The Saint in Miami (21 page)

Simon took a roll out of his pocket and peeled off a bill.

“What does this look like?”

“Read it to me,” said the Greek. “My eyes are bad, and I can’t get by that first O.”

“It’s a century. Just for an advance. To earn the other nine, you take me to this place of March’s. And I want to get there the quickest way there is.”

“The quickest way is overland through the swamps,” said Gallipolis tersely. “But the only guy who could walk on that stuff died nineteen hundred and forty years ago.”

He got up from the table and moved towards the back of the bar.

The Saint said, deprecatingly: “It’s true I’m carrying a lot of money, but Hoppy and I are carrying other things too. They go bang when they see machine guns.”

“You’re damn near as suspicious as I am,” Gallipolis said petulantly. “I’m looking for a map. I thought we might study it a while.”

He pulled out a folded sheet from behind the counter, while Hoppy’s gun hand tentatively relaxed from its hair-trigger hovering.

Gallipolis spread out the map on the counter and said: “Turn up the lamp and come here.”

Simon complied, and bent over the sheet beside him. The Greek pointed to a spot on the lower west coast of the state.

“March’s lodge is somewhere in here on Lostman’s River, near Cannon Bay. The nearest town is Ochopee, and that’s about seventy miles from here on the Tamiami Trail.”

The Saint gazed down at the vast green wilderness on the map marked “Everglades National Park”. Only the thin red line of the Tamiami Trail broke its featureless expanse of two thousand square miles or more. In all the rest of that area from the coastal creeks inland there was nothing else shown -nothing but the close-packed little spidery bird-tracks that cartographers use to indicate a swamp. It was as if exploration had glanced at the outlines and then decided to go and look somewhere else. Only a finger’s length from Miami on the large-scale map, they offered less informative detail than a map of the moon.

And that was where he had to go-quickly.

It had to be him; he knew that He couldn’t run back crying for Haskins or Rogers. It was outside Haskins’ county, anyhow, and he could put decimal points in front of the probability of getting a strange sheriff interested. Rogers would not be much easier. Rogers would probably have to get authorisation from Washington, or an Act of Congress, or something. And what was the jurisdiction, anyway? What charges could he bring and substantiate? Any authorities would want at least some good evidence before going into violent action against a man like March. And there was not one shred of proof to give them-nothing but the Saint’s own suspicions and deductions and a little personal knowledge for which there was no other backing than his word. It would take hours to convince any hard-headed official that he wasn’t raving, even if he could ever do it at all; it might take days to get the machinery moving. The State Department would brood cautiously over the international issues … And he had to be quick.

Quick, because of Patricia and Peter. Who were also the last and most important reason why he had to hesitate to call for official help. They were hostages for the Saint’s good behaviour-he didn’t need to receive any message from the ungodly to tell him that. The counter-attack had been made with the breath-taking speed of blitzkrieg generalship. The pincers movement against himself had been balked, and without a pause one of the flanking columns had swung off and trapped Peter and Patricia. Yet even if Simon could enlist the forces of the Law and send them into the fight, Captain Friede would only have to drop the hostages overboard somewhere with a few lengths of anchor chain tied round them, and blandly protest his complete puzzlement about all the fuss. And the Saint had no doubt that that was exactly what he would do …

“Ochopee.” The Saint’s voice was quiet and steely cool “What is there there?”

“Tomato farms,” said Gallipolis, “and nothing much more except a lot of water in the rainy season. But I know an Indian there. If there’s any guy living who can take you through the Glades to where you want to go, he’s it.”

Simon laid a paper of matches along the scale of miles and began to measure distances.

Gallipolis stopped him.

“You’re on the wrong track. We pick up the Indian at Ochopee, but you couldn’t get down from there. You’ll have to come back thirty miles to where you see this elbow marked 27 in the Tamiami Trail. March’s place can only be about ten miles from there. Of course, it might be nearer twentyfive or thirty the way you’d have to go. If we started early tomorrow morning, we might be able to get in there by the following day.”

The Saint figured quickly. It was a hundred miles to Ochopee and back to the bend of the elbow where they would enter the swamp. If that left March’s harbour only about ten miles away-
“We aren’t going on bicycles,” he said. “We can drive to Ochopee in an hour and a half. We should be able to pick up your Indian and get back to the elbow in another hour easily. That ought to get us to Lostman’s River early in the morning.

The Greek cupped one hand and supported his chin with one arm on the bar.

“Mister,” he said dreamily, “you’re talking about something you just don’t know. You’re talking about covering ten miles of Everglades. That’s oak and willow hammocks, and cypress and thorns and mud and quicksand and creek and diamond-back rattlesnakes and moccasins-and at night I’ll throw in a panther or two. This ain’t walking around Miami. That web-footed Indian might get you there alive if I can talk him into it, but even he’d have to do it by day.”

Simon made rapid calculations on the course of the March Hare. The yacht could probably tick off twenty knots, and might do more with pushing. It was two hundred and fifty miles if she went around Key West to Cannon Bay on the Gulf, which would take her twelve hours or more. But if the submarine operated out of Lostman’s River too, the chances were that the astute Captain Friede knew other channels through the Keys which might save as much as a hundred miles.

The Saint folded the hundred-dollar bill and flicked it towards Gallipolis, and said: “Let’s just pretend that Randolph March and I are having a private war. I want to pull a surprise attack, and I haven’t got time to mess around. Do we start right now, or do we play charades while the price goes down a hundred dollars an hour?”

“What do you think?” asked Gallipolis.

“I think,” said the Saint, “that we start now.”

Gallipolis picked up the bill and tucked it away. He tilted back his head, pinched his lower lip, and studied Simon’s flawless Savile Row tailoring.

“My Indian’s named Charlie Halwuk, and the last time I saw him he told me he was a hundred and two years old, which may be stretching it a bit-it’s a Seminole trick. What I’m trying to tell you is this. If he sees you in that rig-up, instead of starting out on any heap big hunting party, he’ll want to take you down to an Indian village and marry you to a squaw.”

Simon looked down at his night club costume,
“Have you got anything else?”

“I’ve got some things a guy left here on account and never came back. He was about your size. Come along with me.”

The Greek strode off down the hallway of the houseboat, past the darkened poker room, and turned into a stateroom on the left. He lighted a match and touched the wick of an oil lamp. A locker disgorged high leather boots, heavy woollen socks, khaki pants and shirt. Gallipolis tossed them on a bunk.

“They look like hell, but I had ‘em washed. Suppose you try ‘em on. They’ll be more comfortable where you’re going, anyhow.”

The Saint changed, while Gallipolis went back to the bar. The fit was not at all bad. Perhaps the boots were a trifle large, but that was better than having them too small. Simon strapped on his shoulder holster again, and found a shabby hunting coat to put on over the gun.

There was a newspaper among the other litter on the bunk, and Simon picked it up and found that it was dated that evening. He had to turn to the second page to find a follow-up story on the tanker sinking. The reason for that was plain enough, for nothing new had developed. He realised that there was no reason why anything ever should, and he began to wonder if by a fortunate fluke the explosion had been just a little too sudden for the ungodly; and he was tempted to be glad that he had never said anything about the submarine. The plot should have called for at least one survivor to spike the theory that the disaster was due to spontaneous combustion, which seemed to be the accepted explanation pending the verdict of a Commission of Inquiry. After his own capture of the planted lifebelt, the loss with all hands must have been one of those unforeseen accidents to which the best conspiracies were subject.

The only additional information was that the tanker was sailing under the American flag, but had loaded with oil at Tampico and cleared for Lisbon-it was presumed that she had been working up the coast for the shortest possible dash across the ocean. It was a minor point, but it helped to round out the picture and dispose of another lurking obscurity. There had to be at least a good superficial reason for a British submarine to have done the sinking; and beyond Lisbon was Spain, at the back of France, with Franco responding to the strings pulled in Rome, where Mussolini’s wagon careered behind the maniac star of Berlin. It could all be plausible … And the Saint wondered whether it was right that he should ruthlessly call it good fortune that no man had come out alive from that latest sacrifice to the ravening ambition of the hysterical megalomaniac who was putting out the lights of Europe as a screaming guttersnipe would break windows …

He went back to the bar room and found Gallipolis regarding Hoppy with a despairing frown.

“That cricket outfit is going to wow the Indians,” he told Simon apprehensively. “But I gave you the only things I’ve got that ‘d come near fitting him. Maybe he can swap it for a blanket. Anyhow it’ll help keep the rattlesnakes away.”

“We’re goin’ out huntin’, ain’t we?” argued Mr Uniatz. “I buy dese sport clothes in Times Square, so dey can’t be nut’n wrong wit’ dem.”

Gallipolis gave it up and pushed back the bar.

“When I’m walking wide-eyed into trouble, I like my chopper,” he explained. He took his Tommy gun out of the floor cavity, picked up a can of cartridges, and weighted down another pocket with a heavy automatic. A powerful flashlight followed. Simon was keyed for treachery like a taut violin string, but there was no sign of it. Gallipolis turned down the lamp until it flickered out, shone the flashlight against the door, and said: “Come on.”

They followed the path across the palmetto land, with the Greek leading the way. There were small fleecy clouds playing tag with the moon, but the stars gave a steady glimmer of illumination that relieved the fluctuating dark. A frog barked in the canal, and the night was full of the gabble and screech of insects.

Simon stopped for a moment to examine Mr Uniatz’s Lincoln again under the flashlight.

“This is what you came in, I suppose,” he said.

“Dat’s it, boss,” assented Mr Uniatz unblushingly. “I borrow it from de clip jemt, on account of I t’ink I am goin’ back.”

“We’d better move it out-it’s probably on the air by now. I’ll stop about a mile up the road, and you can park it and get in with us.”

He started the Cadillac and let it go, and braked again after they had been on the highway about eighty seconds and the last of Miami had fallen behind. While the lights of the following car went out, and he waited for Hoppy to join them, he took another look at the Greek.

“I don’t want you to misunderstand anything, comrade,” he murmured, “but there’s one other side to that grand I promised you. If I can buy you, I expect anybody else can. But you ought to remember one thing before you go into the auction market. Hoppy and I are both a little quick on the trigger sometimes. If we thought you were going to try to be clever and turn that perforator of yours the wrong way, your mother might have to do her job all over again.”

Gallipolis gave him the full brilliance of his limpid black eyes.

“I never met a big shot like you before, mister.” he said curiously. “Does anybody know just what your angle is?”

“Believe it or not, I’ve done most of my killings for the sake of peace,” said the Saint cryptically.

The Cadillac swept on again until the speedometer touched seventy, eighty, eightyfive and crept towards ninety. Bugs battered shatteringly against the windshield and disintegrated in elongated smears. Simon’s face was a mask of cold graven bronze with azure eyes. Then the world about them disappeared entirely, and they were roaring through mist westward on the Tamiami Trail.

3
A single light showed like a puffball through the fog and rocketed up to meet them.

This is Ochopee,” said the Greek, and touched Simon’s arm.

The Cadillac slowed down. The light turned out to be a single bulb over a pump in front of a darkened filling station. It was the only sign of life in the shrouded town.

“Boss,” said Mr Uniatz from the back seat, in a voice of glum foreboding, “dey pulled in de sidewalks. If dey’s a bar open now it’s because somebody forgot to lock up.”

Gallipolis said: “Charlie Halwuk lives on a dredge about half a mile on the other side of town.”

“What sort of dredge?” Simon asked.

“There’s a lot of ‘em around here. They used ‘em to build the road, and then left ‘em. Now they’re nothing but skeletons with most of the planking gone. Keep straight ahead.”

Simon drove on. Above the whisper of the engine, the night emphasised its silence with the clatter of crickets and a throaty chorus of bullfrogs. It sounded like a thunderclap when the Greek said “Turn here.” Simon pulled over and saw the headlights glisten on two lines of milky water.

“There’s sand underneath it,” said Gallipolis. “Go on.”

They followed the ruts for a tenth of a mile or more, and then Simon stopped again. A great flat boat, with grinning ribs at the stern topped with a crazy superstructure, showed starkly in the double glare of the headlights. The Saint switched on the spotlight and played it from side to side.

Gallipolis called “Charlie!” musically, and said: “Blow your horn.”