The Lonely Silver Rain (5 page)

"Where is it? I can leave in ten minutes and…"

"Billy, don't make me sorry I told you. There are three dead bodies aboard her. The two kids from Citrina that were the suspects, and another girl."

"Good God!"

"They've been dead a while. It's one hell of a mess. They were killed in ugly ways, Billy. It's something to do with dope peddling or smuggling or counterfeiting. Listen carefully. I want to be out of this as of right now."

"How bad is my boat?"

"It would break your heart."

"Tell me."

"Okay, structurally she is probably okay. But it will need complete outfitting, above and below. New rugs, upholstery, paint, cabinetwork. I don't know if they can ever get the stink out. New paint and varnish. The heads were clogged. People have been crapping in the bilge. Billy, believe me, you don't want to see her. Lay back, and when they contact you, have her taken to the yard that built her for a complete overhaul, and then I think you ought to sell her after she's clean for whatever you can get."

"Let me be the judge of…"

"You be the judge. Okay. But one thing has to be clear, Billy. You never asked me to find her. I never looked for her. I never found her. Clear?"

"But why?"

"There has to be some very rough people involved in whatever was going on. And one team knocked off three people on the other team. I don't want anybody to get any idea that it could have been me."

"Oh."

"As far as you know, you may have asked me to look for her but I wasn't interested. I said the odds were too long."

"I didn't know you could get so nervous, Trav."

"Billy, I can get very nervous, and this is one of the times."

I knew when I reached the Mick I wouldn't have as much trouble making him see the point, and I didn't.

"Three deads," he said, and I heard him whistle softly.

"I am making a little bonfire of the photographs, and if you've got anything around there, you better roast a marshmallow too."

"Very good thinking. Let me see. Why were you trying to get in touch with me?"

"I changed my mind. Forgot what it was."

"What's your name again?"

"McGee. Travis McGee."

"Never heard of you, pal."

I made my final call from the outskirts of Fort Lauderdale to the newsroom at the Miami Herald. I told the woman who answered that the Coast Guard had recovered a stolen yacht down in the Keys with the bodies of three young people aboard, and hung up in the middle of the first question she asked. Calling her was easier than calling the Coast Guard. The Guard seems intent on making communication impossible.

I did not feel the inner knots unwind until I had returned the pickup to Sam Dandie, stowed my gear, bundled my sweaty khakis into the laundry sack, taken a long shower in my stall aboard the Busted Flush, big enough for a bridge game, dressed in cool whites and fixed myself a hearty flagon of Boodles over ice. I took the drink topside and sat on the sun deck and watched the lazy life of the marina and the homebound bustle of traffic over an the avenue.

Then I let myself think about being young and dying. One of the basic ingredients of good and bad poetry, good and bad drama the world over. The end of all as life is ere begun. A waste of the firm, springy, young flesh, of all the spices and juices. Tens of thousands of the young kill themselves every year. A pity. I wondered if it could be some kind of Darwinian design, getting rid of the ones unsuited for the rest of the ride. But that would leave out the earthquakes, the floods, the little and big wars, the famines and the deadly diseases that knock off the millions without regard to age or merit: No matter how many dead ones you see, indifference is never achieved except by the butchers. The dead young women had rocked me. A cruel waste. The dentist's daughter and somebody else's daughter. Grownups had helped each of them learn to walk, and had cried out their pleasure when the toddler, face screwed up in anxiety, had come tottering into the waiting arms. Somebody had proudly repeated their first words, read their first school papers, bought their first party dresses. And some people somewhere would have a wrenching, stinging, insatiable sense of loss.

I saw Meyer coming along the dock area and so I got up and walked back to the stern rail of the sun deck and asked him to come aboard. He said he would, as soon as he delivered one fine slab of dolphin to Slip E-10, to the Petersens aboard the Rubiyacht. I told him to step below and fix a drink and bring it up. The long twilight is a fine time of day in October.

When he was in the neighboring deck chair I said, "May I tell you about my day?"

"Please do."

And that was another way of unwinding.

There was another little flurry when the third victim was identified as Gigliermina Reyes y Fonseca, of Lima, Peru, daughter of a Peruvian diplomat. She had been traveling in Mexico with a companion and had been reported missing a month before the body was found.

On November 7, a Wednesday, Billy Ingraham called and said he had something far me, and I could come and get it anytime before Saturday. I drove up there the next morning and went up to the penthouse duplex at the top of Tower Alpha at Dias del Sol. Billy's tan had faded a little. He looked heavier and he seemed abrupt, almost surly. He led me into a little study on the lower floor of the duplex. He didn't ask me to sit down. He handed two thick manila envelopes to me. "What's this, Billy?"

"Your money, MCGee."

"How much?"

"Why don't you count it and find out?"

"What the hell is going on?"

"I'm paying you in cash. Isn't that the way you people like to get it?"

I sat down without invitation and tossed the two envelopes onto his desk. I began to realize what had happened. "Billy, I told you not to go look at the boat. But you did, didn't you?"

He perched a hip on a corner of his desk and looked dolefully down at me. "After the authorities were through with her, the yard sent a couple of men down. They got her cleaned up some and operating and brought her around to Jacksonville. Millis and me, we don't want that cruiser anymore. It's finished for us."

"Going to get another one?"

"I don't know. Maybe not. It's a lot of work and responsibility. Millis, she wants to spend the winter in the South of France."

"Why treat me so hardnose, Billy?"

"I don't know. Shit. You're part of the whole picture somehow. And that goddamn dentist calling me up and crying over the phone, and why did I leave the keys in the boat, his daughter would still be alive, and that damn insurance outfit saying take seventeen thousand three hundred or nothing at all, and people asking me how it felt to own a boat people got killed on. McGee, I just don't feel like being sweet and nice to anybody at all."

"How much is in the envelopes?"

"One ninety-three five."

"Okay."

"Don't you want to ask any questions?"

"Why should I? You're not the kind that screws friends."

"You got a right to know. It took eighty-eight thousand to get her back in decent shape to peddle. Part of that eighty-eight was the little piddle the insurance gave me. The yard says they can get four hundred and seventy-five for her. She nets out in recovery condition at three eighty-seven and you get half of that. Here's how I make out, if you care."

"I care."

"I had seven twenty in her that I put in. I put in a net seventy thousand seven hundred to get her in shape to sell. That makes seven ninety and seven hundred. Out of that I get back a hundred and ninety-three five hundred. In other words, McGee., I take a bath for five ninety-seven two."

"A boat is said to be a hole in the water into which the owner pours money."

He smiled for the first time, but it was a tired smile. "Bet your buns," he said. "The deal with you wasn't the best one I've ever made. I can't tell you how many times Millis has told me that. It never occurred to me that three damn kids could do eighty-eight thousand dollars' damage to a boat just living in it."

"And dying in it."

"Yes. That too." He sighed. "And I didn't know a custom boat would drop so much on the market. We designed it to suit us. People who can afford it, sooner get one built for their own tastes and lifestyle. And word got around it's the murder boat. That hurts chances of selling it. Superstition of the sea or something."

"Billy, you're breaking my heart. Want to renegotiate?"

"And you would, wouldn't you?"

"Just say the word."

He stood up and laughed and belted me on the arm hard enough to numb my fingertips. "Shit, McGee, I've got more money than Carter had pills. I just like. to moan and groan. A deal is a deal. Don't insult me."

I got up and said, "Has anybody been by to find out who located your boat for you?"

"Three dapper little guys in three-piece suits about a week ago. Only one of them could speak English, and not a lot of it either. I told them the Coast Guard found my boat. They were some kind of Latins. They said somebody told the Coast Guard where to look. I said that was interesting, but I didn't know anything about it. They said that the person who tipped the Coast Guard knew whose boat it was. I said that was interesting too, and maybe it was my insurance company."

"Nice going. Thanks."

Millis sauntered in. She was wearing some kind of black silky jogging suit, and she smelled expensive. "Travis McGee! How good to see you!" she cried, and she did it so well I could almost believe her. "How clever you were to find the Sundowner for us."

"Just dumb luck," I said.

"I guess more luck for you than for us," she said. "Can you stay for lunch? Please?"

"Thanks, but I've got to get back."

Billy took me to the door. He said they were flying up to New York on Saturday because there were two shows Millis wanted to see, and also a friend of hers was having a show of his paintings in one of the galleries and they'd been invited to the opening. I told him I hoped he'd have a fine time. He said he hoped so too, but he didn't look as if he believed it.

I decided to give Mick the twenty rather than be picky and cut him to ten percent after expenses. I phoned him on Thursday to be sure he'd be in and then drove over with it. I gave it to him the same way I got it, half hundreds and half fifties in a manila envelope. He undid the clasp and peered in and then he beamed at me, and for an instant I saw how he must have looked as a little kid when he heard he was going to go to the movies.

"Hoo weee!" he said. "Makes my teeth hurt."

"Some well-dressed little Latin types came to my client to find out who found the boat."

"Nobody has come to me."

"They might."

"What boat is that?"

"I can't remember either."

"Wonder who wasted those kids," he said, frowning.

"What kids?"

"Okay, okay, okay," he said. "You get real cautious, don't you?"

"And I'm walking around, talking and everything."

That was the end of it, I thought. Before you tiptoe down the hall, you close all the doors, very carefully. And you don't make any noise until you are out of the neighborhood. Violent people tend to have dim little minds and a tendency to discount all explanations. They would rather hit than listen. The dim little minds have a short attention span, fortunately, and so when jingle-bell time came close, I had made some progress in forgetting the whole thing. There was the occasional unexpected glimpse of the roll of bills in the redhead's jaws, or of the flies crawling across the buttock mounds of the dentist's daughter, or of the kitchen filet knife with the red handle with finger grooves to make it more comfortable in the hand.

And then one day there was a card in my box to pick up a package at the window. It was booksized, book-shaped, book-heft, and had a department store label, a hand-lettered address. I guessed the card would be inside. I was in a hurry, so I tossed it on the front seat of my blue Rolls pickup and headed over the bridge into town. A still, murky day with an eye-shadow sky and the stink of inversion. I needed an odd lot of boat items, some line, some triple-O steel wool, some brass grommets that would work with my grommeting tool, some paint thinner and a couple of small bronze cleats I had decided I needed to make certain lines aboard the Flush easier to manage. There is an open mall on the right a couple of blocks past U.S. 1, with a marine supply and hardware store at the far left end of it. Even though I had a batch of other errands, I succumbed to my tendency to browse the hardware. I average three implausible gadgets per trip. Meyer predicts the Flush will eventually sink from the sheer weight of gadgetry.

As I was paying for my toys at checkout, there was a hard distant thudding sound, followed by some faint sounds in a higher register. I had once heard a head-on collision, and it had sounded much the same.

As I was driving out of the mall parking area, heading for the next errand, I heard the sirens coming.

That evening, three days before Christmas, I heard on the local news and weather that a bomb had exploded behind that shopping mall at a few minutes past ten, killing instantly one Emiliano Lopez, age fourteen, and one Horatio Sanchez, age thirteen. The explosion had blown a hole in the cinderblock wall that formed the back wall of the stock room of a dress shop in the middle of the mall, and done minor damage to a truck parked at a nearby loading dock. The explosion had been so violent only minute traces of the bomb had been found. Chemical analysis indicated an advanced type of plastic explosive, and the authorities said it was reasonable to assume it had a sophisticated arming mechanism. The dead youths had long records of juvenile offenses. As yet there seemed to be no motive.

In the pantheon there must be one god especially assigned to those of us who are amiable, stupid and lucky. I went out to the parking area at a half run and found my present was missing. And I had forgotten that in contemporary Fort Lauderdale one must always lock one's car.

The street children had opened my package. It should have worked perfectly. I should have been blown to bloody mush. One big white flash in the brain, and nothingness from then on-unless, of course, John Tinker Meadows is correct in his television promises of golden streets and eternal life to come.

When I went back into the lounge, I fixed fresh drinks for myself and for Annabelle Everett. I had known her as Annabelle Harris when she had worked for Billy Ingraham back when Billy had his fingers in lots of pies. She'd married Stu Everett, a local TV weatherman, and gone with him when he'd moved to a bigger job in a bigger city, and she had come back without him when she caught him with the girl who did the eleven o'clock sports.

Annabelle is a tall, broad-shouldered blonde with an off-center way of looking at the world. "What was that all about?" she demanded. "You look kinda funny,"

"I thought I'd left something in the car."

"I turned off your little box, friend. They got from the news into weather, and I seriously doubt I will ever be interested in the weather again. Or sports. You can turn it back on if you are seriously concerned."

"No. No, thanks."

About five minutes later she said, "Hey, it would be nice to have somebody to talk to."

"What? Oh, I'm sorry, Annabelle. I was thinking."

"I wondered about that. Your forehead was all knotted up and you were sighing. I had to believe you were probably thinking. Want me to go so you can think a lot?"

"No, don't go. I was glad I ran into you. I didn't know you were back."

"I didn't expect to be back, but like I told you, things happen. Things happen to people every day. I didn't ever think very much was going to happen to me, but there you go. Married and divorced-well, almost divorced-in fourteen months. We should never have left here. Did you know I was born here?"

"Never knew it."

"The bad thing about that situation in Philadelphia, that sports girl is a little thing with hips out to here and a tiny mustache. I mean it hurts your pride along with everything else. Stu was okay until he started getting fan mail. He never got any down here because he had the wrong haircut. In Philadelphia they fixed him up. The mail started coming in. He grinned into every mirror he saw, and he kept doing that thing with his eyebrows. And taking an interest in sports. He always hated sports. He throws like a girl."

She got up and went into the galley and peered into the convection oven. "We got time for one more drink," she said.

"Smells great."

"Chicken Annabelle is always great, friend. You know why I said I'd come here and fix it?"

"Why?"

"Because you are just about the only one-you and Meyer too-who tried to tell me Stu is a silly shit. Why didn't I listen? The other guys I know here, since I've been back just over a month, they seem to think I'm some kind of practice target. They think they can take their shot and they can't miss. I guess the idea is that a married girl gets it so steady she gets used to it, and she misses it so bad all you got to do is get a hand on her and she gives up, and rolls onto her back. And that is a lot of crap. Right now I feel about screwing the way I feel about the weather."

"And sports."

"Right there! Stu and the Little Mustache can read his fan mail out laud."