The Dreadful Lemon Sky Part 10

"That isn't a word I would have chosen."

"Once you face up to reality, everything is easier."

From time to time the rain came down with such a roar we couldn't hear each other. Wind buffeted the Flush, thudding her against the fenders I had put out and made fast to the pilings. Then the rain steadied down into a hard, continuing downpour. I opened two cans of chili, and Meyer doctored the brew with some chopped hot pickled peppers and some pepper seeds. He does not approve of chili unless the tears are running down his cheeks while he eats. His specialty, Meyer's Superior c.o.c.ktail Dip, is made with dry Chinese mustard moistened to the proper consistency with Tabasco sauce. The unsuspecting have been known to leap four feet straight up into the air after scooping up a tiny portion on a potato chip. Strong men have come down running and gone right through the wall when they missed the open doorway.

It was a good night to stay aboard. It was a good night to conjecture, to try various possible patterns of human behavior and see how well they fit, much like kids in the attic trying on old uniforms, wearing old medals.

I got out charts of the Caribbean and worked out alternate routes from Bayside to Kingston and to Montego Bay. It was easier to route back in pre-Castro days. (Maybe everything was easier.) I made it 650, if you were a straight crow. But avoiding Fidel's air s.p.a.ce with enough of a margin of comfort made it 1,000 miles. No great problem for the huskier variety of private aircraft, provided fuel was available at the Jamaica end.

So add in the Bertram. From predawn to after dark would give you, say sixteen hours. Allowing for variations in wind and weather and the size of the seas, call it an outside distance of 120 or 130 out and the same back. That would also allow some time at the far end, for rendezvous.

As I had to start somewhere, I picked 220 mph for the aircraft cruising speed. Give it an hour at the far end for ga.s.sing and loading. Ten hours would do it. Leave in daylight, return by daylight. Okay, so why push the boat so hard? Probably two reasons. First, because the seas close to Florida are so full of small craft, you have to go a long way to get out of the traffic. Second, once you are in open empty water, you are too hard to find from the air. So you have to head for some distinctive land ma.s.s that the aircraft can find without too much trouble.

I drew a 130-mile half circle on the chart, with the point of the compa.s.s at Bayside. Of the areas included, I was willing to vote for the north side of Grand Bahama, over away from the folks and the casinos, where the water is tricky. Big stuff goes way north to come around into the Tongue of the Ocean. Little stuff stays inside, south of Grand Bahama. If they picked a tiny island off the north sh.o.r.e, a pilot could orient himself by the configuration of Grand Bahama, head for the tiny island, and the rendezvous point could be, for example, a mile north of that crumb of land.

If they had a source in the Bahamas for the Jamaican weed, then I was wrong. But that was not likely. Too much risk and too low a margin.

And our Freddy Van Harn had an airstrip and a hangar. And he was Jack Omaha's lawyer. Chris Omaha's lawyer. Lawyer for Superior. Lawyer for Carrie, and Susan, and the marina.

"The invisible ma.s.s," Meyer said, "distorting the orbits."

"Distorting the orbits, or removing the planets?"

"But why?" Meyer asked.

"You know, that's really a rotten question."

"It has to be answered. Otherwise there's nothing."

"Let's find out first if he has an airplane."

"How?"

"The direct approach. Let's go look. Very very early tomorrow."

Somebody came hurrying out of the rain and boarded the Flush. We both heard the warning bell. I snapped on the aft floods, and through the rain curtain we saw Joanna scuttle close to the door for shelter. She was holding a package.

I let her in. She was one very damp lady. "Hey!" she said. "This is such a rotten Sat.u.r.day night, all things considered, I decided we ought to have some kind of celebration. Okay?" She turned and put her package on the table, her back to me. "And it just so happens-"

There was a huge white ringing crash, blinding light, deafening sound, and I was spun and dropped into darkness, hands out to break the fall that never ended...

I opened my eyes and looked up at a white ceiling. There was an annoying whining ringing sound going on which made it difficult to think clearly. I looked back up over my head and saw the familiar white tubular headboard of your average hospital bed and thought, Oh, Christ, not again! A quarter millimeter at a time I rolled my head to the left and saw a narrow solitary window with the venetian blinds almost but not quite closed. A white floor lamp beside the window was turned on. The chair in front of the window was empty. My head made a funny sound against the pillow as I rolled it back into place. I brought up from beneath the covers a slow brown enormous hand and willed it to feel of my head. It felt bandage and then moved dumbly back to lie inert against my chest. So. The other arm worked. Both legs worked. I wished somebody would turn off the ringing. I rolled my head to the right and saw a closed door. A long sigh ended in sleep.

I woke up. The ringing was not quite as loud. There was night instead of suns.h.i.+ne between the slats of the blind. I thought nothing had changed until I found I couldn't move my right arm. I turned my head and studied the arm. It was strapped to a board. There was a needle in the vein inside my elbow. The needle was taped in place. I saw a rubber tube that went up to a bottle hanging over me. It seemed to be about half empty. The stuff in it was gray-white and semitransparent. I reached around in my head for the nurse word: IV Meaning... intravenous. Meaning I was having dinner.

After considerable fumbling around I found a push b.u.t.ton safety-pinned where I was least likely to be able to reach it with my left hand. But I managed, and I thumbed it down.

After a few minutes the door was slung open and a dainty little white-haired nurse about fifty years old came trotting in. "Oh, hey!" she said. "Oh, good!" Then she said something I couldn't hear because of the ringing.

"What? Somebody turn off the d.a.m.n bell." She leaned close. She laughed. "Bell? It's in your ears, sweetie. From the bomb."

"Bomb?"

She checked the IV and said, "You're doing okay here. They're not going to have to go into your skull, sweetie. Now be patient. I'm supposed to get Dr. Owings to check you."

"Where am I?"

"Ask your doctor, sweetie." And she was gone, the door hissing slowly shut behind her.

Dr. Owings really took his time. I found out later that he was out of the hospital. And I found out that one Harry Max Scorf wanted to be present when I came out of it, if I came out of it.

After an hour, Dr. Hubert Owings came in, wearing that familiar look of the distracted, overworked professional. If you ordered a doctor type from central casting, they wouldn't have sent Hubert. He looked like a cowhand in a cigarette ad, even to the lock of hair falling forward across the hero forehead. The man who followed him in was small and spare and old. He wore a thick ugly gray suit, a frayed and soiled s.h.i.+rt in a faded candy stripe. It was b.u.t.toned at the throat, but he wore no tie. He wore a gleaming white ranch hat, the Harry Truman model, and, as I found out later, gleaming black boots. His face was small, withered, and colorless.

"Mr. McGee," said my doctor irritably, "Captain Scorf may want to read you your rights."

"Now, Hube," Scorf said in a plaintive voice, "it's nothing like that. Son, I'm Harry Max Scorf, and I just want to know if you'll freely and willingly answer any questions I might have about the death of Miss Freeler."

I stared at him. "Miss Freeler?"

"Captain, if you would just sit over there and let me handle the usual questions?"

"Sure, Hube. Sure thing."

Hube shone a sharp little light into my eyes, first one and then the other. "Your name?"

I gave it at once. He straightened up and stared down at me in perplexity. I didn't know what was wrong, and then like an echo, I heard my voice giving my name, rank and serial number.

"I don't know why I did that," I said.

"What do you remember doing last?"

"While waiting for you, doctor, I've been trying to remember. The last thing I know is that I was standing in a very heavy rain under a banyan tree, and a little white dog on a screened porch was barking at me. I was on my way to see... someone at Fifteen Hundred Seaway Boulevard, and I don't know if I ever got there. I don't know how I got here, or why. This is Bayside?"

"It is. You were brought in unconscious with a severe concussion and a deep laceration on the back of your head, triangular, with a flap of scalp dangling."

"What about Meyer?"

"At the time you were brought in-"

What about Meyer!"

"He's jes' fine," Harry Max Scorf said.

"Thanks, Captain."

Looking annoyed, Hube said, "If you'd remained unconscious any longer we were going to have to-"

"What day is this?"

"Thursday evening. Nine thirty on Thursday evening, Mr. McGee. The sixth day of June."

"For the love of-"

"Hold still, please. I'm trying to check you." I became aware for the first time of the catheter. He sent Scorf out of the room for no good reason while he uncoupled me from the input and output tubes. He asked me if I thought I could stand up, as if I felt like trying to stand up. I did, in the ridiculous hospital long bib, and walked carefully and shakily around the bed and got back in, sweating with the effort it had taken.

He left me with Scorf, saying, "If you feel you are getting too tired, just say so, and the captain will leave."

After the door closed, Scorf said, "Now just why did you and your friend come up here from Lauderdale, McGee?"

"No answers at all, Captain. Not until the blanks are filled in. What happened? I remember now that Joanna's last name was Freeling."

"Freeler. Now what I know about the bomb comes from the two experts we had come in and check it all over. You and Meyer were on your houseboat Sat.u.r.day night. It was raining hard. That girl came aboard with a package. She put it on the table and bent over it to unwrap it. It went off. You and your friend were lucky because you were both standing behind her and not too far apart, so her body took the major force of the explosion. It blew the girl practically into two halves. She never knew what happened. It knocked both of you down, you and Meyer. You hit your head and he didn't. He lost the hearing in one ear, but they think it's coming back."

"What did it do to the boat?"

"Blew out all the gla.s.s. Blew a small hole in the deck, and blew a great big hole in the overhead, like ten feet by ten feet. Then it rained into the hole all night long. It's a mess. They're working on it now."

"They?"

"At that Westway Harbor Marina. Jason and Oliver and a friend of theirs. With Meyer helping."

"Where's Meyer?"

"Waiting for me to get out of here. He got called the first thing. Anyway, it was what they call a primitive-type bomb."

"Primitive?"

"No timing device or anything like that. They explained it to me after they found enough to know how it probably worked. The package vwas about so big, tied with string. There were four sticks of dynamite in there, taped together and taped into place. There was a battery and a cap and a little switch, a contact switch. What the fella who made it did, he stuck a thick piece of cardboard between the switch terminals. Then he tied string to the cardboard and led the string out a hole in the side of the box and fastened it to the string he tied around the box. So anybody unties it and pulls the string off, they pull that cardboard out and contact is made and it all goes bam. It went off about eight inches from the middle of that girl. Bombs are so d.a.m.ned ugly and messy. I can't get inside the head of folla who'd use a bomb."

"Who are you, anyway?"

"Harry Max Scorf."

"I mean your official capacity."

"Oh, I should have said. I'm with the City and County of Bayside. Used to be just with the County. What I am, I'm kind of a special inveotigator. Odds and ends of this and that. I work when I please and how I please."

"Must be nice."

"It's worse than having hours. A man works longer. Then again, there isn't anything I'd rather be doing. No family. No hobbies. Tuesday I drove on down to Fort Lauderdale and I walked around that Bahia Mar Marina and asked questions about you and Meyer. You don't seem to have much visible means of support, McGee."

"Salvage work. Here and there. It's spotty."

"I combed every dang inch of what's left of your houseboat."

"What's left of it!"

"Steady there. It floats. I came to a conclusion."

"Which is?"

"I don't really think you came up here to straighten out the distribution of pot in Bayside County."

"Thanks, Scorf."

"Somebody will come along soon. No place along the coast can stay amateur. They'll take in the ones who'll play along and kill those that won't, and turn it from nickles and dimes into big money, like it is other places. I thought they were already here. Maybe they are. But it's not you and Meyer."

"Why not?"

"Because the job calls for running the hard stuff, and running women, and selling to everybody, grannies and little kids. It calls for buying the law and buying the courts, and you and Meyer are quick enough in your own way and hard enough in your own way, but you got stopping places that are way short of what it takes. If you got a stubborn bartender and you bust both his arms and change his face, the replacement bartender is willing to do business with you. Bars are a nice distribution point for off-premises use."

"Are you working on a book?"

"Don't get snotty with an old man. I could write one."

"Why are we here?"

"Well, Harry Has...o...b..has one story, and that Miss Dobrovsky, she's got another, and Jack Omaha's wife has another. They add up to Carolyn Milligan having been a friend of yours. But if you thought the girl was killed, and you came here to find out who did it and why, and you didn't check in with us and show credentials-which you haven't got-then you're in trouble, aren't you?"

"I know she was killed and so do you. I just wonder if it was entirely an accidental death. That's all."

"And you wanted to attend the service?"

"Right!"

"Now you lunged at that like a ba.s.s, boy."

"Remember, I hit my head when somebody killed Joanna."

"We can set here and josh each other from now till the end of time. And you can duck and bob and weave all you want. The thing I've got the most of is time. If somebody did kill Carolyn on purpose, who is your guess?"

"Shouldn't this be some kind of a trade?"

"It is. You've been busy. You've been lying to people. Maybe you've been obstructing justice, or concealing the evidence of a crime, or impersonating an officer. Things like that. I won't act on any of that, at least right now. That's the trade."

"Take me in, officer. Read me my rights."

He sighed and shoved his white hat farther back on his head. "Well, let's see now. What have I got to trade? How about this? So far we've kept a lid on that autopsy on Cal Birdsong. It was heart, all right. But Doc Stanyard didn't like the way it looked, that big soft clot in the pleural cavity and no real sign of any aneurysm. He checked it slow and small and found that something went into there on Cal's left side, between the ribs, smaller than a knitting needle or an ice pick. It could have been a piece of stiff piano wire, sharpened to a needle point. A person could roll it between thumb and forefinger like one of those Chinese needles, to make it go in easy. The heart really hops around in there when it beats. Run that needle in there back and forth a couple of times, and you'd probably pick an artery open or puncture the sac around the heart or mess up a valve somehow. Doc found the entrance track and laid it open and took slides. I saw them this morning, all developed. The track shows up nice."

"And what was Birdsong doing?"

"Seems he was dog tired. They tried to keep him awake on account of his being hit on the head. They don't like people sleeping with head injuries. But he was p.o.o.ped and he slept hard. And forever. It wouldn't probably wake him, just that little p.r.i.c.kle when it went through the skin."

"Does his wife know this?"