John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 16 - The Dreadful Lemon Sky

by The Dreadful Lemon Sky(lit)

  "She gave it to me to hold for her, and to give to her sister if anything happened to her."

  "We can come back to that," Scorf said. "Where does it lead you?"

  "We had four people in business together. Carrie Milligan, Freddy Van Harn, Jack Omaha, and Cal Birdsong. Carrie had her own kind of twisted integrity. She'd take no more than what was hers. But she was afraid somebody might take her share away from her. With Freddy supplying the plane and Jack supplying the boat, and probably the two of them supplying the financing, would Carrie have been in for a full quarter of the pie? I'd say no. I would say a top of twenty percent. Jack was the banker. He was keeping it in the safe at the business. Carrie was the bookkeeper and courier. New buys were financed out of that money in the safe. When they eventually decided to call it quits, they would have divided it up according to the formula and gone their separate ways. If a hundred thousand equals twenty percent, then there was four hundred thousand left in the safe after she took hers."

  "Four hundred thousand!" Scorf said slowly.

  "Maybe more," Meyer said. "It is hard to read the motives of a dead man you never met, but it struck us last night that Jack Omaha was setting himself up for total departure, deserting hearth and home, cashing in everything, even cleaning out the partnership. Maybe he left that money in the safe with the group funds, or maybe he hid it somewhere where he could get to it quickly."

  "So maybe he did take off," Scorf said, "and took Van Harn's money and Cal Birdsong's money with, him."

  "Or, like I told you before, a bag of grass fell on his head and killed him, and that's why Freddy told me that Jason saw the Christina come in without Jack Omaha."

  Scorf frowned. "So... Van Harn would want his money and he'd know where it was and who could give it to him."

  I said, "There's a chance he would want to leave it right there for the time being. Jack and Carrie had the combination. Jack was dead and he could trust Carrie. It would be there when he needed it."

  "You mean it could still be there?" Scorf asked, frowning in puzzlement.

  "Suppose," Meyer said, "that Harry Hascomb walked in on Carrie when she was taking her share out of the pot that night of the day Jack Omaha died. He would know there was big money there, but no way to get to it. Harry was the outside man. Because Omaha and Carrie handled all the accounts and financial records, they would be the only ones who needed to know the combination of the safe. Insurance people like to ask that the number of people with access be kept to a minimum. Two is ideal. Because Harry saw her take the money, it would account for her being uneasy and leaving the money with Travis McGee in Lauderdale. Just in case."

  Scorf displayed the quickness of the cop mind by saying, "And after he found out that Omaha was planning to clean him out, and maybe guessed from the Milligan woman's reactions that Omaha was already dead, the simplest way into the safe would be to have the Milligan woman die by accident so he could call the safe company and have them drill it open. It would be the reasonable thing for him to do."

  I said, "We can assume Van Harn went there as soon as he heard of Carrie's accident. All Harry would have to do is act totally blank about there being any money in the safe. Van Harn wouldn't dare press it. Besides, Uncle Jake had already taken him out of his financial bind."

  Scorf sighed. "All theory. Pretty theory."

  "How about some fact?" Meyer asked him. "In the building supply and construction supply business, Hascomb either handled dynamite and caps and wire and batteries or knew how to get what he needed. He was the outside man, not the desk man, and apparently had some mechanical training or ability."

  "And," I said, "Joanna Freeler told me she could retire, if she played it right."

  "Are you trying to say she could have known that Hascomb killed Carrie, and she would blackm-"

  "No! It really shook her when I told her I thought Carrie had been pushed in front of that truck. I think Carrie told Joanna there was a bundle of money in the office safe. They were the only two girls working in that office. And that would give her some leverage to use on Harry Hascomb. That could have been her retirement. If she played it right."

  "She didn't play it right," Scorf said.

  Meyer said, "We decided last night that if Harry had asked Joanna for a date she would have accepted. They'd had an intimate relationship for several years. Then, if he couldn't keep the date, he could have left off a consolation prize, a box of wine and cheese."

  "Loud wine and cheese," Scorf said. He got up and roamed the lounge. He stopped and looked around. "This place was one damn mess when I checked it out. Sickened me. Dead girls get to me. A bomb is a cruel and ugly thing. Any kind of death is cruel and ugly, I guess. Except as a merciful end to pain. The worst are bombs and fire and knives. Look, I know about girls in offices. Jack Omaha and the Milligan woman were the two supposed to have the combination. Bet you a white hat Joanna Freeler knew it too, or knew where Miz Milligan had it wrote down. Know where every damn person in America writes down the combination to a safe? They write it on tape and stick it to the backside or underside of the top middle desk drawer. Half the safe jobs in the country are easy because everybody knows where to look for the combination."

  "We don't want to start the voyage home just yet," I said.

  "Whatever you've given me, I can handle," he said. "It's all theory. If Joanna let it be known to Hascomb that she accepted the date so they could have a little chat about how the Milligan woman died, she set herself up with wine and cheese."

  "If we worked it out right," Meyer said, "it would be... gratifying if we could be present when you interview Mr. Hascomb."

  Scorf looked bleakly at him. "Gratifying, eh?"

  "So few things in life work out neatly, Captain Scorf, it would be reassuring to be in on one that does."

  "And you think that this whole mess is neat?"

  Meyer looked troubled. "Not in the usual sense of the word."

  Scorf thought it over. "'It's hardly one damn thing to go on. I don't want a committee, for God's sake. McGee, you can come along with me and watch me mess it up. Meyer, you better stay right here and get this thing ready to move on out into the channel. My orders are clear. I have to get you started on your way. And we'll be back soon."

  I had expected Scorf to sit bolt upright behind the wheel of the dark blue unmarked Cougar and fumble it along at a stilted thirty-five. Instead, after he had belted himself in, he tipped his white hat forward to his eyebrows, lounged back into the corner of the driver's seat, put his fingertips on the wheel, and slid through heavy traffic like an oiled eel. He moved to where the holes were, moving the oncoming traffic over, and was able to avoid accelerations, decelerations, and the use of the brakes. He had looked too underprivileged to be an expert, but he was, indubitably. And I said so.

  With mirthless smile he said, "I wasted a lot of time and money, ramming stocks around the dirt circuits. I felt easy riding with you the other day. Except you're not good on picking lanes at the lights."

  "Is there a secret I don't know?"

  "Always haul in behind local plates on older cars with kids driving and crowd them a little so they'll pile on out of your way. Haul in behind local delivery trucks. On three lanes run the middle one, and swing to the curb lane when you're going to miss the light. A man turning is out of your way fast."

  "Where are we going?"

  "Pineview Lakes Estates. Twenty-one Loblolly Lane."

  It was low land, five miles out. The developers had used the fill from the dug lakes to lift the ranch-type homes out of the swamp. It was eleven in the morning when we pulled into the river-pebble driveway of number 21, a long low cypress house with a shake roof out of some kind of fireproof imitation of cedar. It was stained pale silver and had faded blue blinds by the windows, the kind that are fixed in place and never cover the windows.

  Two tanned skinny boys were working on a stripped VW with wide oversized tires. They gave us a sidelong glance and no further acknowledgment of our existence, even
when we stood beside the VW.

  "Either of you a Hascomb?" Scorf asked.

  "Me," the skinnier one said.

  "Your daddy around?"

  "No."

  "Miz Hascomb?"

  "No."

  "If it wouldn't strain your brain, sonny, maybe you could break down and tell me where I could find your daddy."

  The boy straightened up and stared at him in bleak silence. "What's this shit about brain strain, gramps?"

  "I am Captain Harry Max Scorf, and I am tired of the hard-guy act from young trash. I get cooperation from you, and I get manners from you, and I get respect from you, sonny, or you go downtown for obstructing a police officer in his line of duty."

  The bleak stare did not change. "Oh, goodness me," the boy said in a flat voice. "I did not for one moment realize. Tsk tsk. From what I overheard I believe you will find my dear father down at his place of business, Superior Building Supplies, at Junction Park. Actually it is no longer his place of business because the silly shit has lost it because he didn't know how to run it, and his partner screwed him and ran with the cash. But Cowboy Harry is just as bigmouth as ever. He is down there because some pigeon from Port Fierce wants to buy the junk that didn't get cleared out in the clearance sale. And now if you will give me your gracious permission to get back to work here."

  Scorf smiled sadly and shook his head. "Thank you kindly, sonny. I am sure we will meet professionally one day."

  "You can count on it," the boy said.

  As we drove out Scorf said, "What makes so many of them so damned angry at everything lately?"

  "It's a new preservative they put in the fried meat sold at drive-ins."

  "As good an answer as any."

  There was one car behind Superior Building Supplies, a recent-model Ford wagon with local plates, dinged and dusty, with a cracked window and a soft tire. One of the big sliding doors that opened onto the loading dock was ajar about three feet. We climbed onto the dock and went into the shadowy echoing areas of the empty warehouse. The air conditioning was off.

  "Hascomb?" Scorf shouted.

  "Yo! Who is it?"

  Harry came out of the shadows, a pair of pliers in his hand. He peered and said, "Oh, hey, Harry Max! You were against the light." He looked at me. "What was your name, friend?"

  "McGee."

  Hascomb was stripped to the waist, the sweat rolling off his soft torso. His cowhand pants, cinched with a wide belt, were sweat-dark around the waistline. His abundant red-brown hair was carefully coiffed and sprayed into mod position, covering his ears. His boot heels clicked on the cement floor.

  "You caught me, Harry Max," Hascomb said. "What I'm doing, I'm taking off the big junction box over there. I don't rightly know if it's mine or the owner's, so in case of doubt I'm taking it. The fellow from Port Fierce offered twenty bucks, and that is twenty bucks I wouldn't otherwise have. He took a lot of the small stuff and he's sending a bigger truck back for the desks, safe, chairs, and those two generators over there. And that cleans me out."

  "Sorry to hear it," Scorf said.

  Hascomb sighed and shrugged. "Hard times and a thief for a partner."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "I think we'll head out to Wyoming. Out to the mines. I can fix any damn thing that's got moving parts. New start. The equity in the house will give us stake. Were you boys looking for me?"

  I wondered how Scorf would approach it. Suspicion without proof is a dangerous thing and a clumsy thing.

  Scorf said, "Harry, I hope you won't take this wrong, I surely do. In my line of work I have to do a lot of fool things I don't believe in, but I guess every line of work is the same. Anyways, I guess your prints are on file from army duty, but it would take a time to get them out of Washington or wherever the hell they keep them, and so they said to me, Captain, you go bring Harry Hascomb in voluntary and take his prints. You won't put up a fuss, will you?"

  "Me? No. Hell, no. I won't put up a fuss, but what in the world is the point of it, Harry Max?"

  "Maybe I shouldn't even tell you this, but we've known each other a long time. Maybe you know or don't know, a fragment of a print isn't worth a damn. This piece they got looks like it is one half of the pad of the third finger right hand."

  "A print on what?"

  Scorf scuffed at the cement floor. He shook his head. "Now you've got to understand how they think, Harry. It certainly wasn't exactly a big secret around the town that you and Joanna Freeler had a lot more than a business relationship. And lovers can have quarrels. Anyway-and don't get sore-the bomb experts, they recovered a piece of battery casing about so big, and they used some kind of chemical treatment to bring out the fragment of the print enough to photograph it. Once they compare yours, then you're off the list for keeps, Harry. It's something I plain have to do, and I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."

  Harry Hascomb whacked the smaller man on the shoulder. "Chrissake, Harry Max. Don't feel sorry. I know when a man has a job to do, he has to do it. Right? You want me to go in right now? Let me get my shirt."

  I noticed that Harry Max Scorf drifted along behind Hascomb as the man got his shirt, and I noticed that Scorf's heavy, drab suit was unbuttoned, and I could guess at the presence of the belly gun clipped to the waistband of his trousers.

  Hascomb shouldered into his ranch shirt and tucked it in and buttoned it as we walked out. He slid the big door shut and snapped the heavy padlock on the hasp and smiled and said, "Have to finish stealing that box later." We were parked beside the Ford wagon, just to the right of it. Hascomb started to get into the Cougar and then he said, slapping his jacket. "Just a second, Harry Max. Let me get my other pack of cigarettes."

  He leaned into the wagon and thumbed the button that dropped the door of the glove compartment. He was very good. Scorf was standing outside the open door of the two-door Cougar, holding the driver's seat tilted forward so that Hascomb could climb into the back. I was opposite the hood, walking toward the door on, the passenger side.

  Hascomb snatched an ancient weapon out of his glove compartment. Officers have smuggled them home from the last five wars. The Colt.45 automatic. I caught a glimpse of it as he turned and fired at Scorf at point-blank range.

  Scorf got his left hand up to ward off the big slow slug. He was reaching for the belly gun with his right hand. The big slug went through the palm of his left hand and hit the shelf of brow over the left eye. The resistance of the thick ridge of bone snapped his head back and broke his neck. The white hat went sailing over the hood of the car. The relentless chunk of lead plowed through the brain tissues and took off a hunk of the back of the skull as big as an apple. It was all very immediate and messy. It splattered blood and tissue over the front half of the Cougar. I saw it all in slow motion. It was in the hard and vivid light of the hour before noon. It was a day of almost stagnant air. The wind had been moving steadily from north to south, bringing to Florida's east coast all the stained and corrosive crud of Birmingham and the rest of the industrial South. The horizons were whiskey-stained, and the sky above was a pallid saffron instead of blue. The bleared sun made harsh studio lighting on the parking lot scene. And Harry Hascomb saw Captain Scorf's horrid death under the dreadful lemon sky.

  Scorf lay poised halfway across the dark blue hood. Meyer had been so right about the vivid reality of death. Harry Hascomb's face was absolutely slack, his eyes blank and dulled. He had expected to see the picture of the dead grackle. Here was the genuine article, smashed, leaking, stinking, and so sickeningly vivid that it immobilized him, froze him in an incredulous horror. I was caught on tiptoe for an instant, knowing that we were in a deserted parking lot in a deserted area, knowing that I could not expect any Saturday noon curiosity-seekers.

  Scorf's coat was spread, showing the gun butt. With a swift and insane delicacy, with a mind bulging awareness of my own madness, I leaned into the field of fire of the big automatic, snatched Scorf's weapon free, and fell to the cement on the far side of the Cougar from t
he immobilized Hascomb. He fired as I disappeared from his view, and like an after-echo of the hefty bam, I heard the slug clunk into the loading dock. An instant later Scorf slid off the hood onto his side, landing with a heavy clopping and thudding.

  Doubtless Harry Hascomb had some sort of a script in mind. Maybe the automatic was due to end up in my dead hand, and Harry was due to end up in Peru.

  I am not one for the shootout at the O.K. or any other corral. I have no wish to stand in full view with steely nerves and draw a bead on the chap trying to blow my head in twain.

  I hitched quickly into the prone position and steadied the short-barreled weapon by grasping my right wrist in my left hand and pushing outward. I aimed under the low road clearance of the Cougar, and I aimed at the front ankle creases in his Western boot and did not miss at that range. He yelled and started gimping around. I missed the other boot the first try and then got it on the second try. All of Harry Hascomb came tumbling down, making shrill sounds of total dismay. He thought to return the fire in the same manner, aiming under the car. I was after his hand or wrist, but I hit the automatic by accident. The slug spanged and went screeing off in ricochet, and the Colt killed the muffler on the Cougar before it went spinning away from him.