Off the Mangrove Coast (Ss) (2000) (25 page)

"Don't be stupid, you punk!" Vino stepped close. "I fixed Garry. He wouldn't play, see?" He paused, staring at Brennan. "I don't like boys that don't play. So I had that truck there; I had witnesses there. I even had a guy ready if the truck didn't finish it. Now you do as you're told or we'll finish you!"

Bickerstaff's face was strained. "Vino," he said, "what if he drops a dime on us?"

"Yeah?" Vino sneered. "If I even thought he'd dime us out, I'd cook him. One sign that he ain't going to play ball, and he gets it."

"I don't rat," Brennan said quietly. "I don't have to rat. All right, I'll play ball. I'll play it the way you never saw it played before."

The lights were bright over the ring. Paddy Brennan felt good, getting away from Vino and Bickerstaff. He rubbed his feet in the resin, and the old feeling began to come over him. He trotted to his corner, where Sammy was waiting.

"What's up, kid? You goin' to tell me? Is it a flop?"

Brennan rubbed his feet on the canvas, dancing a little.

"In the sixth," he said. "They want me out in the sixth. They want to give you a welter and a middle and take me for themselves."

Sammy looked up, and Brennan realized how small he was.

"Oh?" he said. "So they want that, do they?"

"Keep your chin up, Sammy," Brennan said. "Let's get this one in the books. Then we'll talk."

When the bell clanged, Ketchell came out fast. He looked fit, and he moved right. He'd come up the easy way, but he'd had the best schooling there was. Paddy had a feeling this wasn't going to be easy. Ketchell's left licked out and touched his eye. Paddy worked around Ketchell, then feinted, but Tony backed off, smiling.

Brennan walked in steadily, feinted, feinted again, and then stabbed a quick left to the face and a right to the chin.

The punches shook Ketchell and made him wary. His left jabbed again, and then again.

He circled, went in punching. He shot a left to the head, and bored in, punching for the body, then to the head, then took a driving right that bounced off his chin. It set him back on his heels for a second, and another one flashed down the groove, but he rolled his head and whipped a right to the body that made Ketchell back up.

When the round ended, they were sparring in the center of the ring, and Paddy Brennan went to his corner, feeling good. The bell came, but not soon enough. He leaped to close quarters and started slugging. He felt punches battering and pounding at him, but he kept walking in, hitting with both hands. Once Tony staggered, but he" stepped away in time before Brennan could hit him again.

Then a solid right smashed Paddy on the head, and a left made the cut stream blood. Momentarily blinded, a right smashed on his chin and he felt himself falling, and then a flurry of blows came from everywhere, and he fought desperately against them. When he realized what, was happening again, the referee was saying nine, and then the bell was ringing. He staggered to his corner and flopped on the stool. Sammy was working over him.

"Watch it, kid," Sammy said, gasping. "Take nine every time you're down."

"Once was enough," Paddy said. "I'm not going down again."

"Once?" Sammy's voice was very amazed. "What do you mean once?" He paused, staring at Brennan intently. "What round is this?" he demanded.

"End of the second," Brennan said. "What's the matter? You punchy?"

"You are," Sammy said. "This is the fifth coming up. You've been down four times."

Then the bell rang again, and Paddy went out. Ketchell was coming in fast and confident. A raking left snapped at his face, and Paddy rolled his head. Suddenly, something inside him went cold and vicious. Knock him down four times? Why, the His right thudded home on Ketchell's ribs with a smash like a base hit, then he hunched his shoulders together and started putting them in there with both hands. Ketchell backed up.

Suddenly Paddy Brennan felt fine again. His head was singing, his mouth was swollen, but he hooked high and low, battering Ketchell back with a rocking barrage of blows. A right snapped out of somewhere, and he barely slipped it, feeling the punch take his shoulder just below his ear.

Then, suddenly, Ketchell was on his knees with his nose broken, and blood bathing his chest and shoulders. The bell sounded wildly through the cheering, roaring crowd.

It was the sixth.

When he stood up, he could see Vino down there. Vino's eyes were on him, cold and wary. Paddy Brennan remembered Dicer.

He walked out fast, and Ketchell came in, but he could see by Ketchell's eyes what he was expecting. Paddy feinted and slid into a clinch, punching with one hand free.

"They make it easy for you, don't they?" he said. "Even murder?"

Brennan broke and saw Ketchell's face was set and cold. There was a killer in him. Well, he'd need it. Paddy walked in, hooking low and hard, smashing them to the head, slipping short left hooks and rights and all the while watching for that wide left hook of Ketchell's that would set him up for the inside right cross. Through the blur, he saw Ketchell's face, and he let his right down a little where Ketchell wanted it and saw the left hook start.

His own right snapped, and he felt his glove thud home. Then his left hooked hard but there was nothing in front of him and he moved back. He could see Tony Ketchell on the floor, and hear someone shouting in the crowd. He could see Bickerstaff on his feet, his face white, and behind him, Vino, his face twisted, lips away from the teeth. Then the referee jerked his arm up, and he knew he had won the fight.

Clara came running to meet him in the dressing room. She had been crying, and she cried out when she saw his face.

"Oh, your poor eye!" She put up her hand to touch it, and then he grabbed her and swung her away ... Vino was standing in the door with a gun in his hand.

"You're a real smart kid, huh? Back up, sister. Lover boy and I are walking to my car. You'll be lucky if you get him back."

Brennan lunged with his right in the groove and saw the white blast of a gun and felt the heat on his face. Then his right landed, and Vino went down.

All of a sudden, Clara had him again, and the room was full of people. Sergeant O'Brien was picking Vino up, and Vino was all bloody, and his face twisted in hate.

"Get off a me, copper!" he snarled. "You haven't got anything on me I can't get fixed "

"You're under arrest for murder," O'Brien said to Vino. "You and Bickerstaff and Cortina. And when this hits the papers the boys in Brooklyn won't fix you up, they're going to drop you like a hot potato."

Vino's face turned a pasty white.

"You got nothing but this pug's say-so," he declared.

"Oh, yes, we have," O'Brien said. "We've got Farnum's statement, and Cortina's. But we don't need them. We were in the next room when you talked to Brennan. We had a wire recorder microphone hung on the shower partition. It was Paddy's idea."

When they had gone, Brennan sat down slowly on the table.

He pulled Clara toward him. "They're all big money fights from now on, Clara. There'll be time now ... time for us."

"But we'll fix that eye first," she said. "I don't intend to have my man dripping blood all over everything."

She hesitated.

"I can't stand seeing you hurt, but, Paddy I guess it's the Irish in me oh, Paddy, it was a grand, grand fight, that's what it was!"

When I looked up from the menu, I was staring into the eyes of a man who had been dead for three years.

Only he was not dead now. He was alive, sitting on the other side of the horseshoe coffee counter, just half a room away, and he was staring at me.

Three years ago I had identified a charred body found in a wrecked car as this man. The car had been his. The remains of the suit he wore were a suit I recognized. The charred driver's license in his wallet was that of Richard Manner. The size, the weight, the facial contours, the structure of the burned body, all were those of the man I knew. I was called upon to identify the body because I had been his insurance agent, and I had also known him socially.

On the basis of my identification, the company had paid the supposed widow one million two hundred twenty thousand dollars. Yet the man across the room was Richard Mariner, and he was not dead.

Who else could know of my mistake? His wife? Was she still alive? Was I the only person alive who could testify that the man across the room was a murderer? For he must be responsible for the man whose body was found. The logic of that was inevitable.

He was getting up from his place, picking up his check. He was coming around the counter. He sat down beside me. My flesh crawled.

"Hello, Dry den. Recognized me, didn't you?"

My mouth was dry and I could not find words. What could one say at such a time? I must be careful..- . careful.

He went on. "It's been a long time, but I had to come back. Now that you've seen me I guess I'll have to tell you."

"Tell me what?"

"That you're in it, too. Right up to your neck."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Have some more coffee, we have a lot to talk about. I took care of all this years ago ... just in case." He ordered coffee for both of us and when the waitress had gone, he said quietly, "After the insurance was paid to my wife, one hundred thousand dollars was deposited to an account under your name at a bank in Reno."

"That's ridiculous."

"It's true. You took your vacation at June Lake that year, and you fished a little at Tahoe." Marmer was pleased with his shrewdness ... and he had been shrewd. "I knew you went there to fish, and I knew when your vacation was so I timed it all very carefully. The bank officials in Reno will be prepared to swear you deposited that money. I forged your signature very carefully. After all" he smiled "I practiced it for almost a year."

They would believe I had been bribed, that I had been in on it.

He could have done it, there was no doubt of that. He had imitated me over the phone more than once; he had fooled friends of mine. It had seemed merely a peculiar quirk of humor until now!

"It wouldn't stand up," I objected, but without hope, "not to a careful investigation."

"Possibly. Only it must first be questioned, and so far there is no reason to believe that it will ever be doubted."

There was a reason; I was determined to get in touch with the police, as soon as I could get out of here, and take my chances.

"You see," he continued, "you would be implicated at once. And of course, you would be implicated in the murder, too."

The skin on my neck was cold. My fingers felt stiff. When I tried to swallow my throat was dry.

"If murder is ever suspected, they will suspect you, too. I even" he smiled "left a letter in which I said that you were involved ... and that letter will get to the district attorney. I have been very thorough, Dryden! Very thorough!"

"Where's your wife?" I asked him.

He chuckled and it had a greasy, throaty, awful sound. "She made trouble." He turned a bit and something metallic bumped against the counter. I looked down. The butt of a flat automatic protruded from the edge of his coat. When I looked back up, he smiled.

"It's all true, Dryden. Come out to the car, I'll prove it to you."

My thoughts fluttered wildly at the bars of the cage he was building around me. And yet, I doubted that it was really a cage at all. He had killed an innocent man, now it seemed he had killed his wife, what was there to keep him from killing me, too? He had nothing to lose, nothing at all. What he had told me of the involved plot to implicate me was probably a lie. Somehow I couldn't imagine a man who would kill someone in order to cash in on his life insurance, and then kill his wife, giving up one hundred thousand dollars on the off chance that it would keep me quiet. Marmer just wanted to get me out to the car. He wanted to get me out to the car so he could kill me.

What was left for me? What was the way out? There had been an officer in the army who told us there was always a way out, that there was always an answer ... one had only to think.

Fear.

That was my salvation, my weapon, the one thing with which I could fight! Suddenly, I knew. My only weapon lay before me, the weapon of my mind. I must think slowly, carefully, clearly. I must be an actor.

Here beside me was a man who had killed, a man with a gun who certainly wanted to kill me. My only weapon was my own mind and the fear that lay ingrained deep in the convolutions of his brain. Though he was behaving calmly he must be a frightened, worried man. I would frighten him more. What was the old saying about the guilty fleeing when no man pursued? I must talk to him ... I must lie, cheat, anything to keep myself alive. There was an old Arabic quotation that I had always liked: "Lie to a liar, for lies are his coin; steal from a thief, for that is easy; lay a trap for the trickster and catch him at first attempt, but beware of an honest man."

His fear was my weapon, so I must spin around this man a web of illusion and fear, a web so strong that he would have no escape ...

"All of you fellows are the same" I picked up my coffee, smiling a little "you plan so carefully and then overlook the obvious. I always liked you, Manner," that was a lie, for I never had, "and I'm glad to see you now."