The Lonely Silver Rain Part 16

"I'll tell the weight lifters he's a movie star."

"You really going to put him in with them?"

He stared bleakly at me. "How much choice did that kid in there have? How much choice did the girls on the boat have? You always do fine up to a point, McGee, and then you get a little bit mushy at the edges."

Twenty.

ON FRIDAY, the first day of February, it took such a long time to get out of bed I decided Miami Beach could wait one more day. My worst knee kept threatening to give way. My right elbow was agony. There were big dark bruises on both arms and shoulders. I could not recall how I got the painful lump on the back of my head.

This was no morning for a shower. I lowered myself, inch by inch, into the imperial bathtub, into water as hot as I could stand it. I soaked there for a long time, and after drying off on the biggest towel I own, I took a pair of aspirin and dug into the Ace bandage box and found the one that works well on the knee, and used a strip bandage for the right elbow.

I checked the morning and found we had gone back to chill, so I put on an old sky-blue wool shirt, stretch denims, wool socks and the gray running shoes. I looked at myself in the mirror and said aloud, "Tell me the truth, old buddy. Are you getting too old for this kind of boyish s.h.i.t? Have you lost a lot more than a half step getting to second?"

Self-delusion is one of the essentials of life. I told myself that my bruises and abrasions were not the result of a fading physique, but rather the result of a mental lapse. I had underestimated young Marino. And that gave him an edge he didn't deserve. I wondered if he had enjoyed a restful night.

When I stepped out onto the fantail I found another pipe-cleaner cat on the mat looking up at me. With quick and unexpected anger, I stomped it flat. Then I sighed and picked it up, bent it back into shape, took it back in and stood it in formation on the shelf with the earlier arrivals.

I went to the hotel alone and for breakfast I had USA Today, double fresh orange juice, three eggs scrambled with cheese and onion, crisp bacon, home fries, whole-wheat toast and two pots of coffee. The exercise improved the right elbow.

When I went back aboard my home I went up onto the sun deck and came upon the seventh cat, a purple one, staring at me from the flat place atop the instrument panel. I sat in the pilot seat, the cool wind on my face, and looked at the fool thing. Somebody was going to elaborate trouble to have a tiny bit of fun. If they were sending a message, they had forgotten to include the code. Maybe somewhere in the world there was some other McGee who'd find the pipecleaner cats comprehensible and delicious and hilarious.

On Sat.u.r.day morning when I approached my blue truck at nine to head for Miami, I found a brown pipe-cleaner cat on the windshield with one paw under the wiper so it could stare in at me. I put it in the ashtray.

At the Contessa, I browsed the newsstand paperbacks until the girl was free. She had half gla.s.ses, no makeup, straight mouse-colored hair. "Sir?"

"I want to talk to Lopez."

"Lopez? I don't know any Lopez."

"Aren't you Alice?"

"Yes. Yes, my name is Alice."

"The Capataz said to tell you I want to talk to Lopez."

Her eyes changed. "Just a moment, sir." She helped a new customer who'd come in, took his money for a racing form. She came back to me. "Go out to the pool bar and wait."

"How long?"

"Just wait. That's all I know."

After an hour I went back to the newsstand and she told me to go back and keep on waiting. It was past noon when a man sat down beside me. He sighed as he climbed onto the padded stool. He was short and fat and he sounded as if he had emphysema. Each inhalation had a throaty little snore at the end of it. He wore a Palm Beach suit and a white straw hat. His nose and cheeks were tinted purple by tiny broken veins.

"What I got to tell you, friend, no choice in the matter. I got to tell you right now there's absolutely no way Cappy can make a deal."

"I think he knows that."

"What he should do, he should get out of town."

"That's what he's done."

"He could stay like a year someplace and keep his head down, then put out some feelers. Stick his big toe in the water."

"That's the way he has it figured out."

After a thoughtful silence the man swiveled his head on his quarter inch of heavy neck and stared at me. "Then what the f.u.c.k you want with me?"

"Before Cappy left he said you might want to make an offer for young Ruffi."

"Shush!" he said. "Jesus Christ, hush your mouth." He looked around. "Let's move over to that farthest-away table."

It was in the shade of tall, broad-leafed plantings elephant ears, rubber plants, a juvenile banyan, a white iron table with a gla.s.s top, four iron chairs. In spite of the chill in the air, the pool people were warm and happy. The pool Cubans had laced the canvas wind shields in place. Executive types who had recently acquired a tan were parading around in a distinctive way. You can always pick them out. They have to hold their bellies in. To do this properly, they have to tense their muscles and square their shoulders. This makes them hold their arms out from their sides, slightly bent. They cannot swing the arms naturally, and so they walk slowly. If they were turkeys, the tail feathers would be spread. The young girls look beyond them and through them and never see them at all. Sad world.

Lopez put his drink down, took off his hat and wiped his brow with a dingy handkerchief. "With Cappy, people know he was a hired hand, all right? So when the blood cools down it can come back to live and let live. But young Marino, he went against everything. No cla.s.s at all. Who are you?"

"McGee."

He tilted his head. "Like they were trying to set you up for the Reyes girl?"

"Like that. Yes."

"It was you found out Ruffi did it?"

"I didn't find out. But I pa.s.sed the news along."

"And you started up a feud that got a h.e.l.l of a lot of good men killed."

"Instead of standing and saluting and letting them kill me like they killed an innocent friend of mine, Billy Ingraham."

"That was sloppy and dumb, that Ingraham thing."

"And all you people are good G.o.d-fearing, law abiding businessmen."

"You've got no call to get smart-a.s.s, McGee."

"I know that. I know that. I just want to sell him."

"Alive or dead?"

"Alive."

"Where?"

"Where he'll stay for a while. One hundred thousand."

"For that little punk kid?"

"For that little punk kid."

"I can't get approval for that kind of money, even if I was sure you got him."

"That kind of money wouldn't half fill one of those cornflakes boxes that get shipped to Art Jornalero."

He nodded slowly. "You get around pretty good."

"Maybe I can fly to Lima and sell him down there."

"Maybe you try to do that, they wouldn't set up any kind of exchange that would be safe for you to make."

"What are you offering?"

"Frankly, I think it might be closer to fifty than a hundred."

"I've had a hundred worth of grief from this."

"Look, what can I say? I'll do my best."

"How do you want to work it?"

"If we come up with a figure makes us both happy, we pick a third party everybody can trust."

"Such as?"

We ran through several names before we came to one we could both agree on. Hillary Muldoon of Muldoon and Grimes, specialists in labor law. On Monday, the fourth, the agreed figure was sixty thousand. On Tuesday afternoon, the fifth, Lopez and I met with Muldoon, a narrow, stooped bald man with one eye that looked off to the left. The money was counted. I objected to his fee coming out of my end. We compromised. I would come up with half the fee, provided the reward money was granted. Fifty-seven thousand, net.

So I opened the envelope Wes had given me and handed them the full-face and profile mug shots and the Xerox copy of the arrest report, including the charges filed.

After they studied it, Lopez said, "Hillary, I don't like this a d.a.m.n. He's in some d.a.m.n little boondocks slam. This McGee doesn't have him. The law does."

"You understand I can't know why you want him, Lopez, but I do understand that he is awaiting trial and as such he can be released on bail. He could be released in the custody of whoever makes bail. I would say that, in effect, Mr. McGee has lived up to his end of the bargain. Fifty-seven thousand to Mr. McGee."

We shook hands and I left with the money and hastened to the nearest branch post office and sent it to myself by registered mail.

I got home to find, in the last light of day, an orange cat on the mat. And so, with a pattern roughly predictable, I made preparations for bed, cut all the lights, put on dark slacks and turtleneck, eased out the forward hatch, crept around the side deck and settled down in the deep shadows, my back against the bulkhead, a navy-blue blanket over me. I could see the mat in the angle of dock light, five feet away. Got nothing but an almost sleepless night. No cat. No intruder.

At noon Millis phoned me, her voice remote, lifeless. "Travis? Arturo died."

"What happened?"

"I don't know. I was up early working in the garden. So many things died in the cold. When he didn't get up I looked in on him. And he was just there dead. Maybe his heart. I don't know. n.o.body got in here. n.o.body did it. He was so very depressed. Did you know he was sixty-eight? He was so proud of not looking that old."

"Is he still there?"

"Oh no. I phoned some people, and finally they sent an ambulance and took him down like he was sick. With a mask on his face, oxygen or something, so he wouldn't look dead. People are dying around me, Travis. I hate it so. They said I did the right thing. They'll keep me out of it. Roger Carp kept me out of that other thing. I had to appear, you know. But the indictment said person or persons unknown and they sent a copy of the grand jury minutes and the medical records to France."

"I'm glad you had no trouble."

"I'm getting out of everything, aren't I? I haven't even gone to Billy's grave."

"Do you think you should?"

"I don't know. What we talked about, it's still open. If you want. Not the same ship or the same cruise. We can find one we think we'll like. If you want."

"Your enthusiasm is fantastic."

"Don't lean on me like that. I'm not up to it today. I'll be here for a couple of weeks. Call me. Whatever you say, I'm going anyway."

She hung up before I could say good-by.

I tried not to think about Millis all day. it worked half the time. I didn't answer the phone. It rang twice. I couldn't think of anyone I wanted to have a conversation with.

That night I was out under my dark blue blanket by nine-thirty, all lights out aboard. February has a cheerless sound about it. Halfway to Valentine's day. Five days to old Abe's birthday. The winter wind whips around the ancient images of the homeplace, sleet whisk-brooming the kitchen windows.

Tipsy boatmen went past, guffawing their way back to their floating nightcaps. "Let Marie take the wheel and she had it hard aground in ten minutes..."

"You remember Charlie. He found three bales of it floating off Naples and he got them aboard. Took it home and dried it out and he's got enough there to keep the whole yacht club airborne until the year two thousand."

".. should have had it surveyed, d.a.m.n it. Dry rot down all one side of the transom."

And some sour harmony, ending when somebody used a bullhorn to tell them to knock it off, people were sleeping.

Slow hours. And then a swiftness of slender femininity, half seen in the glow from the distant dock lights. Creak of my small gangplank. She had learned not to step on the mat. She kneels, hair a-dangle, leans far forward to put the pipecleaner cat on the door-side edge of the mat. I gather myself. Lunge and snap my hand down onto slender wrist. Yelp of fright and dismay. Then some real trouble when I dragged her aboard. Impression of tallness. She was all hard knees, elbows, fists. She b.u.t.ted and kicked and thrashed, and almost got away once, until finally I caught her hand in a come-along grip, her hand bent down and under, her elbow snug against my biceps.

"Ow!" she yelled. "Hey, ow! You're breaking it."

"Shut up or I will."

It settled her down. She made whimpering sounds, but she had become docile enough for me to fish out my keys and unlock the door and escort her into the lounge, turning on the lights as we entered. I shoved her into the middle of the lounge and she spun around, glaring at me, ma.s.saging her wrist. Just a kid, sixteen or seventeen. A reddish blonde kid, red with new burn over old tan, a kid wearing a short-sleeved white cotton turtleneck and one of those skirts, in pink, that are cut like long shorts, surely the ugliest garment womankind has ever chosen to wear. But if anybody could ever look good in them, this one could. Tall girl. Good bones.

"You're brutal. You know that? Really brutal!"

"Okay," I said wearily. "I'm brutal. What's all this with the cats. kid?"

In response I got a wide humorless grin. "Got to you, hah?"

"It has begun to annoy me. Puzzle me. That's all."

She stared at me. "You're serious? You're not having me on?"

"Kid, when somebody starts invading my privacy with pipe-cleaner cats, I would like to know what's going on. That's all."

She stared at me. "My G.o.d, you're even more opaque than I thought. You're an animal!"