John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 01 - The Deep Blue Good-By

by The Deep Blue Good-By(L

  When I was alone in darkness in my bed, I felt sad, ancient, listless and cheated. Molly Bea had been as personally involved as one of those rubber dollies sailors buy in Japanese ports.

  And in the darkness I began to remember the brown and humbled eyes of Cathy Kerr, under that guileless sandy thatch of hair. Molly Bea, she of the hard white breasts lightly dusted with golden freckles, would never be so humiliated by life because she could never become as deeply involved in the meaty toughness of life. She would never be victimized by her own illusions because they were not essential to her. She could always find new ones when the old ones wore out. But Cathy was stuck with hers. The illusion of love, magically changed to a memory of shame.

  Maybe i was despising that part of myself that was labeled Junior Allen. what an astonishment these night thoughts would induce in the carefree companions of blithe Travis McGee, that big brown loose-jointed boat bum, that pale-eyed, wire-haired girl-seeker, that slayer of small savage fish, that beach-walker, gin-drinker, quip-maker, peace-seeker, iconoclast, disbeliever, argufler, that knuckly, scartissued reject from a structured society.

  But pity, indignation and guilt are the things best left hidden from all the gay companions. Take them out at night.

  McGee, you really know how to live, old buddy, Adorable little old buddy.

  it was to have been a quiet evening at home.

  Until Cathy Kerr came into it, bringing unrest.

  At last I could admit to myself that the rubbery little adventure with the Takes-us redhead was not because I had denied myself a sudsy romp with Chook, but because I was trying to ignore the challenge Cathy had dropped in my lap. I could afford to drift along for many months.

  But now Cathy had created the restlessness, the indignation, the beginnings of that shameful need to clamber aboard my spavined white steed, knock the rust off the armor, tilt the crooked old lance and shout huzzah. Tres Sleep immediately followed decision.

  THE Next morning, after making laundry arrangements, I untethered my bike and pedaled to the garage where I keep Miss Agnes sheltered from brine and sun. She needs tender loving care in her declining years. I believe she is the only Rolls Royce in America which has been converted into a pickup truck. She is vintage 1936, and apparently some previous owner had some unlikely disaster happen to the upper half of her rear end and solved the problem in an implausible way. She is one of the big ones, and in spite of her brutal surgery retains the family knack of going eighty miles an hour all day long in a kind of ghastly silence. some other idiot had her repainted a horrid electric blue. When I found her squatting, shame-faced, in the back row of a gigantic car lot, I bought her at once and named her after a teacher I had in the fourth grade whose hair was that same shade of blue.

  Miss Agnes took me down the pike to Miami, and I began making the rounds of the yacht brokers, asking my devious questions.

  After a sandwich lunch, I finally found the Outfit that had sold it. Kimby-Meyer. An Ambrose A. Allen) according to their record sheet, had bought a forty-foot Stadel custom back in March. They had his address as the Bayway Hotel. The salesman was out. A man named Joe True. While I waited for him to come back, I phoned the Bayway. They had no A. A. Allen registered. Joe True got back at two-thirty, scented with good bourbon. He was a jouncy, leathery little man who punctuated each comment with a wink and a snicker, as if he had just told a joke. It saddened him somewhat to learn I was not a potential customer, but he brightened up when I offered to buy him a drink. We went to a nearby place where he was extremely well known by all, and they had his drink in front of him before we were properly settled on the bar stools.

  "Frankly, I didn't know he was a live one,' Joe True said. 'You get to know the look of people buy boats like that one. That Mr. Allen, he looked and acted more like hired crew, like he was lining something up for his boss.

  Grease under his fingernails. A tattoo on his wrist. A very hard-looking character, very brown and wide and powerful-looking. And smiling all the time. I showed him a lot of listings, and he was so quick to talk price I began to take him serious. He settled on that Jessica III, that was the name the original owner registered her at."

  "A good boat?"

  "A fine boat, Mr. McGee. She's had a lot of use but she was maintained well. Twin 155's, ey'd been overhauled. A nice comproand range and speed. Nicely apmise between pointed. Built in fifty-six if I remember right.

  Good hull performance in a rough sea. We took it out. He handled it and liked it. When we came back in, he scared hell out of me. I thought we were going to peel away about fifty feet of dock. But he hit the reverse just right, and I was up in the bow, and he put me right beside a piling as gentle as a little girl's kiss.

  And when he checked the boat over, he knew just what to look for. He didn't need any survey made. And he bought it right. Twenty-four thousand even."

  "Cash?"

  Joe True shoved his glass toward the bartender and looked at me and said, 'you better tell me again what it is you're after-"

  "I'm just trying to locate him, Joe. As a favor for a mutual friend."

  "I got a little nervous about that deal, and I told Mr. Kimby about being nervous and he checked it out with his lawyer. No matter where Allen got the money, nobody can come back on us."

  "Why did the money make you nervous?"

  "He didn't look or act the kind of a man to have that kind of money. That's all. But how can you tell? I didn't ask him where he got it.

  Maybe he's some kind of eccentric captain of finance. Maybe he's thrifty. What he had was five cashier's checks. They were all from different banks, all from New York banks, Four of them were five thousand each, and one was twenty-five hundred. He made up the difference in hundred dollar bills. The agreement was we'd change the name the way he wanted and handle the paper work for him and do some other little things for him, nothing major, get the dinghy painted, replace an anchor line, that sort of thing. While that was being done our bank said the checks were fine, so I met him at the dock and gave him the papers and he took delivery. That man never stopped smiling. Real pale curly hair burned white by the sun and little bright blue eyes, and smiling every minute. The way he handled the boat, I finally figured he was actually buying it for somebody else, even though it was registered to him, Maybe some 'kind of a tax deal or something like that. I mean it looked that way because of the way those cashier's checks were spread around. He was dressed in the best, but the clothes didn't look just right on him."

  "And you haven't seen him since?"

  "Haven't seen him or heard from him. I guess he was a satisfied customer."

  "How old would you say he is?.

  Joe True frowned. "It's hard to say. if I had to guess, I'd say about thirty-eight. And in great shape. Very tough and quick. He jumped off that thing like a cat and he had the stern line and the spring line all rigged while I was making the bow line fast."

  I bought Joe his third drink and left him there with his dear friends. Junior Allen was beginning to take shape. And he was beginning to look a little more formidable. He had left Candle Key in late February with something of value, and had gone to New York and managed to convert it into cash, all of it or some of it, whatever it was. Weeks later he had returned to Miami, bought himself a good hunk of marine hardware and gone back to Candle Key to visit the Atkinson woman. it had required considerable confidence to go back. Or recklessness. A man with a criminal record shouldn't flaunt money, particularly in an area where an angry woman might be likely to turn him in.

  Yet, actually, the boat procedure was pretty good. It gave him a place to live. With papers in order and a craft capable of passing Coast Guard inspection, he wasn't likely to be asked too many embarrassing questions. People who build a transient life around a forty-foot cruiser are presumed innocent. I'd found the Busted Flush to be a most agreeable headquarters for the basically rebellious. You escape most of the crud, answer fewer questions, and you can leave on the next tide.

  But there wa
s one hitch, and perhaps Junior Allen wouldn't be aware of it. The tax people take a hearty interest in all registered craft over twenty feet. They like to make sure they weren't purchased with their money. A cash transaction like that one might intrigue some persistent little man up there in Jacksonville, and give him a heady desire to have a chat with Ambrose A. Allen, transient.

  But first he would have to find him.

  I wondered if I would find him first.

  I visited the Bayway Hotel. It was a mainland hotel, small, quiet and luxurious in an understated way. The little lobby was like the living room in a private home. A pale clerk listened to my question and drifted off into the shadows and was gone a long time. He came back and said that A. A. Allen had stayed with them for five days last March and had left no forwarding address. He had given his address when registering as General Delivery, Candle Key. He had been in 301, one of their smallest suites, We smiled at each other. He smothered a yawn with a dainty fist and I walked out of his shado"y coolness into the damp noisy heat of the Miami afternoon.

  The next question was multiple choice. I did :not want to get too close to Junior Allen too soon. when you stalk game it is nice to know what it eats and where it drinks and where it beds down, and if it has any particularly nasty habits, like circling back and pursuing the pursuer. I did not know all the questions I wanted to ask, but I knew where to look for answers. Cathy, her sister, Mrs. Atkinson, and perhaps some people out in Kansas. And it might be interesting to locate somebody who had served with Sergeant David Berry in that long ago war. Apparently the Sergeant had found himself a profitable war. It was past four o'clock, and, I kept thinking of questions I wanted to ask Cathy, so I headed on back toward my barge. I parked Miss Agnes handy to home, because I would need her that evening to go see Cathy Kerr.

  I stripped to swim trunks and did a full hour of topsides work on the Busted Flush, taking out a rotted section of canvas on the port side of the sun deck, replacing it with the nylon I'd had made to order, lacing the brass grommets to the railing and to the little deck cleats, while the sun blasted me and the sweat rolled off.

  One more section to go and I will have worked my way all around the damned thing, and then I am going to cover the whole sun deck area with that vinyl which is a clever imitation of teak decking. Maybe, after years of effort I will get it to the point where a mere forty hours a week will keep it in trim.

  I acquired it in a private poker session in Palm Beach, a continuous thirty hours of intensive effort. At the end of ten hours I had been down to just what I had on the table, about twelve hundred. In a stud hand I stayed with deuces backed, deuce of clubs down, deuce of hearts up. My next three cards were the three, seven and ten of hearts. There were three of us left in the pot. By then they knew how I played, knew I had to be paired, or have an ace or king in the hole. I was looking at a pair of eights, and the other player had paired on the last card. Fours. Fours checked to the eights and I was in the middle, and bet the pot limit, six hundred. Pair of eights sat there and thought too long. He decided I wasn't trying to buy one, because it would have been too clumsy and risky in view of my financial status.

  He decided I was trying to look as if I was buying one, to get the big play against a flush, anchored by either the ace or king of hearts in the hole. Fortunately neither of those cards had showed up in that hand.

  He folded. Pair of fours was actually two pair. He came to the same reluctant conclusion. I pulled the pot in, collapsed my winning hand and tossed it to the dealer, but that hole nst my finger and card somehow caught again Ripped over. The black deuce. And I knew that would remember that from then on they w price for d they would pay my busted flush an MY good hands. And they did, for twenty more hours, and there were many many good hands, and there was a great weight of oldtime money in that little group. In the last few hours I loaned the big loser ten thousand against that houseboat, and when it was gone I loaned him ten more, and when that was gone I loaned him the final ten and the craft was mine. When he wanted another ten, with his little Brazilian mistress as security, his friends took him away and quieted him down and the game ended. And I named the houseboat in honor of the hand which had started my streak, and sold the old Prowler on which I had been living in cramped circumstances.

  After the manual labor, I treated myself to a tepid tub and a chilly bottle of Dos Equis, that black Mexican beer beyond compare, and dressed for summer night life. Just at dusk Molly Bea came a-calling, tall glass in hand, tiddly-sweet, pinked with sunburn, bringing along a dark lustrous giggler to show her MY adorable little old boat. The giggler was named Conny, and she was from Gnaw-luns rather than Takes-us, but she was a similar piece, styled for romps and games, all a girlish prancing, giving me to believe-with glance and innuendo-that she had checked me out with Molly Bea, given her total approval, then matched for me and won. She was prepared to move in with me and send Molly Bea back to the Tiger. After the inspection tour, I got rid of both of them, locked up and went off to a downtown place which sells tourist steaks at native prices, and then went on out to the Mile O'Beach, to the Bahama Room, your host Joey Mirris, featuring for Our Big Summer Season, the haunting ballads of Sheilagh Morraine, and Chookie McCall and her Island Dancers.

  Closed Mondays.

  Joey Mirris was a tasteless brassy purveyor of blue material and smutty sight gags. It was a pickup band, very loud and very bored.

  Sheilagh Morraine had a sweet, true, ordinary little voice, wooden gestures and expressions, and an astounding 42-25-38 figure she garbed in show gowns that seemed knitted of wet cob webs. But Chook and her six-pack were good.

  She planned the costumes, lighting, arrangements, routines, picked the girls carefully and trained them mercilessly. They were doing three a night, and the dancers were the ones bringing in the business, and Adam Teabolt, the owner-manager, knew it.

  The room will take about two and a quarter, and they had about seventy for the eight o'clock show. I found a stool at the end of the raised bar, tried not to notice Mirris and Morraine, and then gave my full attention to the so-called island Dancers. The wardrobe for the entire seven could have been assembled in one derby hat. Under the blue floods I saw Cathy Kerr working in perfect cadence with the group, wearing a rather glassy little smile, her body trim and nimble, light and muscular and quick. There is no flab on good dancers. There is no room for it, and no time to acquire it. Effort coats the trained golden flesh with little moist highlights. As always, the bored band did its best for the Chook-troop, and part of the routine was a clever satire on all sea-island routines.

  After the eight o'clock show I sent a note back to Cathy and then went to the hotel coffee shop. She joined me five minutes later, wearing a dreary little blouse, a cheap skirt and her heavy stage make-up. We had a corner table.

  Through the glass wall I could see the lighted pool and the evening swimmers.

  "I'm going to try to see if I can do anything, Cathy. The brown eyes searched my face. 'I surely appreciate it, Mr. McGee."

  "Trav. Short for Travis."

  "Thank you, Trav. Do you think you can do anything?"

  "I don't know. But we have to make some kind of agreement."

  "Like what?"

  "Your father hid something and Junior Allen found it. If I find out what it is or was and where he got it, maybe there is somebody it should go back to."

  "I wouldn't want anything that was stole."

  "if I can make recovery of anything, Cathy, I'll take any expenses off the top and split what's left with you, fifty fifty."

  She thought that over. 'I guess that would be fair enough. This way, I've got nothing at all."

  "But you can't tell anyone we have this arrangement. if anybody asks you anything about me, I'm just a friend."

  "I think maybe you are. But what about those expenses if you don't get anything back?"

  "That's my risk."

  "So long as I don't end up ovAng. Lord God, I owe enough here and there. Even some to Chookie."<
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  "I want to ask you a few questions."

  "You go right ahead, Trav."

  "Do you know of anybody who served with your father in the Army.?"

  "No. The thing is, he wanted to fly. He enlisted to try to get to fly. But he was too ol or not enough schooling or something. He enlisted in nineteen forty-two. I was six years old when he went away. He trained in Texas someplace, and finally he got into the... something about Air Transit or something."

  "ATC? Air Transport Command?o

  "That was it! Sure. And he got to fly that way, not flying the airplanes, but having a regular airplane to fly on. A crew chief he got to be.

  Over in that CBI place. And he did good because we got the allotment and after he was over there, those hundred dollar money orders would come once in a while. Once there were three of them all at once. Ma saved what she could for when he got back, and the way it turned out, it was a good thing she did."