He sat in silence on the couch, almost unaware of me. He was a dumpy, tired little thief dressed for a costume party.
“I gave up the rough lines. She became a partner. She’d cruise on her own, rope them, bring them back within range, set them up, clean them out, divorce them. Had she been more merciful I think she would have been a poisoner. Mercilessness can be a flaw. And believing your own lies. And she had another flaw too. She could never get any sexual satisfaction from the marks. After the scores she’d almost invariably find some brute stud, usually ignorant, rough, dirty and potentially dangerous. But she always kept the whip hand, drove them hard, walked out when she was ready.” He sighed, stirred, pumped himself back up to full con artist scale, aimed personality at me like a two-mile flashlight.
“McGee, do I do all the talking?”
“I think she must have been carrying her share in cash. And was killed a few days after she left the motel in Naples while Arthur was off on his bus trip. I’d guess the playmate who killed her has spent at least twenty-five thousand. Cars, a boat, guns, toys. I’m helping my friend Arthur. If I could come up with a good way of making a recovery from you, I’d give it a try. I take expenses off the top and keep half the net salvage. So moving in on her playmate could be full of ugly surprises, and if I knew how much she was carrying on her, I’d know if there was a balance worth the risk.”
“And if I give you the figure?”
“Then I’d have to figure out whether to tell you who and where. And if you’re lying. Suppose she was carrying just twenty-five. So you tell me a hundred so I will go prodding and maybe get jammed up in a way that will keep me from ever coming back with some cute idea for you. Or maybe I eliminate the playmate, which would satisfy you up for the way he cooked your future plans for Wilma. Or suppose she was carrying a hundred and you tell me it was twenty-five. I say who and where and you send muscle after it.”
He pondered it. “Stalemate again. I see your point. There’s no way I can get you to take my word that the very last thing I would do these days is go after a hijacked take, or send anyone. Risks alarm me, Travis McGee. I have too much to lose. You could check something out. I own twenty percent of the West Harbour Development Corporation. And some other things here and there. Muscle is seldom combined with wits. You seem to be a striking exception. Someone gets killed and the muscle gets tricked into a state’s evidence revelation, and the middleman I would use implicates me. No thanks. Besides, Debra and I are negotiating a score as big as the one Arthur contributed. By falsifying records, bribing minor officials, making some careful changes in old group pictures-school and church-and with the help of some brown contact lenses, some minor changes in hair and skin texture, we have given Debra an ironclad identity as a mulatto, as a pale-skinned girl who actually did disappear at fourteen. This curious revelation has come as a horrid shock to her young husband of four months, and an even worse shock to her wealthy father-in-law, the ex-governor of a southern state, a fevered segregationist, a man with political ambitions. The positive rabbit test-also faked-is bringing things to a climax. The fat settlement is for divorce, abortion and total silence. There was a real chance they might solve it by having her killed. But Debra is not squeamish. Actually, she takes too many chances. Very good family. She was risk-hunting when I found her. Jumping out of the airplanes, racing overpowered little boats and automobiles, skin diving alone and too deep, potting at cape buffalo with a hand gun. She’s incredibly quick and strong. Now she has found something, finally, which satisfies her. The hunt. Along with the constant and very real danger of displeasing me.
“McGee, all I can ask you to do is accept my story of what happened. There was a hundred and thirty-five thousand left in that trustee account for the syndicate in the Naples bank. I arranged in advance for them to have cash available. It is not difficult in Florida where cash is used so often in real estate closings. The day Arthur came up to meet me, my man Harris drove me to Naples. I closed out the account at noon, kept five thousand for incidental expenses and took the balance to that grisly motel room and gave it to Wilma. She was almost packed. We had arranged she would return to Tampa in the car with me in time to catch a Nassau flight. I had her ticket. The money represented the final take for both of us. I gave her the prepared deposit slip for my share. Bahamian banks have a pleasant policy of never divulging information on an account unless the depositor appears in person and signs a specific authorization. She said she’d made other arrangements, that someone was going to drive her to Miami and she would fly over from there. I made mild objections.”
“And you let her fly off with all that money?”
“She liked money. Without me, she’d have a lot less to spend. We were together fifteen years. Taking cash into the islands is easy. She was shrewd and tough. And far from retirement.”
“So, as I said at first, maybe you’re fattening the figure.”
He called Debra in. I gave them no chance for signals, made her face me with her slender back toward him. She verified the details and the amount, asked no questions, left without a word when he told her to go.
I could have gathered Chookie and left. I doubted he’d have tried anything. But there was an implied obligation. And if he did indeed come after what Boo might have left, it could turn into a diversion I might be able to use.
“Boo Waxwell picked her up at the motel. Arthur went to Waxwell’s place at Goodland and found her there. Boo beat him badly. I jounced Crane Watts around first. I used his name to open Waxwell up. I invented the yarn that Arthur had gone to Watts and told him he’d seen Wilma at Waxwell’s. I said I was trying to set up a similar kind of operation to the way you cleaned Arthur out, and needed the woman. He claimed, wide-eyed, it was a little ol‘ waitress friend from Miami. But Arthur remembers Wilma wearing the watch he thought she’d sold in Miami. He wouldn’t invent that. And, of course, he has all his new toys.”
Stebber nodded slowly. “Her usual type. A little more complex, probably. Whenever she tamed them, that finished it for her. I tried to keep him away from Arthur’s beach house while we were still building the con. Hard man to control. Yes. Of course. It fits. She wouldn’t have waved the money at him. He smelled it somehow.”
Debra knocked and appeared with a blue extension phone. “Crane Watts,” she said. “Do you want to take it in here, darling?”
“Or take it at all? Please.” She stooped lithely, plugged it into a baseboard jack receptacle, brought it to him and drifted out.
In full heat and radiance he said, “How nice to hear from you, Crane, my boy!… Start from the beginning. Slow dawn, boy… Yes… I see… Please, no assumptions. Confine yourself to the facts.”
Watts talked far a long time without interruption. Stebber made a sad face at me. Finally he said, “That’s enough. Do pull yourself together. No person named McGee or named anything else has tried to contact me on that matter. Why should you think in terms of an official investigation? As a lawyer you must know it was a legal business matter. This McGee is probably some sharpshooter who found out Arthur had lost some money in an unwise investment and is trying to shake some of it loose. Tell Waxwell too that neither of you should be so agitated. Please don’t phone me again. I retained you for legal work. It’s finished. So is our association.”