A Deadly Shade of Gold Page 3

  "She's twenty-nine. She's not married. She should be."

  "To me? To me, Trav? Take a good look."

  His eyes moved away. He made a knotted fist and stared at it.

  I said, "Maybe you've gotten all the rest of it out of your system now. Maybe you're ready."

  He sighed. "I could be. God knows I could be. I did some thinking. If there's a chance of her. If there's a good chance, then the thing that seemed so important to get your help on... maybe it isn't all that important. Oh boy, they gave it to me good, friend. The stuff was mine, and they took it. You see, without Nora, it was a lot more important to get it back, or get half of it back, half to you. If you could do anything about it. Maybe not, even if you wanted to. This is not minor league."

  "I don't have very much idea of what you're talking about."

  "I suppose it's pride," Sam Taggart said. "Getting pushed around like a stupid kid. But it is better, I guess, to just get out of it with what I have." He stood up. "Stay right there. I want to show you something." He went out to the rusty car with the California plates. In a few moments he came back in. He sat on the bed and untied coarse twine, unrolled a piece of soiled chamois, reached and handed me a squat little figurine about five and a half inches tall. The weight of it was so unexpected I nearly dropped it.

  It was a crude little figure, dumpy, a male representation like a child would make out of clay. It was startlingly, emphatically male. It was of solid metal, dull yellow and orange, blackness caught into the creases of it, shinier where it had been handled.

  "Gold?" I asked.

  "Solid. Not very pure. But that doesn't make the value of it. It's Pre-Columbian. I don't know whether this one is Aztec. It could be. It's worth a hell of a lot more than the gold, but nobody can say exactly what it is worth. It's worth what you can get a museum or a collector to pay for it. I imagine this one was some kind of a potency symbol. I had twenty-eight of them, some bigger, some smaller. Not all the same source or same period. Two were East Indian from way way back. Three were, I think, Inca. When they took the others, they missed this one because that night by luck or coincidence, this one wasn't with the others."

  "They were yours?" I couldn't read his eyes.

  "Let's just say there was nobody else they could have belonged to, the way things had worked out. Somebody might develop an argument on that, but when I had them, they were mine. A rough, a very rough estimate of the value of the whole collection would be three to four hundred thousand. Take the gold alone, it was two thousand, two hundred and forty-one point six ounces, discount that for impurities, it's still a nice bundle." He slowly rewrapped the figurine, knotted the twine. "Finding the right buyer for the whole works would be touchy"

  "A question of legal ownership?"

  "Who owns things like these anyway?"

  "I'm not looking for a project, Sam."

  "So you keep saying. And this one is too rough for one man. Some people have been hurt on this thing already. I thought it all over and I decided, what the hell." He bounced the wrapped lump of gold on the palm of his tough hand. "It scalds them they missed this one, not so much from the value of it, but because I could use it as a lever and give them a lot of agitation. If I wanted to give up any chance at any of it, and give this little fellow up too, I could raise political hell with them. So, earlier today, I made the decision to pull out with what I could salvage. I used most of the pennies I had left to stop along the road and make a couple of phone calls. They'd like to have this little fellow, and close the books. So I said fifteen, and they said ten, and it looks as if it will be twelve thousand five. They're sending a guy to close." He grinned widely enough to expose all the gap where the teeth were gone. "At least I come back with a trousseau. Twelve-five plus Nora is better than three hundred without her. Lesson number one."

  "It takes you a while. But you learn."

  "Can I tap you for some walk-around money?"

  I looked into my wallet. "Forty do it?"

  "Forty is fine, Trav. Just fine."

  "When are you going to see Nora?"

  He looked uneasy. "After I get this thing closed out. God, I don't know how to handle it. I don't know how to act toward her. I ought to drop onto my knees and smack my head on the floor. Tomorrow is the day. Three years of thinking about her, and remembering every little thing about her, and tomorrow is the day. I've got stage fright, Trav. How should I set it up?"

  "What you do, you hire fifty female trumpet players and dress them in white robes and then you-"

  "Right. It's my problem. Trav, how's Nicki?"

  "I wouldn't know. She isn't around any more."

  "Oh,"

  "When she left, we shook hands. What she really wanted was a barbecue pit in the back yard, tricycles in the car port, guest towels, daddy home from the office at five-fifteen. She tried to be somebody else, but she couldn't make it. She lusted to join the PTA."

  He gave me a strange look. "So do I."

  "You'll make it, Taggart."

  "We'll have you to dinner every once in a while."

  "I'll use your guest towels."

  "We'll feed the kids first."

  So I left him there and went on back to the boat, depressed in a vague way. The plumbing facilities aboard the Busted Flush are extraordinary. I heard that the Palm Beach type who originally built her obeyed every whim of his Brazilian mistress. The water tanks are huge. You could almost set up a bridge game in the shower stall. One could plausibly bathe a sizeable horse in the stainless steel tub. Every possible area of the walls of the bath is mirrored.

  When I had saved myself from extinction in that marathon poker game by making a four heart flush stand up, the houseboat chap showed an expensive tendency to see every hand I had from then on. After I had all his ready cash and his houseboat, as his friends gently and firmly led him away from the game, he was trying forlornly to swing a loan on the Brazilian. With cash and houseboat gone, it would seem that his title to that particular asset was clouded.

  I could guess that she had been a very clean girl. Other than that, she was either a very large girl or a very gregarious one.

  I thundered hot water into the big tub, setting up McGee's Handy Home Treatment for Melancholy. A deep hot bath, and a strong cold drink, and a book on the tub rack. Who needs the Megrims? Surely not McGee, not that big brown loose-jointed, wirehaired beach rambler, that lazy fish-catching, girlwatching, grey-eyed iconoclastic hustler. Stay happy, McGee, while you use up the stockpiled cash. Borrow a Junior from Meyer for the sake of coziness. Or get dressed and go over to the next dock, over to the big Wheeler where the Alabama Tiger maintains his permanent floating house party and join the festive pack. Do anything, but stop remembering the way Sam Taggart looks with all the wandering burned out of him. Stop remembering the sly shy way Nicki would walk toward you, across a room. Stop remembering the way Lois died. Get in there and have fun, fella. While there's fun to have. While there's some left. Before they deal you out.

  Four

  THE INSISTENT bong of the bell awakened me. I stared at the clock dial. Quarter after midnight. I hadn't gone out at all. I had read my book, gotten slightly tight, broiled myself a small steak, and baked myself a large potato, watched the late news and weather and gone to bed.

  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.