John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 01 - The Deep Blue Good-By

by The Deep Blue Good-By(L

  These are the new people, and we are making no place for them. We hold the dream in front of them like a carrot, and finally say sorry you can't have any. And the schools where we teach them non-survival are gloriously architectured. They will never live in places so fine, unless they contract something incurable.

  I went north of the mainland route, past an endless wink and sputter of neon, through the perpetual leaf-fall and forest floor of asphalt, cellophane, candy wrappers, Kleenex, filter tips, ticket halves, Pliofilm and latex. one of Junior Allen's women lay wounded and the other lay drunk, and I was looking for a third.

  The Citrus Inn was an old place, a threestory cube of cracked and patched Moorish masonry, vintage 1925, with three entrances, three sets of staircases, three stacks of small apartments. It was on a short, dead-end street in a commercial area. it was across the street from a large truck depot, and bracketed on one side by a shoestring marina and on the other by a BEER-BAIT-BOATS operation which had a tavern specializing in fried fish sandwiches. There was a narrow canal behind the three structures, sea-walled, stagnant.

  The Citrus Inn had its own eroding dock, parallel to the sea wall. I had parked in front.

  I walked around the unlighted side of the Citrus Inn. I stopped abruptly and moved off into deeper shadows. There were two darkened old hulks tied up to the Citrus Inn dock. The third craft was lighted inside, and a weak dock light shone against the starboard side of it and into the cockpit. it shone on the life ring. The Play Pen. There were several of them in the cockpit.

  I couldn't see them distinctly. They had music going, the hesitating rhythms of Bossa Nova. A girl moved to it. Another girl laughed in a slurred sour way. A man said, in a penetrating voice, 'Dads, we are just about now out of beer and that is a hell of a note, Dads. Somebody has got to trek way the hell to Barney's. You going to do us like this in the islands, Dads?

  You going to let us run out of the necessities of life once we get over there?"

  Another man rumbled some kind of an answer, and a girl said something which the music obscured. In a few moments two of them came by me, heading for the tavern. I saw them distinctly when they clambered up onto the dock, a husky, sideburned boy with a dull fleshy face, and a leggy awkward girl in glasses.

  As they passed me the girl said, 'Shouldn't you buy it one time anyway, Pete?"

  "Shut up, Patty. it makes Dads happy to spring for it. Why spoil his fun?"

  I had my first look at Junior Allen. it wasn't much of a look. He was a shadowy bulk in the cockpit of the boat, a disembodied rumble of a voice. A single bark of laughter.

  When I got back to the Busted Flush, Lois was still out. I sat her up. She whined at me, her head heavy, her eyes closed. I got her up and took her over to the beach and walked her until she had no breath for complaining. She trudged along, dutiful as a naughty child. I walked her without mercy, back and forth, until her head was clear, and then we sat on a public bench to give her time to catch her breath.

  "I've got a ghastly headache,' she said in a humble voice.

  "You earned it."

  "I'm sorry, Trav. Really. Seeing him...

  scared me so."

  "Or gave you an excuse?"

  "Don't be hateful."

  "I just don't like to see you spoil what you're trying to do."

  "it won't happen again."

  "Do you mean that?"

  "I don't know. I don't want it to happen ii. But I keep thinking... he could come walking along this beach right now."

  "Not tonight. He's busy."

  "Whatt"

  I told her how and where I had found him.

  With a sideburned boy named Pete, and three girls named Deeleen, Patty and Corry.

  "From the little I heard, he's taking all of them or some of them on a cruise to the Bahamas. They think they're working him. They think they've found a very soft touch. They call him Dads."

  "Can't those poor kids see what he is?"

  "Cathy didn't. You didn't."

  *What are you going to do?"

  "Go see if I can make a date tomorrow afternoon."

  "They might be gone."

  "I think he'll wait until he gets the new generator installed."

  "But what if he leaves with them in the morning?"

  "If that seems too dreadful to you, Lois, you can always get drunk."

  "You don't have to be so cruel."

  "You disappointed me."

  "I know. I'm sorry."

  "How's your head now?"

  "A little better, I think. Trav?"

  "Yes, honey."

  "Trav, I'm so hungry I could eat this bench."

  When I took a look at the outdoors Sunday morning I knew they weren't going anywhere.

  It was a sparkling day. The wind had swung around and it was coming out of the northeast, hard and steady. A wind like that builds too much of a chop out in the Stream for anything the size of Junior Allen's cruiser. It would be running seven or eight feet out there, and very dirty.

  I waited until noon and then drove up to the Citrus Inn. Apartment 2A was in the center section on the second floor. I wore a courting costume, summer version. T shirt, khaki slacks, baseball cap, straw shoes, an eager smile, and a bottle of good bourbon in a brown paper bag. I rapped on the scarred and ornate old wooden door, and rapped again, and a girl-voice yelled in an exasperated tone,.Just a minute!"

  The latch rattled. The door opened an inch and a half, and I saw a tousle of dark hair and a segment of tan face and a cold green unfriendly eye. 'Whaddya want?"

  "I'm looking for Deeleen."

  "She's not here."

  "Are you Corry?"

  "Who the hell are you?"

  "A friend of a friend."

  "Like who?"

  "Marianne, works at Charlie Char-Broil."

  "That silly bitch hasn't got any friends." Had I done any pleading or begging, she would have slammed the door. So I stood easy, mildly smiling. it's a relaxed area. There is a code for all the transients. If you are presentable, unhurried, vaguely indifferent, it is a challenge. I was having better luck with this than I expected, up to this point. I wanted it to continue. if you push against hostility and suspicion, you merely increase it. in a few moments I saw a little less animosity.

  "What's with this Marianne and you looking for Deeleen? I don't get it."

  "I don't want to confuse you, Corry."

  "There's some facts of life I should know?"

  "I used to see Deeleen around there and never got to know her, and then she left and I was wondering about her, if she'd left town, and I asked around and Marianne said maybe she was still here. So this was an empty day, and I had this jug, so I thought I would come see. But if she's as friendly as you are, I guess it wasn't much of an idea."

  She examined me for at least twenty silent seconds. "Stick around a minute,' she said, and closed the door. It was ten minutes before she came out. She had stiffened her dark hair somehow until it looked like a Japanese wig.

  She wore a swim suit and an open cabana coat. The swim suit was a black and white sheath, the black faded and the white slightly grubby. Though flawed by a bulldog jaw and a little too much meat across the hips, she was reasonably presentable. She closed the door and smiled up at me and said, 'You're practically a giant, huh? You got a name?"

  "Trav."

  "There's a kid in the apartment sleeping it off. She was whoopsing half the night from beer. Come on, I'll show you something."

  I followed her down the short corridor to a back window overlooking the dock. A girl in a very brief bikini lay on a pad on the cabin roof of the Play Pm. I looked down at her over Corry's shoulder.

  She looked up at me quizzically. 'I don't blame you at all to come looking, she's built so cute, huh?"

  "Tasty."

  "But if she's absolutely the only idea you came up here with, honey, you can save your NEEL self the trouble. She's all set up with the guy owns the boat."

  "It's a lot of boat. Whose is it
?"

  "An old guy named Allen. We call him Dads.

  We're going to go far and wide on that boat, man. We're going to the Bahamas on that boat. Would you believe it, he says it's hard to find people to go cruising with you? Isn't that a crazy problem. But the way things are, honey, she won't play. It could screw up the boat ride." She turned toward me from the window with just the slightest hint of the stylized posture of the model, the small mechanics of display, seeking approval. 'So?"

  She had invited inspection and I gave it, then said, 'You have to know when to change your ideas. You have to stay loose."

  "The thing is," she said, "I wouldn't want you should have any terrible disappointment. I mean on account of Dee."

  This was the small smoky game of appraisal and acceptance, offer and counter-offer. She had narrowed it down to that one response necessary to her esteem. So I responded as she wished. 'If that was you down there in the sun, Corry, and Dee up here with me, then I could feel disappointed."

  She smirked and beamed and preened, then linked my arm and took me down onto the dock. 'Hey!" she said. Deeleen sat up, owlish in huge black glasses. 'Where is everybody?" Corry asked as I helped her aboard.

  "Dads took off someplace in Pete's car. Pete went down to see Mitch about if he's got the motor back on the little boat yet. Patty okar." "She's still sacked out up there."

  Deeleen got up and came clambering slowly and cautiously down into the cockpit. At a thirty-foot distance she was a very attractive, ripe-bodied young girl. At close range the coarseness, and the sleaziness of the materials used in construction were all too evident. Her tanned hide had a coarse and grainy look. Her crinkle of putty-colored hair looked lifeless as a Dynel wig. The strictures of the bottom half of the bikini cut into the belly-softness of two many beers and shakes, hamburger rolls and french fries. The meal of her thighs had a sedentary looseness. Her throat and her ankles and the underside of her wrists were faintly shadowed with grime. There was a coppery stubble in her armpits, and a bristle of unshaven hair on her legs, cracked red enamel on her toenails. The breast band of the bikini was just enough askew to reveal a brown newmoon segment of the nipple of her right breast.

  "Deeleen, I want you should meet Trav,' Corry said.

  `HV Deeleen said, looking me over. She had a broad mouth and a pink stain of lipstick on one front tooth. She was obviously awaiting further identification.

  "That Marianne works at the Char-Broil, she told him one time we were out this way, and he came around. I was telling him about going on the cruise with Dads." it was very casual, but totally explicit. He came looking for you, but I told him the score and he settled for me.

  Deeleen gave a little shrug of acceptance and slumped into a canvas chair, spraddled and hot. There was a little roll of fat around her waist. She hitched the bikini top up. High against the meat of the insides of her thighs a fringe of pubic hair escaped the scanty fabric which encased the plump and obvious pudendum. A few years ago she would have been breathtakingly ripe, and even now, in night light, with drinks and laughter, there would be all the illusions of freshness and youth and desirability. But in this cruelty of sunlight, in this, her twentieth year, she was a record of everything she had let them do to her. Too many trips to too many storerooms had worn the bloom away. The freshness had been romped out, in sweat and excess. The body reflects the casual abrasions of the spirit, so that now she could slump in her meaty indifference, as immunized to tenderness as a whore at a clinic.

  "What's with squirrel-face Marianne?" she asked indifferently.

  "Nothing new."

  Corry shed her cabana coat, put canvas cushions on the wide transom and stretched out. They had stopped surveying me. I had passed inspection.

  "Even with that wind it's almost too goddamn hot,' Corry said. "Anybody figured out what we're going to do?"

  "I'll wait'n see what Dads wants."

  Corry turned more toward Dee, closing me out of the conversation. 'Was it the way you figured?" she asked.

  Dee gave a flat, mirthless laugh. "Only more so.)

  'ArWbody want a drink?"

  They both stared at me as though startled to find I was still there. "Sure,' Deeleen said.

  "What is it?"

  "Bourbon."

  "okay,' Corry said.

  "But he locked it when he took off," Dee said.

  "You can't get down where the ice and glasses and stuff is. Corry, you want to bring stuff down from upstairs?"

  "It's after one,' Corry said. 'He can get some stuff from Barney, can't he?"

  "Ask to buy some of the big paper cups,' Dee told me. "And get a six-pack of Coke, huh?"

  Barney's service was slow, and he overcharged me for the cups, Coke and ice. By the time I returned to the Play Pen, the girls had shuffled me and dealt me. Corry informed me of their approval and of the choice that had been made. She did it by rubbing the back of my neck while I fixed her drink. We moved back under the overhang, out of the direct weight of the sun. With the breeze, it was comfortable. As they began to get a little high, they included me more naturally in their conversation. We talked about the cruise. Pete arrived.

  He had a dead handshake, like a canvas glove full of hot sand. Corry gave him a key to ZA and he went up to see how Patty was. There was discussion about whether she would go on the cruise. She would have to lie to her folks.

  Suddenly Junior Allen swung aboard, leaped, landed lightly. He was immaculate in white sport shirt, white slacks, pale blue yachting cap. I guessed he was nearing forty. I had not been prepared for him to look so powerful and so fit. He was broad, with shoulders so packed and corded with muscle they gave him a slightly simian posture, the impression enhanced by the extra-long weight and heft of brown tattooed arms, and the short legs, slightly bowed. He had a brown, seamed, knotty face, broad, smiling broadly, the smile squinching the small blue eyes. It was a friendly grin. It was a likable grin. It did not change in any way as he looked at me.

  "Hello, kids,' he said. His voice was a brassy rumble. He rumpled Dee's lifeless hair with a big brown paw. 'Who we got aboard, little sweetheart?"

  She'was transformed. She was elfin, lisping, adoring, his ripe, dumpy little child. 'This is Trav, darling. He's with Corry. Trav, this is Dads Allen. He's the one owns this boat. Hasn't it got a cute name?"

  "It's a very cute name," I said.

  He was quick. He caught my hand in exactly the way I didn't want him to catch it, and watched my mouth as he ground my knuckle bones.

  "Glad you like it," he said. "Welcome aboard."

  He took his keys out and unlocked the hatchway to the cabins. He pulled Dee to her feet, slapped her bare rump and said, "Little sweetheart, you go bring up some decent glasses and the vodka."

  Little sweetheart snickered and arched and went below dutifully. Junior Allen sat where she had been, and patted Corry's bare knee and said, "What's your line of work, Trav?"

  "Whatever I happen to find. A little charter boat work in season. Take boats north and south for the winter folks. Fry cook. Half-ass marine mechanic. You name it."

  After little sweetheart brought his bottle and the glasses, he fixed himself a drink. He beamed at me. 'These kids tell you about the trip? I'm going to take four of 'em over and show them the islands. Hell I've got the boat, the time and the money. it's the least I can do."

  Had I not known the history, I would have readil bought the image he was projecting.

  Fatuous, expansive idiot, hooked by the tired flesh of little sweetheart, taking her and three of her friends on the romantic tropic tour.

  "Passenger list still open?" I asked, smiling back.

  That changed his eyes but not his grin. 'If Pete and I sleep in the two bunks forward, that leaves the main cabin for the gals. I can sleep six, but they got to be very good close friends!

  He roared with laughter. 'Sorry we can't sign you on, buddy."

  "I get to be the fifth wheel,' Corry said bitterly.

  "How so, girl?"

&nb
sp; She stared coldly at him. 'What's so complicated, Dads. You and Dee, Pete and Patty. And good old Corry. Hell, sign him on. I'll need somebody to talk to. Maybe you'll need somebody to run your boat."

  "I never need any help with a boat," he said, smiling. "Or anything else, little sweetheart."