Джон Макдональд - The Last One Left

Sam saw the pure misery in the boy’s eyes as he turned away and stared down the slope of the street toward the harbor.

“What kind of a place is this where you’re staying?”

“Simple. Clean enough. Sixteen shillings.”

“You could get your gear and come along with me as my guest. I’ve got a reservation at the Nassau Harbour Club.”

“I guess I’d just as soon stay right here, sir.”

“Then get that chart of yours and ride on out with me while I register. We’ll talk some more and I’ll bring you back.”

The room they gave him was on the second floor with a small balcony overlooking that part of the harbor. Sailboats with blue sails were racing around a marked course in a windy chop.

From the side windows there was a view of the free-form swimming pool below, of tidy tanned girls swimming, of waiters bringing drinks to round metal tables. At the long docks with their finger piers were the pleasure boats, clean and colorful, bright work winking in sunlight, moving and lifting against the mooring lines to the push of wind, tide and chop.

Jonathan spread the chart out on one of the twin beds. There were patterns marked on it in different colors of crayon.

Jonathan said, “One of the Aircraft Crash and Rescue people marked it up to explain how a search pattern works. This is a square pattern here. It’s a spiral with square corners. They know how far they can see from the altitude they fly at, and on each leg they overlap about a third of the area they could see the last time past. When they go down to check something, they use loran to get back to the point where they broke off from the pattern. Anything they see floating, they check it to make sure it isn’t debris from the Muñeca.”

“How would they explain two seaworthy boats disappearing with no trace at all?”

“Well — fire and explosion is one way. The Muñeca was diesel powered, but the smaller boat Mr. Kayd bought in Florida was gasoline. If it was tied alongside the big boat something like that could have happened. Then there are coral heads. The navigation charts of the Bahamas aren’t real accurate. A coral head can build up from the bottom maybe fifty feet down, and the top of it might be only a foot across and two feet under water, but they’re hard as granite. At cruising speed one could open up the bottom of a cruiser so that it would go down in seconds practically. If they went plowing into a whole area of coral heads, maybe it would open up both hulls.”

“So that would bring it down to the question of just how competent that Captain Staniker might be, and how well he knows the waters and the special problems of the area.”

“From what I’ve found out I guess he knew what he was doing, sir.”

“I’m her brother, Jonathan. Would it be at all possible for you to call me Sam?”

“I guess so. I guess I could — Sam.”

“She wouldn’t have been over here if I hadn’t leaned on you two. I suppose you keep thinking about that.”

The boy sat on the bed, looked down, frowning. “I guess you do too, sir. Sam. But what’s the good of saying if this and if that? There’s that saying, if your aunt had wheels she’d have been a tea cart. Leila and I, we talked about it a long time before we agreed to play it your way. She was a lot more indignant about it than I was. I made her see it from your point of view. You were motivated by love for her. When the motivation is okay, you can overlook lousy performance.”

“Lousy performance?”

Jonathan looked up at him, slightly surprised. “You want to deny people the privilege of making their own mistakes. It’s like you don’t want to give yourself or anybody else any leeway. Leila said you were pushing us around just for the sake of pushing us around. It could look that way, you know. I said you were concerned about her having a good and happy life. She put her finger right on the flaw in that one. She said there must be a thousand definitions of what constitutes a good and happy life, and so it was a thousand to one that what you wanted for her would relate to what she wants for herself. Certainly it was a lousy performance, because there was no need for us to prove anything to each other, and certainly not to you. You see, Sam, if Leila and I had any doubts or reservations, we’d have taken a leave of absence from each other to check it out. At nineteen and twenty-one we’re both a little tougher and more mature than the average. What we want to do with our lives is not sacrificial. For us it’s self-seeking, because that’s where the satisfaction is. And what could make our lives full might sound like nonsense to you.” He paused. “Just as your life sounds like nonsense to us, Sam. You do what you do very successfully. But there are people who are the best in the world at juggling flaming torches, or dancing on ice skates, or collecting old Roman coins. It doesn’t mean everybody should get the same charge out of it.”

“So you went along with it because my motives were pure.”

“Because if we didn’t, it would have been years before you and Leila would have re-established a good relationship. She said it didn’t matter. I said you are the only blood kin she had and it does matter.”

“At this point it is an academic discussion, Jonathan.”

“If — it’s as bad as it could be, I am going to try not to let myself hate you, Sam. Because what was true is still true, no matter what happened.”

“Why didn’t the three of us have this kind of a talk seven weeks ago?”

“We tried to. You weren’t listening.”

Sam stared out at the boats, finally turned and said, “That is perfectly accurate. I wasn’t listening. And I might learn to regret that most of all. Now then. What did you find out that makes you think Staniker qualified?”

“He came here with his wife ten years ago with enough money saved up to make a down payment on a big ketch that had been built here in the islands. He and his wife did a lot of the work themselves, fixing it up for charter. He got all the necessary papers and permissions. He was based at Yacht Haven, just down the road from here. They lived aboard. He operated it on charter for five years. They made a living, but they didn’t make much more than that, I guess. Five years ago they were out on charter and heading for Eleuthera and a waterspout took the sticks out of her and opened the seams and smashed the dinghy. The water that came in drowned the auxiliary so he couldn’t transmit. She drifted down to Cat Island and broke up on a reef there. He got everybody ashore, and he was cleared of any blame when they had the investigation. The ketch was a total loss and there wasn’t enough insurance money to start up again. He went back to Florida and got a job as a hired captain. I guess that when Mr. Kayd was looking for somebody to run the Muñeca over here and cruise the Bahamas, he’d be a pretty good choice.”

“If he was such a good choice, why would he be available? Why wasn’t he already employed?”

“I wouldn’t know. I guess it would be easy enough to find out in Miami.”

“Why didn’t he make a better success of the charter business right here?”

“The people I talked to at Yacht Haven, the ones who were there when Captain Staniker was, they gave me the idea he was a good sailor but not a very good businessman. I got the impression that it was his wife, Mary Jane, who sort of held the whole thing together.”

Sam and Jonathan went down and had lunch in the coffee shop. After lunch Sam drove into town, dropping Jonathan off on the way. He had dealt on a prior visit with a Mr. Lowry Malcolm with the law firm of Callender and Higgs on Bay Street. He took a chance on catching Malcolm in, and after a ten minute wait was taken back to Malcolm’s small office. Lowry Malcolm had gotten out the file on the previous business matter.