John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 17 - The Empty Copper Sea

by The Empty Copper Sea(lit)

  "Oh, great."

  "Dr. Stuart says Noyes wasn't too stable to begin with. He'd been in various kinds of trouble before Lawless ever hired him. Lawless straightened him out."

  "I wonder if Nicky gave Tuckerman some of his free samples."

  "I wondered about that too, and I asked Dr. Stuart if that could be possible. He thought it over and said that it would be impossible to separate the effects of angel dust and the effects of acute alcoholism. He said Tuckerman had been a heavy drinker for years, thinking of himself as a social drinker but getting ever nearer the edge, and in the process doing quite a bit of physical damage to himself. He said that after Lawless left, Tuckerman drank himself into a series of alcoholic spasms in April that destroyed a lot of brain tissue-maybe as much as a dozen series of electroshock treatments. Tuckerman has fatty degeneration of the heart, twenty percent liver function, coronary artery disease, and borderline diabetes."

  "Does Gretel know all that?"

  "He did mention that he had talked to her about John's condition, so I guess she was given all the bad news. He said he told her that John was erratic but probably not dangerous."

  "She'll have to stay with him, then."

  "There isn't anyone else," Meyer agreed.

  And I knew that Gretel was not the sort of person to sidestep any obligation of the blood or the heart. Tuckerman would probably hang on for years. Nice timing, McGee. Your usual luck.

  After lunch we went back to the suite at the Resort. I felt restless. I talked it all over again with Meyer. We had been up one side of it and down the other. We had done a lot more prying than our limited function warranted. We knew more about Timber Bay than we had wanted to know. Good ol' Hub Lawless was down there in Yucatan trying to turn his his personal clock back to the steamy days of his young manhood.

  I wandered around the sitting room, wishing I was on Gretel's beach with Gretel. I stopped at the windows and looked out, and saw a small familiar figure coming around the edge of the tennis courts, beyond the backstops, heading for the pool. By leaning close to the window, I saw her take up position on a chaise on the apron of the pool.

  So I went down there and came up on her quietly, and sat cross-legged on the tile beside her chaise without invitation. Billy Jean wore giant sunglasses with rose-purple lenses, a yellow turban, yellow bikini, and a quart of coconut oil.

  "I'm still supposed to stay the hell away?"

  She shrugged. "Stay. Go. It doesn't matter, does it?"

  "I was wondering if Nicky was on angel dust."

  "You mean often, or just the other night?"

  "Both."

  "Okay, yes to both. He hit it pretty good, but like he said, it's okay for some people and it isn't okay for other people. I guess it wasn't so great for him either, shooting off a gun like that in the parking lot."

  "B.J., he was trying to kill me."

  "You say."

  "Please believe me. He really tried, and if he hadn't been so unsteady, he would have done it."

  She got up and pulled the back of the chaise out of the stops so she could lay it flat. She got back onto her towel face down.

  "Okay," she said wearily. "So he really tried. And if he hadn't missed, I could have gone to your funeral. Just think."

  "But it was an extreme reaction. It was crazy."

  "Nicky was a crazy kind of person. Nobody ever really knew what he'd do next. He did whatever he felt like. You always knew things would be lively around Nicky. So the crystal rotted his head out. Okay, he's dead, isn't he? Why are you worrying about him? I thought the only person you ever worried about was Travis McGee."

  "Did you try crystal?"

  "Ha! Once, baby. Just once. That is a hit like you can't believe. Christ! There I am crawling around on my floor, and it keeps bending under me, and I'm scared shitless I'll fall through. I sit in a corner where I think it's safe and I look at my hands and my fingers had all grown together so my hands were like-you know-flippers. Like pink mittens. I saw a kid like that on television. His mother had taken the wrong kind of medicine when she was pregnant. I had these pink flippers instead of fingers and I started screaming and screaming and screaming. But they said afterward all I did was make a little mewly sound and I kept staring at my hands with the tears running down my face. No way I would ever try that crystal again. Nicky said I might get a real good ride out of it the next time, but it wasn't worth trying. I still dream about my hands looking like that. I'm at the piano and somebody asks for something that's tough to play, and I look down and there are those goddamn flippers again. No way. I stay with a little grass now and then, and not much of that either. And some hash when I'm on vacation."

  She turned her head and looked at her hand and spread the fingers, worked them, closed the hand into a fist and put it under her cheek.

  "B.J., I'm sorry I screwed up our friendship."

  "I could certainly have done without you showing up with that pig Mishy, especially after the nice note you gave me when you left the lounge earlier."

  "I apologize."

  She rolled onto her side and plucked the purple glasses off and squinted intently at me.

  "If you want to pick it up where we left off, forget it. You hurt me. You really hurt me, and the kind of person I am, I can't ever... you know... recapture a mood, not after I've been hurt. I thought you were a truly great person. It just goes to show."

  I nodded. "You're right. It goes to show. I will cherish the memory of the little time we had."

  "You will? Honest?"

  "Yes, I will."

  She grinned and put her glasses back on. "Okay. So will I. And that's the best way. A wonderful memory. Right?"

  "One of the best."

  "Maybe you're okay, McGee. Maybe you've got some heart after all. Listen, I'm sorry I got Nicky all worked up about you. I had no way of knowing he would do anything like he did. I mean, who could ever guess?"

  I went back up to the suite. Meyer read me perfectly, and was amused I should take the trouble to placate Miss Bailey. I don't know why it should amuse him to have me try to get back in the good graces of people I have offended. It is just the sort of thing he does. But I offend more than he does. Oftener and more thoroughly.

  I went into my bedroom and got the four-by-five color print of Lawless out of the nightstand drawer where I had put it. I straightened it out. It had cracked a little bit where I had folded it before. I took it to the bright light at the window and studied it.

  Okay, so it was taken April eighth in Guadalajara, according to the accompanying message. And that would date it just seventeen days after a heart attack. He looked substantial, hearty, and cheerful, sitting there pouring his beer. So maybe it wasn't a heart attack. Maybe some kind of violent attack of flu. Or maybe he mended very quickly.

  And Sheriff Hack Ames had received the slide in the mail just about one month later.

  Probably, if it was a heart attack he would not be anxious to undergo a lot of complicated surgery, and that was why he had never showed up at the Naderman-Santos Medical Clinic. So why hadn't he gotten his five hundred back or at least rescheduled his appointment? Lawless could not have felt he had left a trail leading directly to Guadalajara. John Tuckerman knew where he was going, but John was loyal. But how loyal does a man remain when you take off and leave him penniless?

  Some woman in Orlando had been projecting her Mexican slides and had recognized Lawless as being the man pictured in most of the newspapers in Florida, and featured on TV newscasts. And now Tannoy and Fletcher had nailed it down. Lawless had, been seen in Guadalajara subsequent to the twenty-second of March.

  The photograph wasn't telling me a thing. I looked at his clothing. The short-sleeved khaki jacket was bleached by sun and age to an off-white. I wondered what other clothing he had taken with him. Whatever he had decided to take, he had probably left packed in a suitcase in the jeep, down there under the cottage on stilts. It might be of some vague help to know what was missing from his wardrobe. It might b
e a clue to where he intended to hole up with the architect. Beach stuff would give one answer, and a lot of sweaters missing would give another.

  I interrupted Meyer's somber inspection of the Monday Barron's. "I think maybe I'll go check something out with Julia Lawless."

  "Do you owe her an apology too?"

  "No. I thought it might make a difference to know what clothes he took with him."

  "If you're that restless, Travis, why don't you drive down and see Gretel? I'm sure she'd be happy to see you."

  "Am I being busy for the sake of being busy? Is that what you think?"

  "All I know is you're making me nervous. Go somewhere. Please."

  "Where will you be?"

  "Right here. Asleep, if everything works out."

  Seventeen

  WHEN I arrived at 215 South Oak Lane, I saw that the garage-sale sign was still planted in the lawn. The sallow housewife with the dark blond hair and bitter smile sat in a folding chair in the shade just inside the overhead doors of the big garage: A very pretty young girl was standing at a table nearby, polishing a brass candlestick.

  "Hey McGee," the woman said. "We met the other day. I'm Freddy Ellis. Did you meet Tracy Lawless?" The girl gave me a quick glance. "Hi," she said and turned her attention back to her chore.

  "Looks as if you did well," I said.

  "Damn well, considering. The gang of locusts came and went over the weekend. Several times. We're down to the dregs."

  "Is Mrs. Lawless around?"

  "She'll be back after a while," Tracy said. "What is it you want?"

  "She told me I could stop back if I wanted to ask her anything else."

  "About what?"

  "Tracy!" Freddy Ellis said warningly.

  "I'm sorry, but there've been enough people bothering her. This has been very hard for her. This sale and all. She's exhausted."

  "When she gets back, if she doesn't want to talk to me, I won't push it."

  She studied me and then nodded. She polished the last of the white residue from the candlestick and placed the pair on display. I looked around and noticed that all the guns and fishing tackle were gone. Most of the photographic equipment seemed to be gone. His ten-speed bike, rowing machine, and bowling ball were still there.

  Tracy said, at my elbow, "I found out that they drill holes in a bowling ball to fit whoever buys it. I don't think my mother knew that either. I guess it won't sell. I don't know why the bicycle won't sell. It cost nearly six hundred dollars, and we've got it priced at two hundred, and it is practically new. He was going to get in really good shape. He was going to ride with me and Lynn every morning, and then he was going to ride it to work. I think we did that three times. Maybe even four." She did not sound especially bitter. Just factual.

  A tall surfboard was propped against the wall. When I looked more closely at it, she said, "I'm holding that for a girl that has to ask her father if she can buy it It used to be mine."

  "It's a good one."

  "I know. But it is dumb to have a surfboard here. When is there any surf to ride? Just in storms, sometimes. I didn't even ask for one. He just bought it as a surprise year before last. He threw away a lot of money that way."

  "It's fun to buy things for people you love."

  "That's one of the reasons, I guess," she said, and turned away. The bitterness had been visible for a moment.

  Julia drove in and got out of her car, carrying a bag of groceries. The daughter went to her and took it and apparently asked her if she wanted to talk to me. She nodded and smiled at me, and the girl went into the house with the bag.

  We talked once again in the living room, with the coffee table between us. Yes, she had heard that the investigators had established that Hub was in Mexico subsequent to the twenty-second of March. She said that was nonsense. He was dead, and she knew it.

  "Did Hack Ames show you a picture of Hub taken in Guadalajara on April eighth?"

  "He tried to show it to me. I said it was impossible. It just couldn't be. I wouldn't even look at it. I said it was some kind of a trick. He got very annoyed with me. He really did."

  "I've got a print of that picture here."

  "Don't try to show it to me!"

  "Julia, please. I was wondering what sort of clothing he planned to take with him. It could indicate where he was intending to go, whether he got there or not."

  She hesitated, and then with a sigh of resignation she took the picture and turned it toward the light. She closed her eyes for a few moments, then studied it again, and handed it back.

  "You can't learn much from that bush jacket," she said. "That's the last one of four he bought at Abercrombie and Fitch at least fifteen years ago. They were made out of their special Safari Cloth. They wore like iron. That was the last one. Shoulder straps. Four pleated pockets with buttons. I remember mending the left sleeve in front. You can see the mend. He ripped it on a branch."

  "Do you know what other clothes he took?"

  "I have no idea. He'd moved a lot of his stuff out to the ranch, you know. He was supposed to be sleeping out there."

  "Could you tell by looking to see what's missing?"

  She heaved a great sigh. "Well, I've got to go through that stuff sooner or later."

  "Maybe it would be better to put it off for a while."

  "No. I'll go look. Not that it will do any good." She came back in five minutes, taking long strides for such a small person. She was bent forward, eyes glaring, jaw set.

  "Here, damn you!" she yelled and hurled something at me. I got a hand up in time and caught the wadded cotton. Julie stood over me. "I told him and I told you that goddamn picture was nonsense. Look at it! Look at the sleeve! What did he do, smart man? Wear that to Mexico and sneak back after April eighth and slip it into his closet with the rest of his stuff? I told you. I told everyone. Hub is... is..." She collapsed onto the couch and began to weep.

  "Julia? Julia!" I had to say her name very sharply to bring her back for a moment from the selfinvolvement of her tears. She stared at me, her face small, lined; and anguished.

  "I agreed to tell you why I came here," I said.

  "If it was to prove he's really dead..."

  "To clear Van Harder. To get his license back. A favor for a friend. That's all."

  Her stare showed she found it hard to believe. "Just for that? My God, you go plunging around, kicking and thumping, just for that? What kind of an idiot project is that?" Tears were drying.

  "Your husband and his dear friend left Harder way up the creek. Harder was loyal to your husband. They gave him a very cheap shot."

  "What do you think he gave me? And his daughters?"

  "And his bank and his friends and his other employees too. I guess I stepped in just now because I didn't want to see some grown person crying for him."

  "He was my husband!"

  "When I was small there was a neighborhood kid who had a lot of toys. Whenever we played with him we all knew that whatever the game was, we had to let him win. If we didn't, he would pick up his toys and leave. He was kind of a fat kid."

  "You've got some sort of adolescent infatuation with the idea of gallantry and fair play," she said. "He was doing what he thought was right. Damn you, why have you got me defending him? Would you leave? Please?"

  Sheriff Haggermann Ames saw me in his little sterile windowless office at quarter to four that Monday afternoon.

  He looked at the paper bag I brought in. "What have you got?"

  "You won't like it."

  "Would you like a list of the things that happen every day that I don't like and never expect to like?" I sat opposite him and took the bush jacket out of the bag. I shoved the print he had given me in front of him, unfolded the bush jacket, and pointed to the mended rip in the front of the short left sleeve. His face did not reveal a thing. He told me to stay put. He came back with a slide projector, the kind which comes in a small tin suitcase which opens up into a tent-shaped ground-glass screen. The slide is projected onto th
e back of the ground glass. He plugged it in, turned it on, inserted the slide, turned it to sharp focus. Then he compared the shirt I'd handed him to the shirt in the photograph. He compared the shoulder straps, collar, mend, the buttons on the flap pockets. He turned the projection lamp off, tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling.

  "Get it from Julia?" he asked.

  "Yes. She did the mending. He bought four of them a long time ago. This was the last one left."