Saturday morning early I saddled up the dinghy and, taking Chook with me, droned south inside the islands to Marco Village. We achieved invisibility. There is an easy way to do it along the coast. I wore khaki pants, a white T-shirt, a baseball hat with a long bill, dark glasses. She wore white denim stretch pants, blue halter, dark glasses, and a little pot-shaped straw hat some female had left aboard, embroidered in red yarn across the front-Drink Up. We brought along a tackle box, two rods and a red beer cooler.
Marco Village saddened me. The bulldozers and draglines had gotten to it since my last visit. The ratty picturesque old dock was gone, as was the ancient general store and a lot of old weatherbeaten two-story houses which had looked as though they had been moved down from Indiana farmland. They had endured a half century of hurricanes, but little marks on a developer’s plat had erased them so completely there was not even a trace of the old foundations.
But even the scurry of multimillion dollar development slows to a sleepy pace in the island heat of late May. Loafers identified us instantly by type as we tied up and clambered out of the dinghy, and from then on their total bemused attention was on the fruitful flexible weight encased in the white stretch denim, with Chook quite comfortably aware of admiration and speculation. I asked my question, and we got one bad lead and then a better one, and finally found a sallow, thoughtful young man who took us to where his boat sat lashed to a trailer. Sixteen foot, heavyduty fiberglass hull, with a forty horse Evinrude bolted to the reinforced transom. Twin tanks. All required gear.
“I don’t know about a week,” he said. “Figured on using it some myself. I’d have to get” -he wiped his mouth, stared into the distance- “a hundred dollars, mister?”
“Seventy-five. I buy gas.”
“I got fourteen hundred dollars in it, mister.”
“Seventy-five right now, and if I only keep it three days, it’s still seventy-five.”
He made a responsible show of studying my driver’s license, giving sidelong glances at Chook’s scanty halter, and got very helpful and cheery when he had the seventy-five in hand, describing places where we could hook into big snook and baby tarpon. He put it in the water for us. Boldly lettered on the white fiberglass, in pink, and for some obscure reason in Old English calligraphy, was the name Ratfink.
We took off sedately, towing the dinghy astern, dock loafers watching us out of sight. Arthur was waiting on the beach when we returned. Without the burdens of Chook and the dinghy I took Ratfink out into open water and found I had made a good guess on the hull design. It was very fast and stable, and when I came smashing back through my own wake, I found it was a dry boat.
Another can of gas aboard would give it all the high speed range I’d need. It had one of the new control rigs, shift and throttle on the same handy lever. The cable control gave it a quick steering ratio. I taped a piece of white cloth over the too-memorable name, and with some black electrician’s tape I made an alteration in the registration number, turning a six into an eight and a one into a seven. It would stand inspection from ten feet away.
I changed to slacks and a sports shirt, stowed a light jacket and tie in the locker under the forward deck, told them to be good kids, and took off up the inside route to Naples, an estimated twelve miles away, less than a half hour in my jazzy craft.
I found an adequate little marina just short of the highway bridge on the southeast side of Naples. I filled the tanks, bought an extra five gallon can, had it filled with the right gas and oil mix and stowed it aboard. I said I might be leaving it there off and on for a week. The man said a dollar a day. And how about leaving a car here when I’m out in the boat? I asked. Right over there next to the building, where that pickup is, it’ll be okay there, no charge.
I paid him a week on the dockage, and after he had shown me where to put it and wandered away I tied it up in such a way that though the lines were firm, I could free them with one yank, shove off bow first, hit the starter button and be on my way. This was one of the elemental precautions. Never go in until you are damned well sure how you are going to get out.
There are few roads in the Glades country, but more waterways than have ever been counted. With the jacket over my arm, I went up to Route 41 and walked across the highway bridge and down the other side of the bayou to the Fish House Restaurant. It was clean and quiet. The decor was seashells stuck into cement on the pillars, beams and ceiling. Tourists had pried out a lot of the ones within reach. I found they served a clam chowder with character. It would cure debility, angry the blood, and turn a girl scout troop into a baritone choir.
I didn’t bother phoning Crane Watts’ office. His residence was on Clematis Drive. A maid announced it as The Watts Resydense and told me, “They’s at the Club.” And when I asked if it was the Cutlass Yacht Club, she said, “Nome, they play tennis at the Royal Palm Bath Club.”
I looked up car rentals, phoned one and was told they couldn’t deliver. Just one man on duty. I took a cab to the place the other side of town. I signed up for a dark green Chev, four door, with air-conditioning. The attendant told me to go about another mile north and then look for the Bath Club sign on a road to the left, turn and go about a half mile. I couldn’t miss it. I didn’t.
I found a parking place in the lot. The huge pool, behind woven fencing, was a gabbling, shrieking, belly-whomping mass of kids. They had a crescent of private beach dotted with bright umbrellas and oiled brown flesh, prone and supine. Despite the early afternoon heat, their dozen asphalt courts beyond the pool area were all full. You could see at a glance it was very proper tennis. Everyone raced about in spotless white, sweating and banging hell out of the ball, calling out Love, Add, Out and Nice Shot.
The club house was a flaking Moorish pastry onto which had been pasted a big wing in supermarket modern. I wandered in and found a bulletin board in a corridor. They are always useful. The bulletin board was folksier than the tennis. There was a mimeographed copy of the last club bulletin tacked to it. Seems that on May tenth the Taylors had given a big farewell bash for Frank and Mandy Hopson, before they left on their dream trip, three whole months in Spain. Crane and Viv Watts were listed among the guests. I found a phone booth and book, but it gave me no clue as to good old Frank’s occupation, if any. I roamed until I found a door labeled OFFICE. I knocked and pushed it open. A thin girl was alone in there, typing. She had a pert look, a large toothy smile.
“May I help you, sir?”
“Sorry to bother you. I just got to town today. I called Mr. Frank Hopson at his home but I couldn’t get an answer. I remember him speaking of this place, and I thought maybe Frank and Mandy might be out here.”
She made a sad mouth. “Oh, dear! They went away on a long trip.”
“Don’t tell me they finally made it to Spain. Son of a gun.”
“They were as excited about it as a pair of little kids, believe me, Mr…”
“McGee. Travis McGee. They’ve been after me for years to come over and see them. Well… that’s the way it goes. At least I got a look at the club.”
She hesitated for some additional inspection. I am conspicuously large, and I have a permanent deep-water tan, and I would not look out of place on a construction crew. But the slacks and shirt and jacket were top grade and she knew it. And I smiled at her like Stoney Burke admiring a speckled calf.
“Well, I think we can do better than that for any friend of the Hopsons,” she said, making her decision. “How long will you be in town?”
“Maybe a week. On business.”