John D MacDonald - Travis Mcgee 18 - The Green Ripper

by The Green Ripper(Lit)

  "Nine. There's one buried over a week ago. Nicky. They gave me the gun and told me to shoot him and I did. That was what started all the rest of it. Like letting some kind of bad spell out of the bottle. I thought it was a fake execution, so I fired and killed him."

  We got to the slope and looked down to where we could see bits of the airplane. 'I got all the records out of there I could find," I said. "And I looked everywhere for that goddamn missing arm. I looked high and low. I can't imagine how it hid itself so damn well." My voice was getting high and thin, but I couldn't seem to stop. "Somehow we've got to find that damn arm!"

  "Hey," he said. "Hey, fellow. Take it easy, huh?" He turned me around and headed me back toward the cars. 'I'll have some of my guys go down there and find it."

  We walked in silence.

  "How'd you get them all?"

  I used as few words as possible.

  He gave me a strange sidelong look. I've seen people at the zoo look at the big cats that way, as if they are wondering if the creature could bang right through those bars if he felt like it.

  "You're going to have to come back for debriefing."

  "Debrief somebody who was never briefed?"

  "It's just a word we use, McGee. I think they'll go at you for a week or more. It won't be bad. You'll get good food and rest. The motivation people will want to know just about every word those people spoke to you."

  'lithe one they should talk to is Sister Elena Marie. She used to be Bobbie Jo Annison, the evangelist."

  "We know. We'd like to talk to her for a long long time. And the people who pull her strings, and write her words. We think she's on an island off the south coast of Cuba. Maybe there'll be a lead in those papers. You shouldn't have gathered them up for us."

  'I did that when I was going to blow the whole place to rubble, buildings, people, and all. I was saving the papers for you and Jake. I collected all the money. I think I was saving that for myself. Some of it is mine, about nine thousand. Some twenty-seven thousand is theirs."

  'I can't understand why they didn't kill you out

  The Green Ripper of hand. That's their style. That's their standard program, No infiltration. No way to do it."

  "I was looking for my daughter."

  'daughter!"

  'Em sorry. I'm past making much sense."

  "We'll leave here soon. It's a strain on you, having to stay here."

  "Can we stop in San Francisco? I left my ID there, and my clothes."

  "Of course. You're not under detention."

  "For murder?"

  '~or self-defense. We'll let the record read there was a jurisdictional squabble and they fought among themselves. Look, you should be getting a medal, McGee. But what you are going to get is some very serious and earnest advice about keeping your mouth shut forever. I think you cut down their firepower and manpower some. If the documents give us a lead to other camps, we can cut it down some more. But the summer timetable is probably still on. They can't keep their tigers waiting forever. And they have to have something to show the folks helping them from overseas. No matter how much security we lay on, they are going to create one hell of a series of bloody messes from border to border and coast to coast. A lot of sweet dumb people are going to get ripped up. Headlines, speeches, doom, the end of our way of life, and so on. Terrorism is going to pay us one big fat bloody visit, McGee. But it will only be a visit. They underestimate our national resilience. Aroused by that kind of savagery, we can become a very tough kind of people. You are a pretty good example of that."

  Iy luck was running, and I let it run."

  "They were supposed to be their best, huh? Educated abroad. Honed fine. Dunog the debriefing, you'll have to go into infinite detail about the training, what you saw of it."

  "Everytlung I can remember."

  "They'll want to go into hypnotic drugs to make sure they pull everything out."

  'Tm in no position to object."

  He stopped walking and turned to face me. "And when it is over and they turn you loose, all the in- formation stops, then and there. You never get any more from us, and nobody ever gets any of what you have from you."

  'precept Meyer." Nobodyl"

  Except Meyer."

  41 am serious, dammit!"

  "Me tow So you better not turn me loose. There is no way on earth that I can keep from telling him every damn detail of every damn day I spent here. Can't you remember the clearance he used to have? You checked it out. Remember?"

  "Oh, hell, yes. Okay. Meyer. And only Meyer."

  Two of them came out and spoke to Max in low

  The Green Ripper voices. He came over to me and said, "Take your last look around, And hope they never find out who did their people in."

  'A think they know."

  'Of I was sure they know, I would set up a whole new identity for you, from plastic surgery to colored contact lenses."

  'A wouldn't accept it anyway."

  "You don't care if they come after you?"

  'frankly, not a hell of a lot, Max. Not a hell of a lot."

  In a little while we headed down out of the hills. Jake told me that when everything had been taken out, they were going to truck a couple of bulldozers up there and knock everything flat and push it off the edge. I said that would be nice. They said we would stay overnight in San Francisco, so I could rest up a little, and fly out in the morning. I said that would be nice. They said that maybe the money problem could be resolved in my favor. Like a kind of unofficial reward. Like, maybe, a bounty. I said that would be nice. So they stopped talking to me. I looked out the car window at the tall evergreens and wondered why all the birds had left this part of the world. Jake turned the wipers on, smearing the small sad rain. I think they were glad to stop trying to relate to me. They felt uneasy about me, about being close to me in a small car. I think they felt not exactly certain of what I might do next. And I knew they would not have felt better about it if I had told them I didn't have the faint- est notion, either, of what I might do next, today, tomorrow, or ever.

  Epilogue

  We had found a little cove around behind the Berry Islands, and with the small chop slapping us in the transom, I had bumped twice getting over the bar into the still water. But that was at low tide, and the charts for that day in late June said it was unusually low, so no sweat about getting out, getting that absolute jewel of a cruiser out of there.

  It was named Odalisque Ill, and it was the splendid playtoy of Lady Vivian Stanley-Tucker of St. Kitts. It was a fifty-three-foot Magnum Maltese Flybridge cruiser, built in North Miami Beach. Twin turbocharged diesels cruised it at an honest thirty miles an hour. Paneling, radar, recording fathometer, air conditioning, ice-maker, tub and shower, huge master stateroom, double autopilot system, stereo music, wine locker, microwave oven, live wells, loran, pile carpeting. I knew it would knock close to a half million without extras, and it was the third time her husband had given her a boat for her birthday.

  "The other two were hunuunge!" she had said. "Great vulgar monsters. Had to have a crew aboard at all times. Now this one is cozy, what? Intimate, you might say. The old boy was playing the gold market and got pinched a bit. Apologized for the smaller boat."

  I was over on the beach and had found a sandbar that was supporting more than its share of clams. Lady Vivian and I had been out about two weeks, provisions were running a little short, and soon we would have to decide whether to put in to Nassau or run on over to Miami. I was putting the clams in a string bag. The sun felt needle-hot on my bare back. I was turning saddle brown, and Lady Vivian had turned to a very lovely reddish gold, except for the sunburned tip of her nose.

  The deep chord of the air horns made me look out toward the Odalisque. Shave and a haircut, two bits. Then she came out onto the bow, a tiny golden figure in a white bikini, and motioned me to come aboard.

  I hung the string bag around my neck, swam out through the warm crystal-clear water, and came up the boarding ladder.

 
The Green Ripper

  "Good nap?"

  "Splendid! And I felt absolutely marvelous until, like the dutiful person I am, I turned on the thing- ajiggy at call time, as usual, and damn me if the old bustard wasn't trying to get me. Baaaaad news, sweet McGeeee. I have to fly on down. His damned awful sister has decided to come out for a visit, and he thinks it would look most odd if Em not there to greet the old party. So what I told him, I would go on into Nassau tomorrow and fly from there, and find some dear friend who'll take the Odalisque on over to Lauderdale. Who might that dear friend be?"

  "Give me a hint."

  'hymn, I was having such a lovely time. And we're getting so horribly healthy. All this popping into bed must be awfully good for one."

  Though tiny in the distance, she was substantial up close, a green-eyed, toffee-haired woman just barely on the sunny side of forty, if you could be]ieve her. She gave the healthy impression of someone about to burst out of her clothes, and in fact was willing so to do when the provocation was suffi- ciently explicit. She had very fine-textured skin, gentle as cream, and her body temperature seemed to run permanently at about four degrees above normal. In bed she was like a stove. She radiated both heat and need.

  I put the clams away for later, washed up, and then mixed us a pair of the sour rum drinks she

  279

  John D. Macl)onald doted on. We sat out on the afterdeck under the tarp I had rigged for shade.

  We touched glasses, and as she sipped, she smiled with her eyes.

  "So, there will be another cruise at least," she said.

  "As long as I can last."

  "You are a dear man. I see no sign of faltering, as yet."

  'Y sneak megadoses of vitamins, Viv."

  "You are the only person in this whole wide world I have ever allowed to call me Viv. Why do I like it when you say it?"

  "Because you are helplessly in love with me."

  That got a hoot of laughter, her great bawdy laugh of derision. "You know, dearest McGeeee, I would feel a great deal better if [d been able to pin you down about really helping us."

  'if don't think I could do any good."

  "Utter nonsense! You could do it easily, probe bly. It was my money, you know, not Sir Charles's. From my Uncle Memman. His people made it in the War of the Roses, or some bloody thing like that, seeing slop to both sides, I imagine. After death duties, not very much came down to me, as you can imagine. But it was comforting. You would know. You wake in the night and think of something that you might want, and you know you can buy it. It was truly a magnificent necklace. For forty thousand pounds, it had to be. And somehow,

  280

  The ~ m"- - between appraisals, that wretched little animal switched it on us and now pretends to know nothing about it, and there is nothing we can do. Should you get it back for we, dear heart, we shalt auction it at Christie's and give you half the gavel price. Your customary arrangement, isn't it?"

  "When I work, * is. I work when I need money. Otherwise I am retired. Like now."

  'aria! Living off my involuntary generosity? Last night the only possible roll to escape a double gammon was that incredible six four you rolled. Dear, I am really terribly serious about the necklace. Would you try? For me? For jolly old Viv?"

  "Why not? 111 need the one he substituted, probably. 1~11 try to work something out."

  "Bless you!"

  And the great warm tide of her pleasure and her gratitude took us down into the cool humming, buzzing grotto of the Odalisque below decks, into the deep bunk leaving behind us on the carpeting a hasty trail of bikini top, swim truffle, and bikini bottom where, with the accompaniment of her giggles and sighs and little instructional signals, we played our favorite game of winding up that lmcurious engine of a body of hers to such an aching pitch that a single Might touch, carefully planned, pushed her over the edge. After that, as always, she went into lazy yawning, smiles, a gentle kiss, and her deep deep sleep.

  I picked up the discarded clothing, put -on my trunks, and quietly fixed an oversized old-fashioned glass full of ice and Boodles. Sipping size. I went topside to the By bridge, lounged on the padded bench in the fading heat of the late afternoon sun.

  I remembered how it had been when I had come back home to Bahia Mar, to The Busted Flush, in mid-February, after the teams of skilled interrogators had pulled every last scrap of information, no matter how trivial or unrelated, out of the stubborn tangle in the back of my mind. It took me a week to tell Meyer all of it, at my own pace, quitting whenever I came up against something that needed more thought before I could talk about it willingly.

  Meyer had been patient and understanding and, best of all, willing to believe what I still considered unbelievable.

  "Travis, did you get any clue at all about whether they can stop the other teams?"

  '] saw Max and Jake one more time, a few days before they let me come home. They let me ask some questions. They didn't answer a lot of them. They'd acted quickly enough to terminate a few of the training centers, but the rest of them moved out in time. At best it will push the target date further into the future. Maybe it will begin to happen a year from now."

  '~What about that Brussels thing?"

  "A dead end. It was probably going to be one of their restaging areas, for retraining and re-equipping the survivors of the early strikes."

  The Green Ripper

  "And Gretel had the bad luck to see Titus. That was why they... did away with her?"

  "He was the link between the Church of the Apocrypha and the terrorist arm. They had a fat file on him, but not as an important wheel in the Church. Now the Church has gone underground. That cripples the financing. They probably over- reacted. If they had just given up the land purchase, forfeited the payment, it would have been enough What could Gretel have done, other than tell Ladwigg she had recognized his visitor? Overkill. Paranoia. Maybe just an urge to test a new deadly toy." o did kill her?"

  Nobody seems to know. Or care very much. It wasn't anything particularly personal, killing her or Ladwigg. It was just a case of thug to tidy up a security lapse."

  '~Will you be told anything more?"

  ~ 'There's no need ever to contact me again,' false said."

  "Are you sure you're all right?" Meyer asked earnestly.

  'Y don't know how I am. Or exactly who I am."

  "Remember when I talked about the new barbarism last December? About the toad-lizard thing with the rotten breath, squatting in its cave? You met it, Travis. You felt the lizard breath. It is man's primal urge to decimate himself down to numbers which can exist on the wornout planet. It is man's self-hatred. The god of the lemmings, and of the poisonous creatures which can die of their own venom. It takes time to back away from that, Travis. Time."

  It had taken most of the five months to finish the job of sorting myself out. Meyer had put me on the right track. I didn't know what he had meant when he said to me, 'Not one of us ever grows up to be what he intended to be. Not one- of us fulfills his own expectations, Travis. We are all our own children, in that sense. At some point, somewhere, we have to stop making demands."

  There was no great moment of my saying, "Aha!" or 'eureka!" It just slowly came clear, like the mist rising on a mountain morning. There was a black, deep, dreadful ravine separating me from all my previous days. Over there on the other side were the pathetic and innocent little figures of world- that-once-was. McGee and his chums. McGee and Gretel. McGee and his toys and visions.

  I could not approach the edge of that ravine and look down. Far far below were the bodies of the dead.

  And here I was, on this side. This side was today. This side was the crystal taste of icy gin, me brute weight of tropic sun, the tiny beads of sweat on my forearm, the lovely lines of the Magnum Maltese, those white popcorn gulls way out there, afloat after feeding, Viv's glad little cries of love, the way the stars would shine tonight, the way the

  The Green Ripper clams would taste, the way we would fit together as we sle
pt.

  I tasted all the tastes of today and felt in me a rising joy that this could be true. I had raised my- self up from many madnesses to be exactly what I am. It had become too constant a pain to try endlessly to be what I thought I should become.

  I thought I saw movement over toward the shallows, sixty feet away, where the water danced in sunlight. I looked in the drawer and took out the Polaroid glasses and put them on. Yes, there were some bonefish tailing across the grass, feeding. I went down and changed the rig on the little Orvis spinner, knifed open a clam for bait, sneaked out near the transom and was barely able to drop the clam far enough ahead of them so as not to spook them.

  For a little while I thought they would feed right on by, but then came the soft mouthy movement. I counted to three and gave him a quick little hit, and he took off, screaming the reel, hissing the line. There is an almost indescribable elegance about that first run of a big bonefish.. Big meaning anytking from five pounds to ten. No flap, no wobble, just incredibly smooth acceleration. He circled from the port quarter around the stern about a hundred feet from the boat, and around to starboard. I had no hope of turning him. I managed to pass the rod around the aerial and outrigger without losing him, but I could not manage to get up the ladderway to the bridge fast enough to clear the line, and he broke loose. I laughed at myself, and I wished the fish good luck and long life. His acids would dissolve the hook within days. He would have something to tell the others. How he outwitted monsters.