The Dreadful Lemon Sky (11 page)

I pressed him to find out how well he had done. He was evasive. In the beginning he had plowed everything back into increasing the shipments. He guessed Jack Omaha was doing the same. They were on a cash-and-carry basis with each other. When they got to maximum weight coming in, he had started to skim, and he guessed that Omaha had started too. He said he was having a problem legitimizing the cash, trying to work it out in such a way that he could apply it to the outstanding mortgages on Fifteen Hundred. He guessed that probably Jack Omaha was having the same problem, but he hadn't discussed it with him. He started to ask me about Jack Omaha and changed his mind. He didn't want to know anything about Omaha. Or Carrie.

I asked to see Carrie's apartment. He said that a Miss Joller and a Miss Dobrovsky, Carrie's sister, had gone through everything and packed up some things for shipment to New Jersey, and had called Goodwill to come pick up the rest. It had been cleaned and the new tenant was moving in tomorrow morning. So there was nothing to see.

He said he had a headache and would like to lie down. I told him we had some more ground to cover first. I asked him what Carrie did with the money.

He said he had the impression she took it down to Superior and put it in the safe. It seemed logical that she would have some safe place to put it.

"What do you want from me?" he asked again.

"You have a nice operation, Wally. It's cleaner than some loft or old warehouse or a trailer parked in the woods. And you have those nice clean little clerks and bank people doing the pushing and being very careful because they don't want to mess up this great life-style you created for them. I don't have to put you out of business because you're already retired. You've got no supply, right? Do you know what I'm going to recommend? I'm going to say you should be our exclusive distributor in Bayside. How about that?"

I couldn't detect any genuine enthusiasm in his response.

"What does… it entail?"

"We'll guarantee top quality. We'll guarantee no hassling by the law. We'll expect you to absorb, say, a ton a month, cash on the line, half again what you were paying Omaha. In time we'll have you broaden the line. Coke and hash."

"Oh, I just couldn't handle that, Mr. McGee. I really couldn't. That quantity and price… This has been just a small operation. An amateur thing. You know. I just couldn't…"

I stood up, smiling at him. "It's all settled."

"Don't I have any choice?"

"Choice? Of course! You stay right here and hang onto that cash, because when we make a delivery, you have to be able to pay. You have to accept what we send you. Don't try to look for another supply source. You just wait. If you want to fuss and bob and weave and make trouble, that's your choice: If so we'll kill you and make our deal with whoever takes over this place. It might be a couple of months before we set you up as a distributor, Wally. Hang in there."

He didn't move. I let myself out. I was a little depressed by my own childishness. It was a fair assumption it could work exactly as I had outlined it to Demos. The contact would probably be. a lot less melodramatic than I had made it. Actually the setup would probably not appeal. It was too unusual. Hoodlums are the true conservatives. When you are winning, never change the dice. Distribution would be limited to the candystore, horse-room, bartender, cocktail-waitress, coin-machine, call-girl circuits. Demos's arrangement was too fancy and made too much sense.

I took a small detour to go around by the pool. The after-work residents crowded the pool area. They made a youngish, attractive throng in their brown hides and resort colors. The scene looked like a commercial for swimming pools.

They made gay little cries of glee and fun. A game of water tag was in progress.

Wally's Paradise. There was one thing wrong with it, and that was what probably created the slightly frantic gaiety. They all loved it here. They were all going to stay. They were going to obey all the rules, and pay the rent, and stay and stay and stay.

It was a life-style designed for the young. Twenty years from now it was going to look a lot less graceful and productive. Unless all leases were canceled at age thirty-five, and your family throws you out. It was a pretty problem for Wally, and a dreadful one for his tenants.

I skirted the jolly crowd and walked back to the marina. I needed the long walk in order to sort out everything I had learned from Walter Demos and fit it into the facts and inferences I had acquired before chatting with him.

It was still locked, the security system still operative. Meyer was not back yet. My note to him was still where I had left it. He arrived, soaking wet, ten minutes later.

After he had changed, we sat in the lounge and exchanged information.

"Frederick Van Harn is a very impressive young man," Meyer told me. "In a very short time he has built up a very wide-ranging and profitable practice of law. He has been pulling together the shattered remnants of the Democratic Party in this county. He will very probably run for the state legislature and very probably make it, after he marries Jane Schermer. He Uncle Jake is the power and money behind the party. Van Harn can speak very persuasively in public. A lot of people don't care for him personally, but they have a grudging respect for the way he came back and started building a career right on the top of the ruin his father made of his life. About two years ago Van Harn bought the Carpenter ranch twelve miles west of town. The Schermers live out that way. Jane has extensive grove land out there."

"From what Joanna said, I'd think his reputation as a womanizer would get in the way of his electioneering."

"The general feeling around the area seems to be that he has a way with the ladies, but he'll settle down after he marries Jane. It isn't doing him any harm that I could see. And I spent my time drinking beer in a place across from the courthouse. Bail bondsmen. An investigator for the state's attorney. Bartender. A lady from the tax office. There was just one questionable area that turned up."

"Such as."

"Gossip. About money. It just seems to the spectators that Freddy has bought too much too fast. They wonder if maybe Freddy's father killed himself because he couldn't avoid being caught, but left a stash of cash around somewhere. They say the ranch he bought is twelve hundred acres, high and dry. It had to be at least a million one, even without the ranch house and the man-made lake and the airstrip and hangar. So even if he made out well in the law, how could he pay his taxes and still have enough left over for his lifestyle? He's about thirty years old, and he's been at it here just six years, but he started slow and small."

"Did you get any information on how well his father lived?"

"Oh, very well, apparently. Cars, boats, hunting lodges, women."

"You've come back with a lot."

Meyer smiled. "It's a cozy bar. The conversation was general. Everybody joined in. Freddy has charisma. He's one of the people that other people like to talk about. So it was easy. Besides, due to constant pressure from you, I'm getting better at being a sneak."

"That isn't a word I would have chosen."

"Once you face up to reality, everything is easier."

From time to time the rain came down with such a roar we couldn't hear each other. Wind buffeted the Flush, thudding her against the fenders I had put out and made fast to the pilings. Then the rain steadied down into a hard, continuing downpour. I opened two cans of chili, and Meyer doctored the brew with some chopped hot pickled peppers and some pepper seeds. He does not approve of chili unless the tears are running down his cheeks while he eats. His specialty, Meyer's Superior Cocktail Dip, is made with dry Chinese mustard moistened to the proper consistency with Tabasco sauce. The unsuspecting have been known to leap four feet straight up into the air after scooping up a tiny portion on a potato chip. Strong men have come down running and gone right through the wall when they missed the open doorway.

It was a good night to stay aboard. It was a good night to conjecture, to try various possible patterns of human behavior and see how well they fit, much like kids in the attic trying on old uniforms, wearing old medals.

I got out charts of the Caribbean and worked out alternate routes from Bayside to Kingston and to Montego Bay. It was easier to route back in pre-Castro days. (Maybe everything was easier.) I made it 650, if you were a straight crow. But avoiding Fidel's air space with enough of a margin of comfort made it 1,000 miles. No great problem for the huskier variety of private aircraft, provided fuel was available at the Jamaica end.

So add in the Bertram. From predawn to after dark would give you, say sixteen hours. Allowing for variations in wind and weather and the size of the seas, call it an outside distance of 120 or 130 out and the same back. That would also allow some time at the far end, for rendezvous.

As I had to start somewhere, I picked 220 mph for the aircraft cruising speed. Give it an hour at the far end for gassing and loading. Ten hours would do it. Leave in daylight, return by daylight. Okay, so why push the boat so hard? Probably two reasons. First, because the seas close to Florida are so full of small craft, you have to go a long way to get out of the traffic. Second, once you are in open empty water, you are too hard to find from the air. So you have to head for some distinctive land mass that the aircraft can find without too much trouble.

I drew a 130-mile half circle on the chart, with the point of the compass at Bayside. Of the areas included, I was willing to vote for the north side of Grand Bahama, over away from the folks and the casinos, where the water is tricky. Big stuff goes way north to come around into the Tongue of the Ocean. Little stuff stays inside, south of Grand Bahama. If they picked a tiny island off the north shore, a pilot could orient himself by the configuration of Grand Bahama, head for the tiny island, and the rendezvous point could be, for example, a mile north of that crumb of land.

If they had a source in the Bahamas for the Jamaican weed, then I was wrong. But that was not likely. Too much risk and too low a margin.

And our Freddy Van Harn had an airstrip and a hangar. And he was Jack Omaha's lawyer. Chris Omaha's lawyer. Lawyer for Superior. Lawyer for Carrie, and Susan, and the marina.

"The invisible mass," Meyer said, "distorting the orbits."

"Distorting the orbits, or removing the planets?"

"But why?" Meyer asked.

"You know, that's really a rotten question."

"It has to be answered. Otherwise there's nothing."

"Let's find out first if he has an airplane."

"How?"

"The direct approach. Let's go look. Very very early tomorrow."

Somebody came hurrying out of the rain and boarded the Flush. We both heard the warning bell. I snapped on the aft floods, and through the rain curtain we saw Joanna scuttle close to the door for shelter. She was holding a package.

I let her in. She was one very damp lady. "Hey!" she said. "This is such a rotten Saturday night, all things considered, I decided we ought to have some kind of celebration. Okay?" She turned and put her package on the table, her back to me. "And it just so happens-"

There was a huge white ringing crash, blinding light, deafening sound, and I was spun and dropped into darkness, hands out to break the fall that never ended…

I opened my eyes and looked up at a white ceiling. There was an annoying whining ringing sound going on which made it difficult to think clearly. I looked back up over my head and saw the familiar white tubular headboard of your average hospital bed and thought, Oh, Christ, not again! A quarter millimeter at a time I rolled my head to the left and saw a narrow solitary window with the venetian blinds almost but not quite closed. A white floor lamp beside the window was turned on. The chair in front of the window was empty. My head made a funny sound against the pillow as I rolled it back into place. I brought up from beneath the covers a slow brown enormous hand and willed it to feel of my head. It felt bandage and then moved dumbly back to lie inert against my chest. So. The other arm worked. Both legs worked. I wished somebody would turn off the ringing. I rolled my head to the right and saw a closed door. A long sigh ended in sleep.

I woke up. The ringing was not quite as loud. There was night instead of sunshine between the slats of the blind. I thought nothing had changed until I found I couldn't move my right arm. I turned my head and studied the arm. It was strapped to a board. There was a needle in the vein inside my elbow. The needle was taped in place. I saw a rubber tube that went up to a bottle hanging over me. It seemed to be about half empty. The stuff in it was gray-white and semitransparent. I reached around in my head for the nurse word: IV Meaning… intravenous. Meaning I was having dinner.

After considerable fumbling around I found a push button safety-pinned where I was least likely to be able to reach it with my left hand. But I managed, and I thumbed it down.

After a few minutes the door was slung open and a dainty little white-haired nurse about fifty years old came trotting in. "Oh, hey!" she said. "Oh, good!" Then she said something I couldn't hear because of the ringing.

"What? Somebody turn off the damn bell." She leaned close. She laughed. "Bell? It's in your ears, sweetie. From the bomb."

"Bomb?"

She checked the IV and said, "You're doing okay here. They're not going to have to go into your skull, sweetie. Now be patient. I'm supposed to get Dr. Owings to check you."

"Where am I?"

"Ask your doctor, sweetie." And she was gone, the door hissing slowly shut behind her.

Dr. Owings really took his time. I found out later that he was out of the hospital. And I found out that one Harry Max Scorf wanted to be present when I came out of it, if I came out of it.

After an hour, Dr. Hubert Owings came in, wearing that familiar look of the distracted, overworked professional. If you ordered a doctor type from central casting, they wouldn't have sent Hubert. He looked like a cowhand in a cigarette ad, even to the lock of hair falling forward across the hero forehead. The man who followed him in was small and spare and old. He wore a thick ugly gray suit, a frayed and soiled shirt in a faded candy stripe. It was buttoned at the throat, but he wore no tie. He wore a gleaming white ranch hat, the Harry Truman model, and, as I found out later, gleaming black boots. His face was small, withered, and colorless.

"Mr. McGee," said my doctor irritably, "Captain Scorf may want to read you your rights."

"Now, Hube," Scorf said in a plaintive voice, "it's nothing like that. Son, I'm Harry Max Scorf, and I just want to know if you'll freely and willingly answer any questions I might have about the death of Miss Freeler."

I stared at him. "Miss Freeler?"

"Captain, if you would just sit over there and let me handle the usual questions?"

"Sure, Hube. Sure thing."

Hube shone a sharp little light into my eyes, first one and then the other. "Your name?"

I gave it at once. He straightened up and stared down at me in perplexity. I didn't know what was wrong, and then like an echo, I heard my voice giving my name, rank and serial number.

"I don't know why I did that," I said.

"What do you remember doing last?"

"While waiting for you, doctor, I've been trying to remember. The last thing I know is that I was standing in a very heavy rain under a banyan tree, and a little white dog on a screened porch was barking at me. I was on my way to see… someone at Fifteen Hundred Seaway Boulevard, and I don't know if I ever got there. I don't know how I got here, or why. This is Bayside?"

"It is. You were brought in unconscious with a severe concussion and a deep laceration on the back of your head, triangular, with a flap of scalp dangling."

"What about Meyer?"

"At the time you were brought in-" "

What about Meyer!"

"He's jes' fine," Harry Max Scorf said.

"Thanks, Captain."

Looking annoyed, Hube said, "If you'd remained unconscious any longer we were going to have to-"

"What day is this?"

"Thursday evening. Nine thirty on Thursday evening, Mr. McGee. The sixth day of June."

"For the love of-"

"Hold still, please. I'm trying to check you." I became aware for the first time of the catheter. He sent Scorf out of the room for no good reason while he uncoupled me from the input and output tubes. He asked me if I thought I could stand up, as if I felt like trying to stand up. I did, in the ridiculous hospital long bib, and walked carefully and shakily around the bed and got back in, sweating with the effort it had taken.

He left me with Scorf, saying, "If you feel you are getting too tired, just say so, and the captain will leave."

After the door closed, Scorf said, "Now just why did you and your friend come up here from Lauderdale, McGee?"

"No answers at all, Captain. Not until the blanks are filled in. What happened? I remember now that Joanna's last name was Freeling."

"Freeler. Now what I know about the bomb comes from the two experts we had come in and check it all over. You and Meyer were on your houseboat Saturday night. It was raining hard. That girl came aboard with a package. She put it on the table and bent over it to unwrap it. It went off. You and your friend were lucky because you were both standing behind her and not too far apart, so her body took the major force of the explosion. It blew the girl practically into two halves. She never knew what happened. It knocked both of you down, you and Meyer. You hit your head and he didn't. He lost the hearing in one ear, but they think it's coming back."