Start Screaming Murder

Chapter Three

Tina’s inherent romanticism had visualized the Sprite with her bow cutting through a South Sea, the Pacific swishing past with a sound like rustling hula skirts.

Which goes to show you.

A couple hundred yards off-shore, the Sprite was a mean old tiger taken with a case of mange. There was nothing jaunty in the solid set of the schooner’s two masts against the brazen sky. Crouched in the oily, dead heat, she was dirty and needed paint. A rich man looking for a toy would have passed her over. A knowledgeable sailor looking for guts in a craft might have picked her up for a tenth of her actual worth.

I was driving a shiny new sedan, purchased with agency funds, a departure from our previous practice of annual leasing from an auto rental outfit.

I drove the car down the short asphalt road to a scabby bait camp. A couple of lean guys in jeans were tinkering with an outboard motor on a bench set up beneath towering pines.

One of them came toward me when I got out of the car. Wiping his hands on a piece of waste, he said howdy.

“I’d like to get out to the Sprite,” I said. “That’s her, isn’t it?”

“Yep. Rent you a flat-bottom.” He preceded me to the weathered wooden pier where water lapped against a dozen or more skiffs, each tied in its slip.

In his thirties, burned leather-brown by the sun, the proprietor moved with the resilience of bamboo.

“I’m looking for a fellow I know,” I said. “Works on the Sprite. His name is Bucks Jordan.”

“Then row out and see him.”

“I thought you might...”

“Look, Mister. I don’t know anything about that boat or the people on her. You want the flat-bottom?”

“I don’t feel like swimming.”

“It’ll be two dollars.”

Rowing out to the schooner, I was miserable in the heat. Sweat poured off me, plastering clothes and sodden flesh together in a stifling mess. The heat became a pulse beat in my head and solar plexus. I’ve been down here nearly twenty years, and I’ve never got used to the heat.

Sometimes I almost ache for a frosty New Jersey morning. I’ve never gone back, not since I was a young beat cop up there. Maybe there are too many memories. Of a girl I knew once. She ran away with a punk I was trying to nail. Their fast moving car met an equally fast freight at a crossing.

I blotted out the next few years with alcohol. One morning I woke in an alley, in the crummiest part of Ybor City. I knew it was dry out or die. I took a job on the docks and dried out. Later, Nationwide gave me a break, a job. As the years passed, Tampa became my home. At times I felt as if I’d been born here.

The mangrove-tangled shoreline fell behind. Far off to my port stern, the buildings of downtown Tampa showed rectangular silhouettes in the shimmering pall of heat that was the sky.

As I neared the schooner, a red-hot cruiser roared past fanning a wake that almost capsized the flat-bottom. I grabbed the ladder of the Sprite and held on until the flat-bottom relaxed.

When I looked up, I saw a woman on the schooner’s deck. She was watching me silently. She was, I guessed, in her early twenties. You think of many females that age as “girls.” This one you didn’t. She was short, heavy-breasted, full-faced. Almost stocky. Her hair was a light, faded-looking brown, braided and coiled about her head. She was one of those who come from girlhood into womanhood, by-passing the adolescent phase. She would pass for a very competent secretary, a person capable of assuming responsibilities beyond the scope of a mere girl.

“Hello,” I said.

“Who are you?”

“The name is Ed Rivers.”

“What do you want?”

“I’m looking for Mr. Lessard. Are you his daughter, D. D.?”

“No. I’m Maria Scanlon, a friend of the Lessards... If you’re coming aboard, you’d better snub the line or you’ll lose the flat-bottom.”

I snubbed the line and climbed on deck. “Is Mr. Lessard here?”

“Below. He’ll be up in a minute.” She motioned with a square, graceless hand toward a decrepit deck chair. I went over and sat down. Like everything else about the Sprite the chair was a lot stronger, more sinewy than it appeared. I took out my handkerchief and started wiping some of the steam off my face.

“You’re not a very good sailor, Mr. Rivers,” she said, with a laugh. The laugh did things for her, wiping away some of the seriousness and intensity that was almost middle-age-ish.

“Afraid I’m not,” I admitted.

“I watched the way you handled the flat-bottom.”

“Do you sail much, Miss Scanlon?”

“Mrs. Scanlon,” she corrected. The laugh wasn’t even a memory in her face now. “Mr. Rivers,” she said quietly, “I believe you are looking for something, listening for a sound. Do you mind my asking what it is?”

I gave her a fresh appraisal. “Is a fellow named Bucks Jordan on board?”

Her eyes held on my face for a second longer. Then she turned quickly, rounded the cabin, and called, “Alex, there’s a man here looking for Jordan.”

Quick footsteps. Lessard stood with his hand on the rail, looked me over; the rubber soles of his sneakers cried softly as he came toward the foredeck.

He was a small man, sandy in coloring, maybe forty years old, maybe fifty, or sixty. He had a thin, brooding face, gray eyes like a bitter New England winter. He had lost his hair except for a horseshoe around the sides and back of his long, narrow skull.

In addition to the sneakers, he wore old khaki bathing trunks. He had spindly legs and arms like broom handles. But I didn’t let it fool me. The broom handles were overlaid with layers of wires, and the legs had that slightly bowed, knotty quality that you see on a first-rate lightweight boxer. I had the feeling that this guy didn’t give much of a damn about anything. It was in his eyes and face. He could take care of himself in the toughest ports in the world — and very probably had — because he wouldn’t care whether he lived or died.

Mrs. Maria Scanlon introduced us, and Alex Lessard said, “What you want with Jordan?”

“It’s personal.”

“Yeah? You a cop?”

“In a way.”

“What in hell does that mean? You are, or you aren’t.”

“A private cop.”

“Fancy that. I never saw one of you fellows before. Tell you what. When you locate Bucks Jordan, you let me know and I’ll add twenty bucks to whatever you’ve been paid.”

“Then he isn’t here?”

“He not only isn’t here, Rivers. He took some money with him.”

“Wages, Alex,” Maria Scanlon said.

“Advance wages,” he corrected. “And why don’t you stay out of it.” He fished cigarettes from the bellyband of the bathing trunks. There were matches pushed under the cellophane covering of the package. He lighted a cigarette and said, “Jordan came aboard to do some work, repairs on the rigging, general cleaning up, painting. He worked for several days. Then he gave me such a wild story about his cracker father being in jail charged with illegal alligator hunting that I handed over a sizable advance.”

“You haven’t seen Jordan since?”

“No.”

“When was this?”

“Couple days ago.” Lessard grunted. “The sonofabitch.”

“Alex,” Maria said, “he’s no dog, really. He’s a human being, in great part the result of what society...”

“Maria, honey, please. If it hadn’t been for your do-gooding talk, I might not have let Jordan...”

“I think you’re blaming him prematurely, Alex. He may come back.”

Jawing at each other, they’d about forgot I was there. Then Lessard remembered. “How about letting me know if you find him, Rivers?”

“Any idea where he is?”

His face flared with impatience. “If I had, would I be trying to spend twenty bucks with you?”

“I guess not.”

“Damn right I wouldn’t.” He glanced toward the shore. “I wonder what’s keeping D. D.?”

“Department store downtown,” Maria Scanlon said. “Tell her I had to get back.”

“You’re going ashore?”

“Yes, if Mr. Rivers will give me a lift.”

“Sure,” I said.

We clambered into the flat-bottom. She was first, and she picked up the oars. There is only one way to handle the fanatical, smothering type of woman. I took the oars firmly from her, pushed her forward, and started grunting us landward.

“Really, Mr. Rivers, wouldn’t it make more sense for the most efficient...”

“I’ll row, lady,” I said.

When we docked the boat, she thanked me and started walking away.

“You live here at the camp?” I nodded toward the cottages drowsing fifty yards away under the tall pines.

“No, down the secondary road a couple of miles.”

“I’ll drop you off,” I said.

“Really, I...”

“It’s no bother. “I’m going that way.”

We got in my sturdy new car and I drove out of the camp and picked up the cracked asphalt.

She sneaked a glance at me. “Why do you want Bucks... But you can’t discuss that, can you?”

“Not very well.”

“Whatever he’s done, are you sure he’s to blame?”

I let it ride.

“People are prone to animal-like reactions, you know,” she persisted. “Sufficiently goaded, they are liable to snarl back.”

“People are also accountable,” I reminded her.

“Really?” she said, a disdainful quirk in her heavy brow.

I wondered what her background was. Her diction was good. Her clothes were cheap cotton, but she wore them casually, as if the cost of clothing as she was growing up had never been a major consideration.

I reduced her to little-girl size in my mind, and I had a picture of a kid who was overweight, eager, rebuffed. The one who got her pigtails pulled. The one who never was invited to a prom.

“When did you last see Bucks?” I asked.

“Let’s see... Four nights ago, I think it was. He was drinking heavily in a juke joint near here. I got him back to the boat. I can’t tell you anything about him, Mr. Rivers. Really. You turn here. There is the cottage.”

“If you want to help him,” I said, “let me know if you see him.”

She wasn’t paying attention. She was watching the cottage anxiously.

I thrust one of my cards in her hand. “Call this number. If I’m out, there’s a telephone answering service. If I get to Bucks in time, I might be able to save him serious trouble.”

She got a focus on the card. “All right,” she said. She thrust the card in her dress pocket. Again she looked toward the cottage. It was a cheap, frame affair with a screened porch across the front. A fairly recent model car was parked close to the cottage.

“I suppose Jack’s asleep,” she mused. “He’s my husband. He likes to nap until mid-morning.”

Mid-morning was two hours ago. She got out of the car and ran toward the cottage with eagerness. The tall, strapping outlines of a man appeared behind the porch screening; so I guessed Jack wasn’t asleep.

The screen door banged behind Maria Scanlon. The man grabbed her arm, jerked her around. He spoke to her, glancing toward the car. Then he shoved her inside, his grip on her arm bringing a small cry from her.

I put the car in gear. Bucks Jordan was my problem. Jack Scanlon was hers.