Cargo for the Styx by Louis Trimble

parked the sedan in a dark slot between a big car and a truck. I walked to the front of the truck and stood in its shadow. From here I could look along the dock. I could see the catamaran bobbing at its moorage.
    There was no other boat near the catamaran. I remembered Aggie saying he kept a little sloop. I saw one yawl and a good many express cruisers. But no sloop.
    I wondered if Aggie had taken himself a cruise. I wondered where he’d gone on that cruise.
    Headlights from a car turning into the parking space lit me like a Christmas display. I decided to stop wondering and get out of here. I was dead. I couldn’t be seen standing around.
    I took my corpse and hurried it down the dock to the catamaran. I put it aboard, snug and warm in the cabin. I waited.

CHAPTER XVI
    I WAITED , but what was I waiting for? Bonnie Minos was taking a long time to lose her tail. The way she drove that Ferrari she could have done the job in under five minutes.
    I gave her thirty minutes before I really started thinking. Thirty moved to forty-five and on to an hour. I was down to two cigarettes out of nearly a full pack.
    She’d had all the time she needed to set me up. By now she could have seen Clift and Vann if they’d been at the opposite ends of LaPlaya. She’d even had time to hire a water taxi and go out to wherever Aggie had gone in his sloop.
    I reached for my next to last cigarette. I let it dangle from my lips, the matches in my hand. A car was turning into the parking lot. It swung sideways to me. The floodlights at the land end of the dock gave me a glimpse of it. I watched it slide into a parking space. Not the Ferrari, but my own battered heap.
    So now they were coming for me. I could get out of the catamaran and try to run for it. Only there was nowhere to run. There was only water.
    I thought of taking the catamaran itself. But they would be looking for it. I wouldn’t gain anything by advertising myself.
    I struck a match. I found a locker and opened it. I saw the handle of a wrench. I wrapped my fingers around it. I straightened up, dangling the wrench. I looked up the dock to see how many there were.
    There was one. Running. Stumbling on high heels with eagerness. They didn’t figure me for much, I thought. They’d sent only one after me. A woman. Irma.
    I dropped back into darkness. I traced her coming by the sound of her footsteps. I heard her reach the catamaran and pause. I heard her step cautiously on board and move to the cabin entry.
    She said, “Martin?” Her voice was soft and unsure.
    I could see her outlined against the night. She wore the clinging jersey dress. She had a purse slung from her shoulder by a short strap. The purse was medium sized, big enough for a gun. But her hands were empty and not near the purse.
    I said, “Come on in, baby. It’s after five o’clock, so we don’t have to worry about business, And it’s Friday night. We don’t have to think about getting up in the morning.”
    She stayed where she was. “Martin, why are you talking like that?”
    “How do you want me to talk?” I demanded. “Like you wanted me to talk last night? About how much I know and how much of that I’ve passed on to Marine Mutual? Sure, come on in and listen. Like you listened when Prebble called this morning. How long after I left did it take you to phone Vann and tell him to have Prebble taken care of?”
    She whimpered, “Martin, I didn’t.”
    I moved toward her in the darknes of the cabin. I reached out my hand and clamped it down on her wrist. I jerked her off balance and pulled her inside. I caught her purse and slid the strap down her arm. I tossed the purse to the far corner of the cabin.
    She didn’t fight me. She didn’t speak. A stray beam of light caught her face. She was looking at me, wide-eyed, her lips parted. Her expression told me nothing except that she was waiting to see what I would do with her.
    I pushed her down onto the padded bench that ran along one side of the cabin. I