Built for Trouble by Al Fray Page A

later.
    “At noon, Nola and the Taylor girl come down for a swim. With her experience as a lifeguard, Nola has no trouble convincing me that she’s in panic out there, and she does it without calling for help. Three would have been a crowd. She has already spotted her can of air. When I start out to the rescue, she dives for the beer can, kicks hell out of the sand and silt on the bottom, and comes up again. She wasn’t thrashing this time, just that white bathing cap bobbing in the surface, and now I know why. As I got closer, she went under again, and this time down into the murky water. With her mouth over the brass fitting, she simply took air from the can and exhaled through her nose. When Eddie Baker was desperate for air and started toward the surface, there was the quick grab from behind and the tussle was over. How does it sound, Nola?”
    “Like a fantastic dream. You aren’t by any chance a heroin addict, are you?” Joe bounced off of the sofa and made another nervous forage in the cigarette container.
    “So you’ve got a beer can and a dream, Baker,” Joe said sourly. “The way you describe that can, you could have made it yourself in half an hour with no more tools than a soldering iron and some lead. Who’s going to believe that we—”
    “Anyone who takes a second look at the pictures that appeared in Monday’s paper,” I said. “There was no particular reason for the editor to look at them critically; they were good and that’s all he wanted, but if I sing my song they’re going to haul them out for a recount. When they do and add up one shot obviously taken the morning before the rescue instead of afterward, it won’t be a very long guess to the facts.”
    “So where does that leave us?” Nola asked quietly.
    “Where? Strictly up the creek, minus oars. Next question.”
    “How—how far up the creek? What did you have in mind?” Nola asked. “It’s a shakedown, of course, but there is a certain nuisance factor here.”
    “Not shakedown, just business,” I insisted.
    “So how do we know you’ve got the damn thing?” Joe asked. He was trying to sound careless, but it wasn’t going very well. Nola picked an imaginary speck from her knee and put the fish hooks out for another try.
    “You realize, Mr. Baker, that this is all rather sketchy. You’d have to have a great deal more to—to go on than you’ve given us if you expect this to have any real value.”
    Now it was my turn to fish, but I wasn’t going to watch Nola. She had had some time on the stage and would be able to cover; I wanted to see how Joe Lamb rolled with the punch.
    “What you want to know,” I said, “is whether or not I can prove you killed Hank Sawyer. That it?”
    Joe’s eyes widened and the cigarette he’d been drawing on suddenly lost its glow as his breath caught in his throat. He swallowed once quickly, then bounced up off the sofa and pointed a shaking finger at me.
    “Baker, you’re nuts! Stark, raving nuts! You haven’t a damn thing to go on at any point along the line and—”
    “Hold it,” I said. Nola had a cool smile in place now, something almost amused, but it was a damn good guess that the wheels were turning hard and fast under that head of black hair. I went to the window, looked toward the green lawn and pool outside, and began to take a quick count of the progress. In a way Joe was right; I didn’t have much on Hank’s passing but a guess. And there was a long mile to go before I’d be able to prove anything. For one thing, I still wasn’t ready to believe that he was killed for what he knew about the phony rescue, and that led directly to the next point. What did he know? How could I find out? And what would I do if I did find out?
    I needed time to work things around. Joe had asked how he could be sure I had the beer tin. It gave me an opening.
    “Let’s take things as they come,” I said, turning back to the two of them. “You don’t think I’ve even got the Lucky