The Dreadful Lemon Sky

by John D. MacDonald

  Scorf smiled sadly and shook his head. “Thank you kindly, sonny. I am sure we will meet professionally one day.”

  “You can count on it,” the boy said.

  As we drove out Scorf said, “What makes so many of them so damned angry at everything lately?”

  “It’s a new preservative they put in the fried meat sold at drive-ins.”

  “As good an answer as any.”

  There was one car behind Superior Building Supplies, a recent-model Ford wagon with local plates, dinged and dusty, with a cracked window and a soft tire. One of the big sliding doors that opened onto the loading dock was ajar about three feet. We climbed onto the dock and went into the shadowy echoing areas of the empty warehouse. The air conditioning was off.

  “Hascomb?” Scorf shouted.

  “Yo! Who is it?”

  Harry came out of the shadows, a pair of pliers in his hand. He peered and said, “Oh, hey, Harry Max! You were against the light.” He looked at me. “What was your name, friend?”

  “McGee.”

  Hascomb was stripped to the waist, the sweat rolling off his soft torso. His cowhand pants, cinched with a wide belt, were sweat-dark around the waistline. His abundant red-brown hair was carefully coiffed and sprayed into mod position, covering his ears. His boot heels clicked on the cement floor.

  “You caught me, Harry Max,” Hascomb said. “What I’m doing, I’m taking off the big junction box over there. I don’t rightly know if it’s mine or the owner’s, so in case of doubt I’m taking it. The fellow from Port Fierce offered twenty bucks, and that is twenty bucks I wouldn’t otherwise have. He took a lot of the small stuff and he’s sending a bigger truck back for the desks, safe, chairs, and those two generators over there. And that cleans me out.”

  “Sorry to hear it,” Scorf said.

  Hascomb sighed and shrugged. “Hard times and a thief for a partner.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I think we’ll head out to Wyoming. Out to the mines. I can fix any damn thing that’s got moving parts. New start. The equity in the house will give us stake. Were you boys looking for me?”

  I wondered how Scorf would approach it. Suspicion without proof is a dangerous thing and a clumsy thing.

  Scorf said, “Harry, I hope you won’t take this wrong, I surely do. In my line of work I have to do a lot of fool things I don’t believe in, but I guess every line of work is the same. Anyways, I guess your prints are on file from army duty, but it would take a time to get them out of Washington or wherever the hell they keep them, and so they said to me, Captain, you go bring Harry Hascomb in voluntary and take his prints. You won’t put up a fuss, will you?”

  “Me? No. Hell, no. I won’t put up a fuss, but what in the world is the point of it, Harry Max?”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t even tell you this, but we’ve known each other a long time. Maybe you know or don’t know, a fragment of a print isn’t worth a damn. This piece they got looks like it is one half of the pad of the third finger right hand.”

  “A print on what?”

  Scorf scuffed at the cement floor. He shook his head. “Now you’ve got to understand how they think, Harry. It certainly wasn’t exactly a big secret around the town that you and Joanna Freeler had a lot more than a business relationship. And lovers can have quarrels. Anyway—and don’t get sore—the bomb experts, they recovered a piece of battery casing about so big, and they used some kind of chemical treatment to bring out the fragment of the print enough to photograph it. Once they compare yours, then you’re off the list for keeps, Harry. It’s something I plain have to do, and I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

  Harry Hascomb whacked the smaller man on the shoulder. “Chrissake, Harry Max. Don’t feel sorry. I know when a man has a job to do, he has to do it. Right? You want me to go in right now? Let me get my shirt.”

  I noticed that Harry Max Scorf drifted along behind Hascomb as the man got his shirt, and I noticed that Scorf’s heavy, drab suit was unbuttoned, and I could guess at the presence of the belly gun clipped to the waistband of his trousers.

  Hascomb shouldered into his ranch shirt and tucked it in and buttoned it as we walked out. He slid the big door shut and snapped the heavy padlock on the hasp and smiled and said, “Have to finish stealing that box later.” We were parked beside the Ford wagon, just to the right of it. Hascomb started to get into the Cougar and then he said, slapping his jacket, “Just a second, Harry Max. Let me get my other pack of cigarettes.”

  He leaned into the wagon and thumbed the button that dropped the door of the glove compartment. He was very good. Scorf was standing outside the open door of the two-door Cougar, holding the driver’s seat tilted forward so that Hascomb could climb into the back. I was opposite the hood, walking toward the door on the passenger side.

  Hascomb snatched an ancient weapon out of his glove compartment. Officers have smuggled them home from the last five wars. The Colt .45 automatic. I caught a glimpse of it as he turned and fired at Scorf at point-blank range.

  Scorf got his left hand up to ward off the big slow slug. He was reaching for the belly gun with his right hand. The big slug went through the palm of his left hand and hit the shelf of brow over the left eye. The resistance of the thick ridge of bone snapped his head back and broke his neck. The white hat went sailing over the hood of the car. The relentless chunk of lead plowed through the brain tissues and took off a hunk of the back of the skull as big as an apple. It was all very immediate and messy. It splattered blood and tissue over the front half of the Cougar. I saw it all in slow motion. It was in the hard and vivid light of the hour before noon. It was a day of almost stagnant air. The wind had been moving steadily from north to south, bringing to Florida’s east coast all the stained and corrosive crud of Birmingham and the rest of the industrial South. The horizons were whiskey-stained, and the sky above was a pallid saffron instead of blue. The bleared sun made harsh studio lighting on the parking lot scene. And Harry Hascomb saw Captain Scorf’s horrid death under the dreadful lemon sky.

  Scorf lay poised halfway across the dark blue hood. Meyer had been so right about the vivid reality of death. Harry Hascomb’s face was absolutely slack, his eyes blank and dulled. He had expected to see the picture of the dead grackle. Here was the genuine article, smashed, leaking, stinking, and so sickeningly vivid that it immobilized him, froze him in an incredulous horror. I was caught on tiptoe for an instant, knowing that we were in a deserted parking lot in a deserted area, knowing that I could not expect any Saturday noon curiosity-seekers.

  Scorf’s coat was spread, showing the gun butt. With a swift and insane delicacy, with a mind-bulging awareness of my own madness, I leaned into the field of fire of the big automatic, snatched Scorf’s weapon free, and fell to the cement on the far side of the Cougar from the immobilized Hascomb. He fired as I disappeared from his view, and like an afterecho of the hefty bam, I heard the slug clunk into the loading dock. An instant later Scorf slid off the hood onto his side, landing with a heavy clopping and thudding.

  Doubtless Harry Hascomb had some sort of a script in mind. Maybe the automatic was due to end up in my dead hand, and Harry was due to end up in Peru.

  I am not one for the shootout at the O.K. or any other corral. I have no wish to stand in full view with steely nerves and draw a bead on the chap trying to blow my head in twain.

  I hitched quickly into the prone position and steadied the short-barreled weapon by grasping my right wrist in my left hand and pushing outward. I aimed under the low road clearance of the Cougar, and I aimed at the front ankle creases in his Western boot and did not miss at that range. He yelled and started gimping around. I missed the other boot the first try and then got it on the second try. All of Harry Hascomb came tumbling down, making shrill sounds of total dismay. He thought to return the fire in the same manner, aiming under the car. I was after his hand or wrist, but I hit the automatic by accident. The slug spanged and went screeing off in ricochet, and the Colt ki
lled the muffler on the Cougar before it went spinning away from him.

  Without any conscious thought and without the awareness of any lapse in time, I found myself standing over Hascomb, picking a place right between the eyes.

  Then I realized it would mean I would spend the best years of my life in Bayside, filling out forms and answering questions. He was not going anywhere, but to be safe I took both sets of car keys. I walked all the way to the phone booth beside the gas station, the one Carrie had patronized.

  Eighteen

  A wind had come up and blown all the smutch into somebody else’s sky. Cindy and I sat on the deck chairs on the sun deck, side by side, and looked up at all the diamonds in the sky.

  “You said they found it, Trav, but where was it?”

  “In a box labeled Camp Stove. He was getting ready to go camping. And get lost in the woods. Forever.”

  “He said he killed Carrie?”

  “Knocked her cold. Waited for the right kind of traffic and then took her by the crotch and the nape of the neck and slung her into the farm truck.”

  I sensed the way she shuddered.

  She said, “I suppose, in a way, some of the money is mine.”

  “In a way. But your chances of getting it …”

  “I know. I’ll just have to make it anyway.”

  “Couldn’t you sell out?”

  “Sure. But then what?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Trav, darling, I like to work. I like to run things. And I like to have security. I’ve got a hundred thousand mortgage to pay off, and the place is worth ten times that. I am really going to have to pitch in.”

  “And I was going to ask you to pack a bag and come cruising.”

  “Well … someday, maybe.”

  “I gather that you are underwhelmed.”

  “Male pride talking. Can’t you accept the fact that I’m tied to this place?”

  “And you want to be tied to it.”

  “Please. I don’t want to fight with you. Please, dear.”

  I stretched until my shoulders creaked. “Okay, Cindy. You are very realistic and diligent and all that. Maybe I have a grasshopper philosophy, but it strikes me there are a lot of dead people around here. Given advance warning, they could have done more living.”

  “We don’t know each other.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I found out from you I’m a more physical person than I thought I was. Okay, so it makes me skeptical of myself and impatient about things. So, being a careful person, I need time. I just can’t go mooning and dreaming around here and letting important things slide.”

  “Mooning and dreaming are very good stuff.”

  “Sure, sure, sure. We really don’t know each other at all. And I am a drone. A worker. A builder. Maybe I can learn to play someday. But I have to have something solid, all built, before I’ll dare. Please understand.”

  I gave up. I lifted her hand up and opened it and kissed the palm. She shivered. I said, “Give me a call when you get all your ducks in a row. When you feel like getting acquainted.”

  “Could you call me?”

  “I suppose so. Why?”

  “It’s very strange to feel so shy about somebody you’ve been to bed with. But I do.”

  “Cindy, I will call you. But when?”

  She inhaled and exhaled deeply, a sign of relaxation and contentment and eventual anticipation.

  “Just try me every once in a while, okay?”

  And it was okay because it had to be. There wasn’t any other choice. Sometimes it is a relief not to have a choice. I will have to get Meyer to explain this concept to me.

  For each true friend of Travis McGee

  BY JOHN D. MACDONALD

  The Brass Cupcake

  Murder for the Bride

  Judge Me Not

  Wine for the Dreamers

  Ballroom of the Skies

  The Damned

  Dead Low Tide

  The Neon Jungle

  Cancel All Our Vows

  All These Condemned

  Area of Suspicion

  Contrary Pleasure

  A Bullet for Cinderella

  Cry Hard, Cry Fast

  You Live Once

  April Evil

  Border Town Girl

  Murder in the Wind

  Death Trap

  The Price of Murder

  The Empty Trap

  A Man of Affairs

  The Deceivers

  Clemmie

  Cape Fear (The Executioners)

  Soft Touch

  Deadly Welcome

  Please Write for Details

  The Crossroads

  The Beach Girls

  Slam the Big Door

  The End of the Night

  The Only Girl in the Game

  Where Is Janice Gantry?

  One Monday We Killed Them All

  A Key to the Suite

  A Flash of Green

  The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything

  On the Run

  The Drowner

  The House Guest

  End of the Tiger and Other Stories

  The Last One Left

  S*E*V*E*N

  Condominium

  Other Times, Other Worlds

  Nothing Can Go Wrong

  The Good Old Stuff

  One More Sunday

  More Good Old Stuff

  Barrier Island

  A Friendship: The Letters of Dan Rowan and John D. MacDonald, 1967–1974

  THE TRAVIS MCGEE SERIES

  The Deep Blue Good-By

  Nightmare in Pink

  A Purple Place for Dying

  The Quick Red Fox

  A Deadly Shade of Gold

  Bright Orange for the Shroud

  Darker Than Amber

  One Fearful Yellow Eye

  Pale Gray for Guilt

  The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper

  Dress Her in Indigo

  The Long Lavender Look

  A Tan and Sandy Silence

  The Scarlet Ruse

  The Turquoise Lament

  The Dreadful Lemon Sky

  The Empty Copper Sea

  The Green Ripper

  Free Fall in Crimson

  Cinnamon Skin

  The Lonely Silver Rain

  The Official Travis McGee Quizbook

  About the Author

  John D. MacDonald was an American novelist and short story writer. His works include the Travis McGee series and the novel The Executioners, which was adapted into the film Cape Fear. In 1962 MacDonald was named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America; in 1980 he won a National Book Award. In print he delighted in smashing the bad guys, deflating the pompous, and exposing the venal. In life he was a truly empathetic man; his friends, family, and colleagues found him to be loyal, generous, and practical. In business he was fastidiously ethical. About being a writer, he once expressed with gleeful astonishment, “They pay me to do this! They don’t realise, I would pay them.” He spent the later part of his life in Florida with his wife and son. He died in 1986.

  Read on for an excerpt from The Empty Copper Sea

  One

  Van Harder came aboard the Busted Flush on a hot bright May morning. My houseboat was at her home mooring, Slip F-18 at Bahia Mar, Fort Lauderdale. I was in the midst of one of my periodic spasms of energy born of guilt. You go along thinking you are properly maintaining your houseboat and your runabout, going by the book, keeping a watchful eye on the lines, the bilge, the brightwork, and all. But the book was written for more merciful climates than Florida, once described to the King of Spain by DeSoto, as “an uninhabitable sandspit,” even though at the time it was inhabited by quite a lot of Indians.

  Suddenly everything starts to snap, rip, and fall out, to leak and squeal and give final gasps. Then you bend to it, or you go live ashore like a sane person.

  Crabbing along, inch by inch, I was replacing the rail posts around t
he whole three sides of the sun deck, port, starboard, and stern, using a power drill and a power screwdriver to set the four big screws down through the stainless flange at the foot of each post. I had sore knees, a lame wrist, and a constant drip of sweat from nose and chin. I wore an old pair of tennis shorts, and the sun was eating into my tired brown back.

  It had been six, maybe seven years since I’d seen Van Harder. He had owned the Queen Bee III in charter-boat row. He had been steady and he could find fish, and so had less trouble finding customers than a lot of the others. I knew he wasn’t going to overwhelm me with a lot of conversation. I knew he’d had some bad luck, but that was a long time ago. A frugal man, he had saved his money and finally sold the Queen Bee III to Ranee Fazzo, had acquired a shrimp boat and a large debt, and had moved around to the other coast.

  I finished the post, walked over, and mopped my face on the towel. We sat on the two pilot chairs, swiveled away from the instrument panel to face astern, toward all the shops and towers of Bahia Mar, both of us shaded by the folding navy top.

  Van Harder was a lean, sallow man. Tall, silent, and expressionless. I had never seen him without a greasy khaki cap with a bill. Florida born for generations back, from that tough, tireless, malnourished, merciless stock which had scared the living hell out of the troops they had faced during the War Between the States. His eyes were a pale watery blue. He was about fifty, I guessed.

  “They tell me Fazzo is fishing out of Marathon now,” he said.

  “Doing okay, from what I hear.”

  Silence.

  “Meyer still around?”

  “Still around. He had some errands over in town today.”

  Silence.

  “Guess you heard I lost the Queen Bee Number Four. Shrimp boat. Sixty-five foot.”