The Shadowers (16 page)

I said, “I told you, I’ve lost no little girls. She’s all yours. What do you think I am, some kind of a Galahad or something? Cut her into little pieces and use her for bait.”

Kroch laughed approvingly. I was still playing the game right. “The man, too?” he asked.

“What man?”

“There was a man in the car with Miss Vail. I was watching your house when the two of them drove up. I had no use for the man, but what could I do but bring him along? His name is Mooney. He has a big mouth. It has already got him shot once today; it could get him killed. Your little girl has a big mouth, too, but I will try to let you see her once more. I have a tender heart. Would you like to hear her voice?”

I didn’t say anything. I heard a scuffle at the other end of the line; then Antoinette Vail was speaking breathlessly in my ear: “Mr. Corcoran, don’t come, he’ll kill you! Don’t listen—”

Her voice was cut off. Kroch came back on. “That’s right, Mr. Corcoran. If you come, I will kill you. Unless of course you kill me. Why don’t you try?”

The apartment building in which Dorothy Darden lived was only a few blocks from the center of town. The red Austin-Healey sports job was parked at a meter up the street. I shoved Olivia out on the sidewalk, joined her and took her arm when she threatened to balk again. One day I’ll do a job with a woman who has more sense than temperament. I’d thought that Dr. Olivia Mariassy, with her scientific background, might turn out to be the one. I’d been wrong.

“Just follow instructions like a good girl or I swear I’ll bust you one,” I said. “We haven’t time for personalities.”

She said, “I’m not going up there! I won’t stay in the same place with that blonde tramp! I’d much rather be killed!”

“Nobody’s interested in your ‘druthers,’” I said. “Sorry, Doc, but that’s the way it is. You go in there with your teeth or without them. Take your choice.”

“You... you dictatorial beast!”

“Monster was the word we settled on,” I said. “You’ll go in and you’ll ring the way I told you. Braithwaite has his orders concerning you. You may have a little wait while they get some clothes on and some lipstick off, depending on what stage in the proceedings you interrupt.”

“Damn you, Paul—”

“Shut up,” I said. “Listen closely. You’ll tell Braithwaite that I’m going out to the island. Tell him that Kroch has the Vail kid and Dr. Mooney and is using them for bait, that tired old gag. I’m to turn right beyond the bridge, leave the car at the entrance to the park, and proceed on foot. Kroch will be waiting. He thinks he’s Jim Bowie or something. He’s in effect challenged me to single combat out on the sands. Maybe he really is nuts. Anyway, tell Jack Braithwaite, if he doesn’t hear from me in an hour, he’s to call in the team—he’ll know what I mean—and come after me. When somebody says an hour, Doc, you look at your watch.”

She started to speak angrily, checked herself, and glanced down. “Eleven thirty-three. Paul—”

“At twelve thirty-three the relief expedition gets under way. I don’t want them to jump the gun. I want plenty of time out there. But when they come, tell them to beat the bushes hard, because their man will be there. If I’m in trouble, tell them. I’ll use the needle on him. Injection C. It’ll keep him anchored till they get there. If they’re in a hurry to ask their questions, there’s an antidote they can use. They’ll know.”

Some of her anger seemed to have evaporated. She asked rather uncertainly, “And where will you be, Paul?”

“Who knows?” I shrugged. “As they say in what used to be my part of the country,
quién sabe?
Taking an armed man alive is always tricky. But I have everything working for me. He seems to be under the illusion he’s Superman or Captain Blood or somebody. He also seems to have something on his mind, and five will get you twenty that he’ll want to tell me all about it. A man who wants to talk has two strikes against him in a game like this. Furthermore, unless he’s changed his style of armament, he’s very lightly gunned. I should be able to reach him and immobilize him, one way or another. Your job is to see that Braithwaite sends out the wrecking crew to pick him up if I don’t bring him in within the hour.”

“You mean,” she said, “if you’re dead.”

“Dead, wounded, or just plain tired. Why borrow trouble?”

“It sounds... it sounds absolutely suicidal to me! At least you should take a gun.”

“He’s got to talk,” I said. “I can’t risk using a gun, I might kill him. Here.” I took the little knife from my pocket and held it out. “Keep this for me, too. I don’t want any temptation around. It’s going to be hard enough to keep from finishing him with my bare hands.”

She looked at the knife and shivered slightly. “I didn’t know you carried that, Paul. What a wicked, beautiful thing!”

“A present from a woman,” I said. “You don’t have to be jealous. She’s dead.” After a moment, I said, “I’m sorry I talked rough! I wasn’t mad at you, not really. You know how it is.”

“I know,” she said. She looked up. “I’ll deliver your message, of course, but I’d rather... Can’t I go home afterward? I could take a taxi. I have your revolver. I’m sure I’d be perfectly safe at home.”

I shook my head and led her into the building. The hallway was lined with pink marble and brass mailboxes. I checked the tenants’ names, found the one I wanted, and turned to face Olivia.

“What makes you so sure you’d be safe?” I asked. “Suppose when I get out there Mr. Kroch isn’t waiting on that lonely island beach like he promised. Suppose it’s just a trick to get me away. Suppose the big bell is tolling, the great gong has been struck; suppose Emil Taussig has pressed the go-button and everywhere across the nation the shadowers are closing in on the people they’ve been trailing for weeks and months, waiting for this moment. Suppose Kroch has got the word. He knows I’m staying as close to you as your best girdle. I could create a problem—unless he can send me off to hunt lizards and frogs on Santa Rosa Island while he takes care of his business with you. Maybe he’s been building up this screwy, aggressive, melodramatic character for just this moment, so I’d fall for the trick when the time came.”

“But if you think that—”

“I don’t think that,” I said. “It’s merely one of several possibilities.”

Anger was back in her voice as she said sharply, “If you think it’s even a possibility, why are you leaving me with an untrained boy and a blonde while you go chasing off to rescue—” She stopped abruptly. “I’m sorry. I suppose you do have to go after them. I suppose I even want you to.”

I said, “You’re a nice girl, Doc, but you’re still very innocent, even after all the work I’ve done to bring you up right. You still believe everything you see on TV.”

She frowned quickly. “What do you mean?”

“Nobody’s going to rescue nobody,” I said. The stone walls and metal mailboxes threw my voice back at me flat and hard. “Nobody’s going to rescue Toni, Doc. Nobody’s going to rescue Harold. Nobody’s going to rescue them for the simple reason that they’re dead.”

There was a little silence. Somewhere in the building somebody had a radio going. It probably wasn’t Braithwaite and the nurse. They’d be entertaining themselves in other ways. Olivia was staring at me, aghast.

“But—”

“They’ve been dead since Kroch hung up the phone,” I said flatly, “unless it took him a few minutes to find a secluded spot to do the job. This isn’t Hollywood, Doc. This is for real. Kroch had a use for them. Well, for one of them. He may have thought there was more between me and Toni than just a dinner at Antoine’s, or he may just have hoped I was sentimental about young girls in general. In any case he wanted me to hear her voice so I’d know he wasn’t bluffing.”

“But... but that doesn’t necessarily mean he killed them! Once he’d used the girl—”

“Once he’d used her, what could he do with her? Or with Mooney? Turn them loose to call the police?” I shook my head. “He wanted to be sure I’d come, whether or not he’s going to be there himself. If he is, he wanted to be sure I’d come angry. An angry man is easier to deal with in most cases. There are exceptions, there are times when an angry man can be hard to stop, but he’s not thinking of those. And when he no longer needed Toni... when he no longer needed them, he shot them. I know that and he knows I know it. It’s one of the things he’s counting on to make me come.”

She licked her lips. “You’re just guessing, Paul!”

I said, keeping my voice even, “They’re lying out in the sand right now, or in the bushes, or in their car if he isn’t expecting to use it. Or they’re drifting out into the Gulf of Mexico on the tide, if there is a tide around here and it happens to be going out.”

She said angrily, “You don’t know. You can’t
know!”
She wasn’t even thinking of Mooney yet, and what his death might or might not mean to her. She simply didn’t want to believe it could happen—that a couple of people could die casually because a man with a gun didn’t want to be bothered, or wanted to bother somebody else.

“Of course I know,” I said. “I know because it’s what I would do—what any pro would do—with a couple of hostages that weren’t needed any more. It’s what I’d do if I were operating alone in enemy territory and had important work coming up, as Kroch is and has. Why bother to tie them and gag them and take a chance on their working loose and making trouble? That only happens in the movies, Doc. In real life, everybody knows that nobody makes trouble with a bullet through the head. Besides, as I said, Kroch wants to annoy me.”

“Annoy,” she breathed.
“Annoy!”

I jerked my hand toward the mailboxes. “There it is. The name is Darden, as you know. The number is 205.” I looked at her for a moment longer. “In case I run into trouble, or something, that chess book you once lent me is in my suitcase.”

Then I was out of there and driving away, hoping I hadn’t sounded too much like an ancient Greek promising to come back with his shield or on it. I hadn’t the slightest intention of committing suicide if I could help it; and if you can’t help it, it isn’t suicide. It was going to be tricky, of course. An old pro like Kroch is always tricky, even with a screw loose; and bringing them back alive isn’t as easy as shooting them, whether you’re talking about elephants or enemy agents. Under the circumstances I’d much rather have brought him back dead, but that was a luxury duty said I must forego.

There wasn’t any traffic on the causeway. If people lived all year in the little beach community Olivia had said was on the island, they apparently had no business on the mainland at this time of night. I crossed the sound and made the right turn as instructed, and soon there was nothing but sand on either side, irregular low dunes of it, with dark water showing occasionally beyond. The road was black against the white sand.

I saw the little gatehouse in the headlights and drove right up to it. There was nothing to be gained by being clever. He was expecting me to be clever. He was expecting me to pull off the road out of sight and sneak around like an Indian, all loaded down with lethal hardware. Since that was what he was expecting, I just drove up beside the car already parked at the side of the gatehouse and stopped.

It took me a little while to figure out how to turn on the interior lights of the Renault: you just twist the little plastic light itself. I took from my pocket the flat drug case we’re all issued. It contains a special hypo and three types of injections, two permanent and one temporary. It also contains the little death pill for the agent’s own use, unless he’s wearing it elsewhere. I wasn’t wearing mine on this job, since I didn’t know anything of interest to anybody.

I loaded the hypodermic with the full four-hour dose of the temporary injection C, and put the stuff back into my pocket. I switched off the lights of the Renault and got out and looked around. The other car seemed to be a light blue in color. It was one of the big Chryslers, a convertible. That made it Mooney’s, by the description I’d been given. Where Kroch’s own car was hidden was anybody’s guess. I didn’t even know what make it was. He’d never given me a look at it. I reminded myself not to underestimate the guy. He might act loco at times, but his basic techniques were still good.

I thought about pulling the distributor heads off both cars, or bogging the vehicles in the sand somehow, but that would have been meeting him on his own terms, and he’d still have one car staked out somewhere in working condition. Instead, I left the key in the Renault, to make it look as if I didn’t care how much transportation was available.

I went over to the road, stepped over the long, sagging, padlocked chain, and marched on toward the western end of the island, still a mile or so distant if Olivia had briefed me correctly. My shoes made loud noises on the hard pavement. The island was wider here—no longer just a strip of sand—and there were trees and bushes on both sides. The Gulf of Mexico was darkly visible off to my left. To my right, the water of the mile-wide sound I’d crossed couldn’t be seen for a patch of woods, except where the trees had been cut away to allow for a half-overgrown road down to what seemed to be a rotting old pier.

I saw an oddly symmetrical, long, low, shadowy hill to the right of the main road and realized that it was man-made: a great structure of concrete covered with dirt and overgrown with grass and brush. It was close to a hundred yards long, with two black openings gaping seaward. There was a neat little state-park sign in front.

I went up and struck a match like a nocturnal sightseer, wondering where he was hiding and how eager his finger was on the trigger. Well, if he wanted to shoot, he’d shoot. If not, if he really wanted to talk first, as I guessed, he’d be puzzled by my unorthodox behavior, which was fair enough. I’d been puzzled by his.

Apparently he wanted to talk first. No bullets came. The sign indicated that I was looking at the site of a former battery of two twelve-inch guns placed
en barbette,
whatever that might mean, in 1916, and casemated, whatever that might mean, in 1942.

He gave me no sign of his presence, but I knew he was watching as I blew out the match and waited for my eyes to get used to the darkness again. He’d be checking off one opportunity missed. He’d be wondering if maybe he shouldn’t have shot after all, and to hell with conversation.