Bright Orange for the Shroud (28 page)

Once aboard the
Flush
, and with the amount verified, and the cash locked into the safe up forward, I felt the nervous tension easing in my neck and shoulders. A good man with the right tools could probably peel that box open in an hour. But once upon a time I invited a qualified expert to see if he could locate the safe without ripping out any interior trim. After four hours of delving, rapping, tapping, measuring, he said there was no safe aboard and he damn well didn’t appreciate that kind of practical joke.

At quarter after five, the three of us sat, drink in hand, in the lounge. We were trying to sustain the mood of celebration, but it was dying fast, the jokes forced, the grins too transient.

“I suppose,” Arthur said, “that if you look at it one way, if what they did was legal enough, then we’ve stolen the money.”

“Hijacked is a better word,” I told him. “And if your marriage was legal, and if she’s dead, then the money is her estate.”

“And some of it is Stebber’s.”

“Which he has no interest in claiming.”

“For goodness’ sake, Arthur,” Chook said. “Don’t split hairs. Trav, how does it work out for Arthur? What will he have left?”

I got pencil and paper from the desk drawer. As I wrote, I explained the figures. “Sixty thousand less about nine hundred
expenses is fifty-nine, one. From that we will deduct that fifty-one hundred and fifty you borrowed from friends.”

“But that isn’t fair to you!” he said.

“Shut up. Half the balance of fifty-three thousand nine fifty is … twenty-six thousand nine seventy-five to you Arthur. Or a little bit better than a ten percent recovery on what they took you for.”

“You are certainly in a lovely line of work,” Chookie said with a small dash of malice.

“What’s
wrong
with you, woman?” Arthur demanded with unexpected heat. “Without Travis I wouldn’t have gotten dime one back. What’s he supposed to do? Take a chance of getting killed for … for a per diem arrangement?”

“I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t mean it,” she said, looking startled.

“And if we recovered nothing, then he’d get nothing. He’d be out what he’s spent.

“I told you I’m sorry.”

“That’s what trips up thieves every time,” I said. “They start quarreling over the split. Arthur, why don’t you take your end of it, your lousy little recovery and buy a lot and build a house.”

“Huh?”

“Get a construction loan. Get Chook to help on layout and decoration. Do every possible part of it you can manage by yourself. Put it up and sell it and build another.”

He looked at me in a startled way, and then with a growing enthusiasm. “Hey!” he said. “Hey now! You know, that might be just …”

“Gentlemen,” Chook said, “Don’t let me interrupt anyone’s career, but I think I would be a very much happier girl if
we got the hell out of here. The weather report was good. We can run at night, can’t we? I don’t want to seem frail and foolish, but I would just feel better to be … out of touch.”

“Let’s humor the lady,” I said.

“To make me really happy, gentlemen, let’s make it a nonstop flight all the way home.”

“One stop at Marco,” I said. “To tell that kid where to pick up his
Ratfink
, and give him transportation money to go get it.”

“And another stop,” Arthur said, “if nobody minds too much. I mean Sam and Leafy Dunning were very good to me. Too good for me to just write a letter and say everything is fine. And … they saw me when I was so whipped by everything … I’d like to have them see me … the way I should be. I want to see if Christine is getting along all right. And maybe see some of those men I worked with. I don’t know if they’d take it, but I’d like to give the Dunnings some of that money. They need a lot of things. Maybe just a thousand dollars. And …”

“And what, dear?” Chook asked.

“My carpenter tools are there. I had to buy them out of my pay. I guess it isn’t even forty dollars’ worth, but I’d like to have them. I
used
them. And they might be good luck if I … try to build a house.”

On Thursday at high noon, on the last and most beautiful day of May, we turned into the marked channel leading through the islands to Everglades City. Pavilion Key was south of us. I had checked the charts and decided we would do best staying with the official channel, entering the Barron River where it flows into Chokoloskee Bay, going a little way up the river to tie up at the big long Rod and Gun Club dock. I could have wiggled my way down Chokoloskee Bay to Chokoloskee Island, but it would have to have been high tide going and coming. And it was just as simple for Arthur to find some way to get across the causeway to Chokoloskee.

I stood at the topside controls, chugging the
Flush
along the channel between the Park islands. Down on the bow deck, Chook sat on the hatch wearing little red shorts and a sleeveless knit candy-stripe top. Arthur stood in an old threadbare
pair of my khaki shorts, pointing out places to her, probably telling her of things that had happened when he had crewed for Sam Dunning on his charter boat. There slow diesel grind of the
Flush
obscured their words. I saw the animation on their faces, the shapes of laughter.

Arthur, though still too thin, was looking better. The months of labor in this area had built muscle tissue which malnourishment had reduced to stringiness. Now muscle was building smoothly again, rippling under the pink-tan hide of his back when he pointed. Chook had put him on isometrics, and I had come across him a few times, braced in a doorway like Samson trying to bring the temple down, trembling from head to foot, face contorted. It embarrassed him to be caught at it, but the results were showing—the results of that, and the limbering exercises she gave him, and the huge calorie intake she was forcing on him.

And then, after the straight shot across the bay, we came into the Barron River, into the smooth green-brown flow of it, with the old frame houses of the mainland shore off to port, clumps of coconut palm standing tall, skiffs tied handy. On the right, with its thousand feet of concrete dock, running along the river bank, was the Rod and Gun Club, first the long two-storied, citified, motel wing, then the high-screened pool area that connected it to the old frame part, then the cottages beyond. Four presidents of the United States have hidden out here, finding a rustic privacy and some of the best fishing in the hemisphere. Giant poinciana trees were in bloom, many of them reaching heavy branches low over the water, breezes dropping the flaming petals into the smooth flow of tide and current, and a gigantic mahogany tree shaded the main entrance to the old part, the steps and the porch.

A stubby, sturdy, white charterboat was tied up there, a man hosing her down, probably after a half-day charter. A boy knelt nearby on the cement dock, cleaning three impressive snook. I saw a tarpon that would go about ninety pounds hanging on the club rack.

I decided to put in ahead of the old white cruiser. Arthur, in the bow, readied a line. At dead slow the engine noise was reduced so I could hear voices forward. As we passed the fishing boat, the man with the hose looked over and said, “Well now, hydee Arthur!”

“How you, Jimbo?”

“Fine, fine. You crewin on that there?”

“Seen Sam?”

“Busted his foot up some. Hoist slipped and the engine out of his skiff fell on it. He’s over home mendin.”

“Sorry to hear it.”

When I balanced forward motion and downstream current, Arthur jumped to the dock with a line and I waved him on to the piling I wanted. With it fast, I cut off the engines and the flow swung the stern in. I put on a stern line and spring line. Chook asked about fenders, and I saw that the rub rail would rest well against the pilings and told her not to bother.

We had lunch in the old paneled dining room, under the glassy stare of wall-mounted fish. Just a few tables were occupied. The season was dwindling with the club a month from closing until fall. We had hot monster stonecrab claws with melted butter. Arthur introduced us to the waitresses, and as they served us efficiently, they filled Arthur in on all local news and gossip, including the latest rumors on the manhunt for Boone Waxwell.

A coastguard chopper had made a tentative report about
seeing a glimpse of a boat answering the description, about thirty miles south of us a little way up the Clark River from Ponce de Leon Bay, just as it disappeared under overhanging trees. A fast patrol launch had been sent to investigate.

The opinion was that years ago a man could hide out from the law almost indefinitely in all that cruel silent maze of swamp and hammock, creek, river and island, but not now. Not if they really wanted him. The choppers and the patrol boats and the radio net would inevitably narrow the search area and they would go in and get Waxwell. Probably not alive, considering what he was like and what he had done. They were saying that his best bet would be to get as far in as his boat would take him, sink the boat in the black water, and try to make it sixty miles across that incredible morass, heading northwest, keeping to cover, and come out maybe way over in the Westwood Lakes area. A Boone Waxwell might manage that, but three miles a day might be all even he could manage, so it could be three weeks before he came out the other side, if he didn’t founder in bottomless black gunk between hammocks, if he could keep the mosquitoes and stinging flies from swelling his eyes shut, if he didn’t get fever, if he kept out of the jaws of gators, moccasins and other venomous species of water snake, if he could tote or trap the food he’d need to see him through, if he could avoid the swamp buggies and air boats they’d be sending in on search patterns.

There was one detail I had overlooked, and from the lobby I phoned the hospital in Naples and got the cashier. She said with considerable severity that I had left AMA, Against Medical Advice, and it had been so noted on my record. She gave me the total amount of the fee, including use of emergency room space, tests, the four X-rays and the repair job. I said I
would put a check in the mail, and she softened enough to tell me that I would be foolish to avoid seeing a doctor. The wound should be examined, dressing changed, stitches removed in due course.

After making the call, I found Chook out on the porch, and she said that Arthur had borrowed a car and had gone off to see the Dunnings. We went to the boat and she changed to white slacks. We anointed ourselves on all exposed areas with Off, and walked around the town. The original Collier, having made his fortune in advertising placards in streetcars in the north, had come down and created Everglades City by keeping a huge dredge working around the clock for over a year, building it up out of the swamplands. It served as a survey base and construction base for the building of the Tamiami Trail across the Glades to Miami. It had been a company town until finally, not long ago, the Collier interests had moved out. So there was an empty bank, an abandoned hospital, an abandoned headquarters, an unused railroad station, the rails long since torn up, the ties rotted away. But it was coming back now with the big boom going on at Marco, with the Miami population pressure moving ever westward, keyed by the land speculators.

My leg could take only so much of it. At four o’clock we were back aboard. I took a shower. Showers created an eerie effect on the desensitized skin of my arm and leg, as if they were wrapped in cellophane which dulled the needles of the hard spray. I wore Chook’s shower cap to keep the dressing dry. After the shower I took a nap. Chook woke me a little after six to say Arthur wasn’t back and she was getting concerned about him.

“Maybe it’s taking him a long time to get them to take that crisp new thousand.”

“I wanted to get out of here, Trav.”

“We’ll get out. The weather is still holding. The days are long. I’d like a little light to get through the channel, and then it doesn’t matter. A south southeast course after we’re clear, and when we pick up the lights of Key West off the starboard bow, we’ll pick us an anchorage, or, maybe better, I’ll lug it way down so that by dawn we’ll be about right to pick up the channel markers to go up Florida Bay. Stand watches.”

“I just feel as if we ought to get going.”

Arthur came trotting along the dock at seven, carrying his wooden box of carpenter tools, grinning and cheerful, apologetic about taking so long. He said he had a terrible time about the money, particularly with Sam, but when he had finally put it on the basis of the kids, Leafy had argued his way. It was finally decided they’d put it in the bank and consider it Arthur’s money and touch it only in case of emergency, and then consider it a loan. He said that Christine was placidly, healthily, happily and obviously pregnant, and she’d found a nice boy from Copeland who was going to marry her, much to Leafy’s satisfaction.

As we chugged across the bay toward the channel through the islands, toward the last burnt orange sunset line, the first stars were visible. Chook, with a holiday gayety, had changed to what she called her clown pants, stretch pants that fitted tight to her healthy hide, patterned in huge diamonds of black, white and orange, very high waisted, and with it a white silk
blouse with long full sleeves. She moved in dance steps, brought the helmsman a lusty drink, lucked onto a Key West station doing the best efforts of the big bands of yesteryear, and turned it loud. Between her dancing, her happy jokes, her bawdy parodies of the lyrics she happened to know, she would hustle below and take a few pokes at what she promised would be a gourmet adventure. She turned us into a party boat.

We were in the winding and sometimes narrow channel between the mangrove islands when I heard a curious sound which I thought came from one of my engines, as if something had caused it to rev up. I checked the panel and saw that the rpm’s were normal. Chook and Arthur were below. The loud music had masked the sound I had heard.

But I heard Chook’s scream. And just as I did, I saw something out of the tail of my right eye and turned and saw, in the deceptive dusk light, the empty white boat moving astern of us, turning slowly as we passed it. The boat I had seen on the trailer in Boone Waxwell’s yard.