And then I knew who it was. Along Charterboat Row he was known universally as Pogo, God only knows why. Maybe because he was as cheerful as that immortal possum. Meyer had once pointed him out to me as an example of the perfectly happy fellow. He had a functioning IQ, Meyer guessed, of seventy-five. He loved the sea. He grew terribly excited when fish were being caught. His body seemed to thrive on cola and junk food. He could sew bait, rig lines, net little fish, gaff big fish, wash down the boat, clean up the mess, serve the Coke and beer, swarm up to the tuna tower to search the sea for fish sign. He was cheerful, smiling, quick in his motions, polite to everyone. His face had a fat bland look at odds with his tough body. He had a little thin high voice. He filled in when any one of the captains needed a hand for a day or a week. They paid him off in cash. He had some learning defect which kept him from ever being able to read and write.
I walked down to Charterboat Row and found the Key Kitty with her cockpit hatches open, Captain Ned Rhine staring gloomily down at an electrician working in there.
Ned gave me a beer and we sat on the side of the dock and talked about the memorial service with the wreaths, and how Gloria was bearing up, and how his wife said Gloria would probably get married again someday. Nobody would ever guess she had those three hulking sons.
“Seen Pogo around?” I asked casually.
“Come to think of it, no. Maybe not for a week. Got something for him to do?”
“If he’s available. Where does he stay anyway?”
“Here and there. Here and there. After Roy got hisself all busted up that time last year when the kid ran into his truck, Pogo slept aboard the Honeydoo and worked mate while Stub was taking the contracts Roy had set up. For a while there I think he bunked in the supply room at Castle Marine until it got sold. Pogo is okay. He does a better job of work than some brighter people around here I could name. And he isn’t ever grouchy.”
I changed the subject, and a little later I unchained my bicycle and rode over to Pier 66 and walked out to the gas dock. I don’t buy fuel there, so I don’t know the attendants. There were two on duty, a narrow-faced redheaded man in the office and a young Cuban with a shaved head filling the tanks of a Prowler from Georgia. The redhead had been on duty the morning of the fifth.
They remembered gassing The John Maynard Keynes only because it had blown up soon afterward, and the police had questioned them after somebody reported having seen the Keynes at their gas dock at about ten that morning.
They had noticed the woman in the string bikini but not much else. There were three people on the boat. Or maybe four. It had been a busy morning. The woman had paid cash. She had gone below to get her purse. Ninety-five gallons of regular. A hundred and twenty-nine dollars and twenty cents. She’d asked for a receipt.
“Sure, I’ve seen Hack Jenkins around,” the redhead said. “I remember wondering what he was doing with that boat instead of his own.”
Neither of them knew anybody called Pogo who worked around the docks over at Bahia Mar. As all the charterboat captains would customarily buy fuel at Bahia Mar, that wasn’t unexpected. Every large marina seems to acquire its own village of regulars.
As I biked on back to Bahia Mar, I kept tugging at the minor improbabilities, hoping something would come loose. Norma Lawrence had not impressed me as the kind of take-charge lady who would jump up and pay the bills. It would be more likely she would get the money from her purse and give it to Evan to pay the bill with. And why had Evan stayed below when they went out past the sea buoy into the chop building up from the offshore storm? That was when the customers were always on deck, holding on, peering into the wind like dogs leaning out of car windows.
I carried the bike aboard and locked it to the ring I had bolted to the aft bulkhead, under the overhang, unlocked the Flush, and went into the lounge, into the air-conditioned coolness that chilled the sweat the ten-speed generated.
So what if Evan Lawrence wasn’t aboard for the big bang?
It was an idea that offended my emotional set. A very likable guy with a good grin, a man of warmth, of funny stories, a newly wedded man in love with his wife. And if he hadn’t been aboard, and hadn’t made known the fact of his survival, then it was a possibility he had engineered the explosion and made the anonymous call to deflect any possible suspicion.
So if he was that sort of man, he would have left a special scent along his back trail. I did not know enough about him, and neither did Meyer. Dinner aboard is not an excuse for an inquisition. He had seemed open about himself, but I could recall no talk of family. Funny stories of things which had happened to him here and there along the way. How they had met. How he had pursued her. Strange jobs he had held. Nothing more than that. They were in love. And there was that physical attraction so strong it was tangible, a musk in the air.
In the evening I went over to Charterboat Row during the interval after the customers have had their pictures taken with their fish, that time when the boats are cleaned up, the gear put back in shape, the salt hosed off. I had some heavy work I wanted done, and I was looking for Pogo.
Finally Dan List, skipper of the Nancy Mae III, told me I might try the construction shack over behind that big sign I had seen which said SHORE VIEW TOWERS, 200 Elegant Condominium Apartments, $165,000-$325,000, Ready For Occupancy Soon. Model ready for viewing. Phone so-and-so for appointment. But the construction cranes had stopped when the structure was about four stories high. They stood silent against the sky, like huge dead bugs. Somebody had run out of something essentiaclass="underline" money or time or life. One of those things.
There was an old man in a blue uniform living in the construction shack. In the fading daylight I could see the cot in there, neatly made up. The old man had a big belly, and a badge, and a revolver in a black holster.
“You see that half-wit Pogo, friend, you tell him the only reason he should come back here is to get his stuff. It’s in a suitcase and a cardboard box. What clothes he owns and those filthy dirty picture books. I’m only filling in until they can get somebody for next to nothing, like they paid Pogo. I’m a licensed security guard, and my old lady is nervous alone at night in the apartment while I’m here in this stinking heat to keep vagrants and Haitians and trash from sneaking into that there building and messing up. You tell him he doesn’t show up soon, I’m putting his stuff out in the weather. There’s no agreement we got to store it for him. You tell him that.”
“Is there anything of value?”
“There’s a gray metal lockbox. It’s locked and there’s no key I could find around here. And the little television set I’m using, to keep from going nuts. The picture starts rolling and there’s no way to stop it. You just have to wait until it stops. Feels like it would pull your eyes out on sticks.”
He kept slapping the black leather holster. It was shiny from being slapped ten thousand times. It was a habit that could get him killed. I said if I saw Pogo, I’d tell him.
Even when a missing person is reported, nothing much happens. Local police forces have higher priorities. Nobody would report Pogo, and I saw no reason why I should. There would be a lot of interviews, a lot of forms to fill out. Transients flow back and forth across the country, and up and down the coasts. They are of little moment. They become the unidentified bones in abandoned orchards. Dumb, dreary, runaway girls are hustled into the dark woods, and their dental-work pictures go into the files. As the years do their work, shallow graves become deep graves, and very few of the thousands upon thousands are ever discovered. Burial without the box, without the marker, hasty dirt packed down onto the ghastliness of the ultimate grin. Old Fatso would eventually pry open the box, take anything of value, and destroy the rest. The trash truck would pick up the suitcase and the cardboard box, sodden with rainwater. And years down the road somebody would say, “Hey, remember that Pogo that used to work around here? Kind of a dimwit but a good worker?”