We went out in back where the cabins were, the brush tangled around them. Magoo’s big arms hung down to his knees. He hopped up and sat on the trunk of an ancient red Mustang convertible; top long gone, rusting in the grass, dreaming of hot moonlight nights in the sixties. Preach leaned against a cabin, arms crossed, smiling at me, the Jesus eyes blue and mild. I perched my rump on the edge of a concrete birdbath with seashells stuck into the top of it in a design.
“What’s your action?” Preach asked.
“Favors for friends, when I have to. This and that.”
“Big old bastard, aren’t you?” It didn’t need an answer. He continued, “It doesn’t take too much to handle a pair of fat dummies. Maybe there’s a couple more fat dummies you could bust for me. I mean not just as a favor. Cash in hand.”
“No, thanks.”
“What if you’ve got no choice?”
“What does that mean?”
“That means that if you don’t want to do me a favor, Magoo here and some of his friends will do me a favor by breaking your elbows. It’s known to sting a little.”
I smiled at him and shook my head. “If you give the orders, friend, tell them to kill me. You’ll sleep better.”
“You think so?”
“Whatever gets broken will mend, one way or another. And I would not come back at you from the front, Preach. Something would fall on your head, maybe. Or something you picked up might blow up. Or you could be in a room that catches fire and the door is locked. If I came at you from the front, I might not get you. And I would want to be absolutely sure. So, as far as taking orders are concerned, do you want me to tell you what you can go do in your helmet?”
He pushed himself away from the cabin, stretched and winced, and said to Magoo, “We better do more riding, you know that?”
“I know it,” he said. “The last fifty miles my ass was getting sore. I mean, how much chance do we get lately?”
Preach studied me. “Testing, testing. Blaylock told me about you one time. Said you don’t push. Neither do I, so I understand you. I’ve got an idea or two about this place. But I want to know something. Are you fixing to make any moves on Mits?”
“No.”
“What ideas have you got about this place?”
“Once the legal estate thing is settled, I want to see how quick I can unload my half in any way I can unload it.”
“How are your civil rights, McGee?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean if you are a convicted felon, I can get you a pardon so you can vote again.”
“That’s nice, but I’m clean.”
“That’s nice because you should keep owning half. It could be a nice thing for you.”
“In what way?”
“You won’t have to come anywhere near it. You won’t know anything about it. You won’t know that we’ll have some nice little pads built back here, and a lake dug, and an airstrip, and a meeting room put in, like a little convention center. And the whole place will be wired so a rat can’t sneak in without turning on the red lights. Somebody will bring you what you have to sign, on corporation things. You and Mits will sign a management contract with somebody. I don’t know who yet. The books will show a loss, you’ll get dividends in cash you won’t have to report. They could be nice dividends.”
“Mits gets the same deal?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Why should you care?”
“I care.”
He moved toward me and put his hand out. “We can get along.” We shook hands again. “You handle a bike?”
“Not for a few years. But I can if I have to.”
“Why were you out here the other day, McGee?” In the next ten silent seconds I shuffled through all my choices, all the ways I could go. “I was hoping Blaylock could give me some kind of a lead on a biker who beat a sick old man to death near Citrus City nearly two years ago.”
“There’s been a lot of that going around. I would be very disappointed in you if this has anything to do with law enforcement.”
“It has to do with the old man’s son taking a screwing in the will.”
“No law?”
“I’m helping out. A favor for a friend. My line of work.”
“Blaylock help any?”
“He came up with two names: Bike names. Dirty Bob and the Senator.”
Preach turned to Magoo and said, “Anybody like that in the Corsairs you ever heard of?”
“God’s sake, Preach, ever since that goddam movie there been Dirty Bobs sprang up all over the place.”
“That’s where I heard it!” Preach said. “That movie, that Chopper Heaven. The name they called the boss biker was Dirty Bob.”
“And,” said Magoo, “they called his buddy the Senator. Can’t remember what their names were, their real names.”
“That pair was supposed to have ridden all the way from California in fifty hours, without sleep, using uppers,” I said.
“Then hell,” said Preach, “maybe what you’re looking for is the same two that was in those movies. The originals. I heard they were both Hell’s Angels out there. Or Bandidos. I forget which. Dumb damn moving pictures. Any club goes around ripping up the civilians like in that movie, the smokeys would stake out the highway and shotgun those fuckers right out of their saddles.” He gave me the broadest smile I had yet seen and said, “There’s quieter ways of ripping off the civilians.”
As we entered the room where the others were, Preach hung a long thin hand on my shoulder. “We’re getting along just fine,” he said to Mits and Grudd. They both looked relieved. “McGeek here decided he might just keep on owning this garden spot. Mits, you keep hanging in.”
“Sure thing, Preach.”
“Gruddy baby I will be in touch anon.”
“Fine.”
“Come on, Magoo. Put your sore ass back to work.”
They went booming back out onto the highway, kicking up pebbles, riding hard and fast.
Grudd said in an uncertain voice, “He’s… a very unusual man.”
“What does he do, actually?” Meyer asked.
“Don’t ask. I don’t really know. He’s got an office in Miami. Karma Imports. He’s got some kind of leasing business.”
I said to Mits, “He wants to make a lot of improvements here, bring in a manager.”
“Anything he wants to do suits me fine,” she said. “Shall we just… open up here and keep going?”
Grudd nodded. “Probably best. He’ll move quick, I think. Mits, you go through all Ted’s personal stuff, will you? Sort out the giveaway, and the stuff that has value, and the stuff you have questions about. Keep a list. I’ll be back Monday. No, make that Tuesday. I have to be in court on Monday.” We all had to be leaving. Mits walked out with us. She said, “This is going to be one rotten weekend, guys. There was a squeak in the left wheel on his chair. I oiled it three times but it didn’t go away. I’m going to be hearing that squeak coming up behind me… Thanks for everything, guys, okay?”
In the old blue Rolls on the way back to Bahia Mar, I told Meyer about my talk with Preach. “I don’t think I want any under-the-table dividends from an operation I have to stay away from.”
“What will he be doing out there?”
“God knows. Home industry, maybe. A little pharmaceutical plant. Smugglers’ haven. Wholesale distribution point. National headquarters for the outlaw bikers.”
“Grudd is frightened of the man. Through and through.”
“I got what I wanted from him. The back trail is very tricky, very old and cold, but if it leads where I think it is going to lead, it goes right back to Peter Kesner. Back to Josephine Esterland. Now I want to see those biker movies.”
After I was alone aboard the Flush I could not account for my feeling of unrest, uneasiness. It had begun the instant Preach had put his hand on my shoulder. It had not been friendship or affection. It had been a symbol of possession. He and Magoo had walked me out into the weeds, raped me in some kind of deft and indescribable way, and walked me back in, announcing that I had enjoyed it. I wondered if I had been blowing smoke when I told him I would go after him if they busted me up. Testing, testing. Was pride enough? Maybe I’d spent too much of myself in too many hospitals over the years. Did Preach think I meant it when I said it? If I wasn’t really certain I meant it, then I would try to be careful to keep my elbows intact. It is the new warning system. They hold it on a concrete block, one man on the wrist, his feet braced against the block, and they give the elbow a smack with an eight-pound sledge, crushing the joint. If they do them both, you end up being unable to feed yourself. The Italians do kneecaps; the dopers do elbows.