He went trotting off through the light rain. I unlocked the Flush, checked out my alarm system, and heard the phone ringing as I went in.
“Did he get back early?” Annie asked. “Tell me he didn’t come back early, please.”
“No, dear. He’s due to give the last lecture tomorrow, and he’s booked on a flight that gets into Miami tomorrow night at eight.”
“They said on the news that a woman on another boat saw three people aboard Meyer’s boat before it blew up. And I thought-”
“No, the third person was a captain from Charterboat Row here. A friend of both of us. I think you met him once over here. Hacksaw Jenkins. Hack.”
“Oh, yesl That big rubbery guy that looked like a Japanese wrestler. With the very nice little wife. How terrible! Didn’t you hear any of it on the news on the way back?”
“I avoid news whenever possible. I was playing tapes all the way across.”
“Have you got a phone number for Meyer?”
“I know what hotel he’s in. I could call him, but I don’t know what to say. It’s very sad and very ironic, Annie, after all the trouble we went to, trying to get Meyer out of the dumps.”
“Look, let me know how it goes. Let me know how he reacts. I love that funny old bear.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
I didn’t have to phone Meyer. As I was unpacking toilet articles, he called me.
“Travis? A reporter from the Miami Herald tracked me down: Is it true? They’re dead?”
“I didn’t know a thing about it until about fifteen minutes ago. Johnny Dow told me. He thought you were aboard.”
“Would that I had been,” he said. It was not dramatics. He meant it.
“What can I do here?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I can’t think. What is there to do anyway? Where have they taken the bodies?”
“Meyer, from what I hear it was a very big explosion. Very violent. Out past the sea buoy. Out in the open ocean. Who handles your insurance?”
“I can’t think. You know him. Tall.”
“Sure. Walter. So he probably knows about it by now.”
“Before I phoned you, I checked with the travel desk here at the hotel, and I can’t get out any earlier than the flight I’m already booked on tomorrow.”
“I’ll pick you up. Ten after eight. Anybody I should let know about it?”
“There’s an address book in the… oh, dear God, that’s gone too, of course. Anyway, under Amdex Petroleum Exploration in Houston I had the name of her immediate superior. Hatcher, Thatcher, Fletcher… one of those names. Travis, what I don’t understand is this grotesque nonsense about Chile. I was in Santiago for one week, three years ago. It was a small conference. Yes, we were invited to make recommendations to the military government about controlling inflation. And they took the recommendations, and their inflation is under control, unlike the situation in Brazil, Argentina, and Peru. It was a small international conference; Britain, France, Canada, the U.S.-a dozen of us. I didn’t write the final report or any part of it.”
“Meyer, listen. It’s a crazy world. You were there. You got on somebody’s hit list.”
“And so Norma and Evan and Hack die. Can you find whoever did it?”
“There are going to be lots of very competent people trying to find whoever did it.”
“They never seem to find terrorists.” His voice was lifeless, dulled by loss.
At ten o’clock the next morning, local time, I got through to a brisk switchboard person at Amdex in Houston.
“You had a woman working there, a geologist named Norma Lawrence.”
“Sorry. There’s no one here by that name, sir.”
“Look, I know she worked for Amdex. She was on vacation.”
“Oh, you mean Norma Greene! Miss Greene.”
“Okay. Sure. I want to talk to her boss.”
“That would be Mr. Batcher. Sorry, but he’s out of the country, sir. If you want to leave a message, we expect him Friday.”
I sighed with moderate exasperation. “Who on your team there, besides Mr. Batcher, would be interested in being informed that Norma Lawrence, your Miss Greene, is dead?”
“Oh, God! No! To whom am I speaking?”
“My name is McGee. Travis McGee. An acquaintance. Her uncle suggested I inform her employer. That’s what I’m doing.”
“Mr. Dexter will want to know the details. He should be in any minute now. Where can he reach you, Mr. McGee?”
I gave her the area code and the number. She said she was sorry about the whole thing, and I said I was too.
“Automobile accident?” she asked.
“Explosion on a boat.”
I heard her gasp. “Geez, you know I heard that on the news this morning and didn’t make the connection. I mean I didn’t listen to the name, you know? Her and her new husband and a fishing guide? The news said it was maybe some kind of Cuban terrorists. Why would they-oh, Mr. Dexter just came in. Shall I ring him now?”
“Please.”
In a few moments he said, “Mr. McGee? What can I do for you.”
“Hardly anything. Mrs. Lawrence’s uncle suggested that I call her employer and say that she was killed yesterday in an explosion aboard a boat off Fort Lauderdale, along with her husband and a local charterboat captain.”
“Lawrence? Norma Greene Lawrence?”
“That’s right.” There was a silence that lasted so long I said, “Are you there? Hello?”
“Excuse me. That’s a terrible shock.”
“I was trying to get hold of Mr. Batcher. I didn’t think you’d know her.”
“Mr. McGee, this is a small company. A little over two hundred people. The smartest thing we ever did was take on Norma Lawrence when she’d been out of Cal Tech a year. We hired her away from Conoco. She’s… she was going to be one of the best geologists in the business.”
He said something else, but a sudden rumble of thunder drowned him out.
“Didn’t hear you. Sorry.”
“I was saying what a loss it is. What happened?”
“It looks as if somebody put a bomb aboard, some nut trying to kill her uncle. But he was in Toronto. They were going to dive at the site this morning, but the weather is very bad: eight- to ten-foot waves out there, lots of white water. There was a marker buoy at the site dropped off by a pleasure boat, but it was washed loose during the night.”
“I don’t know what to say. Maybe her uncle would know what her personal estate arrangements are. We have an insurance program, of course. And there would be other funds payable to her, or her estate.”
“I’ll have him get in touch. What’s your whole name?”
“D. Amsbary Dexter,” he said. Hence, I supposed, the Amdex. His company. I wrote down his addresses and phone numbers, and he thanked me for calling him. He said it was a terrible thing, and I said it certainly was. He had one of those thin fast Texas voices. Not a good-old-boy voice, a hustler voice. Hurrying to sell you.
By nine o’clock Tuesday night, in the very last of the watery daylight, I was heading back toward Lauderdale from the airport in the Mercedes station wagon I’d borrowed from the Alabama Tiger’s highest-ranking girlfriend, the one who has charge of his floating playpen while he is back in Guadalajara having his big old face lifted again. Wind gusts whacked the occasional rain against the right-hand windows. Meyer sat damp and dumpy beside me, radiating bleakness, speaking only when spoken to.
“Were they annoyed you didn’t give the final lecture?”
“I was there. I’d taken their round-trip ticket, hotel room, and food. I gave the talk. Only because it was easier than not giving the talk.”
“The weather has been rotten.”
“Um.”
“The tropical storm has moved closer and picked up a little. But they don’t think it will reach hurricane force.”
“Uh huh.”