A Deadly Shade of Gold (3 page)

"After he gave himself the excuse to run, Nora."

She sat down abruptly and stared at me for a long time. "Sure," she said. "You can understand that better than I can, because you are one of those too, aren't you? One of those long distance runners. You wade around the edge, boy. But you never jump in. You go out on the end of the high board and bounce pretty and puff your chest, but you never take that big dive."

"That's reasonably accurate."

Her face twisted. "I'm sorry Trav. I haven't got the right."

"Or maybe all the information. But no harm done."

She hit her knee with her fist. "I don't know how to handle it, meeting him."

"Don't plan anything. Play it by ear, Nora. Don't try to force any kind of reaction. It's the only thing you can do."

"I guess," she said. She gave me a shamefaced look. "This is idiotic, but I'm absolutely ravenous."

"Nora, honey, you know exactly where everything is, including the drawer where you'll find an apron."

"Eggs? Bacon? Toast?"

"All there. All for you. I'll settle for one cold Tuborg. Bottom shelf. No glass, thanks."

She brought me the beer. I heard the bacon sizzling out there. I looked over at the slim and lovely lines of her Italian shoes, one standing, one toppled. I wondered where Nicki was, and if she was making it the way she deserved. I heard Nora Gardino humming to herself. I sipped the cold beer. I turned on the FM and spun the tuner dial and found a Bach thing, a fugue, one of those that sounds as if the needle keeps getting stuck.

Here, behind the thick opaque lounge curtains was that rare and special privacy obtainable in the middle of deserts and the middle of big marinas. Around me were the other craft, water slapping the hulls, gurgling around the pilings, little pressures of tide and wind creaking the lines.

She came out of the galley and said, "Why did he call you?"

"To find out it you were still around," I lied. "To find out if there were any chances left. To find out if it was too late to come home."

"It isn't too late. Believe me, it isn't too late."

Three

SOUTH OF Lauderdale on U.S. 1 there are junk strips dating back to the desperate trashiness of the thirties. They are, as a governor of the state of Florida once said at a press conference, a sore eye.

Sam Taggart was in one of six cabins out behind a dispirited gas station that sold some kind of offbrand called Haste. The cabins were originally styled to look like little teeny tiny Mount Vernons. There was a field full of dead automobiles behind the cabins, a defunct Midgie-Golf on the left, a vegetable stand on the right. Sam was in number three, and I got there at four on Friday afternoon, twenty minutes after he phoned. The car beside the cabin was maroon and rust, a seven or eight year old Merc with bald tires.

A bed creaked as Sam got off it and came to the door. He let me in and hit me solidly in the chest and said, "You're an uglier man than I remembered."

"I compensate with boyish charm, Taggart." We shook hands. He motioned to the only chair in the room and sat on the bed. I had never seen him so dark. He was the deep stained bronze of a Seminole. His hand was hard and leathery. He wore faded khaki pants and a white T shirt with a ripped shoulder seam. He looked leaned down, all bones and wire. He had a crescent scar on his chin that hadn't been there before. He was missing some important teeth on the upper right. His black hair was cropped close to his skull.

"You know what I was remembering while I was waiting, McGee? That crazy time down at Marathon, and those big twins, Johnny Dow's nieces from Michigan. And we got in that game of trading punches, just for kicks. And every time, both those big old gals would scream. Finally I dropped you, and you stayed down so long I began to get nervous. Then you got up, a little bit at a time. I swear to God, it took you five whole minutes to get all the way up on your feet and you stood there swaying and gave me a great big bloody grin and said, 'My turn, Sam.' That's what I was remembering. God, what idiots. How are things, Trav?"

"You mean with Nora?"

"Okay. With Nora. How did she take it?"

"First she got faint and then she threw up, and then she decided she loves you and wants you back."

"Boy I come back like a hero, don't I? I come back in great shape."

"But you came back."

"She's a sucker for punishment, eh?"

"Why did you do her that way Sam?"

He braced his arms on his knees and stared at the floor. "I don't know. I just don't know, Trav. I swear." He looked up at me. "How has she been? How does she look? How's she been making out?"

"She looks a little thinner in the face. And she's a little bit quieter than she used to be. She's made a good thing of the shop. It's in a new place now. More expensive stuff. She's still got the best legs in town."

"Coming back is doing her no favor."

"Leave that up to her, Sam. Unless you plan to do it the same way all over again."

"No. Believe me. Never. Trav, have there been any guys?.

"When you two get back together, you can decide whether you want to trade reminiscences."

"You know, I wondered about you and her. I wondered a lot."

"Forget it. It was a mild idea at one time, but it didn't work out. Where have you been all this time, Sam?"

"Most of the time in a little Mexican town below Guaymas. Puerto Altamura. Fishing village. I became a residente. Helped a guy build up a sports fishing layout, catering to a rich trade."

"You don't look so rich."

"I left real quick Trav. Jesus, you've never seen fishing like we had there. Any day, you quit because your wrist is so sprained you can't hold a rod."

"How nice for you, Sam."

He peered at me. "Sure. Sure, you son of a bitch. When you don't think much of yourself, you can't think much of anything else."

"You said you're in trouble."

"You're still doing the same kind of hustling, McGee?"

"I am still the last resort, Sam, for victims of perfectly legal theft, or theft so clever the law can't
Page 13

do a thing. Try everything else and then come to me. If I can get it back, I keep half. Half is a lot better than nothing at all. But I am temporarily retired. Sorry."

"I've done some thinking since I talked to you. When I decided to come and see you, was I thinking about getting help, or an excuse to see Nora? I don't know. Everybody kids themselves.

How can you tell. I knew I'd find out she's married, two kids by now. I could see the guy, even.

One of those development guys, very flashy, speeches to the service clubs, low golf handicap, flies his own plane. A nice guy with thirty forty sports jackets."

"She's twenty-nine. She's not married. She should be."

"To me? To me, Trav? Take a good look."

His eyes moved away. He made a knotted fist and stared at it.

I said, "Maybe you've gotten all the rest of it out of your system now. Maybe you're ready."

He sighed. "I could be. God knows I could be. I did some thinking. If there's a chance of her. If there's a good chance, then the thing that seemed so important to get your help on... maybe it isn't all that important. Oh boy, they gave it to me good, friend. The stuff was mine, and they took it. You see, without Nora, it was a lot more important to get it back, or get half of it back, half to you. If you could do anything about it. Maybe not, even if you wanted to. This is not minor league."

"I don't have very much idea of what you're talking about."

"I suppose it's pride," Sam Taggart said. "Getting pushed around like a stupid kid. But it is better, I guess, to just get out of it with what I have." He stood up. "Stay right there. I want to show you something." He went out to the rusty car with the California plates. In a few moments he came back in. He sat on the bed and untied coarse twine, unrolled a piece of soiled chamois, reached and handed me a squat little figurine about five and a half inches tall. The weight of it was so unexpected I nearly dropped it.

It was a crude little figure, dumpy, a male representation like a child would make out of clay. It was startlingly, emphatically male. It was of solid metal, dull yellow and orange, blackness caught into the creases of it, shinier where it had been handled.

"Gold?" I asked.

"Solid. Not very pure. But that doesn't make the value of it. It's Pre-Columbian. I don't know whether this one is Aztec. It could be. It's worth a hell of a lot more than the gold, but nobody can say exactly what it is worth. It's worth what you can get a museum or a collector to pay for it.

I imagine this one was some kind of a potency symbol. I had twenty-eight of them, some bigger, some smaller. Not all the same source or same period. Two were East Indian from way way back. Three were, I think, Inca. When they took the others, they missed this one because that night by luck or coincidence, this one wasn't with the others."

"They were yours?" I couldn't read his eyes.

"Let's just say there was nobody else they could have belonged to, the way things had worked out. Somebody might develop an argument on that, but when I had them, they were mine. A
Page 14

rough, a very rough estimate of the value of the whole collection would be three to four hundred thousand. Take the gold alone, it was two thousand, two hundred and forty-one point six ounces, discount that for impurities, it's still a nice bundle." He slowly rewrapped the figurine, knotted the twine. "Finding the right buyer for the whole works would be touchy"

"A question of legal ownership?"

"Who owns things like these anyway?"

"I'm not looking for a project, Sam."

"So you keep saying. And this one is too rough for one man. Some people have been hurt on this thing already. I thought it all over and I decided, what the hell." He bounced the wrapped lump of gold on the palm of his tough hand. "It scalds them they missed this one, not so much from the value of it, but because I could use it as a lever and give them a lot of agitation. If I wanted to give up any chance at any of it, and give this little fellow up too, I could raise political hell with them. So, earlier today, I made the decision to pull out with what I could salvage. I used most of the pennies I had left to stop along the road and make a couple of phone calls. They'd like to have this little fellow, and close the books. So I said fifteen, and they said ten, and it looks as if it will be twelve thousand five. They're sending a guy to close." He grinned widely enough to expose all the gap where the teeth were gone. "At least I come back with a trousseau.

Twelve-five plus Nora is better than three hundred without her. Lesson number one."

"It takes you a while. But you learn."

"Can I tap you for some walk-around money?"

I looked into my wallet. "Forty do it?"

"Forty is fine, Trav. Just fine."

"When are you going to see Nora?"

He looked uneasy. "After I get this thing closed out. God, I don't know how to handle it. I don't know how to act toward her. I ought to drop onto my knees and smack my head on the floor.

Tomorrow is the day. Three years of thinking about her, and remembering every little thing about her, and tomorrow is the day. I've got stage fright, Trav. How should I set it up?"

"What you do, you hire fifty female trumpet players and dress them in white robes and then you-"

"Right. It's my problem. Trav, how's Nicki?"

"I wouldn't know. She isn't around any more."

"Oh,"

"When she left, we shook hands. What she really wanted was a barbecue pit in the back yard, tricycles in the car port, guest towels, daddy home from the office at five-fifteen. She tried to be somebody else, but she couldn't make it. She lusted to join the PTA."

He gave me a strange look. "So do I."

"You'll make it, Taggart."

"We'll have you to dinner every once in a while."

"I'll use your guest towels."

"We'll feed the kids first."

So I left him there and went on back to the boat, depressed in a vague way. The plumbing facilities aboard the Busted Flush are extraordinary. I heard that the Palm Beach type who originally built her obeyed every whim of his Brazilian mistress. The water tanks are huge. You could almost set up a bridge game in the shower stall. One could plausibly bathe a sizeable horse in the stainless steel tub. Every possible area of the walls of the bath is mirrored.

When I had saved myself from extinction in that marathon poker game by making a four heart flush stand up, the houseboat chap showed an expensive tendency to see every hand I had from then on. After I had all his ready cash and his houseboat, as his friends gently and firmly led him away from the game, he was trying forlornly to swing a loan on the Brazilian. With cash and houseboat gone, it would seem that his title to that particular asset was clouded.

I could guess that she had been a very clean girl. Other than that, she was either a very large girl or a very gregarious one.

I thundered hot water into the big tub, setting up McGee's Handy Home Treatment for Melancholy. A deep hot bath, and a strong cold drink, and a book on the tub rack. Who needs the Megrims? Surely not McGee, not that big brown loose-jointed, wirehaired beach rambler, that lazy fish-catching, girlwatching, grey-eyed iconoclastic hustler. Stay happy, McGee, while you use up the stockpiled cash. Borrow a Junior from Meyer for the sake of coziness. Or get dressed and go over to the next dock, over to the big Wheeler where the Alabama Tiger maintains his permanent floating house party and join the festive pack. Do anything, but stop remembering the way Sam Taggart looks with all the wandering burned out of him. Stop remembering the sly shy way Nicki would walk toward you, across a room. Stop remembering the way Lois died. Get in there and have fun, fella. While there's fun to have. While there's some left. Before they deal you out.

Four

THE INSISTENT bong of the bell awakened me. I stared at the clock dial. Quarter after midnight. I hadn't gone out at all. I had read my book, gotten slightly tight, broiled myself a small steak, and baked myself a large potato, watched the late news and weather and gone to bed.