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 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 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 while 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.
There is damned little you can do in a narrow channel. I yanked the twin levers into reverse, gave the engines one hard burst to pull the Flush dead in the water, and put the shift levers in neutral. The only thing that immediately came to hand was the fishkiller, a billy club near the wheel. I forgot the damned leg. When I hit the lower deck it crumpled and spilled me. I scrabbled up and went in the after door to the lounge, into the full blast of the music. Lights were on in the lounge. Mr. Goodman was doing Sing, Sing, Sing, the long one with all that drum. Tableau. Arthur stood in the posture of a man with severe belly cramps, staring at Chookie McCall standing in the corridor just beyond the other doorway,
Boone grinning over her white silk shoulder. One arm was pulled behind her. She looked scared and angry. She tried to twist away. Boone’s arm went up, metal in the hand picking up a gleam from the galley brightness beyond him. It came down with wicked force on the crown of her dark head, and I saw her face go blank as she fell forward, falling heavily face down, with no attempt to break the fall, landing half in and half out of the lounge. With one bare foot he tentatively prodded her buttocks. The flesh under her circus pants moved with absolute looseness, a primitive and effective test of total unconsciousness. When faking or semi-conscious, those muscles will inevitably tighten.
Arthur, with a groan audible over the drum solo, charged right toward the muzzle of the revolver Boone had clubbed her with. Boone merely squatted and put the muzzle against the back of Chook’s head and grinned up at him. Arthur skidded to a clumsy, Railing halt and backed away. Waxvell shifted the revolver to his left hand, put his right hand to his belt, deftly unsheathed the narrow limber blade. He moved forward a little, picked her head up by the hair, put his right hand with the blade under her throat and let the head fall, forehead thumping the rug. Arthur backed further, Waxwell aimed the gun at my belly and made an unmistakable gesture of command. I tossed the fish club onto the yellow couch.