PRIVATE PRIVATE PRIVATE.

No trespa.s.sing. No hiking. No hunting. No camping. No soliciting. No deliveries.

No visiting of any kind except by special amp; specific invitation.

VIOLATORS will be subject to immediate citizen's arrest amp; prosecution.

It made you feel warm and welcome. I went rolling along, thinking of the various things I could tell the guard I expected to find. It was a long way back in. Birds burst up out of cover. I think I went at least a mile and a half, winding to stay on high ground where less gravel fill was needed to build the road. And then I emerged from the scrub-country brush and palmetto thickets and oak hammocks, and there was a white fence on my right. Four horses stared over the fence at me, snorted and wheeled, and went pounding down their side of the fence line. It was apparently a familiar game. Race the funny car and beat the funny man. In the distance I could see a confusing cl.u.s.ter of buildings.

I let the horses win by just enough to let them know they had to work at it. Beyond their fence corner was an asphalt landing strip with a wind sock, a small hangar, six brightly colored little airplanes tied down to the ring bolts, and another one coming in, teetering on the wind. Beyond the hangar the road curved and I saw thirty or so vehicles. About half of them were four-wheel drive. And half the remainder were sports cars.

It was half after four, and I could hear the sounds of party time. I parked Miss Agnes between a Toyota Land Cruiser and an ancient jeep with a big winch on the front, mud-caked up to its ears. I followed the sounds of party. The music was very loud, and it wasn't anything anybody was ever going to be able to whistle. The party was taking place in and around an indoor-outdoor swimming pool. Bright canvas was laced to framework made of pipe to take the sting out of the December breezes. And there were some big electric heating units turned on, glowing toward the pool from atop poles ten feet tall. Eighty to a hundred guests, maybe. There were some earnest young men in ranch gear taking care of the two little bars, and the long table where hot food was apparently in continuous supply.

A six-foot lady, startlingly endowed, pushed a drink into my hands and said, "You better like it,. buster. I spend valuable time getting it made zactly the way he likes them, and I turn around and the son of a b.i.t.c.h has disappeared. Don't just stand there! Drink it, you silly clutz!"

Before I could tell her it was a splendidly dry martini, she had prowled away, snapping her head from side to side, looking for the gin gourmet. I moved further into the fringes of party-land and looked around. It was happening in my side yard, so I could pick out some faces. Two or three of the hustlers with the highest going rate on the beach, in season. A baroness who sang here and there, badly. A couple of girls from the water-ski school. The others looked like college girls, beach bunnies, store clerks and secretaries. The men, outnumbered about two to one, were harder to identify. There was that certain burnished, heads-up arrogance which- spoke of gold credit cards, and the authority to move people around, and the pleasures of the predatory life. They were men who would keep their lawyers busy and their doctors concerned.

I finally spotted Tom Collier, Genial Host. He was in a lime yellow jump suit with two entwined horseshoes in black on the breast pocket. He was coming out of the house, guffawing at something a little blond gem was whispering to him as she clung to his arm with both hands. As he listened, he made a slow sweep of his party, and the appraisal swept past me and hesitated and swept back and came to close focus. I nodded and smiled. He smiled and waved.

It had not been easy to recognize him. He had taken on the coloration of the group. He could have been selling generators in Sao Paulo for Swiss francs he was going to fly to Hong Kong to buy a shipment of motorbikes made in Taiwan. Or he could have been putting together a syndication deal on a dozen old television serials. Or greasing a bill through the state legislature which would improve the profits for his clients. Or supplying the tail at his own party.

I am never quite certain exactly when I make a decision about how to open people up wide as a Baptist Bible. Different strokes for different folks, they used to say. It is a combination of hunch and instinct. Here was a very smart, tough, b.a.l.l.sy fellow right at the peak of his power and glory. He had shed the dull old ways, and he was living big and living rich. He was tasting it all, and so far he loved it.

I was going to have to run a bluff, and a very good one, because this man had seen them all. He had the ruddy, fleshy face of the sensualist, and the air of the search for gratification that has become the reason for living. In this sense, he had a lot to lose. No more low bows and special tables. No more big h.e.l.lo from celebrities. No more invitations to come in on cute little deals and payoffs. And that, perhaps, is the vulnerability of the corrupt, the terrible fear of losing the fruits of corruption. To put it another way-to be asked to leave the party.

But I knew he was the X in Meyer's strange formula, the added factor on the left which had changed the outcome on the right-or delayed it.

I flipped through a half-dozen ways of cutting him out of his happy holiday pack, made a choice, and moved on an interception course. When I caught his eye I made that useful Latin-American sign which asks for a few moments of your time, a thumb and first finger held a half inch apart. He unwound the little blond beauty from his arm, patted her on the rear, and sent her off toward the food. He moved aside, pulling me over with a head gesture.

"I've seen you, but where?" he said.

"Here and there: Not often. Not to talk to. The name is McGee."

He did a good job at covering any impact. I could not be sure I had seen any. But it was obvious that Mansfield Hall would have used my name when he had... haw... phoned Collier about my pending visit. And because he had some a.s.sociation of the name McGee with Professor Ted and his daughter, he had immediately turned off any negotiation with Seven Seas. The genuinely sly man will not rationalize any coincidence. Instead, he'll slam doors.

"McGee? McGee. Is it supposed to ring a bell?"

"Not really. I've got something out in the car. Frank Hayes told me to show it to you."

"Frank Hayes?"

"I didn't know you were having a party. I tried the Atlantic Club first. Some tall girl handed me this drink because she couldn't find the man she made if for."

"On the last day of the year I'll buy anybody a drink, McGee. Go get whatever it is this man I don't know thinks I ought to see."

"You've got to be kidding!"

"Kidding? I don't know any Frank Hayes."

"I mean about bringing it in. I lifted it into the pickup by myself, but I couldn't carry it more than ten feet without taking a rest. It was three hundred feet deep. I don't see how they got it up into a boat without busting it. Look, all I want is that when Frank Hayes asks me, did Collier see it, I can say yes, he saw it. That's my only part in this."

There is something about a pickup truck which disavows guile, which gives a commonplace, workmanlike flavor to any transaction. Night had come quickly. He looked off toward the tops of pine trees, black against the last gray of the sky. The pool lights were on. His nostrils widened, as if he hoped to smell gold adrift on the night breeze.

"Okay. Let's go take a look. What is it anyway?"

"Tell you the truth, I'll be d.a.m.ned if I know. You'd have to ask Frank."

"How do I ask him if I don't know him?"

"I'd guess he'll get hold of you."

We went through the night to where all the cars were parked.

"Some pickup," he said. I was a half step behind him as he reached it. He peered into the bed. In what light was left, all he could see was the big tool chest that was spot-welded against the front end of the bed. I moved to where the light was perfect for me, and I took my right fist back, right shoulder turned away from him, both heels rooted to the ground, the fist six inches from my ear, and aimed at the sky.

Yes, Virginia, there is a b.u.t.ton. As in right on the b.u.t.ton. If you have a dimple in your chin, the b.u.t.ton is an inch and a half east or west of said dimple, along the jaw shelf, lower jaw. That particular area seems to give the maximum jolt to the brainpan. You can knock someone out by hitting him right between the eyes, but the blow requires much more force. The most effective stroke is slightly downward, tending to knock the jaw open at the instant of impact, thus saving the problem of a collapsed knuckle. When striking someone, strike at an imaginary target well beyond the point of probable impact. Then you will not draw the punch at the last microsecond, m.u.f.fling the blow.

My hand was still sore from hitting Frank Hayes on the side of the head, but the swelling was gone. Collier was aware of where I was standing, and I knew he would turn his head and direct a question at me. As I saw the first movement of his head, I started the punch at gra.s.s level. It came up through the muscles of thigh and behind, up the back, and reached the hand last of all. It resembles the old game of snap-the-whip, played by the foolhardy young on roller skates or ice skates. The fist is the last person at the end of the whip. The fist exploded down onto the turning jaw, knuckles nicely aligned along the shelf of bone. It blew his mouth open. He said, "Uhhh!" and dropped facedown so close to me his forehead hit the toe of my left shoe, and it felt as if I had dropped a bowling ball on it.

Two cars were coming to the party. The headlights swept across me. They parked where they would not pa.s.s close to me on their way to the fun and games. They did some whooping and doorchunking. When they were gone I listened to party sounds. There was another sound much too close, and I had a moment of alarm before I identified it. It was coming from an all-white Continental not more than fifteen feet from me. It was angled away from me, which put me back off the stern port quarter, in its blind spot. It was a measured phlumph, of enough weight and purpose to rock the white success symbol on its mushy springing. Once identified, I realized that there were two blind spots operating to hide me. A woman made a cooing sound, which rose to a question at the end and was answered in rumbling, effortful grunting. The phlumph cycle accelerated, and I squatted and slid my arms all the way under Tom Collier, kept my back straight as I stood up, and used the momentum to hoist him up over the high side of the pickup bed, giving him a half roll as he fell onto the metal floor.

I had seen a side road where the horse fence started, so I drove down there and went a hundred feet along the road and stopped, with my lights off. I climbed into the back. Collier was still slack. I' fingered his jaw; nothing felt broken. I unlocked the tool chest and found a pencil flash in the top tray and used it to locate my roll of one-inch filament tape, on the handy dispenser. Better than a fivehundred-pound breaking strength. I shoved his short sleeves out of the way and took a turn around his left arm just below the elbow, then pulled his two arms together, the insides of the forearms pressing against each other. I took the tape around the two arms just below the elbows four times and nipped it off with the dispenser trigger. I took three turns around his ankles and nipped it off.

When you think back, you can remember how many melodramas you have watched where the captive worked his hands loose from the ropes, or went hippity-hop to where they keep the kitchen knives, or broke a bottle or a light bulb and sawed on the broken gla.s.s, or even found some way to burn himself free.

Too bad. All obsolete. Try the filament tape. Trust a friend. Or truss one. No way to get teeth or fingers anywhere near it, or get the hands anywhere near the ankles. No way to stand up, or keep your balance if you do. No knots to learn. And I had him secure thirty seconds after I found my tape. I threw a tarp over him and shoved him forward where the wind wouldn't catch the tarp. Then I went looking for a place. I had the feeling I had seen a ca.n.a.lbank road heading left and right just as I Came off his bridge onto the ranch side.

It was there. I took it slow. We'd had a dry December. I headed east, parallel to the highway, over there on the other side of the ca.n.a.l. After I had begun to wonder if I would ever find a place to turn around, I came to a hurricane-wire fence with a padlocked vehicle gate in it and enough room to turn around. The ground was firm along the fence line. I walked it first, and then drove back away from the highway and the ca.n.a.l for two hundred yards or so.

I dropped the tailgate and reached in and pulled him out to where I could get hold of him and lift him. There were little resistances in his body that told me he was doing the shrewd thing and playing possum. I sat him up, put a shoulder into the middle of him, and hoisted him over the shoulder, my right arm around his meaty thighs, his head and arms dangling down my back.

Using the pencil flashlight, I walked into the edge of the brush and found a mounded area of coa.r.s.e gra.s.s, sand, sh.e.l.l and limestone, probably a place where some small current in the sea had pushed up a window of sea bottom when mankind was only an unborn threat to the distant future.

I carried him with as much of an effect of effortlessness as I could manage. Standing straight, I unclasped my arm from around his thighs and rolled him off my shoulder. I felt him tense up as he went off. He hit without a sound other than the thick thud of impact. That is another way to tell. When a person is unconscious, a jolt like that will rasp the air through the slack throat with an easily audible noise.

I left him in the dark and went back to the toolbox and got the short-handled spade and also a couple of Coolite sticks. I like to keep them on board the Flush and in the car. You peel the wrappers off, and bend until they make a little snapping sound, and then shake them to mix the chemicals. They provide a good strong light for three hours, with no trace of heat. It is a white light with a slight greenish cast to it.

He was on his right side with his back toward palmettos. I activated the Coolite sticks and tossed them onto the ground about ten feet apart. I stood between them and stepped the spade down into the coa.r.s.e stuff, levered a load loose, heaved it to the side. It was easier than I expected. Once I was through the top crust, the consistency was predictable, and I was able to get into a good digging rhythm. When I worked my way around to where I could look at him without appearing to, I could see little catchlights against the wetness of his eyes and knew he was watching me.

I made it six feet long and about three feet wide. My hands began to tingle in a few spots, warning of where the blisters would puff up if I kept going much longer. By then I was almost down to my hip pockets. I had begun to get a sucking sound when I pried the bottom loose. I put the light on the bottom and saw the water beginning to seep in. I sat on the edge and stood the spade up in my dirt pile and rubbed my hands together and rested for a little while. Then I went over to him and rolled him far enough so I could check the pockets in that jump suit. I found a wallet. I took it over to a Coolite and squatted on my heels as I checked it. Nice wallet. Some kind of fine-grained lizard hide with a grey cast to it. Gold corners. Gold initials, lower case, t.j.c.

American Express Gold Card, Diners, Cat Cay membership, Bunnyworld, the Riviera in Vegas, Atlantic Club, Air Travel Card, Abercrombie amp; Fitch, Sh.e.l.l, Texaco, Exxon and BP Three fifties, four twenties, a pair of tens and a pair of ones. I prodded around in the money section and found another flap and pulled it up and found two five-hundreds and a one-hundred. Thirteen hundred and fifty-two dollars for digging a hole. I put his driver's license and his cards back into the pretty wallet. They were his ident.i.ty. They were Tom Collier.

So the symbol was inevitable. I shoved the money into my pocket and I half turned and flipped the wallet into the grave. It hit with a small splat.

"McGee," he said. Nice tone control. Nice modulation. Good for a speech on the floor, or at the jury rail.

"Sah!" Hard and sharp, the enlisted man's protective response.

"I am a very good lawyer. You're going to need one."

"Not if I think everything out."

"You're not thinking. Do you intend to drop me into that hole? If you do, you're not thinking clearly. I'm worth one h.e.l.l of a lot more to you than you took out of the wallet."

I sat on the edge of the hole again, feet dangling inside."You're cool about it. I like that. Just take my word, Collier. You have to go into the hole. I won't put you in live. I'm not some kind of kink. I'll give you a good one across the nape of the neck with the edge of this spade before I put you into the hole."

"Why do I have to go in?"

"They have to be looking for you. They'll figure a man like you would be all set to run at any time. Tricky. If you're around, they'll look for somebody else. And they could get lucky and come up with me. Are you sure you have the right person? I'm the acting senior partner in a very reputable law firm. 'Tricky' is a strange word."

"I'll have to tip them off. It's too much to put into one phone call. Maybe three calls will be best. Three different phone booths, miles apart. Tomorrow. I'll be able to say I read it in the morning paper."

"Read what? About me being missing?"

"They won't know you're missing until they come looking for you. Look, it went wrong. I screwed up the detail. It was a good chance and I worked hard on it, but I know when it's time to cover the tracks and run. It has to be you because you're the logical one.

"Logical one for what?"

"The one that killed Lawton and Charity Hisp this afternoon."

"What!"

"We were having such a nice talk, me and Lawton. From time to time I had to encourage him. He'd get over hurting from the last time and get brave again. And, d.a.m.n it, we were right down to the final item, just how and where he was going to give me his copy of Ted Lewellen's seven projects, with the maps and overlays."

"Lewellen?"

"Oh, come on! Do you think I'm that stupid? There's no 'tpoint in going on with this." I reached and plucked the spade out of the dirt pile.

"No, nol That was just a reflex. I'm sorry. Okay. Professor Lewellen. I'm caexecutor of the estate. What about Mr. Hisp?"

I laid the spade across my thighs. "It was just one of those d.a.m.n-fool things that happen. Bad luck. You know that long skinny neck of his. He took a chance and tried to duck around me and I swung to stop him and the edge of my wrist hit him right on the throat and crushed something in there. He started digging his fingernails into his neck. His face began to get red: He fell down and rolled around and his eyes bugged out. Then he hammered his heels on the rug and died. No doubt about how dead he was. She and I knew it the minute it happened. I nearly lost her. Ran like a deer. I caught her by the nape of the neck in one of those little garden places. Great day for necks. I held her head under the water in one of those reflecting pools. After she stopped buckling, when I let go of her, she stayed right there, facedown on the stones with her head under. She saw me hit Hisp. I knew that if I was going to have any chance at all, she had to be number two."

"Were you driving that idiotic blue Rolls truck?"

"No. I borrowed a car."

"Their children were out?"

"Every one."

"Look. Having my arms like this is beginning to make my shoulders cramp so bad, I can't think. How about cutting my arms loose?"

"Not one chance, lawyer. Forget it."

"Well... what time did this happen?"

"Two o'clock. I know you've got the original. I know that stuff was in your hands because at the time Ted died, you were trying to work out some way it could be handled in his estate if he died. Okay. Frank Hayes and I were with Ted a few years ago in Mexico, looking for something in the Bay of La Paz. We c.r.a.pped out. Our big pump quit and the weather began to turn, and before we could get back there, a hurricane changed the bottom so much we'd have to start all over again."

"And this Frank Hayes is the Hayes of Seven Seas, based at Grand Cayman?"

"Right. We were both lined up to go with Ted on the one he was getting ready to leave on when he was killed. It was going to be rich and easy. He brought me the letter from Mansfield Hall and we agreed it sounded like whoever he represented had hold of Ted's research. And I knew it belonged to the daughter and that she didn't have it, and n.o.body had seen it since he died."

A couple of tree toads tried their pitch pipes and the whole chorus gradually joined in. Some moths had been attracted to the Coolites. They could land on them without frying, and their wing shapes made big moving shadows.

I knew his mind was spinning, running back and forth and up and down the cage, looking for a way out.

"Mansfield Hall," he said. The tone was not questioning. It was bitter.

"No," I said. "He didn't name you. I figured if somebody was trying to make a deal through Hall to set up a treasure hunt, it had to be Hisp. I got to you through Hisp. In my phone tip I tell the law that you and Hisp defrauded Ted Lewellen's daughter. I tell them it was your idea. I tell them you owned Hisp on account of knowing how he and a man named Gary Lindner speculated in bonds in the bank's name six or seven years ago. I tell them you are a director of the bank and you were trying to turn the estate a.s.sets into money by secretly making a deal with Seven Seas. I tell them that you and Hisp were fighting about who was going to get what. They'll really look for you, Collier. They may look a lot of places, but they won't look in this hole. Sorry, friend. It's the only way I'm going to get home free. Find something wrong with it."

"Just one thing wrong. Jesus, this hurts! It keeps me from thinking clearly. Can't you..."

"No. What's the one thing wrong?"

"a.s.sume it works. You walk away empty."

"I'll be in the clear. I'll settle for that."

"Killing the Hisps is going to be very big, McGee. When they can't find me, it's going to be more and more important to pin down exactly where I was when last seen. And who I was with. I can make you a better offer. I'll swear I asked you to the ranch early. You arrived about one o'clock. I'll turn over all the Lewellen papers to you."

"And then blow the whistle on me. Who would they believe? Thomas J. Collier, or me? No thanks."

"But you don't know how much ammunition you have, man! You know that I betrayed my trust as co-executor of the estate. You know I learned of illegal bond dealings and didn't report it. You could completely ruin me. They'd pick me apart. Blow the whistle on you? You could even make a pretty good case that I was the one who sent you to beat some sense into Lawton Hisp."

I thought it over. There is the precise point in the poker game when you have to give the impression of carefully computing the odds. Most people with a bust hand bet too quickly and smile too much. You hesitate a long time before you make your heavy bet into that strong hand across the table.

I got up and tossed the spade aside and went over and picked him up off the ground.

"What are you..."

I carried him to the hole. "Hey! Oh, my G.o.d!"

I bent over and swung him over the hole and let go. He landed on his back in three inches of seepage.

"McGee!" he roared, from the darkness.

I chunked the shovel into the dirt pile, picked up a full load, dropped it where I figured the middle of him had to be.

"Wait!" he roared. "Wait!" and then he began yelling. He was trying to make words, but he couldn't get his mouth closed far enough to make them. He was breaking.

I went over and got one of the Coolites and dropped it into the hole next to his head. I sat on my heels and looked down at him. He stopped roaring.

"I don't see why I should have to explain all this to you, Collier. You're just too d.a.m.ned tricky. There's no way I could trust you to do what you say. I'd worry all the time. I'd wonder if you don't own somebody on the cops who'd come to pick me up for questioning and blow my brains out of the far side of my head for resisting arrest. You're too important. You sell people this big successful image called Tom Collier. I almost forgot to give you the message from Nancy. She says to tell you she's doing just fine without you."

"Listen! Please listen! I'll write everything down. Things they can prove. Please get me out of here! Oh; Jesus! You've got to be crazy. I can write down... terrible things I've done. You're right. n.o.body should ever trust me at all."