“God love us,” Gerry Brell said. She took a vase from the table and stood thoughtfully and dumped it on Lew’s head, flowers and all. The Hingdons and I were busy trying not to look squarely at one another.
Lew pushed the floor away and sat up. He looked like a fat sad baby. His eyes were not properly focused.
Gerry sat on her heels beside him and put her hand on that meaty shoulder and shook him gently. “Sweetie, you better haul your ass out of here right now, because if I know George Brell, he’s loading a gun right this minute.”
The eyes focused, comprehended, became round and wide with alarm. He jumped up and without a glance at anyone or another word went running heavily and unsteadily out.
Gerry smiled at us and said, “Excuse me, please.” She went off to find George.
Little Bess Hingdon stayed close to her big and rather solemn young husband as we went into the long living room. “Dear, I really think we should go.”
“Just leave?” Hingdon said uncertainly. There was a nice flavor about then, that scent of good marriage. Separated by a room of people, they were still paired, still aware of each other.
‘’I’ll find Gerry,“ she said and went off.
Sam Hingdon looked curiously at me and said, “That Lew Dagg is a rough boy. Linebacker. One more year to go, and the pros are watching him.”
“Like what did I hit him with?”
He grinned. “Something like that.”
“Maybe he’s out of condition. He should use the summer for a different kind of exercise. Is that Angie George’s eldest?”
“Youngest. She’s the onlly one left home. Gidge is the eldest. She’s married to a boy in med school in New Orleans. Tommy’s in the Air Force. They’re Martha’s children.”
Bess came hurrying in, carrying her purse. “It’s all right, honey. We can leave now. Good night, Mr. McGee. Hope we’ll see you again.”
I went out to the terrace and made myself a weak drink. I could hear Gerry and George yammering at each other. I could hear the music but not the lyrics. Fury and accusation. A pretty girl in dark braids and a uniform came onto the terrace and gathered up the debris of the cocktail snacks, gave me a shy glance and cat-footed away.
Finally George came out. He looked sour. He grunted at me, poured bourbon over one cube and downed it before the ice had a chance to chill it. He banged the glass down. “Trav, Gerry has a headache. She said to apologize. Jesus, what an evening!”
“Apologize to her for me. Tell her I didn’t stop to think that could be your daughter when I spoke so rough. I was still angry. And about hitting that kid, he gave me no choice.”
He stared at me with evident agony. “Just what were they doing, McGee?”
“I didn’t actually see them doing anything. He had her blouse unbuttoned and her bra unhooked, but she had her shorts on.”
“She doesn’t even start college until fall. Goddamn that ape! Let’s get out of here, Trav.” We went out and got into the Lincoln. He drove swiftly through a long maze of curving roads and then slowed as we passed a house as conspicuous as his. I caught a glimpse of the Triumph. He speeded up. “Gerry said that’s where she’d go. It’s her closest girlfriend.”
He didn’t speak again until we were on 77 heading south. “It’s a hell of a thing for something like that to happen, the first time you’re in my home.”
“Worse for you than for me.”
“How the hell am I supposed to keep an eye on her? That’s Gerry’s job and she’s goofing it. She says she can’t control her. She says Angie won’t listen to her. I’m a busy man, goddamn it. I’ve got to send the kid away, but where? Where can you send them in August, for God’s sake? There’s no relatives to park her with. Did you hear what she said to me?” He banged the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. “What do you think, McGee? Do you think that ape is actually screwing my little girl?”
“I think you’re driving too damned fast, George. And I don’t think he is. Yet.”
“Sorry. Why don’t you think he is?”
“Because if he was, he would have had her off someplace where he could, without interruption. And from the look of her, that was the next step, George.”
He slowed down a little more. “You know, that makes sense. Sure. He’s probably trying to talk her into it. He’s been hanging around for about a month. Trav, that’s the second good turn you’ve done me tonight.”
“And she doesn’t care too much for the boy.”
“How do you know?”
“When she ran out, he hadn’t moved a muscle. She couldn’t know but that I’d killed him.”
“That’s right! I’m feeling better by the minute. McGee, you must have a very nice punch.”
“He’s very easy to hit. And you’re going too fast again.”
We came into Brownsville. He took a confusing number of turns and put the car in a small Iot on a back street. We walked half a block through the sultry night to the shabby entrance of a small private club, a men’s club, with a comfortable bar and a good smell of broiled steak, and a cardroom with some intent poker players under the hooded green light.
We stood at the bar and he said, “A key for my friend, Clarence.”
The bartender opened a drawer and took out a brass key and put it in front of me. “This is Mr. Travis McGee, Clarence. Trav, that key is good for life. Life memberships one dollar. Give Clarence the dollar.” I handed it over. ‘’Cash on the line here for everything. No fees, no assessments, no committees. And a good steam room.“
We picked up our drinks and I followed George over to a corner table. “We can eat right here when we’re ready,” he said. He frowned. “I just don’t know what the hell to do about that girl.”
“Didn’t Gidge and Tommy work out fine?” It startled him.
“Yes. Sure.”
“Don’t worry about her. She’s a very lush looking kid, George. And probably as healthy as she looks. Probably if you knew everything about Gidge and Tommy at the same age, your hair would turn white.”
“By God, if you were twenty years older, McGee, I’d hire you to watchdog her for what’s left of the summer.”
“You wouldn’t be able to trust me.”
“Anyway, whatever you came to see me about, consider it done. I owe you that much.”
“I want information.”
“It’s yours.”
“How much did Dave Berry steal overseas, how did he steal it and how did he smuggle it back into the States?”
It twisted him into another dimension so suddenly it was like yanking him inside out. His face turned a pasty yellow. His eyes darted back and forth as though looking for a place to hide. He opened his mouth three times to speak and closed it each time. Then he said, spacing the words, “Are you a Treasury Department investigator?”
“No!”
“What are you?”
“I just try to get along, this way and that. You can understand that.”
“I knew a Sergeant David Berry once.”
“Is that the way you want it?”
“That’s the way it has to be.”
“What are you scared of, George?”
“Scared?‘’
“You can’t be scared of Berry. He’s been dead two years.”
It startled him, but not enough. “Dead? I didn’t know that. Did they let him loose before he died?”
“No.”
“There’s no secret of the fact I had to testify for him. I hadn’t gotten out yet. I had to go to the presidio where they tried him. I said I’d served with him for two years and that he was a good competent noncom. I said I’d seen him lose his temper a lot of times, but he’d never hurt anybody before. He’d been drinking. A jackass lieutenant with brand-new gold bars, never been out of the States, didn’t like the way Dave saluted him. He made Dave stand on a street corner and practice. After about five minutes of that, Dave just hit him. And then kept picking him up and hitting him again. And then he took off. If only he’d hit him
once, or if he hadn’t run… But I guess you know all about it.”
“Why should I? I want to know how much, and how he got it and how he brought it back.”
“I wouldn’t know a thing about that, friend. Not a single stinking thing.”
“Because you made it the same way and brought it back the same way George?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, believe me.”
“Because you can’t be sure there isn’t something official about this. Is that it?”
“McGee, I have had a lot of people asking a lot of questions for a long time, and they all get told the same thing. It was a good try, McGee. Let’s eat.” His morale came back fast.
It was midnight when we left the back-street club. He had a cocky, wary friendliness. As he unlocked the door of the Lincoln and swung it open, I chopped him under the ear with the edge of my hand, caught him and tumbled him in. And felt a gagging self-disgust. He was a semi-ridiculous banty rooster of a man, vain, cocky, running as hard as he could to stay in the same place, but he had a dignity of existence which I had violated.
A bird, a horse, a dog, a man, a girl, or a cat, you knock them about and diminish yourself because all you do is prove yourself equally vulnerable. All his anxieties lay there locked in his sleeping skull, his system adjusting itself to sudden shock, keeping him alive. He had pulled at the breast, done homework, dreamed of knighthood, written poems to a girl. One day they would tumble him in and cash his insurance. In the meanwhile it did all human dignity a disservice for him to be used as a puppet by a stranger.
He stirred once on the orderly trip back, and I found the right place on his neck for the thumb, and settled him back. Assured I was unobserved, I carried him into my chill nest, pulled the draperies, readied him for proof.
I stripped him, bound him, gagged him and settled him into the bottom ofthe shower stall. It was a hair piece. I peeled it away and tossed it onto the lavatory counter. It crouched there like a docile, glossy little animal.
A naked man who cannot move or talk, and does not know whether it is night or day, and is not told where he is or how he got there, will break very quickly.
The cold water brought him awake, and I let it run until I was certain he was thoroughly awake. I sat on a stool just outside the shower stall. I turned the water off. He was shivering. He stared at me with a total malevolence.
“George, do you think any government agency would permit this kind of interrogation? I’ve got several ways of getting rid of you completely. All perfectly safe. You’ve been asleep a long time, George. A lot of people are looking for you. But they’re looking in all the wrong places. Kidnapping is illegal, George. So we have to make a deal or I won’t be able to let you go.”
His eyes mirrored several new concerns, but he was telling himself he would never give in. “I’m after Berry ’s little package, and I need your help. When you’re ready to talk, just nod your head. Your only other choice is to get boiled like a knockwurst.”
I reached up and turned on the hot water. Good motels keep it at about a hundred and eighty degrees, and it doesn’t take long to get there. I gave him a short burst and a cloud of steam. He bucked himself off the floor and screamed into the towel, a small noise. His eyes were maddened and bulging and he forgot to nod. I gave him a second blast, and when the steam cleared I could see him nodding vigorously. I gave him the third blast for insurance and he jumped nicely and nodded so hard he was rapping his head against the wall of the stall.
I reached in and took the gag away.
He groaned. “Jesus God, you’ve scalded me. What are you doing to me? My God, McGee, what are you trying to do?”
I reached my hand up and put it on the hot water lever.
“Don’t!” he bawled.
“Keep your voice down, George. You’re turning nice and pink. Now just talk to me. Tell me all about how you and Dave Berry worked it. And if something doesn’t sound exactly right, I’ll boil you a little, just for luck.”
With a little coaching, he got through it pretty well. He and Berry had worked together from the beginning. At first it was Missionary Bonds purchased in China, shipped back to a friend in the States to cash and send them the money to buy more. Double money on each deal. Then when that was closed out, it was the gold. They worked together, but kept the take separate. They didn’t trust each other completely.
But Berry was always making more than George Brell because he didn’t spend an extra rupee on himself. He kept reinvesting it in gold. Berry found a goldsmith on Chowringhi Road in Calcutta who would cast facsimile structural parts of the aircraft out of pure gold. Berry would sand them a little, paint them with aluminum paint, screw them in place. A man in Kunming would melt them back into standard bars.
This was after spot inspection was tightened up. When they were finally due to be shipped back on rotation, Brell had over sixty thousand American dollars, and he was certain that Dave Berry had at least three times that much. They took an R and R leave and hitched a flight down to Ceylon. It was Berry ’s idea. He had thought it all out, and had learned all he could about gemstones. The cash made Brell nervous. He followed Berry ’s lead.
They spent the full ten days buying the most perfect gem stones they could find. Deep blue sapphires, star sapphires, dark Burmese rubies, star rubies. Some were too big to fit through the mouth of a standard issue canteen. They cut the canteens open, put the gems inside and resoldered them. They poured melted wax over the stones to hold them in place. The wax hardened. They filled the canteens with water, hooked them on their belts and came home rich and nervous.
“I don’t think they ever suspected Dave of a thing. He kept his mouth shut. But I did some hinting when I’d had a few drinks. They got onto me somehow. I went back home and hid them. I didn’t dare touch them. I was on terminal leave, waiting to get out when I got called to the trial. After they sentenced him to life, I had a chance to be alone with him. I tried to make a deal with him. Tell me where his were. I’d take a reasonable cut for services rendered and see that his family got taken care of. Not a chance. He didn’t trust me. He didn’t trust anybody to be shrewd enough and smart enough. No, he was going to handle it himself without any hitches, and then he could make it all up to his wife and girls.
“I didn’t touch mine for three years. Then I had to have cash. There was some land I had to pick up. I could buy it right. I couldn’t run the risk of selling them in this country. Martha and I took a vacation. We went to Mexico. I made contacts there. I took a screwing, but at least I felt safe. I got just a little over forty thousand. I brought it back in U.S. dollars, and I led it into the businesses a little bit at a time. I was careful. But they came down on me, on a net worth basis, trying to make a fraud charge stick, saying there was unreported income. And it has cost me a hundred thousand dollars to keep from being convicted for that lousy forty thousand. I couldn’t talk to you. I couldn’t take the chance. There’s no statute of limitations on tax fraud, and they could still jail me for never declaring the money I made overseas. I’m marked lousy in the files, and they are after me every year. They’re never going to stop. Now for God’s sake, let me out of here.”
After I untied him, I had to help him to his feet and half carry him into the bedroom. He sat on the edge of the bed and put his bald head down on his bare hairy knees and began to cry.
“I’m sick,” he said. “I’m real sick, McGee.” He huddled and his teeth began to chatter. I tossed his clothes to him and he dressed quickly, his lips blue.
“Where are we?”
“About two miles from your house. We walked out of that club in Brownsville about three and a half hours ago. Nobody is looking for you.”
He stared at me. “Do you know how you looked? You looked like you’d enjoy killing me.”
“I didn’t want to take too long over this, George.”
“I couldn’t hold out against what you were going to do.”
“Nobody could, George.”
/> He felt his bald head. “Where is it?”
“In the bathroom.”
He tottered in. In a few moments he came out, hair piece in place. But the haggardness of his face made it look more spurious than before. He sat again on the edge of the bed. We were oppressor and oppressed. Traditionally this is supposed to create enmity. But, so often, it does not. It had opened up too many conflicting areas of emotions. The violence was a separate thing, like a wind that had blown through, and we were left with an experience shared. He was anxious to have me know that he had acquitted himself well. I was eager to have him believe he had left me no other choice.
“You are a friend of Callowell’s?”
“No.”
“I wrote the stuffy son of a bitch a nice letter and got a brush-off.”
“I traced you through him.”
He didn’t seem to hear me. “Callowell was so damn nervous about anything cute. He’d check that airplane. He’d check around, and right over his fat head some of the static line braces would be solid gold. I tried to kid with Dave about it. Dave didn’t see anything funny. He was dead serious about everything. God, it warted him to send money home when he knew he could keep it and keep on doubling it. I kept spending too much. I had a private car in a private garage in Calcutta. I had a wife and two kids home too. But the difference between Dave and me, he was sure he’d live forever.” He shivered violently. “Trav, you think you could get me home? I feel terrible.”
I drove him home in the Lincoln. My rental was in his drive, and the Triumph was there, in the triple carport, beside a compact station wagon. I rolled the Lincoln into the empty space. Lights were on in the back of the house. I went into the big kitchen with him. There was a center island of stone, and copper pots aligned on a fruitwood wall.
Gerry Brell came into the light wearing a pink quilted robe with big white lapels, her blonde hair tousled, eyes squinting in the light.
“Honey, I don’t feel so good,” George said.
“He’s having chills,” I told her.
She took him off. At the doorway she turned and said, “Wait for me, Trav.”
I looked in the refrigerators and found cold Tuborg in the second one. I leaned against the center island and drank it, feeling unreal. I walked on a fabric of reality but it had an uncomfortable give to it. You could sink in a little way. If you walked too much and came to a weak spot, you could fall through. I think it would be pretty black down there.
The Deep Blue Good-Bye Page 9
