John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 13 - A Tan and Sandy Silence

by A Tan

  Nobody else is going to. And this deft morsel, curled sleeping against you, is a first-class ticket for all of the voyage you have left. Suppose you do have to do some bowing and scraping and fetching. Will it kill you? Think of what most people have to do for a living. You've been taking your retirement in small installments whenever you could afford it. So here's the rest of it in her lovely sleep. The ultimate social security.

  I eased my dead arm out from under her and moved away. She made a sleep-whine of discontent. I covered her with the big colorful sheet, dressed, turned out the rosy light, and made sure the main hatchway locked behind me when I left.

  Back aboard the Flush I put on swim trunks and a robe to keep me warm in the morning chill. The sun was coming up out of the sea when I walked across the pedestrian bridge over the highway and down onto the public beach. Morning birds were running along the wet sand, pecking and fleeing from the wash of the surf. An old man was jogging slowly by, his face in a clench of agony. A fat girl in a brown dress was looking for shells.

  I went in, swam hard, and rested, again and again, using short bursts of total energy. I went back to the Flush and had a quart of orange juice, four scrambled eggs along with some rat cheese from Vermont, and a mug of black coffee.

  I fell asleep seven and a half inches above my oversized bed in the master stateroom, falling toward the bed, long gone before I landed.

  Four

  THURSDAY, WHEN I got up a little before noon, the remembered scene with Harry Broll and his little gun seemed unreal. Six loud whacks, not loud enough to attract the curious attention of people on the neighboring craft. The Flush had been buttoned up, the air-conditioning on. No slug had gone through glass.

  I found where five had hit. At last I spotted the sixth one in the overhead. It had hit tumbling and sideways and had not punched itself all the way out of sight, so by elimination it was the one that had grooved the leather sole of my sandal and nummed my heel.

  I had rolled to my right after going over backward in the chair. It gave me the chance to kick a small table over, creating more distraction and confusion, and it also forced him, being right-handed, to bring his arm across his body to aim at me, which is more difficult than extending the arm out to the side. Two into the deck, one into the chair, one into the table, one into the overhead, and one into my stereo amplifier.

  So maybe the clip held six, and he had not jacked one into the chamber until he got to the parking lot at the marina. If he'd put one in the chamber and filled the clip all the way, there would have been one left for the middle of my face.

  Dead then or a long time in the institutional bed with the drains in place and the pain moving around under the sedatives like a snake under a blanket.

  Don't give yourself any credit, Mr. Travis McGee. The fates could have counted to seven just as easily. You had an easy shot at him with the ashtray, but your hand was sweaty and the fingertips slipped. You missed badly.

  Meyer could be right. I had depended on instinct. It had been my instinct that Harry Broll had not come to kill me. Then he had done his best, and I had lucked out. So was instinct becoming stale? When it stopped being a precision tool, when it ceased sending accurate messages up from the atavistic, animal level of the brain, I was as vulnerable as if sight or hearing had begun to fail. If soft, sloppy, nervous Harry Broll could almost do me in with a pop gun, my next meeting with professional talent could be mortal.

  There was another dimension to it. Once I started doubting my survival instinct, I would lose confidence in my own reactions. A loss of confidence creates hesitations. Hesitation is a fatal disease-for anyone in the salvage business.

  There are worse careers than houseguest. Or pet gopher.

  Too much solitary introspection started to depress me. I was ready for Geritol and cortisone.

  I pulled all the plugs and connections on the Marantz and lugged its considerable weight all the way to where I'd parked Miss Agnes, my ancient and amiable old blue Rolls pickup. I drove over to town to Al's Musicade. He is lean, sour, and knowledgeable. He does not say much. He took it out back himself and found bench space in his busy service department. I watched him finger the hole in the front of it. He quickly loosened the twelve Phillips screws that hold the top perforated plate down, lifted it off, found more damage, reached in with two fingers, and lifted out the deformed slug. "Somebody didn't like the programing?"

  "Bad lyrics."

  "Week from today?"

  "Loaner?"

  "Got a Fisher you can use."

  We walked out front, and he lifted it-off the rack a used one in apparently good condition. He made a note of the serial number and who was taking it out.

  I put the borrowed amplifier on the passenger seat beside me and went looking for Harry Broll's place of business. I had seen it once and had a general idea where to find it. I had to ask at a gas station. It was west of Lauderdale, off Davie Road, over in an industrial park in pine and palmetto country. All of it except the office itself was circled by high hurricane fencing with slanted braces and three strands of barbed wire on top. There was a gate for the rail spur and a truck and equipment gate. I could see a central mix concrete plant, a block plant, big piles of sand, gravel, and crushed stone.

  I could see warehouses, stacks of lumber, piles of prestressed concrete beams, and a vehicle park and repair area. This was a Thursday at one thirty in the afternoon, and I could count only ten cars. Four of those were in front of the office. The office was a long, low concrete-block building painted white with a flat roof. The landscaped grass was burned brown, and they had lost about half the small palm trees planted near the office.

  There were too many trucks and pieces of equipment in the park. It looked neat enough but sleepy. BROLL ENTERPRISES, Inc. But some of the big plastic letters had blown off or fallen off. It said: ROLL E TERP ISES, Inc.

  I cruised slowly by I was tempted to turn around and go back and go in and see if Harry was there and try once more to tell him I'd had no contact whatsoever with Mary for over three years. But he was going to believe what emotions told him ,to believe.

  I wondered how Meyer was doing, using his friends in the banks, brokerage houses, and investment houses to find out just how sweaty Harry Broll might be. The tight-money times and the over-building of condominiums and the pyramiding costs had busted quite a few able fellows lately. Harry probably hadn't come through that bad period without some ugly bruises. I could tell Meyer how idle Broll's place of business looked, if he hadn't found out already.

  When I got back to Bahia Mar, Meyer was still missing. I felt restless. I set up the Fisher, hooked up the tape decks, turntables, and the two sets of speakers. It checked out all right. I turned it off and paced. The itch you can't quite reach. Familiar feeling. Like the name you can't quite remember.

  I looked up the number for Broll Enterprises and phoned. The girl answered by reciting the number I'd just dialed.

  "Maybe you can help me, miss. I'm trying to get a home address for Mrs. Harry Broll."

  "In what regard, please."

  "Well, this is the Shoe Mart, and it was way back in November we special-ordered a pair of shoes for Mrs. Broll. It took so long she's under no obligation to take them, but they're more a classic than a high-style item, so I figure she probably wants them, but I been drawing a blank on the home phone number, so I thought maybe they moved or something."

  "Will you hold on a moment, please?"

  I held. It took her about a minute and a half. "Mr. Broll says that you can deliver them here to the office. Do you know where we are?"

  "Sure. Okay. Thanks. It'll probably be tomorrow." I hung up, and once again, to make sure, I dialed the home phone number for Harry Broll, 21 Blue Heron Lane.

  "The number you have dialed is not in service at this time."

  I scowled at my phone. Come on, McGee. The man is living somewhere. Information has no home number for him. The old home number is on temporary disconnect. The new number of wherever he'
s living must be unlisted. It probably doesn't matter a damn where he's living. It's the challenge.

  Okay. Think a little. Possibly all his mail is directed to the business address. But some things have to be delivered. Booze, medicine, automobiles. Water, electricity... cablevision?

  The lady had a lovely voice, gentle and musical and intriguingly breathy. "l could track it down more quickly, Mr. Broll, if you could give me your account number."

  "I wish I could. I'm sorry, miss. I don't have the bill in front of me. But couldn't you check it by address? The last billing was sent to 21 Blue Heron Lane. If it's too much trouble, I can phone you tomorrow. You see, the bill is at my home, and I'm at the office."

  "Just a moment, please. Let me check the cross index."

  It took a good five minutes. "Sorry it took me so long," she said.

  "It was my fault, not having my account number, miss."

  "Broll. Bee-are-oh-el-el. Harry C.?"

  "Correct."

  "And you said the bill went where?"

  "To 21 Blue Heron Lane. That's where I used to live."

  "Gee, Mr. Broll, I don't understand it at all. All billing is supposed to be mailed to Post Office box 5150."

  "I wonder if I've gotten a bill that belongs to someone else. The amount doesn't seem right either."

  "You should be paying $6.24 a month, sir. For the one outlet. You were paying more, of course, for the four outlets at Blue Heron Lane before you ordered the disconnect."

  "Excuse me, but does your file show where I am getting the one-outlet service? Do you have the right address?"

  "Oh, yes sir. It's 8553 Ocean Boulevard, apartment 42 I've got the installation order number. That is right, isn't it?"

  "Yes. That's right. But I think the billing is for eleven dollars and something."

  "Mr. Broll, please mail the bill back in the regular envelope we send out, but in the left bottom corner would you write Customer Service, Miss Locklin?"

  "I will do that. I certainly appreciate your kindness and courtesy, Miss Locklin."

  "No trouble, really. That's what we're here for."

  Four o'clock and still no Meyer, so I went out and coaxed Miss Agnes back to life and went rolling on up Ocean Boulevard. I kept to the far right lane and went slowly because the yearly invasion of Easter bunnies was upon us, was beginning to dwindle, and there was too little time to enjoy them. They had been beaching long enough so that there were very few cases of lobster pink. The tans were nicely established, and the ones who still burned had a brown burn. There are seven lads to every Easter bunny, and the litheness and firmness of the young ladies gamboling on the beach, ambling across the highway, stretching out to take the sun, is something to stupefy the senses. It creates something which is beyond any of the erotic daydreams of traditional lust, even beyond that aesthetic pleasure of looking upon pleasing line and graceful move.

  It is possible to stretch a generalized lust, or an aesthetic turn of mind, to encompass a hundred lassies-say five and a half tons of vibrant and youthful and sun-toned flesh clad in about enough fabric to half fill a bushel basket. The erotic imagination or the artistic temperament can assimilate these five and a half tons of flanks and thighs, nates and breasts, laughing mouths arid bouncing hair and shining eyes, but neither lust nor art can deal with a few thousand of them. Perceptions go into stasis. You cannot compare one with another. They become a single silken and knowledgeable creature, unknowable, a thousand-legged contemptuous joy, armored by the total ignorance of the very young and by the total wisdom of body and instinct of the female kind. A single cell of the huge creature, a single entity, one girl, can be trapped and baffled, hurt and emptied, broken and abandoned. Or to flip the coin, she can be isolated and cherished, wanted and needed, taken with contracts and ceremonies. In either case the great creature does not miss the single identity subtracted from the whole any more than the hive misses the single bee. It goes on in its glistening, giggling, leggy immortality, forever replenished from the equation of children plus time, existing every spring, unchangingly and challengingly invulnerable-an exquisite reservoir called Girl, aware of being admired and saying "Drink me!," knowing that no matter how deep the draughts, the level of sweetness in the reservoir remains the same forever.

  There are miles of beach, and there were miles of bunnies along the tan Atlantic sand. When the public beach ended I came to the great white wall of high-rise condominiums which conceal the sea and partition the sky. They are compartmented boxes stacked high in sterile sameness. The balconied ghetto. Soundproof, by the sea. So many conveniences and security measures and safety factors that life at last is reduced to an ultimate boredom, to the great decisions of the day-which channel to watch and whether to swim in the sea or the pool. I found 8553. It was called Casa de Playa and was spray-creted as wedding cake-white as the rest of them. Twelve stories, in the shape of a shallow C, placed to give a maximum view of the sea to each apartment even though the lot was quite narrow. I had heard that raw land along there was going at four thousand a foot. It makes an architectural challenge to take a two-hundred-foot lot which costs eight hundred thousand dollars and cram 360 apartments onto it, each with a view, and retain some elusive flavor of spaciousness and elegance.

  Economics lesson. Pay eight hundred thou for the land. Put up two hundred thousand more for ylte preparation, improvement, landscaping, covured parking areas, swimming pool or pools. Put up a twelve-story building with 30 apartments on each of the floors from the second through the eleventh and 15 penthouse apartments on top. You have 315 apartments. The building and the apartrnent equipment cost nine million. So you price them and move them on the basis that the higher lit the air they are and the bigger they are, the ntore they cost. All you have to do is come out with about a thirty-three hundred net on each apartrttent on the average after all construction expanses, overhead expenses, and sales commissions, and you make one million dollars, and you are a btuiden millionaire before taxes.

  But if the apartments are retailing at an average tarly thousand each and you sell off everything in that building except ten percent of the apartments. Own instead of being a million bucks ahead, you are two hundred thousand in the red. It is deceptively simple and monstrously tricky. Meyer says that they should make a survey and find out how many condominium heart attacks have been admitted to Florida hospitals. A new syndrome. The first symptom is a secret urge to go up to an unsold penthouse and jump off your own building, counting vacancies all the way down.

  As I did not care to be remembered because of Miss Agnes, I drove to a small shopping center on the left side of the highway, stashed her in the parking lot, and walked back to the Casa de Playa.

  On foot I had time to read all of the sign in front.

  NOW SHOWING.

  MODEL APARTMENTS.

  CASA DE PLAYA.

  A NEW ADVENTURE IN LIVING.

  FROM $38,950 TO $98,950.

  PRIVATE OCEAN BEACH. POOL.

  HOTEL SERVICES. FIREPROOF AND SOUNDPROOF CONSTRUCTION.

  SECURITY GUARD ON PREMISES.

  NO PETS.

  NO CHILDREN UNDER FIFTEEN.

  AUTOMATIC FIRE AND BURGLAR ALARM.

  COMMUNITY LOUNGE

  AND GAME AREA.

  ANOTHER ADVENTURE

  IN LIVING

  BY

  BROLL ENTERPRISES, INC.

  The big glass door swung shut behind me and closed out the perpetual sounds of the river of traffic, leaving me in a chilled hush on springy carpeting in a faint smell of fresh paint and antiseptic.

  I walked by the elevators and saw a small desk in an alcove. The sign on the desk said: Jeannie Dolan, Sales Executive on Duty. A lean young lady sat behind the desk, hunched over, biting down on her underlip, scowling down at the heel of her left hand and picking at the flesh with a pin or needle. "Sliver?" I said.

  She jumped about four inches off the desk chair. "Hey! Don't sneak up, huh?"

  "I wasn't trying to."

  "I
know you weren't. I'm sorry. Yes, it's a sliver."

  "Want some help?"

  She looked, up at me. Speculative and noncommittal. She couldn't decide whether I'd come to deliver something, repair something, serve legal papers, or buy all the unsold apartments in a package deal.

  "Well... every time I take hold of something, it hurts."

  I took her over to the daylight, to an upholstered bench near a big window which looked out at a wall made of pierced concrete blocks. I held her thin wrist and looked at her hand. There was red inflammation around the sliver and a drop of blood where she had been picking at it. I could see the dark narrow shape of the splinter under the pink and transparent skin. She had been working with a needle and a pair of tweezers. I sterilized the needle in her lighter flame, pinched up the skin so that I could pick a little edge of the splinter free. She sucked air through clenched teeth. I took the tweezers and got hold of the tiny end and pulled it out.