Sam heard his own accent thicken as he said mildly, “And I wonder if it’s any of your business to wonder, Cap’n.”
“Where is the Dye boy?”
“Looking for Leila. Searching the Great Bahama Bank. Leased a catamaran and hired the fellow who owns it. He’s sure she got out of it somehow.”
“He must be out of his damn mind!” Scheff said.
Sam sighed audibly. “Before all this happened, I would have appointed myself to bring him to his senses. Sure. I would have told Kelly it was foolish to take Francisca out of the state. What the hell good is logical behavior? It’s a cold satisfaction, gentlemen. I can verify that. I have always been a very logical type. You have to let people be as irrational as they want to be, and maybe there are better reasons than you know. Maybe what Jonathan is doing isn’t a crazy one-man search party and nothing but that. Maybe out there on those flats he’s putting up a bridge, a way to cross from a life with Leila in it to a life without her. He knows she wouldn’t have even been aboard that boat if I hadn’t sent her off with the Kayds to try to bust up the romance. I wanted to bust it up so she’d marry into the kind of status I thought was important, so I wouldn’t have to explain to people that my sister was off do-gooding in the jungle someplace for a very small dollar. Jonathan offended me because he doesn’t give a damn about the things I thought were important. I was awake at dawn this morning. I was making up a conversation, explaining to Jonathan what I was going to do. I could develop certain contacts, and I could afford to pay the fee to have some specialists pick up the Harkinson woman very quietly and take her to the right place and turn her over to me. But Jonathan kept asking me why. I told him because I expect it of myself. Then he asked me if I expected it of myself, or expected it of the man I have been imitating all my life. Good question. He wanted to know if I thought Leila would approve. Another good question. But I can’t just let go of it! Not all the way!”
He noticed that they were looking at him with strange expressions. He realized why, and shook his head and laughed at them. “The lawyer has flipped, huh? Ever notice how uneasy people get if you try to say some of the weird things that happen inside your head? I used to hold everything back. That’s part of the incantation, because if you let go, They come after you. I’m going to try to tell people what I think. It’s going to raise hell with my law practice. But it’s the only way I can think of to stop being completely alone in the world.”
“You’ve been under a lot of strain,” Lobwohl said.
“Starting before any of this started. Anxiety building up for years. The pursuit of perfection. But I imagine I’ll take one small hack at playing God. Some photographer is going to get a good shot of Crissy Harkinson. I’ll arrange to get some prints. I’ll turn them over to somebody who went into the deal with Bix Kayd and took a whipping. I’ll just tell them there’s a good chance she knows exactly where the money is. There’ll be no place in the world she can hide.”
Chapter Twenty-five
All day Wednesday Corpo kept thinking of chores he had been meaning to do.
An hour before sunset Leila Boylston marched up to him where he was nailing a crude brace to the side of the stairway.
“This is about enough!” she said.
He turned and smiled at her. “Getting hongry, Missy?”
“Now don’t you start that. Sarg, you made a sacred promise on your word of honor. I’m all ready to go. I’ve been all ready since morning. And you’ve been dragging your feet all day. I’m really getting very angry with you.”
“I’ve been thinking on it, Miss Leila. Make more sense to get a nice start in the morning, don’t you think?”
She stamped her foot and began to cry. Ten minutes later she was still snuffling as the Sergeant slowly threaded his narrow channel at the wheel of the Muñequita, towing his skiff on a short line astern.
“Kindly please stop them crying noises,” the Sergeant said. “I’m doing like you want, okay?”
“I c-can’t help it, I’m so huh-happy.”
“Happy to get shut of the ol’ Sergeant. Sure.”
“I’ll come back to see you. I promised. I’ll bring Jonathan and Sam. They’ll want to thank you for everything.”
“Hardly likely,” he grumbled. “Never will see you again, Missy. Never figured on liking anybody around. You did get me real edged up a lot of times, but mostly there was more good to it than bad.”
“Thank you.”
“No cause for thanks. You wrote down the count on that money?”
“Right on your calendar. You shouldn’t keep all that cash around, really. And I’m going to pay back what you spent on me.”
“It was a present. I keep telling you. I never held with trousers on girls, but you look right good in that there pair.”
When he came to the mouth of his channel he slowed, then edged out very cautiously. A tug was taking a big dredge north along the Waterway. About a mile to the north-west, a red runabout was towing three water skiers.
“Clear enough, I guess,” he said and moved out, following the natural channel across the flats, and then, as he reached deeper water, he turned south and looked back to see how the skiff rode as he increased speed.
“What we’ll do,” he called over the louder noise of the two engines. “I’ll take you down close enough so you can see a place where you should tie up. You go in slow with it. Nothing fancy. You understand how?”
“I steer toward the side of the dock and I pull these two things back to half way and kind of coast, and before I bump I pull them back all the way to reverse, and then push them to half way and turn off the keys.”
“I’ll stay in the skiff close by and when I see you’ve made it, I’ll go on back home.”
“And I won’t remember a thing about who took care of me, Sarg.”
About a mile and a half south of his island, Corpo saw a fast launch coming from the direction of town. He eased well off to starboard so they would pass at a good distance. After he was by he looked back and saw the launch make a big fast white-water turn and start coming up very fast behind him.
Corpo stood with his hands locked on the wheel. He heard the pursuing boat slap through his wake. It came up beside him, twenty feet away on the port side, siren growling as it slowed to his speed. He did not look over at them.