The Lonely Silver Rain (4 page)

I stopped at the next Key on the way back toward Miami, and bought the same Coast and Geodetic Survey chart. I sat in the pickup in the shade of a fairly big tree. There are no forest giants in the middle Keys. The hurricanes whip them to death. This one was thriving, awaiting the next big whirly. It had probably survived a couple when it was a sapling, able and willing to bend to the ground. I remembered Lois' message about staying limber. I sat and studied the bewilderment of islands and shoals north of the middle Keys. I phoned the Mick from a booth so hot I had to handle the phone in gingerly fashion. His machine told me to leave a message. My message involved where he could put his machine. I crossed the highway and got some fast food and a little further along the road I heard the three o'clock news. Nothing was happening except that a lot of little people were getting killed in a lot of little wars, and there was an out-of-season tropical disturbance forming beyond the Windwards.

I drove right to Mick's hangar at Southdale. Carleen Hooper was sitting beside the Mick's desk. She had on a pale green jogging outfit. Her blonde hair was short and tousled, her face sallow and lined, with big dark smudges under her eyes. She smiled at me and said, "McGee, I approve of your suggestion about the answering machine."

"Didn't think you'd be listening to it, Mrs. Hooper."

"Carlie, please. Mick should be here any minute. And I've got this big damned form to fill out for the FAA. This afternoon I am right in the groove, coming down from Orlando, assigned to twelve thousand, which is just above some clouds forming. I am skimming the top and all of a sudden this little ultralight pops right in front of me.

"What's he doing at twelve thousand anyway? I would call it two hundred feet. So I am at about two forty knots, which is about three hundred and fifty feet per second. I was just about to go onto autopilot, and if I had, he would have been dead. I had time for just one little twitch which lifted the right wing over him and I had a glance at his face. I think I took seven years off his life, and he took a least a week off mine. I came back around to get a number but those little suckers don't have to have one. It had an MX on the rudder surface. I was tempted to buzz him a couple of times for luck, but with my luck it would have ripped his wings off. He was heading on down pretty good anyway. He waved at me. Isn't that nice? Excuse me, I've got to get this dumb thing filled out. The way I see it, they should have an operational ceiling of one thousand feet and they shouldn't be allowed to operate those things within twenty-five miles of any airport. They look like big dumb mosquitoes."

I told her the fellow was lucky somebody with wonderful reflexes was flying her airplane. I roamed around, looking at the souvenirs the Mick has fastened to the two wooden walls of his office. The other two are glass from one yard on up so he can watch what's going on on the hangar floor. One picture was of the Mick standing on the hardpan in flying gear, helmet in hand, in front of what looked to be a World War II Navy torpedo bomber. It was dated February 10, 1942. The Mick looked about fifteen years old.

When he came in, I took him out into a corner of the hangar far from the two mechanics just finishing up their day, and I told him what I wanted. I showed him the chart. I'd marked the area I wanted covered.

"Okay," he said. "Lower level. Color. Check the hidey-holes. This is Tuesday. I can't do it before Saturday. It will take the whole day. I'll use the Champ and figure on two gas stops. How does four hundred sound? That's a special rate."

"Plus gas?"

"You called it."

"Damn it, Mick, they left the marina Monday morning, the fifteenth. Saturday is twelve days later. Any way anybody could do that tomorrow? Carlie? Somebody?"

"Big rush?"

"I've got a feeling in the lower spine. Lumbar four and five. That's the hunch area. Like they brought something across, and that's a transfer point. Or they're picking something up."

"Let me take another look at that schedule." He was able to rework his little air force schedule so that he could do a half day tomorrow, in the morning, early.

He went into the back corner of the hangar to check his little yellow chum, his Aeronca 7AC Champion, about twenty-one feet of high-wing monoplane with a single wooden propeller, weighing 740 pounds empiy, with room for two passengers, thirteen gallons of gas and 40 pounds of baggage, maximum speed at sea level: eighty-two knots.

"Take me along?" I asked him.

He looked me over and shook his head sadly. "You and me add up to three people, McGee, and I never stress my little friend here, the Champ. One time I put her right above stall speed heading into a steady forty-mile breeze, and she backed up at about five or six miles an hour. I could look down and make out the countryside going by the wrong way. Strange feeling. Tell you what. I can put a Polaroid back on the Nikon, and if the air is calm, I can keep peeling and reloading. Some wind and I'll be too dad bam busy. You could come by like maybe one in the afternoon."

He had four shots of it on thick Polaroid film, taken from a lower altitude than I had become accustomed to. Overhead, and one from a lot lower but behind the stern, so crisp I could read the name, and the third of the port side. The fourth was from a few hundred feet up, showing the vessel snugged up against mangrove.

"I think she's empty," he said.

"How so?"

"After I took this shot, this one where I was high over it, I came down and took this one from directly overhead, expecting people to run out on deck like they always do when they hear that little Continental coughing and sputtering like it's about to quit-and never does. When nobody came out, and I couldn't see any other boats around, I buzzed it from off the port side. I came across this piece of water here and pulled up. I got the camera fixed in place. Missed the first two shots. Water in one, mangrove in the other. Hit it clean the third time. I got the stern shot just right the first time. Couldn't get a bow shot on account of the way the mangrove curves around up here, see? After all that, nobody came on deck, and it was by then nine in the morning, and I came right back to the barn from there. She's empty but I don't think she's been stripped. See here? There's a good dinghy, and this up here is a rod with a star-drag reel somebody left on the side deck. So it can't have been empty too long. They strip an abandoned boat fast down in those waters."

"What's this here?"

"Somebody cut mangrove branches to hide her. But she's big. They didn't cut enough, and they've been cut long enough the leaves all curled up."

"Exactly where is she?"

"She's ten to twelve miles north-northwest of where I picked her up in the other picture at Big Pine Key. She's in a jumble of little islands to the north of Big Torch Key, sitting in a bay in this horseshoe-shaped island." He marked an X on my chart. "Look, in this shot you can see the channel coming in. Very tight. She's out of sight from the water in any direction. You'd have to feel your way into the bay to find her. You going to advise the owner?"

"After I take a look at her."

"Taking the law with you?"

"I think I'll take that look first."

"I don't want to see those funds slip away, friend."

"You won't, Mick."

At first light on Thursday morning I headed out from a place named Faulkner's Fish Camp on Ramrod Key in a wooden skiff with a twenty-horse motor, beer cooler, fly dope, tackle, tackle box, ten-power binoculars and a bait pail full of apprehensive shrimp. I pushed it as fast as the rig would go, and when I got to the area I got lost three or four times among the wrong islands before, at high noon, I found the channel into the little bay protected on one side by the horseshoe island and on the other by a long narrow mangrove island. There was a gentle breeze from the north, just enough to riffle the surface of the bay. She was there, and the closer I got to her, the more disreputable she looked-like an elegant lady who had stepped into the wrong bar on New Year's Eve.

A lot of her varnish had been sprayed lavatory green and it had begun to flake off. I headed slowly for the stern. I could guess that under the new board, stained driftwood gray, screwed to the stern with LAZIDAYS painted thereon, I could find the thick golden word SUNDOWNER. A sudden shift of the breeze changed the look of the vessel and the shape of the day. It brought that thick ripe sweet stink of death and decay. I killed the motor and curved the skiff away from the stink, and as I did so, I noticed three buzzards in a dead mangrove which stood taller than the rest. Black sentinels defeated by the geography of a cruiser. They were never going to flap down to the cockpit deck, waddle down the steps to the feast. You seldom see them out on the islands, except after a red tide has washed the big dead fish onto the mud beaches. I have a friend who disbelieved the experts who say birds have no sense of smell, and, so one summer out in the ranchlands northeast of Sarasota, he tested them. Before dawn he would put dead meat under a white wooden box, and spread several identical boxes around the area. with nothing under them. The buzzards would circle above them for a time, and then would always come down to clumsy landings around the baited box, ignoring the others.

And then he realized that maybe it wasn't a keen sense of smell but instead remarkable eyesight. The carrion flies always arrive first. They have a shiny metallic-looking blue-green abdomen, and maybe the buzzards can spot the glintings from a thousand feet on high. Nature has many little tricks which reinforce the interdependence of the species.

It is one thing to look at a mistreated boat and another to look at a tomb. The silence of the bay seemed more intense. And I could see the glint of the carrion flies.

When you have time to think, use it. I wanted to go below and take a look. If somebody had killed people aboard, then trained investigators might find some useful clue. And if trained people were looking for clues, it would not be wise to leave any of my own. I had the illogical and uncomfortable feeling that at any moment a small boat would come in through the channel. I tied the skiff to the starboard corner of the stern, after I had sniffed a little bit of gasoline to deaden my sense of smell. I used the small rag to squeeze some gasoline from the spare tank into a little bottle from my tackle box which had held a remaining trace of reel oil. I wrapped the bottle in the gassy rag and put it in my shirt pocket. I checked the bottoms of the old gray running shoes. The last traces of tread were long gone. I found stiff old cotton fish gloves in the tackle box, kneaded them soft and put them on. I took the pistol from the bottom of the tackle box and shoved it inside the waistband of my khaki pants. Double-check. My skiff was out of sight to anyone coming into the bay through the only navigable opening. Nothing could fall out of my pockets. I took the sunglasses off and placed them carefully on the rear ledge near the outboard motor. Then I clambered up quickly and levered myself over the transom and stepped down onto the red waterproof padding of the semicircular transom bench and from there to the deck, avoiding some broken glass and a dried puddle of something or other. I stopped there to use the little bottle and rag to kill my sense of smell again. Flies buzzed by me, coming and going. They had a traffic pattern. Down into the shadows of the main lounge through the open hatchway and back out again. One blundered into the side of my face as it went by.

Okay, MeGee. If a fly can go down there, so can you. I turned and waved to the buzzards and went below, picking each step with care, pausing on the second one until my eyes adjusted to the shadows.

Someone had done horrid work. I looked at Howard Cannon first. He was the nearest. He was spread-eagled on his back on the floor, with a line from one wrist to the leg of a table that was screwed to the deck, and from the other wrist to the divider between two low lockers. I sat on my heels to get a closer look at what he had in his mouth. Somebody had pried his angular jaw open and inserted a thick roll of bills, of currency, between those buck teeth and then, from the look of the protruding inch of money they had hammered it into place with the heel of a hand. There was a shiny blue plastic clothespin on his nose. His eyes were muddy slits of white with no iris showing. His face had a blue cyanotic look. I shut my eyes for a moment, breathing through my mouth, hoping no fly would get into one of the deep inhalations. There were some loose bills beside his head, a couple stuck in the blood that had run from the corner of his mouth. I carefully picked up two of the others. Both fifties. They looked perfectly good. Splendid money. Until I noticed that they had the same serial number. And I bent closer to one stuck in the dried blood and saw that it too had the same number. One could reasonably assume there had been some disagreement about the money. Howard Cannon a/k/a John Rogers had lost his argument. And his life. And Karen McBride's life as well. She lay facedown and forlorn on a couch, wearing only a polka-dot sun top. Her dead head lolled over the side of the couch, a tangle of blonde hair hanging. Her left arm hung down, the back of her hand resting against the deck. The flies seemed more interested in her than in her friend. I couldn't make out how she had been killed. I didn't want to touch her. Under the unkempt hair the skull looked misshapen to me, but I could not be sure. There was a dark matted area which could have been blood.

Only the more venturesome flies had gone beyond the main lounge into the forward cabin area. The slender naked girl who lay on her back on the bed had probably been beautiful in life. Dark hair. Clean features. But now the shape of the skull showed, the shape of the bones. She was dwindled the way a total loss of blood can cause. Her slender throat had been sliced from ear to ear, and the knife lay beside her head in the dark mat of blood, a kitchen knife from the galley. The insides of her thighs showed large blue bruised areas and I could guess she had been badly used before someone did her the favor of sending her on her way across the river.

I went back and gave Howard a gentle nudge in the hip area with the rubber toe of my shoe. The body was slack. I know that after death rigor sets in and later the body returns to a slackness of gas and rot, but I had no idea how long that would take. The interior of the Sundowner was stifling, a heat that made my shirt and pants cling to me, dark with sweat. The heat would hasten the process. I had a moment of dizziness and once again sniffed the gas. I looked around and realized that person or persons unknown had conducted a search. Drawers dumped, panels hacked open, engine hatches open, food spilled, the contents of lockers yanked out and spread around.

Maybe I could have found the Sundowner sooner. And if I had, maybe I too could be wearing a bright plastic clothespin and a mouthful of money.

I was not going to learn any more standing there. And almost without conscious transition, I was back in the skiff, sunglasses in place, chugging away from the Sundowner. I put the weapon back in the bottom of the tackle box. Out of some idiot impulse I poured what was left of the gas in the little bottle back into the spare tank. Mr. Neat. In spite of the sun's heat and the warmth of the breeze I felt cold. I stopped the motor in the middle of the bay and vomited over the side. I sucked a piece of ice from the cooler. I wanted to think some deep solemn thoughts about living and dying. But not here, where I felt exposed. I gave the thoughtful, patient buzzards a final wave of farewell and exited the bay, slowly and carefully. But there was no vessel and no aircraft in sight which could have spotted me leaving.

I made very good time returning to Faulkner's and turning the skiff in. There was some mild curiosity about a customer coming back early with no fish. But I said I hadn't felt too good out there, and when I began to feel worse, I thought I better come on in. It wasn't enough of an incident to make me memorable, I hoped.

I cruised ten miles toward home in the pickup before I found a phone booth in the shade, with a door that I could close instead of one of those stupid open shell-shaped things.

The voice on the other end said that it was indeed the Coast Guard I was speaking to, in person of one rating named Bliss.

"I want to report a…"

"I must have your name first, sir."

"Look, what I want to do is report…"

"I must have your name and the location from which you are calling before you report the matter to which you refer, sir."

"Now goddamn it, Bliss…"

"Those are the regulations, sir."

"My name is Adam Smith and…"

"Will you spell that, sir."

I spelled it. "I am calling from Delancy's Grill in Homestead." And I spelled all that too.

"What is the nature of the matter you wish to report, sir?"

"Take this down, Bliss. Take it down carefully because I am not going to spell it. Get your people to take one of the big choppers that have pontoons, and take along three body bags and somebody who knows how to act at the scene of a crime, and tell them to search the small island area ten to twelve miles north-northwest of Big Pine Key, and they'll spot a fifty-four-foot cruiser parked against the mangrove shore of a crescent-shaped island."

"Is it… "

"Shut up, Bliss. Just write or tape or whatever you do. The cruiser was stolen last July fourth up on the east coast near Citrina. Its legal owner is William Ingraham. You people have this on record because you've looked for it."

"But, sir, we…"

"Aboard that cruiser, renamed the Lazidays, they will find the murdered bodies of Howard Cannon of Citrina and Karen McBride, also of Citrina, and also the body of an unidentified young female."

"Jesus Chr…"

"They've been dead a while and it is hot out there, so get on it, Bliss. The island is a crescent pointed north and south, with the open side toward the west. You can tell it by the buzzards sitting in the tree nearby."

"But…"

"If they want to go out and tow that vessel in, they'll have to bring it out on a good high tide, right at the crest."

I hung up on him before his voice changed all the way to soprano.

After I gathered my wits I went back into the 7-Eleven and got another handful of change. Billy Ingraham was home. I told him I had located the Sundowner. I told him I had put the Coast Guard on it and he was to sit tight until he heard from them.