“Millis and I were good friends for a long time,” he said. “We’ve been out of touch lately. If there’s any way I can help you …”
“She told me about your coming to see her back in October. She told you I located Billy Ingraham’s boat. She said you were upset because the girl from Peru was important.”
“Forgive me, Mr. McGee, if I seem a little disorganized. This is the third day of the new year. I’ve been out of the office for several days. I’ve been listening to problems since seven this morning and it is difficult to shift gears. I didn’t realize why your name sounded familiar.”
“You know about Millis’ husband.”
“Yes, of course. Stories like that get a lot of coverage. How is she handling it?”
“Well enough.”
“The news stories imply she is under suspicion. That’s nonsense, of course. From talking to her I know how fond she was of Mr. Ingraham.”
“Billy’s murder seems to have something to do with the girl from Peru.”
He stared at me. “I don’t see the connection.”
“Did she convince you that Billy and I had nothing to do with what happened aboard the Sundowner?”
“Yes. Of course. As I told her, it seemed a strange and horrible way for our lives to overlap again. Yes, she convinced me.”
“When I went aboard the flies were working. I had to sniff at a gasoline rag to be able to stay below long enough to see what happened.”
“I told you, Mr. McGee, she convinced me.”
“On Saturday, three days before Christmas, a bomb went off behind a Lauderdale shopping center and killed two kids. Did you read about it?”
“Yes, I remember reading about it.”
“The bomb that went off was, I think, a gift package I had gotten through the mail and hadn’t opened. I went shopping there and didn’t lock the car, and it is a good guess those kids swiped it and took it around behind the center to open it. The experts say it was a sophisticated bomb.”
Arturo Jornalero frowned down at his right thumbnail. Then he took a delicate nibble at the edge of the nail, got up quickly and wandered over to the window, stood looking out, his hands locked behind him.
Without turning, he said, “Let us imagine that the young son of a dear friend or a valued business associate went down to Peru on vacation, and let us say he went up to Cuzco and was slain by thieves on a dark street at night. The bereaved father might come to me and I might make contact with business associates in Peru, and they might arrange to have the guilty punished without waiting for any slow process of law. It would be a matter of friendship and honor.”
“Wouldn’t they feel some kind of obligation to get the guilty parties?”
He came slowly back to the chair, settled into it and sighed audibly. “That does bother me, Mr. McGee. When the girl was identified, there was … considerable communication between Miami and Lima. The immediate suspicion was that whoever had tipped off the Coast Guard as to where to find the vessel could have been the one who killed the three of them. People have killed for a lot less money than you got for finding that boat. I told my associates that I knew Mr. Ingraham’s wife and that I would look into it. I had a private meeting with her. After that I had someone look into your lifestyle and reputation, and also the character and reputation of your pilot friend out at Southdale Airport. I then reported to my associates that it was highly unlikely that you had anything to do with the trouble, or that Mr. Ingraham was involved in any way, except that it had happened aboard his boat, which had been stolen up at Citrina last July. I told them I thought the murders had been the result of a deal going bad.”
“I was very nearly blown to bits and Billy was killed in Cannes with a wire shoved into his head. There was somebody you didn’t convince.”
“I haven’t been keeping track. I am going to look into it.”
There was enough of an edge behind his quiet and pleasant voice to make me guess he was going to make some people unhappy.
“What kind of business are you in, Mr. Jornalero?”
“We’re an international management and consulting corporation. When, during consultation, we find an enterprise that pleases us, we try to buy into it. So, over the years, we’ve come up with a strange mix. We own pieces of motion picture distribution and production companies in South America and the Orient. We own portions of factoring companies and financial houses in the Bahamas, Cartagena, Bolivia, South Africa. We have a contracting branch and an architectural service here, and an employment agency and a large interest in a pipeline, and some small coastal freighters. When management is good, we believe in retaining it rather than get into the details of operation ourselves.”
“And you’re involved in a company in Lima?”
“Several, as a matter of fact. And some of those companies own pieces of companies in other countries, in partnership with us. It gets complex.”
“I suppose you’d be in a pretty good position to invest at all times, because you have to handle such a big cash flow coming in from the drug business.”
He stared at me, jaw sagging, and then he laughed and thumped himself on the thigh with a big white fist. “Millis has a very active and dramatic imagination. I must confess that while we were … together, I did tell her some melodramatic stories about my life. I am an ordinary businessman, and when a woman demands glamor and mystery, one tries to satisfy her. I can assure you, Mr. McGee, I have never seen a kilo of cocaine much less arranged for its purchase and sale. I have seen some foolish people at social gatherings snuffing it up their nostrils, an ugly and demeaning performance. You are the victim of a cliché, that any successful Latin businessman has to be involved somehow in drugs. We have a good cash flow because we arrange it that way. We get a good return from our investments and it is corporate policy to be ready at any time for the unexpected chance. Many good deals have fallen through because neither money nor credit was quickly available. Right now, this week, through our banking connection in Hong Kong we are buying some bonded warehouse facilities in Panama.”
“Okay, then. If you are so completely aboveboard, what’s all this about bypassing the police to do somebody a favor?”
“Do you know the word pundonor? It means a point of honor. The girl was sexually abused before they cut her throat. This is very distressing to her family. They are rich and powerful and very, very angry. And they know that convicted murderers can spend years and years in air-conditioned cells eating good food and watching television waiting for the execution that never happens. Personal vengeance is primitive. But in such a case it is satisfying.”
“What about the counterfeit money?”
“As I told you and told them, I think it was a deal that fell through.”
“Can you tell them again? Can you get to anybody who might know somebody who mailed me a bomb and tell them to get the word down the line to lay off? It makes me very nervous to be stalked by professionals.”
“I think something can be done about it.”
“I appreciate that, and I appreciate your giving me so much time.”
“Tell Millis that if there is anything at all I can do, she need only ask.”
After I parked my blue pickup and walked back to the Flush, I opened the little panel to see if I’d had visitors while I was away. I was so used to finding nothing wrong that I stood staring stupidly at the unlikely object which had been placed inside the recessed area where the lighted bulbs were. It was a stick figure of a cat made of red pipe cleaners, with whiskers made of nylon fishline. The bulbs were all lighted. I’d had no visitors who broke in, at least. If it was a message, the meaning eluded me.
And when I showed it to Meyer ten minutes later, it did not mean anything to him either, nor had I expected it to.
It was a clear day, chilly in the shade, hot in the bright sunlight, even at quarter to four. Meyer lay supine on a sun cot on my sun deck, his heavy chest pelt glistening with sweat from the exercises I’d talked him into. Meyer equates ex
ercise with obligatory games and all the other enforced boredoms of childhood. But he is never in as bad shape as I expect him to be. I have accused him of secret calisthenics and he looks at me as if I had accused him of watching General Hospital or Dallas. He says his semifitness, a rubbery condition at best, is an inherited characteristic.
I sat in the lotus position on a beach towel on the deck, my back to the late sun as I replaced a broken eyelet on a boat rod, winding the waxed linen around and around and around.
“Jornalero could have been half right,” he said from under the straw hat that shaded his face.
“Half right about what?”
“He wouldn’t have to have any direct connection with the trade. He’s perfectly set up to be a laundryman. If he could absorb two hundred million a year, spread it around the world and bring it back in as wages and bonuses and dividends and fees, he might earn three percent on the transactions, which would be six million.”
“Somebody would have to trust him with the money.”
“So he would know where it came from. Which, in a sense, would make him a part of the whole mess, wouldn’t it?”
“He’s very impressive. I’d trust him with money.”
“From what he said, do you have any clue as to what could have happened?”
“I think he thought somebody got impatient. They got too eager to show some results and make the people in Peru happy. And it made him angry.”
“That would fit,” Meyer said. “From October into late December, with nothing happening. So they make some moves just to be doing something, whether it makes any sense or not.”
“Maybe he can fix it. But I’m not going to unwrap any gifts.”
“Why should they send gifts when they can put a man with a rifle and a scope sight on any of those roofs over there?”
I looked over my shoulder at the roofs on the high buildings beyond the boat basin. When you aim down at a forty-five-degree angle, you cut the estimate of distance in half. That keeps it from throwing too high. The effect of gravity on the slug is diminished by the angle. I felt a circle of ice as big as a silver dollar three inches below the nape of my neck.
My little chore was done anyway. I had tied off the heavy thread. All that remained was the shellac, and I could do that below. I gathered up the towel and the spool of thread, the knife and the broken eyelet. When I turned to face the distant buildings, the circle of ice slid around my body as I turned, and ended up on the left side of my chest. I forced a yawn, and for an instant the ice was in the back of my throat, then reappeared on my chest.
“Sun’s about gone,” I said.
“If you say so,” said Meyer.
I went below. He went back to his beamy cruiser to await the arrival from the airport of one of his female executive friends, a California lady who owns vineyards and sends him the occasional case of rare vintage wine. According to Meyer, whenever he takes her over to the islands, they sit around and discuss economic trends and international trade. And drink wine. Whatever happens, I do know that each one of his lady executive friends believes in her heart that she is the great love of Meyer’s whole life. It shows when they say good-by. And in Meyer’s special way, perhaps it is true. They all are. Not that there have ever been that many of them. Six perhaps. Or seven.
And that evening when I wasn’t thinking about dying, I nearly did. Again.
Nine
I had planned to stay aboard that Thursday night. Christmas and New Year’s Eve had been duds. I had long ago given up expecting too much of them. But this time it was even less than usual. The little toss with Millis had made me feel listless and grubby. I had been reading Lewis Thomas and for the first time he depressed me, even when he said that the glue that seems to hold mankind in some kind of lasting stasis is everyone’s desire to be useful. Maybe I had a desire to be useful which had no outlet.
For once there was such a fat sum in the hidey-hole that the next segment of my retirement stretched into the misty future. But I couldn’t think of any way I wanted to spend it. Maybe get on an airplane and fly to Peru.
Airplanes made me think of the Mick, and reminded me that I hadn’t warned him of the remote chance of something unpleasant happening to him too. For once he answered instead of his machine.
After I finished telling him why it might be well for him to keep his back against the wall, he told me I wasn’t making very much sense. I told him that a lot of things weren’t making good sense lately, but that’s the way the world was at the moment. All over the planet, I told him, people were trying to make sense out of chaos.
“What are you drinking?” he asked me.
“At the moment, coffee.”
“Keep right on with it, pal,” he said, and hung up.
Ten seconds later came the muted bong as somebody trod on the mat at the head of my stubby gangplank to the aft deck, and moments later a fast rapping on the door to the lounge, and a voice calling, “Hey, Trav! Hey, McGee!”
It was Annabelle Everett, with a wide happy smile and a bottle of chilled domestic champagne, to tell me she had, that morning, gone to work in a travel agency, loved the people she was working with, had found the computer easy to operate and was going to move in with one of the girls who worked there because the one who had quit, whose job she had taken, was getting married and moving out to Texas. Annabelle was on a high. I got out the ice bucket and opened the champagne and put on some music. She had gotten all her morale back in one fell swoop. So she wanted to celebrate with one person who had tried to tell her that marrying Stu the weatherman was not a really outstanding idea.
The champagne was slightly acidic, and later on at the steak house the steaks were stringy, the drinks watery, but nothing could quell her spirits. I drove her back to her sixth-floor walk-up apartment in that dying condominium, the Plaza del Rio, walked up with her and went in on invitation. She was beginning to unravel at the edges. Her eyes began wobbling. I insisted we have one more little drink. She had some cheap scotch and I made hers stiff. Then I took my time drinking my weak one. When I had finished I took our glasses out into the small kitchen and rinsed them and put them upside down on the drain-board.
I checked the bedroom and found a king-size bed. I turned it down, went out and gathered her up and carried her in and put her on the bed. I felt very prim and sanctimonious. And then I realized that, after all, she had been celebrating, and she had made it clear what she wanted the end of the evening to be. I shook her to make certain she couldn’t wake up, and then I stripped her and left her clothes in what would look like hasty disarray, some on the floor, some on a chair. I covered her up, then rumpled up the bed, both on her side and on what was intended to be mine.
I found a lipstick and wrote on her bathroom mirror: “Thanks for everything, Trav.” I left a night light on and let myself out, making certain the door locked when I closed it. After all, a girl needs her pride.
I was so pleased with myself I almost missed the slight movement of a shadow in the condo parking area. The parking area had not been lighted at night for a long time. What light there was came from the high white glare of a fast-food enterprise a half block away. Half the area was in blackness, and in the other half, where I had parked, the distant light made long black shadows on the broken asphalt, shadows of the cars and the overgrown bushes. There were maybe twenty cars in the lot, and they were parked fairly close together in that part of the lot closest to the entrance.
I backed up and waited for a car to start up, or for the sound of someone breaking into a car. Caution is a habit, dearly acquired. Caution must be accompanied, whenever required, by the necessary flow of adrenaline, to make the machinery work all the better. I was in the best shape of the past two years. I am gifted from birth with a lot of quick. The hand-eye coordination is better than most. The four inches over six feet provides leverage. Looking slow and lazy helps also.
When nothing happened, I eased along the side of the building, staying in blackness, feeling ahead wit
h each foot before putting my weight on it. The shadow could have been a neighborhood dog, angling across the area. When I reached the rear corner of the building, I waited again. There was a faint light from the other direction, and if I went further I would step out into it. My night vision was improving the longer I waited. I could see the outline of my Rolls pickup. And as I watched it, the outline changed. A man was on the far side of it, moving from the cab toward the tailgate, moving from my left to my right. I saw a faint red arc as he lifted a cigarette into view above the truck bed, moved it to his mouth and lowered it again, then turned and walked back. When his silhouette disappeared behind the cab, I ran silently toward the dark shadow of the nearest car, bending low, running at half speed. It was three cars from my own. The only way I could avoid the light was to work my way under the cars. I stretched out on my back and eased under two cars, pulling myself along by finding handholds on the undersides of the cars.
I crouched quietly in the shadow of the car parked next to mine.
“Son of a bitch’ll probably stay up there with her and screw her all night.”
The voice was startlingly close. A bad-tempered voice, muttering. And too close. I did not understand it until I felt the car I was touching move slightly. The voice was sitting in the car. I made myself smaller against the side of the car.
“Shut your face, Sully,” a thinner, higher voice said. It was inside the car also. It had the flavor of command.
There was a scrape of leather on hardpan, and then a third voice, and I guessed it was Cigarette moving over from my truck to the far side of the sedan. “What’s with the conversation, guys?” His voice was soft and guarded.
“Sully’s getting tired of waiting.”
The Lonely Silver Rain Page 8