The Drowner (2 page)

If such was actually his hunger, then that could be another project in itself, to show him that it was not that important, that he was victimized by a socio-sexual trauma based on some puritanical and primitive consciousness of sin. Liberated by her freedom from sex superstitions, and by a disc of latex, she had certainly showed him, time and again, that it was merely a healthy and companionable reflex, with the cues given in a cheery voice so that a proper and skilful and earnest climax could be achieved; not something to get all knotted up about, sickly and guilt-ridden, not something shameful. That damned priss wife of his had probably contributed more than her share to his emotional shambles. So it was a pleasant, unimportant and gratifying task to prove to him that total honesty was really the ultimate innocence.

But she wondered why it would all make more sense were he not such a sloppy sleeper.

Then you could take it hedonistically. The muscles, money and Mercedes, the steaks and wine and speedboat certainly made the tropical life one hell of a lot more instructive for a scholarship student with an impressive IQ far from her New Jersey beginnings. Stay trapped on campus and you might as well have gone to CCNY.

She wished he could look defenseless and childlike while sleeping. Then it would all be better. Asleep he looked like a cigar smoker at a convention hotel. It gave her a feeling she could not define. An unrest.

In the hot silence of the afternoon she suddenly heard the slow, ascending clump of footsteps on the outside staircase that led from the ground level up to the sun deck and living quarters. She sat up abruptly, rigid and breathless in a panic which astonished her. Then, from the labored cadence of the footsteps, she knew it was the old composer to whom the elder Hansons had loaned the big house before going on their cruise around the world. She stood up slowly and lifted the big gaudy towel and wrapped it around her body, overlapping it above her breasts and tucking it in, in sarong fashion. Giving an old creature like Habad Korody free food and lodging was a pathetic and typical gesture—a yen for culture.

She had looked him up. He had enjoyed a small vogue a generation ago. He was a dusty footnote in musical history. The fiction was, of course, that he would live in the big house and compose while they were gone. If he dropped dead, no one would install a plaque on the spot.

He reached the top of the stairs and paused a moment for breath, staring at her. He wore a big planter’s hat, sandals and oversized khaki shorts. His ancient body was skeletal, the parchment-brown hide dried against sinew and bone. There was a tuft of pure white hair in the center of his narrow hollow chest. The shrewd old monkey-eyes gleamed out at her from under the wide brim of the straw hat.

“What do
you
want?” she asked in a low scornful voice.

“I come with a message for the king, O maiden fair,” he said and trudged over to the sun cot and stabbed Hanson cruelly in the softness of his waist with the iron spike of the musician’s finger.

Kelsey erupted out of his sleep, bubbling and snarling and dazed. He sat up and stared at the old man. “What the hell?” he asked vacantly.

“Your phone here doesn’t work and so they bothered me at the big house, please would I walk down and tell you. Go to the hospital. Something about your wife. Go talk to somebody named Walmo.”

“Lucille? Something happened to Lucille?”

“I’ve told you all I was told.”

After a motionless moment, Kelsey Hanson gathered himself and raced into the living quarters, leaving the sliding glass door open. The old man stared at Shirley. “Such a college,” he said. “Such an education.”

“It isn’t anything to you. Who ever heard of you?”

The old man gave her a simian grin. “Defiance! Anger! Who’s attacking?”

Hanson came hurrying back out in slacks and a sports shirt. He looked blankly at them and started toward the stairs, patting his pockets.

“What about me!” the girl yelled angrily. “What about me?”

Hanson paused and turned back and thrust a ten-dollar bill at her. It fluttered out of her grasp. “Call a cab,” he said and ran down the stairs. His car roared, spewed gravel, whined away up the curving drive.

She picked up the money and picked up her clothes. “You delivered your message, old man.”

He looked at her. “And another for you. If it matters. The human voice is an instrument without subtlety. It wasn’t said on the phone, but it was obvious. The wife is dead.”

The heat of the sun had a different quality. It made her flesh crawl. “You know everything,” she said.

He shrugged. “I know about little ones like you. Smart little ones. Nothing changes. A little time of defiance and guilt, playing with an empty man like that one. Then you get pulled back to what you thought you were getting away from, girl. The things you think you despise. Home, husband, babies. Fruitful.”

“You don’t know anything about me!”

“I knew you forty years ago, and you haven’t changed. His wife is dead. Put on your clothes. Comb your hair. Come to the big house and call a taxi.”

He turned and went to the stairs and stomped slowly down, hanging onto the railing.

Two

SAM KIMBER slouched in the oak chair in Sheriff Walmo’s bare office and said in a tired voice, “Harv, you giving me the idea you’re getting too damn diligent about a drowning. It’s hard enough on me as it is, and you know it.”

Harv Walmo shook his big head sadly. He had two habitual expressions, sadness and heartbreak. “I know it and can’t help it, Sam. We just got to trace out where Miz Hanson was and why. You see any stenographer here taking notes? This is just you and me. Now what was your exact relationship to the decedent?”

“Dear Jesus,” Sam Kimber said softly. He was a long gnarled knuckly powerful pale-eyed man with a lazy effortless look of importance. “You can answer it yourself. My exact relationship was she was my woman, as everybody guessed and nobody could prove.”

Walmo moved and aligned papers on his desk. “When did this intimate relationship with the decedent begin?”

Sam Kimber jerked himself erect and stared at Harv with astonishment and anger. “Now just exactly what the…” He stopped suddenly, aware of the little flags and signals and alarms in the back of his mind. In a moment the equation was clear. Because they had always known each other, since earliest memory, he had made Harv an exception to his working rule that all friendships were conditional and limited. From the years of hunting, fishing, gambling, drinking and wenching with Harv Walmo, and due to the small pressures he had exerted which had gotten Harv elected sheriff some years back, he had thought the friendship was something true and lasting for them both. He looked into Harv’s sad eyes and saw a little shift and glint back in there, a satisfaction, and knew it was his first clue in all these years to a hidden store of jealousy and resentment. It saddened Sam Kimber. So this too was false. And here and now, for the first time in all these years, Harv Walmo had his chance to lean a certain amount of unpleasant weight on his benefactor, and he was enjoying it. Because, after all, they had started even, and Harv would have to believe all of it was luck, not that Sam was the better man.

Sam slouched again, crossed his ankles, grinned at Harv with a wicked amiability and said, “Now any other man owning so much grove land and developments and little pieces of this and that around these here three counties, a sheriff starting to get feisty, he’d stand on his rights and yell for a lawyer. But you and me, we’re friends all our life, Harv. Isn’t that so?”

“I’m just…”

“Doing your sworn duty to the people voted you into office, and I respect you for it. I’m right proud to have for a friend a man who’ll put his duty way to hell and gone ahead of his chance of getting re-elected.”

Walmo was motionless for a moment. “You never said a thing like that to me before, Sam.”

“You never give me cause. It’s a hot month and a hot day, and time we stopped wearing each other out and got back to making sense. You want me to talk about Lucille, I’ll talk about Lucille. And things will be just the way they were.” Which, Sam thought, we both know is a damn lie, but one we’ll have to live by from here on.

“I’d like for you to tell me, Sam,” Walmo said.

“It goes against me to talk about a woman. Any little ol’ swamp kitten is good for a story, like them two down to Arcadia that time, remember? But Lucille, she’s been something else. I knew her before she and Hanson split up, but didn’t think much about her one way or another, just she was a real pretty young woman he found up there in Boston and married and brang down here, and the two of them partying around with the rest of the hard-drinking young ones. It was all over town how they come to split up, so you must have heard it told one way or another, and you might as well know the truth of it as she told it to me. Eleven months ago it was, April last year, time they went out of Stuart over to Bimini with the Keavers on that big Huckins he had then. Three years married, and him drinking hard and playing around and her waiting and hoping for him to grow up and turn into a man. Jase and Bonny Yates were with them at first and then had to fly back. I think it was the next day they took the boat around and were anchored off some beach, and she and Stu Keaver went to the beach in the dinghy leaving Kelse and Lorna Keaver aboard. She took it in her head to swim back and she went up the boarding ladder, quiet without meaning to, and caught Kelse and Lorna having at it. She made a big stink, and Lorna and Kelse didn’t seem as upset as she thought they ought to be. And when Stu came back aboard and got the picture, he didn’t act too agitated either. Everybody had a couple drinks and then a kind of kidding started she couldn’t understand at first and all of a sudden she realized they were trying to talk her into putting out for Stu Keaver. Like she told me she was all of a sudden stone cold sick sober, looking at their animal eyes and all the smirking and dirty talk going on, and she knew she was a stranger in a strange place and it was all over for her.”

“Dear Lord,” Harv Walmo said.

“Soon as they got back to the Bimini dock, she got off with her gear and flew on Mackey back to Lauderdale and back to here, and by the time he could catch up she’d moved out of the big house, into the Orangeland Motel, getting set to head back north. He came around whining and begging and promising, but she said it didn’t move her one inch. Except finally she agreed, trying to be fair, she’d settle for a legal separation for one year, and she’d stay in the county, and he’d support her, and if nothing had changed by the end of the year, then she’d go ahead with a Florida divorce, and he agreed because it was the best he could do with her, the mood she was in. She was going to file next month.”

“How was that going to set with his folks?” Harv asked.

“Good question, and I guess you could answer it yourself. The old lady adores him, and she’s been thinking of all this as just a little marriage spat, but old John Hanson has had the idea a long time his only son isn’t worth the rope it would take to hang him. Old John liked Lucille, and he figured it was Kelsey’s last chance to turn into anything at all. If the divorce had gone through, old John was going to finally heave Kelse out of the nest for good, no matter how much fuss the old lady put up. But now I don’t know. When they left to go around the world last February, old John put Kelse in charge of the groves, but if he’s been out there twice I’d be surprised.”

“Then you got friendly with Lucille after she moved out?”

“Over a month afterward, Harv. She’d moved into that apartment in the old Carey place on Lemon Street, and she’d just started working mornings, reception work for Doc Nile. Kelse wasn’t being too regular about the support, but she had some cash money she could take out of a trust thing up north, seventy-one hundred and some dollars, and she had the idea if she could put it to work down here it would be maybe a little more income. She’d heard all the rumors about everything I touch turning to money, and we’d met socially a couple times so she came to the office for advice. I told her I wasn’t any investment adviser. Truth of the matter, I figured her for just another one of that crowd, the Yates and the Keavers and the Bryes and all. Maybe I was a little rough, and it was like a last straw for her, and she put her face in her hands and started snuffling. Pretty young woman. That light hair and all. So I softened up and rode her around some looking at this and that, and she told me a little at a time how her dreams had gone to hell in a hand basket. So I took her in on that warehouse thing, a seven thousand piece of it that started bringing her ninety a month right off. We felt good being with each other, and I could talk easier to her than almost anybody. Because we were together so much, the talk started, but nothing went on between us, me forty-seven with growed children and Kitty dead since fifty-three, and her just twenty-seven. You got an anxious look in your eye, Harv, and you look a little sweaty, but you better settle back down because I’m giving you no details. I was in Jacksonville for the hearings, staying over a weekend for law talk, alone in a hotel room, depressed on account of how they fixing to chew me up up there, and so I just reached out and took the phone and called her, woke her out of bed at eleven at night on a Friday and told her I was so low I could walk under a gator without taking off my hat, and told her where I was and to get to me the fastest way she knew how. There was a long long silence and then a little click of her hanging up. Late Saturday I came dragging back from all that tax talk and went in and there she was setting in my room, pale as chalk. Tried to smile and tried to say something, but the tears just started running down her face. I don’t know about love, Harv. It’s a word gets kicked around. We never waved it in folks’ faces. We made each other feel good, and she was more woman than you’d figure her for. I don’t know if I would have married her because it never did come up. But I know I’m going to miss her long as I live.”

After a long silence Harv moistened his lips and said, “Yesterday?”

“We’d spent the night out to that shack of mine beyond Beetle Creek and had two cars there on account of me having to go early to Lakeland on business, and her coming in to work. I wanted her to quit working but she said if she did she’d feel trampy. Never would take a dime from me, nor any present except little stuff, and gave me much as I gave her. She left first and I wrenched off the breakfast stuff and went on off to Lakeland. When I got back to town, got out of the car, first man I see is Charlie Best. About three o’clock, and he said she was dead. I couldn’t make my legs work, see clear or think straight. And got as drunk last night as I’ve ever been.”

“Did she say what she was going to do after she left Doc’s office at noon?”

“We were supposed to go to a movie at the drive-in yesterday night, and I was to pick her up at the apartment along about six to eat first. I don’t remember her saying anything about what she was going to do in the afternoon.”

“Did you ever go swimming there with her?”

“I’m not much for swimming, as you know, Harv. We took picnics there a few times, and I’d watch her swim. I’d joke her a little about that place, saying as how it was land I’d held onto long enough and I was going to get it platted up and sold off. Too many people using it, littering it up. She’d never quite know if I was serious. She’d swim and we’d eat the picnic and she’d take her a little nap in the sun while I’d watch over her, thinking on how lucky a man could get sometimes.”

“She was a good swimmer they say.”

“She slid easy through the water and was never puffing when she come wading out.”

“This is just a routine investigation, Sam.”

“Like you keep saying, Harv.” Sam Kimber rose slowly to his full six and a half feet. “One little favor I want to ask you, Harv. Lucille and me, we got to trust each other pretty good. With this tax persecution and all, she was doing a little private book work for me, and it’s some records I need. I want to get into that apartment and get them.”

“Where are they? I’ll see you get them, Sam.”

“I don’t rightly know. I told her not to leave them laying around.”

“What do they look like?”

“Suppose you just clear it so as I can go get my records, Harv.”

Sam waited, hoping his tone had been convincingly casual. Until today he wouldn’t have been as wary of Harvey Walmo. But Harv had turned into an unknown quantity. He wondered if the tax suit had anything to do with it. He could guess the rumors Harv had probably heard. Sam Kimber is in bad trouble. They’re trying to nail him for fraud, and if they do, they’ll strip him clean and maybe even send him up. But if that was the way Harv was thinking, he was in for an unpleasant surprise after all the dust settled. Sure, the Jacksonville boys were threatening fraud, but they didn’t have much chance of making it stick in court. It was just a big difference of opinion on how some things should have been handled. They’d built their case quietly the way they always do, and then sprung the big audit and asked for eight hundred and twenty-two thousand dollars, back taxes, penalties and interest. Coming up with that would really strip him down. But what you did was swing your own tax boys and legal boys onto the firing line and start dickering. Their latest demand was about three hundred and forty thousand, and the counter offer was a hundred and seventy thousand, with three months to raise it in cash money. Gus Gable guessed the compromise settlement would be in the neighborhood of two hundred and twenty-five thousand. After all, as Gus had explained, they had the complete and detailed personal balance sheet, and to demand much more than that would force Sam to divest himself of so many income-producing properties, they’d be killing off the goose they expected to keep producing those golden eggs in future years. It would be a squeeze to raise that much, of course, but it could be done without upsetting any apple carts.

But there was that one little item he’d sneaked out from under them, the one that if it appeared on the personal balance sheet would go right into the kitty, right into Uncle’s waiting hands. And that was the hundred and six thousand cash money. When they’d jumped him, they’d gotten court orders sealing the boxes they knew about, but they’d missed the two prime ones, mostly because Sam had been so careful about setting them up. So he’d taken the quick trips to Waycross and Pensacola, and packed the cash into the little blue airlines bag and then wondered exactly what the hell to do with it. And after considering and discarding a dozen frail plans, he’d merely turned it over to Lucille and told her to hide it in the apartment, and to quiet her curiosity he told her it was cash money, but not how much. He told her it was land promotion syndicate money entrusted to him on a deal so secret there weren’t any papers of verification around, and he couldn’t take the risk of it being grabbed by the tax people and used as evidence of fraud against him. He said he could prove it wasn’t his, but in so doing he’d have to say so much he’d spoil the deal they were working on.

This satisfied her and she said she’d put it in a safe place and forget it. It was funny, he thought as he watched Harv make up his mind, that having Lucille gone made the money a lot less important. There were a lot less things to do with it, somehow. But it was a good big piece of cash, a useful tool for future ventures.