John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 15 - The Turquoise Lament Read online

  "Way ahead."

  She grinned and leaned and gave me a quick kiss, a quick pat, and went swiftly to the door, hauled it open, and disappeared into the busy corridor. As the door slowly, slowly closed, I had a diminishing view of an old man with a walker going along the corridor. His head was canted way over so that his cheek was almost against his left shoulder. He would slide his left foot six inches forward and then lean forward, hands braced on the aluminum tubing of the walker until his weight was over the forward foot. Then he would lift his right shoulder and turn his body to slide and swing the right foot up even with the left. He would then shove the walker another six inches forward. I had watched him in the hallway. He had all the blind, dogged, stubborn determination of a half-smashed bug heading for the darkness under the sink. It was impossible to imagine what was going on inside his skull. The door snicked shut. I wondered how many Marians the old, old man had known. I wondered if he thought of any of them, or one of them, as he made his timeless journeys, each as valiant perhaps as the last five miles of the Boston Marathon.

  "Got a new buddy?" Meyer said in so normal a tone I nearly jumped backward out the window.

  I walked over to the bed. His eyes were bright. "The more I jolly up the nurse corps, the more nursing you get," I told him.

  He felt for the buttons on the side of the electric bed and wound his head and shoulders higher, and cranked his knees higher.

  "I am happy," he said, "that in my misery, in my torment, I have been able to provide you with a new little garden of posies, and a perfect rationalization for plucking one, if you feel the need."

  "You are cured!"

  "And you have an infinite capacity for self-deceit, Travis."

  I sat on the foot of his bed. "What makes you think you can look at a whispered conversation about the condition of your health, Meyer, and come up with a diagnosis of my character flaws?"

  "Fever sharpens the wits. And the hearing."

  "Oh."

  "Attractive woman. Good nurse. How long will I be here?"

  I stared at him and shook my head in wonder. I had not really admitted to myself the chance that the Meyer I knew was gone forever. Too high a fever over too long can cook the little synapses in your skull. Were Meyer to become a very dull fellow, I would have seen to it that he had a pretty good life, considering. But it would have been a long gesture of thanks to the Meyer I had once known.

  But this thing with the shrunken saffron face and the bright eyes was my friend, rising from the valley of the shadows. I went over and looked out the window to blink away, in quasi privacy, the stinging feeling in my eyes.

  "You are a tough old bastard," I told him.

  "The way I feel now, there is nothing tough left. I don't think I could survive a bad case of hangnail."

  "Terminal hangnail is one of the challenges modern medicine must face." I moved toward Meyer and sat on a corner of the foot of his bed. "Let's stop talking about your problems and talk about mine. Like my infinite capacity for self-deceit. I believe you mentioned it. I want to say something, but all the words come out of terrible song lyrics. There is now one lady I want for keeps."

  "That nurse?" he said. His expression was quizzical, unbelieving.

  "No. Pidge."

  "Pidge!" He was definitely startled. "Was there... did you... when you went to...."

  "Yes, yes, yes, dammit! One partridge in a pear tree, and on a low limb, in a good strong light, and me with an automatic shotgun and number seven shot, standing six feet away. Pow."

  He nodded and nodded.

  I said, "What are you smiling at?"

  "Me? Oh, it's just that I don't have to worry about you. I was worrying, you know, before I was struck down. You began to puzzle all your friends. You came back from Hawaii and began acting like a salesman at a convention. You were into Plymouth gin pretty heavy at all times, and you began hewing your way through the solid wall of doxies a determined man can find anywhere and especially in Lauderdale. I wasn't keeping score or keeping track, as you know, but I could not help notice two tourist ladies, the new hostess at the Beef'n it, one stewardess, one schoolteacher, and, God save us and help us, one Avon Lady."

  "And a nurse," I said in a very small voice. "And you say that now you don't have to worry about me?"

  "Oh, I can worry a little. I think you have been in too many beds, and you may have bounced your brains. loose. But I would suspect that the efforts you have gone to in fighting fire with fire indicate that you have a very hot fire to fight. You've overcompensated."

  "I've what?"

  "You're thrashing around, boiling the water, trying to throw the hook. And, in the process, being something of a damned fool."

  "Thrashing, eh? I'm through that phase. The nurse was the end of the line."

  "Thus accepting the inevitability of the shared life?"

  "You could cheer a little. Or clap."

  He cocked his head. "Not quite yet. She's really very young for you, Travis."

  "I keep telling myself that."

  "With an entirely different set of values."

  "I know."

  "And, of course, she's still married."

  "But wants out and will get out."

  "And you have lived for a long time in a random pattern no woman could ever really accept. Can you change your pattern?"

  "I keep thinking that other people have friends, and they talk about ball games and the weather and laugh a lot. What have I got? Ann Landers."

  He smiled and closed his eyes. Thirty seconds later he was in deep sleep, mending.

  Eight

  WHEN I got back to Bahia Mar from the hospital that Thursday night, there was a dark bulk snoring in the deck chair on the aft deck of the Busted Flush. I came quietly aboard and moved to where I could bend over and get a look at his face in the half light. I knew him so well that it surprised me that I had to grope for the name. Frank Hayes. Construction engineer, scuba expert, mechanical wizard. I hadn't seen him since the diesel pump froze up, down in the Bay of La Paz.

  "Frank?" I said softly.

  The snore stopped. His eyes opened. He slanted his glance up at me, not moving his head. Two seconds of appraisal. Then he rolled up onto his, feet and said, "How's Meyer making it?"

  "He must be getting better. He turned mean."

  "I asked around about you two."

  I opened the doorway and hit the lights and ush ered him into the lounge. He carried a duffel bag and a bedroll. He wore safety shoes, faded twill work pants, a smudged white T-shirt and an old wool army shirt worn unbuttoned and outside the pants. He had a beard stubble that misted the heavy lines of his jowls.

  "You're looking healthy, Frank."

  He shrugged. "Less hair, more belly."

  "Too late to go looking for a place to stay. You're welcome to stay aboard."

  "Thanks. Suits me."

  "Want to wash up?"

  "If I go through here, I should come to the head?"

  "Right. I can fix some eggs."

  "I ate already, thanks. A little bourbon and water, half and half, no ice."

  I fixed drinks. I wondered what was on his mind. I knew I couldn't try to pry it out of him. Frank Hayes had to do everything his own way, in his own time.

  When he came back into the lounge, he looked exactly the same as when he had left. He took the drink with a nod of thanks and settled into a big leather chair. He took the drink down by half, wiped his mouth on his hand, and looked around. "Nice," he said. "The way you and Meyer described it, I thought it was maybe some kind of playpen. You hear what happened to Joe Delladio?"

  "No."

  "Head on. In the mountains on the road from Puebla down to Oaxaca. A bus with busted brakes. Wiped him out, and his wife and two of their four kids."

  "Such a damned waste. Jesus!"

  "I know. I didn't hear until months later. Just like with Professor Ted. Thanks for sending me that card to that box number I give you when we broke up the team. I was out of the countr
y."

  "Just you, me and Meyer left."

  "To all survivors," he said, finished his drink and placidly held his glass out for a refill. "That Meyer. At first I didn't think he could hack the kind of work we were doing on the bottom of that bay. Found that goddamn gold, right?"

  I put the new drink in his hand. "Right."

  "The reason I came looking you up, I started wondering what happened to Professor Ted's research notes. He called it his dream book. You remember that?"

  "I remember it well. The afternoon he got killed, Meyer and I went aboard the Trepid and broke into it and searched it all night long. Nothing. And nothing in the safety deposit vault."

  "Strange."

  "I know, especially since he was gearing up to go hunting again. The daughter came down from the north. She didn't have any information."

  "How did he leave her?"

  "In good shape. Very good shape. Between eight and nine hundred thousand, plus the Trepid, plus liquid assets to pay estate taxes and expenses."

  "She around here?"

  "In the South Pacific with her husband, aboard the Trepid, just the two of them. Fellow named Howie Brindle. They sailed out of here almost fourteen months ago."

  "Just the daughter? Nobody else to leave anything to?"

  "Just Linda, known as Pidge."

  "Were you going along on the next hunting trip with Ted?"

  "He hadn't asked me. I don't know if he was going to. He wasn't exactly your ordinary neighborhood blabbermouth."

  "Know who his lawyer was?"

  "Yes. I thought of that. I asked him. No, he was not keeping any books or records for Professor Theodore Lewellen. He had drawn up some trust agreements, handled some tax questions. Tom Collier. Fall, Collier, Haspline and Butts. Tom is coexecutor of the estate, along with the First Oceanside Bank and Trust."

  "Collier a good man?"

  "Supposed to be. Old family. Early forties. Political connections. Rich practice and big landholdings. Why?"

  Frank slowly and gently scratched a newly healed scar on the back of his left hand, a patch of smooth, pink, shiny skin over two inches long, over half an inch wide.

  "How'd you get that?"

  He looked at it as if seeing it for the first time. "This? Some silly bastard left a wrench on the deck, below, and I stepped on the edge of it and swung my arm out for balance and hit a live-steam line. It stung pretty good."

  "Frank!"

  "Eh?"

  "You just suddenly started wondering what happened to Ted Lewellen's research notes? No more questions, my friend. Not until you answer the ones I ought to be asking."

  "A letter is sent a month ago from a Miami lawyer named Mansfield Hall, which sounds like a building on a college campus, to Seven Seas, Limited. A very careful letter. What it is saying is that Hall represents somebody who has come into the possession of some original research materials taken from original sources, indicating the possible location of sunken treasure on the ocean floor, along with geodetic survey maps, overlays, and aerial photography. This somebody wants to negotiate a deal with Seven Seas-whereby they set up a joint venture to go after the items, Seven Seas to finance the first recovery attempt, take back expenses, then split the balance down the middle. This somebody wants the right to have a representative along on the recovery operation. After the first recovery, the terms are to be renegotiated."

  "It does sound like the way Ted set things up. Very orderly, very complete."

  "I thought so too. I went to see this Mansfield Hall. I don't think you could shake anything out of him because I don't think he knows very much. I'm not even sure he knows exactly who he's representing."

  "How did you get hold of the letter?" He stared at me.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I've heard about Seven Seas. It's an offshore corporation, and it was in the news a lot last year, locating and recovering that Air France jet that went down with the gold shipment near Aruba. Based in Jamaica?"

  "Grand Cayman."

  "So how did you get hold-"

  "Because it was sent to me, McGee. Jesus! I am Seven Seas. At least I own forty percent of the son of a bitch."

  I looked at the stubble, the Salvation Army ward robe. "Well, well, well. And I suppose you flew up in your very own Seven-oh-seven to see me?"

  "No. We've got a piece of a Learjet, share it with two other outfits, split the costs based on percentage of use. Way back there in Mexico, I was looking to buy into Seven Seas, Limited. I'd worked for them. Mismanaged. I was looking for a big hit, and we missed it at the Bay of La Paz, but I made it the next try. Had to make it. I had an option on shares."

  "Frank I would never have believed it."

  "Try hard. It'll come to you. Anyway Mister Mansfield Hall wants me to make a counter offer and he will take it to his client and so on, and I told him forget it, I deal nose to nose or not at all. Now I'm snuffing at it from the other end. Whoever is being so careful would have no way of knowing that I ever worked with Ted Lewellen. If this somebody was looking for exactly the right outfit skill, capitalization, equipment, and honesty-the name Seven Seas would probably come up almost anyplace he asked. It's the kind of thing we want to do. But this approach smells. Can you figure why?"

  It puzzled me for a few moments, trying to figure out what he meant. And then I saw it. "You're saying that anybody with a legitimate ownership of Lewellen's research and his salvage plans would be able to raise the money, hire the experts, equip an expedition and go after the goodies."

  "Right. They wouldn't have to be so secret and careful, and they wouldn't have to give away half the net."

  "So somebody ripped off the dream book."

  "Or he trusted the wrong person?"

  "Hisp, at the bank? Tom Collier?"

  "Who knows? We both know what can happen. Suppose there is a man you can trust with your life. Nothing he wouldn't do for you. But all of a sudden you're dead, and he sees an angle. Foolproof. The daughter? She's got a bundle. No need to worry. So this fellow, this true and blue friend, there he is with all Professor Ted's notes and analyses and studies. Basic research was in that journal, a book about so big. The backup research would fill a big suitcase. True-blue friend lays back and waits for heat. There is no heat at all. So finally, he makes his move, trying to set it up so there's no risk at all."

  "I never heard you say so much before, all at one time."

  "Ted trusted you, you son of a bitch!"

  Never before has my jaw fallen open in surprise. Here is what happens. There are nineteen different things you can say, and you open your mouth to say them all, and you can't decide which one to say first. So you sit there like a stuffed guppy.

  And then I was in midair, mouth still open. Total launch. The juvenile reaction. Honor offended and all that. He tried to tip his chair over to the side, but it didn't tip fast enough. I made a midair adjustment of arm, shoulder, and back and popped him on the side of the head as he was toppling. It made a clear white whistling pain in my hand, reminding me that one almost never hits the hard parts of people with the naked hand. One hits the soft parts with the hand, and the hard parts with a utensil.

  I sailed over him and tucked my shoulder under and rolled and came up. I pounced on him, grabbed two handfuls of garments and picked him up and slammed him back against the bulkhead, and drew back to put the next one into a soft part of him.

  "Whoa!" he said in a fumbling voice. His eyes weren't in good focus.

  "Whoa your ass!"

  "Uncle," he said. That's right. The old schoolyard word. It stopped me. It boggled me.

  "Uncle?" I said.

  "I wanted to know. I found out. So no more hitting." His voice was clearer. He shook the mist out of his eyes. I stepped back, but I stayed ready.

  "I lie a lot," I said. "But I don't steal from live friends or dead friends."

  "So I know that, now." He worked his jaw, felt his face. "That was some tag. My head is still ringing. The last time I got hit that hard, a Greek
came up behind me and laid me out on the deck with a fid. You know, I had the idea I could maybe take you if it ever came to that. Even if that was a lucky shot, I don't think so." He moved around me and stood his chair back up and sat in it, with a heavy sigh.

  I kneaded my knuckles and worked them into the palm of the other hand, standing the pain in order to explore for any little grinding of bone chip, grating of fracture. I held the hand out, fingers straight, and looked at it. It was puffing so fast I already had a dimple wherever there used to be a knuckle.