“Was Lessard in the same deal?”
He threw back his head and laughed. “You got a good imagination. Lessard was wildcatting for oil when I met him. It didn’t pan out. He lost his own shirt, plus the pants of a couple of backers. Being two Americans in the same neck of the woods, we got to be friends, even if our interests was different.”
“Just a couple of Boy Scouts camping in a strange woods,” I said.
“Now look, Rivers... ah, the hell with you. When Alex planned this trip, he got in touch. If he was going to be in the States, I wanted to see him. I got a right, ain’t I? To see an old friend? So Maria and I came here to meet the boat.”
“No longer Boy Scouts,” I said. “Now you’re some tired tourists basking in the Florida sun.”
His eyes darkened. Then he lifted his shoulders in that quick shrug. “You can’t bait me, Rivers. You got it all now, wrapped up and complete.”
“Okay,” I said. “But take one bit of advice.”
“For free?”
“No charge whatever. Don’t be in a hurry to leave Tampa.”
“Says who?”
“Me.”
“Yeah? For how long?”
“Until I tell you that you can leave.”
He watched me stonily as I walked out of the cottage.
From the Scanlon cottage, I drove the short distance to the bait camp. The lean, sun-cured proprietor helped a middle-aged tourist couple out of a boat they’d brought in from an afternoon of fishing. The man was a pudgy cigar smoker who looked slightly ridiculous in a Hawaiian shirt and Bermudas. His rotund little wife wore a coolie hat and sun glasses along with her cotton dress and straw guaraches. They chatted about their afternoon of fishing. I supposed they’d return to some little town where she’d recount her experiences to the Thursday Literary Club.
The pompous little man, with condescending gestures, told the bait camp owner he could have the afternoon’s catch. Half a dozen grunts — trash fish to the natives.
The couple wended their way under the pines to a block-long Caddy. The proprietor lifted the kicker from the dinghy, carried it down the pier, and grunted it into a steel drum of fresh water, attaching the motor to the rim of the drum. He’d start it and rinse the salty impurities of sea water from it.
“How-do,” he said. “Have some grunts.”
“Thanks, but I’m not that hungry.”
“Turistas,” he said. Then he spat, in the manner of the Latins.
“I’m still looking for a couple of turistas,” I said.
“Kincaid and Smith?”
“Right.”
“They ain’t been back since you was here.”
“Who’s out there now?” I nodded toward the Sprite riding at anchor on the glassy smooth water.
“I dunno. Lessard and his gal young-un, I think. Want a flat-bottom?”
I fished the rental from my wallet.
“Take your pick,” he said. “Snug her when you get back. I’m going to eat my supper.”
Alex Lessard spotted me rowing out and stood at the foredeck rail, a spindly figure until I got close to him. Then the intensity of his face, his stance, was apparent, and the spindliness became wiry strength. His narrow face was unhappy, his brooding gray eyes cold. The last red rays of the sun gave the naked top of his narrow skull a gnarled, seasoned-walnut appearance.
He wore the faded khaki trunks and sneakers that seemed to be his usual attire when he was aboard.
I tied the flat-bottom to the ladder and secured the oars. When I raised up and looked at him, I sensed a decision in his bitter eyes.
“Welcome aboard, Rivers,” he said quietly. “You’re in time for dinner.”
He offered me a hand up, stood aside for me. In white formal attire, he would have been as much at home at a dinner in a South American embassy.
Courteously, he motioned me aft. I wasn’t fooled. I was as welcome here as a leak in the auxiliary engine’s gas tanks.
At the sound of our footsteps, D. D. came on deck. She stopped abruptly when she saw me. She was a dream in shorts and halter, her short ash blonde hair in slight curls misted to her temples and forehead.
She appeared to be cold sober, her eyes hollow, her face touched with paleness from her last prolonged bout with the jug.
“Mr. Rivers is having dinner with us, D. D. Unless you’ve dined already, Mr. Rivers?”
“No,” I told Lessard, “I haven’t.”
“We’re having pre-packaged TV dinners,” D. D. said. “I’ll slip one out of the refrigerator and into the oven for you.”
She disappeared into the cabin. On the afterdeck under a collapsible awning a small folding table and chairs had been set up. Lessard continued his role of graceful host.
“Please sit down, Mr. Rivers.” Would I care for a cigarette. A martini. He stirred vermouth and gin in a chipped crockery pitcher with all the aplomb of a duke presiding over a cut crystal cocktail service.
I decided to play it his way. We had dinner while the sky darkened and a light breeze came out of the Gulf to ripple the awning.
On the surface, it was almost romantic. A schooner that had been everywhere. Two men and a beautiful woman enjoying the last moments of a lazy tropical day. A passing boat might have envied us.
D. D. was quick to smile, quick-witted and charming. Alex Lessard didn’t for a moment fail to keep the pretense going that I was a welcome guest.
He was interesting as a conversationalist. He had been far, seen much. Under the cynical exterior was a keen mind that feared nothing. Maybe his view of life was too big, too complete, so broad that an individual’s living or dying was of no real importance.
Probably his failures had, brick by brick, built his attitude. When life itself is sufficiently reduced in importance, failures here and there mean nothing.
Talking with him gave me a growing certainty of one thing. I’d faced plenty of tough ones in my time, all the way from hoodlums to an old lady who’d kill mercilessly to keep family scandals secret, to a ravening madman who wanted to soak the pain out of his head with my blood. None of them had been any more dangerous than Alex Lessard.
Chapter Twelve
Dinner over, D. D. cleared the table and brought a bottle of brandy and two glasses from the galley.
“I think I’ll have a swim,” she said. “Join me, Ed?”
“I doubt that Mr. Rivers came here to swim,” Lessard said.
D. D. went into the cabin. Lessard poured brandy. D. D. came out, her bathing suit and hair bold splashes of white in the early darkness. She went forward with a wave of her hand. A few seconds later, the sound of her plunge in the water came to us.
The Gulf breeze spared Lessard the bother of squirting insect repellent. Even in sitting, he was in an attitude of intensity. He listened to the forward splash. “When she was a small girl, her mother always warned her not to swim until an hour after she’d eaten,” he said.
“Her mother must have been a beautiful woman.”
“Yes,” Lessard said, hissing the “s” heavily. Light flared over the chiseled sharpness of his features as he lighted a cigarette. “Shall we get down to business, Rivers?”
“Why not?”
“You’re still looking for Kincaid and Smith.”
“Right.”
“I wish you’d update me,” he said. “I honestly don’t know what’s going on.” His cigarette coal arced bright as he threw up his hands. “First you come out here looking for Bucks Jordan. Someone kills him. Then you reappear to question my daughter. Sounds quite serious.”
“No picnic. Not for Bucks.”
He was thoughtful for a moment. “D. D. was not too drunk to remember the details of your visit.”
“I really came out to see you.”