The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

There was a rip in the nervous old man’s canvas apron, and he mixed his words with waves of a pipe off which most of the stem had been bitten. He waved the pipe and said, “My, mister, you must’ve had a car accident.”

Sail, holding to the counter, said, “What about the charts?”

“Yeah, there’s one other place sells the government charts besides us. Hopkins Carter. But if you’re going down in the keys, we got everything you need here. If you go on the inside, you’ll want thirty-two-sixty and sixty-one. They’re the strip charts. But if you take Hawk Channel, you’ll need harbor chart five-eighty-three, and charts twelve-forty-nine, fifty and fifty-one. Here, I’ll show—”

Sail squinted his eyes, swallowed and said, “I don’t want to buy a chart. I want you to slip out and telephone me if either of certain two persons comes in here and asks for chart twelve-fifty, the one which has lower Matecumbe.”

“Huh?”

Sail said patiently, “It’s simple. You just tell the party you got to get the chart, and go telephone me, then stall around three or four minutes before you deliver the chart, giving me time to get over here and pick up their trail.”

The nervous old man put his pipe in his mouth and immediately took it out.

“What kind of shenanigans is this?”

Sail showed him a license to operate in Florida.

“One of them private detectives, huh?” the old man said, impressed.

Sail put a ten-dollar bill on the counter.

“That one’s got twins. How about it?”

“Mister, if you’ll just describe your parties. That’s all!”

Sail made a word picture of Blick and Nola, putting the salient points down on a piece of paper. He added a telephone number.

“The phone’s a booth in a cigar store on the corner. I’ll be there. How far is this Hopkins Carter?”

“Two blocks.”

“I’ll probably be there for the next ten minutes.”

Sail, walking off, was not as pale as he had been on the boat. He had put on a serge suit more black than blue and a new black polo. When he was standing in front of the elevator, taking a pull at a flat amber bottle which had a crown and a figure 5 on the label, the old man yelled.

“Hey, mister!”

Sail lowered the bottle, started coughing, and called between coughs, “Now” — cough — “what?”

“Lemme look at this again and see if you said anything about the way he talked.”

Sail moved back to where he could see the old man peering at the paper which held the descriptions. The old man took his pipe out of his teeth.

“Mister, what does that feller talk like?”

“Well, about like the rest of these crackers. No, wait. He’ll call you bud two or three times.”

The old man pointed his pipe at the floor. “I already sold that man a twelve-fifty. ’Bout half hour ago.”

Sail pumped air out of his lungs in a short laugh which had no sound except the sound made by the air passing his teeth and nostrils. He said, “That’s swell. They would probably want a late chart for their X-marks-the-spot. And so they’ve got it, and they’re off to the wars, and me, I’m out ten percent on better than a hundred thousand.”

He had taken two slow steps toward the elevator when the old man said, “The chart was delivered.”

Sail came around. “Eh?”

“He ordered it over the telephone. We delivered. I got the address somewhere.” He thumbed an order book. “Whileaway. A houseboat on the river below the Twelfth Street causeway.”

Sail put a ten on the counter. “The brother.”