Crime of Their Life Read Free Page A

from his breast pocket, squinted at the scribbled notes on its back. “She docks back here a week from next Tuesday. That gives you roughly nine days aboard.”
    “What am I going to do with all my spare time?”
    Michaels sighed, returned the envelope to his pocket. “I know it’s a pretty tough assignment, Johnny, and I know you don’t have much time. But we’ve never been this close to them up to now. Before the people on that ship can scatter to all comers of the country, I want to take a crack at bagging them.” He eyed Liddell glumly. “You willing to take it on?”
    Liddell took a swallow from his glass, shrugged. “Hell, for a chance to get away from this weather and get a look at the sun, I’d sign to find a spit in the ocean.”
    The big man nodded his satisfaction. He held his glass up in a silent toast. Liddell clinked his against it, they drank.
    “I can’t tell you what a load that is off my mind,” Michaels told him. “From now on I’m dumping it right into your lap. Just so there can’t be any possibility of a tip-off from this end, I don’t think we should get together again before you leave.”
    “You think there’s someone working from this end?”
    “Somebody fingered Landers. Somebody who saw him coming or going from our office. This is no petty larceny operation, Johnny, and these boys play for keeps.”
    Liddell managed to look unimpressed. “How about my transportation, cruise tickets and stuff?”
    The man across the table grinned. “I had all that sent over to your office this afternoon.”
    “You were pretty damn sure I was going to accept,” Liddell growled.
    “Why not? With all that slush and cold out there, if I wasn’t so damn fat and old, I’d go myself.”

CHAPTER 3
    The Queen Alexandra dropped anchor in the harbor outside Bridgeton in Barbados early on Sunday morning. When the natives awakened and wandered down to the dock from Literary Row, Flower Pot Alley and the other sections of town, she lay bobbing and swaying at anchor out in the blue waters. Already preparations were being made to take off her passengers by tender. In a few hours, the regulars at the Paradise Beach Club, the Coral Reef Club and Sam Lord’s Castle would be complaining bitterly about the vulgar clothes and the loud talking of the cruisers. The island merchants would be agreeing with them, but would be less critical of the tourists’ equally vulgar squandering of money.
    By 9 a.m., the first tender was loaded and headed for the dock. Men in shorts and slacks, all sizes, all shapes, with weird and wild straw hats protecting their bald pates from the beaming sun, lined the deck of the tender. Their feminine counterparts in halters and short shorts or gaily colored blouses and slacks two sizes too small were clotted in little groups busily comparing plans for the day in shrill and strident tones.
    Johnny Liddell stood on the dock at Bridgeton, squinted out at the Queen. She was painted gray, her superstructure a pure white. Her two funnels were tilted at a rakish angle, the slight swirl of smoke rose lazily toward the blue of the sky.
    Liddell watched the tender slowly draw away from the big boat and head toward shore. Overhead the cottony white clouds seemed to hang motionless in the blue sky. It didn’t seem possible that only twenty-four hours before he had been ankle-deep in slush, that the breeze that now cooled the perspiration on his body had been cold and cut through him like a knife. Instead of the blue skies and white clouds, New York had been in its tenth consecutive dark, dreary day with skies the color of lead.
    When the tender had been secured in her berth, its chattering cargo scurried off, determined to pack as much activity into the day ashore as they could. Johnny Liddell walked over to a thin, darkly tanned man in summer whites.
    “My name’s Liddell. I’m joining your cruise from here. Can I take my gear aboard?”
    The man in white smiled, wrinkles dug deep trenches in