Part 11 (1/2)

”We do all that? I hardly know you.”

”It can be our getting-acquainted cruise. It's like eighty days, I think.”

”This is so sudden.”

She shook me. ”Are you in there? Are you awake? Listening? A penthouse suite, man, and I buy all the goodies.”

”I'm not that kind,” I said.

She laughed and then said, ”Seriously, do you ever think you've worn it all out around here?” It hit a little too close to home. Too many had gone away and too many had died. Without my realizing it, it had happened so slowly, I had moved a generation away from the beach people.

To them I had become a sun-brown roughlooking fellow of an indeterminate age who did not quite understand their dialect, did not share their habits-either s.e.xual or pharmacological-who thought their music unmusical, their lyrics ba.n.a.l and repet.i.tive, a square fellow who read books and wore yesterday's clothes. But the worst realization was that they bored me. The laughing, clean-limbed lovely young girls were as bright, functional and vapid as cereal boxes. And their young men-all hair and lethargy-were so laid back as to have become immobile. Meyer was increasingly grumpy, and sometimes almost hostile. I couldn't remember the last time I had tried to stop laughing and couldn't. I could hang around while the rest of the old friends slid away. I couldn't remember the last time I'd had twenty people aboard the Flush at the same time. When the green ripper dropped around and took the Alabama Tiger off for permanent and much needed rest, the heirs had sold the 'Bama Gal to a fellow who moved her around to Mobile. For a time ladies of an overwhelmingly female persuasion had stopped by to ask me where the h.e.l.l the Tiger had gone. I told them he had died smiling, and they had toted him off to the family plot, and the longest floating house party in the world had at last ended. Always, they wept. The party was over.

The management had changed. Irv Delbert had departed. The city was changing. It was getting ugly and dirty and brutal. Locks and chains sold well. People full of speed and angel dust beat each other to death on the night beaches. There is a high in the life cycle of any city. I had seen it in Fort Lauderdale, and we had pa.s.sed it and it was going to be a long downslope. I could ride it down or leave it and hope that memory would gradually replace the ”now” with the ”once upon a time.”

”Seriously, Millis, maybe I have.”

”Are you saying yes?”

”I'm saying let's us take a little nap. Let's sleep on it.

”The agent said those suites have their own little sun decks. Completely private.”

”Uh-huh.”

”It anchors in Cook's Bay at Moorea. Billy told me that is the most beautiful place he ever saw in his whole life.”

”Uh-huh.”

”Frank's tax man estimates that after estate taxes I'll have an income of about seven hundred thousand, mostly tax-free-more if I sell this place, but I want to give that a lot more thought.”

”Uh-huh,” I said, and heard nothing of what she might have said after that.

On Monday I tried to see Mr. Jornalero at his office in Miami. He was in but did not wish to see me. I threatened to stay until he decided he could, but the tiny receptionist phoned down and two security men were sent up. I went peacefully. I drove out of my way and took a look at Sailfish Lagoon. It looked as if the same architect had designed Dias del Sol. But it had more of a fortress look than did Millis' place. And there seemed to be some elegant private homes behind the high wall, near the yacht basin.

A man who wishes nothing further to do with you presents a problem. Though I had not seen the procedure, I could guess that Arturo, between his fortress and his office, traveled in a chauffeured limousine, and that when he walked to a nearby restaurant for a business lunch, there would be a muscled fellow a half step behind him, and maybe another a few steps ahead. Rich men walk carefully in Miami.

When I had worked out a plan, I hurried back to Bahia Mar and began working on overdue maintenance on my aging runabout, the Munequita, a two-ton T-Craft with a pair of one-hundred-and-twenty-horsepower stern-drive units. It shares the same slip with the houseboat. Usually I am very good about taking care of my gear, but it had been too long since I had given the Munequita the loving attention she needs. I had not noticed the five-inch rip in the custom tarp cover near the gunwale on the port side, amids.h.i.+ps. It was damp and grungy under the tarp, with mildew thriving. The automatic bilge pump had tried to take care of the incoming rain until it killed the batteries. The tarp was faded, the paint was faded and the white letters of her name on the transom had turned to ivory.

We all do penance in our uAn strange ways. Mine was to risk getting killed while I paid my dues. By late Wednesday afternoon, the sixteenth, the batteries were up, bilge dry, mildew swabbed away, tanks topped, tarp, mended. I had taken her outside into a pretty good sea and punished my spine and kidneys jumping her head-on into the swells to knock a lot of the acc.u.mulated marine crud off the bottom. The Calmec autopilot was working again. The bilge pump was operational, the ice chest cleaned and stocked, the power lifts greased, the lights checked and replaced where necessary. She wasn't at her best, but she was h.e.l.l of a lot better than before. I wondered why I had spent all that time revamping a music system and indexing tapes when the Munequita needed help so badly. Meyer wandered over a couple of times to watch me at work. He wanted to know what I was doing about my personal problem, and I said I was working on it. He said it looked to him as though I was working on a boat. I didn't explain, though I should have. It wasn't fair to Meyer. But, then again, we had gotten into a game of surly. Old friends do that from time to time. To loosen the bonds, I guess.

At times it seems as if arranging to have no commitment of any kind to anyone would be a special freedom. But in fact the whole idea works in reverse. The most deadly commitment of all is to be committed only to one's self. Some come to realize this after they are in the nursing home.

With an hour of daylight left, and the day growing chillier, I headed down toward Miami, traveling inside. Black leather jacket and watch cap, and the winds of pa.s.sage strumming the canvas overhead, an NPR station on the FM, speaking mildly of the news of the day on All Things Considered, without hype or fury. The little doll growled along, at the lowest speed that would keep her on plane, white wake hissing behind her. There was comfort in being able to enjoy the boat. I had driven myself hard to got her back in shape. I had sore muscles, barked knuckles, a torn thumbnail and tired knees. Penance. Memory of the rumbling voice of the grandpa long ago: 'Anything you can't take care of, kid, you don't deserve to own. A dog, a gun, a reel, a bike or a woman. You learn how to do it and you do it, because if you don't you hate yourself.'

An out-of-date morality. Anything you don't take care of, you replace. of course, the ERA wouldn't cottan to Grandpa's including a woman in his list of owners.h.i.+p items. Grandma seemed a happy woman, however.

It was long past full dark when I came to the marina I had stopped at in other years. I lugged down until I had minimum headway, folded the top down, stood up with the portable spotlight and picked up the private channel markers as I made my way in. The place had expanded. I went to the gas dock and when a man sauntered out to take a line, I asked him if Wendy was around. He said she had sold the place almost two years ago, and it was now owned by Sea and Marine Ventures. They had a slip, though. I tied up, locked up, walked two blocks for pizza and beer, came back and stretched out on one of the narrow bunks in the bow and set my wrist alarm for five-thirty.

Fifteen.

ON THURSDAY morning at six-thirty I was making long slow lazy eights way out in the bay outside the sunlit structures of Sailfish Lagoon. By ten o'clock I gave up and dawdled back to the marina. The same little slip was still available, and there was a marine supplies store close at hand, so I bought various medicines and unguents, salves and brighteners for the little doll, and spent the rest of daylight improving her outward appearance, quitting at nightfall with sore arms and an easier conscience. About all that would remain to do would be to order a new custom tarp cover, and have her hauled for a bottom job.

On Friday I was on station at six, making my eights in the sunrise, binoculars handy. At twenty past six a triangular sail and a small jib went up in among a small forest of sticks, and soon a catamaran came out into the lagoon, heading for the bay. The sail was green and white. The figure aboard had on a dark red jogging suit and a white knit cap. I decided that it was not Arturo, but then when he came closer and I had him in good focus, I saw that it was. I abandoned my station and went off down the bay, heading south at a goodly pace, but keeping watch on Joawalero.

The morning breeze had freshened, and he began to zip right along. When he was far enough from his base, I swung around and came back at high speed and got between him and the lagoon. Apparently he did not notice me, or at least he did not notice the point of the maneuver. When I turned and came back out toward him, more slowly, he was moving well. He got on a long reach, and pulled his sail to the angle where one pontoon lifted out of the water, with Jornalero leaning far back for balance, hissing along at perhaps twenty to twenty-five miles an hour. It began to look trickier than I had expected.

I pushed both throttles and came up on the windward side of him. He jerked his head around and stared at me in astonishment and waved me off. The cat turned into the wind and the pontoon dropped back into the water. The empty sail flapped. I yelled over to him. ”It's me! McGee! Got to talk to you.”

”No!” he yelled, and came about and started off on another reach, not as productive a one, but one that would take him back into the lagoon. I caught up and moved in front of him so that he had to shear away. I b.u.mped into a pontoon and nearly knocked him overboard. A moment later I had snagged a halyard with my boat hook. He was one very angry sailor.

”I've got nothing to say to you!”

”I don't want you to talk, Mr. Jornalero. I want you to listen. Okay? Come aboard. I'll take that thing in tow.”

He was a sensible man. It took him half a minute to realize he had very little choice. We were well out from sh.o.r.e. I gave him a hand. He stepped on the gunwale and hopped down to the deck lightly and handily.

He sat on the engine hatch and said, ”So talk.” I moved out to a broader section of the bay, towing the cat, and then I killed the engines in the Munequita. There was lots of silence to talk into. The sail flapped idly on the cat.

”What I am going to say to you doesn't mean anything and won't mean anything unless you arrange to have somebody check it out. Do you know a wholesaler down in the Yucatan south of Cancun, down below Tulum? A man they call Brujo?”

”I'm listening. You're talking.”

”Okay. I'll a.s.sume you don't, but I'll a.s.sume that you can get in touch with some people who do know him or know about him and who can arrange to go see him about something. They are to ask him about a man who flew in from Florida in a light plane to the Tulum airstrip four times, and made buys from Brujo and flew the product back to a ranch strip. The surveillance was getting tighter, so that same man hired the kids who stole Billy Ingraham's boat to come over and take it out by boat. He was there for the first buy, but sent them over by boat with the money for the second buy.”

His expression had changed, lips pursed had twisted into contemptuous disbelief. The sun was high enough to have lost all the orange look of sunrise light, and the bay had changed from gunmetal to blue. Boat traffic was increasing. I had swiveled the pilot seat around to face him.

”Something bothering you?”

”You're talking.”

”They had worked out a way to bring it in by boat.”

”The people who stop boats know everyway there is.”

”Now we're both talking. Okay, a discussion is better than a monologue.”

”McGee, there's no point in talking to me about bringing in drugs. I don't have anything to do with it.”

”Not since you used to recruit mules in Colombia?”

It jolted him. I could see his intent to deny, but he backed away from that. ”Not many people know that or remember that. I worked my way up... and out. I head up my own corporation. it's a legitimate business all the way.”

I smiled at him. ”Want a beer, Arturo?”