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

by A Tan

  Cause for a long, low whistle. Old Harry with two and a half mil before taxes was a boggling picture for the mind to behold.

  "How soon does he get rich?"

  "Their fiscal year ends the last day of this month. The national accounting firm doing the audit is Jensen, Baker and Company. They will apparently get a guaranteed underwriting through Fairmont, Noyes. I hear that it is a pretty clean deal and that SEC approval should be pretty much cut and dried after they get the complete audit report, the draft of the red herring."

  I stared at him. "Red herring?"

  "Do you know what a prospectus is?"

  "That thing that tells you more than you care to know about a new issue of stocks or bonds?"

  "Yes. The red herring is the prospectus without the per share price of the stock on it or the date of issue. And it is a complete disclosure of everything to do with the company, background of executives and directors, how they got their stock, what stock options they may hold, what financial hanky panky, if any, they've ever been involved in. Very interesting reading sometimes."

  "Nice to see an old acquaintance get rich enough to afford a hell of a lot of alimony."

  "When a company is in registration, they get very secretive, Travis. Loose lips can sink financial ships."

  "What would he want Mary to sign? He said it was to protect his interest in SeaGate."

  "I wouldn't have any idea."

  "Can you find out?"

  "I can try to find out. I suppose the place to go would be West Palm. That's where the administrative offices of SeaGate are. That's where they are doing the audit, starting early so that they can close the books as of April thirtieth. It would be futile to try to pry anything out of the Jensen, Baker people. But maybe somebody in the SeaGate organization might talk. What did you do today?"

  I told him. It was complicated and a lot of it was wasted time and effort, so I kept to the things that had worked.

  Then I got to my big question. I had been bouncing it off the back of my mind for an hour, and it was going to be a pleasure to share the trauma with someone else.

  "Here is this distrait husband, Meyer. He says he doesn't chase women. The Canadian girl was an exception, a big mistake. He wants me to tell Mary he wants her back. They'll go on a nice trip together. He is so rattled and upset he takes out his little gun and tries to kill me. Suppose he had. His two and a half mil would do him no good at all. And Mary could do him no good by coming back. Okay. He stashed his Canadian tail in apartment 61 at his Casa de Playa, and it was right there that Mary caught him. Harry got rid of the girlfriend. Mary gloomed around for a time, and then she left him. He wants her back. He's sending messages through me, he thinks, to get her to come back to him. Let's say she decides to go back. She goes to their house and finds it closed up. She knows he has the apartment. So she'd go there next, and she'd find him all cozied up there with a blonde named Betsy Booker. Draw me some inferences, please."

  "Hmmm. We'll assume that the Booker woman is living in Broll's apartment with him, and the signs of her presence are too numerous to eliminate with short warning. Thus, when Broll came to see you, he either was very sure that Mary would not come back to him or that Mary could not come back to him. Or, possibly, if Mary could come back to him and decided to come back to him, he would have an early warning system to give him ample time to get the Booker woman out of the apartment and maybe even move back to Blue Heron Lane. This would imply that he knows where she is and has some pipeline to her. In either case, there would be considerable insincerity in his visit to you. Yet a man playing games does not pause in the middle of thp game to murder someone out of jealousy. So we come to a final postulate which is not particularly satisfying. We assume that he is and was sincere but is too comfortable with his current living arrangement to want to think it through and see how easily it could spoil his second chance with Mary."

  "He's not that dumb. Dumb, but not that dumb."

  "Logic has to take into account all alternatives."

  "Would you consider eating Hungarian tonight?" I asked him.

  "Considered and approved."

  "Poker dollar for the tab?"

  "Food and drink, all on one."

  Six

  THE WAY you find Mary is the same way you find anybody. Through friends and neighbors. And patience. Through shopping habits, money habits, doctor, dentist, bureaucratic forms and reports. And more patience.

  You reconstruct the events of three and a half and four years ago and try to remember the names and places, the people who could be leads. You find out who Mary used to be, and from that maybe you find out where she is.

  To start with, she was Tina Potter's friend. Came down to see Tina and Freddie. Came down from Rochester, New York. It was just a visit, and then she got her own place. Had some money, some kind of income. Didn't have to work. Came down because she had just been through a jolting and ugly divorce action. She'd gotten her maiden name back by court order. Mary Dillon. Dillon and Dolan. I seemed to be working my way through the Ds. D for divorce.

  A quiet young woman. We all got to like her. She had been putting the pieces of herself back together very very nicely. Then something happened. What the hell was it?

  At last I remembered. Tina Potter had come over to the Flush late one afternoon and asked me if I could sort of keep an eye on Mary. Freddie had a special assignment in Bogota, and Tina would go with him only if she was sure somebody would watch over Mary. The incident which had racked her up had been the accidental death of her divorced husband a few days before. A one-car accident on a rainy night somewhere near Rochester. Left the road and hit a tree.

  I remembered Tina's earnest face as she said, "Two-bit psychology for whatever it's worth, McGee. I think Mary had the idea, hidden so deep she didn't even realize it, that one day her Wally would grow up and come back to her and then they'd have the kind of marriage she thought they were going to have the first time around. So with him dead, it can't ever be. She's trying to hang on, but it's very white-knuckle stuff. Would you mind too much? She trusts you. She can talk to you."

  So I had spent a lot of time with Mary. Beach walking, driving around, listening to music. But if she laughed, she couldn't be sure it wouldn't turn into tears. She had no appetite. The weight loss was apparent. A drink would hit her too hard.

  I suggested the aimless cruise. Get away. No destination. Mary knew by then it wasn't a shrewd way of hurrying her into the sack, because had that been the target, it would have happened one of the times when her guard was way down. She agreed without much enthusiasm, provided she could pay her share of the expenses and do her share of the chores aboard.

  After two weeks she had really begun to come out of it. At first she had slept twelve and fourteen hours a night, as if her exhaustion was of the same kind that happens after an almost mortal wound. Then she had begun to eat. The listlessness had turned to a new energy. She could laugh without it turning to tears.

  One day when we were anchored a dozen miles north of Marathon, among some unnamed islands, I took the little Sea Gull outboard apart, cleaned it, lubricated it, reassembled it, while she zipped around out there in the sailing dinghy, skidding and tacking in a brisk bright wind. When she came back aboard the Flush she was wind blown, sun glowing, salty, happy, and thirsfiy. Before she went off to take her very niggardly freshwater shower, she brought me a beer. She told me she hadn't felt so good in a long long time. We clinked bottles in a toast to a happy day. She looked, smiling, into my eyes, and then her eyes changed. Something went click. They widened in small shock and surprise, then looked soft and heavy. Her head was too heavy for her slender neck. Her mouth was softer. Her mouth said my name without making a sound. She got up and left me, her walk slow and swaying, and went below. It had been awareness, invitation, and acceptance all in a few moments, all without warnlng. I remember hastily fastening the last piece of the housing back onto the small motor and deciding that I could test it and stow it later. The lady was belo
w, and there was a day to celebrate, a cruise to celebrate, a recovery to celebrate.

  So try Tina and Freddie Potter. Long gone, of course. Scrabbled around in the locker where I throw cards and letters. Found one a year old. Address in Atlanta. Direct-dialed Atlanta information, then direct-dialed the Potter house. Squeals of delight, then desolation that I wasn't in Atlanta. Freddie had just gone off to work. She had to quiet the kids down, then she came back on the line.

  "Mary? Gee, I guess the last I heard was Christmas time, Tray. She wrote kind of a short dreary note on the back of a New Year's card. She sounded pretty depressed, so I wrote her, but I didn't hear from her. What's the matter? Why are you looking for her?"

  "She left Harry Broll early in January."

  "That doesn't surprise me much. I never could understand why she married him. Or the first one, Wally, either. Some women seem to have to pick losers every time. Like some women pick alcoholics every time. But... I'd think she'd get in touch with you or with us. But you know Mary. Doesn't want to be a burden to anyone."

  "How about family?"

  "Well, there was just her mother up in Rochester, and she died two years ago. That was all she had, Trav. Gee, I can't think of who you could ask. But I'd think she'd have some friend she'd talk to. A neighbor or something."

  She couldn't contribute anything more. She wanted me to let her know when I found out where Mary was, and she wanted me to come to Atlanta and stay with them and tell them all the news about everybody around the marina.

  I couldn't use the Rolls pickup to visit the neighbors along Blue Heron Lane. There aren't any cover stories to fit that set of wheels. And housewives are very edgy these days. They have little peep holes set into the doors and outdoor intercom speakers and little panic buttons to push if they get too nervous. Respectability is essential. Nothing eccentric please.

  So I borrowed Johnny Dow's Plymouth sedan, and I wore pressed slacks, a sincere jacket, an earnest shirt, and a trustworthy necktie. I carried a black zipper portfolio and a dozen of my business cards. I am Travis McGee, Vice President of CDTA, Inc. It is no lie. Meyer incorporated the company a few years ago, and he keeps it active by paying the tiny annual tax. CDTA means nothing at all. Meyer picked the letters because they sound as if they have to mean something. Commercial Data Transmission Authority. Consolidated Division of Taxes and Audits. Contractors' Departmental Transit Acceptance.

  In my sincere, earnest, trustworthy way I was going to hit the neighborhood on this hot Friday morning with a nice check which I had to deliver to Mrs. Harry Broll in settlement of her claim and get her to sign a release. I used one of the checks Meyer had ordered. It was on an actual account. Of course, the account was inactive and had about twelve dollars in it, but the blue checks were impressively imprinted with spaces for his signature and mine. He borrowed a checkwriter from a friend in one of the shops, and we debated the amount for some time before settling on a figure of $1,093.88.

  "Good morning, ma'am. I hate to bother you like this, but I wonder if you can help me. My name is McGee. Here is my card. I've got, out a check payable to Mrs. Harry Broll in full payment of her claim of last year, and I have a release here for her to sign, but the house looks as if they're off on a long trip or moved or something. Could you tell me how I could find Mrs. Broll?"

  It was not a long street. Three short, curving blocks. Large lots, some of them vacant, so that the total was not over twenty-five homes right on Blue Heron Lane. The Broll house was in the middle of the middle block on the left. The canal ran behind the houses on the left hand side, following the curves. Dig a canal and you have instant waterfront.

  I made the logical moves. I parked the Plymouth in the Broll driveway, tried the doorbell, then tried the neighbors, the nearest ones first.

  "I can't help you at all. We moved in here three weeks ago, all the way from Omaha, and that house has been empty since we moved in, and from any sign of neighborliness from anybody else around here, all the houses might as well be empty, if you ask me."

  "Go away. I don't open the door to anyone. Go away."

  "Mrs. Broll? Someone said they split up. No, we weren't friendly. I wouldn't have any idea where you could find her."

  At the fourth front door-the fifth if you count the place where nobody answered-there was a slight tweak at the baited end of my line.

  "I guess the one to ask would be Mrs. Dressner. Holly Dressner. She and Mrs. Broll were all the time visiting back and forth, morning coffee and so forth. That's the next house there, number 29, if she's home. She probably is. I didn't hear her backing out."

  After the second try on the doorbell I was about to give up. I could hear the chimes inside. No answer. Then the intercom speaker fastened to the rough-cut cypress board beside the front door clicked and said, "Who is it? And, for God's sake, just stand there and talk in a normal tone of voice. If you get close to the speaker and yell, I won't understand word one."

  I gave my spiel, adding that the lady next door told me she would be the one to ask. She asked me if I had a card, and she had me poke it through the mail slot. I wondered why she sounded so out of breath.

  I heard chains and locks, and she pulled the door open and said, "So come in." She wore a floorlength terry robe in wide yellow and white stripes, tightly belted. Her short, blond, water-dark hair was soaked. "I was in the pool. Daily discipline. Come on out onto the terrace. I'm too wet to sit in the living room."

  She was a stocky woman with good shoulders and a slender waist. She had a tan, freckled face, broad and good humored, pale lashes and brows, pretty eyes. The terrace was screened, and the big pool took up most of the space. Sliding glass doors opened the terrace up into the living room. The yard beyond the screening and beyond the flowerbeds sloped down to a small concrete dock where a canopied Whaler was moored.

  She invited me to sit across from her at a wrought iron table with a glass top.

  "Try that on me again, Mr. McGee. Slowly. Is this the check?"

  She picked it up and put it down and listened as I went through it again. "A claim for what?" she asked.

  "Mrs. Dressner, it's company policy not to discuss casualty claims and settlements. I'm sure you can understand why."

  "Mr. McGee, may I ask you a personal question?"

  "Of course."

  "How come you are so full of bullshit?"

  I stared at her merry face and merry smile. But above the smile the hazel eyes were expressionless as poker chips.

  "I... I don't quite understand."

  "Go back to Harry and tell him that this didn't work, either. What does he think I am? Some kind of idiot, maybe? Good-by, Mr. McGee."

  "This isn't for Harry. This is for me."

  "So who the hell are you?"

  "How friendly are you with Mary anyway?"

  "Very very very. Okay?"

  "What happened to her when Wally got killed?"

  She frowned at me. "She came apart. She flipped."

  "And a man took her on a boat ride?"

  "Right. And the way she talked about him, that's the one she should have played house with instead of Harry Broll."

  "I almost thought about it seriously."

  "You?"

  "Travis McGee. The Busted Flush. Cruised the Keys and up the west coast to Tampa Bay. Taught her to sail. Taught her to read a chart. Taught her to navigate."

  She put her determined chin on her fist and stared at me. "That was the name. You, huh? So what's with the funny games, coming here with your funny card and your funny check? If you knew we're close friends, why not start honest?"

  "I have not seen her or talked to her in over three years, Holly. And don't jump on my knowing your first name and try to make anything out of it. The woman next door clued me."

  "Hitting the whole neighborhood?"

  "One at a time. Mary is... low-key intense. She hides a lot of herself. She doesn't make friends easily. But she needs people, so I thought she'd have to have a friend in the neighborhood. A frien
d, not an acquaintance. Right?"

  "So right, McGee. Coffee and tears. Most women bug me. Mary doesn't. I... still don't feel right about you. About taking you for granted. It could be some kind of a trick. I want to ask you things, but I can't think of anything to ask that you couldn't have gotten from Harry."

  "He's trying to find her."

  "You know it! I thought the silly son of a bitch was going to try to shake it out of me."

  "When was this?"

  "A couple of weeks ago. He'd had a couple. He got all weepy. He insisted I had to know where Mary is."

  "Do you know where she is?"