I had that fractional part of consciousness left which gave me a remote and unimportant view of reality. The world was a television set at the other end of a dark auditorium, with blurred sound and a fringe area picture.
Somewhere the happy smiler leaned against the rail and sucked air for a time. I couldn't have fluttered an eyelid if somebody had set me on fire. He began cleaning up the cockpit.
He hummed to himself. I recognized the tune.
"Love Is a Many Splendored Thing." William Holden and Jennifer Jones. I remembered her going into the shallows of that bay in Hong Kong in that white swim suit. But I couldn't keep my mind on her. Every time Dads got in range of me, he kicked. In time to the music.
Then he kicked me in the head. it faded that distant television set right out, right down to a little white dot and then that was gone too....
... The little set came back to life. There was vibration. Marine rumble. Sound of the wake.
Boat idling along. And a thin and hopeless little female voice nearby saying, 'Oh, don't. Oh, don't any more. Oh, please don't any more please."
I was folded into a corner of the stern of the cockpit. I had to puzzle that voice out. Slowly.
Dear little Patty. But she wasn't supposed to be around. I'd written her out of the script. And Junior went, 'Ho, ho, ho." Like a jolly Santa.
"You are a cute little ole button,' he said.
"You're a tasty bit."
I picked one eye and pumped it open. Right eye. It was like jacking up a truck. in the night radiance, Junior Allen was ho-ho-hoing Miss Patricia Devlan. He was crouched at her like a bear, and he had her butted back against the transom, both her thin wrists held behind her in one hand, and his other hand up under her skirt, lifting her onto tiptoe. They were close enough to fall on me.
Suddenly he turned and stared forward and grunted, released her and went up toward the wheel. A course correction, reset the automatic pilot, came back to the fun. But I did not want anyone ho-ho-hoing Miss DevIan. She was hunched over, sobbing. I came up with blinding speed-like one of those trick clothes drying racks being unfolded by a sleepy drunk.
I was forty feet tall and one inch wide, with a head fashioned of stale gas. As Junior roared, I stooped one dead arm out and around the girl's waist, pulled her toward me and rocked right over backward with her, over the rail and down into the black bay water, tucking in all elbows and knees, feeling the wrench of the water, waiting to see how a prop would feel chopping meat.
We popped up in the turbulence, and I saw the running lights receding at a comforting pace. I looked around at shore lights, orienting myself. We were about one mile south of the kick in the head, in a place where the bay was wide, but the channel was fairly narrow. She tilted her pale child-face back, her hair pasted seal black to her head, and made a waffling sound of total hysteria. The boat stopped bubbling along and roared into a turn. I clopped Miss Devian across the chops and shoved her in the best direction and yelled, 'Swim, baby"
She came out of it. She swam very well indeed. She pulled ahead of me. I felt as if I were swimming with four broken arms. And with each breath I could convince myself he was still kicking me in the stomach. We had a good angle of escape. We had to go fifty feet to get past the submerged spoil banks from the channel dredging. He had to come back about a hundred and fifty yards. I was hoping I could sucker him into jamming it aground. But I heard him throttle down sharply, then roar the engines again as he put it into reverse to sit dead in the water.
"Keep going,' I yelled at her. 'Angle a little left."
The spotlight hit us. She stopped swimming.
I took two big strokes and reached her and bore her under. Pistols make a silly spatting sound over open water. And slugs hitting near you make a strange sound. Tzzeee-unk.
Tzzeee-unk. I tried to kick us along and she got the idea. The underwater breast stroke felt as if it pulled my ribs free of my breastbone. I lost her. I grabbed some air and went down again and kept churning along. I peered up and saw no radiance, and came up and looked back. He was in a big curve, and he straightened out and went ramming south toward Lauderdale.
"Patty?" I yelled.
"H-here I am," she said, about ten feet behind me. She was standing in waist-deep water. I went to her and felt the lumpy edges of an oyster bar underfoot.
"He '... He... He was going to "But he didn't."
"He... He... He was going to 'He's gone. Pull yourself together."
I put an arm around her. She leaned her face against my chest and said, "Haw! Oh God.
Haw!"
"Come on, baby."
"I'm... I'm all right. He took my glasses off and threw them overboard. He said I'd never need them again. I c-can't hardly see without them."
"He's gone, Patty. And he's got his little chum with him, and they deserve each other. Get yourself collected, and then we'll swim to shore." Behind her, two hundred yards away, was the bright shore, loud with neon in the night. It made pink and green and blue highlights on her hair. I let her go. Her blouse was pasted to her peach-sized breasts. Except for the breasts, she looked about twelve. With them, she looked fourteen.
"How did you get into the act?" I asked her.
"I phoned your mother and told her the damn fool thing you were planning to do."
"That was you? I... I went out my bedroom window. I didn't want to... miss the fun."
"He's a real fun fellow, old Dads is."
"Don't, please. He said I was the one he was really after. I went to the boat and everything was... so strange. You were lying there so still and bloody I thought you were dead. He told me to go below and wake Dee up. I tried, and I couldn't. I wanted to go home then. He said we were going to have a nice cruise, not to worry. He said you'd tried to rob him. He said he was going to turn you over to the police. He said you were just knocked out. He said that before he turned you in, he wanted to get your accomplice too. He told me to stay aboard and watch you, and give a yell if you woke up. He said he'd be hiding close by. I didn't like it, but I stayed there like he said. I was thinking about Pete and that girl, and I just didn't care what I did. Then a woman came. A tall pretty woman.
She stood on the dock and she said in a loud voice, 'What have you people done to him?
What have you done to Travis McGee?" She couldn't see you from there."
"Dear Godl She was waiting for me in my car. She should have run when she knew something had gone wrong."
"He came out of nowhere and swooped her right up and jumped aboard with her. She started to scream and then she saw you and stopped. He let go of her and she just stood there, staring at you. While she wasn't moving... he... he hit her. With his fist. It was such a terrible blow it made me sick to my stomach.
She fell like a rag doll and he picked her up and put her in a bunk. I got off. But he caught me and brought me back. He threw the lines off and started up. When he got out of that little canal he went real fast out to the main channel and real fast for a little while south down the channel, then he slowed it down and fixed it to steer itself and came back and threw my glasses away and started... doing things to me. I guess... I could have jumped overboard. But I couldn't think of anything... and then you
"Come on! Can you make it now? Come on, girl!"
We swam side by side. It all seemed so damned slow. I headed for the brightest clustering of lights. We ended up in the shells and shallows at the base of a five-foot sea wall. I got the top of it and wormed my way over it, reached down and got her wrists and yanked her up. She stumbled and fell into the damp night grass at the base of a coconut palm. I picked her up and herded her along with me, our rubber shoes squelching, breaths wheezing, strides unsteady. I had to get to a phone.
My face felt like a multiple fracture. I steered us around a rock garden before we fell into it.
It was a motel complex, and for reasons which defy the imagination it was named The Bearpath. They were doing a nice little summer business. The dance instructors were BossaNovain
g a clutch of tourists, all of whom looked as if they did each other's hair for a living. Bidding was vicious in the cardroom. We came churning in, dripping and battered and winded.
Dapper little fellows came running toward us, wringing their hands, making shrill little cries of consternation.
"Phone!" I demanded.
"But you can't come in here like this I grabbed the nearest handful of silk blazer and lifted it onto its tippy toes, and he pointed a rigid arm at a salmon phone on a baby blue counter. When I asked the switchboard girl to get me the County Sheriff's office, she asked in a voice wet with acid and post-nasal drip if I was a guest of the hotel. I told her that if she delayed the call one more second, I would start throwing their guests through their window walls, as a gesture of impatience. Patty stood docile beside me, chin down, shoulders rounded, and her little rump tucked humbly under.
I got a deputy who was so bright and so quick it helped me pull myself together. I was aware of all the silence behind me, the stilled dancers, the frozen card games, the fellows in pastel silk. I described the boat. I said it had left the Citrus Inn maybe forty minutes ago, and was headed south, A. A. Allen, Junior, possibly psycho, in command. Young girl aboard, drugged and unconscious. Deeleen. Last name unknown. And a Mrs. Lois Atkinson, taken aboard against her will, and slugged. May plan to head out from Lauderdale to the Bahamas.
"What's your name and where are you calling from?"
"The Bearpath Motel. I have a girl who needs attention, and needs to be taken home.
A Miss Devlan..."
"We have an alert on a Patricia Devian, eighteen, dark hair, slender build...."
"The same. in her case it was attempted kidnapping and attempted assault. You can pick her up here."
"What's your name?"
I hung up and gave a brief glance at the forty or fifty pairs of bulging eyeballs, and turned and found a way out. I went through some hedges and a flower bed and a parking lot. I had a vivid little silvery grinding in my chest with each breath. I headed toward commercial lights and oriented myself. Better than a mile back to Miss Agnes. Scout pace, they call it. Run fifty steps, walk fifty. The car was there. No key. But the spare was up under the dash in a little magnetic box.
I headed her for home. I heard myself sob.
It was like a big hiccup. A sad brave wonderful gal who had trusted me. She'd trusted me.
She'd trusted reliable old McGee. They had to stop trusting me. Damn them for trusting me.
I blinked and drove and cursed McGee.
ADRY shirt and pants made no remarkable improvement in my appearance. I trudged to the huge neighboring cruiser where my joyous friend, the Alabama Tiger, operates the world's only permanent floating house party. He had some hundred proof for immediate medication, asked me who had dragged me down a flight of stairs by the heels, and offered me the temporary loan of my choice among several eager amateur nurses. But I told him I would rather borrow the Rut Cry. He didn't ask why.
He told me to take it. He likes to get up and fly.
The Rut Cry is twenty-one feet of white water hull with big tanks and two big Mercs astern.
It was moored alongside, gassed and ready. A chattering flock of the Tiger's girls helped me strip the weather canvas off it, and handled the lines and shoved me off, the fast motors burbling; then they stood and waved me their musical good-hys. I belted myself down into the foam rubber seat, found the switch for the running lights, spun the boat and took it out and down, under the bridge, past the Navy and on out into the Atlantic. Once clear of the channel chop, I figured a rough heading for Bimini and let it go. At forty it began leaping clear, banging my teeth, collapsing my spine, cavitating, slamming, roaring. It was punishment for past sins, sticking knives in every bruise. Once I put a bow corner under and came too close to tripping it over. I pulled it back down to thirty. When I was well clear of any possible traffic, I cut the running lights.
Southeast wind. No chop in the Stream. Big long ones I could take on the quarter. I estimated his hull would give him a cruising speed of fifteen tops. I could run in one hour what he could run in two. So give him a twohour head start, right at the sea buoy. No.
Make it an hour and a half from that point.
And I had cleared it at nine-fifteen. So at nine-fifteen I was twenty-two miles behind him.
Forty-five minutes. Give him another ten miles by the time I got to that point. Twenty minutes more. By rough reckoning, if all the guesses were right, I could run up on him by tenthirty.
111R_
So I ran until ten-thirty, then cut to dead slow and headed directly into the long shallows swells. I undid the two straps and stood up, my hand braced on the top of the wheel.
Each time I was at the crest of a wave, I tried to sweep one segment of the horizon. Moonlight silvered the spill of water. I was too far off to pick up the Cat Cay light. My heart jumped when I saw lights east and north of my position, but after three good looks at them, I knew it was a southbound freighter staying clear of the Stream. I stared until I began to see things that weren't there.
I sat down again and leaned my forehead against the top of the wheel. My tongue found an unfamiliar place where a corner of a tooth was gone. The valiant slob. Goof McGee. This was like trying to fill a straight with a threecard draw. He could run without lights too. He was too canny to head this way. He had enough range for Cuba. Or he knew a nice little corner he could tuck it into, down near Candle Key.
The irony of the stars looked down at my and stand play and dwindled me. One man grin one small boat in the vast night. in my despair I let the boat swing and a small wave broke and slapped and sprayed my face. Tears and sea water taste much the same.
The authorities wouldn't stoop to the idiocy of a night search. They would wait for dawn and bring the choppers out, along with some playmates from the C.A.P. And some of the re serve boys needing flight time.
Suddenly the silver was gone. I looked up and saw a haloed thunderhead obscuring the moon. There was lightning under it, low and blue against the sea. So I began my run back, taking it slow, taking the bad motion of the sea on the stern quarter, climbing the long slow hills and then scooting down the other side. I looked toward the storm. I could outrun it by giving myself a beating. I had a rough heading home. It didn't have to be on the nose. it's a big coast. Hardly anyone ever misses it. When you come in at night you pick out the huge pink haze of Miami and then adjust your course accordingly.
The lightning was almost continuous. And as I looked toward it, I picked up something out of the corner of my eye. Some sort of blob between me and the lightning. I thought I had imagined it, and then I saw it again. I spun and headed toward it. It was gone and then I picked it up again. No lights. Just an outline against lightning in the darkening night. I soon had it again, larger, too big to miss. I made a big swing to come up astern. The next flash of lightning was close and bright, bright enough OEM_
to give me the after-image of the pale cruiser on the black sea.
The Play Pen, slower than I thought, way behind the estimated schedule, and picked up by a freak light and vision.
I hung back off his stern quarter and adjusted my speed to his. I lay about two hundred yards off. He was between me and the storm. There was little chance he would pick me up unless he happened to be looking in that direction when the next bright flash occurred. He was doing ten knots, possibly to conserve fuel, and according to my compass, he was on a heading that would bring him in well south of Bimini. It seemed possible he might figure on getting inside, in on the Bahama Bank and dropping the hook, and then heading on for the Berry islands at first light.
Get his fuel at Frazier's Hog Cay, a good reach for him, but possible.
it made a nice problem. I couldn't run up on him without him hearing the snarl of the Mercs. Shoved into my belt was the little Czech automatic I had picked up when I had changed clothes. It would fire every time, with a little bit more accuracy than a garden hose.
And at the m
oment of trying to get aboard, I would be very vulnerable.
There was a click of blinding lightning, an ozone stink, a hard slam of thunder; I heard the hiss of the rain coming, and suddenly it moved across him and he was gone. It came drenching down on me, and I turned toward him, giving it a little more speed, straining to see him. Suddenly the stern loomed up in the rain. I spun the wheel and reversed both motors and narrowly avoided slamming into him. I could ask for no better cover than the rain, than the sound and the blinding screen of it. He moved on, and I hurried after him, risked leaving the wheel and scrambled forward and made it fast to the bow cleat. I hurried back and came back on course, and held the other end of the line in my teeth. He was pulling a big mound of water behind him, but I felt that if I could slide past that, there was relatively flat water alongside of him. The rain felt as solid as hail, and it was surprisingly cold. Squinting ahead, I made two false starts, and then ran it up just where I wanted it. I killed the motors, leaped and caught the rail.
John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 01 - The Deep Blue Good-By Page 17