And somebody else would say, “Guess that was before my time.”
Nobody remembers very long any more. Like the half owner of the Nancy Mae III, which Dan List skippers. Three seasons ago, as a defensive lineman for the Dolphins, he made thirteen sacks in the regular season before they smashed his knee. And now I can’t remember his name. Six-five, about two fifty-five, quick as a weasel. And I can’t remember any part of his name.
Intimations of mortality often make me lonesome. I went back to the Flush and stretched out and called Annie Renzetti on the new private line that rings in her office and in her beach bungalow over there in Naples. Four rings and hang up. If she was alone she could catch it on four rings. If not alone, she could call me back. If she wasn’t in, nobody else would answer that line. It was known to be private.
I tried again at nine fifteen, and she answered from the bungalow. “How’s with you, Annie?” I asked her.
“This day has just about flattened me, love. They start arriving tomorrow before lunch.”
“Who?”
“My convention, dummy. Did you forget? Fifty-three specialists and their wives, or husbands, or special close friends. Proctologists.”
“I forgot it was this week.”
“By Monday afternoon when they all leave, my smile is going to feel as if it was nailed on my face. Tomorrow, early, some computerized little snit from company headquarters will be here to double-check my arrangements. This group doesn’t strike bargains. They want it nice. They’ll get it nice. Management wants them back here every year. What I have paid out for beef you wouldn’t believe. Lobsters and clams are coming by air express. Orchids for the ladies. A really good trio in the lounge. And by the time they arrive I will have personally inspected every room, every suite, every bath towel, tested every light bulb. The thing I resent, Trav, is their thinking they have to send somebody down to backstop me. I’ve proved I’m a damn good manager here. I get the printouts from the whole chain every month. I’m always in the top ten on the ratio of gross profit to gross sales, percentage occupancy, personnel turnover. They hired me to manage so they should let me manage, right?”
“Right!”
“My, my, my, how I do go on. Why should I take it out on you?”
“I’m your friend. Remember?”
“But if you were thinking of driving over about now…”
“Forget it?”
“Yes. Look me up after the convention. I fought it, you know. I don’t think we should have conventions here, even in the slack season, even at top rates. I’ve had to turn away reservations good old customers wanted to make, just to accommodate these… these…”
“Careful.”
“Are you okay, love? You sound kind of down.”
“Lonesome, sort of. Meyer phoned from Houston. He got permission to stay in her apartment while he takes care of the details. He sounded depressed, but he seems to be coping. But I know something he doesn’t know, and I don’t know whether I should tell him. I’m going over there soon. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Whether you should tell him what?”
“I won’t go into how I found out, but if only three people were blown to bits on Meyer’s boat, one was his niece, one was Hacksaw Jenkins, and one was a local retard, an itinerant worker everybody called Pogo, actual name unknown.”
“What do you mean, if only three?”
“The photo taken showed three. Maybe Evan Lawrence was below. But I have the queasy feeling he was on shore. I have the feeling that maybe he was where he could watch the Keynes and push a button on a transmitter. I have that feeling in spite of believing he was not the kind of person to do something like that. I really liked him. He had a good face, good laugh lines. You know?”
“I know what you mean. How would he arrange to stay ashore?”
“I don’t know. Back out at the last minute. Plead an upset stomach. And Hack would have picked up Pogo to help with the fishing because he’d be busy at the wheel out there in that chop. The Lawrences had been living aboard for almost two weeks. Time enough for him to poke around in Meyer’s files and pick up enough information so he could make a convincing phone call about the Chilean connection.”
“But what are you going to do?”
“Annie, I can dig into his life and find out if he was what I believed him to be. If so, he blew up too. If the back trail is rancid, he didn’t die, and we have a new kind of ball game.”
“In either case, you’ll have to start in Houston, and you’ll have to tell Meyer what you are thinking, won’t you? So no need to worry. Tell him the whole thing.”
“He’s had so much-”
“Look. Trust him to be able to accept that immortal truth, dear, that life is unfair. And unpleasantly abrupt at times.”
“It would be a lot easier to talk this all over if you had your head on my shoulder; and my left arm around you, and-”
“Hush. Please hush, McGee. I’d be of no use to you at all.”
“Let me be the judge of that.”
“No way.”
“And so I am separated from my own true love by fifty-three proctologists?”
“That’s one way to put it. Say hi to Meyer for me. Extend my love and affection and sympathy and so on. And phone me from Houston or wherever you may be-but not before Monday night next, which will be… the nineteenth. Look, if things turn ugly, don’t take any dumb chances, okay?”
“No dumb chances.”
“I had sort of an idea. There’s a place on the waterway where they are condominiumizing boat slips: in other words, selling the slip itself with the dock, pilings, and overhead roof, like for forty or fifty thousand for a slip big enough for the Busted Flush. I haven’t worked out the arithmetic yet, but I suspect that I could talk management into letting me invest in that as an adjunct facility to the Eden Beach. Then we could work out a lease arrangement, a sort of contract with you, to have a kind of permanent party-boat setup whereby the guests at the hotel here could sign up ahead and there could be sightseeing cruises, or cocktail cruises, or maybe even dinner cruises if we could work out the service details. What I mean to say, it could be a very nice little living for you, dear. It wouldn’t be a killing but it would be steady, and you would practically be your own boss. And we would… see each other oftener.”
“And I wouldn’t be charging around taking dumb chances?”
“Something like that.”
“On the dinner cruises, could I wear one of those great huge tall white chef’s hats?”
“Don’t be such a bastard, McGee.”
“Look into your heart of hearts and see if you can really see me doing that.”
“Hmm… Oh, shucks. No.”
“Thanks anyway for the concern.”
“You’re welcome indeed. Good night, McGee. I love you.”
Seven
ON THURSDAY morning as I was washing up after break-fast, Dave Jenkins came by to see me. Oldlooking for twenty-two. Burned to a brick bronze by the summer sun down in the Keys. Muscles rolling under the parched hair on his big arms. Sloping powerful shoulders, just as Hack had.