"You saw?" he asked.

"Yes. It's still hard to believe, but I saw. I'm sorry, it didn't seem possible. When did you…?"

"About five years ago."

"What happened?"

"It's a long story."

"I'm not in any hurry. Is there any more beer?"

"Enough."

"Then go ahead." She moved to the glider, and sat with her legs tucked under her. "Tell me all about it."

He leaned against the porch railing, and grinned so broadly that his teeth gleamed in the night. "All right, you asked for it."

9

MADRIGAL'S job was to kill Calvin Weiss. My job was to stop Madrigal, and the job was impossible. Weiss was the entertainment director on the S.S. Carnival Queen, a cruise ship that sailed out of Florida 's Port St. James, on a regular eight-day run to Nassau, San Juan, St. Thomas, and St. Maarten. The Queen had seven bars, four lounges, and a casino. She had a swimming pool, a gymnasium, and two saunas. She had a cavernous dining room, three card rooms, two cafes, a sports area, a skeet range, and the facilities of a small city. She carried one thousand and twelve passengers, and a staff of over four hundred, any one of whom could have been Madrigal. And I had to keep Weiss alive.

"Impossible," I told Sammy.

"Difficult," he agreed, "but you'll manage."

"How? If there were twenty of me, I couldn't keep Weiss covered every minute."

"Right, so you don't try to cover him. The job is to find Madrigal before he can do anything."

"Look, I don't know if Madrigal is a man, a woman, or a cocker spaniel. How do you expect me to find him, tap fourteen hundred heads?"

"Just keep your mind open, tune in to anything you can. With your luck, you'll pick up something."

"Is that the best advice you can give me?"

"With your luck, that's all you need."

My luck. He has a thing about that word. He likes to say that I have more luck than brains, and to prove it he points to the way that I win at cards. He ignores the fact that what I do at the card table has nothing to do with luck. I win because I know what everybody else at the table is holding. I go into their heads, and peek at their cards. To put it baldly, I cheat. Yes, I agree that the way I play doesn't fall within the code of the gentleman gambler, but, you see, I don't believe in gambling. Life is uncertain enough.

With those instructions in mind, on the night that the Carnival Queen sailed from Port St. James, I was not shadowing Weiss all over the ship, nor was I desperately trying to tap any of over a thousand heads at the seven complimentary cocktail parties and imitation luaus going on. I was, according to instructions, trusting to my luck, which meant that I was sitting in the card room on the Promenade Deck trying to decide which way to go on a two-way finesse for the queen of hearts. My partner's name was Betty Ireland, our opponents were Jim and Ellen Kreiske, from Cleveland, and the stakes were respectable enough to keep me awake. The contract was six spades, doubled, I looked to be a trick short, and there was no squeeze or endplay in sight. I needed the finesse, and there was no clue from the bidding as to where the queen lay. It was an even shot either way, and anyone else would have flipped a mental coin, but that would have been gambling, and I don't believe in gambling. Instead, I went into their heads. I tried Ellen Kreiske on my left, but she didn't have it. I tried her husband, and there it was, the queen of hearts along with two small ones. I crossed to the dummy, led the ten of hearts, and when Jim didn't cover, I let it run. I cashed the ace and the king, collecting the queen, and claimed the contract.

"Six spades doubled," I announced. "Nine hundred and ten."

"Way to go, partner," said Betty. "Well played."

"Luck," said Kreiske. He was a grumbler. "Could have gone either way."

"Sheer luck," his wife agreed.

But, as you can see, luck had nothing to do with it. Still, I have to admit that Sammy has a point about my luck, for there have been times when I've done something thoughtless, or careless, or downright stupid, and the luck has pulled me through. That's the way it was earlier that day, before we sailed, when I staked out Weiss's home in Port St. James. He lived on a shady, well-kept street lined with cookie-cutter houses, the sort of street where you express your individuality by the color of your garage door and the size of the flamingo on your lawn. Weiss's door was lime green, and his flamingo wouldn't have broken any records. For no good reason, I was disappointed. I had expected more of a statement from a man who made his living making other people laugh.

I got there early in the morning, parked down the street, and waited for him to show. The Queen sailed at five in the afternoon, and so I had plenty of time, but, despite what Sammy had said about covering him, I wanted to see him on his home grounds and familiarize myself with the way he moved. I settled down to wait with the motor running, the air on high, and that was the first stupid thing I did that day. I wasn't there twenty minutes when the cruiser pulled up, and parked behind me. Two cops got out, and came over. They both wore dark glasses, and one of them was chewing a toothpick.

I lowered the window, and said what everybody says. "What's the problem, officer?"

Toothpick said, "Would you step out of the car, please?"

"I'm just sitting here."

"Out, please. Now." I stepped out into the heat, and he said, "License and registration, please."

I gave him the papers. He looked them over, and gave them back. "Mr. Slade, do you have any business around here?"

"No, just passing through."

"Parked at the curb?"

"Is it a no-parking zone?"

He didn't like that. "Do you know anyone in this neighborhood?"

"Not a soul."

"Then I'm going to ask you to keep on moving."

"You running me?"

"That's it."

"I don't get it. What did I do?"

"It isn't what you did, it's what you're going to do." He shifted the toothpick to the other side of his mouth. "You are going to drive straight down Mason Street to the first light, hang a left onto Cordell, and go four more lights to the entrance to the Interstate. You will not stop for a cup of coffee, you will not stop to rest your weary head, you will barely even stop for the lights along the way. You will get onto the Interstate, north or south, makes no difference, and you will leave the confines of Port St. James at once. That's what you will do. Have I made myself clear?"

"Clear enough, but I'm not sure that you can do this."

"Mr. Slade, I assure you I can. I can do it hard, or I can do it easy. Which is it going to be?"

I couldn't figure it. Sometimes a cop will run a stranger in a small town, but not when the small town is in south Florida where strangers are the bread and the butter. Still, I should have done it. I should have tugged my forelock, and gone quietly, but that would have left Weiss uncovered, and so I made my second stupid move of the day. I reached for my wallet, and both cops stiffened. I smiled. I showed them the silver shield and the green plastic card that identified me as Commander Benjamin Slade, Office of Naval Intelligence, Criminal Investigation Division. Toothpick wasn't impressed.

"Around here that doesn't mean shit," he said. "I know a place in Miami where you can buy one of those things for ten bucks." "Not one like this."

Toothpick asked his partner, "What do you think, Eddie?"

"The lieutenant said to run him."

"He didn't say anything about the U.S. Navy."

"I don't work for the Navy, I work for the lieutenant."

"Yeah, there's that." Toothpick asked me, "You gonna move?"

"Sorry, but I can't oblige you."