THE GETAWAY

"Yeah," said Earl. "Yes, sir, we like it real well here."

"An' o' course, we couldn't leave now, nohow. Not with Roy still in the pen."

Doc said that he understood. There was an awkward moment of silence with no one seemingly able to speak or move. And then, prompted by something in Ma's attitude, Doc felt constrained to proffer payment for the help which she and Earl had rendered.

"I'd really feel much better about it," he said with wholly insincere sincerity. "I know you've said you don't need any money, but…"

"We-el, let's see now," Ma said. "What you think it's been worth to you, Doc?"

"Why-" he kept his smile warm, but there was a cold lump in his stomach. Several times already he had mentally totted up the money in the belts and divided it by two. "Why, I wouldn't put a figure on it, Ma. It's worth whatever you say it is, and whatever you say is a hundred percent okay with me."

"How'd five grand strike you?"

Five! He'd been expecting-well, he didn't know just what. But when people tapped you on a deal like this, it was usually for most of what you had. And there was nothing you could do but like it.

"It's not enough," he declared, generous in his relief. "I'd be getting a bargain at ten."

"Knew you'd take it that way." Ma wagged her head in satisfaction. "Told Earl you would, didn't I, son? But it ain't for us, Doc. What I had in mind was, if you're sure that five or ten won't pinch you…"

"Ten. And it doesn't matter if it does pinch!"

"Well, I'd like you to pass it on to Pat Gangloni. I told you he was down there, I guess. He wasn't carryin' very heavy when he skipped, an'! been pretty concerned about him."

"Good old Pat," Doc said. "I'll see that he gets it, Ma."

"I'd o' helped him myself. But he was in an' out awful fast, an' I didn't have nothin' I could get at in a hurry. So," she wrung his hand. "I'm right pleased you'll be lookin' out for him. Know you mean to or you wouldn't say so."

"It's as good as done," Doc promised. "After all, Pat's a mighty good friend of mine, too."

They rode in the captain's car with Doc in the front seat between him and one of his crew, and Carol in the rear between the remaining two crewmen. Fog was thickening over San Diego, slowly descending upon the bay. The car crept through it cautiously, coming into the quay from the north, then circling the city's civic center, and returning from the south.

The boat was a sturdy fifty-footer, tied up about halfway down the long wharf. There were other seagoing craft on either side of it, a shrimp fisherman and a pleasure launch, but both were silent and dark. The captain parked the car and put the keys in the glove compartment. (It would be picked up by one of his many kinsmen.) He opened the door, spoke quickly in Portuguese and English. "Now, we are in a hurry; so we must be to go out with the tide. But we are not ru

His teeth gleamed in a nervous smile. He got out and the others followed him, and they moved with unhurried haste across the quay. The captain leaped aboard, held out his hands to Carol. Doc landed on the deck a second behind her, and calling low-voiced instructions over his shoulder, the captain showed them to his tiny cabin. It was to be theirs for the voyage. He himself would bunk with the crew.

He closed the door behind him; and there was a murmuring of voices, a blurred confusion of sounds. Then the roar-quickly muted-of the boat's twin diesels. And they moved out into the bay.

The captain came back, drew the shades over the portholes and turned on the light. "You will be very quiet, yes?" He smiled his white, nervous smile. "On the water, the sound she travels far."

He left again. Almost imperceptibly, the boat gathered speed. They slid deeper and deeper into the fog, and the gray mass of it closed in behind them.

Doc prowled about the cabin, automatically inspecting it as he did any place that was strange to him. He was looking for nothing in particular. Simply looking. Most top-drawer criminals have this habit. It had saved Doc's life several times, conversely bringing about the loss of another's life or other's lives on each occasion.

He checked the small shelf of books, and the firstaid cabinet. He looked under the bunk, smiling an apology at Carol who had lain down on it. He poked through the pigeonholes of the desk, located a key ring, and unlocked and examined each of the drawers. Reloeking them-and leaving their contents exactly as he found them-he turned his attention to the heavy chest at the foot of the bunk.

It was padlocked at either end. Doc made a selection from the keys on the ring, found the appropriate ones on the first try and raised the heavy oak lid. There was a quantity of grayish blankets inside; also, bedded between them, several boxes of ammunition, two repeating rifles and two twelve-gauge doublebarreled shotguns. Doc's eyes lit up. Then, almost absently, he loaded the shotguns, laid them at the top of the chest and lowered the lid. He put the locks back on their staples-not locked, although they appeared to be. That completed his inspection and its corollary activities, and he rehid the keys in their pigeonhole and fixed himself a drink.

Lying in the bunk, Carol watched her husband for a few moments, then turned on her side and closed her eyes. His behavior was merely another variation of a norm. If there was anything more than that behind it, he would tell her. When and if the telling became necessary.

She slept.

Almost immediately, it seemed, she came awake again.

Out there in the night, there was a peculiar echo to the boat's diesels. Or, no it wasn't an echo, but the mounting purr of another engine. And against the blinded portholes, pushing stubbornly through the fog, was a fuzzy beam of light.

The cabin was dark. There was silence-tense, expectant-and then Doc's harsh whisper. Carol could see him now, feel him sitting at her side. And near the door, she saw the white flash of the captain's teeth.

"You do what I tell you to, Pete. My wife and I will do the rest."

"No! Please, senhor! I ca

"That makes it all the better."

"Please! I tell you we do not have to! I swear it, and I know thees Coast Guard. Am I a stranger to them? Have I not made this same run many times? We will chat for a few moments, perhaps, and…"

"And they'll hold you up in the meantime. Find out who you are, where you're headed. Get all the dope they need to have us nailed by a cruiser."

"But-but-" there was a desperate sob in the darkness. "But later, senhor? What of that? His position will have been known, and it will be known that I, my boat, was…"

"You can blame it on me. My wife and I slipped on board without your knowledge, and took charge of your guns and ammunition."

"Ha! They will believe such a story?"

"Why not? It's a pretty good one." Doc paused ominously. "In fact, I'd say it was a lot better than the other one."

"You say! It is easy for-what other one?"

"The one you'd have to tell Ma Santis. Not that it would do you any good, Pete. Nothing you could tell her would do any good."

"But…"

The captain sighed heavily. The purr of the motor launch swelled to a sluggish drone.

"I don't like it either, Pete," Doc said earnestly. "I hate killing, and I particularly hate this. But what else can I do?"

"What else?" It scarcely sounded like the captain's voice. "Yes, what else, senhor? What could possibly be dearer than one's own life?"

He turned and left. A moment later there was a cry of "Ahoy, there! Ahoy, _Elena Isabella!_" Then a gentle bump and the scraping of wood against wood.

Doc cocked the shotguns. He handed one of them to Carol, and silently opened the two portholes.