Authors: John D. MacDonald
She stopped and held her fists against her eyes for a few moments. She frowned at the Sergeant. “His voice was
little
. He was trying to explain something to me. ‘It was supposed to be the way I practiced,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean for it to go wrong like this. Miss Leila, believe me, Crissy kept telling me over and over the time to do it was when you were all together. Bunched. All eating. But when I started there were only four of them. You should have been there. Both of you. Then you wouldn’t have to be scared.’ I told him to please leave me alone. He said in a very reasonable voice that he couldn’t. I should be able to understand why he couldn’t. He said it never would have had to happen if it hadn’t been for the money. I didn’t know what he was talking about. He said it was so much money Crissy was able to make him do it. He told me not to be scared any more, not to look at him like that. He said he’d make certain there wouldn’t be any pain, the way it was with Stella. He was mad at Stella for running.”
“Missy?”
“I’m—okay, Sarg. I’ve got it all now, every bit of it. Suddenly he reached very quickly and grabbed my ankle. It got me out of my trance. I tried to run and fell and yanked myself loose, and as I jumped up he came bounding up like—an animal. I knew my only chance was to dive into the water. I knew he couldn’t catch me in the water in the dark. I had on a pretty shift. Stel and I each bought one in the Nassau Shop. Mine was orange and hers was pink. He grabbed at me and caught the back of the neck of the shift. They were very loose fitting. A light material but a close weave. I felt it rip all the way down. I spun out of it and nearly fell again. I wasn’t wearing a thing under it. I whirled and dived from up there toward the sea, but
then I saw the boat, too late. I was going to dive right into it. I don’t remember hitting my head at all. It was just like diving into—a huge deep snowbank. And then I was here.”
“And what day was that?”
“It was—the thirteenth. It was Friday the thirteenth. I wouldn’t remember what day it was, except Mister Bix was making jokes about it being a lucky day. That’s a spooky thing to remember.”
Sergeant Corpo counted it out on his fingers. “Miss Leila, you were eight days drifting in that boat, coming this way on that east wind! Busted head. Fevers eating the meat off you. Sun cooking the hide off you. Missy, you must be hardy as a she-gator. The life must run strong in you. Rains must have come down on you just in time to keep you going. Missy, there in’t one man in fifty’d make it through that. And you’re getting more bright and sassy every single day.”
She looked pleadingly at him. “Try to understand that this makes a big difference in—our plans, Sarg. I
have
to get away from here. They’ll think I was killed too. I bet Staniker thought that dive killed me. I guess it should have. He was insane, Sarg. His face just—it just wasn’t a human face any more. What if he isn’t locked up? He could be doing terrible things to other innocent people. And then it would be your fault, wouldn’t it?”
“That’s one way to think about it.”
“My brother will think I’m dead. So will Jonathan.”
“That much gladder to see you when you come running.”
“Please, Sarg! Please! Oh God, please!”
“Now there. Now you know nobody is going to go off into the dark night. There’s time to think on it.”
“The longer you keep me the more trouble you’re going to be in.”
He looked puzzled. “Looks to me like it’s just the other way
around.” He stood up. “Time people should be in their beds. Anyways, you haven’t even opened up half the stuff I brang you back from town. Pretties keep a gal’s mind off her problems.”
It was night. Gordon Dale was using both halves of his mind to full capacity. He sat at his digestive ease in his leather chair, following the plot of an hour-long western on the television set, while the other half of his mind walked around and around and around the special problems in the brief he was preparing in a civil action for one of his more important clients—like a puppy circling a hedgehog looking for any reasonable place to sink his teeth.
Miriam was on the couch writing to their married daughter in Atlanta, and she said, “If he has family, I don’t see why it has to be up to you anyway.”
It was statement, but also a question. He did not want to wonder what she meant. It was one of Miriam’s small and special talents to come out with a statement so oblique, so unrelated to anything anyone had said recently, you could not ignore it. It would paste itself to some outer layer of husbandly attention and then begin to bore a hole.
“Um?” he said at last.
“Well even if they didn’t have any
legal
responsibility, I would think they’d want to take care of their own.”
He sighed. He put the brief back on a shelf somewhere in the back of his head. And when the ranch hands tracked the stolen horse herd out the far end of the canyon, the wind had blown the sand and covered all the tracks. So they milled around, arguing with one another.
“Whose family, dear?” he asked. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, come
on
, Lieutenant!” she said.
Then Gordon Dale knew, with a certain resignation, they were
to have another little chat about Corpo. He had made captain before VE day. And upon discharge he had been given a termination promotion to major. He had no patience with courtesy titles anyway, any more than he had with those uncurably boyish men who kept green the memories of college fraternity or football triumphs or Let-me-tell-you-how-it-was-at-Omaha-Beach.
“Corpo hasn’t any family.”
“Apparently that’s what
he
told you.”
“No, honey. Really. When I found out he was still alive after thinking he was dead all those years, the doctors said he wasn’t a danger to anybody, but he couldn’t cope without some help on the outside. They’d tried to turn up somebody, anybody, up in Georgia who’d take over. I looked in the book and found a fellow I knew from law school practicing in the area, and I had him check it out. No family.”
“Well, it certainly is
strange
, then.”
“Exactly what is strange, dear?” he asked patiently.
She put the unfinished letter aside. “Well, I was at the hairdresser this afternoon, and Jeanie did me. She’s the young one I told you about. Very pretty, and she’s real good too. Anyway, her best girlfriend works in that expensive dress shop out on Sea Crescent Circle. The Doll House. They have darling sports clothes. Jeanie’s girlfriend’s name is Andra something, and they call her Andy. Anyway, the day before yesterday, Wednesday, your precious Sergeant had the entire place in a turmoil.”
“Now Miriam, if Corpo gets into any kind of trouble anywhere in the Broward Beach area, the police would call me.”
“Did I say he got into trouble? Did I?”
“You said turmoil.”
“In the store. Yes. You can imagine how really weird it would be to have him walk into a place like that. At least he didn’t have that fantastic beard. But that raggedy haircut and that ghastly dent in his
forehead and those stary eyes were enough to make those girls out there pretty jumpy, Jeanie said. When they asked him what he wanted, he had some little lists and he went through them and picked out one that said clothing and handed it to the clerk. When the clerk saw how many things were on it, she took it to Mrs. Wooster, the owner, so Mrs. Wooster came out of the back and told the Sergeant it would come to quite a lot of money. So he took a really fantastic roll of bills out of his pocket and said it should be enough. He had a taxi waiting outside. He said that it was going to be his little sister’s birthday up in Georgia and he wanted to send her a lot of nice things. Andra told Jeanie the list was in a girl’s handwriting, and from the sizes she was a little thing, a size eight or ten. It was quite a list. Underwear, blouses, shorts, slacks, sandals, skirts, a sweater, everything. Mrs. Wooster picked everything out, and Jeanie said Andy said she could have made it come out to twice as much money as she did, but even so it
is
an expensive place and it came to almost three hundred dollars. It didn’t faze him a bit. He had a drugstore list and a grocery list too. Andy told Jeanie it looked as if there was hundreds of dollars left in what Mrs. Wooster gave back to him, and after he was gone Mrs. Wooster explained about him to the girls, and how you are sort of his guardian or something, and that was why Jeanie told me about it. She started off thinking I probably knew about it. That was why I said that his family should be looking out for him.”
“The way he lives, Mim, he isn’t exactly a heavy responsibility.”
“I suppose he picked up his check at your office Wednesday.”
“He was there waiting when I got there. I noticed the beard was gone, and I was going to ask him about it, but he seemed to be in a big hurry. The check he gets and cashes every time is always the check from the month before. Sometimes he loses track and comes in too early, so I worked it out that way to save him extra trips. I
don’t think it’s good for him to come to town too often. It gets him too confused and agitated.”
“Should he be walking around with all that money?”
“Honey, I gave up trying to get him to put it in the bank long ago. He certainly gets more than he needs, a lot more, on a total disability pension. He must have a pretty good bundle by now, and I’d guess he’s got it buried in fruit jars all over that damn island. Maybe he shouldn’t be walking around with hundreds of dollars in cash, but I can’t think of any good way to stop him. And I can’t think of any less rewarding outdoor sport than trying to take it away from him.”
“Well, if he hasn’t got any family, I guess some girl is taking it away from him, one way or another.”
“Which I am going to check out right now.”
As he walked to the bedroom phone he knew it was a good chance that one or the other of the men he wanted to talk to would be on duty at headquarters. He asked the duty desk for either Detective Sergeant Lamarr, or Detective Sergeant Dickerson.
Dickerson was there, but in interrogation, and would call back. The call came back in fifteen minutes.
“Dave? This is Gordon Dale. I’m a little worried about our Robinson Crusoe.”
“If there was any kind of a complaint at all, Mr. Dale, I’d have heard about it for sure. Nothing at all in a long time.”
“When he was in town Wednesday, apparently he spent almost three hundred dollars on clothes for a girl. He bought the stuff out at The Doll House. She wasn’t with him. He had a list. It sounds to me as if he ran into a smart operator at that waterfront place.”
“Shanigan’s?”
“She’d be a small woman, size eight or ten.”
“Mmm. Funny. I wouldn’t think Harry would be stupid enough
to let any of them get cute with Corpo. I made it clear a long time ago. Harry remembers good. I told him that if his bartenders ever tried to put the clip on that poor guy, or if those semi-pros he runs down there ever tried any kind of con on the Sergeant, the Department of Regulatory Services was going to find a lot of expensive things wrong down there, like maybe having to move the whole building back a foot and a half because there isn’t any exception to the set-back regulations on file.”
“Could he be going somewhere else?”
“Mr. Dale, he’s a little too buggy-looking to get service in a good place, and all the other places know the standing order not to serve him. And they know him by sight. I’ll check it out. But if I wanted to make a guess, I’d say some little hustler is working him without Harry knowing about it. Maybe somebody new in town. The next step would be money for the operation on her poor old bedridden mom.”
“Dave, I appreciate your helping me keep old Corpo out of as much trouble as we can.”
“It was a long war, and a lot of people got shot in the head, and I had as good a chance as anybody. We’re having a busy Friday night here, Mr. Dale. Okay if I report back to you in the morning?”
“I’ll be at the office from eight thirty until a little after eleven. And thanks.”
It was night, and Jonathan Dye awakened with a start when a water-bird flew over the anchored catamaran, a night bird making eerie hollow cries of agony. He settled back, rolled and looked up at the incalculable stars. They were anchored in the open flats over sand bottom. There was enough breeze to slap little waves against the hulls. There was an almost imperceptible bump, and then another, and he realized that with the tide ebbing they were beginning to
touch the sand bottom as Stanley Moree had said they would. In the morning they would still be hard aground and Stanley would stay with the cat while Jonathan walked over to search the four tiny islands and sand spits they had approached in the dusk.
He stretched and felt the pull of his thigh muscles. Never had he reached such a peak of physical condition before. He could not guess at how many miles he had walked through shallow water, swum through deeper water. He had never thought that his tough sallow skin would take a tan. But it seemed to darken more each day. He knew he had lost weight, but he could not guess at how much.
He looked over at the stillness of Stanley Moree, asleep a few feet away on the bow deck, and felt gratitude and affection. Jonathan had known Sam Boylston had been humoring what he considered wishful fantasy when he financed the search. Sam had not concealed it well. Never had Stanley given him the slightest indication he did not believe in this search. Stanley did not say cheering words, make heartening predictions. Those would have rung false. He did his job. He made valid suggestions. He worked as hard at it as Jonathan. Something of value had drifted off, and they would find it. Jonathan wondered if it was the very essence of gentle Bahamian courtesy, or if Stanley did indeed share his belief. He had not dared question him about it, afraid to learn that Stanley might be humoring him as one would any mad person.
Yet Stanley had found that tank key the day before yesterday. He had seen the small object at a fantastic distance through the mid-morning glare, on the slope of sand on an island big enough to have given root to a single bush no larger than a basketball. It was a cylindrical white styrofoam float, half the size of a beer can. A short small brass chain was threaded through it, held in place by a brass disc atop the float. At the bottom end of the chain was fastened a bronze tank key, a device with two spindles spaced to fit into the recesses of the countersunk screw top of marine fuel tanks.