John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 15 - The Turquoise Lament

by The Turquoise Lament(lit)

  "We talked it over and it was still okay with me, but Pidge had a lot of second thoughts. She said two girls were okay, but one was something else. If it was one girl, she would be with us all the time, and dependent on us. Four was company, three was a crowd. I didn't see it exactly that way. There were enough chores to keep three people busy. I told her she was being silly about it. She said she happened to own the boat. That wasn't like her, to say something like that to me. I shrugged it off. Hell, if it meant that much to her, so be it. So we sailed without the girl. We didn't even let her know we'd decided not to take her."

  I frowned at him. "I don't see anything especially weird about her reaction."

  "I haven't come to it. She was very quiet for three days. I thought it was on account of the quarrel. Not really a quarrel, but close to it. Enough to shake me up. So that night at midnight she came and woke me up and I went up to the wheelhouse to take over. She was on pilot, rumbling along on the diesels. There was enough breeze to go onto canvas, and the direction was good, but it wasn't steady enough to count on and it seemed a lot of trouble. She leaned against the bulkhead, right beside me, in the darkness. There were the instrument lights and some light from our running lights. I said that the stars were nice, and she said I was a cheap, dirty, sick bastard and then she went on from there, all of it in a low voice. I didn't know what was wrong with her. I didn't know what she was getting at. I kept asking her what her problem was. Finally she said, 'Stop trying to kid me, Howard. How did you expect to get, away with it? You smuggled that blond ass, Joy Harris, aboard, and she's forward and keeps the door locked and the hatch dogged down. I know about the food you sneak to her, and I know about you balling her, and I've heard you two whispering and giggling and groaning.' Those aren't the exact words, but that's what she said. So I asked her if she meant Joy was on board that minute, and she said I knew damned well she was. The way she said it, the back of my neck got all cold and prickly. We were so damned... alone! You know how it is. And we weren't even going to Montserrat, where the girls wanted to go. I should have used reason, I guess."

  "What did you do?"

  "It scalded me. It really did. It hurt to have her think I could do a jerk thing like that. So I told her she was absolutely right and I was going to keep an extra piece stashed aboard wherever we went. So she went below. She was crying. Right away I was sorry I'd been smart-ass about it. I stayed on watch right on into the sunrise and past it. It was hot and calm. I'd figured out how I should handle it. I cut the power off and in minutes we drifted dead in the water. I woke her up and told her to take her time looking around. I told her all the keys were on the cork board in the lounge. When she was satisfied, she could hail me and I'd come back aboard. So I tossed a raft over-that little one there-jumped after it and climbed aboard, freed the little paddle, and went off a hundred yards and stretched out on my face and went to sleep. It took a lot of yelling over the bullhorn to wake me up. By then it was ten o'clock. I went aboard. She was very quiet and strange. She agreed we were alone aboard. She wouldn't agree we had been alone the day before. She was jumpy. She had a way of looking at me. She didn't want me to touch her.

  "For a lot of days we were very polite to each other. It wasn't much fun. We tied up three days at Fort-de-France, and the third day when she came back from one of her trips ashore, she was really in a weird mood. She kept trying to grin, but her teeth were chattering. She wanted to hang onto me. She was a very scared person. But she wouldn't say why. I was glad to have her want to be close to me again. I didn't push it. In her own time she finally told me. I guess I should say she showed me. At Fort-de-France she'd found a place where she could get a roll of film developed and printed. Twelve prints. It was the last three prints on the roll that scared her. I didn't understand why at first. They were shots of the bow taken from aboard. Dumb pictures, really. Empty-looking. She said she had taken three pictures of that girl, of Joy Harris, two of them of her sunbathing and one of her standing, holding onto the bow rail. She was sure she'd had proof I'd brought the girl aboard. She wanted to... you know, wave them in my face and ask me to explain. But there wasn't any girl in the pictures. I told her there'd never been any girl aboard. I told her she'd had some kind of hallucination. I told her that what we ought to do was head back and get her a good workup. She said she was okay. She said nothing like that had ever happened before and it would never happen again. So... we kept on. And sort of forgot it. Tucked it away. And things were great again."

  I pried the second episode out of him. It started during the run from La Guaira to Willemstad. He'd wanted somebody to work on the generator at La Guaira, but the political situation was such no mechanic would touch the Trepid. It was a ticklish problem just to buy stores and get them aboard. The generator was getting noisy. Lubrication didn't seem to help.

  "We were under sail, and at dusk I turned on the generator and she like had some kind of a fit. She kept asking me to listen. All I could hear was the noisy generator. She made me turn it off and on again. Every time it was off, there was no sound at all aboard. Every time it was on she could hear, sort of mixed in with the noise, that Joy Harris girl talking and laughing. Trav, she could really hear that. I know. It was hallucination. But it was so damn real to her she almost made me hear it too. All the way up to Willemstad I ran it as seldom as possible. The only way she could stand it was to shut herself in the forward cabin, with rubber plugs in her ears. She lost weight. She got very jumpy. At Willemstad I got some parts replaced on the generator. It quieted down. She couldn't hear the voices and laughing any more after that. But it had changed her somehow. It made her quieter. She doesn't laugh a lot the way she used to."

  The third episode was murky because he apparently did not understand just what had happened. After coming through the Canal in a convoy of freighters, after going under the high swing bridge of the Pan American highway, they made the eightmile final leg to Balboa Harbor. It was suffocatingly hot. A launch took the pilot and the Panamanian line handlers off the Trepid. It was an hour before sunset, and they decided to keep moving and so they headed out into the Pacific, dipping and lifting in the long slow swells. The chart looked clean. He figured the heading at 190 degrees after adjusting for deviation. That would give them good water down through the Gulf of Panama, staying well clear of Las Perlas, passing them well to the west. And that heading would bring them within visual range of the light on Punta Mala to the west of them, and he drew a line on the chart to intersect the 190-degree line and told Pidge that they should be directly abeam of Punta Mala at about four thirty in the morning, if the wind held, giving them eight knots, and then they would change to 230 degrees. By daylight he hoped to take visual bearings of the coast and set the new course for the long run to Puntarenas, tucked snugly into the Gulf of Nicoya.

  Pidge went forward to make certain everything was secured. The stars were beginning to come out. He caught a glimpse of her as she went over the side.

  With no hesitation he yanked a life ring free and slung it into the dark sea as she slipped by. "It was a fresh breeze, almost abeam, heeling us over to port. No time and no chance to get her onto power. God, you know how small the chances are! I turned to starboard and into the eye and smacked her around, trying to count time, estimate speed, draw the lopsided circle in the back of my mind, and use dead reckoning to come all the way around and up and lay the Trepid dead in the water at where she ought to be. It had to be right the first time because the boat wasn't going to stay there very long. You know how she's set up. Under sail you use that wheel back aft, in the forward part of the cockpit, and under power you can run her from there or the wheelhouse. I came back up, trying to be downwind from where she went over. I was counting time and distance, and then I took my shot. I headed into the wind and yelled to her, and tried to hear something over all the gear slapping and creaking and banging. I was straining to see while she was in irons. Then, as the wind started to push the boat backward, I saw the white life ring back off the ster
n quarter. I didn't know if she was in it at first. Then I could make her out. The Trepid was swinging about and the wind popped the main full and heeled her over, but there was no way on her yet, no answer to the helm. I ran up to the bow and threw a line to her and could just make out the way it fell across the ring. I made it fast to a bow cleat and yelled to her to make it fast to the ring. When I got back to the wheel, there was enough way on her so I could turn her back up into the wind, and this brought Pidge swinging in alongside near the transom. I got the line with a boathook and pulled it up, got hold of the line, pulled her up inside the ring, skinned her knee on the hull. I was laughing and crying. It was such a hell of a long chance. And we'd made it. Know what she thought really happened?"

  "What?"

  "She thought I was watching her after she went forward and saw her lean way over the rail to free a line, and I turned sharp to port to flip her overboard. She thought I came back around and tried to run her down, for God's sake! And then for some damned reason, changed my mind and rescued her!"

  "She get over that too?"

  "I'd have to say not completely. I'm sorry I have to say it. If she'd just... give me a chance. Or if she'd get professional help. But as soon as we tied up, she got the hell off and won't even talk to me. It's a month. I don't know what to do."

  "What were you planning to do?"

  "The next leg? It was sort of open. It's a hell of a jump from here. You've got to want three thousand miles of open ocean and be ready for it. We'd planned to drop on south-Tahiti, American Samoa, then maybe Fiji to Auckland to Sydney-and decide there if we wanted all the rest of it, or if we'd had the best of it. If so, then we thought we'd probably sell the Trepid there and fly home."

  Perhaps I let too much show as I looked around the deck.

  "I know, I know," he said. "I just haven't had the heart to do the chores. Everything has just been meaningless."

  "Maybe you'd feel better if you turned to, Howie." He sighed and nodded. "You're probably right. I guess I would. This is a nice machine, and she's beginning to look like a slum. Yes, I guess I'll do that, Trav. I shouldn't have needed somebody to tell me."

  "Shall I look Pidge up and talk to her?"

  He looked eager. "Would you? Would you give it a try?"

  "Of course."

  "And get back to me?"

  "Why not?"

  "I hate to say this. But you see if you think she needs help. If you think she does, maybe she'll listen to you."

  "I'll let you know."

  He walked with me down the long jetty, past all the boats. He knew a lot of people for having been there such a short time. Hey there, Howie. How's it going, fella?

  At the end of the jetty, he made a short sound of laughter without mirth. "When things start to go bad, they really go," he said. "I've told you enough. You shouldn't hear it all from me. Something else happened when we were a week out from here. You let her tell you about that one, and draw your own conclusions. That's why she got off the boat and why I can't even talk to her."

  I shook his hand. He didn't let go. He looked at me with his big dumb brown brute eyes, and they watered, and in a husky voice, he said, "What I really want is... I want her back... If you could just......"

  He let go and spun away. His voice had broken. He started walking slowly back out the jetty toward the Trepid. It was a listless and dejected walk. A big dumpy giant, sad in the Christmas-coming sunshine.

  Four

  IT WAS late afternoon when I got back to Pidge's borrowed apartment. She seemed remote, ill at ease, and strangely indifferent to my reaction to whatever Howie had told me. She took me down to the ninth floor and showed me the little studio apartment she had borrowed. She gave me the key and said I could come up when I'd freshened up.

  I said it had been a while since I'd done any hotel-hopping, so how about humoring me and going out with me. She brightened perceptibly. By the time she phoned down and said she was ready and would meet me at the garage level, she sounded almost cheerful.

  She wore a handsome pants suit and had carefully applied a fiesta face. She found it easy to smile. She had the use of the white Toyota of the missing Alice Dorck and said that she was getting almost used to the traffic, so maybe... ?

  She sat very erect behind the wheel, with firm grip and frown of concentration. She angled the little car through holes just before they started to close. She whipped around the indecisive and tucked herself away from the certifiable maniacs. She picked productive lanes and managed to locate, without hesitation, the last parking slot in the lot off Seaside.

  It was a good night for strolling, the air balmy and soft. Along Waikiki the hotels have not yet had to adopt the Miami Beach hospitality routine of posting armed guards at doorways who demand a look at your key and, if you look kinky, escort you to the desk for official clearance. At Waikiki you can still walk in and buy a lady a drink. We worked the little cluster across from the International Market the Outrigger, the Surfrider, the Moana, checking out the outdoor bars. Get the rum drink in the squat glass and you get a stick of fresh pineapple to stir it with. Get the Mary, which she was drinking with both care and thirst, and the stir-stick is a stalk of celery.

  I steered the talk to safe places, back to Bahama seas and Florida beaches. She cheered up and freshened, and her voice broke free of the monolevel, moving up and down the scale of her emotions. Have a drink; take a walk; drink again.

  In the most inconspicuous way, I was trying to get her well smashed. Yes, in vino there is veritas, if you can translate it, if you can figure out which side of the truth you are seeing. The International Market was closing. We roamed through a corner of it and I bought her one flower, the color of cinnamon, not quite an orchid, not quite anything else either. And then to the slightly airport flavor of the Princess Kaiulani Hotel, where I steered her, slow, smiling and smashed, through interlocking lobbies track to that place where the Chinese food is the very best of Mandarin, the tastes less separated than Cantonese, more heavily spiced.

  We made wishes with chopsticks, pulling them apart, then arguing over who got the largest portion of the bamboo base where it split. She won both sets, and said she would think about the wishes. Her small, strong-looking hands were deft with the chopsticks. She ate with hunger, glancing across the candlelight, smiling, saying, "Mmmm." She would swing and shake her head in a certain remembered way to settle the brown hair back. Nice. "And the two wishes?" I asked.

  She took one more morsel of the squash, then dropped the sticks on the plate. She shook her head. "Oh, Trav, you know... if I could only have just one wish... how I need that one wish."

  She jumped up and was gone. I waited ten minutes and then paid the check and tipped our waitress to look in the ladies' room. She came back and told me the lady would meet me in a couple of minutes in the lobby. The waitress had a sweet, worried smile. Lovers' quarrel?

  Irregular formations of touring Japanese men moved through the lobbies with worried celerity, all their satin-black Nikons with the bulky nighttime headdress of rechargeable strobe. Why are their glasses frames always so shiny?

  Pidge came to me, shy and damp-lashed, the nose red from blowing. "First date in forever, and I can't hack it," she said.

  "Home?"

  "To what passes for same. Yes. And a lovely, lovely time up until I went owly."

  I drove back through practically no traffic, and she showed me where to duck into the ramp under the Towers, and where the car. belonged. On the way up in the elevator, I heard her sigh over the whisper of machinery. At eleven, I held the door open by leaning against the edge of it and said, "We'll tackle it tomorrow?"

  She studied me and turned, just a little uneasy on her tall shoes. "No. Come on. Damn it all. Come on, let's pick the scabs off." So I let the urgent doors hiss shut behind us, and helped her with the double-key arrangement to number 1112.

  I made a mild joke, something about her friend Alice Dorck being some kind of security-conscious international agent. She s
aid Alice had answered the door once for a man who said he wanted to replace the filter in the air intake. She let him in, and in the process of raping her he broke two ribs and three fingers on her left hand, tore her earlobe, and squeezed her throat so hard she had traumatic laryngitis for two weeks. She said that after that, Alice tended to be lock-conscious.

  No more jokes, I decided. Once inside I asked for a drink and was assured to see her pour one for herself. Down to cases.

  "Here it is! This is the camera. Instamatic. I've had it forever. I buy Kodacolor in twelves. You can usually get it developed almost anyplace."

  "And these are the twelve prints."

  "How many times do you-"

  "Now tell me again, Pidge. These three pictures, the last three on the roll. You took them in this order?"

  "Y-yes. Yes, that's right."

  "You looked through the finder and you took this picture. What did you see in the finder? Details!"

  "Don't roar at me! I saw Joy Harris. I guess she'd come up through the small hatch, and she was stretched out on the bigger hatch cover. She was... on her side with her elbow stretched straight out and her head on her hand, and she was looking straight ahead. I thought about what a cute figure she had. Small but kind of lush. She had on bikini bottoms, faded blue or blue-green. The top was under her, on the hatch. Her blond hair was kind of damp-dark, like sweat or she'd washed it."