The Dreadful Lemon Sky (12 page)

"What did it do to the boat?"

"Blew out all the glass. Blew a small hole in the deck, and blew a great big hole in the overhead, like ten feet by ten feet. Then it rained into the hole all night long. It's a mess. They're working on it now."

"They?"

"At that Westway Harbor Marina. Jason and Oliver and a friend of theirs. With Meyer helping."

"Where's Meyer?"

"Waiting for me to get out of here. He got called the first thing. Anyway, it was what they call a primitive-type bomb."

"Primitive?"

"No timing device or anything like that. They explained it to me after they found enough to know how it probably worked. The package vwas about so big, tied with string. There were four sticks of dynamite in there, taped together and taped into place. There was a battery and a cap and a little switch, a contact switch. What the fella who made it did, he stuck a thick piece of cardboard between the switch terminals. Then he tied string to the cardboard and led the string out a hole in the side of the box and fastened it to the string he tied around the box. So anybody unties it and pulls the string off, they pull that cardboard out and contact is made and it all goes bam. It went off about eight inches from the middle of that girl. Bombs are so damned ugly and messy. I can't get inside the head of folla who'd use a bomb."

"Who are you, anyway?"

"Harry Max Scorf."

"I mean your official capacity."

"Oh, I should have said. I'm with the City and County of Bayside. Used to be just with the County. What I am, I'm kind of a special inveotigator. Odds and ends of this and that. I work when I please and how I please."

"Must be nice."

"It's worse than having hours. A man works longer. Then again, there isn't anything I'd rather be doing. No family. No hobbies. Tuesday I drove on down to Fort Lauderdale and I walked around that Bahia Mar Marina and asked questions about you and Meyer. You don't seem to have much visible means of support, McGee."

"Salvage work. Here and there. It's spotty."

"I combed every dang inch of what's left of your houseboat."

"What's left of it!"

"Steady there. It floats. I came to a conclusion."

"Which is?"

"I don't really think you came up here to straighten out the distribution of pot in Bayside County."

"Thanks, Scorf."

"Somebody will come along soon. No place along the coast can stay amateur. They'll take in the ones who'll play along and kill those that won't, and turn it from nickles and dimes into big money, like it is other places. I thought they were already here. Maybe they are. But it's not you and Meyer."

"Why not?"

"Because the job calls for running the hard stuff, and running women, and selling to everybody, grannies and little kids. It calls for buying the law and buying the courts, and you and Meyer are quick enough in your own way and hard enough in your own way, but you got stopping places that are way short of what it takes. If you got a stubborn bartender and you bust both his arms and change his face, the replacement bartender is willing to do business with you. Bars are a nice distribution point for off-premises use."

"Are you working on a book?"

"Don't get snotty with an old man. I could write one."

"Why are we here?"

"Well, Harry Hascomb has one story, and that Miss Dobrovsky, she's got another, and Jack Omaha's wife has another. They add up to Carolyn Milligan having been a friend of yours. But if you thought the girl was killed, and you came here to find out who did it and why, and you didn't check in with us and show credentials-which you haven't got-then you're in trouble, aren't you?"

"I know she was killed and so do you. I just wonder if it was entirely an accidental death. That's all."

"And you wanted to attend the service?"

"Right!"

"Now you lunged at that like a bass, boy."

"Remember, I hit my head when somebody killed Joanna."

"We can set here and josh each other from now till the end of time. And you can duck and bob and weave all you want. The thing I've got the most of is time. If somebody did kill Carolyn on purpose, who is your guess?"

"Shouldn't this be some kind of a trade?"

"It is. You've been busy. You've been lying to people. Maybe you've been obstructing justice, or concealing the evidence of a crime, or impersonating an officer. Things like that. I won't act on any of that, at least right now. That's the trade."

"Take me in, officer. Read me my rights."

He sighed and shoved his white hat farther back on his head. "Well, let's see now. What have I got to trade? How about this? So far we've kept a lid on that autopsy on Cal Birdsong. It was heart, all right. But Doc Stanyard didn't like the way it looked, that big soft clot in the pleural cavity and no real sign of any aneurysm. He checked it slow and small and found that something went into there on Cal's left side, between the ribs, smaller than a knitting needle or an ice pick. It could have been a piece of stiff piano wire, sharpened to a needle point. A person could roll it between thumb and forefinger like one of those Chinese needles, to make it go in easy. The heart really hops around in there when it beats. Run that needle in there back and forth a couple of times, and you'd probably pick an artery open or puncture the sac around the heart or mess up a valve somehow. Doc found the entrance track and laid it open and took slides. I saw them this morning, all developed. The track shows up nice."

"And what was Birdsong doing?"

"Seems he was dog tired. They tried to keep him awake on account of his being hit on the head. They don't like people sleeping with head injuries. But he was pooped and he slept hard. And forever. It wouldn't probably wake him, just that little prickle when it went through the skin."

"Does his wife know this?"

"She was one of the ones with him. We're keeping the lid on while we watch how people act."

"One of the ones with him?"

"That's all the trading material you get for now. Your turn."

"You probably know everything I could tell you."

"Try me."

"Well… Adding two and two, the Christina came in on May fourteenth, on Tuesday night, with over eight hundred pounds of marijuana aboard. Just two people went out before dawn on Tuesday: Jack Omaha and Cal Birdsong. Sometimes Carrie Milligan went, but she didn't go that day because she was sick and said she would be in when she felt well enough. I would guess that Carrie went to Westway Harbor that night in a panel delivery truck owned by Superior Building Supplies. The boat is docked in a good area for privacy. It's beyond the range of the dock lights, but you can drive up close to it. The grass was loaded onto the truck. Carrie took it to Fifteen Hundred Seaway Boulevard. After it was offloaded, Mr. Walter Demos took over, and he paid Carrie in cash for the delivery at the rate of a hundred dollars a pound. My guess is that she drove down to Superior and parked the truck where she had picked it up. She had left her own car there. Standard procedure was for her to put the money from Demos into the office safe. She and Jack Omaha had the combination. End of trade. Anything new?"

"Here and there," he said comfortably. "Here and there. Of course you spoiled any chance of us finding anything at all by scragging Demos in his big love nest. There won't be a scrap anywhere."

"He's anxious to… wait a second. It fades in and out, like a bad projection bulb. Sorry. My memory quits when it comes to Demos. Your turn," I added.

"Let me see. Oh, here's something you wouldn't know. In that rain Saturday night somebody had left off a package on the porch of the cottage, well back under the overhang, for Joanna Freeler. Betty Joller told me that when Joanna came home she knew what was in the package. She said it was some wine and cheese and like that, for a snack, a present from somebody who couldn't keep a date that night. Now there was just going to be the three of them in the cottage that night. Joanna and Betty Joller and Natalie Weiss. I think it was intended for the package to be opened with the three of them there. Instead, on an impulse, that girl came running through the rain with it. She was a girl who'd rather be with men than girls any time. Your turn, McGee."

I thought it over and then I decided, What the hell, why not? I went through the whole Carrie Milligan death item by item, stressing the illogic of her supposed behavior, the gassing of her car the previous day, and the signs of fresh tampering with the gas tank drain cock.

He glared down at a freckled fist and said, "Even after years, you miss the damnedest things. You know, I decided that what she was going to do was cross the road and walk to a lighted house and ask to use the phone. With her purse setting there on the front seat in an unlocked car? Nonsense! It was right there and I missed it cold." He thought it over, and finally said, "That would do for now."

"You owe me one."

"I don't have any more to trade." He was distracted by the conjectures swarming in his head. He wanted to be up and off and away. I had put him onto the possibility of a new pattern.

He stood up. I said, "When do you lock me up?"

He focused on me completely and silently. Harry Max Scorf was no figure of fun. He was one hard and determined little man.

"I'll do whatever needs to be done," he said, and turned and left, tugging his hat to the correct angle as he went through the doorway. Before the door had wheezed entirely shut, Meyer came bursting in, grinning.

"Thanks. What about the Flush?"

"It floats."

"Really, how is it?"

"There's nothing that about ten thousand dollars can't fix. Don't worry about it."

"Good God, what's left of it?"

"Don't worry about it. You do a lot of talking about the way possessions hold us all in thrall. Pretty things are chains and shackles."

It made me gloomy. I could see a listing hulk with huge holes, with wisps of smoke rising from the interior debris. And it worried me that I should care that much. The important loss was the death of that lively girl. Blown in half. Into two girl parts. Such a great and bitter waste.

I realized that if the Flush were entirely gone, if it had burned to the waterline and sunk, I would be able to adjust more easily than to the uncertainty. Baubles and toys should disappear, not become broken litter.

Meyer sat beside the bed. He looked like an apprehensive owl as he said, "I kept wondering what the hell to do if you didn't wake up. People stay in a coma for years. They seem to have families to look after them."

"And you could see yourself stuck?"

"I could see myself tottering down to the drugstore saying, Yep, he's still asleep. Been nineteen year now. Gimme some more of that goo for bedsores."

"Look, I blank out during my walk that Saturday afternoon. Tell me about Joanna."

He told me. I could not make it seem real. It was easier to make the service seem real. They did the same thing for her as they did for Carrie. One less girl in a long dress to throw flowers. Good-bye, my sister Joanna. Her widower father attended, full of indignation and stiffness at such an informal heathen ceremony. But, Meyer said, it melted him quickly and he wept with the rest. It loosened the adhesions in his heart, freeing him from other rituals.

"We're losing too many girls," I told Meyer.

"You've added a new one."

"Hmm. The spry nurse lady?"

"No. Cindy Birdsong. She's spent a lot of time here, so someone would be with you when you woke up. She was sure you would. Then she missed by a few minutes. She left a little while before you came out of it, apparently. She's out there now, waiting her turn."

"Why the devotion?"

"I don't know. It's some kind of penance, maybe. Or maybe she is the kind of person who has to have somebody to fret about. Cal is gone. You were at her marina when we got blown up."

"What did it do to you?"

"Gave my back a little wrench and gave me a sore shoulder and one deaf ear."

"So this is Thursday, everybody keeps telling me, June sixth, they keep saying, and it is five days gone out of my life, and what useful thing have you done with those days? I don't like it any more around here, Meyer. I want to go home. Every time I get blown up by a bomb I get that same feeling. Let's go home."

"That wrapped head makes you look strange. It's like a turban. Lawrence of Arabia, or some damned mercenary. You're dark enough for an Arab, but the pale eyes make you look very savage somehow."

"Meyer, what did you find out?"

"Oh. While you were unconscious? Let me think. Oh, yes. That's quite a nice hangar out there at the ranch. Quonset-type construction. That's where ranch equipment gets repaired and maintained too. There's a slow charger for batteries, and a battery cart to boost the aircraft batteries when starting the aircraft up cold. There's a fifteen-hundred-gallon gas tank and a pump to service the aircraft and the ranch vehicles. There's about six employees out there, which means a pretty good payroll, wouldn't you say?"

"Meyer!"

"Are you supposed to sit up like that? There, that's better. Okay. Travis, he has…"

Meyer paused and took out his little pocket notebook and flipped through the pages, grunting from time to time.

"Meyer!"

"He has a Beechcraft Baron, designation B fifty-five. It has two two-hundred-and-sixty horsepower Continental engines, designation Ten four-seventy L. The fuselage is twenty-nine feet long, and the wingspan is thirty-seven feet ten inches. At ten thousand five hundred feet, at a long-range cruising speed of two hundred and twenty miles per hour, with optional fuel capacity of a hundred and thirty-six gallons, he can carry two people and over eight hundred pounds of cargo for sixteen hundred miles, less ten percent safety factor, which gives us fourteen hundred and forty miles. It has an automatic pilot and a lot of other things which I didn't write down here. He bought it used a year ago for sixty-five thousand. He financed it. It can carry four people. It is white with a blue stripe."

I stared at him. "And you went out there and went in the hangar!"

He stared back. "I wish I could say yes."

"What did you do?"

"You reminded me to be cautious when I looked under that Datsun."

"What did you do?"

"I did what all economists do. I went to the library. And after a two-hour search I found an article about him and his place in a magazine called Florida Ranchorama. It had a picture of the hangar, with airplane inside. Then I went to the airport, over to the private airplane area, and talked with some mechanics there about airplanes. I asked some questions and then I did a lot of listening. I found out more about airplanes than I care to know."

"You did very well, old friend."

"Shall I blush and simper?"

"If you don't keep it up for long. I hate blushing and simpering in a grown man when it goes on and on."

"You seem to be doing a lot of yawning."

"I am dead tired for some unknown reason, and I am starving. I've never been so empty." We got hold of the sprightly little old nurse, who said the kitchen was closed and who then went off and checked with Dr. Ownings to see if it was all right for Meyer to bring food in. He said fine, and he would approve it because I had a private room.

When Meyer left on his errand it was after eleven, and I did not expect Mrs. Birdsong to be waiting that late. But she was. She came in, and her face went from somber to beautiful in the glow of her smile. She came around and sat on the chair and then stood up again. Awkward moment.

"Please sit down," I said.

"I am so used to sitting right here without…"

"You don't need any invitation, really. Meyer told me how faithful you've been."

She had seated herself again, on the edge of the chair. She wore khaki slacks, fitted and faded almost white. She wore a tan shirt with silver buttons. She clutched a brown leather purse with both hands. She wore a trace of lipstick, nothing more. When she looked down the dark glossy hair would have swung forward, would have softened her face, had she not worn it cropped so desperately short. In manner and looks it was almost as if she were trying to deny her femininity, or perhaps she was so shrewdly aware of herself, she knew that any attempt to deny it merely emphasized it.

"Faithful," she said, giving the word a bitter emphasis. "Sure, I guess so. I… didn't want you to wake up and not have anyone close by to tell you what happened. But I missed out on that… too."

"I appreciate it. Maybe it was good to have someone nearby. I think that people are never totally completely one hundred percent unconscious. I think that they are always aware to some degree of what is going on around them. I think I knew you were here."

"How could you know it was me?"

"Maybe just that someone was here who cared."

"Cared. Yes, that word is okay, Mister McGee. Cared if you lived or died. I'll buy that word."

"I'll give it to you free."

She smiled and again that transformation, but the smile did not last long enough. She flushed visibly and said, "I didn't think about it being hard to talk to you when you woke up."

"Is it hard?"

"Well, I don't know what to say. We buried my husband Monday. I've hired another person. With Jason, Oliver, and the new man, Ritchie, everything can go on… as before. After the insurance people told Meyer that you're not covered, he said it was okay if I told the boys to work on your houseboat whenever they have the time."

I sat up. "I'm covered!"

"For lots of things, yes. If your tanks had blown up, yes. Or sinkings or collisions or fire or running aground. But not for people bringing a bomb on board, you're not covered. Should you be sitting up like that?"

I settled down again. She reached and gave a quick shy pat on my arm.

"It's sort of in their spare time, so I'm only billing you for supplies."

"It wasn't your fault."

"I don't know. Sometimes things happen that maybe a person could have stopped."

"And people can take too much onto themselves. If I had done this… or that… or the other, then maybe this or that or the other would never have happened. The world-mother syndrome."

She thought it over. "I guess I am sort of that way."

She looked down and away, lost to me, wandering in the backwoods of her mind. It was a strong clear face, clean and dark and timeless, like the face of a young monk seen in an old drawing. It was somber and passionate, withdrawn yet intensely involved. The curve of the lips, shape of the throat, set of the eyes, all spoke of fire and of need carefully suppressed, held down in merciless discipline.

Meyer came back. She stirred to leave, but he had brought food for her too. He said it had not been easy at that time of night. Quarter-pounders with cheese, in square cartons, still hot. He had brought six of them, and a container of milk and two containers of coffee. Meyer sat on the foot of my bed. I was certain I could eat three of them. I was famished. Yet it was all I could do to finish the first one. I drank the milk. I sagged back. I thought I would close my eyes for just a moment. I heard them talking, and their voices sounded strange to me, as if I were a child again, half asleep in the back seat while the parents talked together in the front seat. When the little whitehaired nurse woke me up to find out if I wanted a sleeping pill, Meyer and Cindy were gone and the room was darkened. I heard a siren far away. I turned back into my sleep, wormed my way back to dreaming.

On Friday at eleven thirty Dr. Hubert Owings changed the dressing on my head, making it much smaller, getting away from the turban effect. He checked me over and approved me for release. I phoned the marina and got hold of Jason, who got hold of Meyer. Meyer said he would be along to pick me up in a half hour. I told him to bring money. And clothes. The clothes I had been wearing when I arrived were too badly dappled with the blood of Joanna to ever consider wearing again.

I borrowed a shower cap and took a shower. Meyer arrived and said he had stopped at the cashier's office and bought me out, and given the release ticket to the nurse at the floor station. I got up too quickly and felt dizzy. I had to sit down for a minute before I could get dressed. Meyer was worried about me.

"Hube said I'm fine. A heavy concussion. No fracture. I came out of it okay, he says. If I start to have fainting spells, come back in for observation. They are short of beds or they'd keep me longer."

The world looked strange. There were little halos around the edges of every tree and building. I did very deep breathing. It is strange to sleep for five days and five nights and have the world go rolling along without you. Just like it will keep on after you're dead. The wide busy world of tire balancing, diaper changing, window washing, barn dancing, bike racing, nose picking, and bug swatting will go merrily merrily along. If they were never aware of you presence, they won't be overwhelmed by your absence.

On the way back Meyer told me that Cindy Birdsong had made arrangements for me to have a unit at the motel, next to hers. I could not get any rest aboard the Flush because of all the sawing and hammering. I was supposed to get a lot of rest. The prescription would make me drowsy. I said it was a lot of nonsense.

But when I got out of the car I gave up all hope of walking out to look at my boat. I saved everything I had left for the immense feat of tottering over to the motel and collapsing onto the bed which Cindy and Meyer guided me to.

I slept through lunch and woke up at five o'clock. I put my shoes on and latched my belt and went on the long walk out to the Flush. The sun was still high and hot. I heard the power saw long before I recognized who was running it. Jason was brown and sweaty, and he was cutting some heavy-duty marine plywood to size. He let go of the trigger on the saw and put it on the uncut sheet and stuck his hand out. "You don't look so bad, Mr. McGee."

"Neither does my vessel."

"Not so bad on the outside until you notice it blew all the ports out of the lounge. It isn't so great in there."

"Do you know how to do… what you're doing?"

"Does it make you nervous? I can cut plywood to fit, for God's sake. The thing is to get it sealed before it rains again. We're into the rainy season now. I fixed the two broken cross members, those beam things. They were splintered. I cut out the bad parts and bolted in new pieces. It's okay now. Stronger than before."

"In case I get another gift bomb?"

"Nobody around here makes any jokes about that."

"I'm sorry."

"Joanna was an okay person. Not like Carrie, but okay. I mean there was no need for anybody to blow her into pieces."