John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 17 - The Empty Copper Sea

by The Empty Copper Sea(lit)

  I reached across the desk and handed him Boggs's card. He read it, looked at me, read it again, and put it down in neat alignment with the corner of his desk. He reached his hand across to me and we shook hands.

  "Nice to know you, Mr, McGee. Now just what is it that I can help you on? You just tell me and we'll give it a try." It was as if I had suddenly turned into a Dixie County voter.

  "What's the current status of the investigation of the Hubbard Lawless disappearance?"

  "My investigation isn't the only one in town."

  "I didn't think it would be."

  He shifted around in his chair. If he'd had a window, he'd have gotten up and stared out of it. "Our investigation so far tends to show that Hub Lawless is still alive."

  "Where is he?"

  He picked up Devlin Boggs's card again and asked me if I would mind stepping out of the office and closing the door. He said it wouldn't be more than a couple of minutes, and it wasn't. He called me back in and I sat down.

  "You've got to keep this quiet, Mr. McGee."

  "I intend to."

  "I gave one of my deputies, a man name of Wright Fletcher, that speaks pretty good Mexican, leave of absence to go on down to Mexico with an investigator from the insurance company has the big- policy on Hub's life. Both those men thinks there's a pretty good chance of getting a line on him, and if they can locate him, there's enough federal heat involved, we should be able to get him extradited."

  "So how did he get from the Gulf of Mexico to Mexico?"

  "You know how he turned everything he could into cash, picked everything clean; that gave us the lead on premeditation."

  "But wasn't there a hearing and a verdict that he was missing and presumed dead?"

  "That was when the whole thing had just happened. Everybody liked Hub. What it looked like, he was just getting a bunch of cash together to put it into something good where he could turn it over fast and come out ahead. He'd done that kind of thing before. And nearly everybody knew he couldn't swim a stroke. It's like that with a lot of Florida native born. Me, I've lived all my life close enough to the Gulf to near spit in it, and I can't swim no more than Hub could. And the Gulf water is right cold in March. Once we get a line on Hub, we can open the whole thing up again. That insurance company sure-God doesn't want to presume him dead. And Julie Lawless wants to take them to court to get the money."

  "What do you have to go on?"

  "First there is kind of negative reasoning. We can show how he was turning stuff into cash. Hundred dollar bills is all you can get hold of nowadays without attracting attention. You know how much space and weight is involved in six hundred thousand dollars? That is six thousand pieces of paper. It will weigh right around twenty pounds. If it was all mint, which it wasn't, it would make a package six inches by seven and a half inches, and ten inches high. We've not found" it or any part of it. And we have looked. We've looked good.

  "The next part is negative reasoning too. When they got around to inventorying the stuff on the books of those four corporations of his, there.was a jeep missing he used a lot. An old yellow jeep with dune-buggy tires that he could run cross-country at the ranch and the grove. It has never turned up. His other two cars were here, but the jeep is gone."

  "Do you have any positive reasoning, Sheriff?"

  He looked at me, and in those dusty brown eyes I could read a very serious message. Though he looked like a mild man, I would not want to irritate him and not have a little card from Boggs to keep him in check. He exhaled and let his white knuckles relax.

  "We got a lot of calls. After the whole thing went on the wire services, we got calls he was seen in Tacoma and on Maui and in Scranton, P A. People called up and said that if there was a reward they'd tell us where to come pick him up. Key West, Detroit, Montreal. Everybody knew right where Hub Lawless was hiding. When a man has money and you can't find the body, these calls always come in."

  "But that-"

  "Wait until I finish. We don't. have the budget to check out all that nonsense. But we check out what looks possible. Just ten days ago in the Tuesday mail we got a letter from Orlando. There was a slide in it, in a cardboard mount. There was a typed note in with the slide. I've got a copy here of what the note said, and a print made from the slide."

  He read me the note. "The man in this picture I took looks like the man in the newspaper pictures. I took this picture on Friday April eighth in Guadalajara. I can't give you my name or address because my boyfriend thinks I was in San Diego visiting my sister.'"

  The print was a four-by-five, sharp and clear. It showed a sidewalk cafe, a sunny street; traffic, buses, buildings in the distance, nearby shops with signs in Spanish. There were several tables occupied. A man sat alone at one of them, off to the left. He was almost facing the camera. He was carefully pouring what was evidently beer into his glass.

  Hack Ames came around the desk, leaned over my shoulder, and tapped that beer-pouring fellow with his finger. "Hub. No doubt of it. We projected that slide as big as we could with the best projector we could locate. Hell, it even shows the detail of his ring, the little scar at the corner of his mouth. The experts say it was taken on Ektachrome X with a good-quality lens that was a medium-wide angle, like maybe thirty-five millimeters. It was developed at one of the Kodak regional labs, and the date stamp in the cardboard of the mount says April. You can see that she wasn't trying to take a picture of Hub. I think she didn't even know what she had until she got the slides and used a viewer or a projector."

  Hubbard Lawless was wearing an open khaki jacket with short sleeves over a yellow T-shirt. He had a blunt cheerful face, snub nose, bland brow, thinning blond hair combed and sprayed to hide the paucity of it. His hands were big, his forearms thick and muscular. He wore a small frown of concentration as he poured his beer.

  "So it places him in Guadalajara a month and a half ago. That's where your deputy and the insurance investigator went?"

  "With copies of this picture. Wright Fletcher is a very hard worker. He'll show that picture to ten thousand people if he has to. But they're going to concentrate on the clinics."

  "Clinics?"

  "That's the world center for cosmetic surgery. l.ifts, nose jobs, hair plants. There are dozens of very qualified surgeons working down there."

  "Makes sense."

  "If he's been and gone, there'll be before-and-after pictures in the files. That and this picture and the date of the operation would prove he didn't drown when he allegedly fell off the Julie."

  "What about Kristin Petersen?"

  "You mean is she with Hub? It looks that way. Funny thing. A man gets to be forty and he gets itchy, and it's usually a woman sets him off, trying for a different kind of life. It happens every day. But most men, when they go off the deep end, they don't influence the lives of so many other people. They don't raise such hell with a community. This has upset a lot of applecarts."

  "We're staying at the North Bay Resort. Maybe you could let me know if your deputy finds out anything."

  "I don't exactly see where you fit into this."

  "We fit where Mr. Boggs said we fit."

  "Sure," said the Sheriff. "Great."

  "Can I keep the picture?"

  "If you want it. We had a lot made."

  "Are the city police in on this in any way?"

  "There aren't any. There was a referendum and the county took over law enforcement for everything inside the county. They get more service for less money this way. We absorbed their staff and equipment and gave up their office space two years ago."

  "Where is the Julie, Sheriff?"

  "Over to Cedar Pass Marina. The fellow that was mate, DeeGee Walloway, he's living aboard and keeping an eye on it."

  "Can I tell him it's okay with you if I take a look at it?"

  "Now why would you want to do that?"

  "It can't hurt anything, can it?"

  "I guess not. But there's been enough people trying to be some kind of Shylock Holmes around he
re."

  "Was Harder really drunk?"

  "He looked drunk, smelled drunk talked drunk walked drunk, and all-around acted drunk. So, like it said in the paper, I didn't get him tested for drunk. So I can't swear he was passed-out drunk. Besides, he'd done a lot of jail time for D and D."

  "Before he was born again."

  "Those born-again ones fall off too, McGee. And hate to admit it. One drink Van said. Like the ones we pick up wavering all over the road. Two little beers, they say. John Tuckerman and those girls swore Hub took Van up just that one drink. But he could have had a pint bottle in his coat, sucked it dry, and heaved it over the side. He comes from here, you know. And a lot of people remember the hell he raised when he was young. He finally left here and moved on down to Everglades City, did some guiding and gator poaching, got in trouble down there, found Jesus, moved to Lauderdale, and finally wound up back here again. The ones that swear- off, most of them they go back onto it sooner or later, get pig drunk and locked up."

  "Something special you've got against drunks, Sheriff?"

  "Married to one for a long time. Too long. She finally drove into a tree one night."

  "Nice of you to give me so much time, Sheriff."

  "What happened there, over your eye?"

  "I cut across the grounds last night, heading toward the beach, and ran into some of that playground stuff in the dark. Nothing important. Appreciate your help."

  When I stood up, he tilted his chair back and looked up at me. "There have been some people coming into Timber Bay, nosing around here and there, thinking to come up with the kind of leverage that might would get them a piece of the money Hub is supposed to taken."

  "I can well imagine."

  "It would hurt me to find out that you people had conned Devlin Boggs and you're after the same thing as those other sharpshooters."

  "You mean they think the money is here?" I asked, trying to look as though I were stupid enough to ask such a question.

  With patient exasperation he said, "They hope to get a line here on where he went from here. And then they hope to go to wherever they think he is and take the money away from him."

  "Oh."

  "Hub Lawless could be a real surprise to anybody who found him and had ideas."

  "How do you mean?"

  "One time some red-hots up from Tampa tried to take the payroll money at Hula Marina-that was before he sold out to Associated Foods. There were three of them and Hub shot one in the stomach, threw one of them into a wall, and broke the wrist on the third. He moves fast. I've hunted with him. He's got real good reflexes, and he stays in shape. Jogging and so on. Weights."

  I thanked him again and left. This was one complicated man, this Sheriff Ames. He had a mild look. But those dusty brown eyes kept asking more questions than were spoken. He made me wonder if I had actually come to Timber Bay to get a line on all that money. He made me feel guilty for things I'd never done. He made me conscious of that capacity for blackhearted evil which every one of us shares with everyone else-and never speaks about.

  Six

  I WAS THE first to arrive at the Captain's Galley for lunch, having set up the date by phone with Walter Olivera, phoned Dave Bellamy for the reservation, and left word at the desk at the North Bay Resort for Meyer to join us. I had a one-drink wait at the bar, and then Bellamy brought Walter Olivera over.

  At first glance I thought he was a high-school kid. Tall, skinny, with long dank blond hair, a goatee, embroidered jeans, two strands of heishi, and little Ben Franklin glasses. But each time I got a better look at him, I added five years, and I finally guessed him at thirty.

  Meyer arrived right after him, and Bellamy gave us the same booth as on our first visit. Olivera sat on the inside, and I sat across from them. The place was full of locals from the marts of trade secretaries, brokers, salesmen, and city-hall types, along with lawyers, dentists, and contractors. It made a cheerful midday din of voices, ice, silverware, and laughter.

  Olivera said, "Sure, my by-line was on almost all the Hub Lawless stories, and on almost everything else too. What it is, we don't have the horses to put out the Bay Journal seven mornings a week, and we don't have the budget. It is an ABC figure of fifteen thousand; and we were picked up two years ago by Southern Communications, Incorporated, which has maybe twenty smallish papers and a dozen FM rock radio stations. They sit up there in Atlanta with their computer printouts, looking at the gross and the net, and they write ugly letters to Harry Dister-he runs the paper and has ulcers on his ulcers-asking how come he paid fourteen cents more a ream for copy paper this year than last year. They don't give a shit what our editorial position is or our politics. They make us buy the cheapest syndicated crud on the market, and they make poor Harry hustle his ass off for advertising linage." He picked up his glass of white wine. "No point in telling you all my problems, gentlemen. Yes, I covered the Lawless mess, and I didn't do any digging because I can't spend or spare the time."

  Meyer said, "I hope you understand our position, Mr. Olivera. If Lawless is alive and well, we have to go after the available property in one way, and if he is indeed drowned, then we go after it another way."

  "I can see that, sure."

  "So I guess what we are looking for-with Devlin Boggs's help-is an educated guess on what to expect," I said.

  Walter Olivera took his time. "I see it this way," he said finally. "Mr. Lawless was a proud man. He was born right here in Timber Bay. When he was in his second year at the University of Florida at Gainesville, his mother, father, and older brother were killed in a light-plane accident. His brother had rented the plane. Hit power lines trying to set it down in a field when the motor quit. After everything was settled, there was just enough left to see Hub through school. He took business courses. He came back here and married Julia Herron. Her father was D. Jake Herron, who was a state legislator from this area for thirty years, right up to when he died.

  "Hub borrowed some money from his father-in-law to get started in the construction and landdevelopment business, and paid it all back with interest. He worked hard. He worked all hours. Kvery time he got a little bit ahead, he'd branch out. He started Hula Marine Enterprises, Double L Ranches, and Lawless Groves and nursed them through the early years and turned them into profitable businesses. It was a process of constant expansion. I think he was a millionaire, on paper at least, by the time he was thirty-five. He liked making things work out. But luck always enters in. He had no way of knowing everything would start to go sour at about the same time."

  "Everything?" Meyer asked.

  "Just about. He took the money he got from selling Hula Marine to Associated Foods, and he put it into two big tracts of land, one about two miles east of the city line on State- Road Three fifty-nine, and the other way out beyond the south end of Bay, down on a little road that winds on down toward Pepperfish Key. Good waterfront land, and a lot of it. The land on Three fifty-nine was to be a shopping center, a big one. You can drive out and take a look at it. He got the land prepared, roads paved, foundations set. The waterfront land was going to be a big condominium development. Six high-rise buildings, fifteen hundred units. He'd borrowed right up to the hilt, and he was counting on the cash flow he could generate from his other interests to keep the new ventures going."

  Meyer nodded and said, "Hard freeze?"

  "You bet it was. A little freeze is okay. It even helps make the crop juicier. They say Hub was up all night long, roaring around in that yellow jeep. They burned smudge pots and tires and ran big fans off generators. They tried everything. But when there is absolutely no wind and the temperature stays below eighteen degrees for almost five hours, there isn't anything anybody can do. It froze and split some of his older trees. He didn't even end up with cattle feed. And you know what has happened to the price of beef and beef cattle in Florida. They say he could have squeaked through, by getting the shopping center up as fast as he could. The center was going to be anchored by a big store, one of the big chains. He had
a good lease, all signed. And a lot of little people were beginning to flock around on account of the traffic that would be generated by the chain store. And all of a sudden they went the way of Grant's. Bankrupt. Finished. And his lease was worthless. He wanted to make the condominium project first priority, but all of a sudden the state came into the act and said that the project was going to damage valuable wetlands. They wanted a setback from the beach that would have made it impossible for him to put the buildings up in the area left, and they asked for an environmental impact study, which would have delayed it at least eighteen months even if the answer had been favorable to him.

  "He was a very up-front guy. He admitted everything wasn't going too great. But he smiled a lot and he was confident, and everybody figured Hub Lawless would work his way out of it the same as other times when he had been caught in a narrow place. I heard rumors he was sleeping on a cot out at his ranch office, and that his marriage had gone bad and he had something going with a woman named Petersen. She was an architect, and she was supposed to be helping with the designs of the shopping center and condominium project. If he had something going, then maybe he wasn't thinking too clearly. As I said, he was proud. If he hung around, he was certainly going to go steadily and inevitably down the tube. He was going to have to see those corporations go into bankruptcy, and he was going to have to go into personal bankruptcy, resign from the board of the bank, resign from a lot of civic activities and church things. It was certainly going to spoil his image with his daughters, Tracy and Lynn. Sixteen and fourteen are tough years to suddenly go broke. So he decided to milk every dime he could out of every account, every source of funds, fake his own death, and go on the run, realizing that nobody could step in and grab the proceeds of the big insurance coverage on his life away from Julia Lawless. I want the lentil soup, please, a big bowl, and an order of the whole wheat toast, no butter."