Part 11 (1/2)
”She was one of the ones with him. We're keeping the lid on while we watch how people act.”
”One of the ones with him?”
”That's all the trading material you get for now. Your turn.”
”You probably know everything I could tell you.”
”Try me.”
”Well... Adding two and two, the Christina came in on May fourteenth, on Tuesday night, with over eight hundred pounds of marijuana aboard. Just two people went out before dawn on Tuesday: Jack Omaha and Cal Birdsong. Sometimes Carrie Milligan went, but she didn't go that day because she was sick and said she would be in when she felt well enough. I would guess that Carrie went to Westway Harbor that night in a panel delivery truck owned by Superior Building Supplies. The boat is docked in a good area for privacy. It's beyond the range of the dock lights, but you can drive up close to it. The gra.s.s was loaded onto the truck. Carrie took it to Fifteen Hundred Seaway Boulevard. After it was offloaded, Mr. Walter Demos took over, and he paid Carrie in cash for the delivery at the rate of a hundred dollars a pound. My guess is that she drove down to Superior and parked the truck where she had picked it up. She had left her own car there. Standard procedure was for her to put the money from Demos into the office safe. She and Jack Omaha had the combination. End of trade. Anything new?”
”Here and there,” he said comfortably. ”Here and there. Of course you spoiled any chance of us finding anything at all by scragging Demos in his big love nest. There won't be a sc.r.a.p anywhere.”
”He's anxious to... wait a second. It fades in and out, like a bad projection bulb. Sorry. My memory quits when it comes to Demos. Your turn,” I added.
”Let me see. Oh, here's something you wouldn't know. In that rain Sat.u.r.day night somebody had left off a package on the porch of the cottage, well back under the overhang, for Joanna Freeler. Betty Joller told me that when Joanna came home she knew what was in the package. She said it was some wine and cheese and like that, for a snack, a present from somebody who couldn't keep a date that night. Now there was just going to be the three of them in the cottage that night. Joanna and Betty Joller and Natalie Weiss. I think it was intended for the package to be opened with the three of them there. Instead, on an impulse, that girl came running through the rain with it. She was a girl who'd rather be with men than girls any time. Your turn, McGee.”
I thought it over and then I decided, What the h.e.l.l, why not? I went through the whole Carrie Milligan death item by item, stressing the illogic of her supposed behavior, the ga.s.sing of her car the previous day, and the signs of fresh tampering with the gas tank drain c.o.c.k.
He glared down at a freckled fist and said, ”Even after years, you miss the d.a.m.nedest things. You know, I decided that what she was going to do was cross the road and walk to a lighted house and ask to use the phone. With her purse setting there on the front seat in an unlocked car? Nonsense! It was right there and I missed it cold.” He thought it over, and finally said, ”That would do for now.”
”You owe me one.”
”I don't have any more to trade.” He was distracted by the conjectures swarming in his head. He wanted to be up and off and away. I had put him onto the possibility of a new pattern.
He stood up. I said, ”When do you lock me up?”
He focused on me completely and silently. Harry Max Scorf was no figure of fun. He was one hard and determined little man.
”I'll do whatever needs to be done,” he said, and turned and left, tugging his hat to the correct angle as he went through the doorway. Before the door had wheezed entirely shut, Meyer came bursting in, grinning.
Ten.
”WELCOME BACK!” said Meyer.
”Thanks. What about the Flush?”
”It floats.”
”Really, how is it?”
”There's nothing that about ten thousand dollars can't fix. Don't worry about it.”
”Good G.o.d, what's left of it?”
”Don't worry about it. You do a lot of talking about the way possessions hold us all in thrall. Pretty things are chains and shackles.”
It made me gloomy. I could see a listing hulk with huge holes, with wisps of smoke rising from the interior debris. And it worried me that I should care that much. The important loss was the death of that lively girl. Blown in half. Into two girl parts. Such a great and bitter waste.
I realized that if the Flush were entirely gone, if it had burned to the waterline and sunk, I would be able to adjust more easily than to the uncertainty. Baubles and toys should disappear, not become broken litter.
Meyer sat beside the bed. He looked like an apprehensive owl as he said, ”I kept wondering what the h.e.l.l to do if you didn't wake up. People stay in a coma for years. They seem to have families to look after them.”
”And you could see yourself stuck?”
”I could see myself tottering down to the drugstore saying, Yep, he's still asleep. Been nineteen year now. Gimme some more of that goo for bedsores.”
”Look, I blank out during my walk that Sat.u.r.day afternoon. Tell me about Joanna.”
He told me. I could not make it seem real. It was easier to make the service seem real. They did the same thing for her as they did for Carrie. One less girl in a long dress to throw flowers. Good-bye, my sister Joanna. Her widower father attended, full of indignation and stiffness at such an informal heathen ceremony. But, Meyer said, it melted him quickly and he wept with the rest. It loosened the adhesions in his heart, freeing him from other rituals.
”We're losing too many girls,” I told Meyer.
”You've added a new one.”
”Hmm. The spry nurse lady?”
”No. Cindy Birdsong. She's spent a lot of time here, so someone would be with you when you woke up. She was sure you would. Then she missed by a few minutes. She left a little while before you came out of it, apparently. She's out there now, waiting her turn.”
”Why the devotion?”
”I don't know. It's some kind of penance, maybe. Or maybe she is the kind of person who has to have somebody to fret about. Cal is gone. You were at her marina when we got blown up.”
”What did it do to you?”
”Gave my back a little wrench and gave me a sore shoulder and one deaf ear.”
”So this is Thursday, everybody keeps telling me, June sixth, they keep saying, and it is five days gone out of my life, and what useful thing have you done with those days? I don't like it any more around here, Meyer. I want to go home. Every time I get blown up by a bomb I get that same feeling. Let's go home.”
”That wrapped head makes you look strange. It's like a turban. Lawrence of Arabia, or some d.a.m.ned mercenary. You're dark enough for an Arab, but the pale eyes make you look very savage somehow.”
”Meyer, what did you find out?”
”Oh. While you were unconscious? Let me think. Oh, yes. That's quite a nice hangar out there at the ranch. Quonset-type construction. That's where ranch equipment gets repaired and maintained too. There's a slow charger for batteries, and a battery cart to boost the aircraft batteries when starting the aircraft up cold. There's a fifteen-hundred-gallon gas tank and a pump to service the aircraft and the ranch vehicles. There's about six employees out there, which means a pretty good payroll, wouldn't you say?”
”Meyer!”
”Are you supposed to sit up like that? There, that's better. Okay. Travis, he has...”
Meyer paused and took out his little pocket notebook and flipped through the pages, grunting from time to time.
”Meyer!”
”He has a Beechcraft Baron, designation B fifty-five. It has two two-hundred-and-sixty horsepower Continental engines, designation Ten four-seventy L. The fuselage is twenty-nine feet long, and the wingspan is thirty-seven feet ten inches. At ten thousand five hundred feet, at a long-range cruising speed of two hundred and twenty miles per hour, with optional fuel capacity of a hundred and thirty-six gallons, he can carry two people and over eight hundred pounds of cargo for sixteen hundred miles, less ten percent safety factor, which gives us fourteen hundred and forty miles. It has an automatic pilot and a lot of other things which I didn't write down here. He bought it used a year ago for sixty-five thousand. He financed it. It can carry four people. It is white with a blue stripe.”
I stared at him. ”And you went out there and went in the hangar!”