Dead Low Tide, page 6
I thanked her and walked nine million miles down the beach. The Gulf was a sparkling blue, and the sand was pale cream. A one-legged gull landed and gave me a ruffled, evil look. He was all white, with a black head like a penguin. A line of pelicans went by, wings still, bellies inches from the water, looking straight ahead, and all brooding about prehistory and the dull taste little fishes have had for the last thousand years. And no matter what I did, I was still getting closer to the blanket.
I glanced ahead and saw that I had been wrong about the figure. It wasn’t prone, it was supine, and clad only below the waist. I wondered dimly why any woman should want to get her bosom tanned. She had little red plastic cups on her eyes, and she was well greased. I coughed and looked out to sea.
“Why, Andy!” she cried. “No, don’t look yet. Now.”
She was back into her halter and sitting up. “What is it, dear?” she asked. “You look awful guilty.”
“Well—” I started. I was doing fine. Writing a truly great script for myself. “Well—it’s John. There’s been …” I stopped. I was damned if I was going to say there’d been an accident. It’s one of those situations where anything you say sounds as if they’d start selling soap just after you finished. I dropped to my knees on the corner of her blanket, sat back on my heels, and took her hand. In spite of the sun, her fingers were frosty.
She looked at me with a child’s soberness in her eyes. “He’s dead,” she said in a small voice.
“Yes.”
She pulled her hand away and stood up. “I’ve got to go to him. Where is he?”
“They don’t want you to go to him. It’s not—very pleasant. They want to know where you want him taken. You can see him there.”
“Taken?” She looked dazed. “Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, he has to be taken somewhere, doesn’t he? Dangerfield’s, I guess. On Jacaranda Street. It’s next to—But they’ll know, won’t they? And I’ve been here in the sun—telling myself that everything would be …” She went down on the blanket like a doll tossed onto a bed. She fell awkwardly and cried awkwardly, and I patted her greasy shoulder and took my hand back and wiped it on the blanket, while she moaned, “Oh, oh, oh, oh.”
Women have many kinds of tears. There’s a kind they use on you, a contrived and delicate weapon that leaves them looking pretty. And there’s a healthy, lusty, snorting, boohooing brand that leaves them reddened, puffy, moist, happy, and beautifully relaxed. In that case it seems to be a form of self-therapy. Then there are the tears of agony, which must feel like acid. The gray and twisted tears, when they don’t know or care how they look. When you can walk them back to the house, as I walked Mary Eleanor back, and they stumble and lean on you and don’t know who you are, or care. I led her inside and made her lie down, and I darkened the room and sat near her until Dr. Graman could arrive. She rolled her head from side to side, and her thin fingers kneaded her flat brown belly, and not knowing, you could have thought she was in acute physical pain.
Graman came quickly. He gave me a distant, sour, who-are-you-sir look, and assembled a sterile hypo. He was real pretty. He looked a lot like Rita Hayworth wearing a false mustache. He had heard about John Long five minutes before I called, and I had caught him as he was leaving his home to come to see Mary Eleanor. He led me to understand that he could handle things, that she would go to sleep, that he would have a nurse come over, and I could depart.
I wasted no time driving from the house down to Key Estates. A police car was parked just inside the entrance and a uniformed young man with his thumbs in his belt stood astride the road until I had identified myself. A hundred yards down the drive I passed John’s Cadillac. I went out onto the end of the finger and parked near several other cars, one of which was a police sedan, and another I recognized as belonging to Jack Ryer, local newscaster, local columnist, local wire-service correspondent, local intermittent legman for the Ledger when fat stories broke, local man about town, and—according to my sources—competent local collector of female scalps, though not of the bundle-and-brag school. I have bent elbows with him and he is a most pleasant drinking, poker, and fishing companion, though many consider his charm to be applied with a shade too clumsy a spatula, and there are those who say that he laughs with a very cold eye indeed. He is what is called clean cut and well set up, and they say he is not long for our town, as he has that integrated manner of a national phenomenon.
He came around the corner of the house nearest completion, and he was wearing his abnormally alert look, yet under the look was a grayness like the cinder blocks. He stood and lit a cigarette and had to move the match a half inch to the left to get it close enough to the cigarette. He looked at me and then said, “Yo, Andy.”
“Where is he?”
“Other side of the house.” Jack sat down on a cinder block and licked his lips and studied the toes of his shoes.
The ambulance came crawling down the new blacktop behind me. I went around the corner of the house. Chief Wargler looked at me, and said, “You’re McClintock. Tell her, did you?”
“And called a doctor. He’s to go to Dangerfield’s.”
“I figured so.” He was wide and he blocked out what the coroner was bending over. Other men stood around with that particularly useless and thoughtful expression worn in the sight of sudden and violent death.
I moved around Wargler. John lay on his back, his head braced at an oddly nauseating angle against a lumber pile. One leg was outstretched and the other leg was doubled up, the knee canted outward. Beside him was one shoe, the sock laid across it. A pale gray sock with a chinese-red clock. He wore a white shirt and gray slacks. There was a great deal of blood. He looked smaller, and older, and grayer, and shrunken. From the throat socket, at an angle, protruded the gleaming stainless-steel haft of the sort of harpoon they use in skin fishing. His right foot was bare. Near the coiled fingers of his right hand lay a Hawaiian rig. I saw the scratch in the metal where I had banged it on a rock. I saw everything clearly. Every pebble and tiny fragment of white sun-hot shell, and every splinter on the edges of the boards in the wood pile. His face was turned so that the eyes, dry of moisture, seemed to look at the haft of the slim harpoon. There is seldom expression on the faces of the dead. Or perhaps, there is only one expression, always. A look of austere, remote, and yet humble dignity. As though they say, “All along I knew I was clay. Now see me and know thyself.”
The white shirt was unbuttoned and peeled back from the left shoulder. The coroner reached down and pulled the thermometer from the armpit. He looked at it and looked at his watch. He was a small man with a look of eternal indignation.
“With the goddamn sun,” he muttered to himself, “and the heat, who can tell a goddamn thing? Sometime between midnight and five-thirty, or maybe even six.”
I looked at my rig and I nibbled the tip of my tongue. What to do? Point and say, “Hey, that’s mine!”
Maybe you do. Maybe there are a lot of people in the world who go around instinctively doing the logical, uncompromising thing. Maybe they haven’t any imagination, too. I’m always blundering around paying so much attention to what other people could think, that I’m always balanced on a rough rail of indecision, tarred and feathered with my own doubts.
I lit a cigarette and it tasted like burned farina. I found out that there are two ways of gagging. One is in the throat—a very ugly spasm. The other one is back in the mind, and you wish it were in your throat.
The coroner fussed and muttered and wrote things down. Two frail clerical men brought the basket woven of metal straps. They set it down, argued about the harpoon and what to do until the coroner, in a fury of impatience, wedged the heavy body over onto its side, grasped the bloodied barb, and pulled the haft quickly and neatly through the torn wound.
Wargler said, in his buzzing voice, “By Henry, when I get around one of these days to killing myself, I’d sooner stick this here muzzle in my mouth than pig-stick myself with that darn thing. George, Marvin got all his pitchers. You set that wicked thing in the back of the sedan. You there. Take that shoe and sock along. George, you and—you there, McClintock, give those puny fellas a lift on that now they got him strapped in. John was hefty.”
We grunted up with it and slid it in. Wargler came over and said to the driver, “He goes to Dangerfield’s, and you there, you tell Billy Dangerfield to make John look perty enough real quick so his missus can come identify.”
Six
EVEN BEFORE I GOT BACK to the office, it was becoming apparent to me that the firm of John Long, Contractors, Inc., was in a fine mess. It would have been all O.K., and if not O.K., at least a hell of a lot better, if John Long had been less secretive about his business affairs. At no time had I been given any overall picture of what was going on. I had my routine chunk. Steve Marinak had a portion. Another law firm, and a firm of accountants in Tampa, had some more. And apparently Harvey Constanto of the Gulf Savings and Trust knew a little more. But no one of us had enough of the jigsaw pieces to make the whole puzzle.
All I knew was that there was a lot of stuff on order, a lot of stuff on hand, a fat payroll to meet, and a dingy little bank balance with which to meet it. Whenever the operating balance had begun to get low, John would make a deposit from another account. If Key Estates was going to continue, somebody would have to fatten the kitty. I hoped that somebody, somewhere, would find a report from John describing exactly how he operated.
I parked near the office. I could see Joy Kenney in there typing away. I could see a woman waiting to see me. I sat in the car for a few minutes, wondering how it was to hold that barbed razor against your throat and release the friction trigger with your bare toe. Would you shut your eyes? It was sickening. Maybe he had wanted to talk to me. Waited around, wandered around the place, found my rig and took it off the nail, and then decided there wasn’t anything to say, after all. And I’d come back with Christy, and he had gone out the back and hurried away. Then, perhaps, he’d gone out to take a look at the big dream, take a look at Key Estates, which had been going to turn him into a rich man.
I could sense that the whole town was buzzing with it. I could see people standing in shop doorways, looking over at me and at the office. I went on into the office. Joy glanced up at me and murmured good morning and I knew at once that she knew. Her face was waxy. She looked through those eyes at me, and I felt as if the eyes were both long tunnels, and she was crouched ’way back in there, looking through the tunnels, hiding back there where nobody could find out what she thought or felt.
The one who was waiting was the lady who wanted to build the motel. Happy Saturday morning. She was wound up tight. No salutation. No weather comments. “Young man, all day yesterday I thought about the rudeness of Mr. Long and the way he turned me down after promising to build for me, and I wish you to inform him that I have seen my attorney and if he knows what is good for him, he will go ahead with what he promised to do. I am not accustomed to being spoken to in the manner in which he spoke to me, and furthermore, I—” She stopped and stared at me, aware that I was trying to say something. “What is it? Has he reconsidered?”
“He’s dead.”
She stared at me some more and then sat down a bit bonelessly. “Oh, dear. He was such a nice man. An accident?”
“He—uh—committed suicide sometime very early this morning.”
“Oh, dear. Dreadful. Dreadful!” She got up and fooled with the clasp of her handbag and made a vague about-face, and headed toward the door. “Oh, dear,” she said again, and the screen door hissed and closed after her.
Joy looked at me across the top of the typewriter. “The girl from the dress shop came over and told me.”
“Little round girl?”
“Yes.”
“That’s Nate. Natalia. She’s a Russian.”
“Oh.”
“I went out there.”
“I thought maybe you did.”
“I can’t quite—take it all in. As though any minute he’ll walk in. A very lusty alive guy.”
“He—he seemed to be.”
“I guess he was sick.”
“I couldn’t understand what he did it with.”
“One of those things they use to shoot fish underwater.”
“Like a gun?”
“More like one of those crossbows, only without the bow part. Surgical rubber instead. In the—uh—throat.”
“He—did it to himself, then?” she asked. Her mouth worked soundlessly.
“I can’t see somebody walking up and doing it to him, if that’s what you mean. He had his shoe and sock off so he could work the trigger with his toe.”
Looking at her as I explained it, I could have sworn that I saw a lot of tension go out of her. She half closed her eyes and seemed to sway a little. I got up quickly and went to her. “You all right?”
She gave me an almost formal smile. “Yes. Thank you.” I went back and sat down.
The door was yanked open and Gordy Brogan came steaming in. He came over and put his hands flat on my desk and looked down at me. He is an Irishman, professional variety. Peat bog, potato famine, when Irish eyes are smiling in a whisky tenor, smoky whisky and all. As he is at least fourth generation, he has had to develop his own brogue. It isn’t genuine, but it gives the impression.
“By God, Andy, this is hell!” he said. He was too upset to remember the brogue.
“It’s rough. Sit down.”
He sat, his blue eyes intensely serious, for once. “What’s going to happen?”
“You guess.”
“Man, I’m done out there in a little over a week. Where was I going?”
“He was going to haul you over to Key Estates.”
“And now?”
“Stop asking me. I don’t know. The operating funds will run for maybe three weeks.”
“Why does a man go and do a thing like that to himself, I’m asking you?” The brogue had begun to reappear.
“You do it when you have reasons, they tell me.”
“And his little lady? And how is she bearing up?”
“Not good.”
“Aaa, the poor little thing. It’s alone she is now.” He suddenly became aware of the sound of a typewriter and looked over at Joy. “Say, I was wondering what lovely girl voice it was answering the phone when I called.”
“Miss Kenney, Mr. Brogan,” I said.
“It is an improvement, indeed,” he said, beaming. And then he apparently remembered John Long again, and his face became lugubrious. “The best I can do, lad, is go back out and finish my job, I see.”
“That makes sense. They were paying on the basis of percentage of completion, but they weren’t paying into our operating account. The last quarter payment is due as soon as they inspect and accept.”
“We’ll carry on for John, God rest his soul.” He went out and climbed into the pickup truck and rattled back toward his job.
I hadn’t the slightest idea of what to do. Close the office—Was that what you were supposed to do? I wanted somebody around to tell me what to do. My executive talent had a few mothholes in it. Disuse, perhaps.
I got up, and said, “Hold the fort, Joy. We’ll close up at noon. I’ll be back. If anybody wants me, I’ll be at Mr. Marinak’s office.”
“Shall I call and make sure he’s in?”
I went to the door and looked diagonally across the street and up at the second-story office. I saw the wild flare of a shirt through the window. “He’s in.”
I went over and up the stairs, and Steve’s gaunt girl told me I could go on in.
Steve gave me a quick glance and said, a bit too heartily, “Set, Andy.”
“You know about it, of course.”
“I know about it. What’s on your mind?”
“I want to know what happens now.”
“In what way?”
“With the business. The operating funds are a little feeble. But it is a corporation, I understand. Who makes the decisions now?”
“We don’t know. Not until we get an order to open his lock box over at Gulf Savings and see if there’s a will in there. He held the controlling interest. Mary Eleanor owns about thirty per cent of the outstanding shares. I’ve got a few. Harvey Constanto has a few.”
“You don’t know if there’s a will?”
“He never made one out with me. That isn’t saying there isn’t one. He never let anybody know all his business. If he died intestate, the court will appoint an executor, probably Gulf Savings. Mary Eleanor will have the controlling interest. Until it’s settled up, the executor will be able to release funds from other accounts to keep the business rolling. We’ll have a sort of a directors’ meeting once we find out how the shares are split up.”
“What would you suggest I do, Steve?”
“Carry on. What else? And you have got that contract you—asked for.”
“Actually, Steve, I didn’t ask for it. He insisted.”
I could detect a faint unpleasant aroma of unfriendliness. “That isn’t what you told me, Andy.”
“I know. I’m sorry about that. Poor judgment.”
“You’re sitting pretty.”
“I don’t just know as I care much for your tone.”
“Suit yourself.”
We stared at each other and then he smiled apologetically. “Hell, I’m sorry. I’m just damn upset, that’s all. I want to kick something. You were handy. Truce?”
“Sure. I know what you mean. I’m ready to bite, too.”
“I tried to get hold of Mary Eleanor. Some woman told me she’s sleeping.”
“That’s the nurse, I guess. Graman gave her a shot.”
“She that bad?”
“I was there. She’s real bad.”
“That’s damn funny,” he said, talking half to himself. “They haven’t been getting along worth a—” He caught himself, looked embarrassed.
“I thought they were getting along fine,” I said.
“Skip it.”
“Sure, Steve.”
