Part 3 (1/2)
”A block to the left, on this side. Gil's Kitchen. It's okay for lunch.”
We had lunch first. The place wasn't okay for lunch. Gil had a dirty kitchen. A fried egg sandwich was probably safe. We went from there to Texaco, which had some sort of budget rental deal, and I tested to see if I could get my knees under the wheel of the yellow Gremlin before giving him the Diner's Card. n.o.body will take a cash deposit on a car any more. It forces everybody into cards. As the world gets bigger, it gets a lot duller.
I asked him if he could tell me how to find Junction Park. He gave me a city map and marked the route.
The Gremlin did not have air, but it had some big vents. Meyer read the map and called the turns. It was easy to see the shape and history of Bayside, Florida. There had been a little town on the bay sh.o.r.e, a few hundred people, a sleepy downtown with live oaks and Spanish moss. Then International Amalgamated Development had moved in, bought a couple of thousand acres, and put in shopping centers, town houses, condominiums, and rental apartments, just south of town. Next had arrived Consolidated Construction Enterprises and done the same thing north of town. Smaller operators had done the same things on a smaller scale west of town. When downtown decayed, the town fathers widened the streets and cut down the shade trees in an attempt to look just like a shopping center. It didn't work. It never does. This was instant Florida, tacky and stifling and full of ugly and spurious energies. They had every chain food-service outfit known to man, interspersed with used-car lots and furniture stores.
Junction Park was inland and not far from a turnpike interchange. It had been laid, out with some thought to system and symmetry. Big steel buildings were placed in herringbone pattern, with big truck docks and parking areas. The tall sign at the entrance said that Superior Building Supplies was the fourth building on the right.
I parked and told Meyer to see what he could pick up at the neighbor establishments, a heating and air conditioning outfit, a ladder plant, and a boatbuilder.
I went into the front office of Superior Building Supplies. A slender and pretty girl in a dress made of ticking was taking file folders out of a metal file and putting them into a cardboard storage file. She straightened and looked at me and said in a nasal little voice, ”It isn't until Monday.”
”What isn't?”
”The special sale of everything. They're taking inventory over the weekend. And right now.”
”Going out of business?”
She went over to her desk and picked up a can of c.o.ke and drank several swallows. She gave me a long look of appraisal.
”We sure the h.e.l.l are,” she said finally. She shook her gingery hair back and wiped her pretty mouth with the back of her hand, then belched like any boy in the fifth grade.
A man came through the open door that led back to the warehouse portion. He had a clipboard in his hand. He was sweaty and he had a smudge of grease on his forehead. Lots of redbrown hair, carefully sprayed into position. Early thirties. Outdoor look. Western s.h.i.+rt with a lot of snaps and zippers. Whipcord pants. Boots. A nervous harried look and manner.
”We're not open for business, friend. Sorry. Joanna, find me the invoices on that redwood fencing, precut, huh?”
”Cheez, I keep telling you and telling you, it was Carrie knew where all that-”
”Carrie isn't here to help us, G.o.ddammit. So shake your a.s.s and start looking.”
”Listen, Harry, I don't even know if I'm going to get paid for this time I'm putting in, right?”
”Joanna, honey, of course you'll get your pay. Come on, dear. Please find the invoices for me?”
She gave him a long dark stare, underlip protruding. ”Buster, you've been talking just a little too much poremouth. Just a little too much. And you've been getting evil with me too often, hear? I think you better go doodle in your hat. I'm going to go get my hair done. I might come back and I might retire. Who knows?”
She slung her big leather purse over her shoulder. He tried to block her way to the door. He was begging, pleading, insisting. She paid no attention to him. There was no expression on her face. When he took hold of her arm she wrenched away and left, and the gla.s.s door swung shut.
Harry went over to a big desk and sat in the large red leather chair. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He sighed and looked at me and frowned. ”Friend, we are still not open for business. We are even less open than we were. Let me give you some sound advice. Never hump the help. They get uppity. They take advantage.”
”I came by to ask about Carrie Milligan.”
”She used to work here. She's dead. What's your interest?”
”I heard she was killed. I'm a friend of hers from Fort Lauderdale.”
”Didn't she used to live there?”
A bare-chested young man in jeans came out of the warehouse area and held up two big bolts. ”Mr. Has...o...b.. you want I should count every d.a.m.n one of these things? There's thousandsl”
”Hundreds. Count how many in five pounds and then, weigh all we got. That'll be close enough.”
The boy left, and Harry Has...o...b..shook his head and said, ”It's hard to believe she's dead. She worked day before yesterday. That's her desk over there. It happened so sudden. She really held this place together. She was a good worker, Carrie was. What did you say you want?”
”She came to see me two weeks ago. In Fort Lauderdale.”
He was so still I wondered if he was holding his breath. He licked his lips and swallowed and said, ”Two weeks ago?”
”Does that mean anything?”
”Why should it mean anything?”
I did not know where to go from there. The loan of money seemed all at once frail and implausible. I needed to find a better direction. ”She came to see me because she was in trouble.”
”Trouble? What kind of trouble?”
”She wanted to leave something with me for safekeeping. It happened it wasn't the best time for me to try to take care of anything for anybody. There are times you can, and times you shouldn't. I hated to say I couldn't. I was very fond of Carrie Milligan.”
”Everybody was. What did she want you to keep?”
”Some money.”
”How much?”
”She didn't say. She said it was a lot. When I heard about her being killed in that accident, I began to wonder if she'd found anybody to hold the money. Would you know anything about anything like that?”
Once again Harry went into his motionless trance, looking over my shoulder and into the faraway distance. It took him a long time. I wondered what he was sorting, weighing, appraising.
At last he shook his head slowly. ”My G.o.d, I wouldn't have believed it. She must have been in on it.”
”In on what?”
He undid a snap and a zipper and fingered a cigarette out of his Western pocket, popped it against a thumbnail, lit it and blew out a long plume of smoke. ”Oh, s.h.i.+t, it's an old story. It happens all the time. You never expect it to happen to you.”
”What happened?”
”What's your name again?”
”McGee. Travis McGee.”
”Don't ever go partners with anybody McGee. That's my second piece of advice for you today. Jack and I had a good thing going here. My good old partner, Jack Omaha. It wasn't exactly a fantastic gold mine, but we lived very well for quite a few years. And then the a.s.s fell right off the construction business. We had to cut way back. Way way back. Trying to hold out until conditions improve. I think we might have made it. Things are looking a little bit better. I've always been the sales guy and Jack was the office guy. Anyway, he took off two weeks ago last Tuesday. On May fourteenth. Know what he was doing before he took off? Selling off warehouse stock at less than cost. Letting the bills pile up. Turning every d.a.m.ned thing into money. The auditors are trying to come up with the total figure. I'm a bankrupt. Good old Jack. Come to think of it, I guess he had to have Carrie's help to clean the place out. She only worked two days that week. Monday and Friday. Went out sick Monday afternoon. Came back in Friday. That was the day I finally decided Jack hadn't just gone fis.h.i.+ng, that maybe he was gone for good. When did you see Carrie?”
”Thursday.”
”It figures. I never figured her for anything like that. Even though she and Jack did have something going. No great big thing. It was going on for maybe three years, like ever since she started working for us. Just a little something on the side now and then. An over-nighter. What we used to do, we'd send the girls, Carrie and Joanna, on another flight up to Atlanta, and then Jack and me would go up to catch the Falcons and stay in the HJ's next to the stadium. Just some laughs.”