John MacDonald - The Deep Blue Good-Bye

But I wasn’t built for owning, nor for anything which lasts. I could mend her spirit, only to go on and break her loving heart. And she would probably think it a poor bargain when the time came.

All the little gods of irony must whoop and weep and roll on the floors of Olympus when they tune in on the night thoughts of a truly fatuous male.

And I hold several international records.

I DID not know how she would be in the morning. I could only hope that she would not be bubbly, girlish and coy.

She was pouring juice when I went into the galley, and she turned gravely to be kissed, knowing it her due. A little tilt to the dark head. A flicker of appraisal in slanted eyes.

“Temperature normal, pulse normal, patient starving,” she said.

“What?”

“McGee’s clinic. Morning report. I’m having poached.”

“Scrambled medium.”

“Yessir.”.

The breakfast was rather silent, but not with strain.

After pouring second coffees, she sat and looked at me and said, “I’m being a hell of a problem to you, Trav.”

“I worry about it every minute.”

“Thank you for patience and endurance. You have won the Lois Award.”

“Hang it with my other plaques.“

“I watched the dawn from your sun deck. It was a nice one, with thunderheads. I came to the astonishing conclusion that I better not try to give anything until I’ve built up something to give. Otherwise, it’s just taking.”

“In the morning I’m often anti-semantic.”

“Any future aggression, if there is any, will have to be yours.”

“Sounds valid.”

“And if there isn’t any, don’t go around worrying about what I might be thinking. Last night I collected on my assurance. in advance.”

“0kay.”

“Finish your coffee and come see what unskilled labor has done to your barge.”

The work was worth the admiration I gave it. I shooed her off to the beach, with all her gear. She was back in three minutes just to tell me that she couldn’t guarantee she wouldn’t get a little nutty from time to time, but she felt she was past the pill period, and then she headed back toward the beach, a lissome broad in her mirrored sunglasses, walking on good legs and she was far younger than her years, yet old as the sea she approached.

The operator tracked down Harry in New Vork, from one number to the next.

“In answer to your questions, laddy boy, it is mostly a yes. A few months back some very fine items made an appearance here and were you might say classic items, the kind you expect there should be a description, like perhaps on an insurance list. But they are clean, I am told. All Asiatic items, with, as usual, some of the faceted stuff cut freehand enough to take a smidgen off the value. They have appeared here and there and worked their way up through the Street, everybody taking the small edge a quality thing brings, and they are now mostly in the hands of the top houses being mounted in ways worthy of them, and you can find one advertised in The New Yorker as of present, page eighty-one, a retail to curl the three hairs I have remaining. It was a goodly number of top items, a minimum of ten, and perhaps no more than fifteen, unless somebody is holding tight. As to source, laddy boy, on the Street I found a word here, a word there, adding up to a smiling savage man, not by any means a fool, unloading one at a time, without haste, for cash, known to slam one man against a wall, and having no trouble thereafter, claiming he’d be back often with more of the same.”

“What did he walk away with?“

“Forty thousand minimum. These are important items, laddy boy. And he would wait so proof could be had they were not hot. Cash sets up a certain discount situation, of course, but he played one against another, and did well.”

“Could you do as well if you had the same kind of merchandise? Five per cent for your trouble?”

“You take my breath away. I might do even better. For ten.”

“If I had them, we could dicker.”

“You should not put such a strain on this ancient heart.”

“Harry, can you get me a big blue star sapphire, say as big as the average he peddled, a fake that would slow an expert down for a few seconds?”

“There are only two kinds of fakes in that area, laddy boy, the very bad ones and the very good ones, and the good ones come high.”

“How high?”

“Offhand, one large one.”

“Can you rent one or borrow one and airmail it to me?”

“Switching is very unhealthy.”

“It isn’t what I have in mind.”

“I might be able to arrange it.”

“That isn’t the question. I have faith in you. Can you arrange it today?”

“Dear boy!”

“I would hate to have to deal with anyone else, particularly if I get hold of anything genuine later on.”

“My arm is twisted.”

And then, with a thumb in the Yellow Pages, I began checking the marinas. All this great ever-increasing flood of bronze, brass, chrome. Fiberglas, lapstreak, teak, auto pilots, burgees, Power Squadron hats, nylon line, all this chugging winking blundering glitter of props, bilge pumps and self-importance needs dockside space. The optimum image is the teak cockpit loaded soft with brown dazed girls while the eagle-eyed skipper on his fly bridge chugs Baby Dear under a lift bridge to keep a hundred cars stalled waiting in the sun, their drivers staring malignantly at the slow passage of the lazy-day sex float and the jaunty brown muscles of the man at the helm. But the more frequent reality is a bust gasket, Baby Dear drifting in a horrid chop, girls sun-poisoned and whoopsing, hero skipper clenching the wrong size wrench in barked hands and raising a greasy scream to the salty demons who are flattening his purse and canceling his marine insurance.

But they have to park.

And while the outboarders have infinite choice, those that can house forty-footers are merely legion. I made over an hour of phone calls with the simple query, “Had the Play Pen in there lately, forty-foot Stadel custom?”

The assumption was he’d put the damned thing somewhere handy when he’d visited the Mile O’Beach, but that assumption began to grow wan under the negative chorus. So somewhere unhandy, and I began to get into the toll call area, questing up and down the Waterway.

Lois came back from the beach. I sat glowering at the phone. She came back pinked, sun-dazed and slow moving, with spumesalted hair and a sandy butt, displaying upon a narrow palm, with a child’s innocence, a small and perfect white shell, saying in a voice still drugged with sun and heat, “It’s like the first perfect thing I ever saw, or the first shell. It’s a little white suit of armor with the animal dead and gone. What does it mean when things look so clear and so meaningful? Silly little things.”

I sat on a low stool, hating the phone. “What’s wrong?” she said, and leaned a hip against my shoulder, a weight oddly warm and heavy and luxurious for such slenderness. It was an uncontrived gesture and in a moment she was aware of it and moved away quickly, startled by herself.

“Where did Junior Allen like to tie up?”

She moved uneasily away, sat on a curve of the couch. “Little places, mostly. Not the great big marinas. I think he liked places where his boat would be biggest. A hose connection and power outlet and fuel. That’s all he had to have. And privacy. He liked finger slips where he could tie up with the bow toward the main dock.”

“I’ve been trying the small ones too.”

“But after what he did to Mrs. Kerr, wouldn’t he go away?”

“I would think so. But where was he beforehand? He couldn’t have known that was going to happen. I’d assume he’d move along, thinking she would tell the police.”