John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 15 - The Turquoise Lament

by The Turquoise Lament(lit)

  "I don't feel haunted yet," Gabe said.

  "You see, he had already told his wife that she had imagined the girl. They had a scene about the stowaway. He said no girl had ever been aboard at all."

  "Oh, dear," said Doris in a small voice.

  "And he even dropped a raft into the sea and paddled away and let his wife search every inch of the boat, and there was no girl, and they had not been anywhere near land since she had taken the pictures of the girl."

  "Now I feel haunted," Gabe said. "That is very nasty."

  "I am a very sound and logical and all-wise person," I told them. "So when the wife called to me for help I flew out to Hawaii and looked at these pictures and convinced her that she had been hallucinating."

  "I would say that you should get back to her in a hurry," Doris told me.

  "That is a very sound idea. Except that right now she is somewhere south southwest of Hawaii in that very same motor sailer with that very same wonderful guy."

  Doris's hand was on my arm at once. A good gesture of comfort. "Oh, my dear," she said. "How really foul. He has to be quite mad."

  "Where are they headed?" Gabe asked.

  "Pago Pago, with an ETA of Thursday January tenth. Twelve days from now. She's going to break up with him. Or has broken up, whatever you want to call it. She's helping him take the boat down there because he has a buyer for it."

  "And she is very important to you?" Doris asked. I tried a smile which probably looked like the best efforts of a skull. "She's very rich and she can cook. She's too young for me. She says we're for keeps. I've been fighting the idea every way in the book."

  "Wait a minute," Gabe said. "They took the boat all the way from Martinique to Hawaii? Just the two of them?"

  "Yes."

  "Why is she in any more danger now than she was then?"

  "She was in danger then," I said. I told them about the two other incidents. "I've been trying to figure it out," I said. "Let's say, just for the hell of it, that Howie Brindle is a total flip, and he knew when he was marrying her that he might kill her. What if they took off from Lauderdale together and three days later he arrives in Nassau saying she fell overboard? It would be one big loud dirty news story. The authorities and the news people would start unraveling his background."

  "Howie Brindle!" Doris said. "What a marvelously ordinary name that is."

  "And he never met a man who didn't like him. Dammit, he is a big cheerful likable guy."

  "What about his background?" Gabe asked.

  "I haven't really begun to dig, and I've come up with two possible kills, not counting the stowaway."

  "For money?" he asked.

  "I don't think there has to be very much reason. Mostly it would be a case of opportunity, plus some kind of minor annoyance. He's quick and powerful and sly. I don't think he's clever. I'd say a clever man would have gotten this set of pictures back from his wife after they'd had the desired effect on her."

  "To make her think she was losing her mind?"

  "To make her tell a few friends she thought she was losing her mind. The way she told me. And he can tell people how worried he is about her. Maybe this is the first time he ever tried to plan something out. By the time something fatal happens to her, he is going to be able to point back to all the months they had together, nearly a year and a half of cruising the oceans, before she did herself in. And there are friends to step forward and say that she has been getting very, very strange. Maybe always before, he killed strangers. And there wasn't any real gain. But this time it is the best part of a million dollars. So he has to be careful. I have the feeling that he doesn't really feel anything very much. He cries easily. He might be one of the most plausible liars in the world."

  Doris said, "Can't you get them by radio or something? Won't ships see them? Or airplanes?"

  Gabe said, "You are a very nice girl, honey. Let me tell you how big that ocean is. Several wars ago a lot of airplanes, a lot of ships, a lot of people on islands and on radio watch tried for weeks to locate a whole fleet of warships. Oh, and a lot of submarines were hunting too. It was located finally by accident. An old tin goose was way off course, going from here to there, and happened to see it. And a fleet, honey, is a very distinctive-looking thing. It covers several square miles of ocean. One motor sailer is something else. There are hundreds of little inter-island craft out there, under sail. But you can fly across ten times without ever spotting one. If you can track down a radio contact, and if the vessel gave its location and you know where it is going, it is possible to find it, if you are standing by with a long-range search plane."

  "There'd be no reason for the Trepid to give a position unless they were in trouble," I said.

  Silence at the round glass table. Gabe squinted at the bright hazy sky. The old instincts of the newsman were at work. "Coming into port alone would be bad," he said. "If a man says his wife fell or jumped overboard, my first guess is she was pushed, no matter how many years they've been sailing across the oceans. So you check and you find they're married less than two years, that it's all her money. And any idiot would realize he would have to have a body aboard, or it will be a long time and a lot of heavy legal expense in order to collect."

  I wondered if the lawyers' union put the same big bite on an estate under those circumstances as they do in the case of a contested will. If the litigant wins a piece of the estate, the standard practice almost everywhere is for the lawyer to take 45 percent of the amount awarded, regardless of how strong or how flimsy the claim, regardless of how much or how little work is involved in pursuing it. And what agency regulates and enforces these legal fees? The Bar Association.

  There is one thing they don't do. They don't publish their rate schedules in advance. They let it all come as a surprise. A big surprise.

  When I recover something that the victim never expected to see again, I take half. That is made clear in advance. And who regulates my rate? The victim. He can try other methods.

  Sometimes we can negotiate the percentage, especially when it is a very simple salvage job. It would be easier to sit behind a desk and shake my head solemnly and sadly and say, "Buddy, I surely wish I could cut the fee, but I have to abide by the rules and regulations of my association."

  And by the same rules they take 4 or 5 or 6 percent of a gross estate even when there are absolutely no problems at all. Absolutely no chance of paying an hourly rate. Know why? "It wouldn't be fair to those, heirs of other estates where a lot more work is involved. Your dead daddy left you a gross of one hundred thousand, fella? My six percent comes off the top. Six grand. Local bar-association schedule. Hminni. Then there's an estimated thirtytwo percent additional taxes and expenses, so you will stand to inherit... sixty-two thousand dollars! I know it will only take about two hours of my time and about a half a dozen forms for my secretary to complete and process. But you are paying to have it done right, fella."

  When there are things you don't want to think about, your brain slips down the easiest back alley, whistling and kicking cans. It is a sickening wrench to bring it marching back out of the alley to stand at attention and pay heed. I suppose that when it stays in the alley and won't come out, the world says you have gone mad. At Annapolis they have developed a brain-wave detection device to keep the cadets focused on the books. When the alpha wave gets the shape of daydreaming, you get beeped out of your reverie.

  I forced myself back to the here and the now and bullied my reluctant imagination into guessing what Howie Brindle would probably do to my girl. His wife, yes. But my girl. I could name the day, hour, and minute when she stopped being a wife.

  "Witnesses are always nice," I said.

  "I don't understand," Doris said.

  "Somebody who really believes," Gabe confirmed. "They really think they saw what somebody wants them to see, hear what somebody wants them to hear. Suggestibility. But they are alone. Mr. and Mrs. Brindle, in the middle of the sea."

  "Because I convinced myself and convinced h
er that Howie is a nice dumb guy and she was hallucinating. He now knows this is the last chance he gets. And the only thing in the world I can do is be at Pago Pago when he gets there."

  "She'll be aboard," Gabe said. "Too much stink, too much investigation if she isn't."

  "But I don't even know if he can think that clearly. I don't even know if he's that smart."

  "If he is, maybe you should be all geared up to have him picked up for something else. One of those possible kills you talked about. Or this girl." He tapped the envelope of pictures.

  I went digging back through memory. I had made some notes and, though I doubted I could find them, the making of notes is a good crutch. "Two girls traveling together, trying to hitch a ride from St. Croix to Plymouth on the island of Montserrat. Joy Harris and Cecile? Cecilie? Celia. Yes, Celia Animal. Wolf? Bear?"

  "Katz?" Gabe asked.

  "You're a lot of help. Fox! Celia Fox, who has a sister married to a lawyer in Plymouth. Maybe I could do it by phone on the day after New Year's, if Meyer can remember the name of the lawyer we met down there, and if Celia and her sister were both a Miss Fox, because I would think the guy would have to be English, probably colonial-born, and being married to an American girl would be unusual enough to be identification. But look, where does that leave us? Suppose I find the young Mrs. Barrister and get her on that weird island radiotelephone deal, and convince her she should give me Celia Fox's address, if she had one, in the States, and assume I get hold of Celia and she says yes, Joy Harris left St. Croix on the Trepid and no one has seen or heard from her since. Suppose I get in touch with the grieving and worried parents of Joy Harris and they have not heard from the girl for a year. So what? The girls were bumming around the islands. What would be the jurisdiction? I would bet very large odds that very soon after Joy Harris told Howie about Pidge taking snapshots of her taking a sunbath on the bow, Howie worked out his freaky little deception, snapped Joy's spine, and flipped her into the sea along with her backpack, hiking boots, spare jeans and guitar."

  Doris winced and made a gagging sound. "That's a little too vivid," she said.

  "Sorry. There's another thing I should have figured out. She said that when the generator was on, she imagined she could hear Howie and Joy talking and laughing. It would be no big problem to wire up a tape player with an endless loop, in sequence with the generator so that it played whenever the generator ran. Howie is a member of the tape generation. They all fool around with components and editing and splicing. Hearing voices and laughter mingled in with a sound-that of an engine or water roaring into a tub or a noisy compressor-is one of the most common hallucinations."

  A whole bright birdlike flock of little Marchman girls and friends came whirling and chirping into the garden area, asked permission to use the pool, and went darting off to change.

  Doris asked me if I would stay for barbecue, and I said it was very nice to be asked, but my stomach felt as if somebody had slammed it shut. And I was not going to be very good company to have around. When she began to insist, Gabe interrupted and told me I had a rain check.

  He walked me out to the car. He leaned against the high fender of Miss Agnes and said, "And what you want to do is take all the bits and pieces back and spread them out in front of Meyer and see what he says you should do."

  "And hope that it's what I've already decided."

  "Bring him out here with you when this is all over."

  "Sure, Gabe, I'll do that. Thanks."

  "And... bring that girl along too. Like to meet her."

  As I drove away I wondered if Gabe could be mellowing. Where was the sour, savage, bitter man I had learned to know and to like? Then I realized that never before had I gone to him with something that affected me personally, deeply. So Gabe had the warmth and the strength when you had need for it. Otherwise, keep your guard up.

  His advice as to how to spend the waiting time was good. Get geared up to be ready to nail Howie for something else. And make some air reservations.

  Twelve

  MEYER was sitting up in a chair in his room having his evening meal when I arrived. I sat on the bed and told him that he looked a lot less like a reject from a wax museum.

  "I took a shower," he said. "I am eating a steak as you can plainly see. A very skimpy little sawdusty steak, but a steak nonetheless. This will be the last night I shall be attended by Ella Marie. You can pick me up and take me home Tuesday noon. That is New Year's Day, I believe. If the prospect displeases, I can make other arrangements."

  "You are better. And up to your old standards of unpleasantness."

  "Let me know when I exceed them, please. Then I can back off a little. If you are wondering what this is, they started with green blotting paper, ran it through a shredder, soaked the pulp in bacon grease, and then pressed it into little molds so that it came out looking exactly like overcooked string beans. They have other esoteric-" He stopped and put his fork down. "I'm sorry. I was so busy showing off, I didn't really take a good look at you. What's happened, Travis?"

  I got through the explanation about the pictures and my other discoveries. He took giant steps in logic which made detailed explanations of significance unnecessary.

  He said, "Sorry to be so slow to see that something had you by the throat, my friend. Illness is an ego trip, especially after you begin to feel a little better. You turn inward. How do I feel right now compared to five minutes ago, an hour ago, yesterday? Is this pain in my hip connected with the infection? Is it something new? Why can't they come when I ring? All intensely personal. Petulant. To each one of us, the self is the most enchanting object in all creation. Sickness intensifies the preoccupation with self. And, of course, the true bore, the classic bore, is the person who is as totally preoccupied with himself all the time as the rest of us are when we are unwell. The woman who spends twenty minutes telling you of her last four experiments with hair styling, for example."

  "I like that Spanish definition of yours better."

  "Gian Gravina? A bore is a person who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company."

  They came and got his tray. He got up cautiously, waved away the helping hand, and waddled slowly to the high bed. He operated the side buttons to give himself the perfect angle of repose, the right degree of support under the knees. And then he sighed. The sigh of tiredness and great accomplishment.

  "Gabe said that--"

  He stopped me with a hand slowly raised. His eyes were closed. "Let us think. Let us erase all past impressions and conceptions of Howard Brindle and then paint him back into our stage set without going too far, the other way, creating fangs, hair on the palms and the fetid odor of the great carnivore."

  I tried to think. Linear logic was beyond me. My mind kept bouncing off the stone barriers of anxiety and running in circles. He was breathing deeply and steadily, and I wondered if he had fallen asleep.

  "Marianne Barkley backed me into a corner right after the doctor's death and bent my ear into strange shapes with her dossier on Fred and Lois Harron," he said.

  Sometimes there's no way of sidestepping her. She is a large lady who dresses in gypsy fashion and runs a small successful shop in the complex called Serendipitydoo. She sells yarn, needlepoint kits, creative pots, literature of the occult and Japanese prints. She works up detailed horoscopes, breeds Siamese cats, instructs in decoupage, gets around on a Honda and writes a weekly society gossip column for a throwaway called the Lauderdale Bystander. She knows everybody, has a certain fringe position in the old-settler social order and has outlived three husbands, all rumored to have been talked to death.

  Meyer went on. "Twenty minutes of conversation boils down to pure soap opera. Dr. Harron had started to have some real trouble with the bottle. The doctor union was very close to closing the operating-room door. Booze had put the marriage in jeopardy for the usual reasons. His impotence making her wander afield, a few drunken beatings. Marianne suspected that a psychiatrist friend had recommended the long vaca
tion aboard the Salamah. The whole point of her assault on me was to tell me how lucky Lois Harron was. Some mutual friends had tied up fairly near them in Spanish Wells and reported that Fred was getting so totally smashed all day every day, the Harrons had to hire a fellow to operate the ketch. Death by swimming accident left Lois pretty well fixed, she pointed out. The long slow death from booze would have meant professional disgrace and bad memories and no money left at all."

  "It sounds more likely than the account Mrs. Harron gave me. But where are you going with it?"

  "I'm linking it up with a conversation I had about that time. I can't remember who I was talking to. But they had an aura of reliability. Maybe somebody official. Something about a blood alcohol test in Nassau, and a mild astonishment that a man carrying that much load could stand up long enough to dive."