The Big Caper

The Big Caper
Lionel White
1957
Chapter One

1.
Kosta arrived on Tuesday.
Frank had already left for the gas station, over in town on Route
Number 1, two blocks from where the principal street of Indio Beach
intersected the four-lane north-south highway. This main street, Orange
Drive, continued on east for another three or three and a half miles,
through the better residential section of the town. It then crossed the
new, state-financed concrete bridge spanning the river, ultimately
terminating in a dead end at the public beach on the Atlantic Ocean.
Kosta came in a taxi, driven by a colored man, at eight-thirty on this
Tuesday morning, the last week in January. Kay was alone on the
flagged patio, sitting there with her third cup of coffee and her seventh
cigarette and postponing what awaited her in the large, rather
old-fashioned kitchen.
What waited was the collection of dishes from their breakfast, along
with the dishes from the night before, when they had entertained the
Loxleys, the young couple that lived a quarter mile down the narrow
sand road and ran the laundromat on Coral Street.
The Loxleys, like themselves, were fairly new in town. In a community
such as Indio Beach, population 4,351 in the summer and 9,332 in the
winter, there are three distinct and separate groups of people. There are,

first of all, the "natives," those that have lived there for a long time. A
long time, in Florida, is anywhere from ten years to a generation or so.
There are the newcomers, that group which has almost doubled the
static population of the town within the boom years since the war. And
there are the winter residents and tourists, who come down to spend
anywhere from a week to four or five months, and whose money keeps
the economy of the town on a very level and very prosperous keel.
It was to the middle group that both the Loxleys and Frank and Kay
belonged, and from this same group that they had drawn most of their
friends.
According to the instructions that Flood had emphasized, they had
circulated with the "natives" as much as possible. They also had hoped
to form friendships with some of the winter visitors, particularly the
more gregarious ones. But the wealthy Northerners who came down for
the season were not exactly hobnobbing with the proprietor of a gas
station and his wife, even if the wife was a slender, attractive blonde
with nice manners, and the old residents formed a tight little clique of
their own and were extremely reserved; if not downright cold.
A taxi pulled up on the hard-packed sand in front of the house and
Kosta backed out of the rear compartment, hauling a cheap,
imitation-leather suitcase after him. He handed the driver a bill and
waved the change away and then turned toward the semi-enclosed patio
on which Kay sat sipping her coffee.
She knew who he was at once, although she had never laid eyes on him
before. Flood had telephoned Sunday night to warn them that he would
be arriving on Tuesday.
Kosta was the arsonist.
She observed with an almost aloof curiosity his slow, labored approach
up the long path that circled in and out among the worn-out orange
trees, the heavy suitcase banging against his short legs and impeding
his progress. The house sat well back from the road in the center of
what had once been a fairly prosperous citrus grove, but which, through

the passage of years, had been allowed to degenerate until the fruit was
no longer salable.
It was an old house, for Florida, where any house more than twenty or
twenty-five years old is considered a landmark. Built during the boom
years in the twenties, it was a large frame and stucco monstrosity
showing neo-Moorish influence.
Flood himself had found it. It suited his purposes very well, being at
once outside of the town proper and in an isolated section; having as it
did more than a dozen rooms; and, possibly most important of all,
being available at an extremely reasonable rental.
Kay was standing, holding open the screen door, as Kosta approached.
She noticed that the short walk had brought large drops of perspiration
to his forehead. He looked, she judged, about forty.
He hesitated as he reached the door, looking up at her. "Flood's girl?"
The voice had a high, thin quality, and he spoke barely above a
whisper.
Kay nodded and he passed her without another word and stepped onto
the patio.
She stepped around him and opened the second screened door, which
led into the square, sparsely furnished living room. He followed her,
dropping his suitcase the moment he was in the room. He went at once
to an oversized rattan chair