“The way he lives, Mim, he isn’t exactly a heavy responsibility.”
“I suppose he picked up his check at your office Wednesday.”
“He was there waiting when I got there. I noticed the beard was gone, and I was going to ask him about it, but he seemed to be in a big hurry. The check he gets and cashes every time is always the check from the month before. Sometimes he loses track and comes in too early, so I worked it out that way to save him extra trips. I don’t think it’s good for him to come to town too often. It gets him too confused and agitated.”
“Should he be walking around with all that money?”
“Honey, I gave up trying to get him to put it in the bank long ago. He certainly gets more than he needs, a lot more, on a total disability pension. He must have a pretty good bundle by now, and I’d guess he’s got it buried in fruit jars all over that damn island. Maybe he shouldn’t be walking around with hundreds of dollars in cash, but I can’t think of any good way to stop him. And I can’t think of any less rewarding outdoor sport than trying to take it away from him.”
“Well, if he hasn’t got any family, I guess some girl is taking it away from him, one way or another.”
“Which I am going to check out right now.”
As he walked to the bedroom phone he knew it was a good chance that one or the other of the men he wanted to talk to would be on duty at headquarters. He asked the duty desk for either Detective Sergeant Lamarr, or Detective Sergeant Dickerson.
Dickerson was there, but in interrogation, and would call back. The call came back in fifteen minutes.
“Dave? This is Gordon Dale. I’m a little worried about our Robinson Crusoe.”
“If there was any kind of a complaint at all, Mr. Dale, I’d have heard about it for sure. Nothing at all in a long time.”
“When he was in town Wednesday, apparently he spent almost three hundred dollars on clothes for a girl. He bought the stuff out at The Doll House. She wasn’t with him. He had a list. It sounds to me as if he ran into a smart operator at that waterfront place.”
“Shanigan’s?”
“She’d be a small woman, size eight or ten.”
“Mmm. Funny. I wouldn’t think Harry would be stupid enough to let any of them get cute with Corpo. I made it clear a long time ago. Harry remembers good. I told him that if his bartenders ever tried to put the clip on that poor guy, or if those semi-pros he runs down there ever tried any kind of con on the Sergeant, the Department of Regulatory Services was going to find a lot of expensive things wrong down there, like maybe having to move the whole building back a foot and a half because there isn’t any exception to the set-back regulations on file.”
“Could he be going somewhere else?”
“Mr. Dale, he’s a little too buggy-looking to get service in a good place, and all the other places know the standing order not to serve him. And they know him by sight. I’ll check it out. But if I wanted to make a guess, I’d say some little hustler is working him without Harry knowing about it. Maybe somebody new in town. The next step would be money for the operation on her poor old bedridden mom.”
“Dave, I appreciate your helping me keep old Corpo out of as much trouble as we can.”
“It was a long war, and a lot of people got shot in the head, and I had as good a chance as anybody. We’re having a busy Friday night here, Mr. Dale. Okay if I report back to you in the morning?”
“I’ll be at the office from eight thirty until a little after eleven. And thanks.”
It was night, and Jonathan Dye awakened with a start when a water-bird flew over the anchored catamaran, a night bird making eerie hollow cries of agony. He settled back, rolled and looked up at the incalculable stars. They were anchored in the open flats over sand bottom. There was enough breeze to slap little waves against the hulls. There was an almost imperceptible bump, and then another, and he realized that with the tide ebbing they were beginning to touch the sand bottom as Stanley Moree had said they would. In the morning they would still be hard aground and Stanley would stay with the cat while Jonathan walked over to search the four tiny islands and sand spits they had approached in the dusk.
He stretched and felt the pull of his thigh muscles. Never had he reached such a peak of physical condition before. He could not guess at how many miles he had walked through shallow water, swum through deeper water. He had never thought that his tough sallow skin would take a tan. But it seemed to darken more each day. He knew he had lost weight, but he could not guess at how much.
He looked over at the stillness of Stanley Moree, asleep a few feet away on the bow deck, and felt gratitude and affection. Jonathan had known Sam Boylston had been humoring what he considered wishful fantasy when he financed the search. Sam had not concealed it well. Never had Stanley given him the slightest indication he did not believe in this search. Stanley did not say cheering words, make heartening predictions. Those would have rung false. He did his job. He made valid suggestions. He worked as hard at it as Jonathan. Something of value had drifted off, and they would find it. Jonathan wondered if it was the very essence of gentle Bahamian courtesy, or if Stanley did indeed share his belief. He had not dared question him about it, afraid to learn that Stanley might be humoring him as one would any mad person.
Yet Stanley had found that tank key the day before yesterday. He had seen the small object at a fantastic distance through the mid-morning glare, on the slope of sand on an island big enough to have given root to a single bush no larger than a basketball. It was a cylindrical white styrofoam float, half the size of a beer can. A short small brass chain was threaded through it, held in place by a brass disc atop the float. At the bottom end of the chain was fastened a bronze tank key, a device with two spindles spaced to fit into the recesses of the countersunk screw top of marine fuel tanks.
Stanley had examined it with great care. He had rubbed at the green frosting of tiny bits of marine growth it had begun to acquire. He had looked carefully at the amount of corrosion on the metal parts. And he had said that it had been in the water less than a month, that the pattern of wind and tides across the Bank would have brought it from the east, that it appeared to come from a good, big boat. One could not say it had come from the Muñeca. But one could be almost certain.
Jonathan remembered a grassy knoll in Texas, a cool night when the stars were brilliant, Leila beside him, stretched out on her back, her hand in his. A parsec is a light year. A light year is nearly six trillion miles. The faint glow of light from the nearest galaxy has been en route a hundred and thirty-seven thousand years, traveling six trillion miles a year toward us.