The Turquoise Lament

by John D. MacDonald

  Too bad. All obsolete. Try the filament tape. Trust a friend. Or truss one. No way to get teeth or fingers anywhere near it, or get the hands anywhere near the ankles. No way to stand up, or keep your balance if you do. No knots to learn. And I had him secure thirty seconds after I found my tape. I threw a tarp over him and shoved him forward where the wind wouldn’t catch the tarp. Then I went looking for a place. I had the feeling I had seen a canal-bank road heading left and right just as I came off his bridge onto the ranch side.

  It was there. I took it slow. We’d had a dry December. I headed east, parallel to the highway, over there on the other side of the canal. After I had begun to wonder if I would ever find a place to turn around, I came to a hurricane-wire fence with a padlocked vehicle gate in it and enough room to turn around. The ground was firm along the fence line. I walked it first, and then drove back away from the highway and the canal for two hundred yards or so.

  I dropped the tailgate and reached in and pulled him out to where I could get hold of him and lift him. There were little resistances in his body that told me he was doing the shrewd thing and playing possum. I sat him up, put a shoulder into the middle of him, and hoisted him over the shoulder, my right arm around his meaty thighs, his head and arms dangling down my back.

  Using the pencil flashlight, I walked into the edge of the brush and found a mounded area of coarse grass, sand, shell and limestone, probably a place where some small current in the sea had pushed up a window of sea bottom when mankind was only an unborn threat to the distant future.

  I carried him with as much of an effect of effortlessness as I could manage. Standing straight, I unclasped my arm from around his thighs and rolled him off my shoulder. I felt him tense up as he went off. He hit without a sound other than the thick thud of impact. That is another way to tell. When a person is unconscious, a jolt like that will rasp the air through the slack throat with an easily audible noise.

  I left him in the dark and went back to the toolbox and got the short-handled spade and also a couple of Coolite sticks. I like to keep them on board the Flush and in the car. You peel the wrappers off, and bend until they make a little snapping sound, and then shake them to mix the chemicals. They provide a good strong light for three hours, with no trace of heat. It is a white light with a slight greenish cast to it.

  He was on his right side with his back toward palmettos. I activated the Coolite sticks and tossed them onto the ground about ten feet apart. I stood between them and stepped the spade down into the coarse stuff, levered a load loose, heaved it to the side. It was easier than I expected. Once I was through the top crust, the consistency was predictable, and I was able to get into a good digging rhythm. When I worked my way around to where I could look at him without appearing to, I could see little catchlights against the wetness of his eyes and knew he was watching me.

  I made it six feet long and about three feet wide. My hands began to tingle in a few spots, warning of where the blisters would puff up if I kept going much longer. By then I was almost down to my hip pockets. I had begun to get a sucking sound when I pried the bottom loose. I put the light on the bottom and saw the water beginning to seep in. I sat on the edge and stood the spade up in my dirt pile and rubbed my hands together and rested for a little while. Then I went over to him and rolled him far enough so I could check the pockets in that jump suit. I found a wallet. I took it over to a Coolite and squatted on my heels as I checked it. Nice wallet. Some kind of fine-grained lizard hide with a grey cast to it. Gold corners. Gold initials, lower case, t.j.c.

  American Express Gold Card, Diners, Cat Cay membership, Bunnyworld, the Riviera in Vegas, Atlantic Club, Air Travel Card, Abercrombie & Fitch, Shell, Texaco, Exxon and BP. Three fifties, four twenties, a pair of tens and a pair of ones. I prodded around in the money section and found another flap and pulled it up and found two five-hundreds and a one-hundred. Thirteen hundred and fifty-two dollars for digging a hole. I put his driver’s license and his cards back into the pretty wallet. They were his identity. They were Tom Collier.

  So the symbol was inevitable. I shoved the money into my pocket and I half turned and flipped the wallet into the grave. It hit with a small splat.

  “McGee,” he said. Nice tone control. Nice modulation. Good for a speech on the floor, or at the jury rail.

  “Sah!” Hard and sharp, the enlisted man’s protective response.

  “I am a very good lawyer. You’re going to need one.”

  “Not if I think everything out.”

  “You’re not thinking. Do you intend to drop me into that hole? If you do, you’re not thinking clearly. I’m worth one hell of a lot more to you than you took out of the wallet.”

  I sat on the edge of the hole again, feet dangling inside. “You’re cool about it. I like that. Just take my word, Collier. You have to go into the hole. I won’t put you in live. I’m not some kind of kink. I’ll give you a good one across the nape of the neck with the edge of this spade before I put you into the hole.”

  “Why do I have to go in?”

  “They have to be looking for you. They’ll figure a man like you would be all set to run at any time. Tricky. If you’re around, they’ll look for somebody else. And they could get lucky and come up with me.”

  “Are you sure you have the right person? I’m the acting senior partner in a very reputable law firm. ‘Tricky’ is a strange word.”

  “I’ll have to tip them off. It’s too much to put into one phone call. Maybe three calls will be best. Three different phone booths, miles apart. Tomorrow. I’ll be able to say I read it in the morning paper.”

  “Read what? About me being missing?”

  “They won’t know you’re missing until they come looking for you. Look, it went wrong. I screwed up the detail. It was a good chance and I worked hard on it, but I know when it’s time to cover the tracks and run. It has to be you because you’re the logical one.”

  “Logical one for what?”

  “The one that killed Lawton and Charity Hisp this afternoon.”

  “What!”

  “We were having such a nice talk, me and Lawton. From time to time I had to encourage him. He’d get over hurting from the last time and get brave again. And, damn it, we were right down to the final item, just how and where he was going to give me his copy of Ted Lewellen’s seven projects, with the maps and overlays.”

  “Lewellen?”

  “Oh, come on! Do you think I’m that stupid? There’s no point in going on with this.” I reached and plucked the spade out of the dirt pile.

  “No, no! That was just a reflex. I’m sorry. Okay. Professor Lewellen. I’m coexecutor of the estate. What about Mr. Hisp?”

  I laid the spade across my thighs. “It was just one of those damn-fool things that happen. Bad luck. You know that long skinny neck of his. He took a chance and tried to duck around me and I swung to stop him and the edge of my wrist hit him right on the throat and crushed something in there. He started digging his fingernails into his neck. His face began to get red. He fell down and rolled around and his eyes bugged out. Then he hammered his heels on the rug and died. No doubt about how dead he was. She and I knew it the minute it happened. I nearly lost her. Ran like a deer. I caught her by the nape of the neck in one of those little garden places. Great day for necks. I held her head under the water in one of those reflecting pools. After she stopped buckling, when I let go of her, she stayed right there, facedown on the stones with her head under. She saw me hit Hisp. I knew that if I was going to have any chance at all, she had to be number two.”

  “Were you driving that idiotic blue Rolls truck?”

  “No. I borrowed a car.”

  “Their children were out?”

  “Every one.”

  “Look. Having my arms like this is beginning to make my shoulders cramp so bad, I can’t think. How about cutting my arms loose?”

  “Not one chance, lawyer. Forget it.”

  “Well … what time did this happen?”


  “Two o’clock. I know you’ve got the original. I know that stuff was in your hands because at the time Ted died, you were trying to work out some way it could be handled in his estate if he died. Okay. Frank Hayes and I were with Ted a few years ago in Mexico, looking for something in the Bay of La Paz. We crapped out. Our big pump quit and the weather began to turn, and before we could get back there, a hurricane changed the bottom so much we’d have to start all over again.”

  “And this Frank Hayes is the Hayes of Seven Seas, based at Grand Cayman?”

  “Right. We were both lined up to go with Ted on the one he was getting ready to leave on when he was killed. It was going to be rich and easy. He brought me the letter from Mansfield Hall and we agreed it sounded like whoever he represented had hold of Ted’s research. And I knew it belonged to the daughter and that she didn’t have it, and nobody had seen it since he died.”

  A couple of tree toads tried their pitch pipes and the whole chorus gradually joined in. Some moths had been attracted to the Coolites. They could land on them without frying, and their wing shapes made big moving shadows.

  I knew his mind was spinning, running back and forth and up and down the cage, looking for a way out. “Mansfield Hall,” he said. The tone was not questioning. It was bitter.

  “No,” I said. “He didn’t name you. I figured if somebody was trying to make a deal through Hall to set up a treasure hunt, it had to be Hisp. I got to you through Hisp. In my phone tip I tell the law that you and Hisp defrauded Ted Lewellen’s daughter. I tell them it was your idea. I tell them you owned Hisp on account of knowing how he and a man named Gary Lindner speculated in bonds in the bank’s name six or seven years ago. I tell them you are a director of the bank and you were trying to turn the estate assets into money by secretly making a deal with Seven Seas. I tell them that you and Hisp were fighting about who was going to get what. They’ll really look for you, Collier. They may look a lot of places, but they won’t look in this hole. Sorry, friend. It’s the only way I’m going to get home free. Find something wrong with it.”

  “Just one thing wrong. Jesus, this hurts! It keeps me from thinking clearly. Can’t you …”

  “No. What’s the one thing wrong?”

  “Assume it works. You walk away empty.”

  “I’ll be in the clear. I’ll settle for that.”

  “Killing the Hisps is going to be very big, McGee. When they can’t find me, it’s going to be more and more important to pin down exactly where I was when last seen. And who I was with. I can make you a better offer. I’ll swear I asked you to the ranch early. You arrived about one o’clock. I’ll turn over all the Lewellen papers to you.”

  “And then blow the whistle on me. Who would they believe? Thomas J. Collier, or me? No thanks.”

  “But you don’t know how much ammunition you have, man! You know that I betrayed my trust as coexecutor of the estate. You know I learned of illegal bond dealings and didn’t report it. You could completely ruin me. They’d pick me apart. Blow the whistle on you? You could even make a pretty good case that I was the one who sent you to beat some sense into Lawton Hisp.”

  I thought it over. There is the precise point in the poker game when you have to give the impression of carefully computing the odds. Most people with a bust hand bet too quickly and smile too much. You hesitate a long time before you make your heavy bet into that strong hand across the table.

  I got up and tossed the spade aside and went over and picked him up off the ground.

  “What are you …”

  I carried him to the hole.

  “Hey! Oh, my God!”

  I bent over and swung him over the hole and let go. He landed on his back in three inches of seepage.

  “McGee!” he roared, from the darkness.

  I chunked the shovel into the dirt pile, picked up a full load, dropped it where I figured the middle of him had to be.

  “Wait!” he roared. “Wait!” and then he began yelling. He was trying to make words, but he couldn’t get his mouth closed far enough to make them. He was breaking.

  I went over and got one of the Coolites and dropped it into the hole next to his head. I sat on my heels and looked down at him. He stopped roaring.

  “I don’t see why I should have to explain all this to you, Collier. You’re just too damned tricky. There’s no way I could trust you to do what you say. I’d worry all the time. I’d wonder if you don’t own somebody on the cops who’d come to pick me up for questioning and blow my brains out of the far side of my head for resisting arrest. You’re too important. You sell people this big successful image called Tom Collier. I almost forgot to give you the message from Nancy. She says to tell you she’s doing just fine without you.”

  “Listen! Please listen! I’ll write everything down. Things they can prove. Please get me out of here! Oh, Jesus! You’ve got to be crazy. I can write down … terrible things I’ve done. You’re right. Nobody should ever trust me at all.”

  “Ted Lewellen trusted you. Pidge trusted you. How did you expect to get away with making a deal on Lewellen’s research and maps? Big strikes get publicity. She’d remember the name of the sunken vessel, wouldn’t she? Publicity would smoke you out. Then she’d have some questions.”

  “Get me out of here!”

  “No way.”

  “Wait! What did you want to know? About the daughter? She’ll be locked up. Nobody will be paying any attention.”

  “Locked up for what?”

  “Emotional problems. There’s a history of instability. The deal is I can get appointed guardian. Her husband gets the income from the trust.”

  “You made a deal with Howie Brindle?”

  “Help me. Please.”

  “Want to see how many shovels it takes to cover your head?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Howie wouldn’t make a deal with you. Even in a hole in the ground, in the last five minutes of your life, you keep on lying. Howie is a wonderful guy. Ask anybody who knows him.”

  “Brindle is a bug! Listen, he worked for me. Any lawyer with experience in criminal defense knows that kind of a bug. Five minutes after I started chatting with him about the death of Fred Harron, I knew he’d killed Fred. Maybe he did Lois a favor. That’s beside the point.”

  “Howie wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “Dammit, man, he admitted he killed Fred. He sat in my office and blubbered and moaned and howled and wrung his hands and swore that he hadn’t meant to hurt the doctor, that he was just horsing around, and he’d never hurt anybody before in his whole life. He was good. You could almost believe him. But if he’s true to form, there’s a whole full-strength platoon of bodies stretching back into Brindle’s past. He wasn’t going to admit a thing, not even after I’d trapped him three or four times. Then he began to realize I was going to push for an indictment if he kept lying, and might make a deal if he would admit it. So he admitted it, and it didn’t make him very happy when I played the tape back to him. Not right then, because I think he’d have taken the tape and left me on the office floor. Later, when I could tell him that he was listening to a copy of the original tape. Nobody had ever owned him before. It was very hard for him to get used to knowing that he had to do whatever I told him. I told him to stay in the area and keep in touch. I had a different project in mind for him, but then Ted Lewellen got killed in an accident and it shaped up into a better project. I told him to marry her.”

  “You thought he could?”

  “The water is getting deeper.”

  “So drown a little.”

  “My heart is beating too fast. It really is.”

  “It’ll get a long long long rest.”

  “You’re a bug like Brindle. You’re rotten! You know that? You’ve got a cold heart. Yes, I told him to marry her and he married her. He hung around. He ran her errands, did her chores. He was always there. She was alone. He seems like a nice boy. I told him the cruise was a good idea. Why not? They had the boat an
d the money. I told him to use any way in the world to make her think she was losing her mind. When people start to think that way, it can happen. They get irrational. They act funny. And once they’re on the inside, you can usually manage to keep them there.”

  “You’d say he’s a murderer. Why didn’t you tell him to kill her?”

  “She’s worth too much. So there’d be too much publicity, especially about where the money came from. And there might be too many pictures of Brindle in a wire-service pickup, and somebody might show up with some stories out of the past. I warned him that if he killed her, I was going to cook him good, with an apple in his mouth. McGee, I could write the whole thing out for you.”

  “Do you think he’s killed her?”

  “I don’t know. People like Brindle, they get impatient. They get bored. If he could figure out a way where nobody would question it was an accident, he’d do it. Or suicide while of unsound mind. They’ve conned people ever since they could walk. They think people are uniformly stupid. They think we’re all as empty on the inside as they are. It’s a risk. Either way, I thought she couldn’t raise any questions. Dead or crazy, she’s out of the picture. McGee, it’s worth taking risks for. It could be millions. You won’t get another chance like this. You’ll live small all your life.”

  “I guess I will,” I said quietly. “I guess I expect to.”

  There he was down in his hole, with water up to his ears. Ted had probably trusted and respected him. Please help me with my problems, Mr. Collier. Help me take care of my girl in case I happen to slide under a truck.

  Collier took care of her. He had a jolly sociopath standing by, waiting for an odd job, and then this new opportunity came along. Take care of Ted’s girl. My girl. Give her to good old Howie Brindle.

  The white cold light filled the hole, and the moths were down there, fluttering around Tom Collier. He made a strange sound and I looked closer and saw that he was crying. His underlip was protruding and vibrating. Poor Tom. Playtime is ending. All the sweet tastes are fading away. Someone else will have to chomp the good steaks, snuff the bouquet of the wines, count the crisp bills, spread the warm ivory thighs, buy the favors, laugh at the jokes, buy the trinkets.