Curves Can Kill Page 9

  “Let’s try the right side of the lake,” I said to Lee as we got in the boat. “I have a hunch about it.”

  “I never disregard a fisherman’s hunch,” Lee said. “Okay, row to the spot you like.”

  I slipped the anchor into the water at the edge of a weed bank about two hundred and fifty feet from the big tree. We put shiners on our hooks and tossed the baits out gently, letting line run off the free spools as the small lead shots took the minnows deep.

  I felt something nudge my minnow. I pulled line off the reel, felt it move between my fingers, slowly at first, then fast and strong. I flipped the bail home and struck. The fish took off, making my reel sing.

  “That’s a wall-eye,” Lee said.

  It was. A six-pound beauty. Lee netted it for me before casting. Then he was into a fish before I could re-bait my hook. It was another wall-eye about the same size. We caught three crappies and a nice bass after that, then the fish stopped hitting and we just sat there, waiting. There was a worried frown on Lee’s face. I wondered if his thoughts had anything to do with Rita and Strep 3.

  “How was the trip to town?” I asked.

  Lee shrugged. “All right.”

  “You didn’t see anybody on the track, by any chance? A car, maybe?”

  He looked at me. “Why do you ask?”

  I was about to tell him when his face contorted and he twisted half around and something hit the water behind us. A hole had appeared in his right shirt sleeve. I pushed him down in the boat and went down myself. The shot had come from somewhere near the tree. This time I heard the cough of a silenced gun. Earlier, when the bullet skipped off the water between Vicki and me, the splashing we did had covered the sound of the gun belch. I aimed the .32 in the direction of the big tree, but all I saw was a flash of movement in the bushes and then there wasn’t a target.

  Lee was holding his arm, his teeth clenched. I pulled up the anchor. A crimson circle showed on his sleeve, began to spread. But no artery had been severed, for the blood was coming out slowly, not in spurts. I rowed quickly to shore, making sure the jetty was between us and the tree. I started to help Lee, but he shook his head and got out of the boat on his own. I pulled the boat onto the beach, took the first aid kit from my fishing box. Lee sat on a grassy spot among birch trees. He took off his shirt as I approached. It was only a flesh wound, hardly more than a bad bullet burn. I cleaned the wound, covered it with sulphur powder, slapped on a bandage.

  “You’ll be all right,” I said.

  “Give me a smoke,” Lee said.

  I lit two Camels stuck one between his lips. He drew in smoke hungrily.

  “Well,” I said, “what do you think now? That wasn’t a bee that stung you.”

  “I was shot,” Lee said dazedly. “Why was I shot?”

  “Maybe you just got in the way of the bullet. A second or so before you were hit, I leaned over, in front of you, to clear a piece of weed slime from my line. The bullet was meant for me.”

  “I think we should get the police,” Lee said.

  “That’s not going to solve anything.”

  “I’m not interested in solving anything. Someone just tried to commit murder. There are two women in the cabin, remember.”

  “Sure—and one of them is probably on chummy terms with the guy who fired that shot.”

  Lee’s brow furrowed. But then he shook his head stubbornly. “That doesn’t have to be so.”

  “Hell, Lee, how much evidence do you need?”

  “There can be other explanations for that shot.”

  “I think you’ll change your mind about that when you hear what I’ve got to say. Last night I heard someone leave the cabin. I caught a glimpse of someone entering the woods and followed. But I lost her.”

  “Her?”

  “Rita. Unless it was you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You—you may have been mistaken.”

  “You and Rita were in the kitchen when I got back.”

  “That doesn’t prove a thing, Larry. It could have been an animal you saw near the woods. Bears often come to the cabin to rummage in the garbage.”

  “Okay. So maybe it was a bear. But see if you can explain this one. A few hours after you left for town, I heard typing in Rita’s room. I knocked on her door, figuring she might want a cup of coffee. The typing continued. I let myself into her room—”

  “You had no right to do that!”

  “Shut up and listen. Rita wasn’t in her room. The typing sounds came from a tape recorder. I found her footprints near the lake and followed. I lost the trail, but I found this ...”

  I took the handkerchief from my pocket, opened it, showed him the cigarette butt. “It was burning when I found it. I returned to the cabin. This time Rita was in her room. The tape recorder was gone. You’re good at explanations, Lee—figure this one out for me.”

  “I ... I just can’t believe Rita would ...” He sucked in his breath.

  “Finish it, Lee. You can’t believe Rita would what? You won’t finish it? All right, I’ll do it for you. You can’t believe Rita would sell out her country. But that’s exactly what she is doing.”

  But he wouldn’t admit it, at least not aloud.

  I said, “There’s also something that happened yesterday afternoon. Vicki and I were out on the lake. I saw the sun flash off something behind the cabin. Later I investigated and found fresh tire tracks. This was why I asked if you saw a car on the track.”

  “I didn’t see a car.”

  “But you saw something, didn’t you? Come on, Lee, out with it. Something’s been weighing on your mind since you got back from town.”

  Lee took a deep breath, released it as a sigh of resignation. “All right, Larry; it’s in the car. I’II show you.”

  Lee put on his shirt and we walked to his Buick. He took something out of the glove compartment and said in a low voice, “Let’s get away from the cabin.”

  We walked back to the clump of birches, where Lee handed me a metal object with a clamp attached.

  “What do you make of it, Larry?”

  “Well, I’d have to take it apart to be sure ... but it looks like a transmitter device.”

  “I had it apart,” Lee said. “It’s a transmitter, no doubt of it.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “There was a rattling sound in the engine just before I got to town. I stopped at a garage and asked the mechanic to have a look. He found this under the rubber water pipe. The clamp had worked loose and it was banging against the engine block.”

  “Did Rita have any idea where this cabin was located?” I asked.

  “All she knew was that it was in New Hampshire. I never told her any more than that. I didn’t even tell her the name of the lake. Not that that would have helped; the lake isn’t on the map.”

  “Is there any way she could have found out?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Do you keep the deeds in your office? Tax receipts? Receipts for the extra building you had done?”

  “No. I keep all of that in my safe at home. Rita doesn’t even know about the safe.”

  I tossed the transmitter a foot or so in the air, caught it. “Well, this is how they located us. She didn’t have to tell them a thing. A transmitter this size has a range of about ten miles, maybe more. They followed us at a safe distance.”

  Lee saw a straw and grabbed it. “Rita may not have known about the transmitter.”

  “Possible,” I agreed.

  “Well, if she didn’t know about it, then she can’t be connected with the guy who fired that shot.”

  “Then why did she have a talk with him today?”

  “You’re not sure about that, Larry.”

  “Explain the tape machine.”

  He ground the cigarette beneath his heel. “I can’t.”

  “Maybe she didn’t know we’d be followed here,” I said. “But she may have found out we were, while you were making phone calls at the general store yesterday
. Or maybe they found a way to contact her later on, when she was alone in the cabin. If she has Strep 3, she’s sitting on something worth a fortune. It could be that she’s holding out for more money than the other side is prepared to pay or can raise at the moment. Of course, she couldn’t refuse to come here without arousing my suspicion. And maybe the proposition suited her. She’s cool. Above all, friend, she’s cool. She figured that if she disappeared for five or six days, her potential customers would be worried to a frazzle and willing to pay any price. On the other hand, she may have known they were bugging your car with a transmitter. Either way it’s the same thing.”

  Lee was silent, deep in thought.

  “We can’t go to the cops,” I said. “They’d scare everybody off.”

  Lee came to life. “But there are only the two of us. For all we know, there may be dozens of them in the woods! At least contact the people you’re working for.”

  “I’d have to be away from here for a couple of hours to do that.”

  “I’d keep an eye on Rita.”

  “It’s not the same thing, Lee. You might think of another excuse for trusting her. Anyhow, they’d be able to take care of just one man without much trouble.”

  What I didn’t tell Lee was that Z Detail already knew where the cabin was located, and that bringing Rita here had been Baxter Dumbrille’s idea all the way. I was certain that Dumbrille knew that the other side was here, and I was sure he wouldn’t trust me with the whole operation. I just hoped he had more than one man roaming around the woods.

  “What is it you’re trying to do?” Lee asked. “Do you have some kind of a plan?”

  “Yes.” I did some quick thinking. “I want to get enough evidence against Rita to make her talk. Right now we don’t have a thing on her, but if we can catch her with someone from the other side, I’m sure she’ll talk.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “She will. Do you remember the Rosenbergs? They were executed for selling atomic secrets to the Russians. Well, Strep 3 is even worse than the bomb.”

  “What you want isn’t easy.”

  “Of course it isn’t. It’ll mean taking risks; that’ll be my job. All I want from you is co-operation. I can’t watch Rita every moment of the day and night. When she’s with you or we’re all together, I’ll be able to relax. If anything happens, it’ll probably be during the night. Rita went for a walk today because you were in town and I was napping. We can’t give her another chance like that. All during the night, one of us will have to be awake, watching and listening. If she leaves the cabin while you’re on watch, you’re to wake me up.”

  Lee nodded.

  “How’s the arm?” I asked.

  “All right. It throbs a little, that’s all.”

  “Don’t let the girls know you were hit.”

  “Whoever fired that shot knows. If he’s working with Rita, as you think, he’ll find some way to tell her.”

  “Stop looking for angles, Lee. Once you start, there’s no stopping. Now listen to me. Go to the cabin and tell the girls that we’ll be heading back to New York Friday afternoon. This is Wednesday. If something is supposed to happen here, we’ll be forcing Rita’s hand. Say you made a phone call while you were in town, and you have an appointment to see someone Friday night. Got that?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, move. I’ll bring in your equipment after I clean the fish.”

  Chapter 9 ... the enemy shows ...

  We played bridge again after dinner. And once again Vicki made love to me with her feet and legs and threw out her cards with a gay abandon for my money. She began to yawn just before ten o’clock. This time Lee was more than willing to call it quits. I noticed that Rita threw odd glances at him every now and then. Small wonder. His bad play matched Vicki’s and we were close to even. We had cocoa and then the girls went to bed, but not before Vicki had maneuvered into position so she could whisper a message into my ear.

  “This damn arm,” Lee complained as soon as we were alone in the living room.

  I made him remove his shirt so I could lift the bandage. The night was cool and there was a fire going. I tossed the bandage into the flames and got my first aid kit and washed and re-dressed the wound.

  “It’s clean and it’ll heal,” I said, “but it’ll probably give you some trouble during the night. You won’t get any sleep right away, so maybe you’d better stand the first watch. If Rita opens the window in her room, will you be able to hear it?”

  “Without any trouble. The walls are thin.”

  “Good. Don’t take anything to kill the pain, by the way; it might put you to sleep.”

  “Your concern for my comfort overwhelms me.”

  “Leave your door unlocked. I’ll relieve you before one o’clock, and I’ll give you a bomb that’d knock out an elephant.”

  We said goodnight. I went to my room—and got a towel in the face.

  “What took you so long?” Vicki wanted to know.

  “I had to take some vitamins,” I said.

  She put her arms around me. “I hope they’re good vitamins, darling ...”

  The luminous dial on my wristwatch told me it was ten minutes to twelve when I heard a light rapping. I opened the door.

  “I heard her window go up,” Lee said. “Then I saw her down by the jetty. She turned to the left and walked along the shore.”

  “What is it?” Vicki asked in her sleep.

  “I’m going out for more vitamins,” I said.

  “Oh.” She snored gently.

  I got into my things, made sure I had my gun, started for the door. Lee came with me.

  “This is as far as you go,” I said at the door. “You’ll find a sleeping pill in my first aid kit.”

  “You don’t think I could sleep at a ...”

  I didn’t hear any more. I trotted to the jetty and along the shore for as long as the terrain allowed, then I stopped and listened. Ahead of me were the unmistakable sounds of someone moving through dry brush. And not too far ahead. I moved as fast as I could through the brush, sprinted across an open patch, stopped in a clump of trees. From dead ahead of me, closer than before, came dry rustlings and the snapping of twigs beneath someone’s weight. But the next time I stopped, I heard nothing. Moonlight showed me why: a game path, worn smooth by animals going to and from the lake. I was about to turn left and proceed away from the lake when I heard something to the right. So I turned in that direction. Soon I was at the lake. Fish splashed out on the water. A night bird called. Frogs croaked. I strained my ears, listening for a foreign sound. When I finally heard it, I all but jumped out of my skin. A dry twig snapped with a sharp, sudden report—behind me. I turned, saw a blur of movement in the darkness beneath some bushes. Something glinted. A gun? I didn’t wait to find out. Instinct took over. I dived into the water. While I was in the air I heard the thwop! of a silenced gun, saw a stab of flame, noticed the slug penetrate the misty lake haze just above me. Then I was knifing into the water. My chest hit the bottom. I kicked, following the sloping weed and mud. Soon I was in deep water. I twisted to the side, fought to get as much distance between me and the shore as was possible with clothing and shoes holding me back. Finally, my lungs burning, I surfaced. As I gulped in air to put out the fire in my lungs I saw the man who had shot at me. He stood at the very edge of the lake, legs wide apart. I ducked under, saw the stab of flame as he fired again, felt the concussion as the slug skipped off the lake surface a few inches to the right of my right eye—a couple of inches to the left and it would have torn off the top of my head. There was another miniature explosion on the surface as I went down. I swam about five feet under. This time I stayed down so long that I almost blacked out. When I surfaced, I was at least a hundred and fifty feet from shore. I saw the man on the lake edge; he was in the same position. His gun spat flame. The bullet wasn’t even close. I was ready to go down again when I saw two flashes of flame that appeared to be to the left of—and behind—the man. He staggered,
his feet kicking up water. Then he was out of the water and careening around on dry land. One final stab of flame ended his stumblebum carioca. He pitched forward on his stomach. I swam in, waded from the lake, stopped. The guy who had used me as a target lay on his stomach a few feet from the water’s edge. He didn’t move.

  “Whoever you are,”‘ I said quietly to the darkness, “thanks.” There was no answer.

  “Grady?” I said.

  An owl hooted in the woods.

  I knelt beside the man. Dead. I went through his pockets. His gun was near his outstretched right hand. I picked it up, looked at the ugly silencer. Suddenly I missed the weight of the .32 against my hip. I had lost the gun in the water. So I stuck the new gun under my belt and got away from there.

  Lee was waiting outside the cabin door. “I saw flashes of light,” he said. “Then I thought I heard—your clothes! Well, that explains the splashing sounds. What happened?”

  I told him quickly. His face expressed shock and horror. When I was finished he said, “Rita? Where is she?”

  “I didn’t see her.”

  “She ... she may be in trouble.”

  Anger punched at me. “Come off it, Lee! She walked me into an ambush. She’s out there now, talking to her—”

  I stopped as Rita’s door opened. She emerged from her room, blinking her eyes sleepily. She wore a heavy bathrobe. Her hair was tousled. “What’s all the excitement about?” she asked.

  “I saw you down by the lake,” Lee said.

  She looked at him. “Yes, I went for a short walk.”