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 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 non-stop 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 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.”
Fifteen
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. The 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 cocoanut 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.