John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 12 - The Long Lavender Look

by The Long Lavender Look(lit)

  "All my life. He's waiting on us. Come on."

  He directed me ahead of him to different stairs than I had used coming up. "He said to take you the long way around."

  The long way around included a short side trip into the county jail. Billy said this was a brand new part of it, new just three years ago. And these were the maximum security cells. Very bright overhead lights. About five by eight, with a bunk, a sink a toilet. Meyer sat on the low bunk, hunched forward, head bowed, forearms braced on his knees. The thick, slow, half-clotted blood dripped from his mouth to the cement between his bare feet, into a small puddle as big around as a saucer.

  I said his name. He looked up slowly, tilting his head to bring the one slit of one eye to bear. The crushed mouth said, "I still don't like any part of it, McGee."

  As I turned on Billy he moved back swiftly, hand on the holster. "Easy now. Easy." he said.

  "Why, goddammit!"

  "You better ask him about that when you see him, McGee."

  Hyzer's office was austere. Bare walls, bare desktop, blue carpeting. Efficient air conditioning made it very chilly. I was directed to a straight chair placed about six feet back from the edge of Hyzer's desk, which put me in almost the exact center of the room. A very large deputy sat on another straight chair placed against the wall just inside the door. He looked vaguely familiar to me, but I couldn't come up with the association. Big freckled arms folded. Belly sagging over the belt. Broad, soft, drowsy face.

  When I was seated, Sheriff Norman Hyzer said, "This session is being recorded on magnetic tape. When it is transcribed some minor editing will be done to eliminate repetitions. If you have any question regarding the accuracy of the transcription, you will be permitted to listen to the pertinent portion of the recording to satisfy yourself."

  "May I make a comment for the record?"

  "Go right ahead."

  "My friend Meyer is a reputable economist internationally known in his field. He is a gentle person, without malice or enemies, or police record of any kind. We planned to cooperate with you, Sheriff. Get it settled and be on our way. But now you have bought the whole package, Hyzer. I am going to personally nail you to the wall, if it takes five years. From now on I'm coming at you. I'm bringing it to you."

  The big deputy sighed and belched. Hyzer opened his pocket notebook. "First interrogation of Travis McGee. Fourteen-forty hours. April 24. Pritchard monitoring tape. Sturnevan witnessing interrogation. Now then. From whom did you hear that Frank Baither had been, or was about to be, released from Raiford State Prison, and, to the best of your recollection, tell me the date on which you received this information?"

  "The only previous time in my life I ever heard the name Frank Baither was when you said that name this morning in front of Al's service station, Hyzer."

  "Was there a third man with you last night?"

  "You're playing your game, Hyzer. The officer of the law. The professional. If you were a professional instead of a swamp county ham actor, you'd find out who we are, where we were yesterday, and where we were heading. You'd verify the girl running across the road. You'd make a couple of phone calls. Not you. No, sir. Don't confuse yourself with logic. Net result is you aren't going to play sheriff much longer."

  "An unidentified woman ran across the road. We found the place where she crouched in the ditch. Bare footprints in the mud. A place where she braced herself, making an imprint of the knuckles of her right hand. We used the skid marks to locate the area. Sooner or later we'll locate her body."

  "She's dead?"

  "She almost got across, but you swerved and probably hit her."

  "Now why did I do that, Sheriff?"

  "Because she was with Baither and saw you and got away from you and you people had to hunt her down."

  "With an old Rolls, for God's sake?"

  "And you lost control when a tire blew."

  "Hyzer, you are having dreams and visions and fantasies. I will tell you who to phone at Lake Passkokee. I will pay for the call. He is an old friend. We went to the wedding of his eldest daughter. He has a fish camp. We went bass fishing. There were rods in that car of mine. And three fresh-cleaned bass on ice."

  "Deputy Billy Cable says they were fresh enough."

  "Will you phone?"

  "This is a small county, McGee. And I am in a small job at small pay. But I am not a fool. Four years ago you people, along with Frank Baither, planned that job down to the last small detail. And there was just as much at stake now as then. More, because this time you had to kill one you knew of, and one you didn't. First things first. When the time comes to dismantle your alibi, it will fall apart. You know it and I know it. Please stop making speeches. Answer my questions. Was there a third man with you last night?"

  "Meyer and I were alone."

  "Did Meyer finish him off with the ice pick or did you?"

  "Hyzer, the car went into the ditch, and we got out of it by great good fortune, and we walked all the way down to the Tamiami Trail to that station where you found us."

  "That is most unlikely, McGee. We had an anonymous call at one in the morning. A man, whispering to disguise his voice. He said Frank Baither phoned him every night at midnight, and if some night there was no call, and no one answered at the Baither place, he was to call the law. He went out there and found Baither still taped to that chair. From that time on I had cars on the road all night. You would have been stopped and questioned."

  "There is very damned little traffic on that Route 112 after dark. And when we saw lights coming, we got out of sight."

  "Now why would you do that?" He smiled for the first time. I think it was a smile. The corners of his mouth went up about a sixteenth of an inch.

  So I told him about the nut in the old truck who'd tried to pot us from the truck window, and thought he'd gotten one of us, thought he'd scragged somebody named Hutch, then tried to dicker with the survivor, somebody named Orville. I said it happened about one hour and four miles south of where I had put Miss Agnes into the canal.

  "Describe the truck."

  "An old Ford pickup, rough, noisy, and beat. I think it was red. A junker. Not worth licensing."

  He slowly turned the pages of his pocket notebook. "So, being the innocent law-abiding citizens you people claim to be, you made no attempt to report somebody trying to kill you, either at the time or this morning to either Officer Nagle or to me."

  "Sheriff, neither of us saw the man. The plate was too dirty and the light too weak to read the number. You know your own county better than I do. There are probably a lot of fine citizens living back in the boonies off that road. And there are some very rough ones too, native-born swamp rats and poachers, and people that came a long way to find a place where they're not likely to be found. A long time ago I spent one weekend here in Cypress City, and after I saw how Saturday night was shaping up, I went back to the motel room and put my cash money in the Gideon and went back out with one ten-dollar bill and had what you could call a memorable evening. I don't really much care if your people kill each other, Hyzer. We were just making certain they didn't kill us and then feel apologetic because the dead bodies didn't turn out to be Hutch and Orville. There wasn't any phone booth handy after that clown drove off in his junk truck. I thought of a way I could attract official attention. We could have walked back four miles and I could have dived down and gotten my tow chain out of the tool compartment and heaved it up over the power lines. Then pretcy soon we would have had the use of the CB radio in the Florida Power and Light truck that would show up. I thought of it, and I thought of making a neighborly call at the next house we came to. But I didn't like either of those ideas, Sheriff."

  "McGee, you had bad luck, didn't you? When you lost that car in the canal, you went back to Frank Baither's place and tried to use his old Ford truck, but the battery was too far gone and you couldn't get it started: Then, while you were walking, you did some thinking. Somebody was going to spot that car sooner or later, and it could be trace
d to you, and that was a risk you couldn't accept. So you had to put something together that sounded good, and get Al Storey to hoist it out of the canal and tow it in."

  "Hyzer, you are one dumb, blind, stubborn man."

  "You have a good act, McGee. So does your partner. Aren't you wondering, a little, why you can't sell it to me?"

  "More than a little."

  "Then there must be a little more bad luck along with what you already know about. Bad luck or judgment. What could you have forgotten? Think about it."

  I thought. "You must have something you like. I don't know what it could be. I will tell you one thing. Don't depend on it. Because whatever it is, it isn't going to prove what you think it proves, no matter how good it looks."

  "You never saw or heard of Frank Baither in your life?"

  "No."

  "You were never inside his house?"

  "Never."

  "I am going to describe an exhibit to you. It will be a part of the file I am going to turn over to the State's attorney. It is an empty envelope addressed to you, at Bahia Mar, date-stamped a week ago, April 17. On the back of it, possibly in your hand, are some notes about highway numbers and street names. It had been folded twice, and had been immersed in water. Do you recognize it from the description?"

  "I think so. Yes. I don't know where you're going with it, though. Jimmy Ames phoned me last Saturday and invited us to Betsy's wedding. He said that the road I'd normally take was closed, that a bridge was out. He gave me directions. I reached down into the wastebasket near the phone and took an envelope out and wrote down the directions. Get hold of him at Jimmy's Fish Camp. He'll verify it."

  "When the call came in about the Baither murder, Deputy Cable phoned me at my home. I got dressed and drove to the Baither place. I supervised the investigation. After the county medical examiner had authorized the removal of the body I posted Deputy Arnstead there to make certain nobody entered the premises before a more thorough daylight search could be made. I was on my way to participate in that search when the call came from Officer Nagle. After he described you and told me about where your car was, and said you had walked all the way to the Trail, I had no choice but to bring you in for questioning. I returned at eleven-fifteen to the Baither place and, with Deputy Arnstead, completed the search of the house and the area. The envelope was found on the floor of the room where Baither died."

  So what do you do? The big soft sleepy deputy shifted in his chair, creaking it. One thing you do is stop thrashing and flapping. You back up a couple of steps, tuck the elbows in, get the jaw out of range.

  "Question?" I asked.

  "Can you change your mind about your rights? Yes. At any time."

  "That wasn't what I was going to ask."

  "What then?"

  "I can tell you exactly what I did with that envelope, where, and when. But I don't know you, Hyzer. It's planted evidence. You had somebody dance Meyer around. I don't like the way you think. I don't like the way you do your job. If I don't want to answer any more questions, and if you have nothing to do with the plant, then you are going to be that much more convinced you've got the right people to make your case. But if I tell you about the envelope, and you are in on building the case against us any way you can, then you can listen to the truth and go plug the holes in your evidence. I don't even know if this is going onto tape and, if it is, whether you erase the ones you don't like. I'm boxed because I can't figure out what you are, so I don't know which way to go. You talk about some action four years ago, something we are supposed to have planned with this Baither. Check us out. There's no record of any convictions."

  "Which means only that up until now you haven't made any serious mistakes, McGee."

  "So why, Sheriff, would I go to all the trouble of faking up this wedding story and having the fishing gear and the bass in the car, just to come sneaking into your county after dark to knock off a recent graduate of Raiford? Where's the sense to it?"

  "About nine hundred thousand dollars worth of sense, which you are quite aware of. And the chance you might have to go through a roadblock on your way out of the area with it. Misdirection, McGee. A car so conspicuous no fool would use it for this kind of purpose. Fresh bass packed in ice. It should have worked, McGee."

  So another shaft of light in the murk. That much money is worth a lot of care and attention. And it could maybe buy a matched set of Hyzers.

  "I think I'd better stop right now, Sheriff. I'd like to phone an attorney."

  "A particular attorney?" "Yes. In Miami. He'll accept a collect call."

  "May I have his name?"

  "Leonard Sibelius."

  I looked for a change of expression. Nothing. He said, "You can make your call at nine o'clock tomorrow morning, McGee."

  "Why not now? Isn't that a violation of my civil rights?"

  "It would be if you'd been booked, and I'd turned your file over to the State's attorney for indictment by the grand jury. You chose to answer questions. You've been in custody for interrogation since eight-forty hours this morning."

  "Tomorrow is Saturday Sheriff."

  "The twenty-fifth. King, have Priskitt put him in a single twelve or fourteen, and move somebody if he has to. I want no contact between McGee and Meyer."

  I fitted the two parts of the big deputy's name together. King Sturnevan. I looked at him again and made sure. I'd seen him fight years ago at Miami Beach, at about two hundred then. Maybe sixty pounds heavier now. A spoiler, a mawler. Looked slow, but surprisingly hard to hit. Clever on the ropes and in the clinches, ripping those hooks up into the body, snuffing and grunting with the effort. Would have done better in the division except he had a tendency to cut, which put too many TKO's on his record. So the smart way they took him was to put the little twist of the wrist on the end of the jab, hoping to open up his brows before he bombed their innards to pulp.

  "Sheriff, would you please tell this fat, sloppy, old pug not to try to do me the way he did Meyer? Lennie Sibelius can give you enough trouble without that, too."

  "There were three witnesses to your partner's accident, McGee. He had taken his shower. He was stepping into the issue coveralls when he lost his balance and fell, striking his face on the wooden bench in the shower room."

  "Then I guess if the same thing happened to me, it would look like a strange coincidence."

  He didn't answer. He picked up the phone. Sturnevan beckoned to me and held the door open. As we went along the corridor he said, "Hey, you knew me, huh? You seen me in there, ever?" His voice was soft, husky, high-pitched.

  "Miami Beach, just once. Eight or nine years ago."

  "That must have been close to the last. Who was I going with?"

  "I can't remember the name. A great big Cuban boy."

  "Sure! That was a ten-round main. Tigre something. Tigre means 'tiger,' and he had a big long last name, and I knocked him out in the ninth, right? You know what? That was the last one. Honest to Christ, that boy was, I mean, conditioned! Like an oak tree, the whole middle of him. He kept moving the wrong way and giving me perfect shots, and I couldn't even take the grin off his face. Then like twenty seconds into the ninth, he cut me. See this one? He popped it just right by dumb luck and opened it up, and I knew it was bad. All I could do, see, was keep turning to keep the ref from getting too good a look at it and hoping before he did, that boy would tangle his feet and move the wrong way again, so when he did I had to put the right hand right on the shelf. I knew it would bust and it did. But he stayed down. All the time I was in there, what I had was bad managers and bad hands. I had to go for the middle because my hands bust too easy. So you saw that one, hey! I was going to go again, all lined up with I forget who, and I bust the hand in the same place on the heavy bag, working out."

  As we went down the stairs, I said, "But you didn't chop Meyer bad enough to hurt your hands?"

  "He fell on the bench, like Mister Norm said."

  "And his head bounced up and down on that bench like a big rubber
ball. Must have been interesting to watch."

  "What I can tell you is I didn't work him over. Mister Norm got on me about that, and I swore on my baby daughter's grave I never touched him and didn't see anybody else touch him. I told Mister Norm it didn't make sense after all the times I worked a little on some of the people without marking them, all of a sudden I forget how and start hitting a man in the head? Not me. Not the King. Right through here. Hey, Priskie? Fresh fish. Mister Norm says single twelve or fourteen."

  "We can give you twelve, sir. A very nice room. I'm sure you'll be very happy with it. Anything you want, just ring." Priskitt was somewhere between fifty and ninety, spry, bald, and shrunken by the heat of time and fortune. He dug into a bin, selected a tagged bundle, put it in a wire gym basket. "All our guests wear costumes," he said. "Gets you in the spirit of the thing."

  "Priskie, this here fellow saw my last fight, where I chilled the big Cuban kid and busted my hand. I told you about that one, right?"