The Lonely Silver Rain

by John D. MacDonald

  The management had changed. Irv Deibert had departed. The city was changing. It was getting ugly and dirty and brutal. Locks and chains sold well. People full of speed and angel dust beat each other to death on the night beaches. There is a high in the life cycle of any city. I had seen it in Fort Lauderdale, and we had passed it and it was going to be a long down-slope. I could ride it down or leave it and hope that memory would gradually replace the “now” with the “once upon a time.”

  “Seriously, Millis, maybe I have.”

  “Are you saying yes?”

  “I’m saying let’s us take a little nap. Let’s sleep on it.”

  “The agent said those suites have their own little sun decks. Completely private.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It anchors in Cook’s Bay at Mooréa. Billy told me that is the most beautiful place he ever saw in his whole life.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Frank’s tax man estimates that after estate taxes I’ll have an income of about seven hundred thousand, mostly tax-free—more if I sell this place, but I want to give that a lot more thought.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, and heard nothing of what she might have said after that.

  On Monday I tried to see Mr. Jornalero at his office in Miami. He was in but did not wish to see me. I threatened to stay until he decided he could, but the tiny receptionist phoned down and two security men were sent up. I went peacefully. I drove out of my way and took a look at Sailfish Lagoon. It looked as if the same architect had designed Dias del Sol. But it had more of a fortress look than did Millis’ place. And there seemed to be some elegant private homes behind the high wall, near the yacht basin.

  A man who wishes nothing further to do with you presents a problem. Though I had not seen the procedure, I could guess that Arturo, between his fortress and his office, traveled in a chauffeured limousine, and that when he walked to a nearby restaurant for a business lunch, there would be a muscled fellow a half step behind him, and maybe another a few steps ahead. Rich men walk carefully in Miami.

  When I had worked out a plan, I hurried back to Bahia Mar and began working on overdue maintenance on my aging runabout, the Muñequita, a two-ton T-Craft with a pair of one-hundred-and-twenty-horsepower stern-drive units. It shares the same slip with the houseboat. Usually I am very good about taking care of my gear, but it had been too long since I had given the Muñequita the loving attention she needs. I had not noticed the five-inch rip in the custom tarp cover near the gunwale on the port side, amidships. It was damp and grungy under the tarp, with mildew thriving. The automatic bilge pump had tried to take care of the incoming rain until it killed the batteries. The tarp was faded, the paint was faded and the white letters of her name on the transom had turned to ivory.

  We all do penance in our own strange ways. Mine was to risk getting killed while I paid my dues. By late Wednesday afternoon, the sixteenth, the batteries were up, bilge dry, mildew swabbed away, tanks topped, tarp mended. I had taken her outside into a pretty good sea and punished my spine and kidneys jumping her head-on into the swells to knock a lot of the accumulated marine crud off the bottom. The Calmec autopilot was working again. The bilge pump was operational, the ice chest cleaned and stocked, the power lifts greased, the lights checked and replaced where necessary. She wasn’t at her best, but she was a hell of a lot better than before. I wondered why I had spent all that time revamping a music system and indexing tapes when the Muñequita needed help so badly. Meyer wandered over a couple of times to watch me at work. He wanted to know what I was doing about my personal problem, and I said I was working on it. He said it looked to him as though I was working on a boat. I didn’t explain, though I should have. It wasn’t fair to Meyer. But, then again, we had gotten into a game of surly. Old friends do that from time to time. To loosen the bonds, I guess.

  At times it seems as if arranging to have no commitment of any kind to anyone would be a special freedom. But in fact the whole idea works in reverse. The most deadly commitment of all is to be committed only to one’s self. Some come to realize this after they are in the nursing home.

  With an hour of daylight left, and the day growing chillier, I headed down toward Miami, traveling inside. Black leather jacket and watch cap, and the winds of passage strumming the canvas overhead, an NPR station on the FM, speaking mildly of the news of the day on All Things Considered, without hype or fury. The little doll growled along, at the lowest speed that would keep her on plane, white wake hissing behind her. There was comfort in being able to enjoy the boat. I had driven myself hard to get her back in shape. I had sore muscles, barked knuckles, a torn thumbnail and tired knees. Penance. Memory of the rumbling voice of the grandpa long ago: “Anything you can’t take care of, kid, you don’t deserve to own. A dog, a gun, a reel, a bike or a woman. You learn how to do it and you do it, because if you don’t you hate yourself.”

  An out-of-date morality. Anything you don’t take care of, you replace. Of course, the ERA wouldn’t cotton to Grandpa’s including a woman in his list of ownership items. Grandma seemed a happy woman, however.

  It was long past full dark when I came to the marina I had stopped at in other years. I lugged down until I had minimum headway, folded the top down, stood up with the portable spotlight and picked up the private channel markers as I made my way in. The place had expanded. I went to the gas dock and when a man sauntered out to take a line, I asked him if Wendy was around. He said she had sold the place almost two years ago, and it was now owned by Sea and Marine Ventures. They had a slip, though. I tied up, locked up, walked two blocks for pizza and beer, came back and stretched out on one of the narrow bunks in the bow and set my wrist alarm for five-thirty.

  Fifteen

  On Thursday morning at six-thirty I was making long slow lazy eights way out in the bay outside the sunlit structures of Sailfish Lagoon. By ten o’clock I gave up and dawdled back to the marina. The same little slip was still available, and there was a marine supplies store close at hand, so I bought various medicines and unguents, salves and brighteners for the little doll, and spent the rest of daylight improving her outward appearance, quitting at nightfall with sore arms and an easier conscience. About all that would remain to do would be to order a new custom tarp cover, and have her hauled for a bottom job.

  On Friday I was on station at six, making my eights in the sunrise, binoculars handy. At twenty past six a triangular sail and a small jib went up in among a small forest of sticks, and soon a catamaran came out into the lagoon, heading for the bay. The sail was green and white. The figure aboard had on a dark red jogging suit and a white knit cap. I decided that it was not Arturo, but then when he came closer and I had him in good focus, I saw that it was. I abandoned my station and went off down the bay, heading south at a goodly pace, but keeping watch on Jornalero.

  The morning breeze had freshened, and he began to zip right along. When he was far enough from his base, I swung around and came back at high speed and got between him and the lagoon. Apparently he did not notice me, or at least he did not notice the point of the maneuver. When I turned and came back out toward him, more slowly, he was moving well. He got on a long reach, and pulled his sail to the angle where one pontoon lifted out of the water, with Jornalero leaning far back for balance, hissing along at perhaps twenty to twenty-five miles an hour. It began to look trickier than I had expected.

  I pushed both throttles and came up on the windward side of him. He jerked his head around and stared at me in astonishment and waved me off. The cat turned into the wind and the pontoon dropped back into the water. The empty sail flapped. I yelled over to him. “It’s me! McGee! Got to talk to you.”

  “No!” he yelled, and came about and started off on another reach, not as productive a one, but one that would take him back into the lagoon. I caught up and moved in front of him so that he had to shear away. I bumped into a pontoon and nearly knocked him overboard. A moment later I had snagged a halyard with my boat hook. He was one very angry s
ailor.

  “I’ve got nothing to say to you!”

  “I don’t want you to talk, Mr. Jornalero. I want you to listen. Okay? Come aboard. I’ll take that thing in tow.”

  He was a sensible man. It took him half a minute to realize he had very little choice. We were well out from shore. I gave him a hand. He stepped on the gunwale and hopped down to the deck lightly and handily.

  He sat on the engine hatch and said, “So talk.”

  I moved out to a broader section of the bay, towing the cat, and then I killed the engines in the Muñequita. There was lots of silence to talk into. The sail flapped idly on the cat.

  “What I am going to say to you doesn’t mean anything and won’t mean anything unless you arrange to have somebody check it out. Do you know a wholesaler down in the Yucatan south of Cancún, down below Tulum? A man they call Brujo?”

  “I’m listening. You’re talking.”

  “Okay. I’ll assume you don’t, but I’ll assume that you can get in touch with some people who do know him or know about him and who can arrange to go see him about something. They are to ask him about a man who flew in from Florida in a light plane to the Tulum airstrip four times, and made buys from Brujo and flew the product back to a ranch strip. The surveillance was getting tighter, so that same man hired the kids who stole Billy Ingraham’s boat to come over and take it out by boat. He was there for the first buy, but sent them over by boat with the money for the second buy.”

  His expression had changed, lips pursed and twisted into contemptuous disbelief. The sun was high enough to have lost all the orange look of sunrise light, and the bay had changed from gunmetal to blue. Boat traffic was increasing. I had swiveled the pilot seat around to face him.

  “Something bothering you?”

  “You’re talking.”

  “They had worked out a way to bring it in by boat.”

  “The people who stop boats know every way there is.”

  “Now we’re both talking. Okay, a discussion is better than a monologue.”

  “McGee, there’s no point in talking to me about bringing in drugs. I don’t have anything to do with it.”

  “Not since you used to recruit mules in Colombia?”

  It jolted him. I could see his intent to deny, but he backed away from that. “Not many people know that, or remember that. I worked my way up … and out. I head up my own corporation. It’s a legitimate business all the way.”

  I smiled at him. “Want a beer, Arturo?”

  “Before breakfast? Why not?”

  I uncapped two from the cooler and handed him one. He took a long thirsty drink and wiped his mouth on the dark red sleeve.

  I said, “They’d figured out a new way of bringing it in by boat.” I told him about the eye bolt in the keel, the length of cable and the adjustable fins on the aluminum case. He listened carefully.

  “So? A thing like that, it gets around,” he said. “Others try it. Someone gets caught, and then it will no longer work. Towing a dead shark with the kilos sewn inside doesn’t work anymore. Filling the hollow radio aerial with it doesn’t work anymore. Dropping it in shallow water with an electronic beeper fastened to it doesn’t work anymore.” He stopped abruptly, took another swallow of beer and said, “I hear these things, but they have nothing to do with me. What’s the point in what you are telling me?”

  “When the kids came back to make a buy on their own, they had to wait around for product. They hooked up with Gigi Reyes and took her along willingly when they left. When they left they stiffed El Brujo with seventy-five thousand of funny money.”

  “They were very lucky they didn’t die right there.”

  “They were too dumb to know how lucky they were. They were being tricky. When they got back to the Keys they set up a meet with the fellow who had hired them, the fellow who had given up flying across the Gulf and the Caribbean. He met them in the Keys. They had hidden the product and the good money, which they hadn’t used, and tried to pry a piece of the action out of their employer. They showed him how smart they were. They showed him the rest of the funny money.”

  “And so,” Jornalero said, faking a yawn, “he killed them as soon as he’d made them reveal the hiding place. They had cut off his source of supply. And he had no idea how stupid it was to kill the Reyes woman.”

  “Right. And that angry man was—in here we insert a drum roll for suspense—that man was … Ruffino Marino, Junior.”

  You often see people open their eyes wide, but it is rare to see the eyes bulge. It must have something to do with some sort of pressure in the brain. Arturo Jornalero’s eyes bulged. His mouth hung open. His big white hand collapsed the almost empty beer can. I watched him pull himself together, but it took time. Lots of thoughts were spinning through his mind.

  And then another thought brought him up short. “Wait a minute! Nobody in their right mind would give their true name when making a buy. The money talks.”

  “Mr. Jornalero, you wouldn’t get the people off my back. At first you thought you could and then you decided you couldn’t. I had a chance to find out what this whole scam was about. I sat and listened to Brujo say that it had been Ruffino Marino. How do I know how he knew the name? Maybe it was painted on the side of his little airplane. Maybe he gave it because he thought Brujo had seen his movie. Maybe he introduced himself because he is simply stupid. But that’s the man.”

  Slowly and reluctantly, he bought it. He shook his head. “That explains it.”

  “Explains what?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Is this going to get me off the hook? Hey!”

  He raised his head and frowned at me as if he had forgotten I was there. “What? Oh, I think you can probably forget about the whole situation. Yes.” He got up and got the line and pulled his cat close and climbed down into it. He freed my line and tossed it back aboard, pulled his sail taut, worked the rudder and began to head without haste toward the lagoon. He didn’t turn or wave. I was out of sight and out of mind. He had a lot of other things to think about.

  The breeze was from the mainland. The sea was flat. I took the Muñequita outside and ran north up the coast at close to forty knots, promising myself as I have so many times before that the only sane way to get from Lauderdale to Miami and back is by water, and I would never drive again.

  On that Friday afternoon I made my peace with Meyer and related all the action up to date, leaving out any mention of Millis. She was not a pertinent factor. He is a good listener. The questions were infrequent. We talked aboard the Flush. While we talked, we worked on a jug of wine, a Gallo red. Meyer wore a white turtleneck and his cold-weather overalls. He looked more dockhand than economist.

  When the tale had been told, Meyer sighed, got up and went over and looked at my tapes, and selected one of his favorites, a CBS release, Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano, with Jean-Pierre Rampal on flute, Claude Bolling on piano, Marcel Sabiani on drums and Max Hédiguer on string bass. Meyer likes the next-to-the-last number on side two called “Versatile,” where Rampal plays a bass flute. Meyer says you can hardly ever get to hear a bass flute solo anymore.

  He slotted the tape, turned on the rig, adjusted the volume. Then he fiddled with the equalizer. He likes more treble emphasis than I do. I think he is beginning to lose the higher registers. They’re the ones which go first.

  He sipped wine and listened to the music with his eyes closed, legs outstretched, ankles crossed. A potato-nose Buddha in meditation, totally at ease and complete within his hairy carapace. He listened all the way through the tape, and got up slowly and turned it off just as “Versatile” ended. He doesn’t care for the last number. Fidgety, he calls it. It is titled “Veloce.”

  “It could work,” he said.

  “What?”

  “The families of the so-called Mafia are no longer rooted in the Sicilian tradition, where even though they were in dirty businesses, there was a sense of unity and honor and loyalty within the group. They aren’t families anym
ore. They have taken in too many outsiders. They’ve mongrelized the group with everything from Swenson to Pokulsnik to Moran. Honest Italian-Americans no longer have to resent the press coverage of their Sicilian brethren. But even back in the olden times, it never resembled the sentimental idiocy of The Godfather. These groups of gangsters, their only loyalty is to money. They’ve joined forces with the Latins and the rednecks because without contention and with control of the marketplace, the money is better. On the other hand, the Latins still have the sense of family and duty and honor that the Mafia had fifty years ago. The money is almost everything, but not quite. So I think Browder is right. This will cause a split. The way they are interlinked, too many people know too much. So it will tend to get bloody. Each side can turn loose the enforcers they’ve been using in solving normal business problems. Send them after bigger game. We can sit in the stands and cheer.”

  “Maybe these people have gotten soft,” I said, “but if it gets bloody, they’ll bring in out-of-town talent.”

  Meyer nodded. “Roofing contractors from Toledo.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s what they used to call button men. Roofing workers they call them now.”