The Turquoise Lament (13 page)

–The defense may cross-examine the witness.

–Thank you. Mr. McGee, I beg your indulgence in letting me pursue the same line of questioning a bit further.

–Go right ahead.

–Is it reasonable to assume that a man of unblemished reputation, a Vice-President and Trust Officer of a bank, would conspire with a prominent local attorney to defraud a young woman out of a part of her inheritance?

–I don't know how reasona-

–Just answer the question.

–Yes.

–You think that is a reasonable assumption?

–It has happened before, all over the world, right? How many hundred times? So it can happen. And you are saying it happened again?

–No. I don't know what happened. Maybe they had some kind of deal with Ted. Maybe they're not supposed to tell Pidge about it. Maybe they don't really buy this idea of treasure maps. All I know is they didn't act like two men who know something valuable is missing. That's all I ever said.

–During your previous testimony, you stated that it was your belief that there was more than one set of these documents.

–It just seems reasonable there had to be.

–Would you tell the Court, please, why there had to be?

–Because my friend, Ted Lewellen, was a finikin.

–A what?

–Counselor, the witness is using an obsolete word to describe a person who is almost unnecessarily and compulsively fussy about even the most trivial details.

–Oh. Thank you, your Honor. Would the witness care to speculate about how many copies of the valuable documents exist, and where they might be?

–No. I would not care to speculate.

Mansfield Hall's office was in one of the older buildings in downtown Miami. There were a bank, brokerage house, airline offices and shopping mall on the ground floor. The eleven remaining floors seemed stacked with law firms.

He was in the middle, on the sixth floor, at the end of a corridor. It was a clever location. One could not help but associate him in more areas than geography with the suites one passed, with the handsome paneled doors and the bronze nameplates. The older buildings have the higher ceilings. They have windows which can be opened. The thick walls provide more privacy. The paneling is made out of boards, not out of woodgrain thin as a fingernail, epoxied to fiberboard.

I pushed the door open at five of four. The woman behind the secretarial desk was very close to being Mrs. Archie Bunker until she opened her mouth. A very British accent. I was expected. One moment, please. She slipped through a door, reopened it seconds later and stood aside, holding it.

I went in and she closed it. Her office was very bright. His was dark and large, draperies closed, lamps turned on. Leather books and leather chairs. Gleam of silver, of oiled rosewood and polished mahogany.

He was a small, round-headed man, with thick white hair and a thick white mustache, both carefully brushed and tended. He had a very ruddy face, a bulb nose, bulging blue eyes with sandy lashes. He came around the desk to meet me, all cordiality. He was about the size of the average twelve-year-old boy, and he wore splendid tweeds, immaculate linen, a small polka-dot tie, white dots on a blue that matched his eyes.

He waved me into a deep chair and went back behind his desk, and I noticed that his black leather judge's chair was on a platform. Had he meant it to give him more presence, he would not have come around the desk. So it was for the sake of convenience.

The more common conversational hiatus breakers, while one selects the right word, are "eh," "ah," "er," and "um." His space filler was "haw."

"Mr. McGee, I do… I do wish that after we talked on the phone I'd been able to… haw… intercept you before you took the trouble to come here to my office. We all seem to spend far too much of our lives dashing about on superfluous errands."

"Mr. Hayes told me to tell you he is worried about the lack of control on the expense factor. He has substantial operating capital, but not unlimited."

"It's quite… haw… academic at this point, I fear. Directly after you telephoned me, I got in touch with my principals in this matter to determine the flexibility of their stipulations so that I could relay to you the acceptable bounds of negotiation. I had previously reported my conversation with Mr. Hayes, of course. It is their… haw… feeling at this time that they wish to leave the door open with Seven Seas, but that certain other affairs require such intensive supervision it would be best to… haw… postpone the negotiations until some future date more convenient to them. They regret any inconvenience they may have caused Mr. Hayes, or yourself."

"Mr. Hayes will be very disappointed."

"Really! He didn't seem all that impressed with the proposition."

"He's a cautious man."

"The world makes us all more cautious with every passing year."

"Mr. Hall, could you tell me when they might be willing to reopen negotiations?"

"They did not say. I wouldn't hazard a guess." "Maybe there was something in the selection of words or the tone of voice that might clue you as to whether it would be, for example, two months or two years."

"I might have been able to draw some… haw… useful inference, Mr. McGee, had I been in direct communication. But this has all been through their representative."

"Who would that be?"

"Someone they trust to remain discreet, I should imagine."

His expression was one of impassive, everlasting amiability. You get to know the breed after you've met a few of them. The professional negotiators. There is absolutely no way to irritate them, entrapthem or confuse them. They cannot be bribed, bullied, frightened or cajoled. They are as unreadable as master poker players must be. They have no little nervous tics which could reveal mood. They do not smoke and they do not drink, and they seem almost independent of all plumbing facilities. They don't sweat, wilt or yawn. They merely sit across a table from you for thirty-six or forty-eight hours, looking tidy and pleasant and inquisitive, until finally you say the hell with it, and give them what they asked for in the first place.

I should have thanked him and left. But there is no law against chunking pebbles against Stone Mountain.

"On second thought, maybe Mr. Hayes will feel relieved." I waited for some response. He just sat there, amiably, waiting for me to say something he could respond to. "One aspect of this bothered him. He wondered why the person owning these documents would have to trade fifty percent of the net return for the chance of recovery. That made him wonder if there might be… some slight flaw in the title to the documents."

He looked appreciative. "Most… haw… delicately said, sir. The question of ownership of notes copied from documents in the public domain raises interesting legal points. So does the question of the value one could assign to such research. A treasure map purporting to describe the location of one million dollars in doubloons has not the same status as a certified check for one million dollars. I believe that the reason for covert dealings is probably far more explicable on… haw… an emotional basis."

"I don't think I know what you mean."

"One day a man of the cloth sneaked out the back door of his church on a very holy day, changed his clothing and went to a golf course and played one round all by himself. God focused his attention on the sinner, and a young ignorant angel watched over God's shoulder. The ignorant angel watched and saw the sinner sink a three wood for an eagle two on the first hole, hit a long iron into the cup for an eagle three on the second hole, make a hole in one on the third. Following the same pattern, he finished the first nine holes in twenty strokes, and as he teed off on the tenth and hit his drive three hundred and seventy yards down the middle, the angel cried out, 'God, he is a sinner! Why are you rewarding him?' 'Rewarding him?' God rumbled. 'Think about it. Who can he tell?'"

I saw what Mansfield Hall was driving at. I grinned and nodded.

He said, "In our society treasure-hunting is a sign of… haw… immaturity and unreliability. Captain Kidd. Yo-ho-ho. Walk the plank, et cetera, et cetera. Perhaps the fellow holds public office, or is in some fiduciary position, or is a bishop or a college president, or a market analyst." He stood up, and the eight-inch platform made him look of average height as he leaned across the desk to extend his small hand. "Tell Mr. Hayes that should I ever be contacted again on this matter, I shall… haw… most probably get in touch with him."

I made very good time from his office to the elevator, to the ground floor, and to a phone booth. I got Tom Collier's office number from information. To avoid going through the coin-slot routine, I made the short-distance pay call to his office on my GT credit card. I got the switchboard and asked for Tom Collier. A girl said, "Mr. Collier's office."

I hoped I could do it without the usual practice session with the tape recorder. I said, "Forgive me, my dear, but I have… haw… recalled a matter I forgot to mention when I telephoned ` Mr. Collier earlier."

"Oh, Mr. Hall, I'm sorry, but Mr. Collier left about ten minutes ago, and he won't be back in the office until the second. That's next Wednesday. Is it really important?"

"No, no. Just something… haw… incidental to what we discussed earlier. Perhaps not worth… haw… bothering him at all. Thank you, my dear."

Feeling of triumph as I left the phone booth. I suppose it is childlike to give oneself a small round of applause. Especially since it was a victory within the area where I should reasonably expect to do pretty well, after spending years peeling back the layers of human guile and chicanery, an optimistic gourmet at work on the endless artichoke, ever searching for the good part underneath.

I could not have written down the reasons, one, two, three, why I grabbed at this possible way of linking Mansfield Hall to Tom Collier. A man wading the grass flats does not know why he drops the lure halfway between mangrove thicket and sandbar, but the snook comes wolfing out of the water, jaws agape to take it.

Lawyers have a little edge in personal negotiation, as they can always imply-or let the other fellow infer-they are acting in the interests of a client. When a new stipulation is presented, the at torney can gain time and psychological advantage by saying he will have to refer it back to his nonexistent client.

In this particular instance, Tom Collier did himself a little harm, perhaps, by making Mansfield Hall believe that Collier was representing someone else. That diminished Mansfield Hall's habit of caution, believing there was an intervening layer. One can assume that if Hall knew Collier was the principal, all contact would have been made much more carefully. These are the days of the bug, of the wire man, of circuitry smaller than a housefly.

I did not know where and how to reach into this funny little cup of worms, and so I decided to take it back to Meyer for consultation.

"Aha! Frank Hayes won, I see."

"Shut up, just as a special favor."

I stood by the bed and studied the board. It was the beginning of the middle game. Sicilian defense. "I went wrong right here," he said. "Eleventh move. Took the knight with the knight."

"And so after the exchange he checked you with his queen on rook five?"

"Smart-ass!"

"Should have moved your queen to queen two before you took the knight."

"I know that already. Look, do you want to play a game or stand around making redundant comments?"

"I want to play a slightly different game. I need to make some kind of move."

I told him the whole thing. He asked questions. I told him my reasoning. And Meyer began to tug at the loose ends.

"I had an immediate liking and respect for Lawton Hisp," he said. "He knows his job. He knows he knows his job. I have an idea that his trust department turns a pretty good dime for the bank. When I was up there, after Pidge told Hisp to give me any information I asked for, I was impressed by how crisp and businesslike that whole floor is, but with a flavor of people liking what they do."

"You'd rather take aim at Tom Collier?"

"For a trivial reason. I'm ashamed of this brand of illogic."

"Such as?"

"He's a very agreeable man. He's amusing. You've met him."

"Get to it."

"Remember when the Salamah was up for sale?" I remembered. She was a ketch, Abaco-built, one of the biggest I've ever seen built on Abaco, and the most graceful and lovely. A doctor had owned her. Meyer remembered. It is an accident that almost happens frequently. I don't know why it doesn't happen more often. They had anchored late one afternoon in the Berry Islands and gone swimming off the ketch after putting the boarding ladder over the side. The tide and wind shifted. The doctor dived without taking a look first. The dinghy had swung around. It was tied to a stern cleat on too long a line. He dived into it and broke his skull and his back and was dead before the float plane could get to them.

"Anyway" Meyer said, "Tom Collier was handling the estate, and after the Salamah had been brought back here, I was walking by one day and spoke to Tom and admired it, and he asked me to come aboard and see if I wanted to buy it. I told him it was way out of my reach, but I went aboard. Beautiful. He was waiting for the boat broker; who was, late for an appointment, so he was just killing time. You know those country-boy mannerisms of his, the thin crooked black cigars and the kitchen matches. He was saying he thought of buying her for himself at a fair market value, but decided he was too busy to use her as often as she ought to be used. He sighed and took out one of those cigars and looked around, then wiped his kitchen match along the varnished rail. A beautiful varnish job. The match made a scratch line and then a gray place as big as a quarter where it lit. He watched me as he lit the cigar, the match flame cupped in his hands. It was a challenge, the way he did it. He wanted me to say something. He was expressing some kind of contempt for people like you and me, Travis, who live on boats, who cherish boats. He had something to say, but I didn't give him the opening to say it. It's a damned small thing. I shouldn't dislike the entire man for one observed act, but I do."

"And now I do too."

He smiled. "So we're both strange. What's a streak on varnish? Five minutes to fix it. I went back and made sure it was gone. That was about a week later. Howie had done a pretty good job on it."

"Howie? By God, you're right! He was living aboard her, caretaking her until she was sold. Was he working for the broker or for Tom Collier?"

"I have no idea."

"Was that the first job he, had around the marina?"

"As far as I know."

"Could he have been working as crew for the doctor?"

"I just don't know. It's possible."

We were working away on our own special form of triangulation. In another context, for another purpose, it would be called gossip. We are all concerned with the strange activities of the human animal. We are all aware of how coincidence can lead to warped assumptions. And we all keep looking for the very worst from the couple next door to Watergate.

"He's a damned likable brute," Meyer said, echoing what I was thinking.

"Comfortable. Undemanding. A listener who never butts in to tell some epic hero story of his own, who laughs in the right places, and not too loudly or long."

"Pidge wanted to know if he was trying to kill her."

"So you told me."

"I made her believe it was a little touch of paranoia."

"So you told me."

"But God damn it, Meyer-"

"Whoa. Settle down. If he wanted to, just how many chances do you think he's had in over fourteen months of cruising?"

"That was part of my basis for believing she was wrong."

"Well?"

"Who is Howard Brindle?"

"If that's not a rhetorical question, and if that is your starting point, I agree. But you're not going to find out tonight. The chess board is over there."

By the time Nurse Ella Marie Morse came on duty to look after him during the hours of the night, I had the game won. He had slowly worked me back into a cramped position, pressing me back against my castled. king, smothering my queen side, but he had failed to see a sacrifice that gave me a very damaging knight fork and put me a piece ahead. I was trading him down to an end-game defeat, and he resigned when the nurse arrived, saying something about possibly the fever had damaged some brain cells after all.

Before she herded me out, Meyer told me he didn't expect to see me again until I had some hard information on good ol' Howie.

A big raw Saturday wind killed what was left of the strange untimely heat wave. It was the first day of the extra-long year-end weekend, meaning that offices were closed and I could not use the logical starting place, the detailed forms which have to be placed on file with every little red-tape empire.

I had written down what I knew about him. It was very skimpy. He didn't talk about himself often and never said very much. Raised by grandparents, I think. Ohio, Indiana, Iowa. One of those states. His grandfather retired and they moved to Bradenton, Florida. Howie was about ten? Maybe older. Became a high-school jock. Fullback. Straight ahead for the tough yard and a half on third down. Partial scholarship to the University of Florida. Out of the athletic budget. How long ago? They shifted him to defensive tackle. Second string. Got to play in only three out of nine games his senior year. Disciplinary problems, he'd said. I'd inferred he broke train ing now and then, nothing worth spelling out. Wanted the pro scene, but nobody picked him in the draft. The Dolphins took a long hard look at him in training camp. Not enough hustle, apparently, according to what he said. They let him go. Three years ago? Longer? Then a blank until he showed up at Bahia Mar. Knows how to handle himself around boats and the sea. Drinks beer. Doesn't smoke. Six four, two seventy, looks sloppy but is in good shape. Brown eyes, receding hairline, blond hair long. Voice pitched slightly high.

I took a packet of fresh fifties out of my stash. I studied my little collection of improvised business cards. Title Research Associates looked good enough, and there were six crisp clean ones left.

Her name, I learned at Bahia Mar, was Lois Harron. Evidently she'd been able to afford to keep the house. It was on one of those canals southwest of Pier 66, a long low white structure with Bahamian gray trim, behind a screen of shrubbery which would someday hide it entirely from the asphalt road in front. There were eight vehicles in the driveway, parked in random array on the white river pebbles. A couple of vans, a couple of VW's, a camper body on a pickup, a couple of road-worn station wagons and a shiny 'lbyota. The wheels of the young. The high-performance cars are dead. A young man in Dade County has to pay twelve hundred dollars a year in insurance' premiums to buy the basic legal coverage for a high-performance car, and the law says he can't get plates or inspection stickers without proof of insurance. The young used to be the meat of the market, and without their demand, Detroit can't make toys for the middle-aged role players, which is perhaps a blessing to all concerned.

I punched the bell three times before a brutally loud vacuum cleaner was turned off. Then I could hear yelps and sloshing from a pool area out back somewhere. A slender, tall woman with dark hair came to the door. She wore faded old stretch pants and a tired old T-shirt on which appeared pink ghost-writing, almost entirely gone, saying HAWAII FIVE-O. She was barefoot and she had a streak of dirt across her forehead, and she looked irritated, and she also looked very familiar to me.

She frowned and smiled, and pushed the screen door open and said, "Where, where, where? Hmmm. Bahia Mar. A year ago. What was the name of that big cruiser? 'Bama Lady?"

" 'Bama Gal. The Alabama Tiger's lair."

"Sho nuff. Jesus! A year ago, I guess, but the memories are vivid. And I think a bunch of us came aboard your houseboat. Belated apologies for that invasion, friend. We were not all the way tracking. Come in, come in. Total confusion. My maid died. Isn't that hell? She didn't quit. She didn't get fired. She died. Which leaves me with mixed emotions, and I will be damned if I can find anybody who isn't a total dumb-dumb. What is your name? I can't come up with it."

"Travis McGee."

"Of course! I'm dreary about names. Excuse the racket. My only chick is home on Christmas vacation and I wish the dear girl wasn't quite as popular. Look at them out there! Wall to wall energy. It makes me tired to watch them. Get you a drink? What can I do for you, Travis?"

"I'm doing an odd job for a friend. Odd meaning maybe strange. He's doing research on the kinds of people who go around the world in small boats."

"Believe me, I am not his kind of person."

"Neither am I, Lois. But he was questioning me about the background of Howie Brindle, and I said I thought he worked for you and your husband, and he wondered if I'd ask you for your impressions of him."

She was in a good strong north light. Her face tightened just a little bit, and there were some rapid eye movements, a small pursing of the lips. "Is Howie going on some brave adventure?"

"He's somewhere in the Pacific, with wife."

"Oh, yes. That girl who inherited the Trepid when her father was killed. Some idiot name. Pooch?"

"Pidge."

"My dear man, the Trepid is hardly a small dangerous boat. It was built to cross oceans. And being with wife is not being alone, one would hope."

"I'm sorry. This isn't the epic-adventure kind of thing. It's more sociological, about the kinds of people who seek solitude when everybody else is after togetherness. A think piece."

"Can I get you that drink? No? Then sit patiently while I fix myself one."

She was back in five minutes, hair brushed, mouth freshened, smudge gone from her forehead. She carried a colorless drink on ice. "Hatch," she said and sipped before she sat down across from me. "Sure. Howie worked for us, crewing aboard the Salamah."

"For how long?"

"Let me see. It was the longest vacation we ever took. It was just about the only vacation we ever took. Fred did umpty operations a day, getting the decks cleared. And he begged and bullied his best friends into taking the load while we were gone. Let me see. Howie came aboard at Spanish Wells. We'd been in the islands for two weeks, because I remember it took two weeks for me to realize Fred wasn't getting much vacation trying to run the boat by himself. I'm an idiot about those things. So that means Howie was aboard for just about six weeks. And then he brought her back by himself, of course, after Fred-after the accident."

"He was in Spanish Wells looking for work?"

"No. Not the way that sounds. There was a couple from Charleston in a cruiser, and Howie was working for them. Actually, the woman approached us about hiring him. She said he was an absolute jewel. There wasn't anything he wouldn't do, and he respected your privacy and all. But her husband was having angina too bad to keep on cruising, and they were going to fly back home as soon as he felt up to it, and that left Howie at loose ends. It was an answer to prayer. We interviewed Howie and we both liked him a lot. So he moved into the crew cabin forward that same day, and Fred started showing him all that he should know about the Salamah. He really worked out fine. We stopped having all those narrow escapes we were having when Fred was running it alone. And he scrubbed and helped with the cooking and all. If you mean competence, I think Howie could probably sail around the world in an old bathtub. He seems to know when the wind is going to change before the wind knows. He's so huge you're conscious of how his weight tilts the boat. But he's so light on his feet he doesn't seem… ponderous."

"So he was there when your husband had his accident?"

She raised the glass to her lips so deliberately I wondered if she was trying to buy time, and why. She took a deep swallow and said, "Whatever would that have to do with anything at all, Travis?"

"I'm just guessing, but I'd say that there'd be some relationship between how these deepwater people react to emergencies and their desire to get away from the world."