Authors: John D. MacDonald
“And conferences too, I imagine. Meeting people here and there.”
Staniker stared down at his big left fist and then looked at Sam with a troubled earnestness. “He met with some men, sure. And only he and me knew about it. That was most of the reason why he bought that Formula 233 boat in Miami. He told me what kind of performance he wanted in a small boat we could take in tow, and I picked it out for him. What he’d do, we’d leave the big boat in a good anchorage and the two of us would take off in that Muñequita, with billfish gear, and meet up with people like he’d arranged it. But I wouldn’t feel right about talking about that, Mr. Boylston. The way Mister Bix set it up in the beginning, he was paying me a big wage partly for keeping my mouth shut. He had reason to know I could. Now God knows it doesn’t matter to him any more what I say to anybody one way or the other. But perhaps it could matter to some of the men he had dealings with. I’ve signed a contract to tell the whole exclusive story to a man who’s going to write it up, but I’m going to leave out all of the business stuff, because I expect to stay in the business of hiring out as captain, and if you get a reputation for too much mouth, jobs get scarce.”
“I appreciate your point, Captain. You know, it’s a funny thing. If my sister hadn’t been aboard, I’d be upset about something that doesn’t seem important at all to me now.”
“What’s that, sir?”
Watching Staniker closely, Sam shrugged, smiled wryly, and said, “I had a deal going with Bix. A couple of hundred thousand dollars of mine went down with that boat.”
Staniker stared, eyes wide. “Cash money?” he said in a hushed tone.
“Cash money. And a lot more that Bix put in the kitty.”
Staniker shook his head. “Now why would a sane man take a chance and tote that much money all over the Bahamas on a fifty-three foot boat?”
“Sometimes, when something is for sale, cash is the only way you can buy it. Cash doesn’t leave tracks, Staniker.”
“I never had any
idea!
” Staniker said.
“I wouldn’t have mentioned it. But when you told me you felt—a moral responsibility not to discuss his business dealings, I knew there wouldn’t be any harm in it.”
“I’d never mention it to a soul, Mr. Boylston, I swear.”
Sam sighed. “Funny thing. I had a hunch about that cruise. I should have followed it. I felt a little edgy about having my kid sister go along. Careful as Bix was about everything, there was a chance somebody might figure out he had it aboard. Nobody knew except me and Bix. If somebody went after that money, I thought, it would be a damned poor place for Leila to be. Oh. Correction. Two other men knew it would be aboard, even though Leila and nobody else in Bix’s family knew. The other two are business associates. Known them for years. They stood to make too much out of the deal to try anything tricky anyway.”
Staniker poked very gently at his burned thigh, biting his lip. “Mr. Boylston?”
“What?”
“I was wondering. Is it going to come out there was all that money aboard? I mean through the estate or insurance or anything?”
“For personal reasons, Staniker, I hope not. But there’s always that chance, isn’t there? One of our associates might try to set it up as a casualty loss. But I don’t understand, Captain. Why should any publicity about it be upsetting to you?”
Staniker stared blankly at him. “Upsetting? Oh, no. Listen, maybe you don’t like it, me making a few bucks by signing that contract. Maybe you think it isn’t right to make money out of a terrible accident like that. But it’s going to be hard for me to get work. I got to worry about how I’m going to keep eating. My contract has book royalties in it and movie rights. Now I swear to you I won’t tell a soul about that money. You can trust me all the way in a thing like that. But what I was thinking, the reason I asked, if it
did
happen to come out, it might mean a lot more money for me out of that contract. You can hate me if you want to, but nobody is going to look after me except me.”
“I understand.” Sam stood up. “Thanks for giving me the time. You coming along all right?”
“Better than they thought I would, I guess. They’re letting me leave Wednesday. That’s what? June first? Yes. I got a little advance on an insurance settlement. I might maybe try a hotel a couple days to get used to getting around, then fly on back to Miami. But I guess it will be a long time before I really get over this thing, or maybe never. It’s a nightmare for sure, Mr. Boylston.”
On his way to the stairway he saw Theyma Chappie coming along the corridor toward him. He beckoned her into a small alcove.
“Do you now see what I was trying to tell you?” she asked in a low tone.
“Yes. I see it.”
“Some terrible thing hides behind his eyes. When he put his hand
on me, after I jumped away, I felt so cold for a long, long time. That was when I knew he could do what you say he did. Then I was sure.”
“He’s good, Theyma. Believe me, he’s damned good. It’s a great front, all that bumbling slowness and sincerity and troubled manner. There aren’t many ways. Trick him, or trap him, or break him. I don’t know how it can be done. But I have to do it.”
“What will doing it do to you, Sam?”
“Balance the ledger.”
“God’s business, no?”
“With man’s help sometimes. Your place? Five thirty?”
“Good.”
“Just get the recorder out of the room, and that’s the last of it. I’m grateful to you for taking the chance.”
“Perhaps it would have been better not to. I think. For you. I am not sure. But—it is done. And you go tomorrow. Sam, go all the way home. Go all the way to your Texas and your Lydia Jean.”
“This evening I’ll play you something I put together out of all those tapes.”
“Perhaps I do not wish to hear it, eh?”
“I want you to.”
She made a face. “Why should such things you want matter to me in any way? You bully me, Mr. Boylston. It is a disgrace. Excuse me. I must go tuck your monster into bed for a nap.” She pulled her shoulders high, canted her head, gave him an odd look. “I watch him asleep. When his lids quiver and his hands twitch and his mouth changes shapes I know he dreams. And I wonder.”
Sunday afternoon after Leila awakened from another of her long naps, she fought back the insidious lethargy and drowsiness and told the Sergeant, sweetly and politely, that she felt she would be more
comfortable aboard the Muñequita. Had he not said it was moored under the house? Then it would not get too hot. There were screens which could be zipped in place, a bow hatch propped open for ventilation, a marine head, bedding in a locker under the port bunk. She said he would then have his own bed back. She would be able to do more for herself. The suggestion seemed to displease him, and he went out without a word. She felt herself sliding back into sleep, fought it for a little while and then let go. Never had she slept so heavily and continuously. She wondered if the blow on the head had anything to do with it.
She had seen herself in the mirror he brought her when she asked for it. It had frightened her. Her cheekbones looked sharp enough to poke through her sallow-tan skin. Her eyes were sunk back into her head. Her matted hair was clumsily brushed over the shaved area of the wound. Her lips were swollen, pulpy, pale, cracked and split.
She knew everybody would be looking for her. She could not sustain a sense of urgency longer than a few minutes before sinking back into that lethargy that was so like having had too many drinks. He brought her bowls of spiced, rich, heavy food, big mugs of hot tea. She would feed herself until her arm tired, and then he would take the spoon and feed her, coaxing her to take more, making little clicking sounds with his mouth, the way some people speak to horses.
Once she had awakened—yesterday? the day before?—to find she had been turned face down, the improvised night-gown pulled high, while hands that were at once strong and gentle rubbed a pungent ointment into her back, working from high on her shoulders all the way to the backs of her calves and back again. In that disjointed world of half-sleep, Daddy was once again putting on that stuff that stopped the terrible itching-burning of the poison oak. Sam didn’t get it as bad as I did, she thought.
Then she heard the stranger-voice, crooning to itself, “… enough skin come off to build a whole new gal, I do swear … no
bad places left … coming pink and new like a baby … pore little burned ass ain’t board-flat no more, plumping up again.…”
Just as her body began to tighten in alarm, he had given her a little pat on the shoulder, grunted to his feet, spread the clean white shirt down over her, pulled the sheet back in place. Her thought of protest faded into the velvet dark of sleep.
Remembering, as she wondered why the Sergeant had left without a word, she reached a hand under the back of the shirt and felt of herself, felt on her back and buttocks, under a slight oiliness of medication, an ugly random pattern of welts and lumps and ridges instead of the familiar smoothness. There was no pain, yet here and there a special tenderness.
After a long time she heard him clumping up the outside steps. It took a moment to remember the name of the song he was singing without words. Lili Marlene. “Dum dum dah
dum
dah—dum ti dum ti
dah
.”
He told her the boat was ready. He wrapped her in a blanket and picked her up. From the top of the stairs she had expected to be able to see water beyond the shoreline of the island, but the trees were too high. The light hurt her eyes. The world seemed far too huge and bright. The steps looked unsafe. She clung to him. She saw the small boat basin, like a pond in a swamp, the water black and still, and saw the channel where it entered the thick mangrove growth and curved out of sight.
Over his few dum-dah-dum bars of the song, repeated over and over, she heard the tiny song of mosquitoes around her ears, face and throat. In the shadows of the mooring place under the house he stepped lightly aboard the Muñequita from his sheltered dock. The overhead was far too low for him to carry her into the forward cabin space. He set her down and steadied her as she backed down the step and clambered weakly into the bunk he had made up. He came in, closing the screening behind him, sat on his heels and sprayed the
mosquitoes which had come in with them. The hatch was propped open overhead, the screening in place.
He flicked on a weak bulb over her bunk, turned it off again. “The batteries are charged up pretty good, Missy, so if you’re wan-tin to use the light it shouldn’t take it down much, and the gas is full near to the top so as I can run the engines in neutral and recharge, comes to that. And you can run this little fan too I’d say, when the air gets too still.”
He pressed a switch. The little rubber-bladed fan began to whir. She felt the wind against her face, glanced up at it, and a picture formed quickly in her mind and disappeared, leaving an aftertaste of fear and despair she could not identify. She had too brief a glimpse of the dark, bloated, horrid face of the woman to identify her. Eyes bulged from the sockets. Thickened tongue protruded from the mouth. And a long strand of her hair had been caught in a small fan, wound around shaft and blade. The fan did not move. It hummed and stank.
“You all right, Miss Leila?”
“… Yes. Yes, I’m all right.”
After he left her alone she made herself get out of the bunk and look for the things she had hoped to use. The search did not take long. The little pistol and the shotgun were gone. The spear guns were gone. Both bronze keys were gone from the ignition switches and from the compartment under the instrument panel where the little Japanese transistorized ship-to-shore radio was locked away. She stretched out on the bunk and wept for a little while. Then she collected from the compartment under the other bunk a few things she could use. Towels, insect repellent, a terry beach coat which belonged to Roger, one of Stel’s swim suits, the yellow one with white trim.
There’s one way, she thought, when I’m strong enough. Put this suit on and slip over the side and swim out his crazy channel to the
open water. Even if it’s five miles to shore, I can make it. So I better work it into the conversation sometime that I can’t swim.
But there was another thing to try first. And planning it, she fell asleep.
On Monday, far stronger than she had hoped to be, she was able to walk halfway up the steps, clinging to the Sergeant before she tired and had to be carried the rest of the way. With his primitive sewing kit, she had fashioned herself underwear pants from a piece of sheeting, a short skirt from a beach towel, a bandeau top from a smaller towel. After she had rested and eaten well, she said, in polite accusation, “You should have taken me to a doctor right away, you know.”
“Missy, you don’t know about head wounds. You don’t know a thing.” He touched the sickening dent in his forehead. “After I was sound as a dollar, they kept me in that place
three whole years!
”
“But this isn’t the
same!
”
“Well—there’s another thing I expect you better know about. If it wasn’t for the Lieutenant, all them pretty little people in those little houses over there on the mainland shore, they would have got me stuck back into that place long ago. I get mixed up a little sometimes. One of them fat little sons of bitches—excuse me—he stood right up in court and he asked the judge that time how they had any garntee I wasn’t going to sneak over there some dark night and kill them all in their beds, like I was some kind of maniac. I don’t bother them. Why’d they want to bother me like they do? Missy—from the minute I found you, I had that on my mind. You understand? What if I took you to a doctor and you were dead when we got there? What if you died and never come to? All those people over there would jump right onto a thing like that and say Sergeant Corpo, he hurt that pore girl and he should ought to be locked up. Missy, the onliest thing I could do was nurse you good as I could and hope.”
“But what if I
had
died?”
“I had a spot picked out, and I got lumber to make a good box,
and a Bible to say words over you. I would have took that good boat out on a dark night on an outgoing tide and let it go on out the pass into the ocean. It would have been the best I could do, Missy.” He gave a single loud clap of his hands. “But what good is this kind of talk? Here you are setting up, smart as paint, and everything is fine as can be.”