The Scarlet Ruse

She was still taking her long sloshing steaming soapy noisy shower when I took her Bloody Mary into the head and yelled to her that she would find it on the counter beside the sink. She yelled her thanks.

Aboard the Flush, under a bunk, there is a big storage drawer full of lady items which have been left behind or bought for emergencies or donated to the cause. No point in even looking, because had there been a previous lady of these dimensions, I would remember. But her yellow top and shorts were still fresh enough.

The very best eggs and country ham and toasted English muffins with strawberry jam. We sat in the booth next to the stainless steel galley, and she was right about that blue-eyed look of hers. She looked at me often, during and between the forks of egg, the bites of muffin. Anybody intercepting that look would have wondered if it was melting the fillings in my teeth. Bloodhounds look at the moon that way, and kids look into candy stores that way, and barracuda look at bait fish that way.

We shared the cleaning up and took final cups of coffee into the lounge. So I took a deep breath and looked over her shoulder, out the port, at the sunny gleam of the row of boats and told her about Jane Lawson. Glassy shock. Exclamations of disbelief. Yawls and yawps of grief, pain, and anger. Reddened, streaming eyes, considerable nose-blowing, and then she wanted to be held, patted, comforted as the residual snuffles and snorts became less frequent.

She went and fixed her face and came back and phoned Hirsh Fedderman. He had to tell her all he knew about it. She made wordless sounds of shock and sympathy. The tears began running again, and she made frantic motions at me. I put the box of tissue within reach. She asked questions in a torn and tearful voice and honked into the wads of kleenex. After that was over, she had to have another session of holding, patting, comforting and then go fix her face again.

She came back and plumped herself down. “I’m exhausted,” she said. “I felt so marvelous, and now I’m pooped. It makes my problems seem like nothing at all. Hirsh is really down. The poor old guy. The last straw, sort of. I don’t know what he’s going to do now. I know what I better do. I better go and be with him. He hasn’t really got anybody else. Not nearby.”

She got her things. At the doorway from the lounge onto the aft deck, we kissed. For a casual kiss, she felt big and hearty, solid and tall, practically eye to eye with me on her tiptoes. For what she considered any important kissing, she had a strange knack of dwindling herself. She curved her shoulders forward, let herself cling, but without much tangible weight, delicately in fact.

She looked up at me. “We’re some kind of special.”

“That’s what people keep saying about us, all over town.”

“Can I be kind of a coward?”

“How?”

“Don’t come to my place. That’s asking for trouble. Don’t phone me, there or at the store. Just to play safe. Okay?”

“Don’t call us, we’ll call you?”

“Constantly. You won’t believe how often. I’m going to walk all tilted over from the weight of the dimes.”

So I locked my floating house and went on ahead. I went and got Miss Agnes and came back around and picked up Mary Alice. She nipped in and slunched down, saying, “All of a sudden this is a pretty conspicuous car.”

“And no matter what you ride in, you are a conspicuous lady.”

“Isn’t that the damned truth.”

“Would you feel better if I wore a dress and a blond wig?”

She turned and stared at me. “You would make the most incredibly ugly woman in all Florida.”

“Just stop being so edgy.”

“I’ll try. But he’s a sick, murderous, tricky bastard.”

Chapter Ten

I drove her to the club. The man at the gate remembered Miss Agnes far better than he remembered me. And as before, he looked as if it took a great effort of will for him to keep from asking to please never bring such an ugly old handmade pickup into paradise.

There was a slot where I could park near her Toyota. She got in her car, and I put her beach bag in. She gave me a shy, nervous, quick little smile and said she’d phone or maybe just drive up there, if that would be all right. I told her anything would be fine. She hit her brakes a foot shy of a lot of sedate gray Continental as she backed out and then thumped over some curbing as she made her turn. Goodbye, dear girl. And take care of yourself. And Hirsh.

I retraced the route I had used when driving Jane Lawson home. We had been talking. I had followed her instructions without paying too much attention to the turns. So I got partially lost at about the halfway point and nearly lost when I was almost there. When I came upon it, there were two cars in the drive with that vaguely official look. There was a rental Oldsmobile at the curb, and a burly brown man with a shaved head was leaning against the front fender with his arms folded, managing to look patient and impatient at the same time. He wore a white short-sleeved shirt and blue sailcloth Bermudas. His calves and forearms were thick, sinewy, and very hairy.

I parked twenty feet in front of the green Olds and came walking back. He said, “There is absolutely nothing to see here. Get back into that… vehicle and drag ass.”

I took the final six slow strides that put me in front of him. He was fifty at a distance and early sixties close up. But he was fit. Very fit. He even seemed to have muscles on his forehead. I couldn’t fit him into any part of the picture until I noticed the ring on his finger.

“Are you Jane’s father-in-law, sir?”

“I’m General Lawson. Why? Who are you? If you are another goddamn newspaper-”

“My name is McGee. Travis McGee. I’m a salvage consultant. I drove Jane home Friday after work. She asked me in. While we were talking, Judy came in and left with some friends. I found out about this terrible thing this morning. I live in Fort Lauderdale. It is reasonable to assume that in the course of questioning Mr. Fedderman, her employer, and Mrs. McDermit, her co-worker, they would ask them when was the last time they saw Mrs. Lawson, and they would say when she left with me. So, in a spirit of cooperation, I thought it would be well to report to whoever is investigating the case. General, I am very sorry about this. I also wish to point out that all of this is none of your goddam business, and I am humoring you because I hear the habit of command is hard to shake.”

He unfolded his arms, and his chin moved six inches toward me. “What’s that? What did you say?”

“I said I gave you more answer than I had to.”

“What were you to Jane?”

“I’ll even answer that, sir. An acquaintance.”

He closed his eyes for a moment. “They’ve been coming by. Creeps. Sickies.” He tilted his head, frowning, staring at me. “They go by nine times at three miles an hour, or they stop and get out and stand and gawp at the door with no more expression on their face than a ball of suet. Families with little children, standing and staring, with God only knows what kind of dim thoughts moving around in their empty skulls. I’ve sent a lot of them on their way. The sun is hot, and I’ve got a cheap lunch sitting like a stone in my stomach, and the law is hunting down my granddaughter. In other words, I apologize.”

He put his hand out. I took it without hesitation.

He opened the car door and sat sideways on the seat and looked up at me. “Pride is so goddamned wickedly expensive. I have been waiting here, thinking about pride.”

“Sir?”

“Three sons. Jerry was the only one who went into the service and the only one who died. The other two are doing fine. I retired early. Heart murmur. The second star was a going-away present. Bought a little grove in California. Take care of the trees. Gardening. Golf. Bridge. Am I boring you?”

“No, sir.”

“I’m boring myself. Somebody has to get stuck with listening. They paved a road near my place. I went and watched them every day. Isn’t that fascinating? Old fart watching the big yellow machines. Made myself agreeable. Asked questions. Never saw such a crowd of fuckups, pouring money down the sewer. Found a couple of my retired NCOs and officers, as bored as I was. All put some money in the pot. Rented equipment after we bid low on a culvert. Made out. Ploughed it back in. Every one of those other six old farts have taken at least two million out of it. And I kept fifty percent of everything. Seven corporations. Factory structures in Taiwan. Flood control in Brazil. Bridges in Tanzania. Pipe lines in Louisiana. Shrewd old bastard, right? Wrong. Just bored doing nothing. Horse sense and energy and being fair. Nothing more. There’s a Christ-awful shortage of horse sense in the world. Always has been. Ask me where the pride comes in. Go ahead. Ask me.”

“Where does the pride come in, General?”

“Me beginning to make money hand over fist, and Jerry’s widow with two little girls. I had to travel a lot, leaving Bess alone. Lots of room in that house, and if there wasn’t, I could build more onto it. No, she was too proud. She wanted to make her own way. Raise Jerry’s kids without help from anybody. Bess wanted to come down here and visit her and talk her into it and bring her back. She was sure she could. So my pride got in the way. If the damned girl wants to act like that, let her. Jane’s pride and my pride. Send too big a check along with the Christmas stuff, and she’d send it right back. Oh shit, isn’t pride wonderful? She stayed right here in this half-ass place leading a half-ass life, when if she’d wanted to spend a thousand dollars a day of my money, it would have tickled but not pinched. So she’s gone down the drain after a lot of scruffy little years, and the youngest girl has gone sour. For what? There’s no meaning to it at all. None.” He put his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands.

I gave him ten seconds and then said, “Are you waiting for them in there?”

He looked at me as if he had forgotten who I was. “Oh, they’re supposed to be finishing up. I can go in when they’re through, they told me.” He patted his shirt pocket. “Linda is over at the hotel with Bess. I’ve got a list of things. I don’t want that little girl to have to come back here even one more time. She had one look. This was her home. She shouldn’t remember it like the way it is now.”

I excused myself and went up the steps and pushed the buzzer. I told my story to a fat young man with a guardsman moustache. He took me back through litter and ruin to a bedroom where two technicians were working in a perfume stink, patiently dusting the larger fragments of glass. A large man sat on the bed, murmuring into the bedside extension. He had a big head and golden locks and a great big face and jaw, with fleshy, regular features. He hung up and stared at me with a look of total, vapid stupidity. It did not change as I went through my little account for the third time.

He said, “My name is Goodbread, and so far I’m making the file on this one. What I hope, McGee, is that you are one of the kinks we get now and then, they kill somebody and come back and say they just happened to know that somebody and how are you boys making out catching the killer, heh?”

“Sorry I can’t help you that way.”

He favored me with a long, stupid stare. “I might anyway have Arn run you down and check you through everybody’s computer file.”

“There’s somebody you could ask.”

“The mayor?”

“Captain Matty Lamarr.”

“Your first name again? Travis? Stand easy.” He phoned again. He had a very soft telephone voice. He held the phone in such a way that half his big hand formed a cup around the mouthpiece. I guess he was getting the home number. The captain was a few years past pulling Sunday duty. He held the bar down, then dialed again. Big swift nimble fingers. He spoke, waited a time, then spoke again. Listened a long time. And another question. More listening. Expression of gratitude. Hung up.

“The captain didn’t say you are his favorite people.”

“He’s not one of mine, but we got along all right one time.”

“He says there’s no use asking you what kind of an angle you are working.”

“If any.”

“He says he thinks you stay inside the law, just inside, most of the time.”

“I try, Lieutenant.”

“Sergeant. And he said you answer questions right, or you clam up, and you can be a help if you want to be.”

“I liked the woman. I didn’t know her well, but I liked her.”

“The captain says that the only handle he could find to use on you was that you don’t want your name in the paper.”

“There’s a point where that handle breaks right off, Sergeant.”

His long stare was lethargic, his eyes sleepy. “So let me know if you feel anything starting to give, McGee.”

“Can I suggest something to you?”

“You go ahead, and then I’ll tell you if you should have.”

“The woman’s father-in-law is waiting out at the curb in a rented car. He wants to pick up some things for the older daughter.”

“And?”

“If you know who you are keeping waiting, okay. But I read an article about him in a magazine a couple of months ago. That is Major General Samuel Horace Lawson, and Lawson International is listed on the big board, and in his line of work I would guess that he gives a bundle to both political parties, and if he gets annoyed enough, he is going to-”

“Arn!” Sergeant Goodbread roared. The fat young one with the guardsman moustache came in almost at a run, his eyes round.

“Arn, fill me on that guy you talked to out front.”

“Uh… he’s related. Lawson. Old folks. He just wants to get some stuff out of here when we’re through. For the daughter. Why? He’ll keep.”

“Did he call himself General Lawson?”

“Sure. But you know how many old generals we’ve got around this state…”

Sergeant Goodbread went out and brought the general into the house, apologizing for the delay. He helped Lawson with the list of items and had Arn carry them out to the Olds. Goodbread talked for about ten minutes to Lawson in the living room. I could hear the voices but not the words. The air conditioner was too loud. I sat on the bed. The technicians kept going listlessly through the broken glass looking for clean fresh prints. Or even fresh smudges. Many many police officers have worked in criminal investigation until retirement without ever working on a case where a fingerprint made one damned bit of difference one way or the other. A skilled man knows a fresh print or smudge the instant he brings it out by the way the natural oil from the skin responds.

Lawson left. Goodbread came to the doorway and beckoned me into the living room. A chair and the end of the couch had been cleared off. A plastic tape box crunched under his heel and some brown stereo tape caught around his ankle. He motioned me toward the couch, and he bent and plucked the tape off his ankle before he sat in the chair. He took a stenopad out and opened it and put it on his heavy thigh and said, “Description of Judith Lawson, please.”

I shut my eyes for a moment and rebuilt her, head to toe. I started to give it to him slowly, but I saw he was using some form of speedwriting or shorthand, so I delivered it more quickly. I gave him the conversation as I remembered it, not word for word, but reasonably close.

He closed the pad and said, “Thanks for your cooperation.”

“Can I ask some questions?”

“What for?”

“I want to waste your time with my idle curiosity, Sergeant. Like I wasted your time telling you about General Lawson.”

“He mentioned… Captain Lamarr mentioned you get kind of smartass.”

“Is the reconstruction that she came home and found persons unknown busting up this place?”

“No way to check it, but she was wearing street clothes, and her purse was found beside the body. Without a dime in it.”

“And where was the body?”

He hesitated. “In that doorway there to that hall, legs in this room, head in the hall.”

“Was the air conditioner on when the body was found?”

He looked at the ceiling, and for a moment that massive face firmed up, losing the practiced and deceptive look of the dullard. “On when I got here. Which seems several days ago and was yesterday. Linda Lawson said the only things she touched were the front door, which wasn’t locked, and her mother and that telephone. Why?”

“When we got here Friday, the heat would knock you down. She apologized. The house rule was last one out turns it off, first one in turns it on. It made a hell of a noise on high, but cooled off the place fast.”

He went over to the door and walked back into the room. He came back and sat down. “So the kids were busting up the back of the place when she came in, and this room was okay, and so she went over…”

He paused. I said, “If you hear a noise, you don’t turn on something that makes it harder to hear.”

He nodded. “And if you are going to sneak in and bust a place up, you don’t turn on a lot of noise that would keep you from hearing if anybody is coming. And the daughter would have had to walk further to turn it on than to get to her mother.”

We sat in silent contemplation. He tapped the stenopad and said, “Unless this little chickie was part of the group.”

“For what reason?”

“Do they need reasons?”

“How did they get in?”

“Awning window in Judy’s room was open wide, screen pushed into the room. A small person could wiggle through and go open the back door or the front.”

I looked at the floor, at thin shards of picture glass and at a triangular piece of the face of the long-dead Jerry Lawson, a piece containing one eye looking up at me. Next to it was a tape cartridge, multitrack, plastic cracked, tape dangling from it. The color picture on the plastic housing was of a young girl, smiling mouth agape, eyes half-closed in song. The press-apply label on the tape box read $7.79. The broken box and label looked fresh and neat.

I picked it up. I handed it to Goodbread. He threw it on the floor and said, “I know, I know. Damnit. What kids wouldn’t rip off new tapes? Take the money in the purse. Leave perfume. Smash everything in the kitchen, including bourbon, one bottle, seal intact. What kind of kids, everybody puts on gloves in the summertime before they touch anything? Something else too.”

He got up and went into the next room and came back with a nine-by-twelve manila envelope. He undid the clasp and looked through glossies and selected one and handed it to me, saying, “You never saw this.”

I studied it. At first it made no sense, and then I saw what he meant. It was a picture taken with a wide lens and flash, looking down at the doorway where the body had been. There was a ghost outline of a woman lying on her side, head tilted back.

He bent over me, pointed with a thick finger. “Along here some kind of bag or box of some kind of cake mix or cookie mix hit the wall and exploded and came sifting through the air. Then along here, where the side of this leg was, are pieces of a blue and white vase, very small pieces. When the examiner started to roll her over, I saw the clean floor underneath her, so I had them lift her off it very careful.”

I looked up at him. “So what kind of glove-wearing kids, who wouldn’t rip off tapes, perfume, or booze, broke her neck and went right on trashing the house?”

He sat down. “If you take total freaks, if they did not give one damn about anything, where do the gloves fit the pattern?”

“Where are the dirty words?”

“The what?”

“With paint, catsup, lipstick, anything. On the walls. Where’s the big pile? Don’t they always think of putting all the clothes in the middle of the kitchen floor or in the bathtub and pouring everything liquid on top of the mess?”

“I never thought of that,” he said. “It’s kind of orderly. Wrong word, I guess. Break everything breakable. Tip all the furniture over. Dump all the drawers. Slash the clothes and bedding.” He tapped his notebook again. “Mama came home and had another fight with this kid. It got physical, and mama got killed. So the kid trashed the house to make it look as if she didn’t do it. She trashed her own stuff.”

“Or someone was in here looking for something to steal when she came home, Sergeant. Lost his nerve. Tried to grab her when she ran. Broke her neck. Then tried to make it look like kids.”

“Except where is the girl? Why doesn’t she show?”

“But if it was your way, she would have to show up to make it work, wouldn’t she? Running would spoil her idea.”

He wiped the lower half of his face with a big slow hand. He looked tired. “I’ve got more to think about than I need. I want to decide whether or not I want to stay on this. I can get off in thirty seconds, risking nothing.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The general doesn’t want publicity. The press hasn’t made him yet. I told him I want to keep it that way as long as I can because without him, this one is low priority. Three column inches on page thirty-one. An indoor mugging of a middle-aged widow. If whoever killed her keeps on thinking it’s handled on a routine basis-which means only so many man hours, lab hours, leg work, and then into the open file-maybe that person won’t do such a good job of covering as they would if they knew all the pressure there is behind it. I can get departmental priority, quietly, on the basis of who he is, and it improves my chances of a wrapup on it. But if I tip the press, if I made a private call, say, to Gene Miller on the Herald, then it moves from page thirty-one to maybe a big story on the first page of the second section. It hits a lot of sensitive areas. It gets political. The person or persons we’re looking for are alerted, and so they go back and put a lot more braces and rivets on the alibi. And as I told the general, they will cover Judy Lawson’s trouble with the law, because when something gets big, on the days when there’s nothing new, they go back and dig up the old and print it, because if it isn’t known, it’s new. And official sources get into the act.”

“What do you mean?”

“Official sources revealed today that the persons who murdered Jane Lawson may have in fact been looking for her younger daughter Judy, arrested seven months ago by vice-squad undercover agents-”

“Vice squad!”

“She was fifteen then, working with two older boys. There was a rash of it at the time, kids working the parks and working over the tourists. The girl smiles and wags her little behind and tells the mark she’ll give a ten-dollar treat over in the bushes or over in that camper or van. He goes for it, and the boys jump him and pick him clean. Maybe one mark in ten files a complaint. A lot of them are users. Maybe the others are behind in their car payments. They ran Judy through medical, and she wasn’t using, and she wasn’t dosed, and it was first time, so she got two years in the custody of her mother. The boys were already in the files and legally adults, so they didn’t make out that well. Anyway, if it should break, they would take me off and give it to somebody with a lot more rank. The general has given me a deadline to come up with something promising, and if I don’t, he’s going to break it himself by coming up with such a reward for information it will clog the switchboards for a week.”

“How much time?”

“Not enough.”

“Where is he staying?”

“In a hotel.”

“Thanks. Thanks very much.”

“I’ve stopped being an information service. Where can I find you if I want you?” I told him, and he wrote it down.

“And if you think of anything, McGee, get in touch right away. Don’t try to decide what is and what isn’t worth telling me. Get in touch.”

He stood up. I was dismissed. When I looked back, before closing the door, he was staring into space, big face slack, mouth sagging open, eyes sleepy and lifeless. It was a shtick I’d never seen before: Here is a cop so stupid you don’t have to keep your guard quite so high. Here is a cop who needs help finding his way out of a phone booth. Somebody’s dumb brother-in-law. Sure. I could see how that style would fit a lengthy interrogation. Long pauses. Simple questions. A lack of comprehension requiring endless repetition. “And what was it you said you did after that?” Then the eventual, inevitable, fatal contradiction, because the one thing successful lying requires is total recall of all the details of the structure of lies, and that is rare anywhere, even among men who face prison if they fumble just one critical question.

Chapter Eleven

I drove over to the beach and put old Ag into a private, fenced lot which bragged of its security measures. On the way I had stopped at a mainland shopping center and was now the owner of a red and white flight bag containing shorts, socks, shirt, and precuffed slacks which were going to be too short. I carried the cheap sport coat over my arm. The rest of the overnight essentials were in the new flight bag. Thai International.

The same cold-eyed man was on the desk. I told him to tell Mr. Nucci that Mr. McGee wanted to check in. He once again muttered on the phone, hung up, spun the visitab index, turned, and picked a key out of the mail rack. He put a card in front of me and said, “Please.” I hesitated and could think of no reason why I shouldn’t be exactly who I was and so signed in. A bellhop took me on a long easterly walk to far elevators. We rode up to eighteen and walked further east, to the end of the corridor. He turned on all the lights. It took some time. He had to work his way around a big room. He finally left, with tip, and I was alone with my big beds on a circular platform, with my electric drapes, my stack of six big bath towels, my balcony overlooking the sea, my icemaker, my sunken tub, my coral carpeting six inches deep.

I phoned Meyer aboard the Keynes. I told him that I was in 1802 at the Contessa, and it seemed a convenient, temporary refuge. I asked him what he did when he knew he had heard something that meant something, and he should be able to remember what it was, and he couldn’t. He said he usually walked back and forth and then went to sleep. I asked him if that did any good, and he said practically never.

I tried Mary Alice and hung up after the tenth unanswered ring. There was a tapping at my door. A waiter brought in a tray with a sealed bottle of Plymouth gin, a double old-fashion glass, a large golden lemon, and a tricky knife with which to cut slices of rind. Willy Nucci followed the waiter in and waved him back out and closed the door.

Willy came over and shook my hand. He smiled at me. “How do you like this room? All right?”

“Willy!”

“Want me to fix you one of your crazy gin on the rocks, or do you want to do it?”

“Willy!”

“What I can do, pal, I can send up this Barbara I’ve got doing some PR for the place, living here in the house, little bit of a thing, she learned massage in Tokyo, and it’s the damnedest thing, she uses her feet. She walks on your back. You wouldn’t believe. Let me send her up, you’ll never regret it. Pretty little thing.”

“Sit the hell down!” I roared.

He backed up and sat down and wiped his mouth. “I was only-”

“Willy, the room, the bottle, a girl walking on me… What in God’s name has gotten into you?”

“Anything you want in this hotel is yours. It is only to ask. Okay?”

“What makes me so important all of a sudden?”

“You’ve always been important to me, McGee.”

Then light dawned. I stared at him. I laughed. He didn’t. I said, “Willy, your grapevine works too fast.”

“I hear what I have to know.”

“Like I’m working for Frank Sprenger?”

“Remember one thing. This is the first time his name has ever been mentioned between us.”

“Why should you and I have ever talked about Sprenger?”

Some of the tension went out of him, and his shoulders came down about an inch. “I’m not asking you what you’re doing for him, am I?”

“I’m not doing anything for him, Willy.”

The shoulders went up again. “You took his money. That I know.”

“I took his money.”

“Some of the things you’ve done haven’t been all the way bright, McGee, but if you are saying what you seem to be saying, then you are being a hundred and ten percent stupid. If you take Sprenger’s money, you do something he wants done. If you don’t do it, you don’t get to give the money back. You don’t jerk around with any Frank Sprenger.”

“We’re involved here in semantics, Willy.”

“You said you’re not doing anything for him.”

“I’m not doing anything against him.”

Shoulders went all the way back to normal. “Oh! Then that’s what you’re doing for him. Not doing anything to screw him up. Which means he thinks you can or will be able to.”

“One small item and not much money.”

He nodded. “Like that thing we-” He stopped himself. “Like if he was involved in some kind of investment and didn’t get what he thought he was buying, and somebody wanted you to help with the real stuff.”

“Are these rooms bugged without you knowing for sure?” I asked him.

“People are in and out all day. I do the best I can for the owners. And the owners would want me to tell you this, Travis. And you tell Frank Sprenger for me. Any friend of his, any time, the best we got is what he gets. I personally guarantee it.”

“I’ll tell him what a damned good job Willy Nucci does for the owners. But I’d wager he knows that already.”

“I try my best. What do you want? Just ask.”

“I might want something later. Maybe later we could take a little walk together by the ocean and talk.”

“I’ll tell the switchboard, when you phone me it goes through right away.”

“Thanks, Willy.”

At the door he paused and turned. “Even if the only part you want is the massage, I’d recommend her. You’ll sleep like a baby.” I declined. He shrugged and left.

I tried Mary Alice for ten more rings. I tried Hirsh Fedderman. The woman said, “This here is Mrs. Franck speaking, a neighbor, I am sitting with Mr. Fedderman who is now sleeping at last, thank God.”

“Was Mary Alice McDermit there? Or is she still there?”

“Here there is only me, Mrs. Franck, and there is Mr. Fedderman, like I said already, sound asleep. Who did you ask?”

“Mrs. McDermit. She was there today. When did she leave?”

“How should I know if I don’t know her? I didn’t meet everybody that comes here. This dear old man, he is blessed with friends. All day long too many people coming to see him, tiring him out, bringing enough food, we could feed Cuba maybe.”

“Mary Alice works for him. She’s a young woman with long black hair, six feet tall.”

“Ah! Oh! You should say so. That one. Yes. Such a size person they are growing these days. It is something in the food. What time is it now? Nearly nine? So she left at four o’clock, five hours ago. You missed her by a little. If she ever comes back, who shall I say is calling?”

“Thank you, never mind. How is Hirsh?”

“How do you think he is? That nice woman being killed in her own home by wicked children, fifteen years she worked for him, a faithful loyal person. His heart is broken in two. That’s all that is wrong.”

“I know it would be wrong to wake him up, and you wouldn’t even if I asked you. So would you happen to know if a woman who used to work for him is still alive. I think her name is Moojah.”

“Of course Miss Moojah is alive! Wasn’t she here today, bringing a hot casserole? She’s in the book. Why don’t you look? How many Moojahs are there going to be? She lives in Harmony Towers, that has a three-year waiting list for senior singles. Miss Moojah will be alive when all of us have passed away, believe it.”

After I hung up, I checked the directory. Yes indeed. A. A. Moojah. I wrote the number on the phone-side scratch pad, just as the phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Oh, great! Just dandy!”

“I called you twice. No answer. How did you find me?”

“Meyer told me.”

“Meyer phoned you?”

“I didn’t say that, sweetie. Meyer is sitting smiling at me like some kind of an owl.”

“An owl. You mean he’s here in… Oh.”

“Yes indeed. Here I am in all my pretties, making my poor dear little yellow car go seventy-five on the turnpike.”

“It always seems to me like downhill from there to Miami.”

“If and when I feel like it, I’ll check that out.”

“When do you expect to feel like it? I have some things I want to talk to you about.”

“Meyer is a wonderful conversationalist. I’m going to have another delicious drink, and then we’re going to go eat somewhere nice. So don’t wait up for me.”

I started to explain that so many things were happening, it was too inefficient to try to commute, but I realized I was talking to an empty line.

I broke the seal on the bottle and was pleased to find that my personal icemaker made those nice little cubes the size of professional dice. After one sip I got out the card which one of my two visitors had given me-either Harry Harris or Dave Davis. The unlisted phone number was written on the back in red ballpoint.

When the phone was answered, I could hear music and laughter in the background. The girl said, “Whatever you were looking for, we got it.”

“What I am looking for is Frank.”

“We got… oops. Wrong way to go. Whom is speaking?”

“McGee. T. McGee.”

“Just stand there,” she said. She did not cover the mouthpiece perfectly, and I heard her bawling over the background noise, “Frank, somebody name McGee. You wannit?”

She came back on and said, “He’ll come onto an extension in just a sec.”

“Hello?” he said. “Let me hear you hang up, Sissie.”

She let us both hear it, like a good rap on the ear with a tack hammer. “Sorry about that,” he said. It was a deep, easy voice. “And sorry I couldn’t come to see you the other day. I got tied up. I told them not to give out a name. Just the number where you could get in touch with either of them.”

“They didn’t give out any name, Mr. Sprenger. If it was in connection with something I was involved in, concerning a Mr. Fedderman, then I could add two and two, but I wasn’t sure, of course. Then something made me sure.”

“Such as?”

“I was over on the beach, and I stopped at the Americana for a drink, and somebody I know came over and said she understood I’m working for you now.”

Five seconds of silence. “I find that very interesting. You wouldn’t want to give me the name?”

“No, I wouldn’t. But she doesn’t work for you, as far as I know. I didn’t appreciate it.”

“How am I supposed to take that?”

“I don’t know how you want to take it, Mr. Sprenger. I just don’t want any confusion in anybody’s mind about whose problems I’m supposed to be taking care of.”

“Why don’t you come to my office tomorrow, say about ten o’clock, and we can discuss your investment problems?”

“I found your Lincoln Road address in the book. About eleven would be better, I think.”

“I’ll see you whenever you arrive. Right now you and I are even with the board. I consider it full value received. Okay?”

I said everything was just fine. I hung up, smiling. It was worth a thousand dollars to him either way. If I was trying to con him into thinking there was a leak in his administrative apparatus, it was worth it to know I was dull enough to try to con him. On the other hand, if there was a leak, he was tough and smart enough to find it. I knew there was a leak. And I knew that if it was a plant, my friend Willy Nucci was too shrewd to set himself up by letting the plant know where the information was going. One thing seemed reasonably certain. Frank Sprenger would have it sorted out by the time I met with him on Monday. And be duly grateful. I could guess how his mind would work. Absolute loyalty, absolute silence, these are required, are so critical, they are seldom even mentioned. Any violation of this credo is a form of voluntary suicide. The reason is that if the unreliable one talks to someone who intends no harm, and if someone who does mean harm can learn of the defection, then the threat of exposure is deadly enough to extract the same information for other uses. There are two reasons why they use the same sort of cell structure as do intelligence apparatuses. It limits the availability and dissemination of potentially damaging information. And it makes it a lot easier to track down any leak.

I stretched out on a chaise, drink at hand, scratch pad at hand, and began working my way through a tangle of phone lines toward Sergeant Goodbread. I finally persuaded a communications person to patch me through to Goodbread’s vehicle.

“McGee, I can’t make any kind of statement. You know that.”

“This is sort of personal. When you can get to a phone, call me. The sooner the better.”

It took him six minutes to get to a phone. “It better be good,” he said. “I still haven’t been home yet. I’m dead on my feet.”

“I want to give you some information, but I don’t want to give you all of it.”

“Have you lost your mind?”

“What I want to do is get you all the way off that idea of the daughter being involved or kids being involved.”

“We’ve got Judy. She came home this morning and saw a police car and thought her old lady had turned her in, so she and her friends drove right on by. Friday night she and her friends drove up to Orlando to go to Disneyworld. They looked so scruffy they couldn’t get in. So they drove over to Rocket Beach and spent the day, six of them, in an old VW camper and tried to stay over night, but the law took them in to see if they were on any wanted lists, then rousted them south out of the county. It looks as if it will check out all the way, if we have to. After they drove by the house, they went to a friend’s place, whose parents are off at some kind of convention. Anyway, at about six this evening, some other friend called up that house to ask the girl if she’d heard about Mrs. Lawson getting killed and the cops looking for Judy. So the kid got smart and phoned in, and I had her brought in. It really shook her up. It’s violation of probation, and nobody in custody of her. What would happen, she would go to the state school.”

“If it weren’t for the general?”

“He and his wife and the sister came in and talked to the girl. He wanted to bust her right out, right now, but the only way he could do it, it would turn into news. I want it to stay quiet. If the man who did it suddenly hears there is going to be every kind of heat and pressure he ever heard of, he could be long gone.”

“The man?”

“She came home with him yesterday, say. She brought him to her place. They hassled. She started to try to run. He grabbed her by the hair to yank her back, not meaning to kill her, but he was too rough. Broke vertebrae. The spinal cord was pinched and lacerated. The time of death they say was maybe about two-thirty, but the injury could have happened then or earlier. There would be a lot of paralysis, but the heart and the breathing could have kept going an hour after the neck was snapped, maybe longer. She went down, and he probably started to get out of there, then decided to confuse everybody. I had a hell of a job convincing that old man to lay back. Judy’s release can be arranged quietly tomorrow.”

“Where are they staying?”

“Now it’s your turn, McGee.”

“I’m not pleading or begging. I’m just telling you that it would be a very nice gesture on your part, Sergeant, if you would accept what I want to tell you without going after what I really have to hold back.”

“I’ll decide after I hear the first part.”

“There is a good chance that some person or persons unknown believed that Jane Lawson might have something very valuable hidden in her apartment.”

“How valuable?”

“Four hundred thousand, maybe.”

“Is there a chance they got it?”

“If there is a chance it was there, there is a chance they got it.”

“Is it bigger than a breadbox?”

“That’s as far as I want to go right now.”

“The hell with that, McGee. Come in or get brought in. What are you trying to do to me, giving me such crap?”

“You are a good officer, I think. And if I get clumsy and walk in front of a city bus, I want you to have some kind of a starting place.”

“Then give me one! The general is at the Doral.”

“I did.”

“Is it gold coins, McGee? Is it? Hey! McGee? Is it?”

Slowly, gently, I replaced the phone on the cradle, and its little night glow went on glowing.

I checked the time and wondered about the Doral. If one wanted to get anywhere at all with the general, it wouldn’t be over the phone. Probably not in person either.

I wondered about breadboxes and gold. What were they getting for it lately? Sixty dollars an ounce? But not normal ounces. Troy weight. I scribbled some figures. A quarter ton of raw gold would be worth four hundred thousand maybe. Okay then. Smaller than your standard, everyday breadbox. But one hell of a lot more comprehensible than Fedderman’s little squares and oblongs of paper.

He had showed me one in a catalog. British Guiana. Scott catalog number 13. One-cent magenta. Valued at $325,000. Unique, meaning there is only one in the world. Also, 1856. It is Stanley Gibbons catalog number 23, valued at Ј120,000. Crude printing in black on reddish purple paper and initialed in ink by a postmaster long dead.

So, to paraphrase Mary Alice, just what preoccupation of man is worth futzing with? Anything which relates to survival is acceptable on the basis that survival is both possible and laudable. Survival of self and species and environment.

Everything else then becomes a taste. Taste of the hummingbird tongues, taste of gold in the vault, taste of Barbara Barefoot, taste of uniqueness of oneself, because if there is only one British Guiana 13 in the world and you own it, you walk about with the knowledge of being the only man who owns it. You are unique. If you have the biggest pile of throwing-stones in the tribe… Whoa, that goes back to survival.

So what packrat preoccupation did I have? What special artifacts does McGee fondle?

As I was about to pronounce myself immune, I suddenly realized I am the worst possible kind. I collect moments of total subjective pleasure, box them up, and put them in a shed in the back of my head, never having to open them up again, but knowing they are there.

So what would be a gem in the collection?

A time when I am totally fit and I have just come wading through one of the fringes of hell, have been stressed right to my breaking point, have expected to be whisked out of life, but was not. I am out of it, and if there is any pain, it is too dwindled to notice. I am in some warm place where the air and sea are bright. There are chores to do when I feel like it, but nothing urgent. I am in some remote place where no one can find me and bother me. There is good music when and if I want it. There is a drink I have not yet tasted. There is a scent of some good thing a-cooking slowly. There is a lovely laughing lady, close enough to touch, and there are no tensions between us except the ones which come from need. There is no need to know the day, the month, or the year. We will stay until it is time to go, and we will not know when that time will come until we wake up one day and it is upon us.

And that is a McGee catalog 13, unique, shameful, and totally hedonistic. Misfit. An ant with a grasshopper syndrome. Rationale: One turn around the track.

I decided I had better take the whole thing and drop it in front of Meyer, like a crock of snakes, and let him do the sorting and prodding. Meaning, he says, is what somebody finds meaningful.

The phone rang, and she said, “Just to be sure you’re alone in your broom closet, luv.”

“What else? You’re downstairs? Go back through to the second batch of elevators.”

“Just as soon as you take care of this man’s problems.”

“Bell captain here, sir.”

“Mmm. Alfred?”

“Why, yes sir!”

“Any dear friend of mine is, by definition, a dear friend of Mr. Nucci’s. Send Mrs. McDermit up, please. Cordially.”

“Sir, I was only-”

“You were only trying to put a body block on any freelance hooker trying to work your house, Alfred. And no one can tell by looking at them any more, can they?”

“Sir, I-”

“Find out what she would like to drink and have it sent up, please. And have the waiter bring a dinner menu, please.”

“Right away, sir!”

Her little glass jug of margueritas, sitting imbedded in a bowl of shaved ice, reached 1802 about fifty seconds after she did, and just as I was explaining to her that any pretty lady coming alone into a Collins Avenue hotel after dark, carrying a purse as big as a bird cage, would be under suspicion of entrepreneurism.

We tried to be jolly and gay, but it kept fading off into a minor key and into silence. The conductor raps the stick on the podium and starts the music again.

Even the absolutely superb steaks did not get us back into our own places. An ugly death had bent our realities, and we were each on our separate journey to Ixtlan because it meant different things to each of us. We ate by the light of candles in hurricane globes, guttering and flickering in front of the open balcony doors, in the moist warm night wind that came off the sea. I wheeled the dinner equipment out into the hall and chained the door before we moved the candles to bedside, and even the strokes and promises, the rituals and releases of love did not pierce that curious, deadening barrier between us. We did what seemed expected and what seemed the momentary imperative, each living inside the ivory round of skull, looking out of it with night eyes at the shifts and shadows of conjoining.

Chapter Twelve

I awoke, and the candles had burned out. I could hear the sea and, approaching across the sea, a hard night rain, a bumble and thud of thunder. As I sat up, a vivid green-white flash filled the room, leaving me with the after-image of her pillowed head beside me, eyes awake and looking toward the dark ceiling.

I got out on my side and went around the bed to the big doors. The first driving rain came just as I was closing the second one, spattering and bouncing as high as my belly. The doors closed out the rush of wind, the storm sounds, and muted the thunder. I found the pulls and slid both sets of draperies across the doors. The storm was no longer something alive. It was on tape on a television set next door.

I put a breath of air conditioning back on to keep the air in the room from turning stale, and when she called me, I went to her side of the bed. She found my hand and tugged at me. When I bent to her, she pushed and said, “We didn’t talk.”

She hitched over, and I sat on the bed, against a solid warmth of hip under percale. She said, “Over the phone you said you wanted to talk. We didn’t talk that kind of talk, did we?”

“No. We talked bad lines from old movies, I think.”

She was in a total blackness. When I closed my eyes, nothing changed. She said, “It’s funny. You know? They’ve all said so many things so many ways, there’s nothing left for people to really say to each other. I mean I can say things, but behind it I can hear Cher saying it to Sonny.” She changed to a thin, squeaky little voice. “I am Gabby Gabriele, your very own talking doll. Pull my string and I’ll say anything you want.”

I said, “Sometimes Jack Lemmon is speaking, sometimes Jack Lord, sometimes George Peppard, sometimes Archie Bunker.”

I heard and felt the depth of her sigh. “That’s it,” she said. “Nothing is really real, and then Jane Lawson is dead, and that is very very real. She’d talk about her kids and the house, and she’d sound like Erma Bombeck, and that wasn’t real. You wanted to talk about Jane, and then you did, and I didn’t ask you.”

“Sooner or later, Mary Alice, we have to talk about her, so I guess now is okay. I’ve got some facts. You have to help me put them together.”

“Me help?”

“The damage to the house was done after somebody cracked her neck.”

“After! But how-”

“Let me cover the ground first. It wasn’t kids, because too many of the things kids take were still there. The trashing didn’t have the usual pattern. It was imitation trashing, a diversion. The person involved wore gloves. There wasn’t even a fresh oil-smudge on all the glass and pottery things that were broken. The trashing could have been a diversion for another reason too, to cover up evidence of careful search. Whoever did it came through the front door, I think, with Jane. Then later they blew more smoke by making it look as if some small person had wiggled through an awning window in the bedroom. Judy is in custody. She was a couple of hundred miles away.”

She squeezed my hand in the darkness. “How could you get to know all these things, darling?”

“I took a deep breath and walked right into the middle of it, using the excuse I took her home Friday. If I’d found somebody too rigid and dumb running the show, I would have left it at that. There are only two kinds of people you can con. Greedy people and bright people. The greedy ones want to use you, and the bright ones want to see how far you’ll take it.”

“But what does it all mean?”

“Lots of guesses. Maybe it’s as simple as it looks. Somebody came to the door. Pushed his way in. Killed her and took what she had in her purse and looked for more. Then take it through all the shades and gradations right up to the way way out, where she was the one who somehow got her hands on the rarities Hirsh bought for the Sprenger account, and maybe somebody in Sprenger’s organization knew about it and went after her.”

“But Mr. Sprenger doesn’t even know anything is missing!”

I thought that over and decided not to go into it with her. Give Sprenger credit for a good intelligence system. When you put a lot of eggs into a lot of different baskets, you watch all the baskets. McGee starts hanging around Fedderman’s shop. Let us say I do not look as if I collect stamps or coins. I am conspicuous. It is a handicap, professionally. So he gets a line on me through the plate on Miss Agnes. Or, an ugly concept to swallow, Jane Lawson tells him I am interested, having previously told him his expensive rarities have turned into junk. Or there is some kind of conspiracy involving Fedderman and Sprenger which I have not yet been able to figure out. I can start with the only point I am sure of-that Davis and Harris approached me with the idea that the man they represented had a hunch he had been taken but was not really sure.

Too many it’s and whereases to inflict upon the lady who lay close at hand, warm and invisible in the smaller hours of Monday, on one of the twenty-fifths of the many Septembers of my life. Should a man reach eighty, he has only had eighty Septembers. It does not seem like many, said that way. It seems as if there are so few each one should have been better used.

Meyer made one of his surveys of the elderly couples in the Fort Lauderdale area, the ones being squeezed between the cost of living and their Social Security. They were very bitter about it. They were very accusatory about it. Amurrica should give them the financial dignity they had earned. Meyer’s survey was in depth, relating income over the working years to the pattern of spending. Meyer radiates compassion. He is easy to talk to. He ended his survey after forty couples chosen at random, because by then the pattern was all too clear.

He said, “I’ll put it all into appropriate and acceptable jargon later, Travis, but the essence of it is that all too many of them were screwed by consumer advertising. Spend, spend, spend. Live for today. So they lived out their lives up to their glottis in time payments. They blew it all on boats and trailers and outboard motors, binoculars and hunting rifles and department store high fashion. They lived life to the hilt, like the ads suggest. Not to the hilt of pleasure, but to the hilt of spending. They had bureau drawers full of movie cameras, closets full of record players and slide projectors. Buy the wall-to-wall carpeting. Buy the great big screen. Visit all the national parks in America. Funny thing. They had all started to lay away some dollars for old-age income, but when the Social Security payments got bigger and the dollar started shrinking, they said the hell with it. Blow it all. Now their anger is directed outward, at society, because they don’t dare look back and think of how pathetically vulnerable they were, how many thousands they blew on toys that broke before they were paid for, and how many thousands on the interest charges to buy those toys. They don’t know who screwed them. They did what everybody else was doing. Look at the tabulation on my last question. ‘If you had it to do over again, how much would you put aside each month, expressed as a percentage of income, and what would you give up?’ Read the things they’d give up, my friend. It would break your heart.”

I am no living endorsement for prudence and thrift. My grasshopper excesses are worse than theirs. Yet mine are deliberate. I do not expect to have the chance to become very old. And though my chance is perhaps less than theirs, to think that way is romanticism, like that of the seventeen-year old who vows no wish to live past thirty. I hobble down the raw streets of some unimaginable future, cackling, soiling my garments, trying to stop the busy people striding by so I can show them the dead bird I am wearing around my withered old neck. Not an awesome and magnificent albatross. A simple chicken.

“Where did you go, darling?” she asked.

I came back to the reality of my hand taken to her unseen lips, each knuckle slowly kissed. A coolness moved across my naked back, coming in silence from the unseen vent on high, drying the last of the sleep-sweat.

“I went roaming in my head. It isn’t very orderly in there. A lot of brush and jungle trails and no signposts. So I get lost in there sometimes.”

“I came after you, huh?”

“Thanks.”

“That makes me feel spooky, thinking of the insides of heads like that. I don’t go back into mine. It’s full of dull junk. Old cardboard boxes from supermarkets, packed with old clothes and school books. It’s full of things that are all over.”

“Are you tidy? Is everything labeled?”

“No. Why should it be? I’m never going to go poking around in there. It’s all throw-away. I ought to have a truck come and get it. I don’t think back. Neither should you, dear. And there isn’t any point in thinking ahead, because nothing ever comes out the way you think it will. So what I do is think of right now, and I do what I want to with it.”

“I’m thinking of right now.”

“Good. We weren’t real good before, were we? Like yesterday, all except the first time yesterday. Jane dying made things strange. For us.”

“She has to be involved with Hirsh’s problem somehow, but certainly not out of any need for the money.”

“Why do you say that? Why not any need for the money?”

“If she really had to have money, if she was desperate enough to try to steal from Hirsh, long before she got to that point, she would have asked her father-in-law for it.”

“What if she needed a lot?”

“How much is a lot, Mary Alice? I would imagine he could have moved a million dollars into her name in that First Atlantic Bank and Trust within an hour of her phoning him.”

Her breath whistled. The bed shifted, and the hip warmth pressure went away. Her grasp tightened on my hand, and I sensed, without seeing her, that she had hitched herself up to face me. I felt against my throat and chest a subtle radiation of the heat of her body, and the humid scents of her came clearer to my nostrils.

Her voice spoke from blackness at my throat level and not far away. “Are you sure? She never said anything like that!”

“I’m very sure. I met the man. I’ve read about him. He’s very impressive.”

“But I don’t understand.”

“Why she didn’t tell you about it?”

“Not so much that. Why she lived so small and so shabby. Once Linda started going to college, Jane took that rotten bus every school day. I can’t remember her going to a hairdresser. She was always letting her skirts out or taking them in. What kind of a weird kick was she on anyway?”

“Living her own life, maybe.”

“If you want to call it living. I never knew she was such a freak.”

“Apparently you and she didn’t exchange life stories. You didn’t tell her things either.”

“That’s sort of different. I could have gone back to McDermit, maybe. I don’t know. I never asked. If I did, I’d have lived rich. If I could have stood it, I’d have stayed. But what kind of grief would she have had to take? Nothing at all. Just a nice life.”

“Maybe she thought this was a better way to raise her kids.”

“Do you mean that? Judy sings in the choir, maybe? And gathers wildflowers for mama dear?”

“She did all right with Linda.”

“And she thought a five hundred average was okay? It seems to me that…”

After a long silence I said, “Seems what to you?”

“Forget it, huh?”

“Sure.”

“Oh God, Trav, I don’t want to talk about Jane or think about her or Hirsh or Frank or anybody. I just want to make love. Okay?”

“I can’t think of any good reason why not, girl.”

“You seem to be thinking clearly, dear.”

It was better between us. The curious feeling of apartness was gone. She was not a strenuous partner. We slowly and gently and with mutual consideration sorted ourselves out so that there was no strain of support or numbing weight for either of us. In that perfect ease, that sleepy, lasting luxury, I drifted in and out of those fantasies which are neighbors of sleep. In one of the fantasies I was holding a gigantic and disembodied heart, holding it in that precise posture, moving against it in that precise rhythm which was the only way in the world it could be made to keep on beating with that small, deep, and solid rhythm, and could be kept alive.

Chapter Thirteen

She was all combed and showered and lipsticked and dressed when she woke me up and said that she was leaving to go back to her place and change and then go to the store.

My mind felt like glue, and I wondered if I was duplicating Sergeant Goodbread’s habitual expression. “But Hirsh wouldn’t want business as usual, would he?”

“Of course he wouldn’t, silly man! But there’s always the mail, and the things I haven’t finished, and I want to see what Jane was doing that somebody else will have to finish. I won’t open the place up. I’ll print a sign and put it on the door. If there’s anything Hirsh has to decide, I’ll take it to his place and ask him. I hope there is. It will be the best thing in the world for him to start making decisions.”

“Say hello to him for me.”

“Get some more sleep, darling. I’d give odds you’re going to need it.”

She gave me a pat and went off to the door, springing along on those Olympic legs. She undid the chain and left, the latch clacking shut. I remembered how (only the day before yesterday) the webbed, interwoven muscles of her thighs had bulged when the full strain of the slalom cutback clenched her whole body. Visible at such times but never discernible to any loving touch, not on the shoulders or back, the arms, or legs. Firm, yes. But so sweetly sheathed by the resilient softness of the woman-padding of the little layer of subcutaneous fat. Grasp her more strongly, and the firm underlayer of muscle was then tangible, sliding and clenching and relaxing. And the tone and control of the athlete muscles was apparent whenever she moved, whenever she bent, flexed, twisted, lifted, and apparent in the tirelessness of her repetition of any stressing motion.

I bobbed across the surface of sleep, sinking and pulling myself away from it, and at last stood up and creaked a hundred muscles in gargantuan stretching, padded in and adjusted the four shower nozzles to soft thick spray for all the soaping and rinsing, and then to hard fine stinging spray for the cold that finally woke me up all the way. I brushed with the new brush, shaved with the new tools, put on my supermarket socks and shorts and slacks and shirt, my shoes from a previous life where I had lived aboard a houseboat somewhere, and went down to find a place in the hotel to have breakfast. The basement coffee shop had the windowless fluorescence of a bus station at midnight, so I went back up and was led across fifty feet of carpeting to a window table and handed a menu as big as a windshield-twice as big when opened. Three copywriters had swooned while trying to describe the taste of eggs scrambled with roe.

When I lowered the menu, Willy Nucci was sitting across from me. It gave me a start, so visible, he said, “I could wear a bell, like a leper.”

“I should have been able to hear your shirt.”

“This was a gift, handwoven in Guatemala.”

“By parrots?”

“You are very funny today. You are killing me.” The man came up and bowed and took my order. A large fresh orange juice. Blueberry waffle. Double on the Canadian bacon. Maybe some cinnamon toast. Pot of coffee. Willy ordered coffee. After the captain left, Willy said, “From what Alfred said, I guess you got to regain your strength.”

“I thought he was wished on you. I didn’t know he reported to you.”

He glanced around nervously. “Why should I ever say he was wished on me? He’s a good night man. When he isn’t sure, he checks with me. I was making a joke.”

“You were? Ho,ho,ho. What did he check with you?”

“If you were throwing my name around or you were okay and he should drop it right there. Drop it there, I told him.”

“What if I was just using your name in vain?”

“He wouldn’t have broke up any romancing, just had some hackie tail her to wherever when she came out, then depending if it was town or beach, a couple of friendlies would have picked her up for soliciting, and then it would have been put to her as either a hundred bucks and ninety days as a freelance, or case dismissed if she wanted to join up and pay her dues and learn the rules.”

“How about a perfectly legitimate girlfriend?” Willy almost smiled. “Unless a girl has very heavy connections, what difference does it make, after all? And if she’s got the connections, she’ll start naming them the minute she’s picked up, and then it’s a judgment call on the part of the friendlies.”

“So he described her to you?”

“Long black hair, blue eyes, and tits that came up to his ears. She got a little pissed-off at how he acted and wouldn’t give him a name, so he tried the description on me because he said he thought he’d seen her someplace.”

“Where?”

“He couldn’t put his mind to it. I told him to forget it, all and any part of it. He said she was built for heavy duty, for a man and a half. But a little too old to be a bonus item for anybody who turns her over to the union.”

My juice came. I tasted it. I pushed it over to Willy to taste. He made a face and said, “Yeck. Know what does that?”

“What does that, Willy?”

“The oil in orange rind is practically the same molecular structure as castor oil. So whatever clown ground this fresh, ground right past the juice and pith into the rind. Be right back.”

And that is why it is a good hotel. Willy knows everything. He checks every incoming purchase. He reaches up and runs his fingers along ledges. Fifty times a year he picks a room at random and sleeps in it and makes sure that every little thing he finds wrong is fixed.

He came back with fresh juice in a taller glass. He watched me taste it, relaxed when I pronounced it delicious. He said, “Who can knock the woman who did it wrong? A little round Cuban woman, she does the work of three people out there. God grant I shouldn’t lose her and the union shouldn’t slow her down.”

“Before you sell the place.”

“Sell! Why should I sell? Are you dealing off a short deck?”

“Sorry, Mr. Nucci.”

“Here’s your breakfast, McGee. Enjoy.”

Sprenger Investment Associates was five blocks west of Collins on Lincoln Road, on the second floor in the middle of the block on the wide pedestrian mall. The big glass door hissed when I pushed it open. It was a combination reception room and bullpen, with a deep blue rug and gauze green draperies, big formica desks in kindergarten colors. A broad tape machine in a decorator housing was against the wall at the left, demonstrating its inhuman typing skill. A table contained stacks of literature about municipal bonds. One floor man was on the phone, another talking to an elderly couple, a third reading The Wall Street Journal. They were young men, expensively dressed and coiffed. Over on the right a computer printout station was making a subdued roar as the interleaf printout sheets came folding down into the bin. A girl who seemed to be fifty percent thighs stood at a waist-high counter deftly separating and binding a previous printout. Another girl was having a donut and coffee. The third girl stared at me from the reception desk, making her decision not to get up and come around the desk with welcome smile after she had given me a quick inventory, from shoes to sun-parched hair.

“May I help you?” she said in a voice which indicated she thought it was most unlikely that she could. It was cold in the room. She was pretty. There were goosepimples on her upper arms.

“Mr. Sprenger said he would see me whenever I got here.”

“Are you sure he said that?”

“Why don’t we try him on it, little chum?”

“I couldn’t interrupt him, really.”

“The name is McGee.”

I saw at once that she had been instructed. But she had not been prepared for somebody who looked as if he had come to fix the wiring. Her eyes went round. “Oh, of course! I remember now. Mr. McGee.” Her smile became very wide. Unreal, but wide.

“That’s a dead tooth,” I said. “Just beyond the canine on the upper left. A pretty girl should get that fixed.”

Her smile shrunk enough to hide the gray tooth. She wanted to be offended but couldn’t risk it. “I keep trying to get an appointment.” She trotted back and through a door made of blond wood, her hair and her little rump bouncing.

She came out and very close behind her there was a tall frail old man, erect and handsomely dressed. Frank Sprenger, looking just as I expected him to look, had a big brown hand on the old man’s arm just above the elbow. He took him over to one of the young men and got him seated and told the young man to brief Mr. Sumner on the new issues on the recommended list, nothing less than Standard and Poor double A. He came back and nodded to me and stood aside and let me go first. He was big and he was broad and he was brown. He had black, straight, coarse hair that looked as lifeless as hair on a museum Indian. His face was a chunk of bone with the skin taut over it. He had simian brows under an inch and a half of forehead. The skin folds around his eyes had a reverse slant from that of the Japanese, and imbedded in there were little bright intense blueberry eyes. He was dressed in a way that made him conspicuous in Miami in September- beautifully tailored banker’s gray in summer weight weave, a white shirt custom made for what looked to me like a twenty-two neck and forty-inch sleeves, a blue silk tie, a gold stickpin, gold cufflinks.

His office was just as anachronistic. It was like a small library-study in an English manor house, and it looked out upon what seemed to be a ground-floor garden, surrounded by a stone wall. But as I sat in the leather chair he offered me, I saw that though the plantings were real, the turf was Astro, and the stone facing on the wall was by Armstrong.

His voice was a bit high for the size of him, and he projected it with very little lip movement and no animation on his face at all. It is characteristic of people who have either been in prison or who live in such a manner that their total environment becomes a prison of sorts, a place where communication can be a deadly risk.

“Thanks for seeing me,” I said.

“Think nothing of it. You found a problem I didn’t know I had. I appreciate it.”

My chair was very carefully placed. Before him on the desk was one of those brass and mahogany gadgets which are supposed to tell you the time, temperature, humidity, and state of the world, as well as play music for you, FM, AM, or taped. I could not see the dials. His glance kept straying to it, and I realized I was probably being scanned. The world of electronic bugging has gotten so esoteric that the best defense is a receiver of great precision and limited range which constantly scans all frequencies on which a concealed mike could be broadcasting, and translates anything it picks up into a visual signal.

A quick run up and down the scale would not be enough, because the casual visitor might be set up to activate his sending equipment once things got interesting. Also there are some bugs, slightly more bulky, which can be activated and deactivated by an outside incoming signal. The best defense, of course, is to never say anything of use to anybody. The second best defense is the offensive technique of transmitting an overwhelming blast of white noise, a smothering hiss, on all frequencies, whenever you say anything you’d rather not hear played back some day.

I said, “A friend told me about a brand new development, a new way to bug a room, Sprenger.”

He showed no surprise, only a mild interest. “Yes?”

“Everything is a sounding board. Every word we are saying moves the glass in that big window there. There is a transparent substance somebody can put on the outside of that glass that will reflect a certain kind of laser beam. The beam transmitter has to be in a very solid mount. It reflects back to a receptor, very sensitive, which translates the minute differences in the angle of the beam into fluctuating electrical impulses which can be translated into sound. They can do it from a half-mile away, and there isn’t any device you can use which will detect it.”

“Pick up the voices, the words?”

“A speaker is a diaphragm that moves back and forth like the head of a drum and changes electrical impulses into sound.”

He got up and went over to his window, tested the yield in the center of it with big spatulate fingers.

“Could be,” he said. “But nobody can see into this window from anywhere because of the wall. So they couldn’t hit the window with one of those.” He came back and sat at his desk.

“You live in this room? Or don’t the other rooms you live in have windows?”

He rubbed his bumpy nose, closed his blueberry eyes for a few seconds, then said, “I’ll check it out. You are doing me some good, maybe. You checked me out?”

“Enough for my purposes. I didn’t know about this operation.”

“It isn’t a cover. It’s a legitimate outlet for municipal bonds. Home base is in Memphis. We do three hundred million a year in face value right out of this office. We service the municipal bond portfolios of over forty smaller banks.”

“But you’re not regulated like regular brokers.”

His deep tan turned to red tan, and his voice got louder, and he used more lip movement. “We have an association of municipal bond dealers pledged to clean our own house and eliminate the bad practices of the past and drive the shysters out of-What the hell are you laughing at?”

“I couldn’t help it.”

“What’s so funny?”

“You’re wired into every kind of hustling there is. Protection, franchises, smuggling, drugs, gambling, broads, unions, extortion, and you get all huffy about your clean bond business.”

He thought about it. He tried a small smile which lasted almost a microsecond. “Maybe it’s funny. It started as a cover. We bought somebody out. I got interested and built it up. Some of the skim goes away and comes right back into good bonds. I ask them, if the money comes back clean and it is supposed to go into legitimate investment, which would you rather have-a shopping center giving you a taxable ten percent return or bonds giving you five and a half tax free that you don’t have to wake up in the night and wonder about?”

“You have a point.”

“What bothers me about you, McGee, I can’t read you getting into this strictly as a favor to Fedderman. Where’s the connection?”

“I owed one to a friend, and he called me on it and said help Fedderman.” I knew he would accept that kind of reasoning and thought I saw acceptance in those small eyes. “How did you make me?” I asked.

“In nineteen months I put a good piece of money into that little old man’s action. He checked out as an okay old man. He’s good for his guarantee. But I wouldn’t want to find out some day-he’s gone, and there’s a jewelry store. Also there is another thing, I wouldn’t want that little old man to have a big mouth and say Frank Sprenger is giving him bundles of cash, and having all of a sudden some kind of audit that spreads from his book to mine. I could give all the answers, but it still wouldn’t look good. I’m supposed to keep my head down at all tunes. So I arranged to have people keep an eye on the little old man. Any change in his pattern. I heard over two weeks ago he was getting to work earlier, staying longer. Maybe he’s packing? He starts to get appraisals on a lot he owns, on some securities, on the retail business. So when you came onto the scene, we were already at battle stations, so I got a fast reading on you, and it shaped up this way in my mind. The little old man is very nervous lately. You try to get things back when people lose them and the law can’t help them. I’m not his only account, but maybe the stuff he bought for me is missing? If so, I am the injured party. Fedderman will have to make it good, if that’s so, but I would rather have the items he bought.”

“Why?”

“If I wanted money, I already had money. I wanted the stamps.”

“That’s what I mean? Why did you want the stamps.”

“Personally? I didn’t and I don’t. A certain associate is under very close surveillance. He made a mistake and didn’t cover it well, and he thinks they are maybe building a very tight case against him. He’s old and he’s tired and he won’t last long locked up. Anything he tries to cash in, they’ll know it. He has some action going down here, and so he asked me to put his end into something small you can carry in a pocket, as good as money. It used to be stones. They’re too big a markup even wholesale and too big a discount elsewhere. I heard of Fedderman, so we had a nice talk, and I tried it to see if it would work.”

“Tried it?”

“He sold me four stamps from Grenada. From the island. Two pairs they were. One-penny green. Fifteen hundred bucks. I had a courier going to West Berlin, so I told her to sell them there for whatever she could get, and she got forty-eight hundred West German marks, no questions asked, and about a five-minute wait for the money. It worked like he said it would, so I went his route. When that certain associate wants to make his move, he can slip away and get down here. I give him the merchandise and get him onto a freighter with new papers, and he can live nice in a warm climate until he is dead. As a matter of fact, it’s too bad the stamp thing isn’t a market that will absorb money faster and easier.”

“What am I supposed to be doing for you?”

“Is my merchandise missing?”

“Out of a lock box in a bank?”

“I don’t see how it could be. Maybe it didn’t get into the box.”

“I don’t know for certain if it’s missing. Fedderman thinks something is wrong. But he’s old. He could be wrong.”

“He’ll have to make it good. That’s the agreement.”

“He intends to live up to it.”

“So if the merchandise is missing, you’re trying to find it for Fedderman? You can be trying to find it for me too.”

“It would be the same thing. He’d turn it over to you. If it’s missing.”

“I don’t know what he’s been putting in the book. I get these lists. They don’t mean a hell of a lot to anybody except somebody in the same line of work as Fedderman. If anything has happened, it’s more inconvenience to me than anything else. You let me know how you’re getting along.”

He counted out some money and leaned and put it on the corner of the desk near me. I said, “I don’t want to be on the payroll, Mr. Sprenger.”

“I wouldn’t put you on. That’s expenses, nothing else. Expense money saves a man time and trouble and makes him more efficient. That’s a policy of mine.”

“Well… just for expenses then.”

“You have anything, you use the number Dave gave you. There’s always somebody at the place.”

“I think Harry Harris gave me the number.”

“Harry who?”

“Harris. Reddish brown kinky hair, sunburn, sideburns.”

“I don’t have anybody like that working for me.”

“Oh.”

“Nobody who does work for me would ever remember anybody who looks like that.”

“Now that you mention it, Dave was alone when he came to see me.”

“What if I got in touch with you about some other kind of a problem sometime?”

“I seldom take on any work.”

“It wouldn’t be often. You could be on a retainer.”

“I travel a lot. I might not be where you could get in touch.”

“For your information, maybe seventy-five percent of what I do is all legitimate business affairs and management problems.”

“I didn’t mean I was making moral judgments.”

“Then what?”

“I’m no damned good at taking orders. You get that way, working for yourself long enough.”

I saw his interest fade. “Suit yourself then. Thanks for stopping in.”

I didn’t stand up on cue. “Too bad about that other clerk in Fedderman’s shop.”

“I would have missed that entirely if the name Fedderman didn’t catch my eye. It jumped out of the print at me. Lawlor? Lawrence?”

“Mrs. Lawson. Jane Lawson.”

I was trying to watch him closely without being too obvious about it. He seemed awfully plausible. I picked the words with greatest care. “Frank, you bother me.” The blueberries turned to pebbles. “I bother you?”

“One little old man and two women in that shop. So they are involved, the women are, in all his accounts in some manner. So in effect they are handling four hundred thousand of money entrusted to you. You think there has been some hanky panky. The senior of the two clerks gets killed. Somebody got too rough. You read it, but you never stop to wonder if there is any connection at all. Is that logical? What’s my other guess, Frank? What comes next?”

He frowned at me. “Now, come on! I sent somebody to shake the merchandise out of her if she had it? Why take a risk like that?”

“It turned into a risk when somebody got too rough.”

He shook his head. “No, McGee. No, no, no. Your head is full of smoke. That was a nice little woman. You can smell the ones who will and the ones who won’t.”

“But you never went to the store?”

“She came to the bank once with Fedderman.”

Suddenly that little itch in the back of my mind stopped itching, and I stopped finding some way to scratch it. I heard Jane Lawson’s voice. “The Sprenger account is the one where he never looks at the old purchases or the new ones either. He just sits there like so much dead meat. He nods, shrugs, grunts and that’s that.”

“When did she come to the bank?”

He took an appointment book out of the middle drawer and leafed back through it. “May twenty-first. After lunch. The big girl came back from lunch and started throwing up. It was too late for Fedderman to reach me, so Mrs. Lawson came with him. I don’t know why he apologized. What difference is it to me which woman puts the stamps in the book? Fedderman wants to make a big thing out of everything. Maybe you’ve got the same problem. Some freak got into the house and broke that little woman’s neck.”

I left with money in my pocket and vague unrest in the back of my mind. The pretty little receptionist was prodding at her dead tooth. She snatched her hand away, and gave me more smile on one side than on the other. I stopped and looked at the broad tape. Brownsville, Texas, was coming out with a twenty-million-dollar general obligation issue at five and a half percent to expand their sewage disposal system. Sharon, Pennsylvania, was assuming seven million dollars more of public debt for roads, bridges, and flood control. That was nice. I wondered how many Sprengers and friends of Sprengers had their hands cupped under the faucets, waiting for the money.

I walked a block and took a beach cab over to the mainland. On the island of Miami Beach, all you can legally get is a beach cab. If he takes you to the mainland, he is supposed to come back empty. The mainland cabs taking fares from the airport to the hotels along Collins have some of the doormen well enough greased so they can beat the system. Sometimes I wondered how much Sprenger and his pals had to do with the weird cab system that was suddenly costing me about seven dollars. But Sprenger had covered expenses.

It was almost noon. I peered into the shop and saw Mary Alice and rapped on the glass. She stared toward the door and then smiled and came quickly and let me in, locked the door, gave me the close and hearty stance, the hearty jolly kiss.

“Did you sleep all this time?”

“Me? Heavens! I was up practically before you got the door shut.”

“That isn’t going to do either of us any good, buddy.”

“I came to see about taking you to lunch and-”

“I’m so glad you came here, Trav, really. There’s something that really bothers me. I just don’t know what to think. It seems to… I don’t want to say anything until you see it.”

It was back in Hirsh’s office, on his desk. I sat in his chair and examined it carefully. She stood beside me with her hand on my shoulder. It was a white cardboard box, about twelve inches long, eight inches wide, an inch and a half deep. There was wide brown mailing tape affixed to it, running around it the long way and then around the middle, overlapping. Where the tape crossed, there was a mailing label. “Mrs. Jerome Lawson.” Correct address. It was stamped in big red rubberstamp letters, “Book Rate.” The return address was “Helen’s Book Nooke.”

“The book store is two blocks from here,” Mary Alice said.

There were three eight-cent stamps on the package, not canceled. There was heft to the package, as if it contained a book. When I shook it, the book slid back and forth. The box was a little too long for it.

I examined the ends with care. The tape seemed to be slit very inconspicuously at one end. I fiddled with it until I found that the end could be pushed inward. It folded down reluctantly against the resistance of some kind of very strong spring. Once it was folded down and the box tilted until the contents were beyond the edge of the folded-down part, the contents could be pulled out of the box.

The contents was an album or stock book just like the one I had been shown previously as being identical to Sprenger’s. But this one was green. Mary Alice pulled it out of its fiber slip case and showed it to me. There was a name in gold on the bottom right corner. “J. David Balch.”

“Who is J. David?” I asked.

“One of the investment accounts. See. There’s nothing in here. This is a new stock book. I found this by accident. It’s so weird. We each have a little space for personal stuff under the counter near the back. Like cupboards with doors. This was in a brown paper bag, and it was wrapped in a sweater of hers. But it was too heavy for just a sweater. So I started monkeying around with it, wondering if I could open it or maybe pry it open a little way to look in. Know what I thought? That maybe she hid it because it was a very dirty book. That Helen sells things that you wouldn’t believe, if she knows you.”

I looked at the box again. There seemed to be some reinforcing glued to the back of the flap and to the bottom of the box so that the springs would not push through the cardboard.

She said, “I feel like such a great big dummy. I just never thought of changing the whole damned book.”

“You are not alone, M.A. This thing is a shoplifter’s gaff. They usually make them in handier sizes, without such a strong spring. And usually they are tied with string. If you glue the string to the paper, you get a very convincing look. The professional shoplifter buys an item from a good store. She takes it home and doctors the box and then takes it to other stores. Put it down on a counter and you can shove things through the end flap very inconspicuously. They have purses that are gaffed. They can put them down on the counter on top of merchandise and reach down into the purse and pull stuff up into the purse from underneath, through the bottom. I guess this had strong springs because it had to go through the mail. We didn’t think of changing the whole book because they are personalized and arranged in a certain order.”

“I can figure that out too, Trav.”

She went and got a three ring notebook and opened it up at the index tab which bore the initials F.A.S. “These are the inventory sheets for Mr. Sprenger’s account. I haven’t kept this in the safe or anything. Why should I? Now look at these little figures I wrote in. There are thirty-six double-sided pages, and seven transparent pockets across each page. I number the pages in ink up in the top corners. Okay. Take this stamp here.” I read: US #122a* 90c car. blk, w/o grill, VF $1500 ($1375) 28-6-4. The last three figures were written in.

I looked up over my shoulder at her. “Twenty-eighth page, sixth row down, fourth stamp over?”

“I don’t want to seem like I’m accusing Jane.”

“Build the case and I’ll try to tear it down.”

“Okay. When she was alone here, she could bring these pages back to this little duplicating thing and run off copies. They give her exactly what had been bought for the Sprenger account and the exact order in the book.”

“And then she-”

“Let me do it. If I’m going to. Hirsh let her run that little speculative account, bid things in at the auctions, buy things from other dealers. It was like some kind of a joke between them. So she could have bought junk and put it into a duplicate stock book in the same order. And she always got the names put on the books.”

“At a luggage store?”

“Luggage and leather goods. Cerrito’s. We walked past it going to the bank.”

“So she could get a second stock book labeled Frank A. Sprenger without you or Hirsh knowing?” She nodded. I said, “I wonder if they keep any record.”

“Could you go find out? Please? Now? I have to be sure. I just can’t stand… thinking about it and not knowing.”

Chapter Fourteen

When I got back, I noticed her eyes were red. She snuffled and smiled and said, “I’m okay now. What did they say?”

I told her that they liked Jane Lawson at Cerrito’s. Quite a few years ago, knowing that they were giving Hirsh a very special price on imprinting, she had asked if she could do it. The press was in the back room. She had become adept at locking the pieces of type into the press, aligning the album properly, and pulling the handle to give it the right pressure to impress the gold leaf letters into the leather. They were happy to have her do it. They enjoyed having her come in. They were shocked at her death and at the suddenness and the ugliness of it.

At M.A.‘s suggestion, I took her into Hirsh’s office and held her in my arms.

“Now I know the ugliest thing of all,” she said. “The last and ugliest thing about it. She had to poison me.”

“What!”

She pushed me away and stared at me. “You better believe it. We went to lunch together that day. That was because I was going to eat earlier so I could go to the bank at quarter to one. You know, I’d forgotten about it until today? That was back in May. I don’t know the date. I could look it up. We had exactly the same thing. Exactly. That’s what was so strange about it. I’m never sick. But coming back I told her I was feeling very very peculiar. By the time I got here, I was really sick. At the restaurant I went to the girls’ room after our lunch came. That’s when she must have put something in my coffee to make me toss up everything. You see, Trav, that’s when she must have had the book full of junk all ready, in this box or one just like it, and she knew that Hirsh wouldn’t go to the bank alone because he likes to make a little ceremony out of it. She had to know he’d take her. I didn’t remember that one time because there are a lot of other times I went on the other accounts. And she went sometimes when I couldn’t for one reason or another. You know what? I bet Mr. Sprenger would remember because that would have been the only time he saw her.”

“But wasn’t there another time you went to the bank to put things in Sprenger’s book? July?”

“Right. But there was no reason to look at the old pages, like with the other investors. So nobody noticed. Trav, while you were gone, I’ve beat my brains out trying to remember if she had a box like this that day I was sick. I don’t want to be unfair. I don’t want to imagine anything that didn’t really happen. But I keep thinking she had something she said she was going to mail. A package of some kind.”

“How could she work the switch?”

“I’d guess maybe she’d go in there with the box empty and the duplicate stock book in her purse. She’d have a chance to slip the stock book full of junk from her purse to her lap, under the table. At the moment Hirsh would be showing Mr. Sprenger the first item, they would both be looking at it, and she could take the book out of her lap and open it on top of the good book and edge the book off into her lap. Probably with one hand she could shove it into the box, past the spring. I mean in that way, there would always be the book on top of the table. The table wouldn’t ever be empty. Hirsh might remember if she mailed anything.”

She sat on Hirsh’s desk, and I stood frowning in front of her. “And I’m supposed to shoot it down?”

“I hope you can. I really hope you can. She… just wasn’t that kind of a person.”

“In May she scores. Big. In September she’s still here?”

“I know. Mr. Balch’s account must be worth at least two hundred thousand market value.”

“Hirsh leafed through the book, and he guessed that the stuff that was substituted was worth about sixty-five thousand.”

“What? Oh, no. You must have misunderstood. I think he included the good stuff we just added that day.” She turned and indicated her notebook. “Jane was here a lot longer than me, but I bet I could take Sprenger’s list and go up to New York with fifteen thousand dollars, and I could buy stuff that would look okay maybe to Mr. Sprenger or to you but not to a dealer. And… Hirsh sent Jane to New York in April to bid on some things when he couldn’t make it.”

“So where would she get fifteen thousand?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“Why do you say it that way?”

“Well… because we both do appraisals. You get so you know what to look for. It wouldn’t be any big deal to see something really good and slip it out of the collection and put in something cheap that looks like it. They are estate things usually. The collector is dead. So it just looks like he made a mistake in identification. And it would be a hundred dollars here, fifty dollars there, two hundred in the next place.”

“She’d have no trouble selling them?”

“Why should she? It’s like they say, I guess. People start taking a little bit and then more and then a lot. Like a disease. If it was like that with her, Trav, then it wouldn’t make any difference about her in-laws having money, would it?”

“Every big city has rich shoplifters. Kleptos. But the shrinks say they do it to get caught and punished.”

“Don’t you see? If something hadn’t happened to her, she would have been caught. You would have found out.”

“I would?”

“Hirsh said to me that Meyer told him that you have a kind of weird instinct for these things, that you have your own way of finding out who took what. I guess he’s right. Look what’s happened.”

“Part of it has happened. Where did the Sprenger collection go? Who has it? Did somebody take it from her house or take the money she got for it? And are the other investment accounts okay?”

She stared and swallowed and put her hand to her throat. “Oh God, I hope so. I hope Mr. Benedict’s collection is okay. If anything ever happened to those, it would kill both those old guys, I think.” She hesitated, tilted her head. “No, maybe Jane was pretty shifty, but she wasn’t stupid. You just couldn’t sell those nineteen things anywhere. They’re all famous. They’ve all been written up.”

“If somebody wanted to get caught, though?”

“Maybe it wasn’t like that with her.”

“What do you mean?”

She got up from the edge of the desk and hung her arms around my neck. “I’m getting so I’m imagining things, maybe. I guess it could have been a year ago. Jane got real strange. Jumpy and nervous. She told me confidentially not to tell Hirsh, but she might quit and move away. She got some phone calls here she didn’t want to talk about. They left her real quiet and shaky. And then after a couple of weeks she was herself again. But not really like before. She seemed… resigned and bitter. I was wondering…”

“Wondering what?”

“There are an awful lot of ways somebody could threaten a couple of young girls. She was always terribly concerned about them. If somebody wanted her to steal from the shop… I guess it’s a dumb idea.”

“We need all the ideas we can…”

Her fingers dug into my wrists. Her face changed. “Shh! Listen!” she whispered. She tiptoed to the doorway to Hirsh’s cubicle office and looked stealthily around the door frame toward the front door.

“I thought I heard somebody,” she said in a normal tone.

“Speak of being jumpy.”

“Don’t make fun, huh? I have this sixth sense pretty well developed after five years. I’ve had the idea the last few days that McDermit is having somebody make the usual check on me. It’s about that time. Are you getting that boat ready like you promised?”

“Progress is being made.”

“Like what?” she demanded, cool-eyed and skeptical.

“There are blocks that bolt to the deck just forward of the side deck, close to the pilot house. There are ring bolts outside, bolted through the pilot house bulkhead. Two fifty-five gallon-”

“I just wanted to make sure-”

“Two fifty-five gallon drums fit behind those blocks on the port and two on the starboard. A friend named Johnny Dow is bolting the blocks down where they belong. He’ll put four clean empty drums in place-”

“Darling, please!”

“-clean empty drums in place and use braided steel cable with turnbuckles to make them secure, using the eye bolts. Meyer, who has the keys and knows the security systems aboard, will open up the Flush this afternoon, and Johnny will move it to the gas dock and get the drums filled with diesel fuel and get my tanks topped off and bring it back to the slip. Meyer has the list of provisions and maintenance supplies and will see that they are brought aboard and stowed today. I have a hand pump that starts a siphon action to transfer the fuel from the drums to the regular tanks.”

“Please, dear.”

“At the most economical speed, the additional two hundred and twenty gallons builds the maximum range, without safety factor, up to eleven hundred miles. I have not told Meyer why I wanted him to do me these favors, and I imagine he thinks it is busy work I have invented to keep him out of Miami.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I was damned reluctant to make that promise to you, M.A. But you wanted it made, and I have made it. Having made it, I would not dog it.”

“If I ever say ‘Like what?’ to you again, the way I said it that time, wash out my big mouth with yellow soap.”

“I promise you that too.”

“Brutal male chauvinist pig?”

“Well, if you put up a fight, I’m not sure I can manage the soap part.”

She grinned, assumed the stance, jabbed with a long left, and then hooked off the jab, a respectable whistler missing by a calculated inch.

“My very best punch,” she said.

“You keep impressing me in new ways, Mary Alice.”

“Darling, what are you going to do? Stay in the same place again tonight?”

“Join me?”

“Too many eyes are watching me. At least, I have the feeling they are. I think somebody saw me get home this morning. I tried to be sly, but it turned out stupid. I left my car home and took a cab. And so, of course, arriving home at eight something in a cab looks worse than if I’d had my car. No, honey, much as I need you, I’d be too jumpy. Where are you going to be the rest of today?”

“Here and there.”

“But what is there you can possibly do?”

“Once in Vegas I saw an old lady in the Golden Nugget, absolutely totally broke. The slots had cleaned her. So she was sidling around pulling at the handles on the off chance some idiot left a coin in one of them. I saw her find a handle that she could pull, and she hit three somethings and got about twelve dimes down the chute. She got a half hour out of those dimes before she was broke again and started to pull at the handles on the idle machines. That’s my mysterious system, M.A. I go around pulling handles in case some idiot forgot he left a dime in the machinery.”

“What if I have to get word to you?”

“Leave a message at the Contessa for room 1802. This shop is letter A. Your place is B. If you are coming to the Contessa, it is C. If you are going to Lauderdale to wait for me, it’s D. Use a last name that fits. Miss Adams, Miss Brown, Miss Carter, Miss Dean. So I’ll check in for messages now and then. ‘Miss Carter called and will call again’ means I’ll head for the hotel and see you there. Clear?”

“Sure. You do that pretty damned fast, you know. You must have had a hell of a lot of messages from girls in your day.”

“In my day? Thanks. I had the feeling these were my days, somehow.”

“If I let you live through them, maybe. I’ve got more work to do here. What’ll I do with this funny box?”

“Put it in the safe for now.”

“Should I tell Hirsh? I don’t want to.”

“Save it for now.”

“Okay, dear. Please take care of yourself.”

“I came here to take you to lunch.”

“I don’t want to be seen with you. And I’m not hungry. And you don’t know how unusual that is. I’m always hungry.”

Harmony Towers had all the exterior charm of a women’s prison. But inside the colors were bright and cheerful, and the people at the main desk were helpful. Miss Moojah was expecting me, and I could find her in Community Room 7, down that corridor to the end, through the fire door, and up the stairs one flight, and I couldn’t miss it.

Fifteen old people were sitting in a circle in Community Room 7 and a swarthy young lady was saying, “Weeth the irregular verps, Mr. Lewis, you muss memorize, eh? Traer. To breeng. Breeng me a drink. Imperative. Traigame una copita. Eh?”

They all stared at me, and a woman hopped up, excused herself, and walked briskly to the doorway, motioning me back out into the hall. She was medium tall, erect, stick thin, with penciled brows and hair dyed mahogany pink. She had a massive, jutting, macrocephalic jaw. Out in the hall she looked me over with great care, and then said in a deep, metallic contralto, “Around here one gets so accustomed to seeing withered little crickety old men or fat wheezing sloppy old men, one tends to forget how they must have once appeared, Mr. McGee.”

“I could have come later, after your class.”

“I would rather you took me away from it. It is a matter of duty and conscience to attend. There are seven dolts holding the rest of us back. I have petitioned to have the class split in twain. I am so far ahead of the lesson schedule right now, it is pitiful. Come along. We can talk in here. A waiting room. There are dozens in the building. Waiting for what? An absolute waste. Please sit down. Hirsh told me you are a friend of Meyer, and you are trying to help him. He was reluctant to tell me why he needs help. But with a bit of urging he gave me the whole story.”

“Did you really bash two holdup-people with a toy baseball bat?”

She looked astonished. “What’s that got to do with anything?

There were three. I didn’t have to hit the third one. I told him that I would, and he believed me and left. Why do you ask?“

“I was curious. It seems to be just about the most stupid kind of behavior possible.”

“You certainly say what you think.”

“I’m trying to figure out how much weight I should give to anything you tell me.”

“It was stupid behavior. The bat was a gift for my grand-nephew. Still wrapped. I snatched it up out of terror, certain the man was going to kill me. I hit him, and he fell down, and I became notorious. I was interviewed. My picture was in the paper. So I bought another bat for the little boy. When the second holdup attempt occurred, I felt I was in a dream. I had to retain my reputation as a character. I hit him in slow motion. His eyes rolled up out of sight, and he still stood there until I hit him again. More publicity. On the third attempt I told him I would hit him. He left. After he left, I looked for the bat. It was gone. Hirsh had disposed of it. I fainted dead away. Stupid, Mr. McGee? No. Not stupid. Silly. Very very silly.”

“I had to know. Sorry.”

“I understand. My mind is quite clear.”

“Do you think Hirsh is right? Is the Sprenger stuff gone?”

“Yes.”

“Have you wondered about how it could have been done?”

“Young man, we are all fascinated by larceny. Fortunately for civilization, most of us merely think about it. Obviously the entire album was taken and another substituted. It is equally obvious that Mr. Sprenger managed it by devising some diversion, some alternate focus of attention. Had I still been employed by Mr. Fedderman, he would never have taken on the Sprenger account.”

“You made the decisions?”

“Of course not! I would have let Hirsh know I did not approve. Then he would know that if he went ahead with it, I would make his life totally miserable, and he would have decided it wasn’t worth it. A man like Sprenger would find it amusing to steal his own property and then make Mr. Fedderman reimburse him for his investment.”

“I see. Then there is no connection, you feel, between the theft and the death of Jane Lawson?”

“Did I say that? Did I even imply it? Then how do you infer I would believe that? Last Thursday morning those two young women learned what had happened. Jane Lawson had a lot of time to try to work out the puzzle. You were all trying, were you not? I imagine she devised a theory of how it was done and felt compelled to test it before reporting it. She had a very good mind, you know. Quite logical.”

“Could she have been involved, on her own or as an accomplice?”

“Jane Lawson? The question is grotesque. It is… fifteen years ago he employed her. She seemed very pleasant and plausible. We had to teach her everything about the business. She learned quickly. A good memory. I am a very skeptical old woman. I set some traps which looked like the most innocent of accidents, where she could profit without any possibility of detection. She did not hesitate a moment. She is the sort of person who, if she were using a pay phone and found a quarter in the coin drop, would feel very uncomfortable about keeping it. With some people, with too many people, conscience is the still small voice that says maybe someone is looking.”

“What if somebody put heavy pressure on her, like threatening her kids?”

“I think she’d pack them up and go to her in-laws and ask for help. And get it.”

“She told you about the general?”

“Privately, in confidence. We worked together there for ten years, remember. I tend to pry a bit. Of course, I’m going to go back now and fill in until he can find someone. I let her know I did not think her decision was entirely rational, but I respected her for it. She should have married again, of course.”

“Did you help train Mary Alice too?”

“Are you asking about her in the same way? Maybe not exactly in the same way? A personal relationship exists? I stayed on for two weeks after he hired her. She was, and is, a very troubled person, I think. She was quite depressed when she first came to work. She never discusses her background. I had thought her a fugitive in the legal sense. Now I think she is a fugitive from emotion. She has visited me here many many times. She brings little problems to me. Problems of identification. She hated to ask Jane or Mr. Fedderman to help her. She is not really highly intelligent. She has a high order of native animal shrewdness perhaps. In time she became fascinated by the high-value rarities. There is something touching and childish about her enthusiasms. I do not believe-in fact, I am quite positive-Mary Alice could not plan anything very complicated and carry it out.”

I thanked her for her time. I said I would probably see her in the store. She said Hirsh was going to open up again on Wednesday, the day after tomorrow. She went back to her class, and I phoned the hotel from the downstairs lobby. I had checked at two-thirty. Now it was quarter to four.

A Miss Dunn had phoned at five after three and left word she would phone again. She did not leave a number.

I phoned Meyer, caught him aboard his boat. It was too soon for Mary Alice to arrive. I told Meyer she was on the way, ETA unknown. Keep an eye out for her. Put her aboard the Flush. Lock her in. Then wait for me aboard his boat. I taxied back to the hotel, packed in fifteen seconds, and tried to pay my bill. But it was courtesy of Mr. Nucci, who isn’t in the house at the moment.

I walked to the lot, repurchased my old pickup and took the fastest route through a light rain toward the Sunshine Turnpike, swallowing the little bits of acid that kept collecting in the back of my throat.

Chapter Fifteen

I jumped down onto the cockpit deck of the Keynes and went below into the very cramped quarters where Meyer lived like a bear in a cave. A very clean bear in a very littered cave.

“She’s aboard,” he said. “With three suitcases, a hat box, and a train case. Your enchanted barge is all fueled, furbished, and provisioned, sir. May I offer my best wishes for a happy voya-”

“Knock it off!”

I do not talk to Meyer like that. It shocked and annoyed him. Then he got a closer look at my expression.

“She gave me the keys to her car,” he said. “When she parked, she backed it in to hide the plate. She asked me to drive it away from here and leave it in an airport lot. Miami, if I want to be very obliging.”

“Leave it right where it is for now.”

“Okay.”

“I want to ask you to do something without giving you any of the reasons or background. But there’s a risk.”

“A big risk?”

“I don’t know how big. Maybe there’s none at all. Tomorrow morning I want you to go to this address and see Frank Sprenger. Use my name to get to see him. Play it this way. You are very angry at me. I let you believe we were going to make a very nice score out of Fedderman’s problems, share and share alike. In fact, I told you that we’d stay healthier if we got out of Sprenger’s area until things quiet down, and at McGee’s request you got The Busted Flush all ready for a long cruise, maybe over to the Islands, so bring your passport. So tonight McGee smuggled a woman aboard the Flush. You didn’t see her. You don’t know who she is. But from something I said while drunk, you think she came to the Contessa late last night and stayed with me in my room overnight. Tonight I told you your trip was off. I got ugly about it. I said I had better company. I said Frank Sprenger was almost as dumb as Hirsh Fedderman.”

“Sprenger… and Mary Alice!”

“I don’t know what he’ll do. Maybe there’ll be no reaction at all. Right now I’m… trying to work out a jigsaw puzzle where every piece is square, and when I get them in the right places, they make an abstract painting. But they also make an abstract painting any way I fit them together.”

“If he’s interested?”

“Remember No Name Island?”

“Of course.”

“Find it by yourself?”

“No problem.”

“You are going to tell him that my plan, when the two of us were going, was to take the Flush down into Florida Bay and lay behind No Name and wait for a good five-day forecast before running across to Nassau. You can take him to the place. For a fee. Just him. The two of you can drive down to the Keys and rent a skiff and go on out to No Name. Are you sure you can find it?”

“My God, Travis. It’s-”

“All right. You can find it. It isn’t on any chart, so he can’t find it alone. Of all the ways I can read this puzzle, if I’m right at all, he’ll be willing to come alone. If it’s a mob scene, forget it. Be sure you aren’t tailed by his people or anybody.”

“How do I let you know if-”

“I’ll listen to Miami Marine tomorrow afternoon from three-fifteen to three-thirty, four-fifteen to four-thirty, five-fifteen to five-thirty. If you don’t come through with a call, I’ll come in and come after you.”

“But won’t she be able to-”

“Once we’re well out of here, I’ll tell her I asked you to keep tabs on anybody who might come looking for me. If he doesn’t bite, just tell me everything is quiet. If he reacts but the time isn’t set yet, tell me you heard somebody was looking for me but you didn’t get a chance to see them or talk to them. If you are set up with him and know about when he might come visiting, say a man with a beard came by and wouldn’t give his name, but he’s going to come by again at such and such a time.”

“And come back at you the next day when it’s definite?”

“I’ll monitor at the same times. This is a big tricky bastard, Meyer. Don’t listen to any lullaby from him. I think he might make you sit while he goes and gets a description from the night man at the Contessa, the night bell captain.”

“Isn’t that a little too tricky, the part about the hotel?”

“Suggestion?”

“I didn’t see her, but I saw her car and went and wrote down the plate number, and I know where it’s parked.”

I thought it over. “I like it better. What I don’t like is the way I keep thinking of reasons why, if I’m right, Sprenger would like to leave all three of us in deep blue water.”

“If it works out and we drive down there, the two of us, and get the skiff from… what’s that place by the draw bridge?”

“Regal Marine.”

“On the way out I can mention I gave somebody a letter to mail for me if I don’t reclaim it by such and such a day. Who would I be writing to, Travis?”

“Two letters. Our friend Captain Matty Lamarr, who has never been bought or scared, and to General Samuel Horace Lawson at the Doral.” I thought about my luck. Our imminent eviction from what I had begun to feel was safe sanctuary had torn a hole in the bottom of the luck feeling. I sensed emptiness and a cool feeling at the nape of the neck. “Have you got paper and envelopes?”

“When this noble vessel, The John Maynard Keynes, sinks, it will be because of an overburden of paper bound and unbound. Here you are. May I read over your shoulder?”

“Meyer, will you accept the premise that the less you know, the more plausible Sprenger will find you?”

“A subjective judgment. But okay. Who will I leave these with?”

“Jenny Thurston. Allow room for delays.”

Two short letters. All I had to give was my guess as to who and why. The combination of Matty’s professionalism and the general’s massive leverage would open up all the rest of it. I put them in the envelopes and handed them, unsealed, to Meyer. “You were reluctant,” I said. “Chance to overrule.”

He sighed and licked the flaps and sealed them tightly. He said, “Interesting analogy, about the jigsaw with square pieces and nonobjective art. So you put them together in a way, I suppose, that pleases you, and so you call it the only logical arrangement.”

“That’s what I seem to be doing.”

“It is also an analogy for a madman’s view of reality. No rules restrict his assemblage, because they’re all square pieces. So he makes a pattern that pleases him, and then he tries to impose it on the world, and they lock him up.”

“Thanks, Meyer.”

He put his hand lightly on my arm, his wise eyes very sober and quiet. “Quixote, my friend. It has been too long for you, too long since there was a woman who moved you, who made magic. It started to be very good, and some automatic relays in that skeptical skull broke the connection. A sense of what-might-have-been can make a man very vulnerable. Suspicion can become one hell of a big windmill. And some kinds of windmills can break your ass.”

“Contents noted,” I said.

There was a pale pink scrap of day left when I unlocked the Flush, noting with approval that Meyer had unhooked the shoreside umbilical cords for phone, water, and electric and had taken off the spring lines and the heavy weather fenders. I didn’t want to use any interior lights unless I was on engines or on the alternate one hundred and ten system off my generator.

In the gloom Mary Alice rose up from behind the far end of the big yellow couch and said, “Where the hell have you been?”

“Taking care of this and that.”

“Don’t you know you’ve got to get me out of here!”

I moved closer to her and checked on the validity of her anxiety by saying, “Settle down, honey. We’ll be on our way in the morning.”

Her voice got very thin. “In the morning! I can be dead by morning! Now. Please. Can’t we just go a little way? Please.”

I saw the dark shape in her right fist, pointed down at the deck. I took her arm and pulled it out of her hand. She resisted and then let go of it. I took it over to the light of a port. A little Colt.25 automatic, about as small as you can get and stay reasonably lethal.

“Where’d you get this?”

“Can we talk about where I got things when we’re moving?!”

I handed it back to her. Maybe it would make her feel a little bit better. Her anxiety was genuine, or she was a great loss to the theater.

I went to the topside controls and cranked her up. When she settled down from the indigestion and flatulence that afflict her whenever I rouse her from indolence, I went down and cast off the lines, moved her ahead a bit, and left her teetering against a piling. I brought the Muсequita close with a boat hook, jumped onto her bow, took her lines off the dock, and scrabbled back aboard with her bow line, snubbed her close and bent the line around a stern cleat. I cut the timing very close. By the time I got back to the controls the bow was swinging very very near the bow of an old and very well maintained Consolidated in the next door slip. The unfriendly old man who owned her stood by his railing with a big fender, ready to lower it to where I might crunch into him.

“Watch it!” he bawled, just as I gave it hard right rudder and gave my port diesel a hard quick jolt of reverse. It held me against the piling and stopped the swing of the bow and started it moving out.

“Sorry,” I called to him as I eased out of the slip. No point in trying to reply in kind. He had enough trouble in the form of a wide wife with a voice like a bearing about to go. He worked on the boat all week long with her telling him how to do what he was already doing. On Sundays they took a picnic cruise of three hours, and you could hear that voice of hers all the way out to the channel, telling him to watch out for the things he was already watching out for.

After I was under the bridge and past Port Everglades, heading south inside, in the Waterway channel with the running lights on, a healthy arm snaked around my waist, and the big lady pulled us close together and said, “Wow.”

“I’ll put it in the log. One heart-felt wow.”

“You better believe it.”

I showed her a distant marker to aim at and gave her the wheel and went aft and gave the Muсequita a little more line until she towed steadily without wallowing. Mary Alice was very anxious to give the wheel back to me.

“Makes me too nervous,” she said. “Where are we going?”

“I know a good place about an hour and half down the line. We can anchor out. It’s good water and out of the traffic.”

“You tell me how I can help, huh?”

“You might be able to find your way below and come back with a pair of drinks.”

It took a while. She had to hunt for things. She apologized. It was full dark. I was using the hand spot to pick up the reflectors on the unlighted markers. I was aware of her near me in darkness, sitting in the starboard chair, aware of how quiet she was.

“And about that automatic?” I said.

“Oh, a friend gave it to me. He was worried about me. He thought it would be a good thing for me to have.”

“Ever fire it?”

“I drove way out into the country one time, to sort of ranch land. I found a beer can in the ditch and put it on a rock. I had a box of fifty shells. It didn’t make as much noise as I thought it would, but I kept flinching. I had a newspaper in the car, and I stuck it onto a stub sticking out of a big pine tree. Then I could see where the bullets were going, and I figured out how to work it. If I didn’t know when it was going to go bang, I flinched after it happened. Then they went where I was aiming. Then I could hit the can pretty good. Every other time at about twenty feet.”

“That’s pretty good.”

“If I had to shoot somebody, I’d imagine his head is a big beer can.”

“The torso is a bigger target.”

She was quiet for about thirty seconds and finally said, “I’d shoot somebody who wanted to hurt me, right? So I think it would be better to shoot him in the part that does the thinking.”

“I can’t fault you for logic.”

“What?”

“Do you think Jane Lawson switched the stamps in any of the other investment accounts?”

“Darling, can I make a new rule for us?”

“Such as?”

“You come to a point when… you want one life to end and another life to begin. I don’t want to talk about any of that. It’s all over now. I’m somebody else. So are you. We’re both new people.”

“What are these new people going to live on, M.A.?”

“I haven’t seen you hurting for money. Not the way you live. You certainly had the sense to bring along a bundle, didn’t you?”

“Even what they call a goodly sum runs out.”

“In cash?”

“How else? And safely aboard.”

“And we can get to the islands, can’t we?”

“Slowly, in the very best weather. Sure.”

“We can make the money last a long long time in the islands, living on this boat, can’t we?”

“What islands did you have in mind?”

“You practically have to go to the Bahamas first, don’t you?”

“Correct.”

“Well then?”

“Well what?”

“We can just sort of poke along down the Islands to the end of them and then wait for good weather, like you say we need, and go across to the next batch. If we kept doing that, where would we end up some day?”

“Trinidad. Venezuela.”

“Is there anything wrong with that?”

“These two new people are going to have a long and intimate relationship.”

“From the samples, you haven’t anything against that, have you? As any fool can plainly see, / like the idea. A crazy man has run my life for the past five years, and now he’ll never find me again. He’ll never have a chance to kill us, will he?”

“When we run out of funds, we’ll seek honest work?”

“You’re getting stuffy, you know that? What you should do now is just live. Right? It’s a big adventure, and we’re together, lover. We’ll be in love and have fun and swim and eat and laugh and all that. You’re the captain. You can marry us. Let’s think up a new last name for the happy couple.”

“McWorry?”

“Mister, I am really going to cure you of that.”

I found my little parking lot, circled on three sides with mangrove. I checked the time and the tide chart and laid her just where I wanted her, cross-hooked so she would swing properly on the tide change. I pulled the Muсequita up onto the starboard quarter and made her fast there against fenders so she would not nudge us all night. I started the generator and checked the bilges and put Mary Alice in charge of the galley. I sat in the lounge with my drink, moving those square pieces around atop the game table in my mind, finding damned little to please me.

Chapter Sixteen

We got an early start in mist that soon cleared, and by eleven in the morning we were well down the length of Biscayne Bay in the most oppressive heat I could remember. We were making a stately six knots, but there was a steady six knot breeze from behind us, so we moved in a pocket of airlessness, in a reflected dazzle that stabbed up into the shade of the tarp I had rigged over the topside controls.

I kept it on automatic pilot most of the time, taking it out now and again to make a correction for tide drift. She sat in the white copilot seat in a salmon-colored bikini, slumped, with her heels propped atop the instrument panel, her legs apart, her fanny on the edge of the seat, the nape of her neck against the top of the back. She had piled her black hair into a half-knotted wad on the top of her head. Sweat trickled down between her breasts, down her belly, and into the top edge of the bikini bottom, darkening the fabric. She had exposed almost every optional inch of skin area to the breeze that never happened.

The heat made her cross. “Jesus, McGee, is it always like this?”

“This is very unusual weather we’re having.”

“Ha,ha,ha. Can we stop and swim or something?”

“Not through here. Have another cold beer.”

“I don’t want another cold beer. Heat makes me feel sick.”

“When we change direction, we’ll get some breeze.”

“Like how soon?”

“Hour. Hour and a half.”

“Dear Jesus. I just can’t take much of this.”

“Complain, complain, complain.”

She snapped her head around and stared at me, her eyes narrow and furious. “Do you want me to make a list of everything I want to complain about?”

“If it would make you feel better, go ahead.”

“Maybe my nerves are on edge for a lot of reasons.”

“Could be,” I said. No argument. I let the discussion die. It wasn’t going to do either of us any good to talk about it.

Last night she had decided we would have a very busy bed, and she began to do a lot of flapping and roaming and rambling, changing from here to there, and changing back, apparently trying to express a special gratitude with a lot of extra-strenuous work. I stayed with her for a time, and suddenly it was all rubbery fakery, smack and slap, grunt and huff, like a pair of third-rate wrestlers in some lunch-bucket town practicing for the evening’s performance for the nitwits who think it quite real.

As soon as I got that image of it, both the spirit and the flesh became weak. She settled down, still breathing hard.

“Did I do something wrong, darling?” she asked. “Did I move wrong and hurt you or anything?”

“No. No, it wasn’t that.”

“What then?”

“I don’t know. It just happened.”

“Does it happen often like this with you?”

“I wouldn’t say so.”

“You want I should help you? Here, let me help you.”

“No, honey. Let’s just wait.”

“Wait for what? Violins?”

“Let’s just take it easy. That’s all.”

“That’s easy for you to say. What about me? You don’t give a damn how I feel, do you?”

“Sorry about all this.”

“It was going to be really great.”

“Next time.”

She made a sound of exasperation and moved away from all contact with me. From time to time she sighed. Then she got up and went across to the smaller stateroom and slammed the door, leaving behind a faint effluvium of perfume, exertion, and secretions, leaving behind some bedding for me to untangle, leaving behind that strange male guilt and shame impotence creates. The female and the male are both victims of the male sexual mythology. If I do not achieve, or if I prematurely lose that engorgement which creates the stiffness required for penetration, then my manhood is suspect. My virility is a fiction. I have been unable to give or receive satisfaction. The act has not been carried to its compulsory conclusion. Once any element of doubt enters the equation, then the male erection, that font of aggression and mastery, becomes as vulnerable, as delicate, as easily lost as a snowflake over a campfire.

She left me there alone, full of self-pity and yet with a sense of relief. There was just too damned bouncing rubbery much of her, and nothing anywhere that one mere hand could cup. I had all the self-derision of the suddenly gelded stud. I would auction off the Flush to some Burt Reynolds type and pursue the quiet life. Some gardening. Gourmet cooking. And a little philately. Or some numismatics, for a change of pace.

I thought of paying a call upon her, but instead I went to sleep. I was more apprehensive than curious.

Now, forced to recall how miserably I had disappointed the lady, I wondered if I might find a clue to a repetition of failure if I were to look upon her and try to summon erotic dreams of glory and see if I could detect the promise of some small physiological response.

Now, in the blazing shimmer and the white needles that came sparking up off every ripple, I looked sidelong and quickly at her sitting there and felt awe and a little stirring of alarm. There was so bloody much of her, all so firm and fit. A yard and a half of great legs, boobs like two halves of a prize honeydew, a mouth from here over to there, hands and feet almost as big as mine, a powerful-looking neck full of strings and cables and muscles which moved into a different and visible pattern each time she changed the position of her head. I was aware of all her hidden engines, all working away, from the slow hard kuh-dup of her heart to all the other hidden things, absorbing, nourishing, fractionating, eliminating.

“If you don’t mind too much,” she said. She made a nimble reaching flexing motion and dropped a damp wad of salmon-colored fabric onto the deck. “This is a monokini,” she said. She stood up, peeled the rest of it down her hips and down her legs and stepped out of it. “And this is a nokini at all. And automatic pilot or no automatic pilot, this is not invitational. It’s to keep from dying.”

I pointed to the thunderhead building in the southeast, lifting into the sky. “With any luck,” I said.

“Can you drive over that way and get under it?”

“If you look over in that direction, like two hundred yards, you will see some birds walking. Never drive the boat toward where the birds are walking. First rule of navigation.”

“Oh, great!”

“Whether we get it or not, it’ll change the wind.”

“How soon?”

“Maybe an hour.”

“Why do I bother to ask anything at all? Why can’t you use the air conditioning while you’re running?”

“It has to run off the generator. There’s something wrong with the wiring. There’s some kind of crossfeed somewhere. If I start the generator, everything will be fine until I cut in the air conditioning. Then it blows about seven fuses, and we’re dead in the water until I replace them. On every boat everywhere, dear, something is always wrong with the wiring.”

“Why does it have to be the air conditioning?”

“Because God hates us both.”

“Don’t say that!”

“Offends you?”

“Just don’t say it. Okay? It isn’t something to be funny about. That’s all. It doesn’t offend me. It just makes me feel strange. Crawly.”

The Flush waddled along, the long V of her wash fad-tag into the hot ripply dance of the big bay. The lady stood up between the pilot seats, brace legged, letting her black hair down and rewinding it to bind up the strands which had escaped. Sweat made oiled highlights on the long curves of her body.

My concealed amusement at myself had a very acid flavor. Here was the libertine’s dream of glory, the realization of all the night thoughts of adolescence: a handsome, lithe, healthy superabundance of naked lady in her prime, alone with our hero aboard his crafty craft, stocked for weeks of cruising about, a lady as infinitely available as the very next breath or the very next cold beer or hot coffee, and our hero was wishing she had stood on the other side of her chair because he found her overheated towering closeness oppressive, yea even approaching the vulgar. It made me remember the time I went to the performance of a Spanish dance troupe, hoping there was a ticket left at the box office. There was, way way down front. It was so close I could smell the dust they banged up out of the stage. I could see soiled places on the costumes. I could smell the fresh sweat of effort mingled with the stale sweat of prior engagements, trapped in gaudy fabric, released by heat. I could hear the dancing girls grunt and pant. I could see dirty knuckles, grubby ankles, and soiled throats. They were very very good. Ten rows back the illusion must have been perfect. But I was too damned close to the machinery, and it killed the magic.

Okay, hero. You are a sentimentalist, a romanticist. A throwback. You want all those tricks of a bygone culture -the shy and flirtatious female, the obligation for pursuit, retreat, and ultimate capture. Pretty chauvinistic, buddy. This is the new casual world of equality. You are both made of the same order of meat. Should she have a yen for a beer, she can go get it and open it. Should she have a yen for an interlude of fricative pleasure, she can turn and swing astride you as you sit, and you can keep an eye on the channel ahead over her shoulder. Contact and excitation create a natural physical release. It is no big wondrous emotional complicated thing. The new message is that sexual mystery causes terrible hangups which create neuroses which destroy lives.

It all made me want to move to a small town in Indiana and start a little factory where I could make buggy whips, stereopticons, and hoop skirts, and sit in the glider on the porch on the summer evenings and hear the children at play and finally go inside and, by gas light, read that Admiral Dewey had been placed in command of the fleet.

A world I never knew. Maybe the worlds you never knew are always better than the ones you do.

She sat again and swung her feet up. “Won’t this thing go any faster than this?”

“Not enough to matter. It’s a displacement hull. It has to push the water out of the way. I could get three more knots out of her and use twice the fuel I’m using now.”

“It’s a real crock.”

“But it’s my real crock.”

She shrugged and was silent. I tried to put my finger on what it was about her that was battling me and irritating me. It seemed excessively childish for her to complain so constantly about being mildly uncomfortable aboard a houseboat taking her away from something that really terrified her.

Children lack empathy about how the adults around them feel. Children have a tendency toward self-involvement which makes them give too much weight to trivia, too little weight to significant things. If the house burns down, the charred sister and the charred kitten are equally mourned.

I had believed her empathetic, sensitive, responsive. I had enjoyed being with her. This female person did not seem at all responsive in the same way. I went back over the relationship. A cartoon light bulb went on in the air over my head. At all prior times, up to last night and now, my involvement had been in exactly the same track as her self-involvement. So of course she had been responsive, in the way a mirror is responsive.

If you go to a play which is concerned with a dramatic relationship you have experienced, you are deeply moved. The actress will speak the lines in a way best designed to move you. But take the lovely, talented thing to dinner, and she will bury you in the debris of her tepid little mind, rotten reviews in London, the inferior dressing room on the Coast, the pansy hairdresser’s revenge, her manager’s idiot wife, the trouble with talk shows, and who has stopped or started, sleeping with whom or with what.

I had listened to drama and believed it. And now I could not believe that this was the actress.

I saw the squall riffle approaching way off the port bow, making a busier calligraphy on the water. It covered so large an area it could not miss us. I told her to prepare for sudden comfort. While she was looking at me with blank incomprehension, the rain breeze swept us, a coolness with a smell of rain and ozone. She made a glad cry and stood to face it, arms out in pleasurable crucifixion. It died away, and she said “Nooooooo” in a long descending mournful minor.

“More on the way and rain behind it.”

It was more than I expected. The strong gusts threatened to whip the tarp away, and I took it down, folding it with difficulty, stowing it under the instrument panel. Electricity winked and bammed around us as the rain came in silvery, wind-whipped sheets, heeling us to starboard, obscuring the far markers. The rain was unseasonably cold, and abruptly it turned to hail, the size of puffed rice, whipping and stinging us, so that she yelped with pain and surprise and ducked down below the rail on the port side, behind me, for shelter. Then more rain came, heavier but with less wind. I had backed the Flush off to almost dead slow, so that if we wandered from the channel we would nudge the shallows instead of sticking fast. Mary Alice gloried in the rain, upturning her face to it, laughing at the pleasure of it streaming down her body. Her hair was soaked and flattened. The deck ran with water. She picked up her bikini parts, wrung them momentarily dry and put them back on. But we had both started to shiver. I was going to switch to the pilot house controls when suddenly the rain ceased, and I could hear it steaming on across the bay toward the mainland. The depth finder was reading eleven feet, and I had to move easterly about fifty feet to get the distant markers lined up.

Cloud cover moved west, and soon we were in hot sunlight that made the deck steam as it dried.

She toweled her hair half-dry, flung it back, and said, “I’m starving, darling. I really am. After I eat, I’m going to chop my hair short.”

“What?”

“It’s too much of a damned nuisance on a boat ride. You could probably cut it better, huh? How about when we get to the place you said? Will you?”

“Reluctantly.”

“Why reluctantly? Oh, could it help you turn on, if it’s long?”

“I think long hair is becoming to the shape of your face.”

She frowned. “I mean chop it off to only about here, not like when it was all shaved-”

“All shaved off? Why?”

“It was sort of like an initiation.”

“Sounds like a very unusual club.”

“I’ll tell you all about it sometime, honey.”

“We’ve got nothing else to do right now. Why not tell me?”

“Right now I’ve got to fix something to eat. You want to eat now too. Samwiches?”

After we ate, I said, “Okay. The story of the shaved head.”

“I don’t feel like telling it now.”

“But I feel like listening to it now.”

She stared at me. “Are you going to be like that? I don’t like to be pushed around, Travis. I’ve had enough of it all my life. If you muscle me, I can’t feel loving toward you. You understand what I’m saying?”

“I don’t think I could ever adjust to a reward and punishment system of lovemaking.”

“I have news for you. You’re going to have to.”

“Really?”

“When I’m happy, I’m the best thing that ever happened to you, and when you make me unhappy, I’m just no good at all. Sorry, but that’s the way I am.”

“I wasn’t trying to muscle you.”

“I accept your apology.”

“I just wanted to know if you were in a home or a prison when they shaved your head.”

“Oh, you are such a smart bastard! You just cut off the supply, friend.”

“Prison then?”

“No, goddamn you to hell! It was a school for girls.”

That was the forlorn tipoff. The ones which are attended voluntarily are called girls’ schools. I asked no questions. I could feel the radiations of her anger. At last she sighed. “They caught me and a boyfriend with the whole trunk of the car full of radios he’d taken out of parked cars. We’d both been in trouble before. I was fourteen, and he was twenty. I was in a foster home, and those people didn’t give a shit about anything except the sixty-two fifty a month they got for letting me sleep there. At the school we were in cottages. Twenty girls in a cottage. A matron was supposed to run the cottage, but ours was a wino, so two butch girls ran it. I wouldn’t let them into my bed at night, so one of them stole a gold locket from one of the black girls and hid it on the underside of my bed with tape. They found it in a shakedown looking for some missing table forks, and so then they all jumped me and shaved my head. It took a lot of doing. I tore them up pretty good. Afterwards I used to jump the ones who did it, one at a time. They locked me up alone a few times, but I kept going until I got every last one. I guess I’ll keep my hair long the way it is. It isn’t all that much trouble.”

“When did you get out?”

“This isn’t the confession hour. Some day I’ll tell you all that stuff. When I feel like it. Right now I’m going downstairs. You just drive the boat, huh?”

Her voice was weary rather than angry. It seemed quite pleasant being alone. I put the sun tarp back up. I took a beer out of the cooler. A ray leapt high and came down, slapping his wings hard against the water to stun enough minnows for an afternoon snack. Over to my right, in the shallows near a mangrove island, a mullet made three leaps. Mullet come out gracefully enough, then land flat out, on belly or side. They are vegetarians. They graze the undersea meadows where parasites fasten to their skins, and so the mullet leap and knock them loose and go back to grazing. Flying fish leap to glide away from the teeth of the predator fish. Dolphins leap for the pleasure of it. Sailfish leap to shake free of the steel hook.

So why, after the five quiet years in the depths, did my bikinied creature leap free? To knock away the parasites, to stun something she wanted to feed on. To escape the predator or the hook. Or for the pleasure of it.

I shuffled all the square pieces and put the puzzle together again. The trouble with square pieces is that there is no way to know if any are missing or how many are missing. Or how many pieces do not belong in the puzzle at all.

I checked the next marker number against my Waterway chart and found we were making better time than I had estimated. We would be there in time for me to monitor the Miami Marine Operator frequency for Meyer’s call.

Chapter Seventeen

There are long expanses of tidewater flats north of the main channel through the eastern part of Florida Bay. Once long ago, when it had been imperative to find a safe place to stash The Busted Flush, a friend, now dead, had gone ahead in the dinghy, using a boat hook to take the soundings, while I followed at dead slow, taking bearings on other islands, marking down the coordinates. There were several false turns, but at last he found a way around an island about a hundred feet long, forty feet wide, shaped like a lima bean, where by great fortune there was good water close in to the muddy shore. Then he and Meyer and I worked like madmen, hacking mangrove branches and wateroak branches, trying to cover the bulk of the Flush. We were not more than half done when we heard the little red airplane coming and had to dive for cover. They should have seen it from the air, but they missed it.

I got out the chart to refresh my memory of the old channel. I had hiked it in. It looked like a lumpy, runover snake. I had enough tide to make it, and the slant of the sunlight helped me read the water ahead. Even so I nudged the mud several times where the turns were sharp, where I had to back and fill, like a tractor trailer truck threading a Mexican alley.

I laid the Flush close in, close enough to spit into the mangroves, killed the engines, and threw over a bow hook and a stern hook, planning to go over the side and walk them into better position and make them firm, but something changed my mind quickly. Three somethings. A sky-darkening cloud of ravenous mosquitoes, sand flies and stinging gnats. As I bounded down the ladderway, Mary Alice came out onto the stern deck, knuckling a sleepy eye. Then suddenly she began dancing, hollering, flailing her arms and slapping herself heartily. We both tried to get through the doorway at once. We got in, and I slammed it and went looking for any open, unscreened port. They were coming into the galley. I slid that screening across and got out the bug spray and gave them a taste of civilization.

“This is your goddamn paradise?” Mary Alice yawped. “This is where we are supposed to wait for good weather?” She looked down and whacked herself on the thigh. “You are some kind of dummy, you know that?”

There were little ones coming through the screening. I told her to shut up and close all the ports while I started the air-conditioning. Soon, after we had killed off the last of the invaders and the moving air began to feel cool, it began to seem better to her. I told her we were lucky there were no dive bombers, a kind of fly half as big as a mouse that folds its wings on high and comes arrowing down to take an actual piece of flesh out of your body, leaving a hole and a trickle of blood. He takes it away with him and sits in a tree and eats it like an apple. She wanted to believe I was kidding. I was, but only by about ten percent.

I explained to her that the wind had died, and when it came up again, it would be out of the north, and we could go out on deck without being dragged away and eaten. But for now I was going to assume the anchors did not need moving and the Muсequita did not need attention. I was not going out there. No.

Her disposition began to show considerable improvement, and suddenly it was time to gear up and listen for Meyer. She followed me into the pilot house, asking too many questions.

“Okay,” she said, “so what good does it do if you know that somebody has come around looking for you?”

“Or you. Wouldn’t you want to know who?”

“Knowing why is all I need to know. Anyway, what makes you think you can trust that hairy son of a bitch?”

“I don’t think about it. I just trust him.”

“If you’ve got somebody under the hammer, you can trust him. Otherwise, forget it.”

“Another of Mary Alice McDermit’s delicate aphorisms.”

“Afor what?”

“Hush.”

I tuned the channel another hair and got rid of some of the blur. We listened for the full fifteen minutes. There were calls for other boats and calls from other boats, but no traffic for us. She’d had a nap. She was getting hungry again. She was bored. She wanted a drink but didn’t know what. There was a whiny sub-tone in her voice. I let her play with the radio, and she found some country music and turned it too high. It wasn’t worth trying to get her to turn it down. She sat cross-legged on the floor, swaying back and forth, singing the lyrics she knew, scratching her bites.

He didn’t phone on the second segment either. She was tired of the radio. She went in and changed her clothes and came back in a yellow terry thing like a body stocking that she said was too tight in the crotch. She kept tugging at it. It made her cross. She rummaged through the cabinet over the wall desk and found some cards. The only game we both knew was gin. She didn’t give a damn what I might be holding and paid no attention to what I picked, so she constantly discarded right into my hand, and she constantly lost. She turned the radio on again and played solitaire on the floor in front of it. I don’t know what her rules were, but she went out every time.

On the third and final fifteen minutes of monitoring, the marine operator came up with a call for “the motor yacht Busty Flush.” She had a short list, and I came in and identified and took the call. Meyer sounded as if he were calling from the bottom of a big laundry bag. As soon as he’d start to come in clear, they’d dump in more laundry. But I managed to extract from the blur that there had been a fellow looking for me. I felt my pulse give a hefty bump. I waited for the next part of our little code. Mary Alice stood at my elbow, listening to the insectile low fidelity of my tin speaker and, with her thumb, trying to relieve the undue stricture of the nether end of her yellow garment.

It was sick excitement to know that I had placed a bet on a three-legged horse and every other horse had fallen down on the clubhouse turn and my choice was lumping home at historic odds.

Yes, the fellow had a beard. “His name is George Sharsh. He said you know him. Do you know him?”

“George who?” This was beyond the limit of our code, and I was puzzled.

“Sharsh. S as in sniper. T as in telescope. A as in arson. R as in rage. C as in careful. H as in hide. Sharsh.”

“Starch?”

“Right!”

“Sure, I know him.”

“He said he’d be back tomorrow in the late afternoon or early evening.”

“Tomorrow? Thursday?”

“Right. What will I tell him?”

“Stall him.” I hesitated. That was wrong. Meyer might think I wanted him to try to delay Sprenger. “No. Just find out what he wants and see if you can take care of it.”

Out of the depths of the laundry he said goodbye. I hung the Bakelite mike back on the hook and flipped the set off.

“Who is this George Starch guy?” Mary Alice asked.

“Oh, he comes around with a problem now and then.”

“Like what?”

“Well… like a disposal problem.”

“I don’t get it.”

She followed me back to the lounge. I had an urge to experiment. “George is sort of an agent. Somebody might be holding stock certificates that don’t belong to them. George finds a way to unload them.”

“He comes to you with stuff like that?”

“Once in a while.”

I stretched out on the yellow couch. She leaned on the back of it, standing behind it, looking down at me. “I got this idea you were straight, sort of. What do you do, work both ends?”

“I do favors for friends.”

“But Meyer wouldn’t get involved in anything like that.”

“Like what?”

“Fencing anything.”

“Last night before I came aboard, I saw Meyer. He had a suggestion about your car. By now some friends of ours are baking a different color onto it, and they’ll put Alabama tags on it and sell it right in Miami. Alabama tags make it easy. There’s no title certificate. Meyer will probably clear three hundred.”

“He suggested it? I’ll be damned! Gee, you never know, do you? Whyn’t this George Starch move things through… you know, regular channels?”

“That’s like selling to a supermarket, M.A. They’re so big they beat the price way down. I’m a corner grocery store, and I can make better deals.”

“Unless they find out you’re making better deals.”

“I’m not a total damn fool, honey. If some hungry clown contacted me with a problem about a couple of barracks bags full of grass from Jamaica or Barbados, fresh off somebody’s Piper Apache, I would route him to Frank.”

She swallowed and licked her mouth and started to speak and had to speak again, the first attempt was so ragged.

“Frank? Frank who?”

“Frank Sprenger. What Frank do you think?”

“How would I know what Frank? How would I know?”

I reached up and patted her hand. It felt damp and cold. “Sorry. That’s right. How would you know? He isn’t in operations. He’s just a guy who’s acceptable to all parties at interest, and he works as a sort of traffic manager and resident auditor. I guess because you saw him all those times at the bank, I had the idea you would know what he did.”

“Investments,” she said in a small voice.

“All kinds, dear. All kinds. I never got to ask you this question. It’s been in my mind. Frank is very very heavy with the ladies. You are far from being dog meat. I imagine he made his move. What happened?”

“He… isn’t the sort of person who appeals to me.”

I laughed. She asked me what was so humorous. I said it was like a deer in deer season refusing to be shot by a hunter in the wrong shade of red hat.

“Okay, so maybe he doesn’t like girls as big as me. Some men are really turned off by tall girls.”

“If everything else is in the right place, I think Frank might start to get turned off if a girl was fifteen feet tall and weighed four hundred lovely pounds.”

“Well… he never tried anything. I had no idea you knew him at all. You never said anything about knowing him.”

I stretched and yawned. “It was sort of a confidential relationship. He gave me a little fee to sort of represent him in the Fedderman problem. I wouldn’t have fooled with it otherwise.”

She gasped and stood erect. She ran around the end of the couch and came thumping down onto her knees on the floor beside me, sat back on her heels, and stared at me. “He paid you!”

“A token. Two round ones for expenses. What’s the matter with you anyway?”

She thumbed her hair back. “Exactly what did he tell you to do?”

“Why are you getting so churned up?”

“This could be very important. Please.”

“He told me he heard that Meyer wanted me to help Fedderman, who thought that the properties in Sprenger’s investment account had been switched. He said he heard that it didn’t appeal to me. I told him that it didn’t appeal because I thought he could handle his own problems better than I could. He asked me, as a favor to him, to check it out. To keep my eyes open and keep his name out of it, insofar as our private agreement was concerned. I’d say he took care of it himself without my help. You and I know who made the switch.”

I waited for a reply, but I had lost her. She was still there, but her eyes were focused on something further than the horizon. She was chewing her underlip. Her eyebrows went up over the bridge of her nose, separated by two new deep wrinkles.

I wondered if I was wearing an identical pair of wrinkles. Good ol‘ Meyer had found a Meyer-like way of imparting ugly information. Frank Sprenger was enraged. And I had better be very careful and do an efficient job of hiding, because Sprenger was planning to take care of things with a rifle with telescopic sights and then burn my house to the ground. I could not imagine Sprenger, no matter how enraged he might be, confiding his battle plans to Meyer, no matter how much Meyer encourages confidences.

But I could imagine Sprenger asking specifics of the location of the Flush, the terrain, the cover, and asking details of her construction and fuel, enough to enable Meyer to make one of his intuitive yet logical series of guesses.

“So he knows you then,” she asked. “He knows where you live and how you live?”

“Certainly. Dave Davis and Harry Harris have been aboard this houseboat. You wouldn’t know them, I guess. They work for Frank.”

“If he came looking for you or sent somebody, would they ask Meyer where you are and if anybody is with you?”

“I would imagine so. But Meyer would say he doesn’t know.”

“Would Frank know Meyer would probably know?”

“I guess so.”

“Oh dear Jesus God.”

“You better tell me your problem, girl.”

“He can make Meyer tell him.”

“If Meyer sees that Frank is serious about it, he’ll tell him. He’ll tell him the Flush is set for long cruising and you’re aboard with me.”

Her face crumpled. She toppled onto her side and wound her arms around her head. She began to sob.

I sat up and reached down and patted her. “Hey! Hey, what’s wrong?”

She sat up, snuffing, eyes streaming. “Wrong! I’m dead, that’s what’s wrong. You killed me, you dumb son of a bitch!”

She scrambled up, stumbled and nearly fell, and ran back to the stateroom and slammed the door behind her.

I leaned back and closed my eyes. Now I could sit at the game table and take some of the square pieces and turn them the way they belonged and glue them to the table. Too few to be able, from them, to discern all of the pattern.

The brain is a random computer. Fragments of experience, sensation, distorted input, flicker across multiple screens.

… The last time I felt I had lost my luck, I made some bad moves which should have cost me more dearly than they did.

… None of Fedderman’s older investment accounts would have been likely to know Sprenger or to put him in touch with Fedderman. Sprenger could have used a name given to him by someone else.

… Meyer’s first instinct was that Frank Sprenger had been setting Fedderman up, using the inventory lists Fedderman gave him as a basis for buying substitute junk, using a double for Fedderman to make the switch easily.

… Willy Nucci had been very emphatic about how eager Sprenger would be to cover up any personal goof before it became public knowledge.

… When Meyer and I had talked about Sprenger at the steak house that night after I saw Willy, we had agreed that, on second thought, it did not seem to be Sprenger’s style to try to go for a double by cheating Fedderman, when it would be easier to play the tricks and games he was used to. Easier and safer.

… “I like people. I really do.” Mary Alice had said that as we walked to the bank. The people who really like people are so genuine about it they are unable to imagine how it would be not to like people. And so they don’t go about proclaiming.

… Mary Alice had leafed back through the book, looking for the page which had Barbados stamps to see if there would be room for more from the same island on that page. She did not have her glasses. Hirsh often bragged about his vision. She knew he could see the pages. Hirsh was volatile. Was he expected to react, to reveal the discrepancy then and there, so that Sprenger could demand that Hirsh live up to his guarantee?

… In the store last Thursday, I had believed her declaration of honesty. But she had wept more readily than I would have guessed. Meyer had called her amiable and gentle. She had become just what I wanted her to be. For just long enough.

… Had her explanation at lunch that day, of how long it would take to switch the stamps from book to book, been designed to induce me to have the brilliant thought that maybe the whole book had been switched? If so, I struck out.

… My decision at lunch that day, to trust her and believe her, had been based upon my assumption that if she had the art, the guile, and the energy to project a false image so skillfully, she would not have spent five years in that little store.

… Had she sensed when I was vulnerable enough so that she could play that old game across the table, the blue eyes which become trapped in the silence of the stare of realization, widening in a kind of alarm, then, with obvious effort, breaking contact?

… Why would Jane Lawson wait fourteen years before stealing anything? Why would she wonder about the authenticity of the items in the other investment accounts when Mary Alice didn’t, not until much later? Jane Lawson was a very bright woman. If she had planned the action and made the switch the one and only time she filled in for Mary Alice, she would know that eventually I would find out about it. I would ask the right question of Hirsh or Mary Alice, and they would remember. So wouldn’t she look a lot better if she casually volunteered the information? If she had done nothing wrong, she might not think of bringing it up.

… After five years of working with Mary Alice, it was Jane Lawson’s diagnosis that Mary Alice would rather work with her hands than make decisions. They were close during working hours, but after working hours Jane never saw her. In the politest way possible, Jane had said she thought Mary Alice to be a little bit on the dumb side. Today I could agree. But not until today.

… Jane had called the device of putting a hair from her head under the rubber band around Judy’s books one of her “sneaky spy tricks.” It showed a certain talent for subterfuge. Would she mention the rubber band trick if she had used that same talent more profitably?

… Harris and Davis got to me much too fast, much too soon after I became involved. And their first objective was to sideline me, to pay me to back away from Fedderman’s problems and wait for word from my anonymous employer.

… I remembered Harris being silenced by Davis. Harris had said, “That was one of the questions. To find out if McGee was-” Was what? Susceptible to being scared off? Too committed to the Fedderman problem already? Apparently if I couldn’t be bought off or scared off, the third step was to clue me in by saying their boss was interested in the Fedderman situation-which was the same as naming him-and wanted to be certain I was not going to help somebody pull something dumb and fancy which would leave Sprenger on the short end. I could not have let them go back and report that I knew how to keep a good scorecard and I’d refused the money. To Sprenger that would have been tantamount to saying I was out to try to clip him.

… Mary Alice had reacted all too greedily to the ripe and pungent smell of money within the restricted tailored gardens of the Key Biscayne Yacht Club. She had almost visibly salivated. And when she got over believing I was probably the caretaker on the Flush, the touching began. Hand on my shoulder, hip bumping into me. People establish private space around them and do not move into yours or let you into theirs unless you establish intimacy or the promise of it. She had abruptly diminished the spaces we both maintained, moving into mine, letting me into hers. There must be a mutual willingness to reduce the space, or one person becomes uneasy and uncomfortable. Meyer uses that phenomenon to rid himself of the very infrequent person who bores him. He moves inside their space rather than trying to back away. When he stands with his nose five inches from theirs, they begin to falter and move back. Meyer keeps moving in, smiling. They see somebody across the room they want to talk to and excuse themselves. Or remember a phone call they have to make. With Meyer it is a deliberate kindness to do it that way.

… Out there afloat in the night off Lauderdale, she had told me that if she ever did want to take the risk, it would be with somebody so hard to kill that maybe he could keep her alive too. And after soliciting me, she tried to turn me off again, with both of us knowing it was too late at that particular time and place for any stopping.

… She had wept very quickly and abundantly when I had told her about Jane Lawson last Sunday. As she had wept easily in the store. As she had wept not long ago, right here, when she had toppled over. In the kind of early life she had, of foster homes and the school for girls, could the luxury of genuine tears be sustained, or would tears be one of the weapons of survival?

… “Don’t come to my place. That’s asking for trouble.” I’d never been inside it. When I’d first seen it, she had answered my unspoken question, saying that there was a lot of difference in size and in rent between the big apartments on the top floors in front, and the little studio apartments on the lower floors in the rear. “Don’t phone me there.”

… Willy Nucci heard of my new relationship with Sprenger very quickly. But not too quickly for Willy. His network is all over the beach. Switchboards, housekeepers, doormen, car rental girls, apartment managers, bartenders. I’m only guessing. There is probably an unlisted number to call, an anonymous voice, and cash money in a plain envelope, enough to keep the flow coming in, as much cash as the information is worth. Willy wouldn’t be so stupid as to be known as the destination of the flow. Then sharpsters would start feeding bad information, to con something out of Willy. Probably somebody close to Harry Harris told her hairdresser about the fabulous old houseboat some fellow in Lauderdale named McGee owns. Harry saw him on business. Which, to Willy, who might have heard it within twenty minutes, meant I was on Sprenger’s team.

… In the thunderous night, in the darkness, she had lain naked under percale, squeezing my hand and saying ooo and ahh at my modest account of my deductive brilliance. She said she didn’t want to go rummaging around inside her head. She said it was all junk, all throwaway. The news of Jane’s in-law wealth had galvanized her, lifted her up out of the bed. In alarm? And she could not comprehend why Jane had never gone after that money. She thought it freak behavior. I thought it odd. But I could understand. The next morning she was up unexpectedly early and diligent and brisk.

… Alfred, the night bell captain, thought he had seen Mary Alice somewhere before. And she would not give him her name.

… When I had asked Sprenger, in his office, how he had gotten onto me so quickly, his explanation was detailed, garrulous, and unconvincing. So was his explanation about the source of the investment money. I think that what made both stories unconvincing was the ease with which he could have sidestepped my questions. How did you get onto me? I keep good track of things. Where did the money come from? An investor. Sprenger had not gotten where he was by saying one word more than required in any situation. And the explanation about the test with the courier in West Germany seemed more as if he was trying to sell me on how good an idea it was.

… I’d believed Sprenger when he said he had not gotten agitated when he learned Jane Lawson was dead. Yet he should have been. If he believed his investment account was intact, he might not have reacted at all. Yet he knew something was wrong. The only answer was that he knew Jane Lawson was not involved. That meant he had to know who was.

… I went to the shop from Sprenger’s office where she had been working diligently all morning. And suddenly there were a lot of things pointing right at Jane Lawson. But when was the label on the gaffed box typed? And when and why were new albums imprinted in gold for Frank A. Sprenger and J. David Balch? Sprenger’s, at least, had only a few pages left empty. “Jane, honey, while you’re over there, whyn’t you take these two and make me up the blue one for Sprenger and the green one for Balch, okay?” Had the figures written on the inventory sheets been for simplicity in finding a specific stamp or to make it easier to make up a whole duplicate book?

… Hirsh might remember if Jane Lawson had taken a package along that day and mailed it. She could have been given the package by a girl too sick to go to the bank that day. “Please mail it for me, Jane honey.”

… The poisoning episode was increasingly hard to buy. She had to claim it happened, because that meant Jane Lawson had arranged it when she was ready to make the switch. How do you measure exactly how much emetic to give a big healthy girl, an amount that will render her too ill to go to the bank but not so ill as to have to be taken home? Banks have phones. Fedderman would have left a message for Sprenger. Sickness is easy to fake. A hunk of soap slides down easily. Send Jane off to the bank this time, and make the switch in July, at the next visit. Sprenger would probably call the signals. Easy for him to lean across the table and point down to one of the new purchases and ask Fedderman a question about it. Plenty of time for her to switch the books.

… Miss Moosejaw had said Jane Lawson would have added up how it was probably accomplished and had tried to test her theory. By asking a question? And the old lady had not thought Mary Alice morally incapable of robbery that devious, just mentally unable to plan and carry out something so complex. But with Sprenger to plan it, could she carry it out?

… If Sprenger was worried about somebody trying to get cute, was it hard to figure out who he had in mind?

I stood up. I wished I could somehow stand up and leave myself still stretched out on the couch. I wanted to shed myself, start brand new, do better.

Had I been spending the last many years selling real estate or building motels, I could not be expected to recognize that special kind of kink exemplified by our Mary Alice McDermit. There are a lot of them, and they come in all sizes, sexes, and ages. They are consistently attractive because they are role players. Whatever you want, they’ve got in stock. They are sly-smart and sly-stupid. They would much rather tell an interesting lie than tell the truth. Never having experienced a genuine human emotion, they truly believe that everybody else in the world fakes the emotions too, and that is all there is.

I once knew an otherwise sane man who became hopelessly infatuated with the peppy, zippy little lady with the bangs who used to do the Polaroid commercials on television. He bought every kind of camera they make. He took pictures of her picture on the tube. He cut her picture out of magazines. He wrote and wrote and wrote, trying to get a name and address. He went to New York and made an ass of himself visiting advertising agencies and model agencies. It took a long time to wear off. It was totally irrational.

I had seen somebody I had invented, not Mary Alice. I explained away her inconsistencies, overlooked her vulgarities, and believed her dramatics. And so it goes. It is humiliating, when you should know better, to become victim of the timeless story of the little brown dog running across the freight yard, crossing all the railroad tracks until a switch engine nipped off the end of his tail between wheel and rail. The little dog yelped, and he spun so quickly to check himself out that the next wheel chopped through his little brown neck. The moral is, of course, never lose your head over a piece of tail.

Goodbread merely pretended a vast stupidity. Mine, nourished by the blue eyes and the great body, had been genuine. But last night some strange kind of survival instinct had taken over. The body seems to have its own awareness of the realities. In the churny night, the tangly bed, abaft that resilient everlasting smorgasbord, body-knowledge said “Whoa!” And whoa it was, abruptly. One just doesn’t do this sort of thing with monsters. Not with a big plastic monster which would kill you on any whim if it was certain it would never be caught, and if it anticipated being amused by the experience. Body-knowledge said she’d killed Jane Lawson. Not at the moment of Whoa. Afterward, in a growing visceral realization.

She had mousetrapped Sprenger somehow, and it was probably within her power to make him look like such a fool, the people he served would feel a lot better if he were on the bottom of the Miami River. Willy Nucci had explained the occupational hazards to me and to what lengths Sprenger would go to cover up any indiscretion, any violation of the code. The parties at interest had brought in the hard man from Phoenix to police one of their neutral areas, and after six years of service, he had gone sour. Over a woman. And that was his vulnerable area, right? Right.

I had set it in motion, knowing that if Sprenger ignored Meyer’s information, all my guesses were wrong. So I could wait for him or run. I could bring Mary Alice into it all the way or use her as bait. I could try to negotiate with him or hit first.

I tried to guess what I would do if I were Frank Sprenger, but I found I did not know enough about the situation, the relationships. Mary Alice could tell me, but I did not like to think of the ways I might have to use to make sure she was telling me all of it. There was no way to appeal to her, except through her own self-interest. She was afraid of being hurt. She had said so after I had mended the flap of elbow skin. Not the casual bumps and bruises and abrasions. But really hurt, with infections and drains and IVs. And that I could not do.

Chapter Eighteen

I found her snapping the catches on her train case. She had changed to pale pink jeans and a light blue work shirt with long sleeves. She had tied her head up in a blue and white kerchief. She wore new white sneakers.

She straightened and looked at me almost expressionlessly. There was a little contempt there. Not much else.

“I’m splitting,” she said.

“You’ve thought it all over, eh?”

“You blew it, baby. You really blew it. It could have been okay for us. Frank will have guys watching every place for five hundred miles where you could dock this boat. I don’t give a damn what you do.”

“Where are you going?”

“You know something? That’s dumb. That’s really dumb. All you are going to know is that you put me ashore back by that bridge where the cars were. When Frank wraps wire around your dingus and plugs it in and starts pushing the button, you’re going to wish to God you had something you could tell him about where I went.”

“Why should he care where you go?”

“Oh boy. He can talk his way out of how I could run when he wasn’t looking and how he’ll find me and so forth. But he can’t risk what I’ll say to the McDermits about him. How long before it gets dark here?”

I looked at my watch. “Little over an hour.”

“How long would it take the little boat to get back to that place where the bridge is?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

“I’m taking the train case and this suitcase and leaving this other junk. I want it to be a little after dark when you let me off. You better put on better clothes for the bugs out there. You got some kind of repellent to put on?”

“What’s he got to do with the McDermits?”

“Huh? Oh, I’m married to Ray. He’s the middle brother. They got him on tax fraud and conspiracy and a couple of other things over five years ago, and he’s in Lewisburg. He’s doing easy time. Except he can’t do any balling in there, and he’s as spaced out on it as old Frank is. Ray was going to get out last year on parole. But the silly jackass got into some kind of mess, and it will be at least another year. Maybe two. Are you going to change?”

“This is probably as true as the last version you told me.”

“So forget the rest of it. All right?”

“And forget the boat ride, M.A.”

She had the little automatic tucked into the waist band of her jeans on the left. It was not an especially deft draw, that cross-draw recommended to the FBI agents, but it was fast enough for somebody six feet away too stupid to anticipate it.

“We will definitely not forget the boat ride, friend,” she said. She backed away, aiming more carefully. “I can’t run the damned thing, and I am definitely not going to ruin you so bad you can’t run it. Unless you get cute and I make a mistake, and then I’ll try to run it. It can’t be a lot different than a car. I’d rather you run it. What’s the best place? Right up there over your collarbone, maybe. Through that big muscle that comes down from the side of your neck? You want to hurt while you run the boat, or do you want to be okay and feel good and say goodbye nicely?”

“You read me wrong,” I said. “I said forget the boat ride, because according to the tide tables, there shouldn’t be anything out there now except mud flats and sand flats and a trickle of water here and there. Can’t you feel how solid the deck feels under your feet. And the little list? We’re aground, and so is the Muсequita.”

I watched her expression and her eyes. She glanced toward the port. She couldn’t see from that angle. She sidled to her left, and the instant her eyes swiveled away from me, I took the long step, the long reach, caught her by the wrist and by the elbow and gave the funny bone a powerful tweak. She yelped as her hand went dead and the gun fell. I yanked my eyes and face back just in time, and her hooking slash with her left hand left four bleeding lines high on my chest and packed her fingernails with tissue. I shoved her onto the bed so hard her legs rolled high and she almost went over the other side. I picked up her automatic and swiveled the little safety up into the notch on the slide and put it into my pocket.

She sat on the side of the bed, and the tears rolled as she looked dolefully at me. “I’m sorry. I’m so’s-scared, honest, I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m sorry, darling.”

“That doesn’t work either.”

“What?”

“Sprenger wants you. So if I want to maintain good relations with him, the easiest thing to do is wrap you up and hand you to him. I’ll say, ‘Frank, old buddy, she conned both of us, but here she is.’”

The tears had dried and stopped in moments. She sat scowling in thought, nibbling her thumb knuckle. “No. I’m trying to give it to you absolutely straight. It would finish the both of us, not just me, because he couldn’t be sure of how much I told you. He can’t afford any part of it getting out.”

“So the more you tell me, M.A., the more dangerous I am to Frank, and the more chance I might want to play it your way.”

She studied me and then gave a little nod as something seemed to go click way back in those blue eyes.

After Ray was sentenced, she said, it became obvious that there were some people in Philadelphia who believed he had done some talking to make his sentence lighter, and they were willing to get back at Ray McDermit through his young wife. Ray didn’t want her visiting him. He said it drove him up the walls. Sprenger kept an eye on the McDermit interests in the Miami area. He was new then, about a year in the area. He flew up and brought Mary Alice back down. She was to find a job where she would stay out of trouble. The McDermits provided rent on a handsome apartment and the utilities, a car, but no cash in hand. Ray had said it was his wish that if he wasn’t getting any, he wanted to be certain Mary Alice wasn’t giving it to anybody else. She said he was called “the crazy brother.” He wasn’t crazy, but it was hard to guess what he would do. From inside prison he exercised a lot of power with the threat of revealing the damaging information he had in his head.

“I thought I could cut it,” she said. “Besides, Sprenger wasn’t about to get careless about keeping an eye on me. And if I goofed, I had no idea what Crazy Ray would want done to me. But I knew it would get reported back and whatever he wanted done would get done. I got to like the store and the stamps and all, sort of. And I practically killed myself at the Health Club, but I got awful restless. I really did.”

She had figured out, finally, that Sprenger was the key to her personal freedom. She worked on him for a long time. He was very cool and cautious. Finally desire was stronger than circumspection.

“Those cats that have the choice of a couple hundred girls, the one they want the worst is the one they shouldn’t have,” she said. “I knew the leverage it gave me once we started, and so did he. What I was afraid of, he’d have me killed and have it look as if I just packed and left. He couldn’t be expected to be able to keep me from splitting. He set up our dates, you’d think it was a CIA operation. If it ever got back to the McDermit brothers, you can imagine. A man who’ll rip off your wife when he’s supposed to be keeping her on ice will cut a piece of your money too. I was afraid once he had all he wanted, I was going into a canal, car, clothes, and everything. So I told him I had confided in a certain person, who would never never tell, unless, of course, I disappeared or something. And then I had him between a rock and a hard place. If he hurt me to make me tell who, I’d make a phone call to Philadelphia, and he was dead. He was right on the hook, and he knew it, and he had no way of stopping anything I wanted to do. And what I wanted was money of my own, and I told him if he’d become a client of Fedderman, between us we could take him for what he was worth, which I figured at four hundred thousand, from things he had said. He explained to me he was supposed to have good judgment, and I wanted him to make a stupid, dangerous, amateur investment in postage stamps, for God’s sake. He said Fedderman would go to the law if he got swindled, and the name of Frank Sprenger would come into it, and some people would come and take him swimming. I made him talk to Fedderman. I made him check it out that there’s a steady market for rarities. He found out there’s no duty hardly anywhere in the world on importing or exporting rare stamps. I had the leverage, and I kept at him. He had to use his own money. He went over just how I wanted to do it, and he figured out better ways. After we started, I found out Ray wasn’t getting out and might even have to go the whole ten years. Which would make me an old bag, thirty-three damn years old, and the hell with that noise. So it made it more important to me to take Fedderman.”

I could see how neatly she had trapped Sprenger. But I wondered that he had not arranged a fatal accident or a fatal illness so plausible the confidant would have felt no need to make a report.

I could guess at his dismay in investing a fortune in little colored bits of paper.

She got up and went and looked out the port. “There’s enough water out there to run the little boat, right?”

“Right.”

“You’re pretty tricky.”

“Keep talking.”

She sat on the bed again, choosing her words carefully, explaining to me that it was her guess that by now Frank Sprenger had reported her missing, and with whom and how, to the McDermits. He would have to do that to take the edge of plausibility off any report the confidant might make. There wasn’t one, but he had no way of knowing. Or maybe now there was one. Me. The only way Sprenger could feel completely safe would be to arrange the private, efficient, anonymous deaths of Mary Alice McDermit and Travis McGee, and recover the fortune in rarities with which Mrs. McDermit had fled. “They’re aboard?” She nodded. “Show me.” She snapped the tram case open. I went over and stood over her, tensed for any unpleasant surprise she might bring out of the dark blue case. She took out the top tray, and under it were three six-by-nine manila clasp envelopes, with cardboard stiffening, each filled to about a half-inch thickness. She opened one and eased some pliofilm envelopes out and spread them on the bed. I saw blocks of four and six stamps, still in Hawid and Showguard mounts, showing old dirigibles, old airplanes, black cattle in a snowstorm, portraits of Chris Columbus, with and without Isabella.

“All here,” she said. “Years and years of the good life. It will last forever in the right places. I cleaned some goodies out of the safe too, stuff he has for stock.

“Where’d you get the junk you substituted?”

“Indirectly, by Frank, through an independent agent-buyer in New York. I made new inventory lists without any description of quality. He bought junk. Stained, torn, thinned, repaired, regummed, faded, rejoined, even forgeries. They cost a little over twelve thousand, I think. I took them to my apartment and mounted them and put them into the duplicate book. Then when we were close enough to all the traffic could stand, Frank distracted Hirsh, and I switched books and shoved the good one into that box Frank got me that I showed you. We went out together, and I mailed it. Frank thought it was coming to him, but I’d changed the label. God, was he ever irritated! But what could he do?”

“What could he do?” I wanted to go further with it, but sensed that this was not the time to push. I picked one of the transparent envelopes up and looked at a block of six showing a mob scene around Columbus in chains.

“Careful!” she said. “That’s thirty-five hundred at least.”

“Anywhere?”

“Practically.” She gathered the stuff up and put it back into the envelope. She closed it, hesitated, put the other two back into the train case, and handed me the one she had just closed.

“What’s this?”

“It’s worth about forty percent of the whole thing, that envelope. I think we should be entirely honest with each other. You’ve got to forgive me for trying to do a stupid thing. I need your help. Do you have a passport?”

“Yes. Aboard.”

“And some money?”

“Yes.”

“I can really be a very loving person, dear. That’s at least a hundred and sixty thousand dollars in that envelope in your hand.”

“You mean, leave us flee together, Mrs. McDermit?”

She looked annoyed. “Well, why the hell not? What else have you got working for you? It’s what we were going to do anyway.”

“Only at some port of call with an airstrip, I was suddenly going to find you missing.”

“I thought of it. I thought I might, after a long long time alone with you.”

“With me, the great lover?”

“That would probably never never happen again, and if it does, you shouldn’t be so silly about letting a person help.”

“But now we start going by air right away?”

“What’s the best way to do it?”

“Oh, probably take the Muсequita right across the stream to Bimini. It might jar your teeth and kidneys loose. Top off the tanks and run to Nassau. Tie up at Yacht Haven and take a cab into town and get a visa for London or Rome or Madrid and go out to the airport and wait for something going our way.”

“That easy?”

“The first part of anything is usually easy.”

“I always wanted to see the Islands. I really did. I just hate missing the Islands. Maybe we can come back some day.”

Yes indeed. I would have truly enjoyed showing her the islands. How the big aluminum plant and the oil refinery of Amerada Hess blacken the stinking skies over St. Croix. Maybe she’d like the San Juan Guayama and Ybucoa areas of Puerto Rico where Commonwealth Oil, Union Carbide, Phillips Petroleum, and Sun Oil have created another new industrial wasteland where the toxic wastes have killed the vegetation, where hot oil effluents are discharged into the sea and flow westward along the shoreline in a black roiling stench, killing all sea life.

She might be impressed were I to cruise into Tallabea Bay and describe to her the one and a half billion tons of untreated wastes from Commonwealth-Union Carbide which put a two-foot coat on the bottom of the bay. Or we could take a tour up into the mountains to watch how the trade winds carry the bourbon-colored stink of petrochemical stacks through the passes all the way to Mayaguez, ninety miles from the refineries. While in the hills, we could check and see if Kennecott Copper and American Metal Climax have started to strip-mine the seven square green tropic miles of high land which they covet.

It might have made quite an impression.

“Can we start now? Can we?”

“It’s full dark on an outgoing tide. The morning is good enough. In the morning I can take the Flush back out the way we came and leave her in storage at Regal Marine. Abandon her and it attracts too much attention. The Coast Guard would get in the act and Civil Air Patrol and guide boats and so on. Then we can go on from there.”

“Okay. I feel so much better. I’m so glad we had this frank talk, darling.

“I guess we accomplished a lot.”

“Oh, we did!” She lifted the train case back out of the way and hitched over to me and put a shy kiss near my mouth. I held her and looked past her hair at the manila envelope I still held in my right hand.

Poor helpless little critter. Sharing her wealth, but only on a temporary basis. Only until she could find the right time and place to slip an icepick into my brain through whatever orifice seemed handiest.

“Shouldn’t we have a drink to celebrate?” she asked.

Of course, of course. She trotted to the galley to make the drinks. I changed into khakis and a white T-shirt and went to the lounge. As she came smiling in with the drinks, I said, “If Frank were to come here tonight…”

She jerked and lost some of my drink on the back of her hand and on the carpeting as she was handing it to me. “Jesus! Don’t come on like that, will you?”

“Hypothetical question. Would he come alone?”

She sat opposite me and pondered it. “I don’t know. It depends. He’s the kind of guy who likes all the odds his way. I’d say this. If he didn’t come here alone, he’d leave alone. There isn’t any such thing as trusting people, not when it’s worth money to them to put a knife in your back. What he’d probably do, he’d fake one of his slobs into thinking it was some other kind of deal, and when it was done, he’d drop the slob right beside us.”

“Is he really as rough as you seem to think?”

“You’ve got me nervous. Is it okay to pull those curtains across? I don’t like all that black looking in at us.”

“Go ahead.”

She pulled all the heavy curtaining and turned off two of the four lights. She sat beside me and said, “That’s a lot better.” She touched my glass with hers. “Happy days,” she said.

“Happy days, Mrs. McDermit.”

“Is it like a joke, the way you keep calling me that?”

“I guess it’s like a joke.”

“The best thing would be if Frank did come here and we were ready and waiting and we took him.”

“Would he be hard to take?”

“You better believe it. He’s a freak. He knows it all- judo, knives, guns, everything. Like a hobby. And he is fabulously strong. Not just ordinary strong, but special, the way some people are. He can hold his hand out like this, all his fingers spread, and put four bottle caps between his knuckles, here, here, and here, and the last one between his thumb and the side of this finger. Then he can slowly make a fist and bend every cap double. Don’t look at me like that. It isn’t a trick. He has to be careful to place them right, or they can cut into his flesh. There’s another thing he does. You know the kid game, you put both hands out palm up and the other person puts their hands palm down on top of yours and tries to yank them out of the way before you can turn your hands over and slap the backs of their hands? I’ve never seen anybody fast enough to slap him or fast enough to get out of his way. And, wow, does he ever slap! He told me once that when he was fifteen years old, he was a bouncer. He never had to hit anybody, he said. He just took hold of them above the elbow and walked them out, and they always went. They couldn’t use that arm for a few days either.”

“Good with guns?”

“Not fast-draw stuff. Not like that. He has these custom guns, like he had one in the car he showed me once, like a rifle, with a place for his hand to fit perfectly, carved out to fit his hand. And a telescope fastened to it, with a lot of straps and gadgets. He said he makes his own loads. He belongs to clubs where they shoot at targets, and he wins cups and medals. Do you know what he told me? He said he could put a ten-penny nail into a tree, hammer it in and leave a half-inch sticking out, and he could stretch out on the ground a hundred yards away and drive it in with his first shot every time. I said I didn’t believe it. He said he’d show me, but he never did.”

“He may yet.”

“Will you please stop that! It makes my skin crawl. And it’s getting too cold in here. Can you do something about it before my teeth start chattering?”

I went over and turned the thermostat down. The deeper voice of the compressor stopped. The generator chugged on. I heard a wind sound and a faint shift of the bulk of the Flush. I took Mary Alice out onto the deck to prove to her the bugs had been blown away. We went up onto the sun deck. There were ragged clouds obscuring and revealing a third of a moon. I could see a considerable distance by moonlight. The flats stretched out in every direction, mud flats, sand flats, grass flats, dotted with the mystery shapes of mangrove islands, from handkerchief size on up to fifty acres.

It was not a reassuring vista. It was not terrain I could protect easily. The obvious way to get at me would be to keep in direct line with the nearer islands, pick a close one, come up behind it, wade out the flats to the edge of the mangrove and then settle down and wait, with a clear field of fire through the shiny green leaves and the gnarled branches and roots.

I would be able to tell better by daylight, but the nearest one big enough to use as a screen for a long approach seemed to be at just about nail-driving distance.

“I don’t like places like this,” said the lady.

“You won’t be here long.”

“Hurray.”

I went back down the ladderway and out to the aft deck. I stripped down to my boat shoes and went over on the shallow side and walked the bow anchor and stern anchor out to a better angle. I climbed aboard the Muсequita and unsnapped part of her cover, enough to get a small hook out and make it fast to a stern cleat before I walked it back to where she would ride quietly.

I got back aboard the Flush by getting up onto the diving shelf permanently affixed to the transom just above water level, then climbing up the two folding metal steps, and swinging over the rail. She watched me dry myself on my T-shirt and said, “How can you stand to go down into all that black guck? There could be stuff down in there that bites?”