The other end of the line went silent for a moment. I could hear Mack questioning people in the background. Finally, he returned.
“Nope. I haven’t, and no one here has heard of her. But George says there’s a man on the island by that name. Willie says he’s a commercial fisherman.”
“A guy, huh?”
“Yeah. In his mid-forties—right, George?”
I heard George agree in the background. “But there’s no woman on the island by that name?”
“Hell, Dusky, there probably is. I don’t know everyone here anymore. Place gets more crowded every year. But give me a day or two, and I’ll find out.”
“I’ll check back with you in a day or two, Mack.”
“Are you on your way up?”
“Probably. Be there in a few days, probably.”
“Good. By the way, you owe me money, MacMorgan.”
“For what?”
“For this custom-made tarpon rod I’m going to give you an unbelievable deal on, that’s what. Just bring a blank check. I’ll fill in the figures.”
“I’ll mail it first thing in the morning, Mack. I can hardly wait.”
We walked on back to the Rod and Gun Club and took plush chairs in the screened dining area beside the stump of the big Madeira mahogany. The waitress was a pretty Everglades City high school student, and she blushed when Westy chided her for bringing glasses with our beer orders. “Beer glasses are for old ladies, me dear!”
I went with the old man’s advice and had the pompano—which was excellent—and the Irishman had one of the thick cheeseburgers with a slab of sweet onion, and the potato salad.
It was not a meal for conversation. The pompano came with a side order of garlic toast, and baked potato with sour cream, and I spent the better part of a half hour doing it justice.
When the meal was finished, the Irishman took out his long cherrywood pipe, tapped the bowl full of some sweet cavendish, and sat back, utterly relaxed.
“Nice place, huh?”
“Aye, it is, it is.”
“Did you get enough to eat?”
“It’s an odd mother ye make—why the concern, Yank?”
“Just want you to have plenty of energy for tonight.”
He grinned.
The bar of the Gun Club was plush and dark, and it took my eyes a while to adjust when I went in for more beer. There was a huge mounted tarpon, yellow with age, above the clerk’s desk, and beyond that the full skin of a twelve-foot ’gator. There were only a few people at the bar. A stocky man in a Coast Guard uniform caught my eye—and then I knew why.
“Hey—Chief Spears?”
He eyed me for a moment, and then his face lit with recognition. “MacMorgan? Well, I’ll be damned.”
He still had the stub of cigar jammed between his teeth, and he wore his duty whites, complete with service medals. He shook hands as if genuinely glad to see me.
“Have a beer with us out on the porch?”
He stuffed out his cigar in one of the large ashtrays. “I’ll have a Coke with you out on the porch. I had to give up the other stuff five years ago.”
“The same time you gave up snuff?”
He laughed. “Yeah—but I think I miss the snuff more.”
I grabbed a couple of paper cups from the bartender and cradled fresh beers in my left hand, and we went back to the porch. Chief Spears sat down squat and bulky next to the Irishman.
“Ye wouldn’t have abandoned yer own ship now, would you, Chief?”
“Just like an Irishman to think the worst. Right, MacMorgan?” We all laughed. Spears took the tin of Copenhagen I offered him gratefully and settled down with the paper-cup spittoon. “No,” he said. “Like I told you, the Royal Palm isn’t my ship. I just do duty on her to . . .” He hesitated, then started on a new tack. “You know, when I got chewed out for arresting you two, I got the impression that the higher-ups have a lofty regard for your knowledge in this kind of work.”
It wasn’t a statement. It was a question. He wanted to know if he was free to talk shop with us.
“We know how to keep our mouths shut, if that’s what you mean.”
“Good,” he said. “In that case, I only do sea duty when I’m working on a particular investigation.”
“Like boats being blown up in the middle of nowhere?”
He nodded. “Lately, it’s been that. But I’m kind of a troubleshooter. It’s what happens when you’re too old for sea duty, and too mean for a desk. When the other fellas have trouble, they send me out to have a look.” He spit expertly into his cup, then glanced up at me. He had wide dark eyes, bushy black eyebrows, and a face that suggested he had done his share of brawling in other days, other wars. “By the way, MacMorgan, what happened to your beezer?”
I told him about our stop on Mahogany Key, and about the goon who had cracked my face. I didn’t mention the fire aboard Sniper. I didn’t want to give Spears any reasons for getting to them first. I had a feeling he wouldn’t leave much for me.
“I know the guys you’re talking about,” he said, nodding his head. “Every one of them was born for the state pen. Or . . . maybe the federal pen.”
He said the last meaningfully. “You mean you think they’re mixed up with the drug boats that’ve been going up? But why?”
“MacMorgan, tell me and you can have my job, stripes, plush office, and all.” He spit again and took another sip of his Coke. “That’s why I took a couple of days ashore. You know, talk to the locals, see if they have any ideas. In a small town like this, word gets around.”
“Any luck?”
“No. The crew you’re talking about isn’t local. Apparently they’re from down in the Keys someplace. The locals hate them. They’re camping out on Panther Key, and they give them a wide berth. Word is they came up here to fish the National Park illegally.”
“So why don’t you get the marine patrol boys to haul them in? Get them for breaking federal laws, then check them out on the other at your leisure?”
“Because I’m not sure.” He stopped for a moment, thinking. “You said you spent a little time on Mahogany Key with those women’s libbers, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You know they’re mostly homosexua1, don’t you? Lesbians?”
For some reason, I found his words offensive, but not his tone. It was cold and professional.
“We suspected it.” I said nothing more. I was interested to see if he had the same suspicions about the women there as I.
“I talked to the dockmaster up at the marina. He says they run their pontoon boat back and forth between here and there at all sorts of strange times. It kind of nags at me. Why would lesbians come into a small town like this for their fun? And you can’t get supplies here at night.”
“Mebbe lookin’ for a little friendly conversion?” O’Davis suggested.
Spears chuckled. “I wouldn’t bet my firstborn on it—and being in the Coast Guard, that’s about all I’d have to bet. The problem with checking out Mahogany Key is how to do it without them getting suspicious.”
“I’d like to help, but we didn’t leave under the best of terms.”
“I can imagine,” he said. When he got up to go, he turned back and smiled. “Hey, about that breezer of yours, MacMorgan.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t be too tough on those guys. I’ve got enough investigations underway as it is.”
We stopped in to see my hermit friend, Al Seely, on the way back.
Al lives every harried man’s secret dream. A dozen years ago, when he was still in his forties, he got fed up with the big city and the life he was living, canned it all, and found the remotest island he could to set up camp. Now he lives in a peeling frame house on an Indian mound on one of the wildest, loveliest islands around: Dismal Key.
Believe me, there’s nothing dismal about it.
He came down to his narrow plank dock when I pulled the Shamrock in and snubbed her off. He wore the same black Injun Joe hat a
s always, complete with osprey feather on the broad brim. He had his pipe clenched between his teeth and a smile on his broad face, and his little black dog, Digger, barked at his heels.
“Doggone, look what the cat drug in! You haven’t been here in so long, MacMorgan, I thought you’d finally sunk that big boat of yours!”
He insisted we come up to the house with him and set a spell. Al lives simply, but well. He’s a damn competent artist, and he keeps his oil paintings displayed all over the living room, so visitors can enjoy them when they come. Along with that, he does some writing, reads everything he can about the history of the Ten Thousand Islands, and, when there’s nothing else to do, cuts new paths through the island’s jungle.
He’s one of the few men I know brave enough to live exactly the way he wants to live.
When we had taken our seats, and Al had told me everything new there was to tell about the island, I explained to him why we had stopped.
“Mind if we anchor in the little cove off the houseboat tonight, Al?”
“You know I don’t mind. But why don’t you just stay up here with me? You know I’ve got plenty of room.”
“We will, Al. But not tonight.”
He looked at me shrewdly. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with those twerps camping up on Panther Key, would it?”
“Do you know everything that’s going on in these islands?”
He grinned. “Like Thoreau says: You’ve got to slow down if you want to see the world speed by. That plus the fact I know they’ve been raising Cain all over the place. Came up here and gave me a hard time once. Heard you’d had some problems, too.”
“I don’t want to bring any trouble in on you, Al.”
“Oh, heck, Dusky, it’s been too quiet around here lately anyway. You bring in all the trouble you want, any time you want. I’m not afraid of those hoodlums.” Al has a nice wild laugh, like Andy Devine’s, or John D. MacDonald’s. He gave us a burst of it, and loaded up his pipe. “But why don’t you just go ahead and confess the real reason you’re here?”
It surprised me. “What?”
He laughed again. “That’s the real reason you’re up in these parts, you old pirate,” he said, pointing out the window. And, sure enough, he was right again. It was a school of big tarpon moving through the deepwater channel off Dismal Key. They sparkled silver in the late June sunlight, rolling: big fish, up to 140 pounds.
“Al,” I said, “you should drop this hermit business and go into mind-reading. You’d make a bundle.”
He chuckled. “But only with people as easy to read as you, MacMorgan.”
12
The girls on the beach didn’t even bother walking to cover at our approach this time.
Maybe it was because they recognized their own boat.
Or maybe it was because they recognized us.
They lay there oiled and naked, baking in the sun. One of them was the brown-haired amazon. She had one long leg bent, the other outstretched. Her arms were folded lazily above her head, and her face was turned to one side. The pose lengthened her and added an upward thrust to her heavy breasts. She was a striking picture indeed.
O’Davis hazarded a friendly wave. The other women pretended not to notice. The amazon gave him a frozen stare.
“What happened to that charm you’re always talking about, Westy?”
He shook his head sadly. “Ah, the poor lass— tryin’ so hard to pretend like she’s not attracted to me.”
“Heck of an actress, if you ask me.”
I kept watching for Saxan while we worked aboard Sniper. Every time I got up for tools, or more cold beer, I would scan the expanse of the island. But it was business as usual on Mahogany Key. Women went back and forth between the white clapboard buildings. And in the little clearing where I had watched the full-contact karate, a tawny-haired beauty in a black leotard led thirty other women in yoga exercises.
But no Saxan Benton.
“Now, who would ye be lookin’ fer, Yank?” O’Davis asked me wryly.
“What? Oh, no one. Just taking in the scenery, you know.”
“It wouldn’t be that fine-lookin’ director, would it now?”
“Saxan? Of course not.”
He chuckled. “It’s a bad liar ye are, brother MacMorgan. Have I told ya that?”
“Not unless you count every day since I first met you.”
It took longer than I thought to get the ignition system rewired. Repair work on a boat always takes longer than you think it will. Naval architects build them as if every marine mechanic were a midget with gorilla arms.
But I finally got the last wire crimped in, folded the jumble back up under the wheel casing with the help of a tie-wrap, then helped the Irishman clean up the mess.
“Well,” I said, “might as well try ’er.”
I turned the key and punched in the ignition buttons, and Sniper roared to life, the twin 453 GMC diesels rumbling prettily.
“Sounds great, doesn’t she?”
“Fer a bloody stinkpot, she doesn’t sound too bad, now.”
I punched him lightly on the shoulder and wiped my face off with the towel he offered. “O’Davis, you haven’t said a nice thing about powerboats since Castro’s boy confiscated that big windship of yours down in Mariel.”
“Aye, I admit it! But I’ll get ’er back—jest ye wait an’ see, Mr. Dusky MacMorgan.”
I looked levelly into his craggy Irish face. “Damn, O’Davis—you’re not kidding, are you?”
“No. An’ when the time comes, lad, you’ll be goin’ with me back to Mr. Castro’s island to lend a hand. Don’t be forgettin’ that ya still owe me a favor . . .”
“Just a small one for saving my life.”
“Aye!”
When we had everything stored away and ready, I went below and showered in the cramped little head. The Irishman eyed me askance, but said nothing. I changed into clean khaki pants and fresh cotton shirt, and actually found myself raking a comb through my hair.
“Say goodbye to ’er for me, Yank,” O’Davis said with a wink. I didn’t bother answering. I noticed he was getting cleaned up himself.
It was late in the afternoon; the time of day in Florida when the giant anvil-headed cumulus clouds have taken just about all the thermal assaults they can stand. They drift seaward, purple and swollen, then cast cooled and sweeping veils of rain down upon the land. Every summer’s day at four p.m. it happens. You can almost set your watch by it. It rains for about an hour, which softens the air, leaches steam from the asphalt where the city folk dwell, and leaves a hint of something moist and herbal in the sea wind.
Suddenly, it was shower time on Mahogany Key, and I was damn near soaked to the skin by the time I made it up the Indian mound to Saxan’s office. Lightning ker-WHACKED and rumbled, and the rain rattled down upon the tin roof of the porch. Outside, the women of the yoga class sprinted for cover, trying to protect their hair.
I had to make the screen door bang three times before Saxan finally heard me above the storm. She still wore the neat terry-cloth tennis suit, and her long auburn hair was still in braids. She looked surprised to see me, off-center blue eyes dropping their shield momentarily.
“Came to say goodbye.”
“You’re leaving? Oh—you’re soaking wet.”
There was an uneasy silence while I waited for her to invite me in.
She didn’t.
“I was just in a meeting.”
“Oh.”
“I’m . . . it was nice to have met you.”
“And you, Ms. Saxan Benton.”
She remained on the other side of the screen door, but I noticed her cover-girl composure beginning to fall away. The rain had loosened the tape on my nose. I tried to patch it back in the silence.
“Here—not like that. Let me help, Dusky.”
She slid out the door and began tugging and patting pieces of tape. Her fingers were long and warm against my face.
“I’d like to see you again
, Saxan.”
She said nothing, as if she could not hear me.
“Maybe tomorrow night. I could pick you up about—”
“Dusky, no,” she said sharply. She pushed the last bit of tape into place, then stepped back, her blue eyes troubled and defensive. “Do I have to spell it out for you, Dusky? Do I have to come right out and say what I am? You’re looking for some cozy little she-partner; someone to share your bed and have a few laughs with, and—”
“The only thing I’m looking for, Saxan, is you,” I cut in firmly. “Sure, to share some laughs, but not necessarily to share my bed. But I’d be lying if I said that it hasn’t been on my mind all day, because it has. Now if that offends you in some way, I’m sorry. But what I’m mostly looking for is just a chance to spend some time with you, to talk with you—and if that still offends you, then maybe I’ve been wrong all along, Saxan. As I said last night: it’s your decision.”
I turned to go, but she caught my arm. Her hand was trembling.
“Dusky, please . . . I’m sorry.”
As gently as I could, I reached up and touched each cheek with my hand. “It’s nothing to cry about. And it’s nothing you have to decide right now. Let’s just say you have an open invitation.”
“Okay,” she said. “Okay.”
Her perfect face, tan and soft, was tilted upward toward mine. She seemed hypnotized as my lips neared hers.
“No,” she said. But she did not move, her eyes locked into mine.
“No . . .”
She sagged at my touch, then fell into my arms weakly, still trembling. Her mouth was open and ready and wanting, her body alive. She held onto me as if I were a support; the first, perhaps.
With the rain pummeling down upon the tin porch, something so simple as a kiss became a poignant revelation for her; an affirmation for us both—not of a lifetime together, or even, perhaps, months. But an affirmation of willingness.
And then:
“Ms. Benton!”
Saxan whirled away from me, her face suddenly leached of color. A large woman stood in the shadows of the doorway, and I remembered: “I was in a meeting. . . .”
It was an older woman, huge and heavy, with a husky masculine voice. Dimly, I could see that she wore thick cake makeup and red lipstick. The massive felt hat on her head was tilted jauntily.
The Deadlier Sex Page 12
