Come on, white mist. Take another shot. Here is McGee.
But it had edged so far back I couldn't see it anymore out of the corners of my eyes. I got up without thinking of my arm. It slid off the table and flapped me on the leg. And I thought about Janine, and she had a slug in her skull, and the bump, bump, bump would be over. I picked up my left arm and turned it and looked at my watch. How had it gotten to be three in the afternoon?
Go find out. You have to find out sometime. So go take a look at her.
The throat was still knocking away like a good little engine. I tugged at her and got her off Freddy and straightened her out on the bed. I did not want to move her too much. But I did not want to take the chance of her waking up all of a sudden and finding herself right there side by side with what had been Freddy.
I got an old tarp and put it on the floor beside the bed, on his side, reached beyond him and got hold of the bloody sheet and yanked it out from under her, and tugged on it until it rolled him off and he fell onto the tarp with a lanky thudding, face-down. I left the sheet on him and flipped the ends and side of the tarp over him. I turned on the bright reading light and fingered her crusted hair apart and found where the bullet had grooved her skull in an area an inch and a half long and the same distance above her left ear. There didn't seem to be anything you could pull together or sew together. It had punched out a strip of scalp meat, hair and all, and had clotted over and stopped bleeding. I soaked gauze in antiseptic and patted the wound very delicately, then tied the pad in place with more gauze.
Then, in a moment of pure genius, I got a piece of sheeting and made a sling for myself, so my arm would stop swinging around and flapping at me. It was much better. I didn't want her to wake up and look in that tarp. I found the fire extinguisher in the corner where it had rolled. I wiped it off and put it back in the clips. I sat on the floor and put both feet against the tarp and shoved Freddy half under the bunk where he was less noticeable.
I went above decks. We were riding well at anchor. Sea calm. Skies clear. I went below and stripped and cleaned myself up. I wasn't bleeding through the gauze. Good sign. I put a robe on. The empty sleeve flapping was less troublesome than the empty arm.
I made two giant peanut butter sandwiches and yonked them down and washed them the rest of the way with a quart of cold milk. What every healthy American kid needs after being shot.
At four thirty, after some mental practice, I warmed up the set and got through to Miami Marine and put through a credit card call to Meyer aboard his boat. She told him she had a call for him from the motor vessel, the Busted Flush.
"Travis? Say, I see you must have talked her into it without too much trouble, huh? Over."
"It was spur of the moment, Meyer. Crazy wild kids taking off on a magic adventure. Over."
"Are you maybe a little smashed, old friend? Listen, I can't talk about the other thing, not with half this transmission open for anybody who wants to listen. Tell her things are going well. How about the next time you call me, make it from shore and I can tell you the news. Over."
"Will do. I don't know how long we'll cruise around. Maybe I can keep her out a couple of weeks. Over."
"It will be great for her, Travis. And it won't hurt you. Have some fun. Catch fish. Sing a little."
As soon as I signed off, the reaction began. Somehow you do what you have to do, and somehow the machinery accepts the abuse. But when you've forced your way through it, all the gears and wheels start to chitter and grind and wobble around on the pinions. I felt icy cold. I knew it was all sour. She would never come out of it. Something would be bleeding in her head and that would be the end of it. Or somebody had seen him coming aboard, or seen him taking the houseboat out. My arm would start to rot. The hook would pull out of loose sand and we'd drift aground.
I went back below and looked at her and went into the master stateroom and slipped out of the robe and into the giant bed and wished I wasn't too old to cry myself to sleep...
I heard her saying my name for a long time before
I let it wake me up. She sat on the edge of the bed, facing me. She wore a short beach robe and she had fashioned a turban affair out of a pale blue towel. It was night. The light was behind her.
"Trav? Trav?"
"Mmm. How's your head, Janine?"
"I'm all right. I'm perfectly all right. Trav, how badly are you hurt?" She had bared my shoulder and she was looking at the bandage.
"It's just a scratch."
"Please. How bad is it?"
"I don't think it's too bad."
"I want to look at it."
"Let me wake up. I didn't mean to sleep so long."
"Get waked up, then. I'll be right back."
She came back with a towel, a first-aid kit and a basin of hot water. I rolled onto my right side. She went to the other side of the bed, spread the towel and equipment out, and snipped the bandage off.
I heard her insuck of breath, and said, "That bad?"
"I... I think it looks worse than it is. I'll try not to hurt you."
She busied herself. She was very gentle. "Travis?"
"Yes, Jan."
"He was going to kill us both, wasn't he?"
"Maybe."
"I know he was. From the way he looked at me. After he... I thought when you came in and snipped me loose, it was him coming back."
"Did he give you a bad time?"
"Sort of. After he chained me up, he hit me on the head again. Very very lightly, and it was just enough so everything seemed to go far away and I couldn't move or speak or see. I wasn't awake or asleep. I could feel what he was doing. Just with his hands. Sort of... to see what a woman was like there. And when I could move, I grabbed his hands and pushed them away. And he looked at me and blushed and then sort of half smiled and shrugged and I knew he knew I wouldn't ever be able to tell anybody about whatever he decided to do to me. I knew he'd come back... but it was you. And then I was sure he'd killed you like he killed Tush and... I knew I could kill him. I knew he couldn't stop me. And so... I did."
"You didn't quite make it, honey. I took care of it."
"Don't try to be sweet and protective and all. I looked at him in there. I had to touch him and turn him over to make sure. I even felt it in my hands when it hit him, a kind of looseness, the way his head went. I'm not proud of it or full of joy or anything. But I can live with it.... There. I think that's better than the way it was, Travis."
"Thanks," I said and rolled onto my back. She took the basin and towel and gear away.
When she came back, she stood at the foot of the bed and said, "What do we do now?"
"I called Meyer while you were still out."
"And told him about this?"
"No. I said we might cruise around for quite a while."
"You did?"
"Until we're both healed up enough so people won't ask questions. If we go back, we make statements. Everybody will want to see how much front page space they can get, how many times they can get their pictures taken with us. What good will that do you or your kids?"
"No good at all."
"Or do Freddy's people?"
"They might as well think he's alive in the world, somewhere."
"And I couldn't take that kind of hot publicity, Jan. I can't start wearing a public face. It would put me out of business. I don't need a lot of official interest. There's a little bit now. All I can handle. So we deepsix him and say nothing. Not a word, Jan. Not ever, to anyone. Can you handle that?"
Her face was quiet, her eyes thoughtful. In the seanight there was the tangible presence of death aboard. A head-knocker whose luck turned very bad, who'd never make it to the Caicos, who'd had something rancid going on in the back of his mind, some warped thing all mixed up with darkness and helplessness and sexual assault. The sickness had begun to stir and move under stress, had begun to emerge, but his life had stopped before it had gone out of control.
She said, "What if you don't heal right? What if w
e have to find a doctor?"
"We have a story. We were potting at beer cans with a thirty-eight. The kick startled you. It slipped out of your hand, went off when it hit the deck."
"Does... anyone but us know he was aboard?"
"Not likely."
She nodded. "I'll be all right, Travis. I'll be fine." I got up and went on deck and discovered I had completely forgotten the anchor lights. We were well away from any course a small boat might take, but a darkened boat at night invites investigation. I put us back onto legal status. We were riding well. The night was soft, the stars slightly misted. Miami was a giant blow to the north.
I stayed topside a long time. When I went below, she was curled up on the yellow couch in the lounge, sound asleep. I looked down at her and hoped that she would have enough iron in her to help a one-armed man with some curiously ugly chores. She had dark patches under her eyes. I turned off the small dim lamp nearby and felt my way through dark and familiar spaces back to the master stateroom.
I didn't really know if she could last, if she could handle it, until the neat morning when I sat on the edge of the freshly made bed in the guest stateroom and watched her using the curved sailmaker's needle and the heavy thread, sewing Freddy into his sea shroud. She had cleaned and dressed my wound afresh. I had wired a spare anchor snugly to the deputy's ankles, and tucked his gun and cuffs and the black leather sap in beside him.
When she ran out of the hank of thread, and clipped it off and took a fresh end from the spool and moistened it in her lips before threading the needle again, she looked up at me for a moment. It was a flat, dark look, and it made me think of old stories of how warriors dreaded being taken alive and turned over to the women.
At the end of day she wrested the anchor free when I ran the Flush up to it, and brought it aboard. We ran outside, creaking and rocking in the swell. I put it on automatic pilot at just enough speed to hold it quartering into the sea, and together we clumsied him up and out onto the side deck. She held the book and tilted it to catch the light from where the sun had gone down, and she read the words we thought would be appropriate to the situation.
She laid the book down and with my one arm and her two, we lifted the stiffened body upright, and as she held it propped against the rail, I bent and grasped the tarp at the feet and lifted and toppled it into the sea. It sank at once. And then I took the wheel and came about and headed for the buoy that marks the pass back into Biscayne Bay.
Seventeen
ONCE SHE accepted the need to stay by ourselves, to heal in order to avoid questions, a strange new placidity came over her. She had long times of silence, and I could guess that now that she knew what had happened, and how it had happened, part of it was over and the part about finding an acceptance of Tush's death had begun.
She began to eat well and spend some of the sun hours basting and broiling herself to the deep tan her skin took readily, and she began sleeping long and deeply, gaining the weight that softened her bone-sharp face, that filled out the long concave line of the insides of her thighs, that made her fanny look a great deal less as if it had been slapped flat with a one by six.
I called Meyer from shoreside phones. I wore the arm out of the sling for longer periods each day, reslingfng it when the knitting muscle structures began to ache.
She phoned Connie when the trip with the kids was over, and Connie accepted the notion that a little more time cruising would do her good. She talked to each of the boys. They were fine. They missed her. She missed them.
Meyer eased out of the last of her holdings in Fletcher on the Wednesday, the last day of January, at a good price, and when we talked again the following Monday evening-I had phoned him from Islamorada-he said with undisguised glee that Fletcher had gotten up to forty-six dollars a share at noon, and the Exchange had suspended trading in it fifteen minutes later, pending a full investigation of a tip that the earnings reports had been misstated, that a syndicate of speculators had been boosting the price, and that the company officers had been quietly unloading all their own holdings at these false and inflated values. The word on the Street was that it might be another Westec case, and it was rumored that a Florida-based speculator named Gary Santo was deeply involved in the artificial runup of the price.
"If they ever approve it for listing again," Meyer said, "it will open at about six dollars, and even that is more than a realistic book value per share."
The next morning the Flush was tied up at the marina dock at Islamorada, and after breakfast I had Jan peel the final dressing off the wound. The entrance wound was a pink dime-sized dimple, vivid in the middle of the surrounding tan. She made careful inspection of the exit area, held the back of her hand against it to check for any inner heat of infection and said, "This last little piece of scab is going to come off any day now. If we could have had it sewn up, there wouldn't be so much scarring, Trav. It looks as if... somebody stabbed you with one of those wood rasp things."
"I got through the whole day without the sling yesterday. And I can hold that smallest sledge out at arm's length for fifteen seconds. And so I keep a shirt on till the scars bleach white and match the old ones."
"You would make a very low-grade hide," she said. "They might find three or four sections that would make nice little lampshades, but they'd have to throw the rest away."
"Just accident-prone, I guess. And you pass inspection now, lady. Keep it combed that way and you're fine."
"You see, I was aboard this funny houseboat and it got rough and I lurched and took this great gouge out of my scalp on some kind of sharp thing sticking out."
'We can head back so Meyer can help you count your money."
Late that afternoon she went below and came up with two cold uncapped bottles of Tuborg and sat close beside me and said, "A sort of an announcement, Travis McGee. There won't be another chance to talk, probably. I wish to announce that you are a dear, strange, ceremonious kind of guy, and I didn't like you very much at all before Tush died and didn't know why he liked you, and now I do, maybe."
"Tell me. Maybe I can use it."
"It made me jumpy to be alone with you, because the way I had you all figured out, you were going to comfort the little widow woman. Life goes on and all that. Let me bring you back to life, darling. A woman always knows when a man finds her physically attractive, and I am flattered that you so do."
"I so do."
"I expected some of the gooey rationalizations of
the chronic stud, including how Tush would approve, and besides it's so healthy. But you have been very stuffy and proper and dear. Thank you."
"You're welcome."
"Maybe I would have gone along with it, out of some kind of self-destructive impulse. I don't know. I don't know if I was a one-man gal. I sort of think so. Maybe that part of me-the privacy part will come alive again. Anyway, I'm glad you didn't give me a chance to make any choice. Physically I'm a lot better than I was. Better nerves. But I'm still half a person. And so damned lonely, and the world is so... flattened out." She reached up and kissed me under the ear. "So thanks for not trying to be God's gift to the bereaved, dear."
"You're welcome aboard anytime. You wear well." She smiled a bitter little twisty smile and, eyes wet, took my hand and clenched it tightly. So we were a couple of kids in an abandoned barn and the big storm was hammering down, and we held hands for comfort. Tush was her storm, and perhaps Puss was mine.
On another Wednesday, the day of the Valentine, Meyer came over at high noon and interrupted my project of cutting and laying some Nautilex that was a clever imitation of bleached teak on a portion of the afterdeck.
"So I am here and I have brought you a Valentine," said he.
"Sometimes, Meyer, when you act like Porky, you make me feel like Pogo."
"Read the Card."
I put down the knife I was cutting the vinyl with and thumbed his card open. Homemade. He had drawn a heart pierced by an arrow, with a dollar sign dangling from the end of the arrow. His
verse said, "Roses are red; violets are blue. Unadulterated, unselfish, unrewarded efforts in behalf of even the grieving widow of an old and true friend are not like you."
"It rhymes," he said.
Inside the folded card was his personal check made out to me for twenty-five thousand dollars.
"What the hell is this?"
"Such gratitude! It hurt me to see you lose your professional standing, McGee. Like you were going soft and sentimental. So, through my own account, I put us into Fletcher and rode it up nicely and took us out, and split the bonus right down the middle. It's short-term. It's a check. Pay your taxes. Live a little. It's a longer retirement this time. We can gather up a throng and go blundering around on this licentious craft and get the remorses for saying foolish things while in our cups. We had a salvage contract, idiot, and the fee is comparatively small but fair."
John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 09 - Pale Gray for Guilt Page 25