The Deep Blue Good-Bye

by John D. MacDonald

  “You know what just seeing him did to me.”

  “I know. Lois, he just isn’t that ominous. Evil, but not ominous. Sly, but not prescient. Once he is off balance, he will stay off balance, and fall heavily. And the law will gather him in.”

  She sat, her face wan and thoughtful. “What do you want me to do, Travis?”

  In the sultry blue dusk, the three of us lounged in the spacious cockpit of the Play Pen, kindly old lump-jawed, crinkle-eyed Dads Allen in his spotless whites, Deeleen slumped and placid in low-waisted short shorts and a narrow halter which provided a startling uplift, Fearless McGee in pale blue denims and an old gray sport shirt. McGee with a short sturdy pry bar taped to his leg, and an old white silk sock in his pocket, with a goodly heft of bird shot knotted into the toe of it.

  A lazy hour of the day. Deeleen yawned and said, “Patty should be along any time.” She lazily scratched her belly, her nails making a whispering, fleshy, sensuous sound. “How about Trav coming along with us, lover?”

  “I don’t know whether I want to,” I said.

  Dee snickered. “He wants another look at Patty, huh?”

  “We haven’t invited him yet,” Junior Allen said.

  “What I want to do over there,” Deeleen said, “I want me one of those buckets with the glass in the bottom, and you look at the coral and fish and stuff. And I want to go shopping in Nassau. Are you going to take me for a little shopping, lover?”

  “All you can use,” he said, his smile white in the night. Lights were reflected on the still black water of the sea-walled canal. Two kinds of music merged in the softness of the night.

  “Geez, I wish we could take off tonight, as soon as Patty gets here,” she said.

  “How is she going to get here?” I asked.

  “She’s taking a cab, like to go to the bus station, but she isn’t,” Dee said. She tilted her glass. The ice rattled up against her lips. I had been trying to time the drinks, and this time her glass and mine were empty, and Junior Allen’s was more than half full. I stood up and reached and took her glass and said, “Okay if I fix a couple?”

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  I went below. There was a light on in the galley. Spotless galley. Pristine whites. Trim happy ship. I gave her a heavy shot and hoped it would cover the other taste. Twisted the two capsules open, spilled the powder, stirred it in. A powerful barbiturate. Even with the liquor, I was more than reasonably sure it would do her no harm. She was a young and healthy animal. Fifteen minutes after she got it down, she would become unbearably sleepy. It would knock her out for a good fourteen hours, and leave her dulled and lethargic for the following two days. I wondered with a certain irony if it wasn’t practically what Junior Allen had all planned for her, and I was merely jumping the gun. Or maybe he had decided she would be a willing accomplice.

  I put no liquor in mine.

  She murmured thanks when I gave her the drink. I had observed her drinking habits. One swallow at a time, one minute between swallows, until it was all gone. The taste seemed to suit her.

  A breeze moved the cruiser, nudged it gently against a piling.

  “She oughta be here pretty soon,” Dee said. “If she doesn’t come, the hell with her, lover. Who needs her?”

  “She’ll be along,” Junior Allen said.

  “Just the three of us, we could have a ball,” Dee said. “She’s not much of a swinging thing. Who needs her?” She yawned. “And she’ll be drag-assin‘ around, crying over Pete anyways.”

  Dusk had deepened into night, and I saw the stars, and two planes winking, and heard the cheeing of the night insects mingled with the sound of music.

  Deeleen yawned vastly and said, “I can’t keep my eyes open. Lover, I’m going to go sack out for a while.” She stood up heavily. She looked at him and made a kissing sound. As she passed me, she dragged her fingertips across my cheek. She went below, wobbling along the narrow area between the bunks as though the Play Pen were in a choppy sea. She bent and rolled herself heavily onto a bunk. From where I sat, I could see a narrow path of light from the galley light stretching diagonally across her, across the downy small of her back, the deep crease of her waist and the high gluteal round of her hip. Sweet dreams, sweet girl. Slide way way down. Stay out of the action.

  I talked with Junior Allen. He didn’t have his mind on it. He was crouched in the brush, and he could taste lamb, and he was alerted for the first shy sound of the little hoofs coming along the trail. I gently and indirectly advanced the idea of my coming along, and he firmly closed the door. He got up and sprang nimbly onto the dock, snapped the weak dock light on, checked his lines, adjusted a fender and came aboard again, restless.

  Suddenly a man came onto the dock out of the shadows. He wore a gaudy shirt, wrinkled pants and a bright red fishing hat.

  “Anybody here name of Mister Allen?” he asked in a soft voice.

  “I’m Allen.”

  The man fumbled in his shirt pocket and took out a piece of paper. He swatted on the edge of the dock and held it out and said, “Apex Taxi, Mister Allen. You’re to call the lady at this here number.”

  Junior Allen snatched it and turned it toward the light and looked at it. “What lady? She give this to you?”

  “No, sir. I got called over the radio and put it down on that paper. They say come here and find you and give it to you.” He straightened up and hesitated for a moment, and then went back the way he had come.

  “Probably from Patty” I said.

  It was the spur he needed. He hesitated, and I could sense that he was considering ordering me ashore and locking up, locking Deeleen on the inside. I slumped deeply in the canvas chair and said, “If it isn’t her, and she should come while you’re off phoning, I’ll tell her you’ll be right on back.”

  “You do that,” he said. He sailed up onto the dock and went off. He had a springy and muscular gait, like a Percheron in a spring pasture.

  I counted to ten and then went below. I found the lights and turned them on. I went through that boat like a nervous whirlwind, yanking out the drawers and dumping them, pawing through stowage areas. I had little hope of finding a thing, but I wanted it to look like a thorough search. And as I yanked and scurried and spilled, I was pleading with Lois. “Keep him going, baby. Keep him hanging on the line. Keep him hooked.” We had planned some interesting things to say to the monster. In spite of the racket I was making, Deeleen did not make a quiver.

  I selected a spot very carefully, a lighted place where his glance would fall naturally, and I placed the fake sapphire precisely, right where it could have fallen from the hand of a hasty thief. I put a fifty-dollar bill on the cockpit deck where the interior lights shone out upon it. I turned the dock light out and snapped the switch off, breaking it. Then I clambered quickly to the cabin roof and flattened myself out on the far side of the dinghy. I checked my observation points. I could hold on to the safety rail and lean over and look through the port into the small forward cabin, or hitch back a few feet and look the same way into the larger cabin.

  I thought I knew exactly what he would do, what he had to do under those circumstances. Lois had been very dubious about this part. And she had been worried about somebody coming along. But she had been wrong there, and would be wrong again, I knew.

  I heard his hasty footsteps on the dock. I kept my head down. I heard the thump and felt it as he leaped down into the cockpit. I heard his grunt of consternation.

  He would have to find out, and find out quickly. I leaned over cautiously and stared in, my head upside down. I saw him snatch the gem up, stare at it, shove it into his pocket. He whirled toward his marine radio rig, grasped the wooden drawer directly under the rig and pulled it all the way out. A strange resonant buzzing began.

  He reached back in the place where the drawer had been, and the buzzing stopped. He worked at something in there, and then pulled his arms out, a cloth bag in one hand and a small plastic bag of paper money in the other. He examined them.
He stowed them away again, started the buzzer and replaced the drawer. As soon as the drawer was in place, the buzzing sound stopped.

  He went to the sleeping girl. He took her brutally by the hair, lifted her and wrenched her around. His back was to me. It was a very broad back. Her eyes opened, wide and absolutely vacant, and she seemed to stare so directly at me, I almost yanked myself away from the port. She closed her eyes again. He slapped her. They stayed closed. He dropped her.

  Suddenly he reached into his pocket and took out the stone. He moved closer to the nearest light. His body seemed to tense, shoulders lifting. I pulled myself back up, sensing that he would whirl, that he would catch me.

  I wormed my way toward the stern, onto the overhang, working the silk sock out of my pocket. The lights below began to go off quickly, one after the other. I had not counted on that. I closed my eyes tightly for several seconds and then opened them wide, trying to hurry night vision. I heard him coming. Moving swiftly. I wanted one good chance, and I had to take a risk to get it. I slid head and shoulders over the edge as he came out.

  He heard or sensed the movement and tried to turn, but I got him very nicely and solidly, better than I had expected. He took three wandering sideways steps and went down onto his hands and knees. I dropped, landing on toes and knuckles, and as he straightened, I gave it to him with more precision, more of a wristsnapping impact. He went back down onto his hands, shaking his head, sighing. I marveled at the toughness of his skull. I snapped him behind the left ear and his arms quit and his face smacked the teak deck. For a moment, standing and breathing hard, I debated lashing him up. But after three of those, I guessed he would last more than long enough for my two chores, finding and taking his treasures, and disabling his boat.

  The drawer arrangement was tricky. He had a battery buzzer back in there. I couldn’t find his manual switch, so I yanked the wires loose. The compartment was directly behind the drawer, with a sliding lid. I shoved the money into one pocket. I jounced the cloth sack. It made a glassy clinking sound. It stirred an old memory. Glassies won in the school yard long ago, a heft marking many victories. I shoved the sack inside my shirt. They had a strange coolness through the cloth against my skin. A Himalayan coolness perhaps, cold as smuggled gold. Or cell bars. Or those small blue eyes above the lovable smile.

  The boat would be no problem. Hoist a hatch, tear off a handful of wiring. But then I remembered the fake stone. If I couldn’t send it back, Harry would want a lot more than it was worth. I squatted beside Junior Allen and felt it in his right trouser pocket. I worked my hand into the pocket.

  Suddenly he rolled against my hand, pinning it, rolled onto my wrist and arm and the leverage forced me down against the deck. Then he was on his back, my right arm under him. He hooked his left arm around my neck, pulled my head against his waist and began hammering me with his free hand. I had no leverage and no room to strike back.

  As my face began to break, and the world began to blur, I planted my knees and stuffed my other arm under him and heaved. It brought him up and turned him, and I ripped my right hand free of his pocket. He bounded up with a rubbery agility. and I barely saw the kick coming, and turned just enough to take it on the point of the shoulder. My left arm went numb.

  He was a jolly brawler. He kept low and balanced, snorting with each exhalation, and I hit him twice before he bowled me over and bore me down in a tangle of chairs and began the jolly business of rib cracking, gouging, kneeing and breaking everything loose he could reach. He clambered and straddled me, trapping my arms under his blocky legs, picked me up by the ears and banged my head back onto the teak. As the world went slow and dreamy I got an arm loose and saw my hand way up there, the heel of it under his chin.

  He tried to hammer his clasped hands down onto my rigid arm, and would have snapped it nicely had I not gotten my feet braced and bucked him off. He was back at me like a cat, and he swung a hard chunk of wood from one of the smashed chairs. I caught the first one on the shoulder and I cleverly caught the next one right over the left ear. It broke a big white bell in my head, and he side-stepped, grunting for breath, and let me go down. I landed on my side, and he punted me in the belly like Groza trying for one from the mid-field stripe.

  I had that fractional part of consciousness left which gave me a remote and unimportant view of reality. The world was a television set at the other end of a dark auditorium, with blurred sound and a fringe area picture. Somewhere the happy smiler leaned against the rail and sucked air for a time. I couldn’t have fluttered an eyelid if somebody had set me on fire. He began cleaning up the cockpit. He hummed to himself. I recognized the tune. “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing.” William Holden and Jennifer Jones. I remembered her going into the shallows of that bay in Hong Kong in that white swim suit. But I couldn’t keep my mind on her. Every time Dads got in range of me, he kicked. In time to the music. Then he kicked me in the head. It faded that distant television set right out, right down to a little white dot and then that was gone too…

  … The little set came back to life. There was vibration. Marine rumble. Sound of the wake. Boat idling along. And a thin and hopeless little female voice nearby saying, “Oh, don’t. Oh, don’t any more. Oh, please don’t any more please.”

  I was folded into a corner of the stern of the cockpit. I had to puzzle that voice out. Slowly. Dear little Patty. But she wasn’t supposed to be around. I’d written her out of the script. And Junior went, “Ho, ho, ho.” Like a jolly Santa. “You are a cute little ole button,” he said. “You’re a tasty bit.”

  I picked one eye and pumped it open. Right eye. It was like jacking up a truck. In the night radiance, Junior Allen was ho-ho-hoing Miss Patricia Devlan. He was crouched at her like a bear, and he had her butted back against the transom, both her thin wrists held behind her in one hand, and his other hand up under her skirt, lifting her onto tiptoe. They were close enough to fall on me.

  Suddenly he turned and stared forward and grunsed, released her,and went up toward the wheel. A course correction, reset the automatic pilot, came back to the fun. But I did not want anyone ho-ho-hoing Miss Devlan. She was hunched over; sobbing. I came up with blinding speed-like one of those trick clothes drying racks being unfolded by a sleepy drunk. I was forty feet tall and one inch wide, with a head fashioned of stale gas. As Junior roared, I stooped one dead arm out and around the girl’s waist, pulled her toward me and rocked right over backward with her, over the rail and down into the black bay water, tucking in all elbows and knees, feeling the wrench of the water, waiting to see how a prop would feel chopping meat.

  We popped up in the turbulence, and I saw the running lights receding at a comforting pace. I looked around at shore lights, orienting myself. We were about one mile south of the kick in the head, in a place where the bay was wide, but the channel was fairly narrow. She tilted her pale child-face back, her hair pasted seal black to her head; and made a waffling sound of total hysteria.

  The boat stopped bubbling along and roared into a turn. I clopped Miss Devlan across the chops and shoved her in the best direction and yelled, “Swim, baby!” She came out of it. She swam very well indeed. She pulled ahead of me. I felt as if I were swimming with four broken arms. And with each breath I could convince myself he was still kicking me in the stomach. We had a good angle of escape. We had to go fifty feet to get past the submerged spoil banks from the channel dredging. He had to come back about a hundred and fifiy yards. I was hoping I could sucker him into jamming it aground. But heard him throttle down sharply, then roar the engines again as he put it into reverse to sit dead in the water.

  “Keep going,” I yelled at her. “Angle a little left.”

  The spotlight hit us. She stopped swimming. I took two big strokes and reached her and bore her under. Pistols make a silly spatting sound over open water. And slugs hitting near you make a strange sound. Tzzeee-unk. Tzzeee-unk. I tried to kick us along and she got the idea. The underwater breast stroke felt as if it pulled my ribs free
of my breastbone. I lost her. I grabbed some air and went down again and kept churning along. I peered up and saw no radiance, and came up and looked back. He was in a big curve, and he straightened out and went ramming south toward Lauderdale.

  “Patty?” I yelled.

  “H-here I am,” she said, about ten feet behind me. She was standing in waist-deep water. I went to her and felt the lumpy edges of an oyster bar underfoot.

  “He… He… He was going to…”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “He… He… He was going to…”

  “He’s gone. Pull yourself together.”

  I put an arm around her. She leaned her face against my chest and said, “Haw! Oh God. Haw!”

  “Come on, baby.”

  “I’m… I’m all right. He took my glasses off and threw them overboard. He said I’d never need them again. I c-can’t hardly see without them.”

  “He’s gone, Patty And he’s got his little chum with him, and they deserve each other. Get yourself collected, and then we’ll swim to shore.”

  Behind her, two hundred yards away; was the bright shore, loud with neon in the night. It made pink and green and blue highlights on her hair. I let her go. Her blouse was pasted to her peach-sized breasts. Except for the breasts, she looked about twelve. With them, she looked fourteen.

  “How did you get into the act?” I asked her.

  “I phoned your mother and told her the damn lool thing you were planning to do.”

  “That was you? I… I went out my bedroom window. I didn’t want to… miss the fun.”

  “He’s a real fun fellow, old Dads is.”

  “Don’t, please. He said I was the one he was really after. I went to the boat and everything was… so strange. You were lying there so still and bloody I thought you were dead. He told me to go below and wake Dee up. I tried, and I couldn’t. I wanted to go home then. He said we were going to have a nice cruise, not to worry. He said you’d tried to rob him. He said he was going to turn you over to the police. He said you were just knocked out. He said that before he turned you in, he wanted to get your accomplice too. He told me to stay aboard and watch you, and give a yell if you woke up. He said he’d be hiding close by. I didn’t like it, but I stayed there like he said. I was thinking about Pete and that girl, and I just didn’t care what I did. Then a woman came. A tall pretty woman. She stood on the dock and she said in a loud voice, ‘What have you people done to him? What have you done to Travis McGee?’ She couldn’t see you from there.”