John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 15 - The Turquoise Lament

by The Turquoise Lament(lit)

  "I couldn't see any rich man getting stupid enough or drunk enough to buy that Scroomall. One day there was a girl on deck, one of those spindly saggy kind, long blond hair hanging, a face that if she was dead it would have a livelier expression on it, sorry old clothes like a ragbag. Turns out, talking to Howie, she's the daughter of this Fahrhowser, took off from school, she's broke and wants to stay aboard only don't tell the old man. He doesn't know what he should do. She must have moved in, because it was anyway a week later I saw them on the beach and didn't know it was the same girl for sure, because in a swim outfit you could see what was hid under those raggy clothes, and it was pretty nice. From how they were horsing around together it was clear to any fool she'd moved in all the way. What was her damn name? Susan. That's it. Not so long after that my crazy old lady come down from Duluth and I had to run up and down that damn Waterway for a week and a half. I disremember seeing Howie for a time, and then I seen him one day on the Trepid, helping out Pidge Lewellen. I stopped and asked him if somebody bought that Scroomall crock and he said not yet, he was still living aboard, and it hadn't even nearly been sold, as far as he could tell. I would guess that he stayed aboard that Texas boat until the wedding. Sometime later, one day that crock was gone, and you'd have to ask Rine Houk about what happened. And whyn't you go below and drag us up a pair of beers, McGee? It's a cold day for beer, but talking makes me sweaty."

  For about fifteen seconds I didn't know I was talking to Rine Houk. It had been a year and more. The man I knew had a long head, bald on top, a cropped stubble of salt and pepper around the edges, glasses with big black frames.

  When he called me by name I peered at him again. "Jesus Christ, Rine!" I said before I could stop myself.

  He shook his head and sat down behind his desk at his big boatyard. "I know. I know. You should try wearing this goddamn thing in weather like we were having lately. Trav, it's like wearing a fur hat with ear flappers. The sweat comes apouring out from under it and runs down the inside of these wire glasses like you wouldn't believe. If I see myself far off in a store window and I squint up my eyes, I can almost believe that's a young fellow I'm seeing. Selling is a young man's game, Trav, and don't you forget it."

  "Bullshit, Rine. How about Colonel Sanders and his greasy chicken?"

  "I'm not exactly selling box lunches."

  "Don't get huffy with me just because I don't like your hairpiece. We've never been great friends, Rine. But I like you. You are an honest man in a business where they are rare. I want to know a couple of things. Why that red-brown color like a setter dog?"

  "That's the color my hair was when I had any."

  "Do you sell boats from fifty feet away, or talking up close?"

  "I sell them right across this desk."

  "Have you got a young girl friend?"

  "Me!"

  "Are you looking for one?"

  "Am I looking for a coronary?"

  "Rine, somebody gave you a bad steer. Are you selling more yachts lately?"

  "Business is generally rotten."

  "Listen. I did not think of you as being young or old. I thought of you as being Rine Houk, the boat broker. I never especially thought of your face. But now I see your face underneath and between all that shiny hair, and your face looks so damn withered and old, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. You look silly Rine. You look like you had bad judgment. You look desperate. I wouldn't buy a leaky skiff from anybody who looks the way you do right now."

  "Get out of this office," he said, but he wouldn't look right at me.

  "Rine," I said gently.

  He took a deep breath and let it out. He blinked rapidly, and I saw the tears squeeze out of his eyes. He jumped up and went around the corner of his desk, bumping into it, and went into the bathroom off his office and pulled the door shut. I felt rotten. People make such strange evaluations of self. Why upset them? It's none of my business. I waited. And waited. And waited.

  He came out, sans wig. He was back in the big glasses. He didn't look at me. He sat on his heels in front of the executive icebox with the genuine cherrywood paneling. "Black Jack do you?" he asked.

  "Fine. No mix. Just rocks."

  He made the two drinks the same and made them heavy. He brought them to the desk. The intercom said, "Mr. Houk?"

  "Yes, Mark."

  "There's a Mister Mertz here who's interested in the Matthews fifty-two."

  "So sell it to him."

  "But you said-"

  "Forget what I said. It's a beautiful thing for that money. Sell it to him."

  He picked up his drink and gave it a little lift in my direction, then drank it down. He ran his hand over his bald head. "Had the old glasses in the cupboard in there."

  "Handy to have a spare."

  He hit the desk. "You don't know how hard it was, dammit, to all of a sudden one day start wearing that hair."

  "I can imagine."

  "No. You can't imagine. Jesus. All that wasted effort."

  "Are you giving it up?"

  "You told me what I already knew. Now I'm just another bald old fart. Feels good already. Thanks, Trav. Can I sell you... some kind of a leaky skiff?" He grinned and then blew his nose.

  I asked him about the Scroomall, shocking him for a moment with the misapprehension I might be interested in it. He remembered the boat, but he had to look at his files to remember what had happened to it. The owner had finally sent two men over from Corpus Christi to take the boat back to Texas to try to sell it there. The men had to turn back twice before they got it running properly.

  "And Howie Brindle worked out well?"

  "I wish I still had him. I wish I had one round dozen Howie Brindles. He didn't break his back looking for things to do, but when you told him, they got done. And if he'd put his mind to it, he could have sold boats."

  "Was it Tom Collier who recommended him?"

  "It could have been. Or Mrs. Harron, or both of them."

  "Never any problems with him?"

  Rine tilted his head. "What are you being paid to do?"

  "Funny question."

  "I guess so. Fahrhowser had to have money to back his bad judgment in buying that old crash boat. He could still be looking for his daughter."

  "Susan? The one who stayed on the Scroomall with Howie?"

  "Not with Howie. Not that way. He actually loaned her some money to get home on. He told the guys who came looking for her, and he told me the same thing, he made a deal with her. He'd let her come aboard and get rested up provided she'd go home, no arguments. He said he was seriously thinking about calling her people anyway, but decided not to. I guess she never made it back to Texas. And if she hasn't by now, she never will."

  "Maybe she's home. I wouldn't know."

  "Oh. Then why are you asking all about Howie?"

  "I'm conducting a survey. Fahrhowser's first name is?"

  "Jefferson."

  I thanked him. As I got into my car I looked through the show window into his office and saw Rine Houk standing rubbing his head and looking at himself in a wall mirror. He brought himself to attention. He still looked damned old, either way.

  I got back to the Flush at three thirty, and after I had made a big sandwich and eaten half of it, I looked at the map in the front of the phone book and dialed information for Area 512, and asked for Corpus Christi information, the home number of Jefferson Fahrhowser, F as in February, A as in April, H as in Hudson River, R as in Railroad-Fahrhowser.

  I direct-dialed it and got a woman with a drunk voice. She had a lot of slurring range, most of it baritone. I wanted to talk to Jeff and she said I had to mean Jeff senior because Jeff junior was in Cuba or some other goddamn commie hideout, and if I just happened to mean Daddy Jeff, then I was shit out of luck because about six months ago, give or take a week, his heart blew up like a baked potato you forgot to stick a fork into before you put it in the oven, son of a bitch was dead before he hit the floor, and besides that, I was slowing up a great pool party and tequ
ila contest, which I could come over and join if I needed some laughs. I said I was in Florida and it would take too long, and she said this had the look of one of those parties that would go right on through the end of this year and into the next one, and she said she was Bonnie Fahrhowser, the grieving widow lady.

  I said that I was looking for a line on Susan, the wandering daughter, and where could I get in touch. She said she wished she could get back all the money Daddy Jeff had spent in that jackass search for that dreary girl. And you wanna know the worst, Florida boy, the very bitter goddamn end? There is one big slug of dough all locked up in an escrow account, and we've petitioned the probate court and so on, but she can't be declared dead for years and years and years. Jesus! Any fool could tell you that dim little slut was an OD years ago, buried someplace by the taxpayers. I got to get back in the game. It's Zen water polo. You play it with an imaginary ball. You can still make the party, friend. The best parts haven't even started to get warmed up yet."

  As I walked around finishing my sandwich, I tried to guess what Meyer would tell me. Not to walk while you eat. It makes crumbs and you step on them.

  I opened the shallow drawer under the phone desk and pawed through the junk in there. It is where I too often empty my pockets. I quickly found the envelope Pidge had forced upon me. "Take it away." she said. "I don't want to throw them away, and I don't want them around where I can look at them and get strange again. Keep them, darling, and we can look at them again when we're old and gray."

  Twelve square prints, twelve negatives in strips of three. I sat where the light was strong and good, and studied the first nine prints, one at a time. I knew that waterfront area of St. Croix. And it was a nice trimaran from Houston. Howie was in two of them. Smiling. Huge. Happy. And then the last three. The snapshots my Lou Ellen had taken of the imaginary stowaway, Miss Joy Harris. Empty forward deck of the Trepid. Empty hatch cover. No one standing at the rail.

  I noticed that the color values weren't quite as good in the last three. Probably due to the direction of the light. Automatic cameras were never meant for taking pictures in the light Overexposure bleaches the emulsion out, fades the color values.

  Then I realized it wasn't really overexposure. It was more of a kind of yellow-green cast over the whole print.

  Suddenly I was aware of the bump, bump, bump of my heart, and of coldness in the pit of my belly. My hands shook as I tried to put the prints back into the envelope. I dropped half of them, and after I finally got things organized, I headed for the phone.

  Eleven

  I KNEW Gabe Marchman would be home, simply because he never goes anywhere. He had the sense to buy some so-called ranchland west of Lauderdale years ago and keep five acres of it, and put his house smack in the middle of the five acres. He was a combat photographer, one of the great ones, until a booby trap smashed his legs into a poor grade of hamburger and put him on crutches for life. He and his Chinese-Hawaiian wife, Doris, have seven kids, six horses, uncounted dogs, cats, geese, ducks, all living in a noisy and peaceable kingdom. He has a photolab almost as big as the main house. He does experimental work, and he does problem assignments for large fees. He is the most sour-acting happy man I know.

  Doris came out of the house as I got out of the car. She said, "He's very angry with you, and you really have to stay for barbecue, Travis. He loves to talk to you. Talk and talk and solve all the problems of the world."

  "I should stay because he's angry?"

  "Because like I heard him say to you on the telephone, you never come around unless you have a problem."

  "It's strange, you know? I really relish coming here. I like to be with you two. What happens?" She has that lovely matte Chinese complexion, without flaw,, and looks more like a sister than a mother to her eldest daughter, age thirteen. "What happens? We all waste our days doing dreary things, Trav, instead of the things we want to do. You will stay and eat with us? Wonderful! Let's see how Gabe is doing."

  We walked around the big house to the back garden. Gabe was chugging the length of the new pool, getting almost all the impetus from his powerful arms. He paused and held up three fingers.

  "Three more laps only." Doris said. "It's best he finishes the whole forty at one time."

  "Is it helping?"

  "Oh, yes. For the first time, this year, he's been almost without pain. Poor lamb. He so hates exercise."

  Soon he clambered out, pulled himself up, shouldered himself into his terry robe, and leaned against the step railing to dry his face and hair. Then he came swinging nimbly over to us on his aluminum crutches.

  He stared hard at me as he sat down at the glasstopped terrace table. "Well, what do you know!" he said.

  "That's a weird greeting."

  "There was an edge to your voice on the phone. I wondered if it showed in person. It does. So, whatever your problem, it's more personal than professional."

  "Darling!" Doris said sharply.

  "It's okay," I said. "It's okay if Gabe Marchman reads me. He's read a lot of faces in a lot of bad situations."

  "It happens in the eyes," he said. "And something about the tilt of the head and the shape of the mouth. Mostly in the eyes, though."

  "Somebody very important to me could be in a very bad situation. I don't know. It depends on what you tell me. I almost don't want to ask you."

  "Do we go into the lab?"

  "Maybe you won't have to. Here. A roll of twelve exposures, Kodacolor, shot on an inexpensive Instamatic. Tell me anything you want to tell me about them."

  He slipped them out of the envelope and dealt them out on the plate glass like a game of solitaire. I watched him separate the three of the empty forward deck of the Trepid and put them in a row of their own.

  Next he turned the nine prints face down. In a few moments I saw what he was doing. It irritated me that I had not figured out something so simple. The paper had a pattern on the back, the word "Kodak" over and over, imprinted in diagonal rows. He worked by trial and error until finally he had the nine prints all in a row, with the trademark matching at every edge. Next he tried to find even one of the three greenish ones which would fit at either end of the strip of nine. None would fit. He found that two of the greenish ones matched. But the third would not fit on either end of the short strip of two. Only then did he examine the negatives. He turned all the prints face up, in the same order. He matched them up with the negatives, which were in strips of three. He gave the most intensive examination to the strip which related to the three prints of the empty foredeck.

  He leaned back in the white iron chair, shrugged and said, "All I can tell you is that the prints come from at least two separate rolls and possibly three. If I had to bet, I would say two rolls. This shift toward the greens and yellows indicates that the film, before exposure, either in the film package or in the camera, was subjected to too much heat. Probably when in the camera. That's how it usually happens. The other nine are from a roll that didn't get too hot prior to exposure. I am guessing two rolls because the degree of shift seems to be identical, on these two taken in sequence and on this one. This one is a stranger. At first glance it seems to be a print from this end negative on this strip of three, but if you look at the top of the negative and the top of the print, you see that the print covers one support of the rail that the negative doesn't. I would say that whoever developed and printed these runs a small operation. He's a little slow or a little stingy about changing his chemicals. And you can see that the prints were clipped apart by hand, probably on a small cutting board. Here is one where someone made a false start, backed off, and got it centered better between the two prints. That's all they tell me. And I can see that it isn't what you want to hear."

  "No. It isn't what I want to hear."

  He looked at the front of the envelope, hand stamped with the name of the establishment. He read it aloud. "Pierre Joliecouer, Rue de la Trinite. Fort-de-France. Martinique. Photographic services and supplies. What haunts you, McGee?"

&nbs
p; "You might as well be a hauntee too. A man and a woman are cruising the islands, alone on a motor sailer. At a port the man smuggles a transient girl aboard. I don't know how he hoped to keep her a secret. Maybe he didn't give a damn. The stowaway comes up through the forward hatch to sneak some sunshine. The wife sees her and makes a record of it. Three pictures. The stowaway sees her taking the third and last one. She ducks below. She tells the man. Meanwhile the wife takes the film out of the camera and hides it in a safe place aboard. When the wife is asleep the man filches her camera and drops a cartridge of film in it and takes a full roll, twelve shots, of the empty forward deck from several probable angles. At Fort-de-France he manages to follow her-or maybe there are not too many places where you can get color film developed-and takes his roll to the same place. I would guess he uses money to persuade the proprietor to rush the processing of the two rolls. Maybe he says he wants to play a harmless joke on his wife. He returns to the shop and sorts out the prints and negatives. He removes the pictures of the stowaway and substitutes pictures which show roughly the same area, but empty, of course. He makes one mistake, as you pointed out, in matching negatives to prints. He leaves the prints there for his wife to pick up."