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

by The Empty Copper Sea(lit)

  "For half of what?"

  "For half of the way you look right now."

  "Come on! You've been in the sun too long." She snatched her work shirt and we headed back. She seemed to have been infected by some of my exuberance. At one point she sprinted away from me, running on the packed sand where the tide had receded. She ran well, and it took a determined effort to overtake her. She stopped when I clapped my right hand on her left shoulder. She was breathing hard, and she inspected me and discovered I wasn't.

  "Good shape, huh?" she gasped.

  "Better than my usual. I helped a friend bring a big ketch up from the Grenadines to Lauderdale. Lots of wind, all from the wrong direction. A person could get in the same kind of good shape by spending a month working with weights while rolling downhill."

  "Are you a freak about condition?" She was recovering her wind quickly.

  "I guess to a certain extent. I get into situations where it is nice to be quick, and healthy to be persuasive. I get into them oftener than most. If I get bloated and slow, somebody is going to put me out of business. So when I get the slow bloats, I get the guilts, and when I'm in shape I feel righteous and smug-but what I do is keep going from one extreme to the other, and getting it back gets rougher every year. How about you? Freaky?"

  "Not really. But I'm sort of a jock. You know, born with good coordination and good muscle memory. I learn physical things quickly. I like competition. I don't have to tell you I am one big girl. Six foot one-half inch. One hundred and forty-eight pounds of meat. Solid meat. You are one man who doesn't make me feel all that huge, though. I guess I like to stay in shape because you can do things better, and you feel so much better. It's kind of a... a hummy feeling. You know your motor is running."

  We went back to the cottage. Meyer was on the veranda deck reading a copy of the Reader's Digest for July 1936. He said it had a lot of uplift in it. He said he had heard that the ideal article for the Reader's Digest would have a rather long title: "I Dropped My Crutches, Abandoned My Electronic Submarine, Climbed the Undersea Mountain and Found God." He said John Tuckerman was napping. He had felt very tired.

  John came yawning out as we talked. He sat in an old rocker and nodded from time to time as Gretel told him that she had told me all about the plan he had cooked up with Hub for the disappearance. He did not seem especially concerned.

  He smiled at me and said, "I tried to talk Hub out of it. I really did. I told him he was letting all his friends down. He was letting down the people who were still working for him, who were still loyal. He wouldn't listen. He said everything had gone to hell and there was no way to salvage any of it, except to leave and take what he could with him. All he could really think about was getting into the Petersen woman's pants. Excuse me, Gretel."

  "Was she all that great?" Gretel asked.

  "Depends on what you like," John said. "She's kind of pale and round-faced, but with hollows in her cheeks, pale green eyes, soft quiet little voice, silver-blond hair that she braids a lot, and a slender body, but with real big tits. She's quiet but she's used to giving orders, and when she tells somebody to do something she has a way of making them jump and do it. She walks into a room and you know she is... somebody. Somebody important."

  "How did she act when you gave her the message?" I asked him.

  "Oh, she was upset. She paced around her place, nibbling her thumb knuckle, telling me to shut up whenever I tried to say I was leaving."

  "She had opened the note?"

  "Yes, but she didn't tell me what it said."

  "But the verbal message," Meyer asked, "as I think you told me before your nap, was to tell her to come out to the cottage, was it not?"

  "Yes. To tell her he'd had some kind of mild heart attack and to come out. He told me to stay away from the cottage for a few days and to hide the jeep in the brush before I left."

  "Then," said Meyer, "the written message had to be some kind of instruction to her, to do something before coming out, because if he was going to see her out there, he would be able to tell her any other instruction. And it had to be something he didn't want to tell you."

  "I don't know what that would be. He knew he could trust me."

  "We have one problem to solve first," Meyer said. We looked at him. He looked very pleased with himself. "It's so obvious," he said. "Certainly she didn't walk out here from the town!"

  In the silence, Gretel said, "It's like that game of logic where you have to get everybody across the river in one boat in so many trips. What kind of car did she have, Johnny?"

  "A small rental car. A red Mazda five-door hatchback. Hub rented it for her from Garner Wedley, owns the Texaco station out on Dixie Boulevard and has the franchise for Bonus Rental. I know because I had to take it to be gassed and serviced a few times. It drove nice."

  "Oh, John, did you have to do things like that for him? Putting gas in his girlfriend's car?"

  He shook his head as if in irritation at her denseness. "Honey you just don't understand. Anything that Hub asked me to do, I was glad to do. It didn't matter what. I worked for him, and I was his friend too. And I still am, no matter what."

  "Did the Texaco station man get his car back?" I asked. I saw Meyer nod his approval out of the corner of my eye.

  John Tuckerman frowned. "My memory has gone so rotten. It seems I remember Garn chewing at me about something or other, about that car. But a lot of people were chewing at me about a lot of things back then, that last little bitty part of March. My feeling is he got it back but there was something wrong with it, wrong with the deal somehow." We asked some more questions. What sort of container was the money in? It was in a fake gas can chained and padlocked to the rack on the back of the jeep. How much money? Hub never said. But it was a lot. A real lot. Hub said he was sorry he'd never see his daughters again, and never see John again. But a man had to do what he had to do.

  Where had the money been hidden out at the ranch? As they had collected more and more of it, turning pieces of paper and equipment and supplies into cash, Hub had kept it in various places, moving it every time he got nervous about it. And the more it got to be, the more often he got nervous.

  What did you mean by a fake gas can? It was one of those heavy-duty GI gas cans, tall and narrow and painted yellow like the jeep. There were two of them, and they fitted in brackets in the back, on either side of the spare-tire bracket. Hub had hacksawed a can in half and soldered a flange on the inside of the lower half, so the top half could be fitted back on. He packed all the money in there, put the can in the bracket, ran the heavy-duty rubberized chain through the heavy handle that was part of the top of the can, pulled the chain tight, and padlocked it. From then on he felt easy about the money. He could park it right down near the bank. Whenever he left the jeep, he took the distributor rotor along with him. He made jokes with John Tuckerman about the kind of gas in the gas can. He told John some of it was his and would be left behind.

  I said to John, "I suppose you've hunted for the money for what he was supposed to leave here for you."

  John looked at me. He wore the somewhat defiant expression of a sly child. "I won't say."

  "We looked for it," Gretel said wearily.

  "We never did!" John yelled. "Never!"

  And from the subtle gesture she made, I knew it was time for us to go.

  It was almost four fifteen on Saturday afternoon when we headed back toward Timber Bay.

  Meyer said, "I haven't heard that infuriatingly tuneless whistling of yours for a long, long time. Congratulations."

  "On what?"

  "On coming back to the land of the living."

  "It shows? I was that bad?"

  "You were that bad, and for a long time. You were, in fact, committing the eighth deadly sin."

  "I was? What is that?"

  "You were boring, Travis. Very boring."

  "Oh?"

  "Self-involved people are always boring. Nobody can ever be as interested in them as they are in themselves."<
br />
  "Sorry about that."

  "You probably couldn't help it. It's been coming on since before we went up to Bayside that time."

  "If I've been so depressing, why didn't you just bug off?"

  "There was always the chance you'd come out of it."

  "I feel as if I had."

  "She seems to be an exceptional person."

  "Gretel? Yes. Yes, she is. I like these dunes. They give it a nice wild unspoiled look. We'll have to cruise this coast sometime. Maybe head north from here."

  "What are you smiling at?"

  "Me? Was I smiling?"

  Eleven

  THE LIGHT breeze was out of the southwest. The sky was cloudless. The late afternoon sun was hot. Shopping centers were jammed. So were the beaches and tennis courts. Meyer took the Dodge to go find out about the rental Mazda. I walked north along the uplands above the beach until I came to North Pass Vista.

  I walked around the place for a few minutes and located Symphony, where John Tuckerman had lived, and Melody. Each was a cluster of four small two-story town houses. Melody Three was where Kristin Petersen had lived. Someone else was in there. A slight baldheaded man was in the narrow carport, painting a small chest of drawers, biting his lip as he made each careful stroke.

  The office was in a unit farthest from the water. There was a sign stuck into the lawn and another over the-doorbell. A man opened the door and looked out at me. He had half glasses and a bootcamp haircut. He looked to be about forty.

  "Yes?" he said, managing to inject hostility and disbelief into that single syllable.

  "I want to ask some questions about Kristin Petersen, please."

  "I have no interest in answering them."

  As he started to close the door I put my palm against it and gave a hearty shove. It drove him back and banged the door open.

  "Hey!" he said. "You can't force your way in here!" The foyer was a shallow office, with a secretarial desk two chairs, and a gray file cabinet. He picked up the phone and dialed the operator. I took my time finding the To Whom It May Concern card from Devlin Boggs. He asked the operator for the police. I held the card up in front of him. He told the police it was a mistake and he was sorry. He took the card, turned it over and read the message, and handed it back.

  "What's your interest in Miss Petersen?"

  "My interest is enough to drop subpoenas on you if I think you are holding back."

  "Oh. You're an attorney?"

  "What is your name?"

  "Stanley Moran."

  "Mr. Stanley Moran, I don't want you to keep asking me questions. I am not here to answer questions. I am here to ask them. Maybe you would like to phone Mr. Boggs and get his opinion on whether or not you should ask me a lot of questions."

  "But how do I know you-"

  "Or I can come back with Hack Ames, or Deputy Fletcher, or anybody you might think of who can reassure you."

  "Why are you smiling like that?"

  "Because the angrier I get, the more I smile. It's a form of nervous anxiety. When I break out laughing, I usually hit people."

  He sat down behind the desk, picked a pencil up and put it down, and moved a stapler a few inches to the left to line it up with the edge of the small desk.

  "There's nothing I've said or done to get angry at."

  "When did she leave here?"

  "Do you know how many times I've had to answer-"

  "Stanley, I'm smiling again."

  "Oh. She left here on the twenty-third. The precise time cannot be established. She had a visitor at ten thirty that morning. The police were very interested in that, and they finally were able to identify the visitor as Mr. Tuckerman, who was then living in Symphony Four. After he left, she drove out and was gone the rest of the day. People were interested in her movements because of her-coughrelationship with Mr. Lawless, who at that time was believed drowned out in the bay. They were searching for the body. Her car was seen back in her carport at about eleven on the night of the twentythird; however, it was gone when I walked around the area at six the following morning. I rise early. So the assumption is that she departed during the night of the twenty-third, or very very early on the morning of the twenty-fourth."

  "She took everything with her?"

  "Well... practically everything. All her personal things, of course. But she left a few things she had bought for the unit. Let me see now. Two very primitive-looking pottery bowls. Ugly things, actually. One small table, of blond wood with the top in set with blue and green tiles. One framed print that I can't make head or tail of you can hardly tell which way up to hang it. Our storage space here is very limited. There's a limit to how long I can hold these items. I might say that Miss Petersen was not exactly my favorite tenant here at Vista. She made very disparaging remarks about the decor and the architecture. My wife and I have worked very hard to make these units attractive and livable. She had no reason to call them vulgar. We do not set ourselves up as moral arbitrators or-"

  "Arbiters."

  "What?"

  "I have been listening to a man named Meyer too long. Go ahead. You were saying?"

  "People's morals are their own affair. But she did, time and again, 'entertain' Mr. Lawless here overnight. His car would be parked in her drive and I would sometimes see him leave in the early morning."

  "Shameless!" I said.

  "What else do you want to know?"

  "Did mail keep coming for her?"

  "Yes, until I filled out a permanent change-ofaddress card and signed her name to it. I had it sent to the Atlanta address she gave me when she rented Melody Three. Of course, I have told all of this so many times that-"

  "Did she have any particular friends among the other renters?"

  "Not one that I know of."

  "And you would know."

  "I like to think so. After the projects for which Mr. Lawless had hired her were indefinitely delayed, we thought she would probably go right back to Atlanta, but she stayed on. She would go over onto our beach for a little while every day, and she would swim in the pool. I know that quite a few men tried to strike up a conversation with her. She was quite... noticeable in her swimming attire. But she'never responded at all."

  "What do you think happened to her, Mr. Moran?"

  "Why do you want to know what I think?"

  "Why do you always answer a question with a question?"

  "Do I? Excuse me. My wife and I think she ran away with Mr. Lawless. We think they are living in Mexico under new names."

  "Why would she leave her profession?"

  "Because of being in love with Mr. Lawless, I would guess. Anyway, I don't know that she was really good at being an architect. They say that the other things she has designed were really not great successes. They say she wasn't in great demand, actually."

  "Did she leave owing you money?"

  "Heavens, no! We ask for the first and the last two months in advance. Technically you could say she was paid up through this month, through May."

  "Did she pay by check on an Atlanta bank?"

  "Yes. I can tell you which bank. Just a moment. I noted it on my copy of the lease."

  He got it out of the file. "The first check was for fifteen hundred and sixty dollars, including tax, on Atlanta Southern Bank and Trust, check number eight-twenty, account number four-four-eight, fourfour-one."

  I wrote it down and said, "You keep good records."

  "Thank you, mister-"

  "McGee," I said, moving toward the door. "And thank you for everything."

  "No trouble at all," he said. "Any time."

  The world is full of contention and contentious people. They will not tell you the time of day or day of the month without their little display of hostility. I have argued with Meyer about it. It is more than a reflex, I think. It is an affirmation of importance. Each one is saying, "I can afford to be nasty to you because I don't need any favors from you, buster." It is also, perhaps, a warped application of today's necessity to be cool. Stan Mor
an in his half glasses and brush cut and improvised office, managing the Vista in order to save rent, was all too conscious of being nobody, and it had curdled him. I guessed he would have some sort of disability pension from somewhere. Or maybe he was a retired enlisted man who had been company clerk for too many abusive officers. If I were King of the World I would roam my kingdom in rags, incognito, dropping fortunes onto the people who are nice with no special reason to be nice, and having my troops lop off the heads of the mean, small, embittered little bastards who try to inflate their self-esteem by stomping on yours. I would start the lopping among post-office employees, bank tellers, bus drivers, and pharmacists. I would go on to checkout clerks, bellboys, prowl-car cops, telephone operators, and U. S. Embassy clerks. By God, there would be so many heads rolling here and there, the world would look like a berserk bowling alley. Meyer says this shows a tad of hostility.