Bright Orange for the Shroud (16 page)

I watched him, saw the flicker of appraisal in his blue eyes, half hooded by those long lashes. He hooked his thumbs over his belt. Then, with that flashing speed which can come only from long and intensive practice, he snapped his brass belt buckle loose, yanked it free, exposing the bright limber blade holstered within the belt leather. The wrist snap came before I could hope to reach him. The blade chunked into the damp earth an inch from the outside of my left shoe, driving so deeply that only the brass buckle showed, as if balanced on end. He leaned against the boat with a lazy grin. I bent, put a finger in the buckle, pulled the blade free, wiped the earth from it between thumb and finger. The hilt was weighted to give it a midway balance point. I handed it to him. He fed it back into the scabbard, clinched the belt.

“What’s the message that get through to you, friend?” he asked.

“That I can stop watching you, because you’d just as soon talk about money.”

“Let’s get on in the house. I’m dry as a sandy beach for sure.”

He had more toys in the house. A big rack of new sporting arms, small rust spots beginning to fleck the bluing. Color
television. Expensive camping and fishing gear stacked carelessly in corners. In the kitchen he had a hotel-size refrigerator, its new enamel dappled with dark fingermarks, its innards stacked full of premium beer. I saw cases of very good liquor in a kitchen corner.

Everything not new was battered and squalid. I looked in the door of the tiny bedroom. The double bed was a rumpled tangle of soiled sheets marked in a leopard pattern. They looked like silk. The pattern seemed apt. The bedroom had the pungent odors of a predator’s cage, a cell for the cat carnivore.

We drank beer in silence and then he said in grotesque hostlike apology, “I was fixin to keep fat stuff out here to hoe this place out today, but it slipped clean right out of my mind. I guess it’ll be until after exam week fore she can get to it. I don’t want to mess up her schooling.”

I sat on a chair with a broken arm. “Haven’t they ever heard of statutory rape around here?”

“First somebody has to complain, friend. What the hell
is
your name?” I told him. He repeated it aloud. “You in some line of work?”

“Whatever happens to come along.”

“That’s the best kind they is, McGee. But sometimes you work with somebody who like to mess things up because they get jumpy for no reason at all. Then you don’t want to work with them again. And maybe they do damn fool things like sending somebody around who could maybe be the law.”

“Crane Watts,” I said. “Great guy. If the law asked him for a match, he’d fink out. It makes me wonder about you, Boo baby. But maybe you went along because it was close enough to legal. Watts filled me in. I can use some of his ideas, but not him. Not to help me with
my
pigeon. A fatter one than Wilkinson.
And it is not going to be split so many ways. From what Watts said, the take from Wilkinson had to be split between him, you, Stebber, Gisik, Wilma and the executor of the Kippler estate. I was hunting up a hungry lawyer, and found him. But I need a
smart
hungry one.”

He wiped his mouth, and he looked very uneasy. “That dumb bassard talks awful quick, don’t he?”

“You and me, Boo. We know the ways to make them talk quick. I got interested. He got pretty jumpy.”

“Like to watch ’em jump,” he said dreamily.

“When he got scared sober, he tried to deny the whole thing. Maybe I like that assessment bit, to keep it legal. But maybe hit and run would be easier all around. Either way I need the woman. The way I understand it, the woman works with Stebber. But do you think she’d come in on something without bringing him in?”

“How in hell should I know about that, buster boy?”

“How in hell should I know until I ask, Waxwell?”

“What did Watts say?”

“Before I got around to that he’d started to do so much lying I couldn’t sort it out.”

“I say it wouldn’t hurt to have Cal Stebber. That fat happy little son of a bitch could sell snowflakes in hell. He makes it go smooth. But you get Watts, and you don’t get Stebber or the woman. Or Boo Waxwell. He was a one-time thing. I got only one more little piece of business with lawyer boy, and that’s all. You see that Viv? She look at old Boo like he’s a spitty place on the sidewalk. I got it in my mind to take care of that. I had other things going then, and no time to line her up. She’s got next to no man atall, and it’s sure a waste. She’s all solid woman, and when ol’ Boo gets her steadied into it one of
these days, she’ll come on like an ol’ walkin beam pump machine with no place to turn her off. I got that one marked in my mind, because any fool can see she sure ain’t gettin what she come after so far.” He winked. “And she was just a little
too
snotty to ol’ Boo, which is always a good sign ever time. They get like that when they get little ideas in their pretty little heads, making them skitty.”

I sensed it was a diversion, but could not imagine why.

“But to get back to it, Waxwell. Is the woman as good as Watts seems to think?”

He shrugged, went out after more beer, came back and, as he handed me mine, said, “She has Arthur clamped down like one of those little hairy dogs rich women tote around. She married him legal. Always does, Cal Stebber said. Gets herself Alabama divorces. Makes no money claim and it goes through quick and easy. Married up with maybe eleven of them, and her and Stebber and Gisik, one way or another, picked every one clean. Averages out maybe one a year. Maybe she doesn’t hit it off so good with your man. She’s no kid anymore.”

“Where can I find her?”

He stared blankly at me then. “Why ask me?”

“Why not? Watts told me that after you cleaned Wilkinson, you and Wilma shacked up right here.”

He looked around at the room as though seeing it for the first time. “Here? Why would he say a thing like that?”

“Because Wilkinson told him how it was, months later, when he showed up demanding money. Wilkinson was sent on a wild goose chase up to Sarasota. When he came back to the motel, Wilma had cleared out. Wilkinson told Watts he found you and Wilma here, and you beat him up.”

Waxwell threw his head back and guffawed, slapped his
knee. “Oh, that! Goddam! He sure did come around here. Drunk or sick. God knows. I had me a little friend here, waitress that come over from Miami to see me. Little bit of a woman no bigger than Wilma, silvery color hair like Wilma. About sundown and the light not too good. That fool Arthur got it in his head she was Wilma for sure. Maybe out of his head from losing the money and her taking off. Hard to say. I had to bust him up a little and run him off the place.”

He shook his head, stopped smiling, looked earnestly at me. “Mind you I’m not saying I wouldn’t want to a had Wilma here a while. I did give it a little try. But I struck out swinging on three pitches, man. Hurt my pride some, but it wasn’t the first time I missed and won’t be the last, and a man has to face it there’s some you can’t get to. With her, it was all business. She didn’t see no point in just for the fun of it. Cold, maybe. I don’t know. Or maybe no money, no kicks. Way I figure it, while Arthur was riding that bus up to Sarasota, she was long gone on her way to Miami with her end of the loot, and from there God knows where, someplace where she could live good until the money got small enough so she had to start on suckering the next one for them to squeeze dry.”

I used a long drink from the bottle to make certain my face didn’t show anything. The momentary diversion, and then the strange earnestness. The house and yard full of toys. Mildred Mooney could not have invented that rancid little scene by the beach house pool. Nor could Arthur have invented the telling detail of the little diamond watch he thought Wilma had peddled. Conversely, Waxwell could not have known of being seen by Mrs. Mooney, nor of Arthur’s instant recognition of the diamond wristwatch. What could he have been worth in the Wilkinson swindle? Five thousand? Ten at the very top.
Maybe twenty-five thousand. And it wouldn’t buy many new toys. I had a sudden and vivid image of that small, delicate, pampered face, wavery under the black slow run of water, of fine silver hair strung into the current flow, of shadowy pits, half seen, where sherry eyes had been.

“So Stebber would be the one for me to ask, I guess,” I said.

“Most likely to know. By now maybe they got a new one going for them.”

“So if I have to work through Stebber, then he’s in on it. And my end is smaller.”

“McGee, what got it in your head you got to have one particular broad, just because she did good on the last one? I could pick you one right out of the air. Thinking on one right now. Little ol’ gal way up in Clewiston, wasting her talent. Doing waitress work. Had her teaching license, but lost it for all time. Dresses good. Acts like a lady. Pretty face but built only a little better’n fair. Sugar sweet, and a born thief. But I swear and garntee, she get any plain ordinary fella into bed just one time, from then on he can have trouble remembering his own name or how to count to ten. And that’s all you need, isn’t it? That’s how Wilma set them up for Stebber.”

“I better think the whole thing over, Boo.”

“It’s Rike Jefferson over to Everglades, executor on the Kippler land, writing any damn letter they tell me to tell him. He married the youngest Kippler girl, how come he got that job, and she’s years dead. I yell frog one time and Rike jumps all his heart gives out. Down in Homestead is Sam Jimper, a lawyer crooked as a ball of baby snakes, but knowing I was behind you with my eye on him, he’d sooner frenchkiss a gator than try to get cute two ways. I’m telling you the way to do is you forget Watts and Stebber and all them, and let me get
Melly on down here and you look her over, and give her a trial run if you don’t believe me. She won’t take as big an end of it as you’d have to give Wilma. But I get a good cut because you need me to set it up, because without a genuine big piece of land, all recorded and setting there to look at, you’ve got no way to give a man an itch to double his money, so as to show off for his cute new little schoolteacher wife. And I tell you, Sam Jimper’s got an office paneled in black cypress big enough for a ball game, nothing like that closet Watts has got. I say you give Melly five hundred dollars for front and just turn her and aim her at your man, married already or not, he’s got as much chance as a key lime pie in a school yard.”

“Don’t tell me how to run it, Boo. Don’t tell me who I’m going to use. Maybe I don’t need some nut who tries to kick my knee off before he knows who I am or what I want. I have to think this out. I don’t want it messed up. It’s the biggest piece of money I’ll ever get hold of. Right now I’m going to let things sit for a while. Maybe you make sense. I don’t know. If I decide you do, you’ll hear from me.”

“What if’n I think of something else that’d help?”

“Tell me when I get in touch.”

“An if you don’t?”

“Stop leaning on me, Boo.”

He chuckled. “So you got to go talk it over with somebody. Look like you got a partner.”

“What’s that to you?”

He stood up. “Nothing. Not one damn old little thing, buddy boy. None of my business. Maybe you’re just the errand boy, talking big. Come back. Don’t come back. Ol’ Boo’s gettin’ along sweet and fine. Leave off your car down the road?”

“Left a boat in Goodland and walked in.”

“Drive you in.”

“Don’t bother.”

“Got to go see somebody anyways. Come on.”

It was going sour. I could sense it. We went in the Lincoln. The abused engine was ragged, and he took the curves of the narrow road in careless skids, spattering shell into the ditches. After coming to a noisy, smoking stop at Stecker’s Boat Yard, he got out with me and strolled out to the dock, talking slurred, amiable nothings. The old man was gone. The pumps were unlocked, but I did not want to spend extra time within range of that blue-eyed stare. I gave it full throttle and at the end of the long white-water curve away from Goodland, I looked back and saw him standing motionless on the dock, watching me, thumbs hooked onto that lethal belt.

It had been all right, and then it had gone subtly wrong in a way I couldn’t explain. I had the feeling it had been a near thing getting away from him at all. Something had changed him—some factor of doubt, some special alertness. A twig snapping, maybe, in the tangly backwoods of his mind, bringing the head up, ears cocked, eyes narrow. I now knew it was going to all move quickly, and I could no longer set the pace. I had done my little prying and poking. The avalanche had started its first grumblings. Then comes the time to try to outrun it.

After exposure to Boone Waxwell, the look of Chook and Arthur on the early afternoon beach had the flavor of a great innocence. She was hovering around him, cheering him on with shrill yips. He was braced against an impressive bend in one of the big boat rods. When I beached the
Ratfink
near the
Flush
, she hollered to me to come tell them what Arthur was fighting.

I trotted down to where they were. I saw a slow massive boil about a hundred yards out. Arthur, grunting, was trying to horse it enough to get some line back.

“What did you use?”

She held her fingers about eight inches apart. “A shiny little fish I caught, but we think he was dead after Arthur threw him out there a couple of times.”

Arthur gave me a strained grin. He and his quarry were in
stasis. I waded in and felt the taut line, then felt that slow distinctive stroke, a kind of ponderous convulsion.

“Shark,” I said. “Sand shark or a nurse shark, probably. Longer odds on a hammerhead.”

“My God!” Chookie cried. “We’ve been
swimming
in there!”

“Heavens above!” I said. “And sometimes a bat will fly into a house and bite somebody. Or a raccoon will charge, snarling, into a supermarket. Sweetie, the sharks are there
all
the time. Just don’t swim when the water is all roiled and dirty.”

“What’ll I do?” Arthur asked in a strained voice.

“Depends if you want him.”

“My God, I don’t want him.”