John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 16 - The Dreadful Lemon Sky

by The Dreadful Lemon Sky(lit)

  After considerable fumbling around I found a push button safety-pinned where I was least likely to be able to reach it with my left hand. But I managed, and I thumbed it down.

  After a few minutes the door was slung open and a dainty little white-haired nurse about fifty years old came trotting in. "Oh, hey!" she said. "Oh, good!" Then she said something I couldn't hear because of the ringing.

  "What? Somebody turn off the damn bell." She leaned close. She laughed. "Bell? It's in your ears, sweetie. From the bomb."

  "Bomb?"

  She checked the IV and said, "You're doing okay here. They're not going to have to go into your skull, sweetie. Now be patient. I'm supposed to get Dr. Owings to check you."

  "Where am I?"

  "Ask your doctor, sweetie." And she was gone, the door hissing slowly shut behind her.

  Dr. Owings really took his time. I found out later that he was out of the hospital. And I found out that one Harry Max Scorf wanted to be present when I came out of it, if I came out of it.

  After an hour, Dr. Hubert Owings came in, wearing that familiar look of the distracted, overworked professional. If you ordered a doctor type from central casting, they wouldn't have sent Hubert. He looked like a cowhand in a cigarette ad, even to the lock of hair falling forward across the hero forehead. The man who followed him in was small and spare and old. He wore a thick ugly gray suit, a frayed and soiled shirt in a faded candy stripe. It was buttoned at the throat, but he wore no tie. He wore a gleaming white ranch hat, the Harry Truman model, and, as I found out later, gleaming black boots. His face was small, withered, and colorless.

  "Mr. McGee," said my doctor irritably, "Captain Scorf may want to read you your rights."

  "Now, Hube," Scorf said in a plaintive voice, "it's nothing like that. Son, I'm Harry Max Scorf, and I just want to know if you'll freely and willingly answer any questions I might have about the death of Miss Freeler."

  I stared at him. "Miss Freeler?"

  "Captain, if you would just sit over there and let me handle the usual questions?"

  "Sure, Hube. Sure thing."

  Hube shone a sharp little light into my eyes, first one and then the other. "Your name?"

  I gave it at once. He straightened up and stared down at me in perplexity. I didn't know what was wrong, and then like an echo, I heard my voice giving my name, rank and serial number.

  "I don't know why I did that," I said.

  "What do you remember doing last?"

  "While waiting for you, doctor, I've been trying to remember. The last thing I know is that I was standing in a very heavy rain under a banyan tree, and a little white dog on a screened porch was barking at me. I was on my way to see... someone at Fifteen Hundred Seaway Boulevard, and I don't know if I ever got there. I don't know how I got here, or why. This is Bayside?"

  "It is. You were brought in unconscious with a severe concussion and a deep laceration on the back of your head, triangular, with a flap of scalp dangling."

  "What about Meyer?"

  "At the time you were brought in-" "

  What about Meyer!"

  "He's jes' fine," Harry Max Scorf said.

  "Thanks, Captain."

  Looking annoyed, Hube said, "If you'd remained unconscious any longer we were going to have to-"

  "What day is this?"

  "Thursday evening. Nine thirty on Thursday evening, Mr. McGee. The sixth day of June."

  "For the love of-"

  "Hold still, please. I'm trying to check you." I became aware for the first time of the catheter. He sent Scorf out of the room for no good reason while he uncoupled me from the input and output tubes. He asked me if I thought I could stand up, as if I felt like trying to stand up. I did, in the ridiculous hospital long bib, and walked carefully and shakily around the bed and got back in, sweating with the effort it had taken.

  He left me with Scorf, saying, "If you feel you are getting too tired, just say so, and the captain will leave."

  After the door closed, Scorf said, "Now just why did you and your friend come up here from Lauderdale, McGee?"

  "No answers at all, Captain. Not until the blanks are filled in. What happened? I remember now that Joanna's last name was Freeling."

  "Freeler. Now what I know about the bomb comes from the two experts we had come in and check it all over. You and Meyer were on your houseboat Saturday night. It was raining hard. That girl came aboard with a package. She put it on the table and bent over it to unwrap it. It went off. You and your friend were lucky because you were both standing behind her and not too far apart, so her body took the major force of the explosion. It blew the girl practically into two halves. She never knew what happened. It knocked both of you down, you and Meyer. You hit your head and he didn't. He lost the hearing in one ear, but they think it's coming back."

  "What did it do to the boat?"

  "Blew out all the glass. Blew a small hole in the deck, and blew a great big hole in the overhead, like ten feet by ten feet. Then it rained into the hole all night long. It's a mess. They're working on it now."

  "They?"

  "At that Westway Harbor Marina. Jason and Oliver and a friend of theirs. With Meyer helping."

  "Where's Meyer?"

  "Waiting for me to get out of here. He got called the first thing. Anyway, it was what they call a primitive-type bomb."

  "Primitive?"

  "No timing device or anything like that. They explained it to me after they found enough to know how it probably worked. The package vwas about so big, tied with string. There were four sticks of dynamite in there, taped together and taped into place. There was a battery and a cap and a little switch, a contact switch. What the fella who made it did, he stuck a thick piece of cardboard between the switch terminals. Then he tied string to the cardboard and led the string out a hole in the side of the box and fastened it to the string he tied around the box. So anybody unties it and pulls the string off, they pull that cardboard out and contact is made and it all goes bam. It went off about eight inches from the middle of that girl. Bombs are so damned ugly and messy. I can't get inside the head of folla who'd use a bomb."

  "Who are you, anyway?"

  "Harry Max Scorf."

  "I mean your official capacity."

  "Oh, I should have said. I'm with the City and County of Bayside. Used to be just with the County. What I am, I'm kind of a special inveotigator. Odds and ends of this and that. I work when I please and how I please."

  "Must be nice."

  "It's worse than having hours. A man works longer. Then again, there isn't anything I'd rather be doing. No family. No hobbies. Tuesday I drove on down to Fort Lauderdale and I walked around that Bahia Mar Marina and asked questions about you and Meyer. You don't seem to have much visible means of support, McGee."

  "Salvage work. Here and there. It's spotty."

  "I combed every dang inch of what's left of your houseboat."

  "What's left of it!"

  "Steady there. It floats. I came to a conclusion."

  "Which is?"

  "I don't really think you came up here to straighten out the distribution of pot in Bayside County."

  "Thanks, Scorf."

  "Somebody will come along soon. No place along the coast can stay amateur. They'll take in the ones who'll play along and kill those that won't, and turn it from nickles and dimes into big money, like it is other places. I thought they were already here. Maybe they are. But it's not you and Meyer."

  "Why not?"

  "Because the job calls for running the hard stuff, and running women, and selling to everybody, grannies and little kids. It calls for buying the law and buying the courts, and you and Meyer are quick enough in your own way and hard enough in your own way, but you got stopping places that are way short of what it takes. If you got a stubborn bartender and you bust both his arms and change his face, the replacement bartender is willing to do business with you. Bars are a nice distribution point for off-premises use."

  "Are you w
orking on a book?"

  "Don't get snotty with an old man. I could write one."

  "Why are we here?"

  "Well, Harry Hascomb has one story, and that Miss Dobrovsky, she's got another, and Jack Omaha's wife has another. They add up to Carolyn Milligan having been a friend of yours. But if you thought the girl was killed, and you came here to find out who did it and why, and you didn't check in with us and show credentials-which you haven't got-then you're in trouble, aren't you?"

  "I know she was killed and so do you. I just wonder if it was entirely an accidental death. That's all."

  "And you wanted to attend the service?"

  "Right!"

  "Now you lunged at that like a bass, boy."

  "Remember, I hit my head when somebody killed Joanna."

  "We can set here and josh each other from now till the end of time. And you can duck and bob and weave all you want. The thing I've got the most of is time. If somebody did kill Carolyn on purpose, who is your guess?"

  "Shouldn't this be some kind of a trade?"

  "It is. You've been busy. You've been lying to people. Maybe you've been obstructing justice, or concealing the evidence of a crime, or impersonating an officer. Things like that. I won't act on any of that, at least right now. That's the trade."

  "Take me in, officer. Read me my rights."

  He sighed and shoved his white hat farther back on his head. "Well, let's see now. What have I got to trade? How about this? So far we've kept a lid on that autopsy on Cal Birdsong. It was heart, all right. But Doc Stanyard didn't like the way it looked, that big soft clot in the pleural cavity and no real sign of any aneurysm. He checked it slow and small and found that something went into there on Cal's left side, between the ribs, smaller than a knitting needle or an ice pick. It could have been a piece of stiff piano wire, sharpened to a needle point. A person could roll it between thumb and forefinger like one of those Chinese needles, to make it go in easy. The heart really hops around in there when it beats. Run that needle in there back and forth a couple of times, and you'd probably pick an artery open or puncture the sac around the heart or mess up a valve somehow. Doc found the entrance track and laid it open and took slides. I saw them this morning, all developed. The track shows up nice."

  "And what was Birdsong doing?"

  "Seems he was dog tired. They tried to keep him awake on account of his being hit on the head. They don't like people sleeping with head injuries. But he was pooped and he slept hard. And forever. It wouldn't probably wake him, just that little prickle when it went through the skin."

  "Does his wife know this?"

  "She was one of the ones with him. We're keeping the lid on while we watch how people act."

  "One of the ones with him?"

  "That's all the trading material you get for now. Your turn."

  "You probably know everything I could tell you."

  "Try me."

  "Well.... Adding two and two, the Christina came in on May fourteenth, on Tuesday night, with over eight hundred pounds of marijuana aboard. Just two people went out before dawn on Tuesday: Jack Omaha and Cal Birdsong. Sometimes Carrie Milligan went, but she didn't go that day because she was sick and said she would be in when she felt well enough. I would guess that Carrie went to Westway Harbor that night in a panel delivery truck owned by Superior Building Supplies. The boat is docked in a good area for privacy. It's beyond the range of the dock lights, but you can drive up close to it. The grass was loaded onto the truck. Carrie took it to Fifteen Hundred Seaway Boulevard. After it was offloaded, Mr. Walter Demos took over, and he paid Carrie in cash for the delivery at the rate of a hundred dollars a pound. My guess is that she drove down to Superior and parked the truck where she had picked it up. She had left her own car there. Standard procedure was for her to put the money from Demos into the office safe. She and Jack Omaha had the combination. End of trade. Anything new?"

  "Here and there," he said comfortably. "Here and there. Of course you spoiled any chance of us finding anything at all by scragging Demos in his big love nest. There won't be a scrap anywhere."

  "He's anxious to... wait a second. It fades in and out, like a bad projection bulb. Sorry. My memory quits when it comes to Demos. Your turn," I added.

  "Let me see. Oh, here's something you wouldn't know. In that rain Saturday night somebody had left off a package on the porch of the cottage, well back under the overhang, for Joanna Freeler. Betty Joller told me that when Joanna came home she knew what was in the package. She said it was some wine and cheese and like that, for a snack, a present from somebody who couldn't keep a date that night. Now there was just going to be the three of them in the cottage that night. Joanna and Betty Joller and Natalie Weiss. I think it was intended for the package to be opened with the three of them there. Instead, on an impulse, that girl came running through the rain with it. She was a girl who'd rather be with men than girls any time. Your turn, McGee."

  I thought it over and then I decided, What the hell, why not? I went through the whole Carrie Milligan death item by item, stressing the illogic of her supposed behavior, the gassing of her car the previous day, and the signs of fresh tampering with the gas tank drain cock.

  He glared down at a freckled fist and said, "Even after years, you miss the damnedest things. You know, I decided that what she was going to do was cross the road and walk to a lighted house and ask to use the phone. With her purse setting there on the front seat in an unlocked car? Nonsense! It was right there and I missed it cold." He thought it over, and finally said, "That would do for now."

  "You owe me one."

  "I don't have any more to trade." He was distracted by the conjectures swarming in his head. He wanted to be up and off and away. I had put him onto the possibility of a new pattern.

  He stood up. I said, "When do you lock me up?"

  He focused on me completely and silently. Harry Max Scorf was no figure of fun. He was one hard and determined little man.

  "I'll do whatever needs to be done," he said, and turned and left, tugging his hat to the correct angle as he went through the doorway. Before the door had wheezed entirely shut, Meyer came bursting in, grinning.

  Ten

  "WELCOME BACK!" said Meyer.

  "Thanks. What about the Flush?"

  "It floats."

  "Really, how is it?"

  "There's nothing that about ten thousand dollars can't fix. Don't worry about it."

  "Good God, what's left of it?"

  "Don't worry about it. You do a lot of talking about the way possessions hold us all in thrall. Pretty things are chains and shackles."

  It made me gloomy. I could see a listing hulk with huge holes, with wisps of smoke rising from the interior debris. And it worried me that I should care that much. The important loss was the death of that lively girl. Blown in half. Into two girl parts. Such a great and bitter waste.

  I realized that if the Flush were entirely gone, if it had burned to the waterline and sunk, I would be able to adjust more easily than to the uncertainty. Baubles and toys should disappear, not become broken litter.

  Meyer sat beside the bed. He looked like an apprehensive owl as he said, "I kept wondering what the hell to do if you didn't wake up. People stay in a coma for years. They seem to have families to look after them."

  "And you could see yourself stuck?"

  "I could see myself tottering down to the drugstore saying, Yep, he's still asleep. Been nineteen year now. Gimme some more of that goo for bedsores."

  "Look, I blank out during my walk that Saturday afternoon. Tell me about Joanna."

  He told me. I could not make it seem real. It was easier to make the service seem real. They did the same thing for her as they did for Carrie. One less girl in a long dress to throw flowers. Good-bye, my sister Joanna. Her widower father attended, full of indignation and stiffness at such an informal heathen ceremony. But, Meyer said, it melted him quickly and he wept with the rest. It loosened the adhesions in his heart, freeing him f
rom other rituals.

  "We're losing too many girls," I told Meyer.

  "You've added a new one."

  "Hmm. The spry nurse lady?"

  "No. Cindy Birdsong. She's spent a lot of time here, so someone would be with you when you woke up. She was sure you would. Then she missed by a few minutes. She left a little while before you came out of it, apparently. She's out there now, waiting her turn."

  "Why the devotion?"

  "I don't know. It's some kind of penance, maybe. Or maybe she is the kind of person who has to have somebody to fret about. Cal is gone. You were at her marina when we got blown up."