A Deadly Shade of Gold (4 page)

I put a robe on and went out through the lounge and put the afterdeck lights on. I looked out and saw Nora Gardino rehooking my gangplank chain. She came aboard and swept by me and into the lounge and turned on me, one fist on her hip, her eyes narrow. "Where is he?"

I yawned and rubbed my eyes. "For God's sake!"

"You know Beanie, over at the Mart."

"Yes, I know Beanie."

"She called me, over an hour ago. Maybe an hour and a half. She said she saw Sam about eight o'clock over at the Howard Johnson's. She was sure it was him."

"Can I fix you a drink, Nora?"

"Don't change the subject. Where is he? You said he wouldn't get here until tomorrow."

"So I lied."

"Why? Why?"

"Settle down, honey. He had a little matter to take care of first."

"I called you and called you, and then I decided you'd turned the phone off again, so I came on over. I want to see him, Travis."

"He wants to see you. Tomorrow."

She shook her head. "No. Now. Where is he?" She stood there staring at me, tapping her foot.

She wore flannel slacks, a yellow turtleneck sweater, a pale leather hip-length coat over the sweater, swinging open. She looked fervently, hotly, indignantly alive.

"Let him set it up his own way, Nora."

"I am not going to wait through this night, believe me. It's ridiculous. The time to have it out is right now. Where is he?"

"I don't know."

"Travis!"

I yawned again. "Okay, okay, honey. Let me get dressed. I'll take you there."

"Just tell me where."

I was tempted, but then I thought that Sam Taggart would be sore as hell if I let her go to that fusty little cabin without warning, bust in on him in the midst of that kind of squalor without warning. The best way I could retrieve it would be to have her wait out in the car and go get him and warn him and send him on out to her. As a matter of fact, as a penalty against myself, or a gesture of friendship, I could turn over the Busted Flush for the reunion, and stay in his little Mount Vernon.

I dressed quickly, woke myself up by honking into double handfuls of cold water, locked up, went out with her and woke up Miss Agnes. Nora sat very perky and alert beside me.

"What was it he had to take care of?"

"I'll let him tell you that."

"When did he arrive?"

"This afternoon, late."

"How does he look?"

"Fine. Just fine. He's in great shape."

I drove over to Route 1 and turned left. She was as rigid as a toy with the spring wound too tightly. When I glanced at her, she gave me a big nervous white-toothed grin in the reflection of the passing street lights. The gas station was dark. I parked on the asphalt beside the pumps and got out.

"In one of those crummy little cabins?"

"He isn't broke."

"I don't care if he's broke. I'll come with you."

"Nora, damn it, you stay right here. I'll send him out. Okay?"

"All right, Trav," she said meekly.

I walked around to the back. Cupid McGee. His car was beside his cabin. There was a pickup truck parked beside the end cabin on the left. The others looked empty. I rapped on his door.

Night traffic growled by on Route 1.

"Sam?" I called. I rapped again. "Hey Sam!"

I tried the latch. The door swung open. I smelled musty linoleum, ancient plumbing. And a sharp metallic smell, like freshly sheared copper. I fumbled my hand along the inside wall beside the door.

The switch turned an unshaded light on. The light bulb lay against the floor, on the maple base of a table lamp, the shade a few feet away. The eye records. The eye takes vivid, unforgettable pictures. Sam Taggart was on his side, eyes half open in the grey-bronze of the emptied face, one chopped hand outflung, all of him shrunken and dwindled by the bulk loss of the lake of blood in which he lay. A flap of his face lay open, exposing pink teeth, and I thought, idiotically, the missing teeth are on the other side.

They're sending a guy to close the account.

I heard the brisk steps approaching across cinders, and it took me too long to realize who was coming. "Sam?" she called in a voice like springtime. "Darling?"

I turned too late and tried to stop her. My arms were wooden, and she tore loose and took a step in and stared at what they'd left her of him. There are bodies you can run to. But not one like that. She made a strange little wheezing sound. She could have stood there forever. Lot's wife.

I had enough sense to find the switch and drop him into a merciful blackness. I took her and turned her slowly and brought her out. She was like a board.

In the darkness, with faint lights of traffic touching her face, she said in a perfectly conversational tone, "Oh, no. I can't permit that. I can't stand that. He was coming back to me. I can't have anything like that. I can't endure that. There's only so much, you know. They can't ask more than that, can they?"

And suddenly she began to hurl herself about, random thrusts and flappings like a person in vast convulsions. Maybe she was trying to tear herself free of her soul. She made a tiny continuous whining sound, and she was astonishingly strong. I wrested her toward brighter light and her eyes were mad, and there was blood in the corner of her mouth. She clawed at me. I caught her by the nape of the neck, got my thumb under the angle of her jaw, pressed hard against the carotid artery. She made a few aimless struggling motions and then sagged. I caught her around the waist and walked her to the car, holding most of her weight. I bundled her in on the driver's side, got in and shoved her over, and drove out of there.

By the time I walked her into her cottage, she was crying with such a despairing, hollow, terrible intensity that each sob threatened to drive her to her knees. Shaja wore a slate blue robe, her ashy hair tousled, her broad face marked with concern.

"I took her to Sam," I said. "When we got there he was dead. Somebody killed him. With a knife." She said an awed something in a foreign tongue. She put her arms around the grief-wracked figure of the smaller woman.

"Do what you can," I said. "Sleeping pills, if you've got any."

"We haff," she said.

"I've got to use the phone."

She led Nora back to the bedrooms. I sat on a grey and gold couch and phoned the county sheriff's department. A man has been murdered at the X-Cell Cottages, in number three, half a mile below the city line on the left. My name is McGee. I found the body a few minutes ago. I'm going back there right now."

I hung up in the middle of his first question. I went back to Nora's bedroom. Shaja was supporting Nora, an arm around her shoulders, holding a glass of water to her lips. A coughing sob exploded a spray of water.

"I'll be back later," I said. She gave me a grave nod.

When I parked at the gas station, a department sedan was already in front of the cottage. The cottage lights were on. Two deputies were standing outside the open door. A middle-aged one and a young one.

"Hold it right there!" one of them said.

I stopped and said, "I phoned it in. My name is McGee."

"Okay. Don't touch anything. We got to wait for the C. I. people," the middle-aged one said.

"My name is Hawks. This here is Deputy DeWall." He coughed and spat. "Friend of yours in there?"

"Yes."

"When'd you find him?"

"A little after quarter of one. A few minutes after." Cops do not have to be particularly acute.

The average citizen has very few encounters with the law during his lifetime. Consequently he reacts in one of the standard ways of the average citizen, too earnest, too jocular, too talkative.

When someone does not react in one of those standard ways, there are only two choices, either he has been in the business himself, or he has had too many past contacts with the law. I could sense that they were beginning to be a little bit too curious about me. So I fixed it...

"God, this is a terrible thing," I said. "I suppose you fellows see a lot of this kind of thing, but I don't think I could ever get used to it. Jesus, as long as I live I'll never forget seeing Sam there on the floor like that with the light shining on his face. I can't really believe it."

Hawks yawned. "Somebody chopped him pretty good, Mr. McGee. The registration on the steering post says Samuel Taggart."

"That's right. Sam Taggart. He used to live here. He went away three years ago, just got back today."

The doctor arrived next. He stared in at the body, rocked from heel to toe, hummed a little tune and relit the stub of his cigar. Next came another patrol vehicle followed by a lab truck and by a Volkswagen with two reporters in it. A young square-shouldered, balding man in khaki pants, in a plaid wool shirt, and a baggy tweed jacket seemed to be in charge.

Hawks and DeWall muttered to him as he stared in at the body. They motioned toward me.

Everything was casual. No fuss, no strain. When a man with a hundred dollar car gets killed in a four dollar cabin, the pros are not going to get particularly agitated. The official pictures were taken. A reporter took a few shots. They weren't anything he could get into the paper. Tweed Jacket waved the doctor in. The ambulance arrived, and the two attendants stood their woven metal basket against the outside wall of the cabin and stood smoking, chatting, waiting for the doctor to finish his preliminary examination.

The doctor came out, spoke briefly to Tweed Jacket and drove away. The ambulance boys went in and wrapped Sam, after Tweed Jacket checked his pockets, put him in the basket, strapped him in and toted him out and drove away with him-no siren, no red lights. Tweed Jacket waved the lab crew into the cabin and I heard him tell them to check the car out too.

He came wandering over to me, the two reporters drifting along in his wake. He turned to them and said patiently, "Now I'll tell you if there's anything worth your knowing. You just go set and be comfortable, if you can spare the time."

He put his hand out and said, "Mr. McGee, I'm Ken Branks. We appreciate it when people report an ugly thing like this rather than letting it set for somebody else to find, like when they come in the morning to tidy up. You come on over to the car where we can talk comfortable."

We got into the front seat of his car. He uncased a little tape recorder and hooked the mike onto
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the dash and plugged it into the cigarette lighter. "Hope you don't mind this. I've got a terrible memory."

"I don't mind."

"Now tell me your full name and address."

"Travis D. McGee, Slip F-18, Bahia Mar, aboard the Busted Flush."

"Own it or run it?"

"I own it."

"Now you tell me in your own words how you come to find this body."

"Sam Taggart used to live here. He went away three years ago. He got back today and called me up this afternoon, aboard the boat. I came right over and we talked for about an hour, about old friends and so on. I loaned him forty dollars. He said he was back to stay. I went on back to the boat. I spent the evening alone. I had my phone turned off. I went to bed and went to sleep. At quarter after twelve a woman came to the boat, a friend of mine. She used to know Sam. She said a mutual friend had phoned her and told her Sam was back in town. She thought I might know where he was. She thought it would be a good idea if we both paid him a visit. I got dressed and drove her over here. She left her car back at Bahia Mar. His car was here. I knocked and there wasn't any answer. I tried the door and it opened. I found the light switch. She came to the door and looked in at him too, and she went all to pieces. She used to be pretty fond of him.

I took her back to her place, phoned in from there, and then came right back here. There's somebody to take care of her at her place. When I got back here, the two deputies were already here. So I waited around."

"Who is this woman?"

"She's a local businesswoman. It wouldn't help her any if it was in the newspapers that she was with me when I found the body."

"I can understand that, Mr. McGee. Who is she?"

"Nora Gardino. She has a shop at Citrus Gate Plaza."

"I know the place. Expensive. She knew this type fella?"

"I guess he didn't have much luck during the three years he was away."

"Where did he work and where did he live when he lived here?"

I remembered some of the places he had worked, and a couple of the addresses.

"Would the law around here have any kind of file on him?"

"It wouldn't be anything serious. Brawling, maybe."

"Who phoned Nora Gardino about seeing this man in town?"

"A girl called Beanie who works in the Mart, across from Pier 66. I don't know her last name."

"Do you know where she saw Taggart?"

"In that Howard Johnson's opposite the Causeway, about eight o'clock."

"Anybody with him?"

"I don't know."

"How long did you know Taggart before he moved away?"

"About two years."

"How did you meet him?"

"Through friends. A mutual interest in boats and the water and fishing."

"Where has he been living?"

"In California. And he spent some time in Mexico."

"And he came back broke?"

"He borrowed forty dollars from me."

"What do you do for a living?"

"I get into little ventures every now and then. Investments. Land deals. That kind of thing."

"It was sort of a gag, going to call on Taggart so late?"

"I guess you could call it that. She wanted to see him again, I guess."

"You didn't see anybody driving away from here or walking away from here when you drove up?"

"No."

"Was he the kind of fella goes into a bar and gets in trouble?"

"Sometimes."

"I'll have to check this out with Mrs. Gardino."

"Miss. She might be pretty dopey by now. Sleeping pills. It was a terrible shock for her to see anything tike that."

"A knife is messy. There's no big rush about talking to her. How about Taggart's folks?"