Bright Orange For The Shroud

“Trav!” Arthur said after about twelve minutes. I took him a spade. It was eighteen inches down, a super kingsize special bargain glass jar that had once held Yuban powdered coffee and now held three packets of curled new bills. The jar went into the car trunk, tucked back behind the spare. I moved to the border of his area. Six feet from the first find I struck something that felt metallic at about the same depth. Prince Albert tobacco can that had once held a pound and now held three more curled packets. Put it with the jar. Fill the holes. I checked my watch. We worked as fast as we could. I could not move well yet. Arthur was faster. We covered a continuously expanding area. When the total elapsed time was forty minutes, I said, “Knock it off.”

“But there could be…”

“And there might not be. And we want to get out with what we’ve got. Move!”

As planned, he sank a rod deep, and I taped a cable to the exposed stub. We put the other rod down ten feet away, ran cable from it back toward the cottage, and I wired the two ends into the impressive heavy duty receptacle they had picked up in a hardware store.

We drove out. Chook, eyes on the narrow road, said, “I knew the time was running out. You didn’t get anything, did you?”

“Not what we. expected. Just a token. Sixty thousand.”

She hauled the car back from the brink of a damp ditch. She stopped at the entrance. Arthur rolled the window down. “We’re all set, thanks,” he called. “We’re going to go out now and check with Project Control, officer. These things change very rapidly, depending on the news breaks. At least, if they do decide to use that location, it’s all set for them. I personally appreciate your cooperation.”

“Glad to help out, mister.”

“If there’s a change of plan, don’t worry about the gear we left there. It shouldn’t be in anyone’s way, and somebody will be through later on to pick it up.”

Out on the main road off the island, heading toward the Trail, Arthur began to giggle. And it became infectious. And soon we were all roaring and howling, with, for Chook and Arthur, a potential edge of hysteria in it. Gasping, we told Arthur Wilkinson he was superb. He was big media, through and through.

“Next let’s try a bank job,” Chook said. And we were off again.

In the interest of avoiding any unfortunate coincidence, we turned north on 952 before we reached Naples, then west on 846 to come out at Naples Park Beach eight miles north of the city.

Once aboard the Flush, and with the amount verified, and the cash locked into the safe up forward, I felt the nervous tension easing in my neck and shoulders. A good man with the right tools could probably peel that box open in an hour. But once upon a time I invited a qualified expert to see if he could locate the safe without ripping out any interior trim. After four hours of delving, rapping, tapping, measuring, he said there was no safe aboard and he damn well didn’t appreciate that kind of practical joke.

At quarter after five, the three of us sat, drink in hand, in the lounge. We were trying to sustain the mood of celebration, but it was dying fast, the jokes forced, the grins too transient.

“I suppose,” Arthur said, “that if you look at it one way, if what they did was legal enough, then we’ve stolen the money.”

“Hijacked is a better word,” I told him. “And if your marriage was legal, and if she’s dead, then the money is her estate.”

“And some of it is Stebber’s.”

“Which he has no interest in claiming.”

“For goodness sake, Arthur,” Chook said. “Don’t split hairs. Trav, how does it work out for Arthur? What will he have left?”

I got pencil and paper from the desk drawer. As I wrote, I explained the figures. “Sixty thousand less about nine hundred expenses is fifty-nine, one. From that we will deduct that fifty-one hundred and fifty you borrowed from friends.”

“But that isn’t fair to you!” he said.

“Shut up. Half the balance of fifty-three thousand nine fifty is… twenty-six thousand nine seventy-five to you Arthur. Or a little bit better than a ten percent recovery on what they took you for.”

“You are certainly in a lovely line of work,” Chookie said with a small dash of malice.

“What’s wrong with you, woman?” Arthur demanded with unexpected heat. “Without Travis I wouldn’t have gotten dime one back. What’s he supposed to do? Take a chance of getting killed for… for a per diem arrangement?”

“I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t mean it,” she said, looking startled.

And if we recovered nothing, then he’d get nothing. He’d be out what he’s spent.“

“I told you I’m sorry.”

“That’s what trips up thieves every time,” I said. “They start quarreling over the split. Arthur, why don’t you take your end of it, your lousy recovery and buy a lot and build a house.”

“Huh?”

“Get a construction loan. Get Chook to help on layout and decoration. Do every possible part of it you can manage by yourself. Put it up and sell it and build another.”

He looked at me in a startled way, and then with a growing enthusiasm. “Hey!” he said. “Hey now! You know, that might be just…”

“Gentlemen,” Chook said, “Don’t let me interrupt anyone’s career, but I think I would be a very much happier girl if we got the hell out of here. The weather report was good. We can run at night, can’t we? I don’t want to seem frail and foolish, but I would just feel better to be… out of touch.”

“Let’s humor the lady,” I said.

“To make me really happy, gentlemen, let’s make it a non-stop flight all the way home.”

“One stop at Marco,” I said. “To tell that kid where to pick up his Ratfink, and give him transportation money to get it.”

“And another stop,” Arthur said, “if nobody minds too much. I mean Sam and Leafy Dunning were very good to me. Too good for me to just write a letter and say everything is fine. And… they saw me when I was so whipped by everything… I’d like to have them see me… the way I should be. I want to see if Christine is getting along all right. And maybe see some of those men I worked with. I don’t know if they’d take it, but I’d like to give the Dunnings some of that money. They need a lot of things. Maybe just a thousand dollars. And…”

“And what, dear?” Chook asked.

“My carpenter tools are there. I - had to buy them out of my pay. I guess it isn’t even forty dollars worth, but I’d like to have them. I used them. And they might be good luck if I… try to build a house.”

Fifteen

ON THURSDAY at high noon, on the last and most beautiful day of May, we turned into the marked channel leading through the islands to Everglades City. Pavilion Key was south of us. I had checked the charts and decided we would do best staying with the official channel, entering the Barron River where it flows into Chokoloskee Bay, going a little way up the river to tie up at the big long Rod and Gun Club dock. I could have wiggled my way down Chokoloskee Bay to Chokoloskee Island, but it would have to have been high tide going and coming. And it was just as simple for Arthur to find some way to get across the causeway to Chokoloskee.

I stood at the topside controls, chugging the Flush along the channel between the Park islands. Down on the bow deck, Chook sat on the hatch wearing little red shorts and a sleeveless knit candy-stripe top. Arthur stood in an old threadbare pair of my khaki shorts, pointing out places to her, probably telling her of things that had happened when he had crewed for Sam Dunning on his charter boat. The slow diesel grind of the Flush obscured their words. I saw the animation on their faces, the shapes of laughter.

Arthur, though still too thin, was looking better. The months of labor in this area had built muscle tissue which malnourishment had reduced to stringiness. Now muscle was building smoothly again, rippling under the pink-tan hide of his back when he pointed. Chook had put him on isometrics, and I had come across him a few times, braced in a doorway like Samson trying to bring the temple down, trembling from head to foot, face contorted. It embarrassed him to be caught at it, but the results were showing-the results of that, and the limbering exercises she gave him, and the huge calorie intake she was forcing on him.

And then, after the straight shot across the bay, we came into the Barron River, into the smooth green-brown flow of it, with the old frame houses of the mainland shore off to port, clumps of cocoanut palm standing tall, skiffs tied handy. On the right, with its thousand feet of concrete dock, running along the river bank, was the Rod and Gun Club, first the long two-storied, citified, motel wing, then the high screened pool area that connected it to the old frame part, then the cottages beyond. Four presidents of the United States have hidden out here, finding a rustic privacy and some of the best fishing in the hemisphere. Giant poinciana trees were in bloom, many of them reaching heavy branches low over the water, breezes dropping the flaming petals into the smooth flow of tide and current, and a gigantic mahogany tree shaded the main entrance to the old part, the steps and the porch.

A stubby, sturdy, white charterboat was tied up there, a man hosing her down, probably after a half-day charter. A boy knelt nearby on the cement dock, cleaning three impressive snook. I saw a tarpon that would go about ninety pounds hanging on the club rack.

I decided to put in ahead of the old white cruiser. Arthur, in the bow, readied a line. At dead slow the engine noise was reduced so I could hear voices forward. As we passed the fishing boat, the man with the hose looked over and said, “Well now, hydee Arthur!”

“How you, Jimbo?”

“Fine, fine. You crewin on that there?”

“Seen Sam?”

“Busted his foot up some. Hoist slipped and the engine out of his skiff fell on it. He’s over home mendin.”

“Sorry to hear it.”

When I balanced forward motion and downstream current, Arthur jumped to the dock with a line and I waved him on to the piling I wanted. With it fast, I cut off the engines and the flow swung the stern in. I put on a stern line and spring line. Chook asked about fenders, and I saw that the rub rail would rest well against the pilings and told her not to bother.

We had lunch in the old paneled dining room, under the glassy stare of wall-mounted fish. Just a few tables were occupied. The season was dwindling with the club a month from closing until fall. We had hot monster stonecrab claws with melted butter. Arthur introduced us to the waitresses, and as they served us efficiently, they filled Arthur in on all local news and gossip, including the latest rumors on the manhunt for Boone Waxwell.

A coastguard chopper had made a tentative report about seeing a glimpse of a boat answering the description, about thirty miles south of us a little way up the Clark River from Ponce de Leon Bay, just as it disappeared under overhanging trees. A fast patrol launch had been sent to investigate.

The opinion was that years ago a man could hide out from the law almost indefinitely in all that cruel silent maze of swamp and hammock, creek, river and island, but not now. Not if they really wanted him. The choppers and the patrol boats and the radio net would inevitably narrow the search area and they would go in and get Waxwell. Probably not alive, considering what he was like and what he had done. They were saying that his best bet would be to get as far in as his boat would take him, sink the boat in the black water, and try to make it sixty miles across that incredible morass, heading northwest, keeping to cover, and come out maybe way over in the Westwood Lakes area. A Boone Waxwell might manage that, but three miles a day might be all even he could manage, so it could be three weeks before he came out the other side, if he didn’t founder in bottomless black gunk between hammocks, if he could keep the mosquitoes and stinging flies from swelling his eyes shut, if he didn’t get fever, if he kept out of the jaws of gators, moccasins and other venomous species of water snake, if he could tote or trap the food he’d need to see him through, if he could avoid the swamp buggies and air boats they’d be sending in on search patterns.

There was one detail I had overlooked, and from the lobby I phoned the hospital in Naples and got the cashier. She said with considerable severity that I had left AMA, Against Medical Advice, and it had been so noted on my record. She gave me the total amount of the fee, including use of emergency room space, tests, the four X-rays and the repair job. I said I would put a check in the mail, and she softened enough to tell me that I would be foolish to avoid seeing a doctor. The wound should be examined, dressing changed, stitches removed in due course.

After making the call, I found Chook out on the porch, and she said that Arthur had borrowed a car and had gone off to see the Dunnings. We went to the boat and she changed to white slacks. We anointed ourselves on all exposed areas with Off, and walked around town. The original Collier, having made his fortune in advertising placards in streetcars in the north, had come down and created Everglades City by keeping a huge dredge working around the clock for over a year, building it up out of the swamplands. It served as a survey base and construction base for the building of the Tamiami Trail across the Glades to Miami. It had been a company town until finally, not long ago, the Collier interests had moved out. So there was an empty bank, an abandoned hospital, an abandoned headquarters, an unused railroad station, the rails long since torn up, the ties rotted away. But it was coming back now with the big boom going on at Marco, with the Miami population pressure moving ever westward, keyed by the land speculators.

My leg could take only so much of it. At four o’clock we were back aboard. I took a shower. Showers created an eerie effect on the desensitized skin of my arm and leg, as if they were wrapped in cellophane which dulled the needles of the hard spray. I wore Chook’s shower cap to keep the dressing dry. After the shower I took a nap. Chook woke me a little after six to say Arthur wasn’t back and she was getting concerned about him.

“Maybe it’s taking him a long time to get them to take that crisp new thousand.”

“I wanted to get out of here, Trav.”

“We’ll get out. The weather is still holding. The days are long. I’d like to get through the channel, and then it doesn’t matter. A south southeast course after we’re clear, and when we pick up the lights of Key West off the starboard bow, we’ll pick us an anchorage, or, maybe better, I’ll lug it way down so that by dawn we’ll be about right to pick up the channel markers to go up Florida Bay. Stand watches.”

“I just feel as if we ought to get going.”

Arthur came trotting along the dock at seven, carrying his wooden box of carpenter tools, grinning and cheerful, apologetic about taking so long. He said he had a terrible time about the money, particularly with Sam, but when he had finally put it on the basis of the kids, Leafy had argued his way. It was finally decided they’d put it in the bank and consider it Arthur’s money and touch it only in case of emergency, and then consider it a loan. He said that Christine was placidly, healthily, happily and obviously pregnant, and she’d found a nice boy from Copeland who was going to marry her, much to Leafy’s satisfaction.

As we chugged across the bay toward the channel through the islands, toward the last burnt orange sunset line, the first stars were visible. Chook, with a holiday gayety, had changed to what she called her clown pants, stretch pants that fitted tight to her healthy hide, patterned in huge diamonds of black, white and orange, very high waisted, and with it a while silk blouse with long full sleeves. She moved in dance steps, brought the helmsman a lusty drink, lucked onto a Key West station doing the best efforts of the big bands of yesteryear, and turned it loud. Between her dancing, her happy jokes, her bawdy parodies of the lyrics she happened to know, she would hustle below and take a few pokes at what she promised would be a gourmet adventure. She turned us into a party boat.

We were in the winding and sometimes narrow channel between the mangrove islands when I heard a curious sound which I thought came from one of my engines, as if something had caused it to rev up. I checked the panel and saw that the rpm’s were normal. Chook and Arthur were below. The loud music had masked the sound I had heard.

But I heard Chook’s scream. And just as I did, I saw something out of the tail of my right eye and turned and saw, in the deceptive dusk light, the empty white boat moving astern of us, turning slowly as we passed it. The boat I had seen on the trailer in Boone Waxwell’s yard.

There is damned little you can do in a narrow channel. I yanked the twin levers into reverse, gave the engines one hard burst to pull the Flush dead in the water, and put the shift levers in neutral. The only thing that immediately came to hand was the fishkiller, a billy club near the wheel. I forgot the damned leg. When I hit the lower deck it crumpled and spilled me. I scrabbled up and went in the after door to the lounge, into the full blast of the music. Lights were on in the lounge. Mr. Goodman was doing Sing, Sing, Sing, the long one with all that drum. Tableau. Arthur stood in the posture of a man with severe belly cramps, staring at Chookie McCall standing in the corridor just beyond the other doorway,

Boone grinning over her white silk shoulder. One arm was pulled behind her. She looked scared and angry. She tried to twist away. Boone’s arm went up, metal in the hand picking up a gleam from the galley brightness beyond him. It came down with wicked force on the crown of her dark head, and I saw her face go blank as she fell forward, falling heavily face down, with no attempt to break the fall, landing half in and half out of the lounge. With one bare foot he tentatively prodded her buttocks. The flesh under her circus pants moved with absolute looseness, a primitive and effective test of total unconsciousness. When faking or semi-conscious, those muscles will inevitably tighten.

Arthur, with a groan audible over the drum solo, charged right toward the muzzle of the revolver Boone had clubbed her with. Boone merely squatted and put the muzzle against the back of Chook’s head and grinned up at him. Arthur skidded to a clumsy, Railing halt and backed away. Waxvell shifted the revolver to his left hand, put his right hand to his belt, deftly unsheathed the narrow limber blade. He moved forward a little, picked her head up by the hair, put his right hand with the blade under her throat and let the head fall, forehead thumping the rug. Arthur backed further, Waxwell aimed the gun at my belly and made an unmistakable gesture of command. I tossed the fish club onto the yellow couch.

“Cut the music off!” Waxwell yelled.

I turned it off. The only sound in the silence was the idling rumble of the diesels.

“McGee, you want your bilges to pump pink for the next three month, nobody gets cute. Right now we got things to do. McGee, you get on up topside and keep this barge off’n the stubs, and ease on back to my boat, very gentle. If you can transmit from topside, I’ll hear your power generator whine, and I’ll slice this gullet here wide open. Arthur, boy, you get you a boat hook and fish up the bow line and make it fast when we come up on it, hear? Now move!”

It did not do me a bit of good to realize how he had managed it. He’d been tucked back into some little bayou under overhanging mangrove, had let us move by in the narrow channel, all lights and music, and then had come out and come up on us in a fast curve from astern, up to the starboard side, amidships, making the roaring sound I had heard, had cut his engine, jumped and grabbed the rail, come in through the doorway up to the side of the deck to take Chook unawares in the galley, gun in his hand.

We were in a turning drift toward a channel island, and I eased it away from trouble, put one engine in forward and the other in reverse to bring it cautiously around within its own length. I needed no special warning to watch for stubs. Tide currents undercut the old islands. Mangrove and water oak settle deep and die, and the above water parts weather away. But the underwater segment hardens, usually one blunt-tipped portion of the main trunk, curving down to where the hard dead roots still anchor it. It will give when you run into one, spring back and maybe slide along the hull. But if the angle is right, they will punch a hole through one inch of mahogany.

I brought the Flush around, then scanned my spotlight across the water and picked up the white boat.

“Get it at the port stern,” I called to Arthur. When we were on it, I heard it bump the hull once, and looked back and saw him get the line, stoop and bend it around a transom cleat.

“Now you go on just like before,” Waxwell bawled to me from below. “Only dead slow. You see any traffic, you sing out. Keep it in your mind, ol‘ buddy, ol’ buster boy, I can as well ditch the three of you and run it myself, so be real good. Arthur, hike your tired ass in here and bring me a bucketa cold water for fancypants.”

Arthur went below. I kept to the channel, barely maintaining steerage way. I thought of fifty splendid ideas, and maybe half of them would work and all of them would leave Chook shrunken, bleached and dead. In my great cleverness, I had left him with nothing to lose.

As we came out of the channel, moving out toward the sea buoy, and as the first swells began to lift us, I heard voices aft, turned and saw the three of them back there. Chook stood in a listless slump, hands lashed behind her, head bowed, dark hair spilling forward. Waxwell held her with a companionable hand on the shoulder, upright knife clamped under his thumb. I watched Arthur, at Waxwell’s instruction, bring the white boat close, refasten it, clamber over and drop into it and hand up a bulky duffle bag, a rifle, a wooden box, apparently heavy. We were past the sea buoy and out into deep water. At Waxwell’s orders, Arthur freed the smaller stern anchor, lifted it high overhead and smashed it down into the bottom of the towed boat. He retrieved it by the anchor line, smashed it down twice more. By then Waxwell’s boat was visibly settling, and putting enough drag on that stern corner so that I had to turn the wheel to compensate. When the gunnels were almost awash, he had Arthur free the line. He yelled up to me to put the spotlight on it. When it was fifty feet astern, it showed a final gleam of white and went down.

“Give it a south southwest heading, McGee,” he yelled. “Put it up to cruising, put it on pilot, and get on down here.”

He sat on the couch beside Chook. He lounged. She had to sit erect, hands behind her, and she kept her head down, chin on her chest. He put us in front of him, a dozen feet away, on straight chairs, with the request to keep our hands on our knees.

He looked at us and shook his head. “Couldn b’lieve my ol‘ eyes. Had to figure to take me a boat. Holed up where I figure the best chance to get me a good one, rough up some of them power squadron types, get em on the way out from Everglades with the best chance of full tanks, teach em to do exactly like ol’ Boo wants. And by God here comes this Busted Flush I heard about in Marco from when you were anchored over off Roy Cannon island, folks that rented Arlie Mission’s outboard, the one you come to Goodland in with the name covered over. One teeny little son of a bitch of a world. My, my.”

He beamed. “Now would you look at ol‘ Arthur there. I plain give him the cold sweats. You know, I heard them Dunnings tooken you in, and you were working around that part. No need to come look you up, I figured. I needed just one time to put ol’ Boo’s mark on you. Never did think you’d get sassy again.”

“Did you kill Wilma?” Arthur asked.

But Waxwell was studying me. “You’re more surprise than this broadass barge, friend McGee. I’d a swore you were drippin loose brains when I toted you to the car.” He chuckled. “Give me a real turn findin you gone. But I figured it out.”

“Congratulations.”

“It had to be that fat little son of a gun, Cal Stebber. A smart one. He would have had somebody along on account of Arthur here wouldn’t be any use to anybody. Come took you outen the car to take you to get patched up. It was you got him worked up about me, McGee, lettin him know whereat Wilma was seen last. So I figure after I drove off, he went on in and shot them two dead, phoned in my license, knowing he could lay it onto me and it would be safer the law takes care of me than him trying it. With me on the run, maybe he even figures to get aholt of the cash money Wilma was toten; but I have the idea it’ll stay where it is till I’m ready to go back for it. That fat little fella messed me up for sure. And kilt off one of the best ol‘ pieces a man could hope to find, afore I even got her broke in real good. But there come ol’ Boo’s luck like always, bringin him one on the same style, oney bigger and younger, hey, pussycat?”

Lazily he touched the blade point to her upper arm near the shoulder. She gave a little jump, but made no sound. The fabric was pulled tight where he had touched. A bright red dot appeared where he had touched.

“You did kill Wilma,” Arthur said.

Waxwell gave him a pained look. “Now Boo isn’t one to waste something that fine. Little tiny bit of a gal, but I tell you, she was just about as much as ol‘ Boo could handle. What happened, Arthur boy, she liked things real rough, and I guess it was the second night after you were there, we boozed up pretty good and it went wrong somehow, caught her wrong some way, and wrenched up her back, real bad. She couldn’t even get up onto her feet come morning. And my, how she talked mean, like she was the queen and I was some bum. I was supposed to lift her gentle into the car and tear-ass off to a hospital. But I felt right sickly, said I’d get around to it sooner or later. Never did hear such a dirty mouth on a woman, the things she called me. And she wouldn’t be still, even when I asked her nice. So I went over there and, just to give her the idea, with my thumb and finger I give her one little quick pinch in her little throat. She looked up at me and her eyes begin to bug out and her face gets dark red. Her little chest was pumpin, trying to suck air in. I must have bust something. She waved her arms, flapped around a little, shoved her tongue out and next thing you know, she’s dead as a mullet, her face all purpled out. Arthur, I sure didn’t mean to do it like it happened, but after I been through her stuff, I found enough cash money, had I knowed it was there to start, I’d have done it more on purpose. She’s up the Chatham River, boy, down in the deep end of Chevelier Bay, her and her pretties sunk down with cement block, wired real good, even that little diamond watch down there with her, because enough money can make a man afford to be smart.”

“Half smart,” I said.

He looked at me with mild disapproval. “I tried to like you, boy, and I just couldn’t work it out.”

“You bought a lot of fancy gear with that money Boo. It makes people wonder where you got it. And bought a scooter for poor fat little Cindy. That attracts attention. You tried to make me swallow a clumsy lie about a girl who looked like Wilma. You got nervous about me and went flailing around, getting Crane Watts all rattled. Hell, man, you didn’t even get rid of Wilma’s stuff. How about the black lace pants Cindy tried to get into and couldn’t?”

“I din find them until… you’re all mouth, McGee. Cindy told you that, hah? What else she talk about?”

“Everything she could think of.”

“I’m going to get back to her some day. And real good. Enough talking. I got to look this boat over. Arthur, you go find me some pliers and some wahr. Move, boy!”

When Arthur came back with them and went slowly toward Boone, even I could tell he was going to make a play. I gathered myself to do what I could, feeling no optimism. There was a clumsy rush, a fleshy smack, and before I was halfway up, Arthur was tottering back to turn and fall heavily. I sat down again. Arthur sat up, his eyes dazed and his mouth bloody.

Boone lifted Chook’s heavy dark hair out of the way, took the top of her ear between thumb and finger and laid the knife blade against her temple. Without any trace of anger he said, “Just one more time, one more little bitty thing, and I slice off this pretty little piece of meat and make her hand it to you, lover boy.”

Arthur got slowly to his feet. “Now you pick up that wahr and pliers and wahr McGee’s ankles together, and when he lies down and puts his arms around that table leg that’s bolted fast to the deck there, and you wahr his wrists good.”

In a little while we were neighbors, Arthur and me, tightly and efficiently wired to the adjoining legs of the heavy wall table, and Waxwell had gone off to make a tour of inspection of the Flush, pushing Chook ahead of him, speaking to her with that same heavy, insinuating, jocularity I had heard him use on Vivian Watts, saying, “That’s right, that’s fine. You just go along there, pussycat, and ol‘ Boo’ll stay right with you. My, my, you a big piece of girl for sure.” His voice faded as they went past the galley and staterooms toward the bow.

“My God, my God!” Arthur moaned.

“Steady down. Aside from one damn fool play, you’re doing fine.”

“But she acts half alive.”

“She’s still dazed. That was a hell of a rap. He did it very neatly Arthur, getting aboard. We have to just hope he’s smart enough to know he needs us.”

“What for?” he demanded bitterly.

“If he doesn’t know, I’ll tell him. They’ll check all boats leaving the Everglades area. He’ll have to have us handy to get us a clearance, while he keeps us in line by staying out of sight with a knife at her throat. So we wait for a chance, one that we can make work.”

“He’ll never give us one. Never.”

“Let me take the lead. Try to be ready all the time. Your job is Chook. She’s his leverage. The minute I make a move, your job is get her away from him. A flying tackle, anything.”

They came back to the lounge, Boone chuckling to himself. “You got this thang as prettied up as a Tallahassee whore house, McGee. This big old gal says her name is Chookie. Now ain’t that one hell of a name? Come on, darlin. We’re going to see what she’s like topsides.”

After they went out, I said to Arthur, “Act as if that last punch broke you down completely. You’re whipped. It will make him less wary thinking he only has me to watch.”

“But, my God, Trav, if he… if he leaves us right here like this and takes Chook back there and…”

“There won’t be one damned thing you can do about it, I can do about it or she can do about it. It will happen, and be over and done, and we’ll still have exactly the same problem.”

“I couldn’t stand that.”

I did not answer him. I felt a change in movement of the boat and knew he was at the topside controls. He added rpm to both engines. They were out of sync at the new throttle setting. In a few moments he smoothed them out. I identified the clunk as he put it back into automatic pilot.

He brought Chookie back into the lounge. ‘’Sure can’t turn much knots in this tub. But she’s fueled up and got a good range. I figured the heading to the Marquesas Keys, McGee.“

“Congratulations.”

“How it’s going to work, we’re going to cut between Key West and the Marquesas, then make like we were heading along the keys to come on up to Miami. But what we’re going to do, we’re going to cut it real real wide outside the keys, and come dark tomorrow night, we douse all running lights and run for Cuba as fast as this here bucket will go. Time them Cuban patrol boats intercept us, the only folks aboard will be a poor simple ol‘ backwoodsy guide, and his real quiet lovin girlfriend, both runnin from the capitalists. If you both behave nice, I’m going to set you loose in that little dinghy halfway to Cuba. If you make me one piece of trouble, you get to go swimming with an anchor. Clear?”

“Yes sir, Mr. Waxwell sir.”

“Now if I was half smart, like you claim, McGee, I’d just run this sweet thing back into that big bed and settle my nerves down a little. But she feels poorly and it would play pure hell if somebody run up to check us over. So once we pass a check, there’s time to wahr you on up again, hoe this beard down, rench off the swamp water in that fancy shower and bed this pretty thang down.”

I could turn my head and look up at them. Boone turned her, snipped the scrap of nylon line from her wrists with a flick of the knife blade, scabbarded the blade and snapped the false buckle into place. He turned her around and he took the revolver from the waistband of his pants where it had been snugged against a softness of belly.

“Now you gone be a sweet pussycat. You see this here? You gone go hot up some food for ol‘ Boo. He’s gone loose these boys for a time, and you play any games, he goes eeny meeney miney and whichever one it comes out, ol’ Boo blows his kneebones to pebbles.”

She gave no sign of hearing or understanding. His right hand flickered, cracked her cheek so hard it took her a quarter turn around, making her take a long step to catch her balance. He pulled her back by the arm and said, “I getten through to you, gal?”

“Please, please,” she said in a wan little voice.

“Sure hope you got more life in you on your back, pussycat, than you got on your feet.” He fondled her roughly and casually, breast and belly, flank and hip while she stood flatfooted, enduring it like a mare at an auction. He pushed her toward the galley. She took two jolting steps to catch her balance, and then walked on slowly, not looking back. She could have been, I thought, in a sleep-walking concussive state, or it could be her own game of possum. If the former, it might deaden things for her. If she was being clever, I had to be alert for the opening she wanted to give me.

When Boone bent over Arthur with the cutting pliers, I tried a little idea of my own. “Better do me first, Boo.”

“Why?”

“I’ve got the reserve batteries on charge, and there’s no regulator on that bank. It’s past time to change back. I go by an estimate of time. It could burn them out. So if you set me loose first, then you can take me forward so I can switch them over.”

“Now why you fret about batteries that ain’t hardly yours any more?”

“It’s rigged so that lights feed off the bank being charged, Boo, and if the lights went out all of sudden, you might get nervous with that gun!‘

“That’s being right bright there, buster boy.”

He released me and, when we went forward, gathered up Chook from the galley and brought her along to prevent her going to the lounge and releasing Arthur, He wasn’t going to make any obvious mistakes. As I went forward, ahead of the gun, I was trying desperately to figure out a problem in compass compensation. The compass that controlled the automatic pilot was set well forward, away from any chance bulk of metal which could put it off, cased in a wooden box in a sort of flat shelf area forward of the forward bilge hatch. I wanted to change the automatic pilot direction from southwest to southeast 0kay, so I had to move magnetic north… to left. And with north behind us that meant I had to put my hunk of metal… this side of the compass box and to the left. And it had to be a guess. if I pulled it off too radically, Waxwell would feel the change when we corrected onto the new course. And too small a change would do us no good. And there was nothing down in that hatch that had anything to do with batteries. But I kept a big wrench down there, in a side rack, one too big for the tool box. And there was a switch down there, obsolete but never removed. It had run a separate forward bilge pump before I had put the three of them on the same control. I had to move fast, and in the dark. I yanked the hatch up, told him to hold it, and dropped down. I got the wrench on the first grab and slid it onto the shelf, behind and to the left of the compass box. I reached and found the purposeless switch and changed the blade from up to down. I waited a few moments, pushed the wrench closer to the compass.

“Climb on up out of there, McGee!”

“All done,” I said cheerfully. I jumped up and sat on the edge of the hatch, feet dangling, casually examining my knuckle as if I had barked it.

“Come on!” he said impatiently. As I turned to climb out, I found the wrench handle with the side of my foot and pushed it further toward the compass box. I sensed the course change then, stumbled on the edge of the hatch, fell clumsily to create a diversion. He moved cat-quick out of reach, letting the hatch slam, keeping the gun on me.

“Foot’s asleep from that wire, Boo,” I said apologetically.

“Get on back to your chair, boy.”

Back in the lounge, as if in answer to a prayer, I heard a beginning patter of light rain on the deck above. I doubted Waxwell had the training to use the navigation aids aboard to figure a position, but I knew damned well that he could take one glance at the stars and know the heading was way off.

Arthur and I sat on the straight chairs. Waxwell instructed us in how to act if we were intercepted by launch or float plane. He would be below, with the girl tied and a knife at her throat. And if we were boarded, he estimated he had a good chance of taking them.

“Was that the gun you had the silencer on?” I asked him.

“Damn mail order thang,” he said. “Too loud. Tried it one more time once I got home that night and it pure blew all to hell.”

Chook came shuffling listlessly in with sandwiches and coffee for him. He took the tray on his lap, sat her at his left, held the knife in his left hand close to her ribs, put the gun on the couch at his right, kept his eyes on us as he wolfed the sandwiches. I tried to get some clue or signal from Chook. She sat dull-faced, hands slack in her lap, staring at the floor. The diesels were roaring at high cruise, setting up little sympathetic vibrations, rattlings and jinglings. The Gulf was as flat calm as I’ve ever seen it, and the gentle rain continued. I knew that sooner or later he would go up top and check the control panel and the compass direction. I knew I had altered it, but I had no way of telling how much. I wanted to delay him. I looked at my watch and saw to my surprise it was nearly ten o’clock.

As he put his empty coffee mug down I said, “Want to hear on the radio how they’re about to catch you?”

“Let’s have a good laugh, sure thing.”

I went over and spun the dial on AM, brought in Key West, and was pleased to hear them give national news first, ten minutes of it. Boo sent Chook to bring him more hot coffee.

“And on the local scene, the big hunt for Everglades killer Boone Waxwell has shifted abruptly to a new area tonight. Just as authorities were beginning to fear that Waxwell had slipped out of the net in the Clark River area, two small boys, skiff fishing in the islands west of Chokoloskee Bay returned home to Everglades City at dusk to report seeing a suspicious acting man in a boat that tallies with the description of Waxwell’s boat in which he made his escape from the Caxambas area.”

“Swore them little bastards din spot me,” Boo said.

“Based on the boys’ account of details not released previously, authorities are convinced they saw the fugitive, and all efforts are now being concentrated on sealing the area and conducting a massive search beginning at dawn.”

“Well, I just did get out of there in time now,” Waxwell said.

“But they’ll have our name and description from the Rod and Gun,” I told him, “and I’ll bet you they’re trying to raise us on all bands right now. They’ll start an air search for us at dawn, Boo baby.”

With furrowed brow he held his hand out for the coffee. Chook came slowly toward him, dragging her feet, the mug steaming. She reached as though to put it in his hand, then hurled the contents at his face. He could have seen it only out of the corner of his eye, but quick as she was, he was quicker, reminding me of the way he had almost gotten to me to stomp me before I rolled under his boat. He got his face and eyes out of the way, but a dollop of the boiling brew hit him across the throat and shoulder. With bullroar, he was up off that couch, knife in the left hand, pistol in the right. By then I was in mid-air, launched at his knees. As he spun away from me, he took a flashing slice at Chook, and she evaded it only by the speed of a dancer’s reflexes, jumping back, curving her body, sucking her belly away from the very end of the blade. I rolled up onto my heels, squatting. Arthur was trying to edge around behind him, a heavy pottery ashtray poised.

Boo backed away, put the gun on Chook. “In the belly,” he said tightly. “That’s where the bitch gets it. Lay that down gentle, Arthur boy. Back away, McGee.”

I knew from his eyes we were not going to have another chance. Not now.

And then there was a funny hollow thump from up forward, and then a horrible smashing, thudding, grinding, tipping noise, with the bow going up, canting, slowing so abruptly we were all staggered. She is not a fast old lady, but she had thirty-eight tons of momentum. To a boat owner, a noise like that is like hearing the heart torn out of you, and it froze me in place. And Arthur, still staggering, hurled the ashtray at Boone Waxwell. Sensing something coming, Boone whirled to fire. Arthur confessed later he had hoped to hit Boone in the head. The broad dimension of the ashtray hit the hand and the pistol as Boone was swinging it around. The heavy pottery broke into a dozen fragments and the pistol went spinning toward Chook’s feet. She pounced on it and came up with it, holding it in both hands straight out in front of her, eyes squinched, head turned slightly away from the expected explosion. It made one hell of a bam in the enclosed space. Boone tried to run to get behind Arthur, but ran right into the chair I threw at him. Another wild barn from the pistol in the hands of the very earnest brunette convinced him, and he ran out onto the after deck. The poor old diesels were still laboring, trying to shove the Flush all the way up onto the island. He scurried to the port side and swarmed up the ladderway to the sun deck. I started after him and Chook yelled to me to look out. She braced herself on the tilt of deck and fired up at him. Maybe Waxwell thought to go forward and jump off onto the mangrove island. But the determined girl apparently convinced him he should take to the water. The forward twenty feet of the Flush was wedged up into the mangrove tangle. When he ran across the sun deck, I ran across the after deck nearly knocking Arthur overboard.

I got around the corner in time to see him make his leap into the black water, a dozen feet short of the mangrove roots. He jumped high and wide to clear the narrow side deck, jumped feet first like a kid going off a high board. He hit just where the bright galley lights shone out the port, silvering the water. You expect a great splash. He stopped with a horrid abruptness, the waterline still a few inches below his belt. He remained right there, oddly erect, silent, head thrown back, cords standing out in his neck. I thought he had wedged himself into a shallow mud bottom. But then I saw he seemed to be moving back and forth, a strange sway like a man on a treetop. He reached down to himself, putting his hands under the water, and he made a ghastly sound, like someone trying to yell in a whisper. He turned his head slowly and looked toward the three of us. He held his right hand out toward us, opened his mouth wide and made the same eerie sound once more. Then he bowed slowly to us, laid over gently, face down. Something seemed to nudge at him from below, nudge him and shove him free, and as he floated toward the darkness, slowly there reappeared, with a slowness that told of the length of it that went down through black water to the dead root system, just an inch or so showing above water, the dark rotted end of the stub, four or five inches thick, upon which he had burst himself and impaled himself.

Chook was clinging to Arthur and crying as though her heart was broken.

Her arms went around his neck, and the gun slipped from her slack fingers, put a little dent in my rail before plopping into the sea. I sent them inside, got a light and the longest boathook, went to the starboard deck, hooked him most gingerly by the back of his shirt collar, towed him forward and hung him against the small dark shoots of the new mangrove sprouting at the waterline. Only then did I remember my laboring engines and run to turn them off before they burned out. Arthur sat in the lounge in the big chair, Chook in his lap, all arms wrapped tightly and all eyes closed, making no sound and no movement. I crawled the bilge with the flashlight, looking for some little hole the size of a motorcycle sidecar. Probably some seams were sprung, but she looked sound. Surprisingly sound.

When I went back through, Arthur asked me if he could help. I took him aft and we sounded all around the stern area with boat hooks and found there was plenty of water back there. I sent him forward in the bilge with a light and a little emergency horn on a compressed air can to give me a blast if broken mangrove trunks started to come in.

I tried to back it straight off. I got about a yard with full throttle, thought things over, then tried one forward and one in reverse to swing the stern. It swung, with an unpleasant crackling sound from up forward. I had noticed that the compass put us on a dead easterly heading at the time we hit. It’d gotten more change than I’d hoped for. Figuring time, we couldn’t be very far south of Pavilion Key, maybe halfway down to the Chatham River. I backed, gained a little more, swung it the other way, backed again. After the fourth swing, she suddenly came all the way off, making very ugly noises.

I backed clear, turned her, put her on pilot and a due west heading, and at very meager rpms, went scrambling down to the bilges to see how she was. And she was, astonishingly, bone dry sound. Apparently the hull shape had just pushed that springy mangrove aside.

I located our position with the radio loop, close enough for my purposes. I remembered the wrench and got it away from the pilot compass before I ran us aground again.

A Coast Guard chopper circled us a half hour after dawn, making that distinctive whappling noise. He hung off the stern while we all beamed and waved at him, and finally, after he had done everything but throw his hand phone at us, I gave a great gesture of comprehension and ran to my set. He moved a half mile away so I could hear and came in on the Coast Guard frequency. I was astonished we’d been so close to a maniac like Waxwell, yes indeed. Wow. It makes you think. When we broke off, he gave himself a little treat. He came over and took a long appreciative look at Chook. She had come out in a little flimsy shorty nightgown to wave at the pretty helicopter, and the flyer and his buddy up here swung craftily around to put the rising sun behind her. But the instant he was gone, we stopped grinning like maniacs.

“Is it right, Trav?” she said. “All those people hunting and hunting?”

“The tide was an hour past high when I snagged him onto the shore. There aren’t any branches over him. They ought to find him soon.”

I put her on radio watch, monitoring the Coast Guard frequency. At quarter of eight she came up to tell us they had the body and a positive identification. She looked wan and dreary, and we sent her back to bed. But before she went, she gave Arthur a rib-cracking hug, stared into his eyes with her head cocked, and said, “I just thought I’d tell you something. Frankie would not have done what you did. For me. For anyone. Except Frankie.”

After she sacked out, we went through Waxwell’s gear. We deep-sixed it, rifle and all. Except something we found in the box under his dehydrated rations. Carefully folded into saran wrap. Ninety-one brand new hundred dollar bills in serial sequence.

Chook came up for air at three in the afternoon, all soft and blurred and dreamy.

“What do we do,” she said, “anchor for four or five or six days, like on the way over, huh?”

“Okay.” they said, simultaneously, and it was at that moment I decided the unexpected nine thousand was a wedding present, if my hunch paid off.

Sixteen

MY HUNCH paid off, on the Fourth of July, with perhaps the only beach picnic reception of the season serving hamburgers and champagne to about two hundred types, from beach bums to a state senator, from waitresses to a legitimate, by blood, baroness.

And on the afternoon of the Fifth of July, as I was once again making the motions of assembling the delayed cruise over to the islands, a merry voice called me up from the engine room. And there, at my gangplank, slender and graceful as a young birch tree, dressed in a pale high fashion gray, five matched pieces of luggage standing beside her, cab driver hovering in the background, stood Miss Debra Brown, Calvin Stebber’s disciplined cigar-lighter and daiquiri mixer, her crystal mint eyes alight with mischief and promise.

“It’s all right, driver,” she said.

He turned to go and I said, “Hold it, driver.”

“But darling,” she said, “you don’t understand. There was this contest, three words or less, how and where and with whom would you most like to spend your vacation, and you won, darling McGee. And here I am!”

I slowly wiped my hands on the greasy rag I had brought up from below.

“So Uncle Cal got it in his head I got a very nice piece of Wilma’s bundle, and you’ve cooked up something that might work.”

She pouted. “Darling, I hardly blame you. After all. But really, I have just been terribly terribly mopey ever since you visited us. You genuinely intrigued me, dear. And this is a very seldom thing with Debra, believe me. Poor Calvin, he finally got so weary of all my little sighs and hints that he told me to come over and get it out of my system before I came down with the vapors or something. I swear to you, dear McGee, this is an entirely personal affair, and has nothing whatever to do with… my professional career.”

It was a temptation. She was a convincing elegance. Headwaiters would unhook the velvet rope and bow you in. Elegance with the faintest oversweet odor of decay. Perhaps for any man there can be something very heady about a woman totally amoral, totally without mercy, shame or softness.

But I had to remember her, too vividly, lighting Stebber’s cigar.

“Sweetie,” I said, “you are a penny from heaven. And you probably know lots and lots of tricks. But every one would remind me that you are a pro, from Wilma’s old stable of club fighters. Call me a sentimentalist. The bloom is too far off the rose, sweetie. I’d probably keep leaving money on the bureau. You better peddle it. Thanks but no thanks.”

The lips curled back and her face went so tight, I saw what a pretty and delicate little skull she’d make, picked clean, as Wilma’s now was, in the dark bottom of Chevelier Bay. Without a word she whirled and went off toward the distant cab.

The driver looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. He managed three bags on the first trip, and came after the others at a trot, looking whipped with a salty lash.

I don’t know what it is that makes that difference. I don’t know now, and maybe I never will. Maybe the people who fit have some forlorn fancy about perfecting themselves in their own image, about living up to some damned thing always a little out of reach. But you try. You reach and slip and fall and get up, and you reach some more.

I went below, slapped a wrench on a nut, put my back into it, and took the hide off the top of three knuckles.

I sat down there in the hot gloom like a big petulant baby, sucking on my knuckles, remembering the shape and sway of her in gray, walking away, and thinking some of the blackest thoughts I own.

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Table of Contents

Travis McGee #6 Bright Orange For The ShroudJohn D. MacDonaldRIGHT ORANGE FOR THE SHROUD 21BRIGHT ORANGE FOR THE SHROUD 123