The Turquoise Lament (16 page)

When there are things you don't want to think about, your brain slips down the easiest back alley, whistling and kicking cans. It is a sickening wrench to bring it marching back out of the alley to stand at attention and pay heed. I suppose that when it stays in the alley and won't come out, the world says you have gone mad. At Annapolis they have developed a brain-wave detection device to keep the cadets focused on the books. When the alpha wave gets the shape of daydreaming, you get beeped out of your reverie.

I forced myself back to the here and the now and bullied my reluctant imagination into guessing what Howie Brindle would probably do to my girl. His wife, yes. But my girl. I could name the day, hour, and minute when she stopped being a wife.

"Witnesses are always nice," I said.

"I don't understand," Doris said.

"Somebody who really believes," Gabe confirmed. "They really think they saw what somebody wants them to see, hear what somebody wants them to hear. Suggestibility. But they are alone. Mr. and Mrs. Brindle, in the middle of the sea."

"Because I convinced myself and convinced her that Howie is a nice dumb guy and she was hallucinating. He now knows this is the last chance he gets. And the only thing in the world I can do is be at Pago Pago when he gets there."

"She'll be aboard," Gabe said. "Too much stink, too much investigation if she isn't."

"But I don't even know if he can think that clearly. I don't even know if he's that smart."

"If he is, maybe you should be all geared up to have him picked up for something else. One of those possible kills you talked about. Or this girl." He tapped the envelope of pictures.

I went digging back through memory. I had made some notes and, though I doubted I could find them, the making of notes is a good crutch. "Two girls traveling together, trying to hitch a ride from St. Croix to Plymouth on the island of Montserrat. Joy Harris and Cecile? Cecilie? Celia. Yes, Celia Animal. Wolf? Bear?"

"Katz?" Gabe asked.

"You're a lot of help. Fox! Celia Fox, who has a sister married to a lawyer in Plymouth. Maybe I could do it by phone on the day after New Year's, if Meyer can remember the name of the lawyer we met down there, and if Celia and her sister were both a Miss Fox, because I would think the guy would have to be English, probably colonial-born, and being married to an American girl would be unusual enough to be identification. But look, where does that leave us? Suppose I find the young Mrs. Barrister and get her on that weird island radiotelephone deal, and convince her she should give me Celia Fox's address, if she had one, in the States, and assume I get hold of Celia and she says yes, Joy Harris left St. Croix on the Trepid and no one has seen or heard from her since. Suppose I get in touch with the grieving and worried parents of Joy Harris and they have not heard from the girl for a year. So what? The girls were bumming around the islands. What would be the jurisdiction? I would bet very large odds that very soon after Joy Harris told Howie about Pidge taking snapshots of her taking a sunbath on the bow, Howie worked out his freaky little deception, snapped Joy's spine, and flipped her into the sea along with her backpack, hiking boots, spare jeans and guitar."

Doris winced and made a gagging sound. "That's a little too vivid," she said.

"Sorry. There's another thing I should have figured out. She said that when the generator was on, she imagined she could hear Howie and Joy talking and laughing. It would be no big problem to wire up a tape player with an endless loop, in sequence with the generator so that it played whenever the generator ran. Howie is a member of the tape generation. They all fool around with components and editing and splicing. Hearing voices and laughter mingled in with a sound-that of an engine or water roaring into a tub or a noisy compressor-is one of the most common hallucinations."

A whole bright birdlike flock of little Marchman girls and friends came whirling and chirping into the garden area, asked permission to use the pool, and went darting off to change.

Doris asked me if I would stay for barbecue, and I said it was very nice to be asked, but my stomach felt as if somebody had slammed it shut. And I was not going to be very good company to have around. When she began to insist, Gabe interrupted and told me I had a rain check.

He walked me out to the car. He leaned against the high fender of Miss Agnes and said, "And what you want to do is take all the bits and pieces back and spread them out in front of Meyer and see what he says you should do."

"And hope that it's what I've already decided."

"Bring him out here with you when this is all over."

"Sure, Gabe, I'll do that. Thanks."

"And… bring that girl along too. Like to meet her."

As I drove away I wondered if Gabe could be mellowing. Where was the sour, savage, bitter man I had learned to know and to like? Then I realized that never before had I gone to him with something that affected me personally, deeply. So Gabe had the warmth and the strength when you had need for it. Otherwise, keep your guard up.

His advice as to how to spend the waiting time was good. Get geared up to be ready to nail Howie for something else. And make some air reservations.

"I took a shower," he said. "I am eating a steak as you can plainly see. A very skimpy little sawdusty steak, but a steak nonetheless. This will be the last night I shall be attended by Ella Marie. You can pick me up and take me home Tuesday noon. That is New Year's Day, I believe. If the prospect displeases, I can make other arrangements."

"You are better. And up to your old standards of unpleasantness."

"Let me know when I exceed them, please. Then I can back off a little. If you are wondering what this is, they started with green blotting paper, ran it through a shredder, soaked the pulp in bacon grease, and then pressed it into little molds so that it came out looking exactly like overcooked string beans. They have other esoteric-" He stopped and put his fork down. "I'm sorry. I was so busy showing off, I didn't really take a good look at you. What's happened, Travis?"

I got through the explanation about the pictures and my other discoveries. He took giant steps in logic which made detailed explanations of significance unnecessary.

He said, "Sorry to be so slow to see that something had you by the throat, my friend. Illness is an ego trip, especially after you begin to feel a little better. You turn inward. How do I feel right now compared to five minutes ago, an hour ago, yesterday? Is this pain in my hip connected with the infection? Is it something new? Why can't they come when I ring? All intensely personal. Petulant. To each one of us, the self is the most enchanting object in all creation. Sickness intensifies the preoccupation with self. And, of course, the true bore, the classic bore, is the person who is as totally preoccupied with himself all the time as the rest of us are when we are unwell. The woman who spends twenty minutes telling you of her last four experiments with hair styling, for example."

"I like that Spanish definition of yours better."

"Gian Gravina? A bore is a person who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company."

They came and got his tray. He got up cautiously, waved away the helping hand, and waddled slowly to the high bed. He operated the side buttons to give himself the perfect angle of repose, the right degree of support under the knees. And then he sighed. The sigh of tiredness and great accomplishment.

"Gabe said that-"

He stopped me with a hand slowly raised. His eyes were closed. "Let us think. Let us erase all past impressions and conceptions of Howard Brindle and then paint him back into our stage set without going too far, the other way, creating fangs, hair on the palms and the fetid odor of the great carnivore."

I tried to think. Linear logic was beyond me. My mind kept bouncing off the stone barriers of anxiety and running in circles. He was breathing deeply and steadily, and I wondered if he had fallen asleep.

"Marianne Barkley backed me into a corner right after the doctor's death and bent my ear into strange shapes with her dossier on Fred and Lois Harron," he said.

Sometimes there's no way of sidestepping her. She is a large lady who dresses in gypsy fashion and runs a small successful shop in the complex called Serendipitydoo. She sells yarn, needlepoint kits, creative pots, literature of the occult and Japanese prints. She works up detailed horoscopes, breeds Siamese cats, instructs in decoupage, gets around on a Honda and writes a weekly society gossip column for a throwaway called the Lauderdale Bystander. She knows everybody, has a certain fringe position in the old-settler social order and has outlived three husbands, all rumored to have been talked to death.

Meyer went on. "Twenty minutes of conversation boils down to pure soap opera. Dr. Harron had started to have some real trouble with the bottle. The doctor union was very close to closing the operating-room door. Booze had put the marriage in jeopardy for the usual reasons. His impotence making her wander afield, a few drunken beatings. Marianne suspected that a psychiatrist friend had recommended the long vacation aboard the Salamah. The whole point of her assault on me was to tell me how lucky Lois Harron was. Some mutual friends had tied up fairly near them in Spanish Wells and reported that Fred was getting so totally smashed all day every day, the Harrons had to hire a fellow to operate the ketch. Death by swimming accident left Lois pretty well fixed, she pointed out. The long slow death from booze would have meant professional disgrace and bad memories and no money left at all."

"It sounds more likely than the account Mrs. Harron gave me. But where are you going with it?"

"I'm linking it up with a conversation I had about that time. I can't remember who I was talking to. But they had an aura of reliability. Maybe somebody official. Something about a blood alcohol test in Nassau, and a mild astonishment that a man carrying that much load could stand up long enough to dive."

"Oh," I said. "But I don't think Lois Harron is a very good liar. She said that she and Howie were below and heard the crunch when he dived into the dinghy."

He opened his eyes. "Let's say they anchored off Little Harbor for a swim. All three of them swam. Fred Harron drank and swam and passed out on deck, loaded. And then Lois and Howie went below and took off their wet suits and had sex. Afterward, let's say that Lois drowsed off. Howie heard the dinghy swing in the tide and wind change and bump against the hull. He certainly knew the marriage situation. Maybe he wanted to do her a little favor. He could give such a great start it would wake her up and he could pretend to be agitated and say, 'What was that? What was that? Didn't you hear it? A big thumping noise. Maybe we pulled the hook.' He could yank his swim trunks on, hurry topside, take a quick look around at the empty sea, scoop the surgeon up and launch him headfirst into the dinghy, bawling to Lois to hurry up just as the doctor landed."

I got up and looked out his window into the early darkness. "A little favor for a lady, eh? Like killing a hornet, or parking her car in a narrow space, or helping her over a fence. Meyer, you never used to be able to think so badly of people."

"I used to lead a sheltered life. Does it fit, emotionally? Does the concept have internal logic?"

"Enough to give me the crawls. No proof possible. Ever."

"You take a turn. Try Susan from Texas."

"Okay. Erratic, neurotic, alienated. And hostile. So she located her father's boat somehow. Maybe she was still in contact with a friend in her hometown who would know. She moves aboard, pleads with Howie not to tell her folks. They become intimate. He likes living aboard boats. She is an added convenience. He doesn't have to go out and find a girl if he wants one. Maybe he never wants one badly enough to go to any great lengths to find one. But if one is right there, within reach, he'll reach when he feels any mild urge. Okay, so she thinks she'd got the leverage on two counts, letting her stay aboard and laying her. Hostility is the clue, maybe. A little lady lib mixed in. Do just what I want you to do, or I'll blow the whistle on you, Howard. And maybe she would anyway, because she was erratic. End of a convenient way of life. Big problem of where to live and what to do. So he turned her head a little further around than it is supposed to go, wired her into a weighted tarp, put her and her stuff into the launch by the dark of the moon, and probably deep-sixed her up one of the canals. How many of those freaky, wandering, bombed little girls disappear every year without a trace? Thousands? I don't know. But I think it adds up to a lot of them."

"Very nice," Meyer said. "It fits the same pattern. A casual response to a minor problem. Why do we like Howie Brindle?"

"Rhetorical question?"

"Not exactly. There is something childlike about him. A kind of placidity, a willingness to be moved about by events. You sense that he does not want to be an aggressor, to take anything you have from you by force. He is cheerful, without being at all witty. He loves to play games. He likes to be helpful. He watches a lot of daytime television. He has a short attention span. He won't dream up chores, but he'll do faithfully what you tell him to do, if you're explicit. His serious conversation, a rare phenomenon, seems to come from daytime televiion drama. He loves chocolate bars and beer. He doesn't want trouble of any kind, and he'll lie beaufully to get out of any kind of trouble. He has absolutely no interest in the world at large. Retarded? Hardly. I think he may have a better intelligence than he is willing to display. But something is wrong with him. For lack of a better word, call him a sociopath. They are very likable, plausible people. They make superb imposters, until they lose interest in the game of the moment. They form few lasting attachments. As a rule, they are liars, petty thieves, sometimes brawlers, but seldom are they killers. I can explain why they are so dangerous, the ones willing to kill. Because they are absolutely immune to polygraph tests. The polygraph measures fear, guilt, shame, anxiety. They don't experience these emotions. They can fake them by imitating the way the rest of us act under stress. But it's only an imitation. When the only thing in the world that concerns you is not getting caught, you would kill for very small reasons. In fact, murder that is the result of irritation plus casual impulse plus an elementary slyness is the most difficult to solve."

I went to the foot of the bed. "We've seen some of those, Meyer. Remember?"

"Not if I can help it."

"We like him because he's just a mischievous little kid."

"That's the ultimate simplification. Mommy gives all her time to new baby sister and won't make peanut butter sandwiches when you come home from school, so put the pillow over baby sister's little face and push down on it and listen to the clock going tick."

"But what the hell good is all this doing Pidge?"

"She doesn't fit the pattern of his other… solutions."

"No. This seems more complicated. Seems! It is. It's as if… he hasn't been able to figure out the best way to go-to kill her or drive her crazy."

"Remember his first and only rule. Don't get caught."

"So?"

"So if the ramifications of killing her made him cautious and indecisive a year ago, nothing has really changed so much. And you are in the equation now. He knows you talked to her about the things she couldn't comprehend and convinced her she had been hallucinating. I think that might be the best favor you could have done her."

"I don't understand."

"I'm thinking out loud. And not making much sense. Sorry. I think that if she were to confront him on this trip to American Samoa with his having tricked her into thinking she was losing her mind, she might not last the whole voyage."

"But you think she will?"

"My God, don't take my hunch for reality. She could be face down right now, off a lovely atoll, drifting down and down into that incredible turquoise blue, with Howie squatting and watching her sink, his only lament a vague disappointment at having to give up something of about the same pleasure quotient as a chocolate bar."

"Why are you-"

"Whoa! The veins in your neck are standing out. I had to steer you away from childish optimism. Remember, there is a very cold and strange entity that hides inside Howie Brindle. It is the imposter. He is the stage effect. It has refined the role until good ol' Howie knows all the tricks of quick acceptance, of generating fondness, of making people glad to help him out. The thing inside pulls the strings and pushes the little levers, and Howie does all your chores for you. Cheerfully."

"What the hell should I do?"

"First, stop yelling. Second, on your way out, tell them I am ready to go to sleep: Third, you could backtrack Howie a little bit further. Fourth. Hmmm. Fourth. Oh. Tom Collier comes into this thing too often to be shmmm… suggle…"

"Meyer?"

"Garf," he said softly, the "f" lasting on and on. His eyes were closed. I stared up through the ceiling, hands spread wide, and spun and left him there.