fainted. You'll be telling the truth. Then keep your ears open; find out what's in store for me. I can't help you or anybody else if I stop breathing. And I'll try to see you later today."

She frowned a little, biting the inside of her lip, and said, "George might think it's funny if I suddenly get lovey."

I grinned at her. "With your equipment you could make him believe anything. You could make him jump into La Quebrada Gorge."

She smiled prettily at me, fanning her lashes over the green eyes. "Well, why do I want to make you look silly?"

"It usually takes a little of the edge off a man's anger if the guy he's mad at is made to look silly. Any edge I can get, I want. You just slap me a time or two, then shove me into the pool. Make it look good, and George might get a little happier."

"Sounds like fun. But what'll I tell George? Why did I do it?"

I shrugged. "Tell him I pinched your—No, don't tell him that. Tell him anything. Tell him I said something nasty about him and you didn't like it. You stuck up for him. Anything. It can't make him any madder at me than he is right now. And I'd much rather have you toss me into the drink than have George and his friends do it."

"All right. You asked for it."

I stood up, my back to the pool, and she stepped over in front of me. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the beef trust milling around. "Go ahead," I said to Gloria. "Clobber me."

She hesitated. "It seems funny when I'm not mad at you." A trace of a smile twitched the corners of her mouth. "Say something to make me want to slap you."

I grinned at her. "O.K. And you asked for this." I told her something, but she didn't seem to get madder. The corners of her mouth twitched violently, then she raised an eyebrow, drew back her right hand, and let me have it. Then, making it look good, I guess, she brought her hand whipping back across the other side of my face and slammed both hands against my chest.

The crack of her palm across my cheek was still echoing, especially inside my head, as I flew backward and splashed into the water. When I came up the hoods were still laughing. I climbed out, flashed a look at the boys, and spotted Gloria standing by Georgie, her arm around his waist. Then I stalked away from the pool, scooped up my robe, and got out of there.

I glanced back over my shoulder as I headed for my rooms. Nobody was following me. The vultures wheeled lazily, patiently, overhead.

3

THE HOTEL DE LAS AMERICAS is one of the most beautiful hotels in Acapulco, Mexico. It spreads all over the point of the Cerro de los Cañiones, or Mountain of the Canyons, that juts out into the blue waters of Acapulco Bay, and besides the rooms and suites in the main building of the hotel itself, there are dozens of little cottages and bungalows scattered over the grounds, bungalows with names like Pago Pago, Singapore, María Bonita, and Casa Redonda. Shaded walks wind around the hotel and by the bungalows, and vines and flowers and trees weave a variegated pattern of red and green and yellow and orange almost everywhere you look.

You drive out from the town of Acapulco and turn left off broad Manuel Guzmán Boulevard just before you reach Caleta Beach, and climb up the Calle de Tambuco on Las Playas peninsula until you pass under the cement arch with "Hotel de las Américas" painted in faded letters, then up the curving drive and past the watchtower to the main building. Beyond it, down a vine-shaded walk, is the alberca, or swimming pool. You walk past the alberca and among small tables in the little area for dining and dancing, and into the bar, where you can sit either on a bar stool or at one of the seats before skin-topped tables that look like huge tom-toms. Beyond the bar is the dining room—all of this open to the warm air—and then you come to La Bocana, where there will be dining and dancing in the evening. La Bocana is at the very end of the point, overlooking the bay on all three curving sides, and at night there are red and yellow and white and green lights in the branches of the huge tree that is the only ceiling except the sky.

From the pool I walked down the shaded path and to the colorful patio next to the open-air lobby. I was in one of the junior suites, number 103, right at the corner of the patio. My key was still at the desk, but I'd left my door unlocked when I went to the pool so I pushed it open and went inside. I sprawled on one of the twin beds and thought for a minute about the case I was on, wondering what all the activity in Acapulco might have to do with it. There was a good chance it was plenty. Gloria had said the boys were down here on "some union thing or other." Unions. And Joe, my client, was way up at the top of the union pyramid. If I got back what he wanted, there was a cool fifty thousand dollars in it for me.

It was funny the way the case was shaping up. I'd never had a case remotely like it; every time I got a little deeper into the thing, it got bigger, and screwier. When I had gone out to see Joe four days back, it was big already, simply because my client was a damned important man, being blackmailed. Even when I learned the blackmailer was Wallace "Gunner" Parkinson, it was just a big honest man being blackmailed by a big dishonest man, though it seemed screwy that a top-notch con man like Gunner would resort to blackmail, which is a bit out of the con's line. It got screwier when I learned Joe wasn't at all honest, and I got confused when I found out it wasn't blackmail. Not, at least, in the usual sense of the word.

I talked to Joe for over two hours, and if the guy who'd been working on Joe hadn't been Gunner, I might have thought Joe was pulling my leg about the mass of dirty information Gunner had picked up on my client. But, knowing a lot about Wallace Parkinson, I wasn't too surprised.

Gunner had, in a compact blackmail file, a lot of stuff that Joe was understandably unhappy about; proof of misappropriation of union funds; photostats of union records that had belatedly been destroyed; incontrovertible evidence showing that Joe had once been a card-carrying member of the Communist party; even proof that Joe was paying an unmarried nightclub singer named Lila $500 a week for support of her and her baby, who by an odd coincidence was also Joe's baby. And Joe was happily married with three children of his own. Three other children.

That sounded bad enough to me, but it was only the small stuff, some miscellany that I learned about in the first hour of conversation. I agreed to take the case, so now Joe let his hair down.

We were sitting clear out in the middle of the enormous lawn, in straight-backed chairs set up by a card table. We had highballs, and fresh air, and a pleasant day, but that wasn't why we were on the lawn. Joe was, he explained, taking no chances that anybody would overhear our conversation—or, more important, get a recording of it. Joe looked haggard, almost ready to collapse. He said, frowning, "He came right out here with it, Mr. Scott. It was all in a fairly small brief case, just some papers and photographs—and a tape recording." He paused and shook his head, jowls swinging. "Why, the man must have been working on me for months. Night and day. I can't understand why he'd go to such trouble. And why me?"

I said, "A man like Gunner always takes a lot of trouble, plans everything. That's why he's such a big man. Never heard of him blackmailing anybody before, though."

Joe frowned again. "That's the odd thing, Mr. Scott. He didn't want money from me. He brought all that stuff out here, and then had the audacity to say his price for the material was a very important position in my union. Second only to my own. Not money at all. I didn't understand him at first."

I was getting confused myself. I said, "You mean he wanted a job?"

"That's the sense of it. But a position of such power that only I would have any control over him—and, with a man like that, well . . ."

He didn't finish, but I knew what he meant. Joe would have had a difficult time controlling a man like Gunner.

Joe continued, "Why, he'd have been able even to place other such scoundrels, friends of his, in positions of importance and trust beneath him."

It sounded a bit funny to me, already, to hear Joe talking about scoundrels in positions of importance and trust. I said, "Could you have swung the deal? I mean got him the spot he wanted in the union?"

He almost smiled. "Of course, Mr. Scott. There would have been nothing difficult about it." He took a swallow of his drink, then fixed his eyes on me, looking grave and tired, unutterably tired. "And I would have swung the deal, as you put it. I had no choice. I have no choice. I will." His voice got louder and more high-pitched; he spoke more rapidly. "Mr. Scott, I can't impress on you too much the value of those papers and the rest of it. Some of it, like the information about Lila and the boy, can be duplicated. And the Communist record, which is known to the FBI. I've made up for that mistake. But most of them can't be duplicated. I've taken care of that; some of the records are now destroyed. But the rest of it can ruin me. I told the man I wouldn't do business, but he knew, I'm sure, that I have no choice. I will do business with him to get back that blackmail material on me. I'll give him anything he wants, any position in the union, money, anything at all!"

He paused and looked at me, then continued. "I realize I'm not making myself sound very admirable, but that isn't my purpose. My purpose is to convince you of the importance of that file on me. If that information is ever made public, my life is ruined. There'd be . . . no point in my living. And I assure you, public knowledge of that information about me would affect a good many others. Big men whose names are mentioned in those papers, important men in business and government, and many well-known men in the union movement. If that information becomes public, it will affect the stock market, it will definitely affect official attitude toward my union. And I dare say there would be an uproar in Congress."

He sighed heavily. "You must get those papers, Mr. Scott. I'd prefer that you return them to me, but failing that, I'd want them destroyed. Once I know they no longer exist, I can breathe easily again."

That had been quite a passionate speech for Joe. I let him calm down a little, then said, "You mentioned something about a recording. What was that?"

He shook his head wearily, ran his tongue over dry lips. "There's that, and the documents. Some material from the War Department. I wasn't supposed even to let that document out of my sight. It was in my safe. My safe." He used the only profanity then that I ever heard him use. "That . . . that son-of-a-bitch stole my safe!"

"Look," I said, "maybe you'd better tell me all you know about how Gunner managed this."

He finished his drink and started in. Apparently Gunner had been after Joe for months. He'd actually had him tailed, had apparently known all Joe's movements for some time. Just two nights before Gunner confronted Joe with his blackmail file, somebody had entered Joe's house and removed the entire safe from the wall—a trick that some of Gunner's friends could accomplish without too much difficulty. Joe, during this explanation, also mentioned the tape recording again, but he skipped right by it. By now I understood that Gunner had pulled off this caper with even more than his usual thoroughness, but I still didn't understand it.

I kept going back to that document, the War Department thing Joe had mentioned, but he was evasive. Getting specific information from Joe was about as difficult as getting blood from a fashion model. Finally I said, a bit impatiently, "Listen, Joe. For Pete's sake, I'm the boy who's going to glom onto this junk—if I'm lucky. I'll know then what it all is. You're acting like a sick man that dares his doctor to find out where it hurts. You want me to find this stuff, you'd better tell me what I'm supposed to find. Now, what the hell is this War Department document?"

He shook his head. "It's a secret document, Mr. Scott."

"It was a secret."

I thought he paled a little. "Yes. Even so . . . it's likely Mr. Parkinson doesn't realize its significance."

"Then it is significant"

This time he actually did get paler; there was no mistaking it. He put one hand on his forehead and rubbed it back and forth, staring at the table. This thing was getting bigger and screwier, and I was getting more interested.

Finally he said, "As I told you, it is a secret document. I simply cannot tell you what it contains. But, well, it is terribly important."

"To whom? To you?"

"Yes, to me. And to you, Mr. Scott. To . . . all of us."

He wouldn't tell me any more about it. Not right then. I changed the subject. "How about this recording?"

He gave that to me, almost as if he were eager to talk about something else. The story seemed simple enough, but there was something about it that didn't ring true; something that smelled. He said that half a dozen of his business acquaintances and some other union men had met here at his home at the end of March, just about a month back. They discussed . . . business, union methods. He slurred over it as if it were only a little shop talk and poker among pals. Joe hadn't the slightest suspicion at that time that Gunner, or anybody else, knew of the meeting, or even knew he was yet in Los Angeles. He'd only been out here from New York for two days then, but Gunner had been on his tail. More than that, Gunner had recorded that entire conversation. That was the main reason Joe and I were now sitting out on the lawn.

When he'd finished I said, "Joe, I don't like to sound like a cross-examiner, but if it was just a friendly get-together, why is that recording so important?"

He licked his lips. "We discussed business matters. Some union business that . . . that I should not like made public. Out of context . . . you know how strange things sound. And a recording, I understand, can be manipulated or doctored so as to distort completely its original meaning."

He stopped. I let him stop. But I was getting the impression that Joe was a bigger rat than Gunner. We talked another half hour, during which I learned I would be on an unlimited expense account. The reason both Joe and I figured I could use an expense account was that the last thing Gunner had said to Joe was that he'd see him again in a month or two. In other words, he wasn't going to bother the guy for a while. Perhaps the idea was to let Joe sweat, soften him up. That had been yesterday, which gave Gunner only a day's start if he were leaving the L.A. area for a while, leaving Joe here to worry.

At the end of the last half hour I said, "OK. I'm all set, I guess. And knowing Gunner, I'd better not sit here any longer than I have to. Oh yes, just one thing more."

"Yes?"

"You'll have to give me something, at least an idea, of what that War Department thing is that's floating around loose."

He sighed heavily. "Well . . . all right. It concerned steps the United States would take in the event of war." His face seemed to sag even more and the lids dropped a bit farther over his eyes. He said, so solemnly that it made a little chill run down my spine, "And I mean war, Mr. Scott. Total, complete, absolutely destructive war. The document you refer to . . ." he hesitated. "It had to do with the possibility of the use of germ warfare by the United States against . . . an aggressor. That's absolutely all I can tell you."

That shocked me, but for a funny reason: I knew that he was lying. It was nothing I could put my finger on; maybe his face, his words, his expression, maybe the tone of his voice. But when your sole occupation, almost your life, for a good many years has been one kind of investigation or another, including talking to and interrogating thousands of different kinds of people, every once in a while you know positively when somebody is lying to you. Joe was giving me some kind of snow job. And I didn't much like Joe, but I was more anxious than ever to dig into the case.

I said, "It sounds damned important. This whole thing does. And that document sounds so important that I can't help wondering why it wasn't in the Pentagon, or a congressman's hip pocket, instead of in your safe, Joe."

Anger flickered momentarily in his eyes. "Mr. Scott, I'm not hiring you to question me, but to retrieve that blackmail file. You forget that I am a man of some importance; I serve on several committees and I'm active in many fields other than the one with which you automatically identify me; I'm quite close to the president himself. Let me say only that there was good and sufficient reason for my possession of the document. However, quite naturally, that's all I can say about it."

"Don't flip. It just seems to me that the FBI could handle something like this a lot better than I can."

He straightened. "You may be sure the FBI is working on it. I can state that positively. However, the federal agency isn't concerned with my private—ah, papers. That is your concern. As a matter of fact, the entire mass of dirty, blackmailing filth is your concern. Including that document and that recording. Fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money, Mr. Scott." I mentally agreed. He had impressed upon me that that sum would be my reward. He said, "For a job well done, Mr. Scott, fifty thousand dollars would actually be a small fee. I will probably pay a substantial bonus."

"Sounds good to me. Well, I'll get busy." I stood and looked down at him, remembering that he had lied to me at least part of the time, and I added something I often, but not always, add when I get a new client. "Incidentally, Joe, I've handled a lot of murder cases in this area, as you know. Usually I make it clear that if my client knocked a guy off, I'd turn him in as quick as I'd scuttle anybody else. Quicker." His face flushed and I went on, "I just like to clear the air."

"So? What can that possibly have to do with me?"

"Undoubtedly nothing. Like I said, I just like to clear the air before I start a case. If I'm hired, that is."

"You're hired. And I couldn't respect a man who didn't think along the same lines." He shook my hand before I left. Good, hearty, firm handclasp. A jovial enough guy ordinarily, hail-fellow-well-met, good guy, good Joe. But now he was just a very frightened man. About all he had left was the firm handclasp. I took off.

That had been the start of it. Screwy enough, but I didn't yet know how big it was. I got an inkling when I found Gunner. I traced him—using methods too numerous to mention; mostly informants and underworld tipsters—to Mexico City; then to the Hotel de la Borda in Taxco, where I found the car he'd rented in Mexico City under the name of Arthur Brand. He was there, registered as Robert Cain, and in a big beam-ceilinged room on the third floor I found Parkinson-Brand-Cain, or Gunner, and he was dead, with a bullet in his brain. There weren't any papers, photos, recordings, or secret documents around. I made a thorough search, but the only thing I found that might help me was in Gunner's wallet. It was a little reservation slip like those you get from travel agencies, for the Hotel de las Américas in Acapulco. The reservation was for Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Brodney and was effective April 28, which was the day already started.

I sat in the room with the dead Wallace Parkinson for a few minutes, then let myself out and checked, casually, at the desk. Nobody could tell me if Gunner had been alone or with somebody else. He'd apparently come to the desk alone, but that didn't mean anything. I went out to my car and thought a while, wondering what to do next. Apparently Gunner had either been traveling with somebody—who had murdered him—or been tailed by somebody besides me. And, too, it seemed that he had either been going to Acapulco with a "Mrs. Jacob Brodney" or intended to meet her there.

Also, Gunner would hardly be heading for Acapulco to lie on the beach; not with the blackmail file he had—or had had—on Joe. I thought another minute and made up my mind. I was going to Las Américas and pick up my reservation. From here on in, at least for a while, I was going to be Wallace "Gunner" Parkinson, and see if things didn't start to happen.

It was daylight when I left Taxco and started driving on the narrow, idiotically curved "highway" leading to Acapulco. A little after noon I checked the desk at the Hotel de las Américas and learned that nobody had yet picked up the reservation. I claimed it, started to sign the register Jacob Brodney, then stopped. My brain was dulled with fatigue, but that seemed like carrying this thing too far. Particularly if Gunner, as Brodney, had planned to meet somebody here who knew him. I didn't look the least little bit like Gunner.

I let the clerk continue to think I was Jacob Brodney, but I signed the registration card Shell Scott. Then I gave the clerk, a sharp-looking Mexican named Rafael, the equivalent of a hundred U.S. dollars to swear if anybody asked him that a wire had arrived from Jacob Brodney saying he was delayed, and that Rafael had thus given the room to an odd character who had signed the card Shell Scott. Rafael was more than a little perplexed at this, but for 864 pesos he would have sworn the tortillas were lousy.

That seemed to cover me in case any homicidal friend of Gunner's wondered what I was doing in the dead Gunner's room, so I tottered down to Suite 103 and fell asleep across one of the twin beds with my clothes on. I woke up before midnight, logy and still tired, had a quick but delicious dinner at La Bocana—noticing some hard, vaguely familiar faces—then went back to bed.

The next morning I checked at the desk to see if anybody had been inquiring about Suite 103. Nobody had. Then breakfast, another check at the desk, a tedious wait in the lobby, in the bar, and near the desk, with nothing happening except that I saw some more crooks, including a confidence man named Archie Crouse, who owed me a favor. I kept him in mind; I might need a favor. Then I had some drinks at the bar and lunch in the dining room, followed by a dip in the pool. And then came Gloria, walking toward me and telling me she had troubles.

Now, in my suite, I'd actually spent no more than half a minute going back over part of what had happened since I first got the call from Joe and started on the case. I shrugged, stood up, and tossed my robe on the bed. If nothing else, I had a beautiful suite and all the comforts the management could provide, and right outside were the blue waters of Acapulco Bay and the pool.

I stretched, and the door opened. The bellhop who came in was the goddamnedest-looking bellboy I'd ever seen, and he walked right in, leaned against the wall, and looked at me.

He was about five feet tall, and looked five feet wide, and his face could have used a lot of plastic surgery. He was just about as cute as an elephant's fanny, and he should have been in a museum with one of those Latin signs over his flat head. I suddenly began wishing my gun were on me instead of in the bureau drawer. I swallowed.

The bellhop said softly, "Gunner?"

I said, "Uh."

"Get some clothes on," he said in a half whisper. "Fifteen minutes."

"Uh" had worked the last time, so I said it again. He nodded, went out, and shut the door softly. I didn't know what was going to happen next, but whatever it was, I wanted to be fully dressed—including my .38 Colt Special under my coat.

Just then the toilet flushed in the john on my left. As I looked at the closed door of the john, it opened, and out strolled a beautiful gal wearing a mink coat and very little else. I gaped.

She laughed. "My goodness," she said in a silken contralto. "You must be Gunner. You must have known I was coming."

Yeah, sure. I know everything. She smiled at me, and I took a good look at her. It was worth taking.

She was swathed in about forty pounds of mink and an ounce or two of gold lamé that was strapless, topless, backless, and very nearly useless. She was dressed for evening, and I wished it were. She had walked out of the john carrying, by the handle on top, a little black box like one of those cases women carry when they intend to stay overnight someplace. She tossed the case onto the bed and then draped her mink carelessly over it, and I took a look at the dress she seemed to be wearing.

It was cut so low in front that for a moment I thought it was a robe, but it stopped just short of disaster. She was one woman who was obviously unpadded except by Nature, and I'm a Nature lover.

She blinked blue eyes at me. "Torelli sent me down to keep you company, honey."

Honey. She had called me honey. I got out a word past my confusion. "Torelli?"

"Sure. Torelli told me to—uh, talk to you till he's ready."

Torelli? I didn't know any Torelli. And whoever she was talking about, I didn't know what she meant by that "till he's ready" line. Maybe she was talking about me. Hell, I was already ready.

She had lovely, curving legs with slender ankles. Her hair was long, the way I like it, but it sure was a peculiar color. It just missed being strawberry blonde. I guess it was orange, but I wouldn't have cared if it had been green. Her narrow waist made her hips look even more delightful. Oh, I looked at everything.

I was still looking when she said, "Well? How long do I stand here?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. Uh, sit down." I led her to a chair. "You sort of confused me for a moment."

I started to ask her what this was all about, and who was Torelli, and so on, but then I remembered I was supposed to be Gunner and have all the answers.

I said, "Torelli sent you?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well, good old Torelli."

She didn't add anything to that, so I asked her, "Like a drink?"

"Anything you say."

I laughed at that remark and dug out the bottle of bourbon I had for emergencies. This was an emergency. I poured two stiff drinks, gave her one, and drained mine almost immediately.

She wore a huge signet ring on her finger, with a raised E on it. I noticed the ring because it was almost as big as the dress she was wearing so carelessly. But with a dress like that, there was no point in being careful, anyway. "Incidentally," I asked her, "what's your name?"

"Evelyn. You can call me Eve."

There was quite a bit I could have done with that, but I needed another drink first. I made it while she coasted on her first one.

She sipped at the highball and said, "How about some music?"

"Sure. Fine. Like some music. I'm crazy about music."

She'd spotted the radio, and she got up and waved her hips over to it and turned it on. Music blared from the radio and she turned the dial till she found something she liked. It was sensual stuff with a lot of rhythm; I couldn't have named it. It might have been a mambo, but it was sweet music to me because Eve was keeping time to the beat with one little foot and innumerable other parts of Eve.

"Dance?" she asked me.

I had to clear my throat before I could answer. "Hell, yes."

She wiggled a little, then lifted the dress a bit over her beautiful legs. "Aaaah," I said. She lifted the dress higher and came at me like Gilda Gray.

Pretty soon we were moving around a lot but not doing very much with our feet, and I was thinking that whoever Torelli was, I owed him a favor. And then the door opened and that ugly bellhop came in and I could cheerfully have boiled him in oil. He could, at least, have knocked.

"Well, for God's sake," he said. "Ain't you dressed?"

That remark set some kind of record for nonsense. I said icily, "No, my good man, I am not dressed. And if you will kindly get the hell out—"

His face suddenly got much tougher-looking, which surprised me because I had thought it could not get any tougher-looking. "You listen to me, Gunner. You got one minute to get dressed, or you go in your swimming trunks. And Torelli wouldn't like you showing up in that outfit."

Eve said, "Lord, I'm sorry, Gunner. I'll beat it for now. You better jump."

I was starting to feel like jumping out the window. But she'd been very nice to me, so I walked to the bed and held her mink coat for her. As I pulled the coat from the bed, the little black box under it fell to the floor.

She squealed. "Oh!" she cried. "My box!"

I said, "Whoops, sorry," but she was already stooping over. She picked it up and said, "Can't you be careful? You might have broken my box."

"Honey, I wouldn't hurt it for the world."

She whirled and walked out with the mink in one hand and her little black box in the other. The bellhop growled at me that I had thirty seconds and I jumped into a pair of pants and a sport shirt and stuffed my feet, without socks, into my shoes. He didn't even give me time to tie the laces.

"What's the matter with you, Gunner?" he asked. "You losing your marbles?"

I didn't say anything and he steered me out the door. This idea of taking Gunner's room and going along as he might have had seemed like a good idea when it occurred to me. Now it seemed as if perhaps it were working too well.

The bellhop took my arm and led me around the colorful patio. We didn't go up by the desk, but walked outside and headed along a narrow path toward a big bungalow that was more a house sitting by itself a little apart from the main building. The bellhop steered me straight toward it and I wondered who or what we were going to see. The place was the Villa al Mar, one of the three biggest, fanciest, and most expensive suites at Las Américas.

We reached Villa al Mar and walked up the cement steps onto the long terrace facing the water. I looked across the bay to the town of Acapulco, then at a motorboat cutting across the water in a foaming arc with a man and woman water-skiing in its wake. I couldn't help wishing I were the man. There were dozens of other boats in the water, and two or three big, sleek yachts. Only about a hundred yards out in the bay was a huge white yacht with its stern toward the terrace, and I could make out the name: Fortuna. I remembered that word meant fortune, or luck, and I thought uneasily that the name should mean something to me. I remembered that name from somewhere.

The bellhop took my arm and pulled me up in front of a door leading inside, knocked four times, then pushed me forward as the door opened. I got a quick glimpse of the spacious living room, cigar and cigarette smoke hanging beneath the low ceiling, a bunch of men sitting in chairs all over the room, and more men grouped around a big square table in the room's center. I walked inside, the door shut behind me, the key turned in the lock with a very final sound.

4

THE GUY at the head of the table was Torelli—Vincente Torelli, sometimes called Gorilla, but only behind his back. Now I knew who he was. Now I knew, and it made me very sad. No matter what he was called, he was poison—and he was The Top. You couldn't go any higher in the international crime syndicate.

My eyes almost popped out, not only because he was who he was but because he was the last guy I'd expected to see here. He'd been deported from the States several years back, and the guy was supposed to be in Italy.

I could taste death in my mouth. I was looking right at the syndicate and the Unione Siciliano. I didn't have much time to look around the room, but the place was swarming, absolutely swarming, with some of the deadliest killers and gang bosses and dope pushers and up-from-the-bloody-ranks elite of the syndicate and the Maffia. This was no place for a private detective. This was no place for anybody.

I caught all of that in half a second and then there was pandemonium in the room. Three or four guys jumped out of their chairs and one guy started toward me and about a dozen men started talking and shouting all at once.

All but Torelli. His face didn't move a muscle, even when he spotted me. He just stared at me coldly from dark eyes as expressionless as a dead snake's. When the hubbub and noise roared up he let it ride for about two seconds, then lifted his hand and waved it slightly.

It was as if he'd pulled a switch. Everybody stopped talking at once and the room got as quiet as a graveyard. The men who had jumped up eased back quietly into their seats. A lot of eyes were on me, eyes that had watched too much torture and death already and would calmly watch a lot more.

In the quiet Torelli said softly to me, in a purring voice with a definite Italian accent, looking coldly at me with his dark eyes fixed on mine, "You're not Gunner."

I said the first words that popped into my mind, knowing I had to say something. "Gunner? Who the hell's Gunner? And who the hell are you?"

His swarthy face hardened like a quick-drying cement, and that should have scared me. But it didn't. I knew, suddenly, that I couldn't have said anything else, that out of my subconscious mind had come the only words that were right. I had to make Torelli believe that I'd simply stumbled into this mess, and I had to convince him that I didn't know who he was. It was quite an order, and I didn't really think I could do it, but I had to try something in a hurry.

Torelli said, "Listen, mister," and his voice was like a knife edge at my throat. "Say your piece fast. What were you doing in Gunner's room?"

I strained to keep my voice normal, keep it from cracking. I had to pull this through, pretend I didn't know what he was talking about. If I knuckled down to him completely, crawled even a little, he'd know I had him pegged for who he was. In one way, my next words and actions were the most foolish of my life, but it was the only way I could handle this and have the slimmest chance.

So I said, "Will you quit yapping about this Gunner, whatever he is? I already told you I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

I was still standing with my back to the door, and now I walked around the table toward Torelli. Two men near me half rose from their chairs and some right hands crept toward left armpits. Torelli waved his hand slightly and everybody relaxed again.

I stopped three or four feet from Torelli, and it suddenly occurred to me that if I'd had time to dress carefully and wear a gun, I might very well be dead now. One funny move toward a gun and I'd grow holes like sponges.

I swallowed and looked down at him, trying to make my face look angry. I said, "And what business is it of yours which room I sleep in?"

For the first time his expression changed a bit. He winced. I don't know what he might have said then, or what might have happened, but from behind me came a voice I recognized. It was a deep, rumbling voice and it said, obviously to Torelli, "Uh, excuse me."

Torelli glanced past me and nodded. I craned my head over my shoulder and looked at Garvey Mace. He was looking at me and his broad face was serious.

I tried to make it light. "Mace! Why, you old crook. What the hell is this, man?" My voice didn't quite make it on the last word and it wobbled a little.

Mace said softly to Torelli, "He's Shell Scott, a soft heel from L.A. I know him well, saw him earlier today. Says he's down here on vacation." Then to me he said, "Take a tip, Shell." It was the first time he had ever called me anything but Scott. "Give your answers pretty."

I shrugged. "OK, if you say so, Mace."

I looked around the room. I was getting a hazy idea of what was going on in Acapulco, and I wasn't too surprised to see the head of a union that had been expelled from the CIO for Communist activities, and a wheel from an AFL labor union that controlled, I knew, well over a hundred thousand members. I was a little surprised, though, to see a United States senator. Only one. That left ninety-five honorable men unaccounted for.

I said to Torelli, "OK. What's the trouble?"

He just looked at me. He'd asked me once, and he wasn't in the habit of asking people twice. I wasn't about to make him start. I said, "About the room? Like I told you, I don't know what you mean. I pulled in here yesterday afternoon from Mexico City and had a hell of a time getting a bed. Didn't have a reservation."

He said flatly, "You got a room here."

"Sure I did. Finally hit here and got on the clerk. Had to slip him a little grease, but he had a cancellation and let me have it."

Torelli's dark eyes left my face only briefly, flicked to the floor and then back to my face, but I heard the door open and close softly.

He knew, of course, that there was a chance I was telling him the truth, so he stopped playing it hard. He was plenty smart; that's why he was the top. He said, pleasantly enough now, "What'd you come here with the bellboy for?"

I glanced over my shoulder to see if the bellhop had gone down to check my story at the desk. He was still there, so it was somebody else talking to the guy I'd paid a hundred dollars. I wished now I'd given him a thousand.

I jerked a thumb at the bellhop and then grinned at Torelli. "He can tell you," I said. "Here I was in the room and he walks right in and says something about my getting dressed in fifteen minutes, then blows. I figured he must have escaped from somewhere. Then this Eve doll breezes in dressed in next to nothing. She says I must be Gunner and starts to make a play. So, if she wants to play with some Gunner, I'll be her Gunner. I forgot all about this bellhop character. I figured his attendants must have picked him up by now, and I was doing pretty well as Gunner when the guy banged back in like he owned the place. The fact is, I had no desire to come down here, but that lug wouldn't take no for an answer. Made me jump into some clothes and then dragged me down here." I pulled up my pants leg. "Look at that. I didn't even have time to tie my shoelaces. The guy acted just crazy enough so I didn't want to argue with him." I stopped. Then I said, "When Garvey Mace tells me to do something, I generally figure it's a good idea. But why all the questions?"

Torelli nibbled on his lip, glanced at the bellhop for a long second, then back to me. Then he looked around the room. His eyes stopped on the senator and he paused for a moment. I could almost feel his brain cells working. He smiled at me; the smile made his face look like the front end of an old locomotive. "Perhaps I should explain. We're having a kind of convention here, Mr. Scott. Elections coming up in November, you know. Naturally we wouldn't want word of our strategy to leak out in advance of party conventions." He looked across the room. "Isn't that right, Senator?"

The trained, healthy voice answered, "Indeed it is. We might be helping to determine the future course of the ship of state here in this room." He cleared his throat. "In these trying times—"

Torelli cut him off with a nod; this was no time for a speech. Almost anybody but a senator would have known that. The senator shut up.

I looked back at Torelli. I said in my politest tone, "I'm sorry for my rudeness when I came in here. I can understand your curiosity, though. I might be a Republican spy, huh? Ha—"

I got out only one "ha" because nobody thought that was funny. Torelli said, "In that case you wouldn't mind a few more questions."

"Not at all."

"What are you doing here at Las Américas, Mr. Scott?"

"I was just fortunate to get a room here, that's all." I heard the door open and close softly again behind me and it suddenly got harder to push the words out. I kept it going while Torelli glanced to the door and then back at me again. "I'm just here on a vacation. Like Mace said"—I jerked my head toward him—"I'm a private detective. Finished up a case in Mexico City yesterday, so while I was close, I figured I'd take a look. Never been here before."

"Mexico City? What took you there? I'm interested, really."

"Guy named Willie Lake lifted some jewelry from an old dame in L.A. Name of Bradenton. Worth about fifty grand. I picked up the guy in a flea-bag hotel on Donceles—his doll fingered him—and picked up the swag with him. They're holding him in Mexico, and I sent the stones back to L.A. Figured I deserved a vacation." I grinned, then let it die. Torelli wasn't the grinning type.

"I see," he said. He was quiet for a few moments, his eyes fixed unwaveringly on my face. He asked a few more questions, which I thought I answered OK. So far the answers I'd given him could be checked; the Willie Lake robbery had been set up by Joe so that it would appear my work had nothing to do with Joe himself, and apparently Torelli had got the right nods or winks or whatnot from the guys behind my back. The desk clerk had probably come through with the story about the fake wire from "Jacob Brodney," but it wouldn't take much pressure to get the truth out of him. When and if Torelli found out Gunner had been shot through the head, though . . . I refused to think about it.

Torelli said finally, "I hope this hasn't inconvenienced you too much, Mr. Scott. You can go to your Eve now."

I grinned. "I'm afraid the insistent bellhop queered that for me. She left when he started throwing his weight around. Well." I took a big breath. "I'll see you around." I looked around and said, "See you, Mace, and nice to meet you, Senator. Hope your man gets all he deserves." And then I turned my back on Torelli, which is usually a very foolish thing to do, but it seemed that I had done so many foolish things already that one or ten more wouldn't make much difference, and I started walking toward the door, wondering if I'd make it.

The ugly bellhop swung the door open just as I saw, sitting in the corner, George Sudden Death Madison, still staring at me with hate in his eyes.

I took one more step toward that open door and Torelli spoke from behind me and I very nearly broke and ran. But all he said was "Mr. Scott, because of the importance of this . . . convention, I'd suggest you stay close to your room—the hotel, at least—until the convention is over."

I didn't even turn around. "Oh, hell," I said. "I've got no place to go."

Then I walked out that open doorway and heard it shut behind me.

5

THERE WAS sure a convention here, all right. Only it was a convention of mobsters and torpedoes like nothing I'd ever heard of before. I had an idea what it was about now, but I wanted to be sure. I remembered seeing Archie Crouse, my grifter acquaintance, in the bar this morning. Maybe I could get the word from him. Knowing his breed, I knew he'd like nothing better than to be quits with me. He'd been charged with a crime and I'd cleared him, not because I wanted to help him, but because I wanted the guilty guy, and got him. The charge was murder, and Archie never forgot it. Not many people would, but especially not a con man.

I wandered around the hotel grounds for fifteen minutes, and finally I spotted Crouse in a chair in the lobby. The only trouble was that I'd spotted my bellhop earlier, in a double-breasted suit now, keeping an eye on me. So I walked casually by Archie and said out of the corner of my mouth as I passed him, just like a tough guy, "Meet me at the bar, Archie." I walked on out to the front of the hotel, stood there for a minute, then turned around and almost bumped into the ex-bellhop.

This guy wasn't Vincente Torelli. I said, "What do you think you're doing, playing tag? Keep out of my way, friend. I've had enough trouble with you already."

He didn't say anything. I brushed by him and walked out past the pool and into the bar. Archie was on a stool and I climbed onto the one next to him and ordered a bourbon and bottled mineral water from the bartender. Between sips I laid it out for Archie. He wasn't crazy about talking, but he gave it to me, all of it, everything I hadn't already been sure about. It scared hell out of me.

After a few minutes of quiet conversation I said, "This convention doesn't have anything to do, then, with Gunner's big caper—the blackmail touch?"

"Only indirectly. But you can see how nice it ties in."

"Yes. It's one of the neatest jobs I ever heard of."

"You know Gunner."

"Yeah," I said. "None better." I wondered how Archie would feel when he found out Gunner was dead; he'd known the guy. I said, "You don't know who it was Gunner was putting the squeeze on?"

"No, just some big Commie that pulls a lot of weight."

That one slammed into me. Joe had mentioned his ex-Communist background, but he'd definitely stressed the ex. I thought about that for a minute, finished my drink, and ordered two more. "Archie, what about this recording? Some union guys, was it?"

"Yeah, half a dozen or so. Pretty big union men, and they couldn't afford to let that dope get out. That tape's a real lever. That's what I hear, Scott. I never saw any of this stuff, you understand."

"Uh-huh." Something buzzed in my brain and I hung onto it, thinking up a storm. A dozen things were tying together, and I could see how this thing might wind up. It would very likely wind up with me dead, but I pinned down the buzz in my brain, my mind jumping ahead. I might be able to plant an idea in Archie's thoughts now, this minute, that could conceivably work into something big later.

I sipped at my drink, put it down, and said, "Archie, the way it sounds, Gunner got together this blackmail file on—on a big apple, and headed down here to present it to Torelli. Gunner would then be aces with Torelli, right?"

"He'd get a blank check, Scott. What Gunner has will set the whole program up."

"Uh-huh." That "program" worried me even more now than my client's problem. Archie had given me most of the lowdown on the program of this convention. I brought my mind back to the immediate problem. I said, "Beautiful job of Gunner's—if it's on the level."

He frowned. "What you mean by that?"

"No offense, Archie, but you can count the really top confidence men on your fingers. You know that. And clear up at the very top you'd have to put Gunner. He'd be just the man who might try to con Torelli."

Archie swung around on his stool and stared at me. "Con Torelli! You must have been sprung from the cackle factory. Not even Gunner would try that."

"Why not? Couldn't he fake a bunch of stuff, spread some fat rumors, and get Torelli panting as hot as any other mark? Gunner might get killed, yeah, but if he didn't there could be millions in it."

Archie frowned, bit his lip. He said softly, "That would be the biggest score of them all."

I stopped pressing. "It was just a thought. I doubt Gunner would try it. You might ask around, see if anybody knows anything for sure. There's some of Gunner's pals around here." I grinned. "They might have to protect him from himself. Torelli would have him pushed for sure, you know. Torelli isn't an ordinary mark; he'd bust his wig."

Archie let his tongue roam around inside his cheek, thinking.

"Well," I said, "that does it. Thanks, Archie." I finished my drink.

He said, "Scott, now we're quits. Even. Right?"

"Right."

He turned back to his drink. I said, "One thing for free, if you don't mind, Archie. Who's the ugly lob at the end of the bar chilling us? He's dogging me. Doesn't seem to care if I know it or not."

Archie glanced at the end of the bar, then at me, frowning deeply. "If he's on your tail you better get rid of it. Hell, don't you know that's the Joker?"

I didn't even say thanks. I got out of there, went to my room, and bolted the door. I knew the Joker, but I didn't know him when I saw him. I know a lot of gorillas by their names, records, and revolting characteristics without knowing them by sight, because most of the crooks I see are the Southern California variety. The Joker was actually Abel Samuels, a Chicago conk-crusher who got his moniker because he looked so very unfunny, and because he was fruit for practical jokes. He always cracked wise before he killed a guy. The boys in his own set thought he was a scream; none of the victims said anything. He was alternately up and down in the favors of the top racket boys because, though he was tough, efficient, and deadly, he was, like most avid proponents of the practical joke, not very bright, and he too often got carried away by his delight with his own latest gag, such as knocking out a chum's teeth when said chum had a hot dinner date.

The main trouble with the Joker was that, though he was subservient to his own bosses, he had no respect for any law, assuming, rightly or wrongly, that he could get away with anything. Maybe rightly, because I now remembered that he was the man who shot and killed Art Fly, a Los Angeles bookie, on Seventh and Spring in L.A. Ten people saw him do it, one of them testified shakily against the Joker at the trial. The Joker beat the rap. Three months later the brave witness who testified died in bed; he bled to death of gunshot wounds. Also, the hood was a junky and a close friend of George Madison.

I went to the bureau and took my snub-nosed .38 Special out of the drawer. It didn't seem as if anything less than a death ray would be much good to me in this town, but I swung out the cylinder and put a sixth cartridge in the empty chamber I usually carry under the hammer. So I might shoot myself in the arm, but that seemed relatively unimportant.

I got dressed in a pale blue tropic-weight suit complete with gaudy sport shirt, loud socks, and gleaming cordovan shoes, then I lay down on the bed and thought about what I'd got into. It was big. It was the biggest.

Actually, it was two or three cases rolled up into one. The blackmailing of Joe, my big union man, by Gunner was one case. This hoodlum convention in Acapulco was another. And although they were completely separate, they fitted together.

I had known Gunner was headed for Acapulco after throwing a big scare into Joe, and when I'd got here and seen the swarm of other big-time mobsters around I had, at first, started thinking they might have gathered here because of that blackmail file Gunner was carrying. That idea had seemed thin, though, because even as important as my client was in the States, and in his union, it didn't seem likely that there'd be so much commotion simply because of Joe—as an individual, at least. It wasn't likely.

I knew now that Joe, and the blackmail file on him, had nothing at all to do with the calling of this criminal get-together. Joe was just one bit in the overall scheme, and something that Gunner, looking out for number one, had dreamed up by himself. This Acapulco convention and what it was supposed to accomplish had been planned long before Gunner—or anybody else—had even thought of putting a squeeze on Joe.

But I knew what was up now. This convention of top-ranking criminals had only one purpose, but one so big and audacious it was frightening: to plan the infiltration and capture, by the underworld, of all the labor unions in the United States! And the biggest prize of all was the union Joe controlled.

When Archie had first told me the purpose of this convention I'd almost fallen off my stool. But when I thought about it a little, I wondered why it hadn't happened before. The United States unions are now so powerful that they're a prize not only for the labor bosses, but also for gangsters and Communists—any person or group that hungers for power. The men who control the nation's unions also control the nation's industries, and, in a sense, the nation. Lenin himself stressed the necessity and desirability of Communists infiltrating the unions; control labor, he said, and you control the land.

It appeared that Vincente Torelli was taking a page from Lenin's book. I knew that racketeers had in the past controlled many unions, and that a large number of unions were even now dominated by racketeers. But this convention was the last step in planning a concentrated, intensive, and well-directed campaign to consolidate present positions and start the climb upward to complete and total control of all U.S. labor unions. And that was important enough to bring the boss, Vincente Torelli, all the way from Italy to head the conference. He would be present to supervise operations in person, but because he was forbidden to enter the States, and because of its proximity to the United States, Acapulco was chosen for the meeting place.

That was the situation when Gunner and Joe came into the picture: Initial plans had been made by Torelli and other top mobsters, the date of the Acapulco conference had been decided upon, and the word had gone out. Gunner had simply, all by himself, stolen a march on the rest of the crooks, and started to dig up dirt on my client. It didn't have to be Joe that he'd started working on; it could have been any other big labor leader in America—but they didn't come any bigger than Joe, and Joe was vulnerable.

The more I thought about it, the more certain I became that Torelli and his men, up in the Villa al Mar above me now, had a very good chance of getting exactly what they wanted. And if they got what they wanted, they could have their billions and their power and their cops and politicians—even their president. Maybe somebody like the senator up there.

I had thought of this case as big before, but now I knew it was probably the most important one I'd ever be on in my life.

It was easy, now, to see the importance of that blackmail file on Joe, the file I'd been hired specifically to recover. The personal intimidation of Joe wouldn't have been important—except to Joe—if he'd been merely another guy sweating for a buck. If the gangsters got Joe under their thumb, they'd have the vitally important industry Joe represented under their thumb, too. The real importance of the file wasn't the fact that it was damaging to Joe, but that to avoid being ruined he'd turn over his union to the gangsters.

Of course, he couldn't actually "turn it over," like a house or a small business; but he could, with his weight, see that gangsters got the important, controlling spots in the union. And it wouldn't take many men in positions of control.

With that file Torelli could quietly, unobtrusively, over a period of six months or a year, get actual control of Joe's union. And that was only one facet of Torelli's plan.

I rolled off the bed. I had lain there thinking for over half an hour. It was three-thirty in the afternoon. I stopped thinking about what might happen as the result of this Acapulco convention, and concentrated on the one thing I had to do: get that blackmail file. And, too, I realized I'd been thinking primarily about the effect of that file in Torelli's hands, and the lever it would give him with which to pry into Joe's union—and, apparently, into other unions. But there was also that recording, highly damaging, it appeared, to several other union bosses. And that War Department document.

I revamped my schedule for the afternoon. I'd been planning to see Gloria, work on her—one way or another—and see if she'd heard anything important from her hoodlum friends. Also to ask her if George was going to kill me yet. But the way things were shaping up, it appeared I'd better get out of here for a while and dig up a flea-bag hotel for a hideout that nobody but me knew about, and then make a couple of phone calls I wanted out of the way: one to the FBI and one to my client.

I went out of the room, pulled the door shut. I couldn't lock it because I'd left my key at the desk when I'd gone out to the pool earlier. I started down the walk and suddenly remembered that Torelli had advised me not to leave the hotel. I remembered because, waiting for me at the corner of the patio, was the Joker.

6

THERE WASN'T MUCH POINT in my pretending I hadn't seen him. I walked on up to the Joker and stopped in front of him. I was still supposed to be an innocent cluck who had just stumbled into Suite 103, so I said, "You wouldn't still be following me around, now would you?"

He didn't say anything, but his eyes narrowed slightly. Possibly he was thinking of some practical joke, like breaking my spine.

I said, "Maybe you don't get it. I've had enough of your company. Too much. Get off my tail."

He finally spoke. He told me in three short words what I could go do to myself. I returned his invitation, then walked out to the desk. With the Joker. It was apparent that he intended to stay with me, so I picked up the key to 103 and headed back toward my room. The Joker started looking a little puzzled. Ten feet from the desk I took off, walking as fast as I could without running.

"Hey," the Joker said, and started after me. I got to my room about three yards ahead of him, hit the lock with the key ready in my hand, and pushed the door open just as the Joker reached for my shoulder. I jumped inside and he automatically came after me. With my back against the edge of the open door for leverage, I lifted my foot and planted it hard in his stomach and shoved with all my strength.

It didn't knock him off his feet, but it sent him staggering away from me. I jumped back out of the room and slammed the door, turned the key in the lock, and trotted down the walk. On my third step I heard the crash as he slammed into the wooden panels. The door wasn't going to last very long, but all I needed was time to get out of the hotel and away. Assuming, of course, that some other big unprintable pile like the Joker wasn't also tailing me. Apparently the Joker was the only one, and the door lasted long enough.

I strolled down the steps, then walked to where I'd parked my rented Buick. I started it, pointed it down the Calle de Tambuco, and stepped on the gas. I roared downhill to Manuel Guzmán Boulevard, making sure I wasn't followed, then turned right and drove into Acapulco.

Acapulco is really two towns. There's the lush, plush string of luxury hotels along Miguel Alemán and Manuel Guzmán and dotting Las Playas, with accommodations and service that would be pleasing to Lucullus, and then there is the Zócalo, or square, and the beautiful bay dotted with boats and yachts, and the long cement muelle fiscal or public pier, or walk, along its edge in front of the town, and then there's the town itself.

Acapulco, the town, is largely a dirty, ramshackle community like many others scattered all over Mexico. Much of it stinks, and thin streams of foul, germ-filled water trickle down some of the gutters, adding to the stench. There are the inevitable mangy dogs and pigs and people, the Indian woman nursing her baby on the street, the street vendors, and the outstretched hands, palms up.

You see tourists in their bright sport shirts and thin dresses, gawking at the blind beggar near the Hotel La Marina on the corner of the Zócalo, or taking moving pictures of the quaint old church near the semimodern movie theatre on Juan Alvarez while a kid in what looks like gunny sacking crawls past them on his knees, his spindly, twisted legs projecting out behind him like thin, blotched pieces of driftwood. Glamorous Acapulco.

I drove to Juan Alvarez, then took a left through the Zócalo. I looked around as I drove down Calle Progreso and into Avenida Cinco de Mayo, but didn't see what I wanted. Coming back up Caleana I found a spot that would do and stopped. It was a little hotel where I was sure no tourists or well-to-do criminals were staying. Here was my flea bag. Possibly only fleas stayed here. Peeling paint over the narrow entrance announced faintly that this was the Del Mar Hotel.

I parked a block and a half away and walked back, went inside the Del Mar and up to the desk. It smelled. The clerk looked up from his picture book and asked me something in five-hundred-word-a-minute Spanish. He smelled, too. I asked him if he could hablar inglés and he told me un poquito, and finally I registered as John B. Smith and got a rusty key, which smelled. I was going to love it here.

I took a quick look at the small, musty room, which was on the ground floor. If I had to leave my room by the window I didn't want to break my neck. The room was number 10, at the rear of the hotel, with one dirt-smeared window looking out onto an alley. That suited me.

I went back to the desk, left my key, then walked across the tiny, empty lobby to the phone in the corner. I had a hell of a time, and it took twenty minutes, but I got larga distancia and was put through to Los Angeles and the Federal Bureau of Investigation office on Spring Street. The office is only a few blocks from my own spot in the Hamilton Building on Broadway, and I know several of the boys. I was particularly chummy with a boy named Art Dugan, and I was hoping I'd get him. It took a while, but finally he was put on the line.

"Art," I said. "Shell Scott here."

After a minute of "What the hell you doing in Mexico?" and so forth, I got down to business. First I told him where I was calling from, then, "Art, can you tell me if this guy"—I gave him Joe's name—"is linked in any way with Communists?"

"What brought this on?"

"If he is, I'm going to spend about fifteen minutes telling you a bunch of stuff you should know. Maybe you already know it. I'll tell you this now: The guy's my client. If he's OK, well, we've had a pleasant chat. Some of what I've got you're going to hear, anyway."

"Just a second." He was gone for a couple of minutes, then I heard him say, "Can't we keep this on a friendly basis, Shell? Let's say, suppose the guy was a wheel. What would you want to talk about?"

I gave him a little; I hit the edges.

"Uh-huh," he said softly. "OK, Shell. You can give me the rest of it."

That was enough for me. He'd answered my question about Joe. And as far as I'm concerned, Communists or Communist sympathizers have no "privileged communications." I gave Dugan his fifteen minutes' worth; I gave him everything. When I got through he knew as much about what was going on as I did—and undoubtedly a lot more.

He was quiet for almost a minute. "Torelli, huh? Didn't know he was down there."

"He is. Yacht in the bay and all. And the rest is just as I told it. Art, there it all is. And now I want some info, if you can give it to me."

"Shoot."

"Have you got any idea what the recording could be? And what's this secret document he babbled about? It sounds a little fantastic; spy and counterspy, you know. But if I get knocked off down here, I'd like to know what the score is."

"Shell," he said, "secret documents always sound fantastic to most Americans. But not to guys like Fuchs and Rosenberg and Greenglass. Unfortunately. Or to us, fortunately. Hold on a second."

I heard the clatter as he put the phone down. He was gone for what seemed a long time, maybe five or ten minutes. Then he was back "OK, Shell. I can tell you this: That stuff is so important I wish I were there." That told me plenty; it meant either Dugan or somebody else from an FBI office would be down here soon. He said, "Keep this in mind: Your Gunner and his chums couldn't possibly know how vital that stuff is, so you're probably the only guy around there now who does." He kept talking. There wasn't a lot he could tell me over the phone, but by inference, and by references to other things we both knew about, he got some points across.

Once he said, "Remember what we talked about in the Colony Club? When you got back from Las Vegas after that deal up there?"

I tried to remember. The Colony is a pleasant night club in Gardena, featuring strippers. I remember being there with Dugan and two thirsty tomatoes, but that was about all I could think of.

He added, "You had a date with Stella. We talked so long you were late; you were griped as hell."

What was the guy talking about? I'd never been out with any doll named Stella. There had been a wild stripper in the Colony show named Stella, though. Now I remembered that Dugan and I had even talked about her, discussing the frantic manner with which she performed her stock in trade: the bump. Even now I had to grin, remembering that Dugan and I had both got a big yak out of referring to Stella's animated—well, to a vital portion of her anatomy—as the guided missile. I stopped grinning. Now I got it.

"No germs, huh?" I said.

"Easy, Shell." A pause. "Doesn't that sound like what one of those boys would claim Stella was?"

Uh-huh. A big part of the Communist propaganda was devoted to "proving" that the United States used germ warfare in Korea, dropped potato bugs in Germany, and other such idiocies—which weren't idiocies when the propagandized believed them. Dugan hadn't really told me anything, but he'd told me a lot. A smart boy, Dugan. I wished he were here. Instead of me.

We talked another five minutes, then I rang off. While I waited for my second call to go through, to Joe's unlisted number in L.A., I thought about what I'd got from Dugan. Part of it was sketchy, but I had enough. Joe had given me a snow job about the ex- on his Communist tag; he just didn't carry a card any more, that was all. The FBI knew all about him, had been watching him. Joe was as big in the Communist party as he was in the union movement. Well, the union racket was a logical spot for him; he'd listened to Papa Lenin. And that explained part of the recording problem, too. Gunner had got on his spool of tape a recording of the conversation between Joe and six other Communist union leaders—of which there are a hell of a lot more than six in the States. I didn't know what the meeting had been about, but from the talks with Archie and Dugan, and my own knowledge of the Communist conspiracy, it seemed likely they'd been discussing paralyzing, nationwide strikes, if not setting up a timetable for them. It's common knowledge, except among idiots, that a large number of union bosses are waiting only for the word from Moscow, whereupon the strikes, sabotages, picketing, and all the rest of it will begin. Begin in earnest, that is. But, actually, I could only guess at what went on in Joe's house that day. Dugan hadn't even said the other six were Commies, but he had said "some other Joes," which told me enough, knowing Dugan. He'd also used almost the same phraseology another time, saying, "Just thank God Gunner got that bump from Joe before Joe got it." It didn't sound like anything much except gibberish, but I knew who the other Joe was Dugan had referred to. Of course, the "bump" was the dope on guided missiles.

Good God, I thought. Guided missiles. I knew that the guided missile program was one of the biggest, most secret, and most expensive parts of our defense program. Nobody like me could actually know how big or important it was, but it seemed obvious that the next war—the one my client had spoken so solemnly about—would be fought largely with missiles, maybe radar-controlled and with atomic warheads. Nice things to blow up the world with. But from the talk with Dugan I still didn't know what phase of the program the document detailed. I did know it was important. I did not know what the hell I was going to do about it.

At least, though, I had a couple of ideas. I started in on one when Joe answered the phone.

"Joe? Shell Scott. I—"

He broke right in, his voice shaking a little. "Have you got the . . . got it?"

I had no respect at all for this customer, and it was hard to keep that from showing in my voice, but I tried to keep it toned down. "No. Haven't even seen it. I'm not sure it's down here, but in a little while I'll be betting my life that it is." I briefed him fast on what I'd picked up so far—the part I was willing to let him know. I wound up with: "And the top man down here is Vincente Torelli. He wants that stuff as bad as you do."

There was silence for so long I thought the connection might have been broken. But finally I heard him say, "My God. Oh, my God."

As soon as I knew he was still on the line I said, "So it's no picnic. Here's what I want you to do." I talked to him fast for two minutes, telling him what stuff I wanted him to get and send down to me. When I finished he said, "That's a large order. When do you want it?"

"I want it now. But I'll settle for tomorrow night."

He didn't even have to think it over. "That's preposterous! Why, it's impossible. I can't get it to you that soon."

"You get it down here. It's your neck. But it's my neck, too. If I need the stuff and don't have it, I'm dead. I'm not exaggerating. And if I get planted, pal, you're sunk."

There was silence for about a minute, then he said, "All right. It's impossible, but I suppose I can manage it."

"Incidentally, Joe, about that fifty thousand. I'd probably work better if you deposited it to my account."

He sputtered. "What do you mean? The arrangement was that you would be paid that amount if successful."

"Yeah, yeah. But I'd like my heirs to get it. If I figure the dough's there, I'll laugh at danger, Joe. People are going to be shooting at me pretty quick, I've got a hunch. With live ammunition. I honestly think if fifty Gs were in my bank I'd be much more efficient down here. And I'm sure the stuff's around here somewhere."

I had him over a barrel, the knife in his gizzard, and I was twisting it. And enjoying it. I was even wishing it were a real knife.

He sputtered a little more, but finally he said helplessly, "All right. All right. I'll do it."

"First thing in the morning." Poor Joe. Everybody had him over a barrel. And all he wanted over a barrel was the United States. I tried to think of something else I could gnaw at him with, but that seemed to do it.

"OK," I said. "I'll keep in touch. I'll be staying at the Del Mar Hotel on Caleana under the name of John B. Smith. Send the stuff down by messenger as soon as possible tomorrow. Buy a jet plane if you have to. Don't let anybody know what it's about except you, and me, and the messenger. When he sees me he's to ask if I'm John B. Smith. I'll ask him who won the election. He'll say Costello. That way we'll both know we've got the right parties."

"All right, Mr. Scott."

I hung up. I sat in the lobby for a while. It was dark outside now. I had work to do, but I was damned if I knew where to start. And then I thought about Gloria. I'd intended to see her earlier, but this was as good a time as any. I needed somebody on the inside now more than ever, somebody who might be able to give me little bits of information I could put together. And she was nearly perfect if she hadn't been pulling my leg when we'd talked at the pool. That was a chance I'd have to take. If there was any trouble about a big "shipment" to Torelli, or news about the now dead Gunner, Gloria would be a likely gal to hear something about it.

Gloria it was. I headed for Cottage 27 at the Hotel El Encantado.

7

I PARKED THE CAR in a dark spot on the winding road past the main part of the Hotel El Encantado and walked, checking the cottage numbers till I found 27. Then I stopped. I was in something of a quandary. I couldn't just barge up to the front door and knock. I could imagine the conversation: "Hello, Georgie. Like to chat with your wife. Don't shoot."

I could go back down to the lobby and call, but there was always the chance that the wrong party might be listening in on her phone. Maybe even the phone in my room was bugged by now. The hoods down here were experts, and careful, and it was likely everything was bugged. Possibly even the bugs were bugged. Worst of all, maybe hubby was home. Well, I could peek through a window. I thought for a moment of the delightful time I'd had when I last peeked through a window, a bedroom window in Las Vegas, and I immediately started looking for a window. There were lights on inside the cottage, so I knew somebody was home, but shades were drawn on the front windows. I started to go around to the rear of the cottage. There was only one trouble.

The Hotel El Encantado, like the Hotel de las Américas, is spread all over the top of a hill on the Cerro de los Cañones, which ends in a precipitous cliff at the edge of the sea. Most of the cottages have, on the ocean side, small terraces from which there is a lovely view of the ocean—and a drop of two hundred feet from the terraces to the sea and rock below. Most of the terraces can be reached only from inside the cottages themselves, and I didn't care for a quick glimpse through a window while I was falling two hundred feet.

I walked along the side of the little house till I reached the rear, right at the edge of the cliff. The terrace stuck out over a lot of nothing, but at least I was able to climb quietly over the railing running all the way around its three sides. I stood inside the rail on the wooden flooring for a moment. The terrace didn't extend from one side of the cottage to the other, worse luck, but only about halfway. Only one window was open here at the back of the cottage, light spilling outside, and it would have been dandy to look through except that it was three or four feet beyond the far rail of the terrace, and there was nothing to stand on directly in front of it except air, which you can't stand on.

I walked ahead to the terrace's far edge. There was a small extension of the wooden flooring sticking out about four inches beyond the rail, and if I climbed over the rail and then hung onto it, I could stand outside the railing on the little floor extension and lean forward enough to look into the room—if I stretched, and didn't mind hanging out there over nothing. It hardly seemed worth it, even if Hedy Lamarr was doing something awful in there, because I could look over the rail and way, way down to blackness. It was too far down for me to see the whitecaps curling, but I could hear the faint, dull boom of breakers and the whispering hiss of the surf.

I couldn't stand there gawking at the blackness, so I looped a leg over the rail, climbed over, and stood on the four inches of wood, which seemed to have shrunk to one inch and held tightly to the rail while I leaned forward. I could just get my head and neck past the windowsill, but I had a clear, unobstructed view of the interior of a small room, apparently a kind of sitting room. And sitting in it was Gloria. Gloria of the lovely limbs and green eyes and tawny, arched eyebrows, and the nasty friends. I couldn't see George, so I said softly, "Hey, Gloria."

She was reading a book. She stopped, marked her place with a fingernail, and looked up and around the room. She shivered slightly, then started reading again. My arm was getting tired.

"Hey, Gloria," I hissed.

She froze. She glanced around her, dropped the book without marking her place, got up, and walked out of the room toward the front of the cottage. My arm was getting awfully tired.

Gloria was gone for about half a minute; then she came back in, still looking puzzled. I hadn't heard her call to George to ask him if he were hissing, so I took a chance. In a normal tone I said, "Over here, Gloria. It's me."

She got absolutely rigid for a moment, then slowly inched her head around. She looked smack dab at me, at my neck and head slanting up at an angle from the side of the window, and she just kept looking at me without saying a word. Her face didn't even change expression, except that she raised an eyebrow. Obviously she didn't believe this.

I said, "Hello, Gloria," and she fainted.

There wasn't a hell of a lot I could do about it, considering my lack of mobility, so I let her faint. The window was just far enough away from the terrace so that, though I could touch it, I might not make it if I tried to jump in, so I just hung there and waited till she started coming around. While she was still dazed I started talking to her, explaining that this wasn't just part of me out here, or a ghost, and that everything was dandy, and was George home? She tried to babble at me, but finally I convinced her I wasn't on a lark.

She swiveled around to face me, still sitting on the floor, and she said, "What in God's name are you doing out there?"

"Is George home?" Quite obviously he wasn't, because I was still hanging onto my railing.

"No," she said. She started to babble at me some more, but I cut her off.

"I thought he might be here with a gun or something, so I didn't knock. Next time I'll knock. What a silly way to build a house! Well, let me in. And turn off the light."

She got up and doused the light, then walked over to the window, and I remembered her lovely walk at the pool this morning. She peered out at me, barely visible in the faint illumination reaching here from the hotel, then she said, "Have you been drinking?"

"Not a drop. Let me in."

"You'd better not come in, Shell. George isn't here, but I expect him any minute. What do you want? My word!"

"Talk to you. Afraid your phone might be tapped. You pick up any dope from George? Or his chums?"

"Uh-huh. But you better get out of here. George wouldn't like this." She grinned at me. "Wish I had him in your position."

I looked down below me at the blackness and got her point. She wouldn't even have to get a divorce. "Well," I said, "meet me someplace. Someplace more comfortable."

"Fine. One of the things I got from George is that, since you seemed interested in me this morning, I'm supposed to keep you interested. And pump you."

"Pump me? How you mean, pump me?"

"Find out what you're doing in Acapulco. I think Torelli's leery of you. Something happened this afternoon at some sort of meeting."

"I know all about it."

We talked a little more, making it as short as possible because my arm was sure getting tired, and it summed up that Torelli, not being sure what I was up to, if anything, had passed down the word through George that Gloria was to string me along and give me enough rope to hang myself. Gloria was to be my Mata Hari. At least, that was the situation if Gloria wasn't pulling my leg. And, obviously, if it was OK for her to pump me, it was OK for us to be seen together. Not like this, though, of course. We wound it up by agreeing to meet down at El Peñasco, the nightclub here in the Hotel El Encantado, where we could chat more comfortably.

We'd decided that Gloria would tell George that I'd phoned while he was out—and then we remembered the "bug" angle again. So I told her I'd phone her in a few minutes, pretending to be merely an ardent Romeo on vacation in Acapulco, and making a date.

She had been getting closer and nicer and more interesting all the time, but handicapped as I was, I couldn't take advantage of it, or of her.

"Shell, to think that you went through all this just to talk to me."

"Well, I also—"

"I think that's awfully sweet, Shell. George would never have done it."

I started to tell her that, stupid as George was, he had good sense, but her face was only a couple of inches from mine and she had only to lean forward two more inches to stop my conversation. She did lean forward, and kissed me softly on the lips, and almost stopped my conversation forever. I didn't mind, but I was glad she kissed me softly. A good hard kiss would have sent me flying two hundred feet.

She took her lips away. "Shell," she said, "you're sweet." And she kissed me again.

Even on solid ground that kiss would have sent me quite a distance. She could do more with just her lips than most women can do with all their equipment, and I would have been enjoying myself immensely if I hadn't been dangling over a cliff. As it was, I was beginning to enjoy myself quite a bit. I reached out and put my right hand over on the windowsill, and I was having so much fun that I grabbed on good and then let go the railing and slammed my left hand onto the windowsill too. I was sort of spread out a ways, but, by God, I was getting closer. What I was actually trying to do was climb in the window, but Gloria took her lips away again and said, "Shell, don't be silly. I told you George was coming."

George was coming. Hah. Let him come. The hell with George. I was going right through that window, George or no George.

"He should be here now," she said. "I'll meet you at El Peñasco, Shell."

Well, at least I had my hands up there on the windowsill. I had to hang on with one hand, but that gave me one extra.

"Oh, Shell," she said. "Stop that, Shell." And then she gave me a kiss that made the last one seem like sister kissing brother. I was floating up there two hundred feet off the ground, and I felt sure that if I let go I'd keep on floating, but I still kept one hand on the windowsill, just in case. Things went along nicely, but I finally became convinced that what I had in mind was impossible. I forgot all about Sudden Death Madison until I heard the front door slam. I hadn't even heard him drive up. But I sure as hell heard his heavy footsteps pounding through the little cottage and getting closer.

"Gloria!" he yelled. "Where are you? You here? What happened to the lights? Huh, Gloria?"

At the window, everything was a perfect frenzy of activity. I had a devil of a time getting untangled, and I barely managed to get both hands on the windowsill and duck my head down out of sight when the lights went on in the room. I wanted over on the terrace very badly right then, but I couldn't make it without showing my head at the window. The way I felt, I wasn't sure I could make it under any circumstances. My feet were way back behind me somewhere on the terrace ledge, my hands were stretched way out and clutching the sill, my heart was in my mouth, and my body was hanging over nothing and starting to bend in the middle. The wrong way. I was, to be quite frank about it, in one hell of a position.

8

I WAS LOOKING DOWN between my arms, listening to the boom of the surf and George's feet getting closer to the window, when he said, "Well, hi, Gloria. What you doing down there on the floor, Gloria?"

She said quickly, "Hello, George, darling. Come in the kitchen and I'll fix you something." I heard her getting to her feet and a shadow fell on my left eye, the eye nearest the window. I could have sworn that shadow pushed me down another inch.

George said, "What you doing on the floor, Gloria?"

"I was . . . just looking out the window, George. Enjoying the view."

"Ain't it dark?"

"Well, yes, but—but there's a dark view."

"Yeah?" said George. "Lemme take a look."

She sort of squeaked, "No!" and I thought: Well, Scott, you've had it; they'll put on your headstone, "He died trying."

Then Gloria added quickly, "No, darling, you wouldn't want to. Don't look now. It . . . uh, they must be burning something around here. There's, uh, an awful smell out there."

So I smelled.

I missed some of the conversation inside, which was probably no great shakes, anyway, as conversations go, but now I heard footsteps. If that was George coming over to poke his head out the window, he'd soon know he'd been in a battle; I was going to spit in his eye. But then I noticed the footsteps were getting fainter. The light clicked off and the Madisons left the room.

I sighed. I had it made now. All I had to do was get back on the terrace. I didn't want to make any little mistake, because any little mistake would be a big mistake, and I actually didn't know what I should move first. I had never realized before that two arms and two legs added up to so many limbs. Finally I lifted my leg up from the ledge of the terrace, teetered a bit, but kept raising it higher like an awkward acrobat trying to touch his head, and finally I got my toe hooked over the top of the rail. I twisted it around till my heel was hooked firmly. At least, I hoped it was hooked firmly. And then I bent my knee, straining, let go of the windowsill, and pulled myself toward the rail, hands clutching. I must have been quite a sight.

There was a rather bad moment when I thought something was going to break but I made it, grabbed the rail, and climbed over it onto the terrace. I could hear George and Gloria moving around inside the cottage. I went back the way I'd originally come. I sat in the Buick, letting my breathing get back to normal, then drove to the parking lot behind the main building. Nobody came screaming at me, so I parked in the lot, got out of the car, and walked up to the hotel's entrance. I stood there a moment. It was going to be very bright in there. But there couldn't be anything worse than a bunch of armed killers inside. What were bullets? And Gloria and I had decided it was OK if I were seen in public. I went inside.

All I knew for sure about my status was that Torelli must have put the Joker on my trail and undoubtedly knew by now that I'd given him the slip. But what other word was out on me I didn't know. Actually, guys like Torelli shy away from violence and murder as much as possible. The syndicate is too big, and largely too legitimate, to put up now with St. Valentine's Day massacres and wholesale killings. But it is also true that sometimes a nice clean murder becomes necessary—and just Shell Scott wouldn't be wholesale killing.

I found a phone and called the number Gloria had given me. She answered.

"Hi," I said. "This is the Bat Man. George there?"

"Yes," she said. "This is she."

So George was listening. I said, "I'm dying to see you. It's such a nice night I thought we might go skin diving."

"Sounds like fun," she said. "Glass masks and little web feet and spears."

"That's not what I meant. I meant diving in just our skin."

"Why, I'd love to, darling."

"Hey," I said, "you sure George is there?"

"Yes."

"I was just talking, but that sounds like a lovely idea. How—"

"No. El Peñasco sounds fine, though. You understand."

I understood. George would probably go along with the idea of our nightclubbing. But not skin diving. I could hardly blame him.

"OK," I said. I realized that some of this might sound peculiar if the phone was tapped, so I went on, "Seriously, Gloria, how about meeting me at El Peñasco? Can you get away from your husband?"

"I think so. He's back in the little room that looks out past the terrace—but that wouldn't mean anything to you, would it? I'll manage, though, and meet you in, say, half an hour. Maybe less. Bye."

I hung up. Yes, sir, George was sure stupid. I had some time to kill, and if I were going into the nightclub I'd soon find out what the word was on me, so there was no point in hiding. I had to find out sooner or later. I went into the bar, perched on a stool, and had a bourbon and Tehuacán. It tasted so good I had a second. Then I wandered around a little noting a few hard faces and one face I'd glimpsed up in the Villa al Mar this afternoon. Nothing happened, so I amused myself by studying a poster publicizing the floor show.

El Peñasco means "The Crag," or "The Cliff," and is an appropriate name for the nightclub because the combined restaurant and dance floor are suspended from the side of the cliff, jutting out over the sea and braced with heavy girders so that the whole thing won't fall into the deep waters beneath it. If the floor were glass the customers could look straight down into the ocean a hundred feet below.

The highlight of the show had been copied by the management from the show at La Perla in the Mirador Hotel—probably one of the most beautiful and unique nightclubs in the world—and consisted of a dive in flickering torchlight by a daredevil diver who plunges, from the cliffs beyond the club, 120 feet into the sea. Tonight, in addition to and before the diver, El Peñasco was presenting María Carmen, acrobatic dancer, with Hernández and Rodríguez, so the poster said. There was a picture of María Carmen, a lovely little Mexican girl who appeared to be in her early twenties. There were pictures of Hernández and Rodríguez, too, but I paid little attention to them.

About twenty minutes had passed since I'd called Gloria and it was now eight-thirty, so I walked to the front of the hotel and waited. In five minutes two guys who looked as if they might be Rodríguez and Hernández came in, and right after they passed me a big yellow Cadillac pulled up in front of the entrance and a gal who could only be María Carmen popped out as an attendant climbed behind the wheel.

She was medium-sized, all over. That about summed it up, but the impression was anything but medium. I'd been told that Mexican women mature quite young, and I'd say María matured about six. She was one cute little doll.

When she started to trot by I said, "Hello, María," just for the hell of it. I like to live dangerously. She skidded to a stop, apparently thinking I was somebody she knew, and she said, "Buena' noche'."

This looked as if it might be difficult. I speak halting Spanish that has very nearly halted, and if little María was going to "Buena' noche'"me, it was already time to tell her adiós, which is one of the few Spanish words I can say glibly.

But I answered, taking a chance, "I just said hello for the hell of it. I recognized you from your picture."

She laughed and said in better English than mine, "Oh. That happens all the time. Who're you?"

"Shell Scott."

She said, "Hi, Shell. Well, I gotta run." And she did just that. Just before she went out of sight around a corner, she stopped and yelled over her shoulder and halfway across the lobby, "Hey, Shell. Catch the show if you can." Then she was gone.

In another two minutes I spotted Gloria walking around the side of the hotel. She came up the steps, looking lovely, and almost sedate after María Carmen, but very alluring in a beautiful blue dress that looked almost as if it had been made for skin diving.

She gave me a big smile and winked one green eye at me. "Hello, Shell. I managed to sneak out. I see you're alive."

"Alive, but still coming out of shock. That dress is enough to put me right back into it."

She laughed. "Like it?" Then she dropped her voice and said, "Until you phoned, I didn't know whether to look for you here or down in the ocean."

"Very nearly the ocean. It was touch and go there for a while. If anybody had touched me, I'd have gone." I gave her my arm and we started walking through the lobby. "And many thanks, Gloria," I said, "for jumping to my defense the way you did. I'm in your debt."

She squeezed my arm and smiled. "I'll make you pay." She chuckled as we walked out through the side entrance of the hotel and down the cement steps to El Peñasco, and she kept squeezing my arm. I didn't stop her. She had several squeezes coming to her. We were early, and managed to get a table for two right in front of the dance floor. I ordered our drinks and looked around.

The place was simple enough in design, but being here was a little like floating on a magic carpet. Behind us was the cliff, which curled around part of the left side of the club, but all the rest, including the front and right sides, was just open air. There weren't any walls or windows or ceiling, only space and a railing about four feet high all the way around the outer edge of the club. It was almost as if a big floor had been made and then jammed forcibly into the side of the cliff and covered with chairs and tables. The light came from the rough cliff behind us. Straight ahead of our table was the dance floor; beyond it was only sky above and ocean below. Covering about half of the left side of the dance floor was a slightly raised space for the orchestra, which hadn't yet started playing for the evening.

When the drinks came I said to Gloria, "I don't imagine this table has a mike underneath it, and I don't see anybody flapping his ears, so what's the score? First, who's been elected to dispose of my body?"

"Nobody that I know of." She grinned at me. "George would like to, but Torelli wants to know if you're up to something. That's what I'm doing, you know, pumping you. George would have a fit if he knew the truth. He's been following me around like a dog since I started being nice to him."

I could understand that. I pondered my next question. There was a lot of information I thought I might be able to get from Gloria, but I didn't want to give away too much information myself. There was a small chance that she was actually stringing me, and was busily engaged in pumping me while she pretended merely to be helping me out. So, as far as she was concerned, I was still just a guy on vacation.

I said, "I fell into a meeting this afternoon, by mistake, and there was a lot of talk about some guy named Gunner. You know anything about him?"

She swallowed part of her drink. "A little. He was supposed to see Torelli about something. I don't know what, but I gather it was pretty important."

"Who is the guy? He around here now?"

She shook her head. "Confidence man. George knows him. But it seems he hasn't shown up. Hadn't last I heard, anyway. There's quite an uproar because he hasn't arrived yet. What's so important about Gunner?"

"That's what I'd like to know. Somebody thought I was the guy today. It's got me a little worried. You don't know what he was supposed to see Torelli about?"

"Not exactly, Shell. This Gunner was bringing something to Torelli. I don't know what, though."

"If Gunner hasn't shown up, Torelli must not have got whatever Gunner had, right?"

"Oh, I'm sure of that. George told me Torelli was pretty mad about not getting the stuff. He's trying to find Gunner now." She paused. "Frankly, I think Gunner was bringing in dope for Torelli. You know. Narcotics."

I was thinking that dope was the better word in this case. But if that was the straight story, Torelli still hadn't got his hands on the papers, and still hadn't found Gunner.

I said, "Gloria, will you do me a favor with no questions asked?"

"Well, I suppose."

I didn't know quite how to put it. But if there was a chance she was on the level, she might really help me. I laid it on the line. "Honey, whatever it is that Gunner was bringing Torelli is obviously damned important. I'd like to know if it shows up. You're in a position where you could catch the rumble, maybe, and if you do, let me know fast. And if you even tell anyone I asked you to do it, I'm dead. Maybe you, too, but me for sure. And if you do find out and tell me, and Torelli learns you did, you're also dead."

I left it there.

She left it there for a while, too. Almost a minute. Then she said, "Shell, you're really interested, aren't you? You really want to know. You're not on vacation, are you?"

Her face was a little twisted, and her green eyes had a sort of hurt look in them. If she was laying my neck on the chopping block, she was sure doing a good job of it. If she was on the level, though, she was very likely thinking some unpleasant things about me. I couldn't afford to give away anything I didn't have to, though.

I said, "Gloria, honey. No questions, remember?"

"I'm just supposed to maybe get myself killed—and no questions?"

I didn't say anything. Finally she asked me, "This is why you said you'd help me, isn't it?" Her voice was soft, with a little quiver in it. She didn't wait for me to answer, but went on, "I'll tell you, though, if I hear anything, Shell. That what you want?"

"That's what I want." I felt pretty lousy. I finished my drink and said, "Well, let's enjoy ourselves."

"Sure," she said. "Let's die laughing." She emptied her glass and shoved it to the middle of the small table. "Buy me a drink. I'm going to enjoy myself if . . . if it kills me."

I looked away from her, not saying anything, and spotted a waiter, then gave him our order. I also spotted some familiar faces in the crowd. We'd been in the club about ten minutes, and the place hadn't been very full when we arrived. Now, though, the club was almost filled to capacity. I'd automatically glanced around when we got here, and I'd seen only three hoods I recognized. But now it seemed that half the faces belonged to crooks known to me from L.A. or the Villa al Mar.

Gloria was gulping her drink frantically. I reached across the table and put my hand over hers. "Relax, honey. Let's try to have a pleasant half hour or so."

She took another glug of her drink.

"Hell," I said, "didn't I climb a cliff for you?"

She smiled a little, but answered, "Not really for me, Shell."

"Maybe not a hundred per cent, Gloria, but partly. And, honey, I'd do it again—a hundred percent for you."

She smiled a little more broadly. "Well, I'll take your word for it. I do believe you would." She grinned. "I guess you just like to do things the hard way."

I grinned back at her, then looked around and stopped grinning. Two nice elderly couples I'd noticed three tables from ours were gone, and in their place were two other couples that could not by any stretch of the imagination be classified as nice elderly couples. The girls were pretty enough, in a hard, glossy way—the kind of gals you see in New York or Hollywood, Mexico City or Paris or Acapulco, traveling with their "uncles." One of the uncles in this case was Dave Moroni, Moron for short, who had been a minor cog in Murder, Inc., when Bugsy Siegel had still been one of their top torpedoes. The other guy was a top-notch cannon who could kiss the dog and lift your wristwatch between ticks.

I wondered why the other two couples had left, and then while I watched I caught a cute little bit of byplay. Right next to the table Gloria and I occupied at ringside were two women and one rather insignificant-looking man in rough English tweeds. Two of the burly characters I'd seen at the Las Américas pool occupied the table nearest them, and all they were doing was staring.

They stared at the dolls and the insignificant guy, and every second he seemed to become less significant. Not even the tweeds helped. One of the hoods lit a cigarette, then flipped the wax match onto Tweedy's table. Tweedy twitched. After another minute of this, the two girls and the now very frightened guy got up and left. The two hoods moved over to the table. One of them grinned at me.

It appeared that we were hemmed in. It looked as if all the hoods in the world had gathered here, now that the day's business was over. And they apparently liked to mix business with pleasure, because they seemed already half plastered.

It seemed like an odd little coincidence that all these hooligans would be here at the same time I was, and I don't like odd little coincidences. I played with that and then looked across the table at Gloria.

"Say, honey, have you noticed the customers?"

She nodded. "It's funny. I don't like it."

"That makes two of us."

She said, "I wonder if George—" then bit her lip and stopped.

"What about George?"

"Nothing, I guess. But, of course, he knew we were coming here. He was right by the phone when you called me. But I don't suppose . . ."

"You think George might have passed the word around to drop in at El Peñasco? Big attraction: the shooting of Shell Scott"

"Oh, that's—that's not sensible," she said.

"Who said George was sensible?"

I glanced around again, and what I saw made me think that possibly George wasn't behind this at all. Coming in the door like a small diesel locomotive was my roommate, the Joker.

He stopped inside the entrance and looked around. I wasn't sure whom he was looking for, but he didn't leave me in doubt very long. He spotted Gloria and me, tossed his shoulders around a little, and then started walking heavily toward our table.

I said to Gloria, "Hang on, kid. We're going to have company," and shoved my chair back a little way from the table. I was wearing the .38 under my coat, but I didn't even like to think about waving it around in here.

Gloria licked her lips and said, "Oh. Oh, him."

The Joker stopped alongside us and glared at me for a few seconds. Then he said, "You was supposed to of stayed at the hotel, crumb."

"Yeah," I said. "Under the bed, I suppose. And lay off the crumb routine."

I stood up. I looked into the Joker's eyes and saw the tiny, pinpoint pupils. I sat down.

Junk. I knew the guy was a junky, but this was a hell of a time for him to have a load on. From the looks of his pupils he was full of the stuff; morphine, maybe. In his state he might do anything, absolutely anything. You can't predict a junky's actions. You're damn right I sat down.

He was acting funny, which was natural, but I couldn't figure him. He wasn't even looking at me now. He was looking around at the mess of hoods, and they were a mess. The Joker grinned widely all around, getting some grins and nods in return. He was having fun; a lot of his friends, who knew he was a comical fellow, were watching him. I wanted out of here, far away from here, but I had a firm conviction that I was stuck here whether I liked it or not.

The Joker looked down at me again. "You don't like me calling you crumb?"

"I don't like it."

"Well, all right," he said. "Why don't you say so? I won't call you crumb. I'm everybody's friend."

I didn't like this. I said, being very careful of my choice of words, "You know, I wish you'd blow. You're raising hell with my vacation."

It struck him funny. He laughed windily and slapped his stomach. Suddenly he stopped laughing, just turned it off, then wheeled and walked away. He walked clear across the room, and that should have made me feel better. It didn't because he stopped at a little table and sat down across from George Madison.

"Baby," I said to Gloria, "I don't like this a bit. And I'm getting jittery. The Joker's over there with your husband. It might seem peculiar to many that I'm sitting here with you."

She looked almost green. "Let's get out of here."

"Sure. We'll float out." I swallowed some air. "But we might as well try."

I started to get up and a strange thing happened. When I shoved back my chair it went back six inches, then lurched and came forward six inches and banged into my legs. I plopped down again. I looked over my shoulder.

Behind me, sitting at a table for four, which held six, was a guy about my size, which is pretty big. His foot was on the back of my chair, where he'd left it after shoving the chair under me again. I didn't know who he was, or what his occupation was, but the last part I could guess. He had the face of an ex-pug who was ex- because he was not a very good pug. Flattened nose, lump ear, scar tissue over both eyes. He shook his head back and forth. He didn't say anything aloud. He didn't have to say anything aloud. The five other guys at the table were of varying degrees of size and ugliness, and they all shook their heads too. They were telling me I was naughty.

I turned around. "Forget it, Gloria. I have just decided I like it here."

She'd seen the little cuteness, and she polished off her drink, then grabbed the full one the waiter had brought and started working on it. I worked faster. I finished mine and ordered more before she was through. Almost everything is easier when you're half-plastered.

Usually, after so many highballs, a slow, warm flush creeps up from my stomach and I start feeling happy. The flush was at my hairline, but I still wasn't happy. I had another drink, which helped a little. I didn't know what was up, but obviously something was cooking, and a man with only half a brain could figure that the Joker and Sudden Death Madison were the cooks, one or both of them.

"Too many cooks," I said.

She said, "Yes, sir. Too many crooks."

"Not crooks."

"Oh, yes they are. All of'’m."

I wasn't going to argue. "Not exactly what I meant," I said. "Joker and George. Don't like both of them sitting at the same table together. Not both those hoods."

She looked at me for several seconds. "I guess," she said slowly, "they figure two hoods are better than one." Then she laughed wildly.

I refused even to comment on that. It occurred to me that I was supposed to be looking for some papers. Along with about a thousand other guys. I would be very happy to go look for papers if I could get out of here, now that I'd got what I could from Gloria. She was a sweet kid.

"Gloria," I said, "you are a doll. I like you."

"You are a doll, too. I like you, too."

I was going on from there, though there wasn't much farther I could go in El Peñasco, when everything went black. I thought for a moment that I might have been sapped, but it was apparent I hadn't. Maybe I had gone blind. Could be that the waiter was a syndicate man. He might have put Mexican tap water in my highballs, and that stuff can kill you. But then there was a fanfare from the orchestra and a spotlight from the cliff behind us poured a wide swath of light down onto the dance floor. Showtime. An MC hauled a microphone onto the floor and started talking in Spanish.

"Hey," I said to Gloria. "Floor show. This ought to be good."

And then the MC switched to English and announced María Carmen, acrobatic dancer.

9

OUR TABLE was a few feet in from the edge of the dance floor, in front of it, so that we had excellent seats for the show. Remembering María, I was glad we did, and I turned my chair a little more toward the floor for unobstructed vision. The MC whisked the mike away, the spotlight broadened to cover the entire surface of the dance floor, and from the rear of the club came María Carmen onto the stage.

I had thought of her as medium-sized, but now I realized that that particular thought had come to me because she'd had all her clothes on. She still had some clothes on, but they were hardly worth mentioning. She wore only a kind of brassiere over her breasts, which I must now confess were not medium, and a skin-tight pair of shorts that must have been made of thin but very strong material, because they didn't split when María went into her act. Well, you can't have everything.

She was barefoot, and she walked slowly to the center of the stage and bowed to loud applause, in which I joined, and then she did a little wiggling, in which I also joined. A man in the orchestra started a roll on his snare drum, softly at first, gradually getting louder, and María stood in the center of the stage, facing the audience with her legs spread apart and her feet flat on the floor. Then she slowly began to do an ordinary back bend. It started out ordinarily, but instead of simply reaching with her hands to touch the floor, she just kept on bending until her head came up between her legs, and from that odd position she gave the crowd a big smile.

She stayed like that for a few moments, and of all times for her to see me on the fringe of the spotlight, that was the time she picked. She saw me, wagged her head a little, which looked very strange indeed, and then she winked at me.

I grinned at her and she started back the way she'd come as Gloria said, "What was that?"

"What was what?" I could feel the bourbon.

"You know what was what."

"She winked at somebody, looked like."

"Looked like you. You know her?"

"Just to say hello to."

"She doesn't say hello like that, does she?"

I let the answer ride. I didn't know the answer, but I was curious. Anyway, this was no time for conversation. María was moving around faster now, and there was a little jazzy music from the orchestra as she whirled around and sprang about and sat on the floor and did any number of peculiar things. She sat down and put one leg behind her head, then she put the other leg behind her head, and if she'd had a third leg, I do believe she'd have put that behind her head. It looked as if soon there'd be nothing left of María except what was behind her head.

This was fascinating me; I had seen women in some strange positions at one time or another, but I was learning some new twists. María got all twisted around down there on the floor, and pretty soon she was standing on her head, and her back, and her bottom, and walking all over herself. She got into some positions that there is no point in describing because they are impossible and she simply couldn't have done them. She wandered all over the stage, accompanied occasionally by bursts of applause, and for a while she cavorted at the edge of the stage right in front of me and I had a very delightful time.

She was about two feet from me, maybe less for part of it, and she winked at me again.

"Ah ha!" Gloria hissed. "It was you!"

And then María Carmen went gyrating back to the center of the stage, where she had a controlled fit, after which she sprang to her feet and bowed a couple of times while everybody clapped like mad, particularly those at ringside. She blew everybody a kiss, then pranced off the stage, and the MC came back to announce bilingually that now María Carmen would appear with those two clever fellows, Hernández and Rodríguez.

Then the three of them pranced onto the floor and they all jumped up and down and ran around frantically, the men dressed in ankle-length black tights and Byronic flowing white shirts, and María Carmen still in the same outfit, which hadn't split yet.

Then one of the guys yelled, "Allez . . . oop!" or its Spanish equivalent and María ran and leaped at him and I'll be damned if he didn't grab her foot in both hands and throw her away. She went clear up in the air and came down on the shoulders of the other guy, and then there was some more "Allez . . . oop!" and she jumped down and then flew up again and went zipping through the air like a cartwheel.

I closed my eyes, then the suspense made me open them. Everything was all right. They were still tearing around like crazy. She was such a lovely little gal, though, that I hated to think of one of those guys missing her. She'd simply go sailing through space with no walls anywhere to stop her. Oh, this was horrible. There they went again. I closed my eyes; this was it now, I knew she was gone. When I looked again there would be the two men leaning over the rail, screaming. But when I opened my eyes all three of them were standing together holding hands in friendly fashion and there was a fanfare and much applause.

They bowed, and then one of the men, Hernández, I think, walked to the edge of the floor a few feet from me to speak to some guy I didn't know, and to the Joker. I wondered, idly, what he wanted to talk to that flat-headed hippopotamus for. Or why the Joker would want to talk to Hernández. Or—I heard Gloria clearing her throat.

I turned to her. "How'd you like it, honey? Having lots of fun?"

"I imagine you enjoyed it more," she said icily. "I wish they had floor shows for women."

"There's a thought. Maybe some bright boy will make millions putting on shows for women. But, then, don't women like to look at women?"

"Not like men do. What an exhibition that little—little exhibitionist put-on! I suppose you think she's sexy?"

I grinned at her and finished my drink. Then I shook suddenly, put my glass slowly on the top of the table, and turned to look again at the conference going on a few feet from me. While the show was in progress, I had become quite wrapped up in it. I had forgotten all the goons around me, even the Joker, whom I should never have forgotten. I had not even paid much attention when he started talking to Hernández. What the hell was going on over there?

They were close enough so that I could hear a little of the conversation, but it was all in Spanish, so they might just as well have been talking bird language for all the good it did me. But the guy with the Joker was rattling stuff at Hernández and I caught a "con permiso" and a "magnifico" and a "cómico," and then Hernández was bobbing his head and saying, "Si, si," followed by much gibberish.

Then that card, the Joker, climbed onto the dance floor and grabbed the mike while Hernández chattered away at María and Rodríguez.

"Guys and dolls," said the Joker.

All his chums broke into applause and whistles and feet stamping in a most uncouth fashion. The Joker beamed and grinned, having himself a time. He waved his hand for silence and said, "It is all arranged." The crowd hung on his every word, dying to know what cute thing he'd dreamed up. "By special permission of the management and kind cooperation of them"—he jerked a thumb over his shoulder—"we have got us a added attrackshun. A famous comic dancer who is with us tonight will do some acrobats for us with them." He jerked his thumb again.

He passed. "An' now," he said happily, "I give um to you, as he has gladly consented to dance for you. That famous comical foreign dancer, Shell Scott."

10

JUDAS H. PRIEST. HOODS or no hoods. I was going to make a run for it.

I sprang up out of my chair and wheeled around in a graceful pirouette as the band blew a fanfare and a spotlight fell on me. On me, spinning. I froze and swung my head around. Everybody went "Hurray" and screamed and whistled. Oh, boy, this was terrific. You can depend on the old Joker.

I was still going to run for it, but a thin guy at a near table caught my eye and moved his napkin away from the gun that was under it, then covered it with the napkin again. That wasn't the only gun around, because I felt the hard muzzle of one grind into my side and turned to look into George Madison's stupid, grinning face.

"Be a good sport, now, Scott," he said. "Dance for us pretty."

He jabbed the gun hard into my side, so hard it hurt, and then the Joker was alongside, both of them edging me out of the spotlight, so the Joker could neatly slip the .38 from under my coat and tap me lightly on the head with it, which he did. He heard George's remark and he echoed it. "Dance pretty."

My heart hurt. I said, "What you think you're going to do? Shoot at my feet? I get you on the end of a gun, Joker, and I won't shoot your feet. You think about it and you'll know where I'll shoot you."

They shoved me around to the side of the floor, out of the spotlight where it was nearly dark, and I felt the Joker slam my own gun against the back of my head again. Harder this time. He didn't want to knock me out, just calm me down, but that was the wrong way to calm me down. I was mad enough to charge all the hoods in the universe, but the Joker gave me a violent shove that sent me careening across the dance floor, all stooped over and having a hell of a time staying on my feet, slipping and sliding on the polished floor.

The crowd went into hysterics. All the killers and stranglers and dope pushers and blackmailers were yakking loud enough to split their throats. I caught my balance just past the center of the stage and stood there a moment with my fists clenching and unclenching and feeling ready to explode. I turned my head and saw María clapping her hands and laughing, and her two partners guffawing. They thought this was on the level!

The spotlight was in my eyes and I couldn't see through it to find Madison or the Joker. If I could have seen either one I'd have jumped at them, but there was nothing out there; there were no faces except those at the ringside, including Gloria's. There came a huge wave of sound louder than the sea crashing beneath me; waves of laughter and hoots and whistles.

I wanted a machine gun. I wanted a bomb. I wanted to bury them all up to the neck and then ride horses over them. I wanted . . .

I stopped wanting anything but out. I had just heard that stupid cry of acrobats, "Allez . . . oop!" and I swung around, horrified. María was way up in the air, coming down, and the two men caught her neatly, one on each side grabbing an arm and a leg, and they swung her toward me, then back behind them, and started to swing her forward again. Oh, no, dear God.

They were going to throw her at me!

I backed away from them, waving at them with my hands as the yaks and bellows and screaming got even louder because this was so hilarious. María came swooping down between the two men, almost brushing the floor, and I backed away yelling, "Don't! Please don't. If you value your—" And then they threw that woman at me.

María Carmen came flying through the air, turned slightly sideways in a sitting position with one leg drawn up daintily and one arm high over her head, and a big happy smile on her face.

I let out a panicked yelp, but I did my best; I did what little I could. She came slamming at me and into me. I grabbed her by one leg and then we were both going in the same direction—the direction she had been going—only we were on the floor, with me on my back on the bottom and María Carmen half around my neck, and this was neither the time nor the place for that sort of thing.

When I went down, my head tried to go through the floor, but the floor was almost as solid as my head. There was total pandemonium, and I heard three or four bumps out in the audience, which bumps I presumed were spectators falling out of their chairs and rolling around screaming.

Oh, I was a hit, all right. I was a star. The Joker would die happy now; he had achieved the ultimate. He'd die happy, maybe, but by God, he was going to die.

And there he was, right alongside me, an expression of fiendish glee on his ugly face and tears rolling down his cheeks. María Carmen wasn't around my neck any more, but I was still flat on my back, a bit stunned from the bang on my head. I tried to look to my right, out toward the happy people, but I had slid so far that half of me was out of sight behind the orchestra stand. This was great for what the Joker had in mind, because he said, "Let me help you, dancer." Then he picked up my head and threw it at the floor, and he hit it. He hit it with my head.

I think I went clear out for a little while, although it was the same night when the blackness went away because I could still hear the mirthmakers out front. But I was only about half conscious because quite obviously what was now happening was a figment of my imagination.

There were a couple of people hanging onto me, one on each side, each of them grabbing an arm and a leg the way the boys had held María a while back, and the characters hanging onto me looked like the Joker and Madison. I must still be out; this was all a dream.

And in my dream the Joker and Sudden Death Madison were with me on the stage, swinging me back and forth between them; the audience was behind me, and there wasn't anything ahead of me except the far edge of the dance floor and the high railing at its edge, and beyond that nothing except space and stars and the ocean beneath us.

I was rising up at one end of a swing now, and from up that high I could see the water out there. If I hadn't known it was silly, I'd have thought they were going to throw me into the ocean. And then the boys gave me a heave and let go, and I saw the edge of the railing coming at me, and then it went under me, and then there was nothing under me except ocean.

Odd. Even these crazy hoods wouldn't throw me into the ocean. And then I was in the ocean.

11

AS SOON as I went over the rail and saw all that blackness down below me, every bit of fun went out of this escapade. It was a hundred feet down at high tide. When the water was out . . . well, the water was just out.

And here I was, zooming through space like an unguided missile. How did I get here? I went plummeting down, kicking and screeching and trying to get my feet pointed down so I wouldn't break my back when I hit, if I hit water, and I slammed into the water feet first.

I went in straight enough, but my feet came back up toward my middle and I felt as if sledgehammers had hit me from the bottom and from each side. But it was water, and I was alive and kicking. And I mean kicking. I was kicking and splashing and swimming and stroking and making a lot of progress, only the wrong way. I was still going down. Finally I slowed down and thought I was starting up again, but I wasn't even sure I wasn't going sideways and I knew I had been underwater a good hour, and my lungs were trying to come out under my arms.

I managed to get out of my coat, but that was all I could get rid of before I started fighting upward again. Then my head broke water and I started snorting and tried to suck in all the air in Acapulco. I got a lot of it, and a lot of water with it, and my head slowly stopped spinning. The sea was restless underneath me, surging and swelling. My clothes and shoes kept trying to drag me down and I had to keep fighting just to stay on the surface. I gulped more air, then stroked with what strength I had left until my fingers hit rock and I dragged myself out of the water.

I lay there, wondering if I'd ever be able to move again, and that sharp-edged rock felt as good as a Simmons Beautyrest mattress, and the thought occurred to me that this was no way to look for secret documents. Finally I raised my head and looked up at the sky that I'd come screaming down out of, and I saw the lights. They were flashlights coming down the steps from El Peñasco. Coming, probably, for the remains.

And I could very well have been dead. Might be the hoods would think I'd drowned. They'd be half right; I was half drowned. But there was no point in my letting them know I was alive. I didn't want them ever in their lives to know I was alive. It was dark down here, but I managed to pick my way along the base of the cliff, hanging to rocks that tore my skin, and I got far enough away from the descending flashlights so that nobody would see me.

I rested where I was, in comparative and momentary safety, while I tried to figure out what had set off that fiasco. One thing I was sure of: Vincente Torelli hadn't had a hand in it, and wasn't going to like it a bit. Men like Torelli simply don't operate that way. If he'd wanted to get rid of me, he'd have done it quickly and efficiently. And I didn't believe even the Joker and Madison had intended, originally, for everything that had occurred to happen. They must have got carried away with the fun of what they were doing. I had an idea they were going to be on the boss's list. That made two lists they were on.

And it was even likely that none of the hoodlums present except the Joker and Madison had been in on the deal. The rest probably had merely gathered to watch the fun, whatever it might be. I wondered for a minute about Gloria. I wondered if she might have been in on it. I hated to think so, but it was a possibility.

I also wondered what I was going to do now. I couldn't very well go back to my Las Américas room. George and the Joker might drown me in the shower. I thought it was likely that they hadn't meant to knock me off, but it seemed important to my future plans that I find out for sure. I wanted to know a lot of things, such as what happened after I disappeared, what the hoods had done, what Gloria had done—and what was happening to her now. I had to grin, thinking that I had got out of the gangster-filled El Peñasco just as I had suggested to Gloria that we manage it: I had floated out.

And it was time I floated somewhere else and got out of sight for a while. I couldn't see walking all the way into the town. Particularly not if I was supposed to be dead. I pondered the problem for several minutes, then decided it was worth the chance to try picking up my rented Buick. The parking lot was quite a distance from the club, and should be deserted enough at this hour, so I shouldn't have too much trouble if I were careful. If I had the car I could head for any place I wanted. California, for example. The way I was starting to feel, if things kept going the way they were, the hoods could have the United States. They could have the world. But I was near a little strip of beach, and I could walk along it for a hundred feet, then climb up the cliff and circle around to the parking lot. I headed back up.

In ten minutes I was standing on the edge of the lot, in near darkness. I could see my Buick fifty feet away, and while I hesitated, wondering whether to stroll casually over to it or maybe crawl on my belly, I noticed the red glow as somebody dragged on a cigarette a few feet beyond the car. I couldn't see who was there, but two figures were leaning against the side of another auto nearby. Could be somebody taking the air, or it could be goons looking for me in case I was still breathing. Armed goons; and the Joker had my .38. I looked around, trying to spot any other figures standing at strategic spots, and I saw a yellow car I recognized: María Carmen's Cadillac.

I thought about it for five seconds, then I hunched over so I was out of sight and scooted between rows of cars and over to the Cad. It wasn't locked, and I climbed into the back seat of the sedan and squatted on the floor.

Long minutes passed and my muscles were getting cramped when I heard the tap-tap of high heels on the asphalt. I hunched down out of sight behind the back seat. The door on the driver's side opened and María Carmen slipped in and slammed the door. She was humming something, happy as could be, and I reared up behind her, leaned forward, and grabbed her shoulder with one hand while I put my other hand over her mouth. She almost went through the roof.

I held her while she chewed on my palm, then I said, "María, this is Shell Scott. You asked me to catch the show. Remember?"

She stopped squirming and I said, "I just didn't want you to scream. So don't." I let her go.

She didn't scream. She turned around in the seat and stared at me and I said, "Sorry I had to be so rough, but if you'd let out a yelp there might have been a bunch of my—uh, friends over here."

She stared at me for a few seconds, then began laughing like mad. "I knew by the way you caught me that you weren't a professional," she bubbled. "I told you to catch the show."

"Actually, my sport is bowling," I said. "But that's my standard catch."

She laughed some more. "All you need is practice." Then she calmed down and asked me, "What are you doing here? In my car, I mean."

I told her about coming up to get my buggy and noticing that goons had been added, then said, "Since you're one of the few people I feel sure isn't a hoodlum, I thought maybe you'd drive me away from this mess. Let me hide on the floor."

"Sure. Come on up front."

I was liking this gal better every minute. "I'd better wait till we get out of here before I move. I also hoped you'd tell me what happened after the fun ended."

She laughed again and started the car. "Plenty," she said. "Why aren't you dead?"

"That will puzzle me till I am." I lay down on the floorboards, wishing I had my gun, as she drove around the drive and headed down to Calle de Tambuco. Nobody stopped us.

When we turned right on Boulevard Manuel Guzmán, María said, "Well, we're here. Come on up front."

I climbed over the seat and plopped down beside her.

"Where do you want to go?" she asked me.

"I dunno. But thanks for the lift out of there, María."

"For nothing."

"Can you buzz me a little way? A little farther from what I want to leave behind me?"

"Sure. Anywhere. I have nothing to do till tomorrow night's show. If they have a show. Be hard to top tonight's, no matter what we do." She giggled.

I rested my head on the top of the cushions behind me. Now that I'd had time to calm down a little, I seriously considered what I was going to do. Probably little else was due to happen tonight, and I wasn't about to go looking for trouble at the moment, anyway. It was past my bedtime. It had apparently been past my bedtime before I ever went into El Peñasco. Las Américas was out, and I hated the thought of turning in at the smelly Del Mar. I'd had enough fighting, and I didn't want to fight cockroaches till morning. But, it appeared, it was the Del Mar or nothing.

I leaned against the door on my side and looked at María. The windows were rolled down and the balmy Acapulco breeze played with her dark hair. She glanced at me occasionally, her red lips curving with smiles as we talked on. She was dressed again, but even now she didn't look medium. She would never again look medium. And even sitting still, she seemed charged with vitality and energy.

"You're sure full of pep," I said. "What do you do with all that energy?"

"Well, I work a lot of it off in the show." She smiled quickly at me again. "And I swim a lot. Do a lot of water-skiing. This is a perfect place for it. You ski?"

"No. I—uh, suddenly don't like the water."

She laughed. "It's easy. Maybe I'll show you how sometime."

"Well, you showed me how to dance. Which reminds me—what happened after—afterward?"

She looked at me seriously then. "First, tell me—did those guys want to kill you? I thought it was a gag for a while."

I shook my head. "To tell you the truth, I'm not sure. They'd like to kill me, all right, but whether they meant to tonight or not, I don't know. The short, wide guy was hopped up. No telling."

"Well," she said, "the place cleared out in a hurry after you left." She grinned. "One minute the place was jammed, the next there were about four tables filled. People even left their drinks."

"Uh-huh. How'd that girl I was with act?"

María slanted her eyes over at me. "She acted a little goofy. Went around slapping people and raising hell. Slapped those guys that tossed you around. Even slapped me. Why should she slap me?"

I let that last bit ride. "This might be important, María. You'd say she acted as if she hadn't known what was coming off?"

"Naturally. I'd say everybody acted like that. I'd have pulled her hair out, only that guy took her away with him."

"What guy?"

"That big stupid-looking guy. One of your pals."

It might mean something and it might not. Stupid-looking was obviously George; it was natural that Gloria would go home with her husband. And I was pretty sure now that my swim had been an impromptu kick. I was thinking that there wasn't much left for me to do this night when María said, "Know yet where you want me to drive you?"

"I guess down in town someplace. I'll put up in some little hotel overnight. Stay out of sight till I can figure what to do next."

We talked a little longer as she drove slowly down toward town, and she asked me how come I seemed to be in trouble with such unsavory characters. I told her I was a detective and put her off with vague answers.

Finally she said, "Shell, in your own words, there's a billion creeps with guns who might be looking for you. And you just want to get out of sight overnight. I've rented a house not far from here. Down on the beach. If you want to, you could stay there. You should be quite safe there." She laughed again. "From the creeps."

It was funny, but the thought hadn't even occurred to me that María might have a place where I could stay. The idea must have been stewing in my subconscious, though, because I was certainly happy when she said that. I was tickled pink.

"You know what?" I said. "That sounds like the answer to practically all my problems."

I looked at María Carmen. This was the best offer I'd had all day. I looked closer, thought about her dancing, scooted nearer her on the seat, and took a real good look. No, by George, this was the best offer I'd had all year.

"Well, let's go," she said.

"Yes," I said. "Indeed yes. Can't you go any faster?"

12

MARÍA CARMEN'S rented house was a small place down on the beach a mile or two past town, right at the edge of the sea. She parked the Cad behind the house, then took me by the hand and pulled me up to the front door. Not that I was hanging back; she just pulled because she knew the way in the dark and was wasting no time herself.

Inside she shut the door, then flipped on the light.

"There," she said. "Here's your hideout. Like it?"

Frankly, a barn would have suited me fine at the moment. But the house was the kind of place you'd like to live in. The lighting was soft, indirect; colorful prints were on the walls, matching the bright hues of the comfortable divans and easy chairs. A woven-reed carpet covered the floor, and you could hear the sound of the surf a few yards from the door.

"Lovely," I told her. "I could hide out here for a year."

She smiled. "I'll only be here two months." She looked me over. "Boy, you look terrible. You better get into something dry."

I started trying to think of some gay reply, but she didn't give me time. She walked out of the room, then came back and grabbed me by the hand and pulled me after her. "Just turned the water heater on," she said. "You'll have hot water in five minutes." We were at another door and she opened it and pushed me into the bathroom. A large, tiled shower was in the corner.

"Climb in," she said. "Even in Acapulco you can catch a cold. Boy, I take good care of you, huh?"

"Yeah. Shower would feel good, at that." I waited for her to leave so I could undress.

She watched me, smiling pleasantly. "Well, you going to shower with your clothes on?"

"Oh, no. I never do that." She leaned against the wall, watching me. I said, "As a matter of fact, I usually take my showers alone, ha, ha."

She threw back her head and laughed. "Is that all that's bothering you?" She walked up to me and stopped, the top of her head about on a level with my chin. She pointed to the shoulder holster that I still had on. "What's this for, a gun?"

"Yeah, sure."

She fiddled with the strap, slipped the gun harness off, then unbuttoned my shirt.

I grabbed it and hung on. "Whoa. Slow down. Look. I'll get it. I can handle it."

She grinned up at me. "I can handle it better than you can. Let go."

"No. No, I won't."

She sighed and said pleasantly, "All right, Shell. Hand it out the door to me."

"Hand it out the door!"

"Uh-huh. I'll go mix us a drink, if you're sure you can manage alone."

"I can manage alone. I mean, of course I can't manage alone . . . that is, hellfire, woman, I can get undressed by myself."

She grinned. "That's what I figured. You can hand your clothes out to me in complete privacy." She pinched me lightly on the chest and turned and went out.

I got undressed and turned the "C" faucet on. From my experience in Mexico I had learned that the C and F lettered on most faucets did not stand for "caliente," hot, and "fría," cold, but rather for "cold" and "freezing." However, the stream was warming up. María must have had an efficient heater. I was positive she had an efficient heater.

I adjusted the water a little as it got hotter, then wadded up my wet clothes and carried them over to the door.

"Yoo-hoo," I said.

I heard the tap-tap of María's high heels coming toward me. "Yoo-hoo, yourself. You got it warm for me?"

Warm? For her? Maybe that should have been my question. I said, "Well—"

She interrupted. "You finally get your clothes off?"

"Yes. Yes, I did. I—Whoops!"

She had opened the door a little and started groping around it for my clothes. She was one hell of a little groper. We both whoopsed and then I stuffed my clothes into her clutching little hand.

She was laughing outside the door like a gal having a happy fit, and between gurgles she said, "Just a minute. I'll bring you your drink."

She went tap-tapping away and in about a minute I heard her coming back. I got goose pimples all over. She wasn't tap-tapping now. Her feet sounded more as they had at El Peñasco when she'd been barefoot. Well, it was her house. I guessed she could go barefoot if she wanted. I swallowed. Hell, it was her shower.

She stuck her hand around the crack of the door again; this time her hand was already full. She held a tall highball glass like those for zombies. I didn't know what was in it, but I grabbed it with one hand, held her hand with my other one, and started swallowing. I didn't care what was in the drink; it was some kind of alcohol. Besides, I felt a little like a zombie. I got rid of the whole drink while I held her hand, then I put the glass back in her palm and said, "More."

"Whoops!" she said. Then, "Oh, one coming right up."

I had to laugh. She must have been holding two drinks, because in about half a second another glass floated around the door and I grabbed it.

"Thanks," I said. "This one yours?"

"You can have mine. I'll make another one for me."

Seemed like everything she said struck me funny. That one almost broke me up. I had a swallow of the drink and she padded off. I had another swallow, then climbed into the shower. I was starting to feel fine. Warm liquor inside me, warm water pouring over my skin, no hoods giving me a hard eye.

I didn't even hear her pad back. The door just opened and she walked in. It was quite apparent that she was going to take a shower. She didn't shower with her clothes on, either. She had one of those tall highball glasses in her hand and she swung the door shut behind her and casually tasted her drink.

She grinned at me. "I see you made it."

I said something that even I didn't understand.

She finished her drink and put it on a little dressing table, spotted the rest of my highball, and brought it over to me. She asked, "Want the rest of this?"

"Yes, please. Thank you. I believe I do. I'm positive I do." I finished the drink. She took the glass, turned around, and put it on the dressing table. Water was streaming in my open mouth. Then she turned around and advanced on me. That is the only word. She advanced.

"Move over, Shell, honey. Give María a little room."

I moved over. I moved clear over into the corner. But I knew when I was whipped. "Sure," I said. "Come on in. The water's fine."

She stepped into the stream of water. "Mmmm," she sighed. "It feels good."

I didn't know quite what to say, but I definitely wanted to say something. I didn't want to just stand there. If I just stood there, María was apt to think I was a very unworldly oaf. However, this seemed to be one of those times when finding the just-right phrase was difficult.

"Well," I said. "Ah, María, you're looking well."

She didn't answer. She picked up the soap.

I tried again. "My," I said. "You certainly have a lovely little place here. You have a charming little place."

"Water sure does feel good," she said. "Do my back."

Well, by God, if she didn't want to talk, we wouldn't talk. I'd do her back. I did her back. I did this and that and the other, and she kept on saying, every once in a while, "Mmmm, sure feels good."

Finally the water started getting cold, and the thought came into my mind that I'd had just about enough of interruptions by bellhops, hanging from terraces, and trying to carry on light conversations in showers.

"Baby," I said, "let's get out of these cramped quarters."

We did. She pranced into the darkened bedroom and managed to beat me to the bed. Barely.

This little acrobat was incredible. I had seen nothing at the club when she'd been dancing, nothing at all. That had been the calisthenics before the game, and this was for the championship.

I knew there was an open window behind me, and there was always the chance that a fiendish hoodlum was peering in here with a gun and getting ready to plunk me. It didn't bother me. There could have been ten hoodlums there with bazookas, and as far as I was concerned, they'd have been no place. That seemed like the life I'd left behind me, and I knew I didn't have long to live, anyway.

Time passed, filled with strange adventures that rocked my belief in the laws of probability. For that matter, in the laws of possibility. Finally it became still and quiet, like a grave. Perhaps, I thought, it was death.

Later María Carmen said, "Shell?"

"Ah," I said. "There you are."

"Shell," she said.

"Yes?"

"Get up and turn on the light."

"Get up and turn on the light. Oh, boy. Sure. Get up and turn on the light. What makes you think I can move? I sprained something. I sprained everything."

"Shell."

"Yes?"

"You know what I am?"

"Yeah. You're a spy for the syndicate. You've sabotaged me. Now they're gonna get the world."

"I don't know what you're talking about. I mean, what I am is ruined. You've ruined me. It's a cinch I can't turn on the light."

"The hell with the stinking light. I don't want to see any light ever. I want it always nice and dark."

"Shell."

"Yeah?"

"Good night, Shell."

"Good night, María."

And that was the end of our conversation. The only thought I had before falling asleep was that María Carmen was going to do very little dancing tomorrow.

13

THIS WAS A MORNING that I would gladly have skipped. María Carmen was in the shower singing "Ta Ra Ra Boom De Ay," a regular little bundle of jolly energy, and I had managed to slide one foot almost to the floor. I was reaching for the carpet with my toes, carefully, when she came out of the bathroom wearing a satin robe. She looked as fresh and sparkling as dew. She was bright and lovely. And she was too bloody cheerful.

She sat down on the edge of the bed and peered at me. "Hi! How's my boy?"

I didn't answer her; she could tell by looking. The feeling I had was a brand new kind of hangover compounded of my drinks at Las Américas and El Peñasco, sea water, shower water, and whatever María had plyed me with, plus various odds and ends.

She peered at me some more. "Ugh. Your eyes look horrible."

"You should see them from the inside."

"You mean you can see out of those?"

"I can see a color."

"Uh-huh. Bet I know what color."

"Skip it. I can't bear to think about it. Or to look at it" I closed my eyes. "What day of the week is it? And what time is it?"

"Eleven o'clock Wednesday morning, the thirtieth of April, 1952. The sun is shining, the sea is blue, the little—"

"Oh, shut up. Just so the world's still there."

She laughed. "It's still there. Get up and I'll fix you a big breakfast."

I groaned. "Don't go to any trouble. Just bring me a plate of bourbon."

She went off and came back in two minutes with a fizzing Alka Seltzer and another concoction, both of which I drank, not caring. She sat on the bed and held my hand. I told her while she was at it to take my pulse.

It took about an hour, but by noon I'd eaten and pulled myself together. It was quite a job, as I felt as if I'd been scattered all over, but I was a reasonable facsimile of Shell Scott by the time María said to me, "What are you going to do today, my savage?"

"I'm not sure, little flame thrower"—we had several pet names for each other by this time—"but I'm getting some ideas. Right now I'd like to use your bedroom for half an hour."

She grinned. "Only half an hour?"

"In absolute and complete privacy," I explained. "I want to think. In case you didn't know, I am also a thinker. So how about excusing me for thirty minutes or so?"

She pouted prettily. "I thought we could go swimming. Or water-skiing. I could teach you."

"You're good, huh?"

"I'm an expert water-skier. Really, I am. I could teach you easy."

"Some other time. Right now I must solve the problems of the world."

"In my bedroom?"

"María, I know of no better place for solving difficult problems."

"OK. I'll catch some sun."

I went into the bedroom and lay down on the bed. María came in after me and undressed and then put on her swimsuit. I closed my eyes; I did want to think. I closed my eyes after she'd gone, though.

When María went out into the sun I relaxed and tried to put some pieces together, going back over part of the last few days in the light of what I now knew. I knew a lot more than I'd known when I'd started, but I wasn't any closer yet to getting my hands on the blackmail file.

Those papers, the recording, the document, all of them were, I felt sure, here in Acapulco or close. I also felt sure that whoever had them didn't realize their actual significance; the importance of that one document, for example, to the people of the United States. The person who had that blackmail file now—the person who had undoubtedly taken it after murdering Gunner—was almost surely looking upon it as important only to Vincente Torelli. And, of course, to Joe himself. Torelli probably wanted that stuff as much as any other man in the world, because it was the lever with which he could pry into Joe's union with its 800,000 members. From Torelli's point of view, there would be hardly any price too high to pay for the papers.

I had to consider the possibility that whoever had the papers might have headed for China, Red China, but it was a hundred to one that their possessor was now in Acapulco getting ready to bargain with Torelli. Or bargaining. And I had a hunch that person was a woman.

I went back over it. Gunner was a highly intelligent man; he'd had a fortune in his possession, a fortune he'd worked hard to get. He'd have taken damn good care of it. Yet he'd been killed and the papers stolen. He might very well have been traveling with a woman; the registration at Las Américas was in the name of Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Brodney, not just Mr. Brodney. A woman could have got next to him. In bed, say. He'd been in bed when he was killed.

I had also considered the idea that Gunner's killer—whether a man or a woman—might well have known of Gunner's reservation at Las Américas and headed for it. That was one of my big reasons for taking the room in the first place. Unfortunately, it didn't seem a healthy spot for me to stay in right now. I had checked with the desk clerk before going out to the pool yesterday, and he'd told me nobody had been asking about the reservation except me. I'd half expected to get something there, and I intended to check that angle today.

I mentally listed the things I had to start doing: check with the desk clerk again, get in touch with Gloria, find out if I was supposed to be alive or dead and learn if Gloria had heard of any big deals cooking or concluded. It might be that the papers were already in Torelli's manicured hands. If so, I'd play hell getting them. But, until I knew for sure where the blackmail file was, if I ever did, I had to go ahead under the assumption that I would get the papers; and I'd have to plan in advance what I'd do then. I hoped what I had in mind was good enough. It had to be good enough, well enough planned, because once I got that blackmail file, the combined forces of the Mafia and the syndicate would have me marked for murder. For that matter, so would any Commies who might be after that document and recording. But, I thought, Joe would certainly have done his best to keep even his Communist pals from knowing he'd had that vital paper in his hands and lost it. Or rather, especially his Communist pals, who might consider that slip enough reason for Joe's liquidation.

So my real worry, if I got the papers, would be the killers, the gangsters, the Mafia. It looked as though my only hope of coming out on top, and alive at the same time, was to get the papers without letting anybody know I had the things. Of course, Torelli might already be reading them and chortling.

I was anxious now to get started, find out what the score was, but I spent another twenty minutes making myself carefully cover every angle I could think of.

I went into the living room, crossed to the phone on the table, and dialed the Hotel de las Américas. I asked for the desk clerk, Rafael. When he came on I said, "This is the guy who gave you a hundred U.S. bucks day before yesterday. Remember?"

"What? Why, yes. But I thought . . ."

"You thought what? And keep your voice down."

"Well, I heard—that is, I thought you might be drowned. Weren't you—"

I cut him off. "Yeah. I went for a swim. What's the score on that?"

"They've had men out there searching the ocean underneath El Peñasco."

That was good enough; it was one thing I'd wanted to know. The hoods must not know for sure whether I was alive or dead. And they wouldn't know until somebody saw me.

I said to Rafael, "Thanks. Something else. Has anybody been asking about me or Suite One-o-three?"

"A big ugly guy did yesterday. I told him about the—uh, cancellation, like you said."

"Good." That had been when Torelli sent a man down to check my story. "The guy give you any trouble, Rafael?"

"No, just asked me who was in One-o-three, and I told him the story."

"Thanks, pal. And listen, forget you heard from me. As far as you're concerned, I'm in the drink. That's the way I'd like it to stay. See?"

"Well—"

I knew why he was hesitating. Same old story. I said, "And I'll drop off at the desk before long with another hundred dollars. The same as last time. Now can you remember to forget?"

"Yes, sir."

"Nobody else but that guy yesterday came around? Nobody inquired today? Not just about me, Rafael, but about the suite I took. Nobody at all?"

"No, just him."

"OK. Keep your eyes and ears open, will you? I'll check back with you later. Maybe later tonight. And if I don't bring the hundred myself, I'll send it around. You never heard from me."

He said he understood and I hung up, then dialed the Hotel Encantado and Cottage 27. If a man answered I was going to forget about talking to Gloria. But it was her soft voice that said, "Hello?"

"Gloria? Don't jump out the window. This is the cliffhanger, the guy who flies."

"Oh!" She was quiet for a moment, then she said, "I was afraid—"

"Skip it. You alone?"

"Yes."

"Beat it down to the main lobby and wait. I'll call you there on a house phone I know is good. OK?"

"Five minutes." She hung up.

I waited, impatiently, for four minutes, then called the desk, had Gloria Madison paged and sent to a house phone. When she answered I said, "All clear?"

"Uh-huh. It is you, isn't it, Shell?"

"It's me." We got the glad-you're-alives and other preliminary exchanges out of the way in a hurry and then I asked her, "Gloria, has there been any rumble yet? You hear anything about that shipment Torelli was expecting from Gunner?"

"No, Shell. And I'm sure I'd have heard. George is like putty around me now, and he'd have told me if there'd been anything."

"Even after last night?"

She laughed. "Even. I got pretty mad, but when I calmed down I told George it was just because he'd be sure to get in trouble with Torelli over it. I was right, too. So is that other one, that Joker."

"Good. Gloria, you sure there's nothing about that shipment? No big deal cooking, no nothing?"

"Nothing yet, Shell. George tells me Torelli is on pins and needles himself. The thing must be pretty important, whatever it is."

"Yeah, it must be."

I couldn't understand why those papers hadn't shown up yet, and then I thought a minute about Torelli on pins and needles, as Gloria had put it, getting more anxious, more eager for the dope. And maybe that explained it. The smart play for whoever had the papers—if the idea was to boost the price—would be to get Torelli anxious and worried. It was also a good way for whoever had the papers to get killed, but it was the only explanation I could think of to account for their not being offered to Torelli in the two days since Gunner had been shot. Whoever blew Gunner's brains out didn't do it just for fun.

Right then a peculiar thought struck me and I automatically put it into words. "Hey, Gloria, you and George are married, aren't you?"

"What? Why, what a silly thing to say! Of course we are. We were married in Los Angeles. What—"

I interrupted. "Sorry, I was just talking. Forget it." Hell, I was grabbing at straws. I knew she was living with George, and I could check the marriage if I wanted to, but I also know it wasn't necessary. No, Gloria was on my side; there wasn't any doubt about that. So, by completely eliminating the lovely Gloria as any part of my opposition, I had one less person to worry about. Something flicked in my mind, tried to get through, and went away. I tried to get it back, but lost it. I had that funny, frustrated feeling you get for a moment when you think you've forgotten something important.

Finally I said, "OK, honey, thanks. Keep listening for that rumble. I've got some things to do now, but I'll call you later. You expect George home?"

"He's with Torelli and the rest at Las Américas now. I think he'll be there all afternoon."

"OK. I'll call you later. I've got a feeling things can't stay this quiet."

"Shell, be careful."

"You can count on it. Bye, Gloria." I hung up, then called a taxi, arranged for the driver to wait at an intersection three blocks from María's house, then hung up again, went to the window, stuck my head out, and yelled at María. She came running, and it was a very pretty thing to watch. She trotted in the front door and plopped onto one of the divans.

She said, with a saucy inflection that made her double meaning obvious, "You want me?"

I grinned at her. "Yeah, but I'm made of steel. I've got to leave."

She frowned a little. "Already?"

"There's a lot I've got to do. And it's time I started. Don't even have time for a shower."

She didn't smile. "Anything I can help you do?"

"No, but thanks, María. You might get into a pile of trouble; there's plenty around. I used your phone, but there's not a chance anybody knows I came here with you last night, so you'll be OK as long as you forget you ever saw me except at El Peñasco before I took my dive. I'm serious. Otherwise you might get yourself badly hurt or—killed."

She kept frowning. "Forget . . . But you'll see me again, won't you?"

That was a laugh. I might be gone a long time, at that. I said, "María, as long as I've got one leg left I'll hop back. But now I've got to get to work; do what I came down here for. Try, anyway."

I walked to the door and looked out at the bright sunlight. I was scared to walk out there, but I still wasn't as sharp as I'd have to be before this case got much older. And I didn't look very sharp; I needed a shave, and though María had pressed my wrinkled clothes, the pants had shrunk and appeared to have been made for a man five feet tall, not six-two. But at least they were pants, and the only ones I had.

María Carmen touched me on the shoulder and I turned around. She didn't say anything, just slipped her arms over my shoulders, raised up on tiptoes, and kissed me on the mouth. Then she stepped away from me and said, "That's to remember me by. We fellow acrobats have to stick together. And . . . if you've got two legs, you run back."

I looked down at her, liking her, not wanting to leave her. Actually all I was going to do for the next hour or so was go downtown to the Del Mar, check and see if Joe had come through yet with the stuff I'd sent for. The only reason I didn't want María around was that there was bound to be a lot of trouble sooner or later, and I didn't want her mixed up in it. Funny how fond you can get of a peppy little gal in just a few hours.

I said, "I'll be back, don't worry. I don't want you hanging around me for a while. You might get hurt. I think I'm going to see some nasty characters before the day's over."

She said saucily, but with her eyes serious, "What if I don't mind taking a chance? Maybe I could help you. I've got lots of talents."

I grinned at her. "I know you have. But can you shoot a gun?"

"I'm not sure." She frowned. "But I can drive a car. I'll be your chauffeur."

"You're off your trolley, honey. I've called a cab."

"A taxi? When I've got a Cadillac? Let me go with you, Shell."

I hesitated, and she noticed it. But then I said lightly, "No soap. You'd bore me. I don't want to get tired of you."

Then I told her good-bye, turned, and walked out of the house. I walked down the sidewalk alongside Miguel Alemán Boulevard in the bright sun, headed toward the taxi that should be waiting three blocks away. The sea sparkled on my left and the air was perfumed with the scent of flowers. It was a beautiful day, a day for water skiing, for lying in the sun, for drinking coco fizzes under the thatched roof at the Club Copacabana and looking at the lovely women. It was a very bad day for dying.

14

I COULD SEE the Club Copacabana up ahead, the palm fronds, the thatched roof, cool and exotic-looking. I wished I had nothing else to do except sit under that thatched roof curling my toes in the sand, having a drink. A block beyond the Copacabana I could see the taxi waiting. I wasn't thinking about much of anything except maybe the pleasant appearance of the club ahead, when I heard a car slide to a stop alongside me.

I swung round suddenly, automatically, the blood leaping in my veins at the thought that somebody had spotted me, and I was almost ready to drop down on the pavement when I saw the bright splash of color that was María Carmen's Cadillac. She was leaning out the window with her mouth open, staring at me.

Sudden anger flared in me. "What the hell you trying to do? Scare the—" I stopped. No sense in bawling her out because I felt silly. I walked over to the car.

"I'm sorry, Shell," she said. "I didn't mean to sneak up on you, but I just made up my mind all of a sudden. I thought maybe I could take you wherever you're going. I just wanted to be with you."

She sounded so sweet and repentant that I felt like a heel for shouting at her. She opened the door and I got in beside her. "Is it all right?" she asked.

I gave up. "I guess so. I'm just going downtown."

She turned on a half-smile. "And I'm your chauffeur?"

"Chauff away. You asked for it." Hell, I thought, it's nice having her around; before anything rough comes up I can get rid of her.

She made a U-turn and headed downtown. I gave her directions to the Del Mar, but told her to park away from the place, even though her car, so far, couldn't be identified with me. She might as well know my hideout; she knew nearly everything else about me.

"And this place," I said, "is not the Reforma-Casablanca. This is part of the end of the world. This is where gangrene has set in. You still want to go?"

"Sure."

We went. She wrinkled up her nose as we passed through the little lobby. Inside Room 10 I locked the door and waved María to a chair. To the chair.

She said, "Locking the door, huh? Expecting visitors?"

"That's to foil the bigger cockroaches. They go frantic at the smell of people."

"Shell! How can you talk like that?"

"I told you it'd be rough. This was your idea." I started, walking back and forth in the small room. Ordinarily I'm not a pacer, but something was bothering me. I'd got that itch in my convolutions again. It often happens on a case; when it does I know I've either forgotten something or added two and two for a five. The blackmail file, I thought. It's around, but there's been no noise about it. Somebody's got the damned thing. I went back to the woman angle again. That much was logical enough, but how was I supposed to pick out the one woman, if it was a woman, from the flock in Acapulco? With few exceptions, each of the underworld boys had his wife or "wife" along. The only women I'd had any contact with were Gloria and María. Hardly be Gloria; she could have kissed me a little harder last night and got rid of me. And María was out; none of it fitted her. She had seemed damned anxious to tag along, though. I frowned, thinking about that, then felt like batting my head. I was really getting silly now. But those were the only two . . . . No, they weren't. That wild tomato, Eve. Eve, the beauty who'd strolled out of my john. What the hell had she been doing in there? Well, I thought, that's a stupid question. But I thought about her a little longer.

"Shell."

"Huh?" I'd been hot on an idea there and I'd almost forgotten María.

"What's the matter? You looked funny."

"Just a minute, María. I was thinking about something." I went back to it, tried to pick up where I'd left off. I took the key out of my pocket, went to the door, and unlocked it. I walked slowly across the lobby and sat down in the chair before the phone, thinking some more, remembering what it was I'd almost had when I'd called Gloria earlier. I thought back to finding Gunner dead and alone, then checking into the hotel, the rest of it.

I grabbed the phone and called Rafael again at Las Américas.

He said, "Bueno?" and I told him, "The hundred-buck man again. Anybody asking about my suite?"

"No. No change."

I said slowly, "Think carefully, Rafael. How about yesterday? Yesterday afternoon?"

"No, just as I told you."

"Nobody at all except me?" I could feel a little of the excitement draining out of me.

"Well," Rafael said, "of course there was your wife. But I—"

"You idiot. You lousy—" I stopped yelling. I was more angry with myself for not seeing it sooner than with Rafael. "I'm sorry. Describe her. What did she look like?"

"Describe your wife?"

"You silly ass, she wasn't my wife! Describe her!"

Two fast sentences and I knew who it was. It was Eve, all right. Little Orange Hair. Mrs. Jacob Brodney. That was what had been swirling in my brain, but now the whole thing hit me so hard it almost hurt my head. It was simple now, but it was like predicting the score when the game is over.

I'd checked into Las Américas and slept, got up and asked about inquiries at the desk, then gone out to the pool. A little while before I left the pool Eve must have come into the hotel from wherever she'd been, stopped at the desk, and said she was Mrs. Jacob Brodney. The clerk wouldn't have had any reason to question her or stop her; the reservation was in the name of Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Brodney, and I'd presented the reservation slip with that name on it. I'd signed the card Shell Scott, but I might just as easily have signed it Joe Blow or Stalin; the clerk thought I was Brodney.

And Eve, who must have been traveling with Gunner, had naturally been the gal Gunner intended to take along to Las Américas. She'd just gone on ahead as planned—only without Gunner. Actually, there was no reason she shouldn't have. I was almost positive she and Gunner hadn't known they were being tailed, and as Gunner had been traveling under the name of Robert Cain at Taxco and the reservation was in the name of Brodney, she'd have assumed naturally enough that there'd be no trail between Wallace Parkinson's dead body and one Mrs. Brodney at Las Américas. Only after she'd shot Gunner she'd taken a powder without remembering to remove the reservation slip from his wallet.

I said to Rafael, "What did she say when she picked up the key? How'd she explain being alone?"

He sounded puzzled. "I assumed she was with you. Even—even if she wasn't your real wife, sometimes in Acapulco . . ."

"I understand. It's all right. Thanks." He didn't have anything else to add, so I hung up.

It all fitted perfectly. Only she hadn't known I was there ahead of her and she'd just barged in. No wonder she'd almost dropped her beautiful teeth when she saw me. But she'd been a sharp gal, as any gal of Gunner's would be, and she'd covered up her confusion fast. Torelli sent me . . . you must be Gunner . . . dance? She'd kept my head spinning on a sexy merry-go-round after that so I hadn't even had time to think. Then she'd apparently dropped the key at the desk, and blown.

I grabbed the phone again. I had to find her. I had to find her in a hurry, but I didn't have the faintest idea where she was. At least I had something, more than I'd had five minutes ago.

I yelled, "María!" Then I put in a fast call to Gloria's cottage.

María came running out and I shouted at her, "Get that car started. Hurry it up."

The line was busy. I hung up, made myself wait a few seconds, then tried again. Still busy. I couldn't wait any longer. I was ready to explode. I ran out to the street and headed toward the corner running. Before I reached it the yellow Cad came roaring around the corner and screeched to a stop beside me. María threw open the door, saying, "What's the matter? What happened?"

"Hotel El Encantado. Fast, woman."

She slammed her foot down on the accelerator and we took off. On the way I gave María a quick and sketchy rundown on what was up. Thanks to me, she was getting deeper into this than I'd planned; the least I could do was tell her what was coming off.

She didn't ask questions as I talked, just listened and drove like a jet pilot. As we turned in at El Encantado I said, "Honey, things may pop like firecrackers in a little while. I'm poison, and any gal seen with me is asking for trouble. You already know too much. You'd better check out. Drop me and beat it fast."

"No." Her face was flushed and she was almost smiling. She actually acted as if she were enjoying herself. This María was my kind of woman. A woman.

I pointed out the cottage and she slammed on the brakes, the heavy car skidding to a stop in front of 27. I got ready to jump out and run up, hoping that George wasn't inside. Even if he was, his probable shock at seeing me would give me an edge, and I'd be very happy to kick his teeth in anyway.

The car stopped and I leaped out and ran up to the door. It wasn't locked and I wasn't about to knock. I just slammed it open and charged in.

The living room was empty, but I heard footsteps and in a moment Gloria scurried in. She stopped suddenly, surprise on her face. "Shell! What—"

"You alone?"

"Yes."

"There's an orange-haired girl here in Acapulco. Name of Eve. Big blue eyes, upholstered shape, beautiful legs. Probably in some edge of the rackets. You know her?"

"It sounds like Eve Wilson. But where have you been? I've been trying to call you, Shell. What are you doing here?"

"This Eve Wilson. You know where she is? I've got to find her fast."

"Yes, she's right here."

"Here! In the house?"

"No, here at El Encantado. Cottage Six. I—"

I didn't wait for the rest. I turned around and started to sprint out to the car, and then stopped. Something Gloria had said . . . I turned at the door and asked her, "What did you say about calling me? Why? What about?"

She put her hands on her hips. "I've been trying to tell you. I called your suite at Las Américas half a dozen times, but there wasn't any answer. I didn't expect you to be there, Shell, but you hadn't told me where I could reach you."

I walked up to her and grabbed her arm. "Why'd you call me, Gloria? What's up?"

"Shell, you're hurting me."

"I'm sorry, honey." I let go of her arm. "It's just that things are coming to a head. There's not much time left."

"That's what I tried to phone you about. I'm not sure it's what you wanted to know, but you told me to listen for any rumble about Torelli and his shipment."

She paused. I wanted to shake her, but I let her tell it her own way. She said, "I really don't know what it is, but somebody's talked to Torelli about what Gunner had, and Torelli learned that Gunner is dead. George told me about it. Anyway, whoever it is wants five million dollars for the stuff. Isn't that silly?"

I had to sit down for a minute. My brain was going around like a ballerina and I couldn't get all this at once.

Then it started building up, a little bit more, and then all of it. I saw Eve coming out of the bathroom carrying a little black box that I'd thought might contain cosmetics and whatnot. Cosmetics, hell. It was five million bucks' worth of blackmail papers on my union man; government papers, the recording. I groaned. It had been that close, right in my hands. No, not quite. I remembered Eve's anger and concern when I'd held her mink coat for her and knocked her box to the floor. And then she'd calmly picked it up and walked out.

"Gloria," I said sharply, "when was this? How long ago?"

"I only heard it about half an hour ago. I don't know when Torelli heard. George was there when he got the call."

"You mean Torelli got a phone call about the stuff?"

"Yes. Then George stopped by and said he'd be busy for a while. That's how I happen to know. George said he had some sort of negotiations to make for Torelli. That's an awful lot of money, Shell."

Negotiations. Sure. Torelli was dickering with Eve, beating the price down. Beating it down to nothing. I knew the kind of negotiating Torelli did, and George was just the boy to handle it. That gritty, stupid little Eve, putting the proposition up to Torelli cold: five million and the stuff was his. A couple of things puzzled me, though.

"Gloria, Torelli didn't have the stuff half an hour or so ago?"

"No. But he was—"

"Yeah, thinking it over. You say George came by here? Clear up here to this cottage?"

"Yes."

I stood up and faced her and said, "Gloria, where is that woman? She may be dead by now. Where's her cottage? Quick!"

Her eyes widened but she said immediately, "It's across from here. You can see it from the door."

She stepped past me and pointed out the doorway, telling me which cottage was Eve's and I spotted the place. As soon as I knew which one it was I started running. It would be as quick as taking the car because of the winding road that led around by the cottages, but as I sprinted past the Cad I waved my arm at María to follow me. I didn't wait to see if she understood, but started across the green stretch of lawn toward the cottage a hundred yards from me.

Then it happened. Not much in the way of action, but even from a hundred yards away I didn't have any trouble seeing the man's figure come out of the front door and walk rapidly to the long black Lincoln parked near Cottage 6. He got in and tore down the winding drive, headed in a hurry for somewhere.

I didn't slow down; if anything, I ran faster, but I knew I was already too late.

15

MY LUNGS were hurting by the time I got within fifty feet of the cottage. I was sweating, not only from the exertion of running at top speed, but from the excitement building inside of me and from fear for Eve.

The conviction that I'd find Eve Wilson dead was almost like knowledge in my brain; God only knew what Torelli's man would have done to her while she was alive—or had done to her.

I raced the last few feet, jumped across the little porch, and slammed into the door. It burst open and I nearly fell as I stumbled inside. The room was almost identical with Gloria's living room, and it was empty. I glanced quickly around, saw nothing at first. Then, through an open door directly ahead of me, I saw dancing shadows, queerly flickering shadows that leaped and died. I ran toward the room, inside it, and almost stumbled into the flames.

I stopped suddenly, sickened, wanting to turn away and not look at what was there in front of me. On the bed was Eve, and I knew, even without logic or thought, that she must be dead. When I saw the flames, I had thought for a moment that the cottage had been set afire. But now other senses told me that wasn't what the fire had been for; the smell of burned flesh was thick and choking in the room and in my throat. So thick I could taste it.

The flames rose from a ten-gallon pail at the foot of one of the twin beds in front of me, still licking hungrily upward to eat at the blackened feet wired together above them. Eve Wilson lay across the bed, her arms pulled above her and tied to its head, her feet bound together and extending beyond the foot of the bed directly above the pail.

In the first moment after I burst into the room I saw all that, saw Eve's lovely body twisted on the bed, saw the marks of other burns on her white skin, the tangled orange hair, the gag tied into her mouth. I saw every detail of her body with startling clarity even as my flesh crawled and my throat closed up with sickness; I saw the way the gag distorted her mouth, the bright smear of lipstick staining her cheek, livid marks on her wrists where she'd torn the skin straining at her bonds.

I stepped forward and shoved the pail toward the wall with my foot. I knew it was a useless gesture, a sudden reaction to my personal revulsion, but I couldn't stand the sight of that fire searing flesh, even Eve's dead, unfeeling flesh.

And then she moved!

I stared, not even comprehending for a moment, then leaped toward the bed toward her, shock numbing my brain. She moved again, only the merest motion of her head, straining upward. The gag was loose as her torturer must have left it, shoved hurriedly back in between her red lips after she'd talked. And she'd talked, for sure.

I pulled the gag of wadded cloth from her mouth and watched her eyes slowly open. It was like watching the eyes of a mummy quiver and move. The long, curving lashes trembled, the lids fluttered and slid upward until her eyes were wide, staring at me with all the pain and horror in the world caught and captured in them, swimming in their blue depths. And then her lips moved; sounds came out, not words but only moaning, choking noises that were horrible and ugly and pitiful, and that thrust themselves into me like separate knives.

I couldn't move, couldn't even drag my eyes from that anguished face as her lips trembled and twisted as she tried to speak, draining the little life and strength left to her, and there were only those gasping, wretched sounds that were a soft and audible horror in the room. And then the words came out like soft cries, twisted, almost unrecognizable. "Told him . . . he called Torelli. . . knows."

I wanted to pet her, touch her, do anything to take that look out of her eyes. "Don't talk, honey," I said. "Take it easy, sweetheart. Don't even try to talk. I'll get a doctor."

Her eyes widened even more, clung desperately to mine, and she moved her head slightly, agony in the movement and in her gaze. She was trying to speak, willing herself to speak while her eyes forced me to look at her. I brought my face down close to hers as her mouth opened wide and her jaws moved back and forth soundlessly, her lower lip pulled far down below her teeth. Then her mouth nearly closed and she forced the words out, whispering, on one last breath of air. "Gull Islands . . . Gull. . ."

Her features smoothed, the eyes and mouth went slack. Her mouth still hung grotesquely open and her eyes continued to stare, but they stared like all the eyes that look forever into the blackness of eternity. The intricate, wonderful machinery inside her once beautiful body slowed and stopped, and she lay completely still with the perfect, complete stillness that is death.

I stared at her, knowing that she had murdered Gunner, and murdered him for gain, for money; but I couldn't feel any anger or hatred or contempt for her, not then. I just felt pity for her, and a kind of sadness that she would never be alive again. I moved to the foot of the bed and saw the torn, blackened feet, the darkened skin cracked and ugly, and I remembered the same feet tapping to the rhythm of Latin music in my room. I shuddered, and then the revulsion started building up in me. I wanted to get out, out in the clean air and the sunlight, but I made myself stay a moment longer. There was nothing I could do for Eve, but she had told me what I needed to know.

Her murderer had tortured her, learned where the papers were, phoned Torelli from here, then left Eve dying, the flames still . . . I shuddered again. Gull Islands, she had said. I knew there were islands of that name outside the bay, four or five miles from here. Eve's murderer would be racing toward them at this very moment. I thought a minute longer. I knew what I was going to do, but I couldn't let sickness and shock make me forget the plans I'd made, the thoughts I'd had before this moment. I still had to plan and think and scheme, even while my brain rebelled at thinking. I went back to Eve's side, took her limp left hand in mine. The big signet ring I had seen on her finger when she'd been with me at Las Américas was still there. I eased it from her finger, put the ring in my pocket, then left.

Outside I looked for María, but she wasn't waiting there for me. Apparently she hadn't understood my frantic waving when I'd raced by her. I could see the car now over near Gloria's cottage. I started walking rapidly toward it, still seeing Eve's dead face. The need for hurry was growing in me; whoever had been in that long black Lincoln had several minutes' head start. With a little luck I might catch him. And I had to catch him.

I'd been lucky so far in that none of the hoods had spotted me walking downtown, or since I'd been up here, but I had known it couldn't last if I kept walking around in broad daylight. It didn't.

I got to within fifteen yards of the car and María ground the motor into life just as the door of Gloria's cottage opened and the Joker stepped outside. I don't know whether he'd spotted me from inside and come out or just lamped me as he was leaving, but for a moment he squinted at me from twenty yards away, as if trying to convince himself that it was actually me, alive.

I leaped toward the Cadillac shouting, "Move, honey, move, get going!" and that broke the spell for the Joker.

It looked as though he covered eight feet in the first bound toward me, and I saw his hand digging at his shoulder holster. I don't know whether María saw it too, and the gun flashed dully in the sunlight the next instant, or whether it was my shouted words or simply an idea of her own, but she ground the gears and let out the clutch with a jerk. The wheels spun for a part of a second and then took hold, and it wasn't going to be long before she was doing seventy from the looks of things.

I changed course and angled toward a spot ahead of the accelerating car. I shouted at María, "Run, run, honey," not even using the right words but hoping that she'd understand. I wasn't about to jump on the car; I just wanted her to get the hell out of there, away from the Joker and any others of Torelli's men who might be around. There was a bigger fright building in me now than the one I'd had when I first saw Eve dying. It grew with the thought of María tortured like that, dying like that.

I wanted the Joker to think I was trying to get away, so I'd have at least a chance to catch him by surprise when I turned to face him. He was almost on me and I had nearly reached the car. María had slowed down, her frightened face turned toward me. The Joker hadn't fired the gun, maybe because he didn't want the noise to bring others running, but perhaps because he felt he had me anyway. He loomed up at my side, his great hands reaching for me as he came running at an angle toward me, now only a yard away. Not looking at him but still lunging toward the car, with my eyes fixed on it, I saw him from the corner of my eye as my right foot hit the ground and I let my left foot slam into the grass as it hit, dug it in, trying to bury it in the earth to stop me suddenly as I braced my leg against my weight and twisted, hurling myself toward the Joker, my body dropping down toward the ground, angling at his burly legs.

My shoulder slammed into one of his driving knees and then I hit the grass, my face grinding over it as I sprawled full length. I rolled over on my back, tried to scramble to my feet. The Joker had gone flying over my body, head over heels, and landed even more heavily than I, the gun squirting from his fist. Now he was on his hands and knees, turned away from me, but as I watched, he swung around toward me with his lips pulled away from his teeth, still down on all fours like a misshapen animal.

María had stopped the car. Damn her, damn the woman. Was she crazy? Didn't she know she had to get out of there? I got to my feet and shouted, "Get out! Go on, honey. For God's sake get out of here!"

Then the Joker was on his feet facing me, his long arms down at his side. He didn't try to pick up the gun a few feet away; he kept his eyes on me, moved toward me. If I ran he'd have plenty of time to get the gun and pick me off. I waited for him. That damn little María still sat in the car, twenty feet away, the motor idling, her face turned toward me.

The Joker moved closer, his arms coming up like hooks held out from his sides. If he ever got those arms around me it would be all over; I knew he had probably twice my strength in those beefy arms. I held my hands up in front of me, open, so I could slash or chop at his face and neck with their edges. I knew how; I knew the tricks and blows of judo, and I had been taught unarmed defense in the Marines, but I had to keep away from him, keep those arms from getting around me.

I stepped back away from the Joker as he reached me, then moved around him to the side, circling, as he paused, turned, then leaped toward me. He was wide open and I slashed my right hand out hard from my chest, trying with its edge for the thin, brittle bridge of his nose, but one of his big hands came up, barely flicking mine, not enough to block it but enough to deflect the blow that would have killed him had it landed.

The side of my hand jarred into his cheek, robbed of part of its force, but it jerked his head around and jarred him as he reached for my wrist. He grabbed my wrist, slapped his other hand around it, and started to bend it. The thought of that black car racing away, getting farther and farther from me, flashed into my mind. It was all over, the whole show was over, if the Joker crippled me now. In an hour Torelli would have the blackmail file in his hands. And if the Joker crippled me, I knew he'd kill me.

He was holding me tightly and I let myself crumple, threw myself backward and down toward the ground, pulling the Joker toward me and feeling the screaming pain that wrenched my shoulder. But even before my back slammed into the ground I brought my right foot up hard into the Joker's middle as the weight of his body fell on top of me. His feet left the ground and I strained backward, jerking my arm and thrusting with my foot in his belly, and he went on over my head, a grunt bursting from his lips just before he thudded heavily into the ground behind me.

I spun toward him, unable to hold his arm, but at least free of his grip. He was scrambling around before me and I chopped wildly at his ugly face, and the thick blade of my right hand slashed into his lip, split it, and sent the blood spurting. My other hand jarred into his jaw, then again into his throat, and I jabbed with stiff fingers at his eyes, missing, but ripping his cheek as he jerked his head. He moved away from me, trying to get up, as I got my feet under me and jumped toward him.

He was just coming up off the ground, bent over as I got close to him, and his face was inches from my knee. I drove the knee forward, cracking into his jaw. Pain ran up into my thigh. It felt as if I'd broken the kneecap. The Joker went back on his fanny and rolled to his side, groggy, but still trying to get up. I stepped forward; pain flamed in my kneecap, but the leg held me up and I reached him. I kicked him in the face. That was it. The fight went out of the Joker.

I turned around. María still stared, her mouth hanging open. I ran toward the car and jumped into the back, yelling at her to get moving. I was barely inside the car when it hurtled forward, throwing me against the cushions. María went careening recklessly around the curves of the winding drive as I climbed into the front seat.

I looked back once toward Gloria's cottage. The Joker was on his hands and knees, shaking his head. Perhaps he'd never been knocked completely out. He looked to be in good enough shape to reach a phone and call Torelli, at least as soon as his head cleared enough so that he'd think of it. Things were ganging up on me.

I leaned forward and peered out the windshield, urging the car to go faster. Maybe there was time. Maybe.

16

MARÍA DROVE LIKE A MANIAC down to Manuel Guzmán and turned right. I said, "Honey, why didn't you beat it? I wanted you out of there."

Her jaws clenched together as she glanced at me. She said, "I wanted to, Shell. I was scared. I wanted to get way. But I couldn't. I just couldn't leave you there when . . . when he might have killed you. I just couldn't move."

She was quiet for a few seconds, then she said, "Where are we going?"

"Not we. Me. You've got your neck stuck out far enough. You'd better go hide someplace." I gave her a quick rundown on what had happened: Eve, her killer on his way to Gull Islands; even at this moment, perhaps, almost there.

She said, "You're going there? But you might get killed."

I didn't answer her, but she had said a larger mouthful than she knew. What it boiled down to was that I should have killed the Joker. But it's one thing to kill a man in a fight or when he's trying to kill you, and another thing entirely to kill a man when he's helpless. The fact remained that I should have killed him. Now, or soon, he would certainly phone Torelli and spill the story on what had happened. Torelli had earlier been phoned by Eve's killer, who undoubtedly had told him where the blackmail stuff was, and got Torelli's OK to pick up the stuff, then headed for the islands. Torelli could easily put those two phone calls together. When he did, he'd know not only that I wasn't drowned and was very much alive, but also that I knew about Eve and might well be on my way to Gull Islands, or at least after her killer. And the papers. He'd know damned well that I wasn't just a dope who had stumbled into Gunner's room. That was bad enough, but the worst part at the moment was that Torelli's next move, without a shadow of a doubt, would be to order a flock of his men to Gull Islands—after Shell Scott. My only chance was speed, hurry, get there and away before any Torelli army arrived. What I'd do at Gull Islands I didn't know yet. But the papers were there. That was the important thing.

María suddenly pulled over to the curb and stopped. I looked at her as she put the gears in neutral and clasped her hands together. "I can't drive," she said. "After that fight back there, I feel as if I'm coming apart." She started to tremble.

I said sharply, "Snap out of it. Don't go to pieces on me now. Get over here and let me drive." I pulled María to my side of the seat, climbed over her, and got under the wheel. I hated to sound so rough, but if I had sympathized with her she'd probably have unraveled.

I slammed the car into gear and headed for a dock where I could rent a boat.

I glanced behind me to the feathery wake spreading from the stern of the motorboat, then ahead to where the sleek bow cut through the waters of the sea outside Acapulco Bay. The sea was strangely calm, incredibly level and smooth, flat and brassy under the hot sun. It was almost like being on a huge lake with hardly any swell or motion of the water. There had been little change in the motion of the boat when I'd left the mouth of the bay and entered the ocean itself.

When I got the boat, María had been practically hanging on my shirttail all the time, pleading with me to stay, pleading with her words and her soft, dark eyes. I almost had to bat her one. But God, she was a sweetheart.

It had taken me five precious minutes after reaching the dock, and a whole fistful of pesos, but I'd got a fast boat and precise directions to Gull Islands. Gull Islands are unique in that they are uninhabited except by millions of birds, literally millions of squawking gulls. The islands sit offshore about a mile, six little dots in the blue of the sea, and always swarms of screaming gulls circle and soar above them. The birds nest there, breed there; it's a kind of sanctuary for them. There were half a dozen of the islands, and that wasn't so good, because I knew the papers I wanted were on one of them, but I didn't know which one. I had to give Eve credit; she'd picked a good hiding place.

I could see the islands now and corrected my course a little to point me directly at them. I knew that I was headed in the right direction, but that was all. I didn't have any idea which of the islands to hit, where the papers would be, which island the man ahead of me would be on. And I knew he must be there by now. I couldn't circle each island. That would not only take too much time, but also would spotlight me for the other man, the bastard who had tortured and murdered Eve to get the information he wanted. One more murder wouldn't make any difference to him, and I didn't have a gun. I'd been in such a hurry and so charged up back there with the Joker that I'd even forgotten to take the gun he had dropped.

I was worried, too, about the noise the motor of my boat made, and the chance that I'd be seen approaching. A man could hide, wait till I got near, then put a bullet in my brain. But I had to keep going now; once Torelli got his hands on the papers, I was out in the cold. And so were a lot of other people. I'd never get them back from him.

I looked behind me again. I'd been keeping an eye peeled, half expecting to see that another boat or boats had already taken off after me. I hadn't seen anything yet, but I was out too far to see all the way into the bay. I was close to the islands now, and I started to cut my motor and coast toward them when I saw, on the third island ahead of me, a whole swarm of birds rising from the ground and fluttering in the sky, darting and swirling, moving in toward the center of the island from right to left like a wave. It was a shifting white cloud that none of the other islands had in such degree, and I knew what had caused it, what must have caused it.

He was there.

And this was by far the largest of the islands, a half-mile or more in diameter, and about three or four hundred yards from the small island nearest it. Eve had probably picked it because a thousand little brief cases or boxes or piles of papers could be hidden on it and a guy could search half a year for what Eve had hidden and not find it unless he knew where to look. And I didn't know where to look. I gunned toward the big island, beginning to hear the raucous cry of the gulls now, and twenty yards away I cut the motor and drifted in toward the shore.

As soon as the noise of the motor died I could hear the thousand-voiced cry of the gulls piercing my ears. I drifted closer and the bow of the boat slid up on the shore. A wave of white loomed up in front of my face as what looked like thousands of birds whirled into the air in a white explosion. The noise was almost deafening, and I knew now that I hadn't been heard approaching—or seen, either. I could see no more than twenty yards ahead of me except for brief moments when the shifting pattern of feathery bodies left a hole through which I could see for a brief moment. There were a few rocks and some small, twisted trees and bushes, but little other vegetation. Everything on the ground was buried under the droppings of the gulls. And everywhere was that living cloud of bird life, incessantly and raucously crying. I felt as if I had been suddenly transported from the calm, flat sea into a small, eerie world out of a nightmare.

I had fixed in my mind the position of the first flurry of white, the flurry I'd seen from out on the sea, and I knew it was close, on my right now. The excitement in the bird colony had traveled in a nearly straight line toward the center of the island, so the other man had probably been headed there. He wasn't what I wanted though; not at first. First I wanted to find the boat he'd come in. I circled around to my right, following the shoreline and stirring up more clouds of gulls, and in two minutes I found the boat. It was about like the one I'd come in, except that it was smaller. It was empty. I walked fifteen yards from it and waited. He'd soon be coming back to the boat. And I knew he'd be carrying papers that might be worth, to Vincente Torelli, five million dollars or many, many lives. Something that I wanted, that Joe wanted desperately, that the FBI and the War Department had to have, something that a number of union chiefs and Communists would give almost anything for. The unreal island was a strange setting for what was soon to happen, and yet the outcome of whatever did happen, would affect hundreds, perhaps even thousands and millions of people.

Fifteen minutes dragged by. I knew the man would come back with a gun at his shoulder, and I was sure, even now, that only one of us would leave here alive. I felt strangely calm. I'd known this was coming for quite a while, and I was glad it was finally here. On my side I had surprise, and that's usually half the battle.

It was eerie and almost frightening waiting in the now slowly surging mass of birds. They flew between me and the sun, light flickering and alternating with the shadows on me and around me, shadows that sometimes persisted for long seconds. Feathers drifted down near me, and once in a while a great gull would sweep past my face. The screams and cries and shrieks drowned the sound of the sea and all other sounds.

I never did hear him. But it seemed as if the shrieks and screams of birds got even louder, and movement rippled even more rapidly through the white cloud around me, and I knew he was coming back, getting nearer. I felt ready for him, and I noticed with surprise that I was standing with my feet spread wide and my hands clenched, and that my mouth was bone dry, my heart racing in my chest.

And then I saw him.

At first I got just a glimpse of him thirty yards away as white bodies fluttered up before him, but it was his face, George Madison's face. I had known that it would almost surely be Madison, doing his "negotiations" for Torelli, maybe trying to get back in Torelli's good graces, but I was glad to see his face and know for sure. Because I'd wanted it to be George Madison; we'd had a showdown coming, and knowing him, I'd been pretty sure it would probably have ended with a bullet in my back. Here, now, it was just George and me alone, and with that first brief glimpse of his face the anger and humiliation and hate suddenly boiled up inside me, spreading from my stomach into my chest and brain, and through some strange trick of my senses the smell of burning flesh was in my nostrils again, just as real and vivid and biting as when I'd first stepped into Eve's bedroom.

I waited only a second after I first saw him, then moved forward slowly, straining my eyes for the next flash of his face or body, because I knew I'd have to be fast. I couldn't give him a chance to get ready for me; I had to take him by surprise, get close to him before he realized what was happening, realized that he wasn't alone.

I saw him again, sixty feet away, a short twenty yards, and I leaped forward, digging my feet into the soft footing beneath me and leaping toward him with all my strength. I cut the sixty feet in half before he spotted me, and I saw the black case he was carrying in his right hand—the black case I had seen before in Eve Wilson's hand.

George Madison swung his head up, unbelieving at first, shocked into a stillness as he saw me charging out of nowhere at him through a screaming flurry of whirling white and gray bodies and beating wings, with my hands already up and reaching toward him. God knows what went through his brain in that moment; maybe he wondered if I'd risen dripping out of the sea to kill him, and maybe his stupid brain just saw me, identified me, and then slowly forced him into action.

But the surprise was enough. I almost reached him before he hurled the box at me in a kind of reflex motion and swept his hand in the same movement toward the gun under his coat. The box cracked into my face but I didn't even feel it, and then I was on him. My body slammed into his, with all my weight and speed adding to the impact, and it was like the sound of an ax pounding into a tree trunk as our bodies met. He went stumbling away from me, falling on his back and rolling, and I staggered, then took one more step and left my feet in a dive toward him.

He was dazed, but he knew now that this was for keeps, for one of us, and he rolled partially away as I crashed into him. Then his hand chopped across my cheek, the jar shuddering down into my spine. I felt that one, and saw his hand rise as he squirmed from beneath me and jabbed at my throat with stiff fingers. I jerked my head aside and clutched for his arm, trying to snap it, pull him off balance so I could get to him, and then he scrambled to his knees, right hand streaking for his gun.

I clutched at his arm, and caught the sleeve of his coat, jerked desperately even as the knowledge grew in me that this wasn't like a brawl with the Joker, who depended only on his strength. George was the same kind of fighter I was. His open hand crashing across my cheek, the stiff-fingered jab at my throat had told me he could kill me in a second with his hands, just as I could kill him with mine.

I jerked at his sleeve, yanking his hand away from the butt of the gun, then threw my other hand at his face, aiming for the bridge of his nose as I had with the Joker. We were both still on our knees, sinking inches into the slime beneath us, and George ducked toward me rather than away from me, getting in close as my hand clipped his head a glancing blow at the hairline, his own hand driving for my solar plexus with the fingers extended stiffly so they would burst my heart inside me when the blow landed.

I twisted frantically away from those stiff fingers, completely on the defensive, with my right arm still swinging above him as it had glanced from his head, my body wide open and unprotected. I threw myself forward, twisting to my left in the fraction of a second before the blow landed. I turned barely enough and the fingers knifed into my ribs, missing the vital spot but flooding my side with a sharp, agonizing pain.

He might have had me then, with a little luck, but again he slapped his hand to his chest for the gun. As it slid from beneath his coat I rolled toward him, on my knees now and almost falling upon him, chopping with my hand at his arm as the gun swung toward me. I felt the thud as I hit flesh, and the gun fell from his grip.

Neither of us reached for the gun, a heavy .45 automatic, though it lay between us. No more false moves for him or for me. We'd measured each other now, knew what the next wrong move would mean. On our knees in the filth, only a yard apart, we stared at each other for a breath of time, looking like two men from another age battling in primeval ooze while the gulls screamed and swirled around us.

He backed away on his knees, hoping I'd try for the gun and leave myself unprotected for another moment. I got my feet under me and stood up as he did the same. We moved toward each other simultaneously; slowly, warily, circling like jungle animals, waiting for an opening.

Suddenly he feinted with one hand. I watched him as I stepped back on my right foot, confidence returning to me after the scare that one blow of his had given me—and sharp pain ripped through my knee, the knee with which I'd kicked the Joker, and I felt my leg giving under the sudden weight of my body on it. As it gave, more of my weight pressed on the strained tendons and ligaments and my foot twisted and slipped from under me and I fell, landing on the knee but managing to stay upright, not even feeling the pain now as my eyes filled with the sight of George's body almost upon me and the blur of his sweeping arm and hand slashing upward from his thighs toward my face. I thrust my left hand up, blocked his arm, and grabbed it. He drove forward, his body banging into me, but I kept the grip on his wrist, tightened my fingers. He grabbed my right wrist with his free hand as we rolled on the ground. Then suddenly his hand left my wrist and I rose on one knee again, shaking my head to clear my vision. Something crashed into the side of my head, stunning me, dimming my sight, and I fell backward.

In a blurred flash I saw him, his face only two feet from mine, distorted and ugly. I saw his left hand moving again, and the metallic gleam of the gun in his hand. That was what he had hit me with; when we rolled on the ground he must have hit the automatic, felt it, then reached for it and used it as a club.

And now that he had it in his hand, he thought only of the gun. A gun was the instrument he had used so many times before to kill, to murder; he knew he could kill me with the gun. And because of that, because of his dependence on guns and confidence in his automatic, he forgot that he could have killed me with his hands.

The gun was pointed slightly to my right, swinging around now toward my head, ready to blast death into my brain. Even as I moved I knew that in another second it would be ended for one of us. I lunged toward him, slamming my left hand down against the earth to hold my body from the ground, and with my body momentarily supported I threw my right hand forward, my momentum and body weight behind my swinging arm, and my hand open, the fingers pointing at the soft spot in his belly below his rib cage. The gun was pointing squarely at my head, and he must already have been tightening his finger on the trigger when my fingers sliced into the unprotected, yielding flesh, and it felt as if my hand had half buried itself in his body even as I jerked my hand aside and rolled away from the gun.

He didn't even manage to pull the trigger. The force of my stiff-fingered blow sent him toppling slowly backward from his knees, his feet bending beneath him, and I knew that his heart was rending inside him, bursting, sending a bloody explosion through his body for the last time, and that in seconds he would be dead.

And, like that, it was over.

He fell backward, one leg still cramped beneath him, and died. The gun had fallen from his fingers. I picked it up and sat there with him for a few seconds, letting my breathing get more shallow and the little tremors stop rippling through my body. The screeching gulls slowly circled down about us. Some of them lighted on the earth and hopped about with oddly comical motions.

I looked around me, then at the body on the ground, thinking that this was a strange grave for a man, and that it could have been my grave. When I left, the gulls would settle down like dirty white vultures, and this island would appear like all the others. The gulls might be curious about the man thing that didn't move, but they'd soon ignore him and continue their wheeling and screeching above and around him, and maybe walk on his stiffening body and waxen face. And then, in time, he'd become part of that slime beneath him.

The hell with him. It was no more than he deserved.

I got up, walked to where the black case lay on the ground, picked it up, and went back to George. I went through his pockets and found the silver key that fitted the lock in the black case, put it in my pocket, and started walking toward my boat, the automatic stuffed into my trousers. My knee seemed to be OK as long as I didn't twist it, put the wrong pressure on it. But my side hurt like hell and I felt as if I were one large bruise.

I spotted George's boat and turned right, walking toward where I'd left my own. I reached it, started to climb in and shove off, then glanced idly out over the water.

I'd forgotten all about them while I'd been battling with George. But there they were, slicing through the water toward me: Torelli's army.

17

THEY SAW ME. At least I could see them too. There were two boats with three people in each, which meant there were only six men after me. Hell, I probably had six cartridges in the .45, maybe seven, so all I had to do was overpower six gorillas, then shoot them. I might even have a bullet left over for the wizard. For me to accomplish all that, there'd have to be a wizard.

Of course, I didn't stand there gaping at my six pursuers while I figured all this out. By now I was running like a fiend back through the sea gulls. I had the black box in one hand and the .45 in the other, and I knew I had to get rid of the box fast. There wasn't a chance in the world that I could get away from here without Torelli's men catching me, and right now, even though I couldn't really convince myself of it, the black box was more important than I was. I could only hope those guys hadn't seen it in my hand. There was a good chance they hadn't; I had been hardly more than a blur out there once I spotted them. If they hadn't seen the box, I might be able to ditch it somewhere and swear I hadn't seen it either. Then later my ghost could come back for it.

I kept running. I knew the general direction I'd been taking, but I suddenly realized that, just in case I lived to get away from here, I'd want to know how to find the box again. I started looking around for a hiding place, but all I could see was the sea gulls. Already I was beginning to hate sea gulls.

I had slowed down to a trot by now, and ahead of me was a gnarled tree taller than most on the island. Near its top was a peculiar arrangement of three branches that I'd recognize if ever I saw it again. This was far enough; I couldn't run around carrying the stuff any longer. I put my back against the tree and paced off twenty steps, then stooped down and, with my hands, dug out a hole about two feet deep. What passed for ground out here was soft stuff, and easy to dig into. I put the box in the hole and covered it up, smoothed the ground as best I could. Buried treasure. But it was the first time I'd ever heard of treasure being buried in what my treasure was buried in.

As an afterthought I went back to the tree and scratched a small mark in its side with the metal of the automatic, then smoothed out my track as well as I could, walking backward several yards from the tree. From that point I ran off in one direction, then came back and ran off in the other direction. It may sound as if I were running off in all directions, but I was covering up my tracks and laying false trails. This brilliant maneuver accomplished, I ran all over some more, and then began considering seriously just what I was doing.

I had to get the hell out of here, but there were only three ways the hell out of here; land, sea, and air. That wasn't enough. What I needed was the fourth dimension. The land didn't stretch far enough; I could hardly make it by air; and I couldn't swim a hundred yards, much less the mile or more to shore. Anyway, I was pooped. So I had to get a boat—and the only boats were back where those six torpedoes were. There was the answer: a torpedo boat. There's something about this island, I thought. It tries a man.

I started back. I angled over to the edge of the island, skirted it in a direction that would take me around to the boats. After five minutes without running into any of the lurking hoods, I spotted George's boat. One of the torpedoes was there, his back toward me. Only one. Maybe I had a chance. I kept my eyes on him and sneaked closer. I tried to decide whether to shoot him, and maybe bring the others running, or to attempt sneaking the rest of the way up to where I could hit him on the head. While I decided this, somebody hit me on the head.

There was a little, hard hammer in each of the arteries leading into my brain, and every time my heart pumped those little hammers flew through the arteries and slammed into a soft spot on my skull. I knew it was soft because I could feel it bending in and out with each heartbeat. Consciousness came back to me and I could see the blur of pinkish light filtering through my closed eyelids. I opened them.

I couldn't get oriented for a minute. I've been sapped before, and usually I come to looking at a ceiling. This time I was looking at a whole passel of foolish birds flapping around where the ceiling should be. Birds and sky and more birds. Very odd. It would appear I had been sapped once too often.

I started to turn my head to the left to see where I was at, and something hard slammed into the side of my jaw, and I suddenly didn't give a damn where I was at. The side of my jaw started to hurt just a little more than the back of my head. I put my hand up and brushed my cheek; the swelling had already started. I ran my tongue along the inside of my teeth. The teeth were all there, so far, but I could taste blood from the cuts inside my mouth.

A rough voice behind me said, "Turn around, Scott," and like a fool I started to. Wham! Same jaw, same thing all over. People behind me were laughing. It was a funny joke.

"Get up," Rough Voice said.

Get up, sure. Throw me a rope for my teeth and I'll bite my way up. But I grunted and strained and got to a sitting position. And I got a look at them. All six of them. It was horrible.

Such a stupid collection of blanks I had ever seen. They were all big muscle-brained he-men, the kind you see at the beach kicking sand, and throwing footballs where the girls can see them, and hanging from the parallel bars with one hand while scratching themselves under the arm with their other hand, and sticking out their upper teeth, and looking very natural that way. They were a sorry lot.

"Get up," Rough Voice said again.

I looked up at him, really singled him out and looked at him for the first time, and immediately wished it were the last time.

The man was not real. No, sir, he was an illusion. It was a fact that one half of his face was smaller than the other, and if that half was less ugly it was only because there was less of it. He had no hair on his head at all, and his little black eyes perched like flies over his huge, mashed nose. Stiff black hairs jutted out of his nostrils like a lost mustache.

Torelli had really sent the sour cream off the top after me. To look at these six guys, you'd think Torelli had hoped to scare me to death.

"All right, Scott," said Rough Voice. "Where's the papers?"

Now we were getting down to business. I said, "What are you talking about?"

"Look, Scott, maybe you like getting slapped around. Well, I like slapping you around, see? So when I ask you questions, you answer fast and right."

This wasn't good. I thought of the black box buried not far from here, and what it would mean if these guys got it. The five others stood behind Rough Voice, looking down at me. A couple of guns were in sight and one guy had a pair of field glasses hanging from his neck by a strap. They all looked grim. I'd hold out as long as I could, but I was pretty sure that if Rough Voice really started working on me, no matter how I tried not to, I might talk. There are things you can do to a man that will make almost any man talk when he stops screaming.

"Listen," I said, "don't you get it? I don't know what's coming off."

"Where's Madison?"

That was something; they hadn't found him yet. I said, "Madison? How the hell would I know?"

Rough Voice didn't like that. His jaw muscles bulged and his mustache wiggled. He said, "The only reason you're not unconscious is because you can't talk unconscious. But I'm getting tired. You didn't come out here just for fun."

"Why not? I like birds."

Wham! I was on my way back again. The hell with it. I stayed there. But not for long. Rough Voice reached down and grabbed the front of my shirt and jerked me to a sitting position. He shook me a little, then told one of the men behind him to scout around. One of the guys took off.

"Scott, I better wise you up," Rough Voice said roughly. "I know you came out here after Madison, and after the papers. I know they was out here. And you know I know it. Tell me where they are fast and you'll live longer."

Yeah, I knew how much longer. Just long enough to let them get their hands on the papers.

I gritted my teeth and said, "I don't know what you're talking about."

His big fist slammed into my stomach and every atom of air ripped out of my lungs. He grabbed me and pulled me up, and I got the fist in my stomach again. Then, blurrily, I saw his big fist coming at me. This time the sun didn't dim. It went out.

It took me quite a while this trip. I got the pinkish glow through my lids and worked for a minute or two to get them open. It was an automatic thing to do when coming out of unconsciousness, but after I got them open again I realized it hadn't been worth the trouble. Rough Voice grabbed my shirt and pulled me to my seat again.

His big hand slammed across my face, then back the other way. I was getting scrambled. But I had it figured that he wasn't trying to kill me. He only wanted me to think he was trying to kill me. Well, that's what I thought.

He said harshly, not a trace of humor in his voice now, "I'm tired messing around. I'm gonna start breaking your bones in a minute. Now get up on your feet."

I got awkwardly to my feet. My brain was clearer now; it seemed somehow easier to think on my feet. I had to figure what to tell these guys, and figure fast. They knew what I was doing here, all right—but maybe, just maybe, there was a way.

If I could convince them that Madison had got here ahead of me and left with the papers, they maybe wouldn't kill me right way, might take me ashore. They might wait till they'd checked my story. It was pretty flimsy, and it would take some doing, but at least the old think pot was starting to perk.

Then I noticed that all five guys here had turned their heads and were looking off to my left. I took a look myself.

No, things couldn't get much worse. Of course not. This was swell. The sixth guy was coming back to join the party now, and he was dragging George Madison along behind him by one foot.

18

THE SIXTH MAN walked up to us and dropped George Madison's foot. Seven people watched this with a grisly fascination, and then six people looked at me. I kept looking at George.

That foot plopping down to the ground did more toward lowering my morale than the beating I'd so far received. I looked at the foot, and it was my foot down there. That was me down there. The guy who'd brought the body had hauled it all the way, part of the time with the face dragging along the ground. The eyes were opened, but even if he'd been alive he couldn't have seen out of them. And the face was bruised and cut, the mouth hanging ajar. George didn't look good at all.

I was in pretty bad shape myself. My lips were puffed, and I could tell by the soreness on it that my tongue had been cut, probably on my teeth. At least the teeth were still there. Of course, so were George's.

Rough Voice stepped closer to me. Nothing had been said yet, but I'd have a hell of a time convincing these guys now that Madison had run away with the papers.

Rough Voice said softly, "You didn't know where Madison was, huh? He just fell down and hurt himself, didn't he? Well, Scott, I think I'll break your right arm first."

"Wait a minute." I took a breath. "All right, I came out here after Madison, sure. We'd had trouble before—you know about it—and I was carrying a little hate for him." I didn't know how much of this they'd swallow, but at least I was still on my feet. I went on: "When I got out here, it must have been just a minute or two after Madison. He was probably watching me from shore. We had a beef, and—well, he lost."

"Sure," Rough Voice said. "He had a forty-five, but he didn't feel like shooting you."

"We . . . talked first. Argued. He got too close and I took his gun away."

Rough Voice laughed. It was an ugly laugh. "Took it away," he said. He reached under his coat and pulled out a gun. It was another .45 automatic. He worked the slide, putting a cartridge under the hammer, and then he pointed the gun at me.

Man, I wanted away from there. I was actually becoming obsessed with the idea of getting away from there.

Rough Voice said, "Why don't you take this gun away, Scott? You must be good at it." He was having a jolly time.

"Hey," one of the guys behind him said. "Lookit."

Everybody looked out where he pointed, and we all saw the boat at about the same time. It was a long, white job cutting through that flat ocean toward us. I had been hoping it would be the Marines.

The boat veered away from us about fifty yards from the island. I could see two people in it, and I could barely make out the faces pointed toward us. The conversation stopped while we gawked. The boat went past us for a couple of hundred yards, then started turning around and heading back.

Rough Voice said, "We better get in off the shore. No sense letting people see what's going on." He looked at me. "You know what's gonna happen if you don't start spilling your guts?"

"Yeah. You'll spill my guts."

He knocked me down.

I didn't feel nearly as tough as I sounded. And I certainly hadn't meant to sound that tough. He didn't knock me out, but he knocked me dizzy. He hauled me up again and grabbed the front of my shirt again. He bunched it up in his hand and the cloth ripped. He had a little skin in there, too. He looked as if he were really going to start working me over now, and I started to raise my hands, shaking my head to get the dizziness away.

"Hey!" one of the goons yelled. "Lookit!"

Rough Voice kept hanging onto my shirt and me, but he turned his head. We all did. The boat was roaring at us, then up close it turned away. Something was ripping along several yards behind it. I shook my head again. Something was wrong with my eyes. Must have been that last blow that did it, but I could have sworn it was a woman bouncing along behind the boat. I was reasonably sure it was a woman, even as dizzy as I was, because she didn't have anything on, and it's usually pretty easy to identify people as women when they don't have anything on. And this naked woman was bobbing along behind the boat getting closer and closer to us in a long, splashing arc, and she was on water skis.

She zoomed in practically to the shore, zipping along on top of the water, and as she swished past us and away she smiled and waved, apparently very happy indeed.

"Lookit," the same goon said. "Ooooh, lookit. She's nekkid."

I hardly heard him. I was staring at María Carmen's rapidly dwindling behind.

The boat turned and started back and all the rest of it seemed to happen automatically. I didn't even think about it. All the torpedoes were staring bug-eyed at what I'd just been staring at, even Rough Voice. He still gripped my shirt with one hand, and he held the automatic chest-high in the other. That hand gripping my shirt would make slugging him a little difficult, so I did the next best thing, which turned out to be a whole lot better.

I took a long step forward, close to him, and I slammed my right knee with all my strength up between his thighs, right where it would be, by all right-thinking people, called a foul. I fouled him, all right. I fouled him good, and as he gasped and gagged and started crumpling I grabbed the automatic in my right hand and threw hand and gun and all against his temple.

He slumped against me as about three of the guys half a dozen feet away let out startled yells, and I slipped my left arm under his shoulders and around his back and hugged him to me as if we were going dancing. The checked butt of the automatic was solid in my right fist. I slipped my finger around the trigger and yelled at the others, who were just now starting toward me. "Get back or—"

I didn't finish it because one of the men had been standing all this time with a gun in his hand, and he was hunching downward into a slight crouch now and jerking the gun up toward me. I guess he didn't care if he shot Rough Voice in the back, so long as he got a piece of me.

I pulled the trigger of my gun three times as fast as I could, aiming awkwardly around Rough Voice's limp arm and hoping that one of the slugs would get the guy. Two of them did. One spun him around and the other one slammed into him somewhere and he went down five feet back of where he'd been standing when I blasted him.

That slowed the others. Only one of them had a gun in his fist, and it was pointed toward the ground halfway between him and me.

"That's enough," I snapped. "Drop it. Drop it fast!" I pointed the gun at him, and he dropped it. The rest were hesitant, shaken by the suddenness of what had happened, and I backed away from them. My feet went into the water. I kept backing up until the water was around my hips, keeping the automatic trained on the hoods ashore, then I yelled at them, "Run, you bastards. Run!" With the last word I started pulling the trigger. I aimed over their heads and emptied the clip as they yelped and scattered in every direction except at me.

I dropped Rough Voice in the water, threw the automatic after the disappearing hoods, and started splashing out to sea.

And here came María.

There should have been a band playing. Zip, swoop, and there she was. The boat slowed down and she settled into the water a few feet from me.

"Here," she gasped. It seemed like a strange thing to be doing, but I took the water ski she was shoving at me. I grabbed it tight with both hands and hung on as the boat accelerated, and before I knew it I was going like a porpoise. For a little while I was on top of the water and then I started down like a whale sounding. I thought I was going to hit the ocean bottom when I bobbed up again. It was rough, but I was getting away. It occurred to me that I was a fortunate fellow. Yes, I was fortunate indeed. Wasn't I water-skiing at Acapulco?

19

IN THE BOAT, after our first babbling bits of what was, for all practical purposes, completely unintelligible conversation, I grabbed María and gave her a very wild kiss. She had got back into the clothes she'd been wearing when I'd left her at the dock, so the kiss was not as wild as it might otherwise have been, but it was quite satisfactory anyway.

A guy about forty in a yachting cap, blue coat, and white ducks was at the wheel, politely ignoring us. We sat together in the seat behind him.

I said to María, "How did all this come about? I'm just now realizing that it's real."

She smiled at me, blinking her brown eyes. Her dark hair was plastered down on her head, sopping wet and almost black. She said, "I saw all those horrible men come to the dock and get a boat, and I knew who they were from what you'd told me—and the way they looked. I was frantic. I finally hired a boat." She nodded toward the yachting cap. "I mean, I didn't really hire it; Jim's an old friend of mine. I went to see him, and then we came out here." She smiled happily. "And here I am."

"And there you were," I said. "In the flesh. That was perfect, really. It took all the attention off me, every bit of it. But how in the name of sanity did you happen to think of that?"

She laughed. "I thought of the water skis before we even left. I figured those men might be suspicious of a boat just coming around, but I thought they might be less suspicious if it looked like somebody just water-skiing. I was going skiing with my street clothes on—I thought that might be surprising. And then right at the last moment, after we saw you and the boats on shore, I thought of the . . . the other." She chuckled. "I thought people might look at me, and maybe you could run."

People might look at me, she said. That was possibly the greatest understatement I had ever heard. I kissed her again.

She laughed, then frowned slightly. "Did you get . . ."

I shook my head. That started me thinking again. We still weren't very far from the island, and looking back, I could see the boats and the tiny figures of the men on the shore. Nobody had taken off after us yet. Probably they were more interested in the papers than in me. And they'd had to fish Rough Voice out of the water.

I had a small idea.

I told María about it and she gave directions to Jim, the pilot. We turned around and headed back.

The boat in which I'd gone to the island looked like a faster job than the hoodlums', and the one we were now in was even speedier than mine, so I figured if it came to a chase we'd have little trouble. And we weren't heading back to the big island anyway, but to the smaller one three or four hundred yards from it. I wanted the goons to see me, and I hoped the guy who'd been wearing the field glasses would use them.

We skirted the small island, watching the big one, but didn't see any boats take off. We grounded, and I jumped out and ran ashore into a cloud of sea gulls. It was a shame after I'd had my bath in the ocean. These birds must have been drinking Mexican tap water, and a little of the stuff goes a long way. Especially out here. These birds were sick. But I kept going till I was hidden from view, and looked around. I found a few dead limbs and broke half a dozen foot-long sticks from them, took off my shirt, and wrapped the sticks in it. While I was at it I picked up a handful of this Gull Island and shoved it in my pants pocket, then ran back to the boat, carrying the bundle in front of me. It wasn't much of a play, but if the goon was using his field glasses he might start wondering. They knew they were looking for a package or box, but they couldn't know for sure what island it was on. A whole flock of men, digging up the big island and looking around, might find the black box I'd buried, but if I could divert any attention at all to this island it would help a little.

I got in the boat and we shoved off.

The sun was sinking toward the horizon when María and I got out of the boat on a strip of deserted beach. On the way in, María had explained that the pilot was an old friend of hers whom she'd known when she'd appeared in the Acapulco clubs previously. By the time we hit the beach we were all old friends. The guy took off, and María and I walked through the sand toward the road.

"Where do we go now, Shell?" she asked.

"We?"

"We." She nodded her head firmly.

"To the Gangrene Hotel. It seems as safe as anyplace."

Getting there wasn't any trouble. María's car was still down at Jim's dock, where she'd left it, so we hailed a taxi, which took us to within three blocks of the Del Mar. From there we walked. On the way I checked half a dozen little stores before I found what I wanted. And what I wanted I stole. I didn't buy because I didn't care to have anyone later saying he'd seen a sloppy, beat-up dirty man—obviously Shell Scott—getting the stuff. Nor did I want anyone remembering that María had bought the stuff. The black case was toughest, but I found a secondhand one in a dingy shop tended only by a sleepy old man to whom María talked while I did the shoplifting. It wasn't exactly like Eve's, but it was black and about the same size. The third place I tried, I found and stole a small reddish stick of sealing wax, and I bought a newspaper at a small farmacia and wrapped everything up in it.

When we reached the hotel, I was about ready to go. I picked up the key and walked with María to Room 10, thinking that the place sure did smell good. When we went inside, I started thinking other thoughts.

The big revolver in the guy's hand was pointed about at my navel, and it was held very steady. He was a man about my age, and presentable enough, except for the revolver.

I kicked the door shut.

"You John B. Smith?" he said

"Yeah. Who won the election?"

"Costello."

"Hell, man," I said. "You really gave me a scare there for a minute. I didn't expect you in my room."

He grinned and put the gun away. "There it is." He nodded toward the chair in the corner, and the new briefcase on its seat. He walked over to me. "I bribed the clerk to let me in." He looked at María. "I didn't expect a girl."

"It's not what you think," I said. "If I explained, you'd never believe me. Never. And thanks, pal."

"It's OK. I'm being well paid."

He shook my hand and left, but before he took off I made a deal with him for his revolver. He wouldn't need it now that he'd got rid of the briefcase, and I would. There was no trouble. Joe had told him to cooperate in every way.

After he'd gone, María said, "What was that business all about?"

"I'll show you, honey. You've earned anything you want." I got the briefcase from the chair and opened it on the bed. Joe had done a good, fast job. Everything seemed to be here, and it all looked authentic and right. There was the dope about Lila and Joe's past Communist record—I'd told him that would have to be included. And there was a stack of affidavits, photos, reports, photostats, a whole pile of stuff, including a spool of tape. It looked good, but everything except the dope on Lila and the Commies was faked. None of it would put a real squeeze on Joe or anybody else.

"This is what everybody's looking for," I told María.

She looked puzzled. She already knew about the blackmail file, so I went on, "At least, this is the Shell Scott version of what everybody's looking for. Watch."

I spread my stuff on the bed: black case, sealing wax, the fake papers, Eve Wilson's signet ring—thank God those goons hadn't got around to searching me—and a box of matches. I crowded all the fakes into the box, shut and locked it, and dirtied it up a little with dirt and the part of Gull Islands still in my pocket. Then I dipped sealing wax over the lock till a big gob was built up on it. I let it cool a little, then pressed the signet ring into the wax. When I got through, the black case was full, locked, and sealed, and there was a crisp "E" in the wax over the lock. I let it cool some more, turned the box upside down, and shook it. It was OK. The seal stayed in place. I cleaned off the ring, stuck it back in my pocket, then checked the revolver I'd just got. There were five cartridges in the chambers. I was just about ready.

María said, "I don't quite understand."

I grinned at her, although I didn't feel much like grinning. "Well," I said, "with any luck, that black box there is what you saw me run onto the little island and get a couple of hours ago."

"But you got a bunch of sticks."

"Uh-huh. But if Torelli's men over on the big island saw me, they don't know I got sticks." I pointed at the box. "That's what I got."

She understood it all at once and gasped. There wasn't a gasp left in me. If a rumor that I had the box of papers reached Torelli, then the word would go out, even bigger than the word that was out already: Get Shell Scott. Every hood in Acapulco, every big-time hood in the world would be looking for me like crazy. I would be, to Torelli and his clan, more important than Joe Stalin or J. Edgar Hoover.

I had to do it this way; at least, my battered brain couldn't think of any other way out. Otherwise I had to either forget about getting the real papers at all or else plan to get the real stuff and then get killed. Because if I got them, and Torelli knew I'd beaten him out of them, then naturally he'd kill me. What it boiled down to was that I couldn't run, not from the Mafia and the syndicate and the international network of blackmailers and murderers and fast-buck artists. Not as long as the only place I could run to was the world. I was understandably willing to go to a little trouble if it saved my life.

So, before long, I was going to let Torelli learn that the black box he wanted was here in this room. All Torelli knew was that Gunner had been bringing him some stuff that looked like the junk I'd put in the box. He'd never seen the real papers. As far as I knew, except for Joe, only Gunner and Eve had seen them. They were both dead. And, too, I'd planted with Archie the possibility that Gunner might have been trying to con Torelli; I hoped Archie had asked around a little. He probably had. Well, there on my bed were the papers Gunner had been trying to con Torelli with.

It was important that I didn't let Torelli get the papers too easily; if he had to work for them, he'd be more likely to assume automatically that they were what he'd been after. I had to set this up, build a frame around it to make it look good. Maybe as Gunner would have done it—and the fact that Gunner was a con man was what had given me this idea in the first place.

A confidence man, when he's taking a sucker, will often go to almost as much trouble as the producer of a Broadway play. In the "rag," for example, the con man takes the eager sucker to a brokerage office. It's a complete broker's office, the same as any real one—except that it's fake. Other con men and their criminal friends watch the fake tickers and the stock board, and win and lose thousands of dollars on the "market"; hoodlum clerks bustle around; honest-looking criminals make large investments; figures go up on the board; cashiers pay off huge sums of money, which the sucker eyes hungrily. The beauty of it is that the mark usually doesn't know he's been taken even after he drops his fifty thousand or hundred thousand or whatever it is. Usually for the con to work well, the con man must have an eager sucker as well as the props.

In the little con game I was dreaming up, I was the con man and Torelli was the eager sucker. Anyway, I hoped he was; at least he was eager. If I were lucky, he'd get these papers, find out later they were fakes, but knowing Gunner and the con game, feel that Gunner had been trying to con him from the beginning. Anyway, he'd stop looking for the real ones.

This dingy hotel room and the black box were my props, but I had to dress them up a little. I had to put on a little play for Torelli—maybe have a murder. A cold-blooded murder should make it more impressive, more "real." So I needed an actor who'd get himself killed to help me put my con across. I needed a candidate for a corpse. I had thought quite a bit about it, and my candidate was Abel Samuels, the Joker.

The Joker would do fine. He had my gun; he'd been the brain behind the cute trick of tossing me in the drink after he sapped me and banged my head; he was the boy who'd first hauled me face to face with Vincente Torelli; he was the one who'd piled into me after I left the dead Eve Wilson. And the Joker had naturally called Torelli after that, thus being largely responsible for my party with the six goons earlier this afternoon. There were plenty of reasons besides all the murders the Joker had never paid for.

And in another way, it was perfect. He liked a good practical joke, and this one was a beauty—and about as practical as they come. The only trouble was that this joke was on him.

So it was all settled. The only thing I had to do now was to find the Joker, and then convince him, one way or another, that he should tag along with me. It seemed highly probable that he would object.

"María," I said, "much as I love your lovely company, and much as you've done for me, I think you'd better clear out. There's going to be a big fuss here in about an hour. I've got a little errand to run right now, then I'm coming back here. You better scat and meet me someplace later."

She was frowning, looking at the black box. "Shell, I think I get it, but what's the wax and all for?"

"Sealing wax? If Torelli gets his hands on the box, and he's in the right mood, I'm hoping he'll be more likely to figure, because it's sealed, that the stuff in there is the McCoy—just as Eve sealed it up."

"But why the ring business? That 'E'?"

"That's one of the nicest gimmicks, honey. The way it'll look to him, Eve sealed the thing up, jammed her ring into it so she'd later know it had never been opened, and buried it. Then I dug it up. And it obviously still hasn't been opened. Neat, huh? I even used her own ring."

She was still frowning.

I said, "See, the hoods killed her. Obviously they won't want to leave her body there in the cottage, so as soon as it gets dark—" I glanced out the window; it was dark already. "Well, along about now, they'll haul her out of the cottage and dump her someplace. First they'll strip her of anything that might help identify her, and when they find the ring they'll know about it even if they don't take it . . . to. . . Torelli. Oh, my God!"

Oh, boy, I was being smart. I figured everything out. Everything's fine. Great. I had the damn ring in my pocket.

The ring bit wasn't the most important part of my plan, but it was supposed to be a big help in convincing Torelli he had the McCoy—and I needed every bit of help I could get. Now I had to go back to El Encantado, and if Eve were still there, slip the ring back on her stiff, cold finger.

20

I CROUCHED in the half shelter of some bushes fifty feet from Cottage 6, wondering if Eve's body were still inside or if the boys had already come to cart her away. I knew that if they hadn't yet come, they would soon.

I'd grabbed María's hand and hustled her out of the hotel, put her in a taxi, then found an unlocked Chevy, crossed the ignition wires, and borrowed the car. I didn't want cab drivers hauling me around, and I'd need the buggy later anyway, for the Joker, if I lived. The car was parked down the road from the hotel, and I'd walked from it to here with no trouble. There was only fifty feet more to go, and I couldn't wait any longer.

Right now there were probably innumerable hoodlums digging up the big island and perhaps the small one near it—every one of the six islands, for all I knew. I did know that even aside from the chance that the real box might soon be found, I was getting close to the end of this mess, one way or another.

There was an urgency inside me, a need to hurry, but my feet dragged as I bent over and crept toward the side of the cottage. I had waited three or four minutes, so I was reasonably sure no men were inside doing their grisly job; they'd have come out with her by now. But I still didn't like going in there.

I reached the porch and eased across it, then pushed open the front door. It swung wide slowly with a tiny squeal from the hinges. And then the smell hit me. It was still there, still strong, and my stomach jumped a little, then settled down again. I stepped through the door into blackness and felt my way toward the farther door leading into the bedroom. I paused there a minute, my hand gripping the sharp corner of the doorframe, then I went on in. I was nearly sick and my aching muscles were stretched tight all over my body as I skirted the spot where I knew the foot of the bed was, and her unrecognizable feet and legs, if she were still there. I couldn't see anything, not even the bed. My leg brushed the side of the bed and I stepped along it, then reached slowly with my hand toward its center. I touched her, somewhere on her cold body, and I jerked my hand away involuntarily.

I forced myself to touch her again. I ran my hand along the chill curve of her shoulder and up her left arm to her hand, still bound to the head of the bed. I took the ring from my pocket and forced it on the finger from which I'd taken it.

Then I turned away, and I heard the sounds. I froze there, and then I heard a voice, a man's voice, and I understood that the sounds had come from the front of the house, out at the drive there. Torelli's men had come for Eve; they were entering the house now. I had barely beaten them here. I hadn't heard their car, if they'd come in a car, and there had certainly been no lights. But they were here and I heard a soft footstep and a muttered curse as the men came closer.

I did the only thing I could do; I lay down on the floor and eased my body as fast and as quietly as I could under the bed.

Almost immediately I heard a footstep inside the room, and then a voice said softly, "That front door closed?"

Another answered, "Yeah. Turn on that light. This gives me the creeps."

A faint glow suffused the room. "What a godawful mess," one of the men muttered.

They came alongside the bed and I held my breath. Dimly I could see two pairs of legs a foot from my face. So there were two men in here; maybe there were more outside.

"Gimme that knife. Let's get this over with."

The bed springs creaked and I let out my breath softly, filled my lungs, and held my breath again. The bed springs creaked some more and a man grunted. Finally one said, "Help me wrap her in this." Then he swore filthily. In another few seconds I heard the grunts as the men lifted the body, the springs creaked for the last time as they were relieved of Eve's weight, and then the heavy footsteps went out of the room.

I waited for five minutes after I heard the sound of a car engine being started nearby. Then I crawled from under the bed and got out of there.

Just past Caleta Beach I parked the Chevy in the darkness and climbed up the drive to the Caleta Hotel. From talking to Gloria I knew that the Joker was staying there, but I didn't know in which room, or even if he was now in that room. I wasn't at all anxious, either, to let people see me walking around.

I waited till a little Mexican kid came along, gave him a peso, and asked him to scoot into the hotel and have a bellboy bring me a highball. Five minutes later a bellhop came with the drink and I paid for it with a hundred-peso note, a little over eleven dollars U.S. When he seemed curious I explained what those hundred pesos, and a forthcoming hundred, were for, and he nodded and took off to knock on Abel "Joker" Samuels' door with a bottle of whisky, courtesy of a feminine admirer who would, if it was all right, come wiggling up to his door and knock. And would he be alone?

A few minutes later the bellboy was back and said the Joker was already brushing his teeth. For no extra charge he showed me where the Joker was staying. His room was in what the Caleta management refers to as the "Bungalow," where the poor people live. It was set a little apart from the main hotel building, a few feet from the open-air dining room, and was on the edge of the inevitable cliff, with the inevitable beautiful view. My man was on the top or second floor, in a corner room.

I walked down the dark, slanting drive, brought my Chevy to the Bungalow, and parked. I climbed the stairs to the second floor and walked around the terrace to the corner room.

I took the heavy revolver out of my pants. I tapped lightly on the door with my pinkie, and the building seemed to shake as 330 pounds of Joker rushed to greet me. He swung the door open wide, showing me infected tonsils in a big smile as he started to speak. I jabbed the muzzle of the revolver into the center of his forehead hard enough to start a large swelling.

I thought he was going to come at me, big gun in my fist and all, but I said as nastily as I could, "Get back in there, Joker, or I'll splash your brains on the veranda."

He stepped back a few feet, glowering at me, and I moved inside and slammed the door shut. I stepped up to within three feet of him and said, "Turn around."

He frowned. "What—"

"Turn around!"

He turned slowly and I moved in a hurry, raising the heavy gun. He saw the movement from the corner of his eye and started to jerk around, roaring, but I slammed the revolver hard against the side of his head and it rocked him. He stumbled, going down, but he grabbed at my legs and wrapped his corded arms around them, and I took more care this time, picking my spot as I reversed the gun in my hand, then plunked him good with the gun butt on the back of his big head. He slid down to the carpet and stopped moving.

I went back to the door, locked it, then looked around the room to make sure we were alone and that nobody outside could see in. The Joker's gun, another .45 automatic, was in the top drawer of the dresser, right alongside my sweet .38 Colt Special. I took both guns and went back to the Joker, a regular walking arsenal. He was beginning to stir. He raised his hands underneath him on the carpet, but he wasn't about to get up.

I said, "How do you feel, Joker? Isn't this fun?"

"What . . ." He shook his head and got a couple of inches away from the floor. "What's this for? What's comin' off?"

"Your head, Joker."

I stepped up beside him, the revolver backward in my fist again so I'd have the butt handy.

"What you hit me for?"

I said, "Up in El Peñasco, remember? Somebody threw a woman at me and I fell down. Hit my head, Joker. That's what the lump on your head is for. Tit for tat. Then I think you came on the stage and bounced my head—so this is for that."

I clobbered his head again and he stopped moving again.

I turned on the overhead electric fan, then got some water and threw it on him, and he started coming around. I waited till he was clear out of it, and only a little groggy. He'd be a little groggy for quite a while.

I said, "We're going places, Joker. Tonight we're a team. You're my partner."

He was sitting on the floor now, and he scooted back to lean against an easy chair. He put one immense hand on the back of his head and the hand came away bloody. He looked at it wonderingly, then glared at me and said, "Why, you stinking, gawdamn—"

I was going to have to hit him again. I had to walk around behind him and lean clear over the chair, but I managed it.

There is no point in describing the rest of it, but when I left the Joker came along meekly enough with his old buddy Shell. It was brutal, sure, but it was one of those thin threads my life was hanging by. We got to my borrowed car, and we climbed in, and I sapped the Joker. Then I drove downtown to the alley behind my hotel and dumped him in my room through the window. It wasn't as simple as that; you try dumping three bags of cement through a window all at once. I thought for a while I'd have to use the car to bump him through, but I made it, then drove a few blocks away, left the car on Calle Dominquillo, and walked back. I climbed through the window, getting rather expert at it by now, then closed and locked the window, pulling the shade and thick curtains across it, and looked at the Joker, still sleeping like a baby.

Oh, he'd probably be OK in time, with a little rest—that is, if he lived. And there was a chance, a slight chance, that he'd live. That part wasn't up to me, though. It was up to Vincente Torelli after the Joker phoned him. And it was about time the Joker phoned Torelli and told him where he was, where the black box was. I might have to sap the Joker a few more times, and I had to coach him in what to say, but he would cooperate.

21

IT HAD BEEN A BIT COMPLICATED, but now it was all set. The stage was set, at least; the play was about to start. I was still rehearsing the Joker, though.

He already talked quite freely to me, telling me of his movements after our brawl at El Encantado, anything I'd need to reduce the chances of a slip. I knew now that he'd phoned Torelli after our beef in the afternoon and Torelli had told him to keep checking my room at Las Américas, and to keep an eye peeled for me. That word had gone out to most of the boys. The Joker had heard that I might have the papers on me, or know where they were. So it appeared the goon had watched me through his field glasses and jumped to the obvious conclusion.

But until the Joker phoned Torelli from the Del Mar, which call he'd just completed, I hadn't known for sure if the boys were still digging up the islands. Now I knew that they had been until the call from the Joker; whether they were still hunting, I didn't know. If they were—and they probably would be until Torelli had the black box in his hands—I'd be wasting a lot of time and energy if one of the hoods stumbled onto the real stuff before I finished conning Torelli.

The Joker had started the con with his call to Torelli. Essentially, without the frills, the Joker had done this: He had, following my instructions to the letter, not even understanding what was going on, explained to Torelli that he had seen me coming ashore from a white motorboat on a strip of deserted beach with a pretty girl. The Joker had raced to the beach, beat the hell out of me, taken the black box I'd been carrying. The Joker was now in town and he'd like to sell the papers to Torelli for a measly million dollars. Torelli said he'd think about it. The Joker, naturally, didn't tell Torelli where he was. The Joker said instead that he'd get in touch with Torelli again in an hour, and if Torelli was ready with the thousand Gs, the box would be delivered.

Then I played a dirty trick on the Joker. I waited five minutes, then called Torelli myself and corroborated everything the Joker had said, telling it from my point of view, of course. I added angrily that I'd tailed the Joker, and I told Torelli exactly where the Joker was now hiding out. Street, hotel, room number, alley, and all. I threw in a lot of other stuff, stating that I had only this afternoon learned from the Joker who the boss was, who really was after the papers, and that once I knew it was the great Vincente Torelli, I wanted no more to do with the black box. I was tipping him off not only where the Joker was, but where the papers were, and in return I hoped we'd be able to call a truce. There was quite a bit in that vein, and Torelli said that if I was giving him the straight copy, he and I would have no more trouble. I wanted to believe him.

Now I made the final arrangements. I put the black box in the middle of the bed, where anybody coming in the door would spot it right away, then pulled my one wooden, straight-backed chair over in front of the window with its back toward the alley. I pulled up the shade but left the heavy cloth curtains drawn before the opening, then opened the window, climbed out into the alley, and looked into the room. The curtains were just thick enough so I could see the chair's outline without being able to distinguish anything else clearly. I climbed back into the room, pulled the window down, and locked it, then fixed the curtains again, leaving the shade up.

I looked around the room. The small closet was in the right-hand corner as I faced the door; the door would open toward it. I walked over and opened the closet door, making sure it didn't squeak. I didn't want it to squeak when I stepped inside the closet and pulled the door shut.

The Joker was sitting up on the floor. I'd had to sap him again. His head was a little bloody. "Get in the chair, Joker," I said.

He obediently struggled to his feet and plopped down in the chair with his back to the window. I said in a hard voice, "Now listen carefully, Joker."

He swung his head around and stared stupidly at me. He didn't say anything. "When I snap my fingers," I told him, "you get up and walk over to the door there, then go back and sit down in the chair."

He licked his lips. He didn't know what was going on and he was still dazed. But I let it sink in, then snapped my fingers. He got up, walked over to the door, wobbling a little, then came back and sat down in the chair. I had the .38 on him all the time, but I didn't need it.

It made me sick to watch him. And I felt sick because of the part I'd had in beating him down to what he was at the moment. It was easy to look at the subdued Joker now and forget that, if he got the chance, in another week or month he'd be knocking off a competitor or muscling somebody into line, taking care of another Art Fly or witness. And, too, I wanted to keep on living; that old, primary instinct for self-preservation is as strong in me as in anybody else. The Joker himself had chosen his life, a violent, brutal life that he must have expected might end violently; I hadn't made him get a gun. Besides, the louse should never have tossed me into the ocean.

We waited. The Joker started coming around a little more, and he also started getting nervous. He wasn't anywhere near as nervous as I was. Particularly now, because I was going to give him back his gun. I didn't think he'd try to use it, not for a while, but I wasn't sure which way the guys would come, door or window, and I wanted to be ready for either way. If it was the door, I wanted the Joker to have a gun in his hand. I caught his attention and tossed him the .45 automatic. I kept my .38 on him all the time.

"What's this for?"

"Just hold it, Joker. And keep quiet."

He looked blankly at me, at the muzzle of my .38, then rested the automatic on his thigh. I took the other revolver out of my pants and held it in my left hand. We waited some more.

The Joker licked his lips, frowned, looked around him. "Hey," he said. "What you—"

"Shut up!" I hissed at him. He shut up.

Another minute went by and I strained my ears with a physical effort, trying to sharpen them to every sound. I could hear the Joker's breathing and my own, and the creak of the wooden chair as he shifted his weight in it. I heard a car going by on the street outside, and a toilet flushing somewhere in the hotel. That was all.

Then I heard the sound I'd been waiting for. Or thought I did. A little scraping, slithering sound outside in the alley. It was just a whisper of sound, and I couldn't be sure it was what I thought it was, but I snapped my fingers, staring at the Joker. It looked as if it were going to be the window.

He stared at me, unmoving, just gazing stupidly at me. I snapped my fingers again and jerked my head toward the door of the room. He sighed, frowned, hesitated, then stood up and walked to the door and started back. It was just as well I'd worked him over good. He went back and sat down in the chair. The outline of his big head fell on the heavy curtains.

I didn't hear a sound. Not even the pfft of the silenced .22 that must have been used. But I was watching the curtain and saw the little hole appear in it like magic, and heard the tinkle of glass from the window, and even without looking I knew, as the Joker fell forward, that there was another little hole in the back of the Joker's head.

Well, he'd had a chance, but it hadn't worked out for him. He'd died after all. He fell forward to the floor and his heavy body jarred the wood beneath my feet. That's what he got for trying to put one over on Torelli.

I stepped back into the closet and pulled the door shut carefully, leaving it open just enough so I could see an edge of the black box on the bed. I pulled the hammers of both revolvers back on full cock and waited for the men to come in. I didn't know how many there'd be or who they'd be, but I knew they'd be coming in. I just hoped nobody took a peek inside this closet, because then the hot war would start.

I heard the footsteps coming, heard the door open. Then there was silence for a moment.

A man's voice said softly, "There it is."

Footsteps whispered across the floor. I saw a hand reach out and a body blocked my vision. Then the body moved away, and the black box was gone. Footsteps again, the lights were switched out, I heard the door close, and that was all. Not another word or sound.

I stayed where I was for five minutes, hardly breathing.

Then I pushed the door open. There was faint light spilling in from the alley. The room was empty, except for the Joker. The box was no longer on the bed. Every bit of it seemed to have gone like clockwork.

Of course, I had to get out of there without being seen, and I still had to get the real black box. I hadn't liked Gull Islands very much during the daytime; I doubted that I'd be mad about them at night. Particularly if Torelli's men were still there. I checked my guns, stepped out of the closet, and headed for the window.

It was different approaching Gull Islands at night.

The sea was rougher, and everything was black except the cockpit of the motorboat. Blackness pressed in all around me, relieved only a little by the faint moon, and I felt very much alone, although I had company—Jim, the guy in the yachting cap who'd piloted María and me this afternoon. She'd told me, during our afternoon ride, where he lived, and I'd driven out to see him when I picked up the Chevy.

I'd had no trouble getting away from the hotel, though I'd held my breath going through the window and out the alley. But I'd reached Calle Dominquillo and the car ten minutes after I had left the room. I'd wanted Jim mainly because he owned a good private boat, and he could find Gull Islands at night; I might have gone right out to sea. We'd spent an hour together at his place, killing time. I hoped that was long enough.

"Close now," Jim said. He switched off the cockpit lights. The blackness wrapped itself around us.

There was a dark blob looming up ahead of us. I asked, "This it? The same one?"

"Yes. The big one." He cut the motor.

The bow glided up on the shore, scraping gently. I swallowed. There was no great sound of shrieking tonight, though there was life out there, rustling movement, and the occasional cry of a gull. I got out and walked through ankle-deep water and onto Gull Island.

I had my .38 and a flashlight, but I wanted to use the flashlight as little as possible, and the revolver not at all. There was a chance there were no other men on the island, but I couldn't be sure. Jim had tried to hit the shore about where I'd been this afternoon, and I found the spot, using the flash briefly, in five minutes. Then I headed in, hoping I could find that tree. As I walked, I stirred up crowds of gulls. They burst up in front of me with sudden startled cries. They were ghostly shapes, insubstantial in the thin moonlight. I kept walking, looking . . . .

I had been looking for an hour. Once I retraced my steps to the spot from which I'd started, and now I knew I should be somewhere near the tree. I stopped being careful; if anybody else were out here, there'd have been trouble before now. I turned the flash on and left it on. In ten minutes I found the tree. My light picked out the three strangely twisted limbs near its top. I found the mark I'd scratched in its side. I put my back to the mark and walked forward twenty steps. I bent down and began to scoop out a hole.

I dug down a couple of feet. I found nothing.

Hell, twenty paces was quite a distance. I might be off a foot or two. I kept scooping and shoveling with my hands, working outward in a circle from the spot where I'd started, working faster, perspiration beginning to come out on my forehead and on my chest. The thought of what it would mean if one of Torelli's men had found the box, perhaps even while I was putting on my biggest act for Torelli himself, was swelling in my mind.

My hand brushed something, struck something solid. I grabbed it, pulled it out, and turned the flash full on it.

It was there. The black box.

And that was it; all over. The rest was easy.

22

HOT SUN burned against the sand and sparkled on the blue waters of Acapulco Bay. I was having another coco fizz in another enormous coconut, not at Las Américas this time, but under the thatched roof of the Club Copacabana, almost at the edge of the surf on lovely Copacabana Beach.

I still ached—it had been only two days since I dug up the black box—but I felt good just the same. And, finally, I felt clean. I had soaked three times in hot tubs and taken eight showers. And the best part was that I had walked openly around town, into and out of hotels, and nobody had killed me. Apparently Torelli and I had our truce, and it appeared I'd stay alive a while longer.

Getting the real black box, the blackmail file, and conning Torelli had been the big parts. After that it had been simple. I'd looked the stuff over in another dingy hotel room: a pile of papers and photostats and photos like those Joe had sent me, only the real thing this time. It was all that Joe had said and more: a complete file on his movements for nearly two months; pictures of Lila and the cute, pudgy baby; some other pictures of Joe and Lila that weren't so cute; proof of union crooked work and fund stealing and even some rather peculiar strike negotiations and odd union assessments that Joe hadn't mentioned.

And the War Department documents. It hadn't been too clear to me, even though I'd held it in my hands, but it was a list of guided-missile bases all over the world, top-secret bases, some of them known to our allies and some known only to a select few in the United States government. There'd been a lot of words and figures and calculations and peculiar symbols in the document that meant nothing to me but would have meant a great deal to men who could understand them.

And I'd managed to listen to the tape recording, almost an hour of it: seven Communist union chiefs discussing which strikes in which defense plants should be called first; which unions—important in the nation but not yet sufficiently sprinkled with Communists who would vote and strike and picket and sabotage in accordance with the party's instructions—should be given more vigorous attention. A lot of it. I listened carefully to it all with Dugan.

I'd had to call L.A. again, and they didn't tell me where Dugan was, but I told them the name of the dump in which I was then staying, and in an hour he showed up. I gave him everything, all the papers, told him the blow-by-blow story. He was on his way back to L.A. with the stuff now. As for my client, I'd told Joe what to expect if I learned he wasn't all that he should be. He wasn't all that he should be. And I didn't even have to inform him that the case was over; the FBI was going to take care of that.

I wiggled my bare toes in the cool sand beneath my table. I'd been wanting to do that for a long time. I finished my coco fizz and ordered another. So far I was alone, but I'd made a phone call and would soon have company.

Gloria was free of Sudden Death Madison now, I was thinking, since his sudden death. She and I had several things to talk over. And there was other unfinished business here in Acapulco, too. I hadn't even settled my Las Américas bill, and I still owed Rafael that hundred bucks. Ah, well, mañana.

I had enough money to take care of almost anything that might come up. Part of my walking around town had included going into the Banco Nacional de Méjico, a couple of blocks from the Zócalo, and having my $50,000 transferred here. It came to 432,000 pesos, which would buy a lot of coco fizzes.

I kept looking out the entrance toward the street. She hadn't come in sight yet. I had on my passionflower trunks; maybe we'd have a swim after a while. I wouldn't mind staying here all afternoon, like a man living in a tropical shack on a tropical beach. Tonight, when the orchestra started playing, we could go dancing barefooted in the surf. I felt wonderful and relaxed and good; I was looking forward to tomorrow again.

At least, I felt good about tomorrow as far as I, personally, was concerned. I didn't feel so good about Torelli and the syndicate and the Mafia and the Communists and unions and all the rest. I thought with a very real hate about Vincente Torelli, probably heading back to Italy now. I'd seen his big, white, half-million-dollar yacht, the Fortuna, sailing out of the harbor earlier today. Torelli was still alive and still making plans.

At least, my specific part of the case was over. I'd messed up part of the gangster's union deal, their projected stranglehold, but it was only one small part, and I knew the mobsters would be busy doing the work that Torelli and others had outlined for the underlings, and for themselves. The mobs had a big foot in the union door now, and I hadn't kicked the foot out all by myself, not by a long shot. The racket boys would be active, trying to ease the rest of the way in. Maybe they'd make it; the same thing, on a smaller scale, had been going on for a long time and nobody had stopped it yet.

The hell with it. I'd had enough for a while; somebody else could take over from here. Me? I was taking a vacation in Acapulco. I had 432,000 pesos, a coco fizz, my evil trunks, and my toes curling in the sand.

And here she came now, to make it perfect. I'd told her to wear her swimsuit, and she walked toward me now, hips swinging, full breasts barely concealed by the bandanna floating upon them. I couldn't help thinking that this was almost the same way it had started four days ago.

Only, of course, this time it was María.

THE END

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1952 by Richard Prather

Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media

ISBN 978-1-4804-9902-7

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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Table of Contents

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two