“It’s gone nice and quiet around here,” Cappy said.
“Mmmm gh mmm mm,” Ruffi said.
“I want to look around,” Cappy said. He went into the back of the house. The television was still on, the sound off. A woman who looked like an expensive hooker was apparently yelling bad things into the face of a man who looked like a hairdresser. They were both overdressed and standing in what could have been the bedroom of the departed Shah of Iran. So it was an afternoon soap, and I felt the hollowness of no lunch yet. My jaw creaked. I had sore bruises on both arms. My head ached.
“What about the TV?” Irina asked.
“Enjoy.”
She turned the sound up. Mother and daughter moved closer, watching and listening. Cappy came out of the back of the house carrying a tan leather duffel bag and a jar with a screw-top lid.
“These clothes will fit, and what I got here is maybe eleven or twelve ounces of prime white lady.”
“Leave me some!” Angie yelled. “You leave me some.”
Her mother stood up and Angie never saw the hard palm coming. It smacked her on the side of the face, spun her halfway around and dropped her onto her hands and knees. Angie scrambled to her feet and went bellering into her bedroom and slammed the door.
“Will she testify?” I asked Irina.
“Would that be a good idea?”
“I think so. He killed a couple of girls on a boat last year. Raped them and cut one’s throat and cracked the other one’s skull. I don’t think they’ll ever nail him for it. The only witness is dead. They can get him for this.”
“What charges?”
“Statutory rape. Corrupting the morals of a minor child.”
The woman nodded. “She’ll testify. By God, she’ll testify! He’s been here a week yesterday. I had to phone her in sick at school. He walked in on us like he owned the place.”
Cappy came in from outside. “McGee, I don’t think I’ll go back in with you for that other ten. On the same ratio when I pay off, you get fifteen. Wait a minute. You took five hundred back, so you’ll get … fourteen thousand two hundred fifty.”
“What are you going to do?”
“The big genius there with his mouth stuck together, he had the title and registration in the side pocket of that Mercedes out there. It shows no paper out on it. It’s got a little over four thousand miles on it, and give me a half hour I can sign his name better than he can. And I got a contact on Route 19 a little north of Clearwater. I can get thirty minimum for it in cash in ten minutes. I go back in with you, I’m taking an extra chance. I head west from here. How about you come out with me, Irina, and move that little junker of yours out of the way.”
He picked up the duffel bag, nodded to me and said, “See you around.”
“Hold it. You’re forgetting something.”
He snapped his fingers. The three of us went out. He led me away from Irina and said, “What you do, you go to the magazine stand in the lobby of the Contessa over on the Beach and you find a girl works there name of Alice. She’s got little half glasses. You tell her you want to see Lopez. She’ll say she doesn’t know any Lopez. You tell her the Capataz told you to ask her. Wait until there’s no tourists around. Okay? Try for fifty. What the hell. See you around. You got good moves, McGee.”
He put the top up on the Mercedes. I moved the Buick back out of the way. He gunned the white car a few times, then put it in gear and went rumbling over the hump bridge, turned west, waved, and was soon a high-pitched whine in the invisible distance.
I went back into the house with Irina. Ruffino had managed to work himself up into a sitting position, back against the wall, dark eyes glaring at us over the pursed mouth. She went to the ruins of the toppled cabinet and picked a small white bowl, unbroken, out of the shards of other treasured things. She put it on top of the new television set.
I asked her permission to use the phone, and looked up the number for the county sheriff. It had been a few years. I wondered if Wes was still there. A lot of them leave. The top slot is political, and the pressure seeps down through the ranks. When the communications clerk answered, I asked if Deputy Wesley Davenport still worked for the department.
“Yes, sir, Captain Davenport is here today. Is this a personal call?”
“Yes,” I lied. She gave me a different number to call.
“Cap’n Davenport,” he said.
“Wes, this is McGee. Travis McGee.”
“You kilt somebody again, pardner?”
“I’ve managed to hold back.”
“Builds character. What have you got?”
“Last time I talked to you those twin daughters of yours were pretty small. How are they doing and how old are they?”
“They are just fine little old gals. Going on eleven.”
“You know where the Casak house is?”
“Rings a little bell. Hang on. Sure. Hugo Casak, armed robbery. Put him away and he’s been out well over a year now. But he never reported in, so right now he’s on the list for violation of parole. He lived out there on that damn little lone-some swamp road that goes nowhere. Okay. I can find the house. So?”
“I’m calling from the house. I want to ask you to do things a certain way.”
“For old times’ sake, I suppose.”
“Congratulations on making captain.”
“Well, thanks heaps. What have you got?”
“I’ve got a guy here hiding from the Miami fireworks.”
“Looks to me like they all went nuts over there.”
“They did indeed. This one has a big coke habit. And he’s right here looking at me. Before you come out here, you stop off and buy a big bottle of nail-polish remover.”
“Of what!”
“I’ve got him glued together with Miracle Glue. Mouth, hands and legs. Second thought. Let’s try it another way. He can move his legs from the knees down, so maybe we better walk him to your car and you get him into a cell before you unglue him. He’s strong and quick. I outweigh him maybe fifty pounds but he nearly took me. He kicks.”
“Okay, champ. What am I arresting him for?”
“The only people here when he came in on them were Mrs. Casak and Angie, her eleven-year-old daughter. He’s been here over a week and he got the kid on coke and taught her to enjoy screwing.”
The silence was so long I finally said, “Wes?”
“Okay. I was just thinking it through.” His voice had grown heavy and tired. “Can I get statements?”
“Guaran-damn-teed, Wes.”
“But there’s more, isn’t there? Knowing you.”
“Remember the rape killings aboard the Lazidays down off Big Torch last October?”
“Surely do.”
“There were two of them did it. This is one of them. The other is in the foundation of a new condo. Nobody will ever make this one I got here for it. Never.”
“So?”
“Wes, I want him held as John Doe. Maybe his prints are on file. Send the wrong classification. Anything. Also, this little shit is very big on publicity. He loves his picture in the paper.”
“Will the mother and the girl talk it up? If they do, there’s nothing I can do on this end.”
“They won’t say a word. She’ll keep the kid out of school for a while longer.”
I looked over at Irina and she nodded agreement.
“Then okay, McGee. You got my provisional promise to bury the son of a bitch. But first I have to come check it out. You stay there?”
“Right here.”
By the time Wes arrived I felt better for having had two of Mrs. Casak’s oversized fried-egg sandwiches and a quart of milk.
Wes and I shook hands, surveying each other. He was heavier and he had less hair. He told me I was leaner and had less hair.
He had a bottle of nail-polish remover. He squatted heavily beside Ruffino and scrubbed the man’s mouth roughly with a rag he got from Mrs. Casak.
After Ruffi had run out of breath, Wes turned t
o me, face a mask of imitation surprise, and said, “You hear that? You ever hear a dirtier mouth? My, my! Right now I got me a tank full of weight lifters. They’re motorcycle queens down from Houston, tattooed all over butterflies and spring flowers. Guess I’ll put this John Doe in with them. They’ll take to those eyelashes.”
He went in and had a closed-door session with Angie. He came out looking sour and angry. After we got Ruffino Marino into the back seat of the county sedan, he took me over to the side and said, “I know an assistant state’s attorney that can take this on without making waves. Maybe he can work out a plea. He goes into state prison as a child molester, he won’t last through the first year. Too many doing time up there got kids of their own. There’s still something I don’t know. Right?”
“Wes, the people looking for him, I’m going to tell them where he is.”
“Look, I don’t want any wild men trying to bust him out of our store.”
“That’s not their style.”
“That name he was yelling, that’s his real name?”
“Except in the movies. In his one dud movie. Then it was Mark Hardin, Florida’s answer to Rocky one, two, three, four, five and so forth.”
“I’ll tell the weight lifters he’s a movie star.”
“You really going to put him in with them?”
He stared bleakly at me. “How much choice did that kid in there have? How much choice did the girls on the boat have? You always do fine up to a point, McGee, and then you get a little bit mushy at the edges.”
Twenty
On Friday, the first day of February, it took such a long time to get out of bed I decided Miami Beach could wait one more day. My worst knee kept threatening to give way. My right elbow was agony. There were big dark bruises on both arms and shoulders. I could not recall how I got the painful lump on the back of my head.
This was no morning for a shower. I lowered myself, inch by inch, into the imperial bathtub, into water as hot as I could stand it. I soaked there for a long time, and after drying off on the biggest towel I own, I took a pair of aspirin and dug into the Ace bandage box and found the one that works well on the knee, and used a strip bandage for the right elbow.
I checked the morning and found we had gone back to chill, so I put on an old sky-blue wool shirt, stretch denims, wool socks and the gray running shoes. I looked at myself in the mirror and said aloud, “Tell me the truth, old buddy. Are you getting too old for this kind of boyish shit? Have you lost a lot more than a half step getting to second?”
Self-delusion is one of the essentials of life. I told myself that my bruises and abrasions were not the result of a fading physique, but rather the result of a mental lapse. I had underestimated young Marino. And that gave him an edge he didn’t deserve. I wondered if he had enjoyed a restful night.
When I stepped out onto the fantail I found another pipe-cleaner cat on the mat looking up at me. With quick and unexpected anger, I stomped it flat. Then I sighed and picked it up, bent it back into shape, took it back in and stood it in formation on the shelf with the earlier arrivals.
I went to the hotel alone and for breakfast I had USA Today, double fresh orange juice, three eggs scrambled with cheese and onion, crisp bacon, home fries, whole-wheat toast and two pots of coffee. The exercise improved the right elbow.
When I went back aboard my home I went up onto the sun deck and came upon the seventh cat, a purple one, staring at me from the flat place atop the instrument panel. I sat in the pilot seat, the cool wind on my face, and looked at the fool thing. Somebody was going to elaborate trouble to have a tiny bit of fun. If they were sending a message, they had forgotten to include the code. Maybe somewhere in the world there was some other McGee who’d find the pipe-cleaner cats comprehensible and delicious and hilarious.
On Saturday morning when I approached my blue truck at nine to head for Miami, I found a brown pipe-cleaner cat on the windshield with one paw under the wiper so it could stare in at me. I put it in the ashtray.
At the Contessa, I browsed the newsstand paperbacks until the girl was free. She had half glasses, no makeup, straight mouse-colored hair.
“Sir?”
“I want to talk to Lopez.”
“Lopez? I don’t know any Lopez.”
“Aren’t you Alice?”
“Yes. Yes, my name is Alice.”
“The Capataz said to tell you I want to talk to Lopez.”
Her eyes changed. “Just a moment, sir.” She helped a new customer who’d come in, took his money for a racing form. She came back to me. “Go out to the pool bar and wait.”
“How long?”
“Just wait. That’s all I know.”
After an hour I went back to the newsstand and she told me to go back and keep on waiting. It was past noon when a man sat down beside me. He sighed as he climbed onto the padded stool. He was short and fat and he sounded as if he had emphysema. Each inhalation had a throaty little snore at the end of it. He wore a Palm Beach suit and a white straw hat. His nose and cheeks were tinted purple by tiny broken veins.
“What I got to tell you, friend, no choice in the matter. I got to tell you right now there’s absolutely no way Cappy can make a deal.”
“I think he knows that.”
“What he should do, he should get out of town.”
“That’s what he’s done.”
“He could stay like a year someplace and keep his head down, then put out some feelers. Stick his big toe in the water.”
“That’s the way he has it figured out.”
After a thoughtful silence the man swiveled his head on his quarter inch of heavy neck and stared at me. “Then what the fuck you want with me?”
“Before Cappy left he said you might want to make an offer for young Ruffi.”
“Shush!” he said. “Jesus Christ, hush your mouth.” He looked around. “Let’s move over to that farthest-away table.”
It was in the shade of tall, broad-leafed plantings—elephant ears, rubber plants, a juvenile banyan, a white iron table with a glass top, four iron chairs. In spite of the chill in the air, the pool people were warm and happy. The pool Cubans had laced the canvas wind shields in place. Executive types who had recently acquired a tan were parading around in a distinctive way. You can always pick them out. They have to hold their bellies in. To do this properly, they have to tense their muscles and square their shoulders. This makes them hold their arms out from their sides, slightly bent. They cannot swing the arms naturally, and so they walk slowly. If they were turkeys, the tail feathers would be spread. The young girls look beyond them and through them and never see them at all. Sad world.
Lopez put his drink down, took off his hat and wiped his brow with a dingy handkerchief. “With Cappy, people know he was a hired hand, all right? So when the blood cools down it can come back to live and let live. But young Marino, he went against everything. No class at all. Who are you?”
“McGee.”
He tilted his head. “Like they were trying to set you up for the Reyes girl?”
“Like that. Yes.”
“It was you found out Ruffi did it?”
“I didn’t find out. But I passed the news along.”
“And you started up a feud that got a hell of a lot of good men killed.”
“Instead of standing and saluting and letting them kill me like they killed an innocent friend of mine, Billy Ingraham.”
“That was sloppy and dumb, that Ingraham thing.”
“And all you people are good God-fearing, law-abiding businessmen.”
“You’ve got no call to get smart-ass, McGee.”
“I know that. I know that. I just want to sell him.”
“Alive or dead?”
“Alive.”
“Where?”
“Where he’ll stay for a while. One hundred thousand.”
“For that little punk kid?”
“For that little punk kid.”
“I can’t get approval for that kind
of money, even if I was sure you got him.”
“That kind of money wouldn’t half fill one of those cornflakes boxes that get shipped to Art Jornalero.”
He nodded slowly. “You get around pretty good.”
“Maybe I can fly to Lima and sell him down there.”
“Maybe you try to do that, they wouldn’t set up any kind of exchange that would be safe for you to make.”
“What are you offering?”
“Frankly, I think it might be closer to fifty than a hundred.”
“I’ve had a hundred worth of grief from this.”
“Look, what can I say? I’ll do my best.”
“How do you want to work it?”
“If we come up with a figure makes us both happy, we pick a third party everybody can trust.”
“Such as?”
We ran through several names before we came to one we could both agree on. Hillary Muldoon of Muldoon and Grimes, specialists in labor law. On Monday, the fourth, the agreed figure was sixty thousand. On Tuesday afternoon, the fifth, Lopez and I met with Muldoon, a narrow, stooped bald man with one eye that looked off to the left. The money was counted. I objected to his fee coming out of my end. We compromised. I would come up with half the fee, provided the reward money was granted. Fifty-seven thousand, net.
So I opened the envelope Wes had given me and handed them the full-face and profile mug shots and the Xerox copy of the arrest report, including the charges filed.
After they studied it, Lopez said, “Hillary, I don’t like this a damn. He’s in some damn little boondocks slam. This McGee doesn’t have him. The law does.”
“You understand I can’t know why you want him, Lopez, but I do understand that he is awaiting trial and as such he can be released on bail. He could be released in the custody of whoever makes bail. I would say that, in effect, Mr. McGee has lived up to his end of the bargain. Fifty-seven thousand to Mr. McGee.”
We shook hands and I left with the money and hastened to the nearest branch post office and sent it to myself by registered mail.
I got home to find, in the last light of day, an orange cat on the mat. And so, with a pattern roughly predictable, I made preparations for bed, cut all the lights, put on dark slacks and turtleneck, eased out the forward hatch, crept around the side deck and settled down in the deep shadows, my back against the bulkhead, a navy-blue blanket over me. I could see the mat in the angle of dock light, five feet away. Got nothing but an almost sleepless night. No cat. No intruder.
The Lonely Silver Rain Page 19