"Oh?"

"Self-involved people are always boring. n.o.body can ever be as interested in them as they are in themselves."

"Sorry about that."

"You probably couldn"t help it. It"s been coming on since before we went up to Bayside that time."

"If I"ve been so depressing, why didn"t you just bug off?"

"There was always the chance you"d come out of it."

"I feel as if I had."

"She seems to be an exceptional person."

"Gretel? Yes. Yes, she is. I like these dunes. They give it a nice wild unspoiled look. We"ll have to cruise this coast sometime. Maybe head north from here."

"What are you smiling at?"

"Me? Was I smiling?"

Eleven.

THE LIGHT breeze was out of the southwest. The sky was cloudless. The late afternoon sun was hot. Shopping centers were jammed. So were the beaches and tennis courts. Meyer took the Dodge to go find out about the rental Mazda. I walked north along the uplands above the beach until I came to North Pa.s.s Vista.

I walked around the place for a few minutes and located Symphony, where John Tuckerman had lived, and Melody. Each was a cl.u.s.ter of four small two-story town houses. Melody Three was where Kristin Petersen had lived. Someone else was in there. A slight baldheaded man was in the narrow carport, painting a small chest of drawers, biting his lip as he made each careful stroke.

The office was in a unit farthest from the water. There was a sign stuck into the lawn and another over the-doorbell. A man opened the door and looked out at me. He had half gla.s.ses and a bootcamp haircut. He looked to be about forty.

"Yes?" he said, managing to inject hostility and disbelief into that single syllable.

"I want to ask some questions about Kristin Petersen, please."

"I have no interest in answering them."

As he started to close the door I put my palm against it and gave a hearty shove. It drove him back and banged the door open.

"Hey!" he said. "You can"t force your way in here!" The foyer was a shallow office, with a secretarial desk two chairs, and a gray file cabinet. He picked up the phone and dialed the operator. I took my time finding the To Whom It May Concern card from Devlin Boggs. He asked the operator for the police. I held the card up in front of him. He told the police it was a mistake and he was sorry. He took the card, turned it over and read the message, and handed it back.

"What"s your interest in Miss Petersen?"

"My interest is enough to drop subpoenas on you if I think you are holding back."

"Oh. You"re an attorney?"

"What is your name?"

"Stanley Moran."

"Mr. Stanley Moran, I don"t want you to keep asking me questions. I am not here to answer questions. I am here to ask them. Maybe you would like to phone Mr. Boggs and get his opinion on whether or not you should ask me a lot of questions."

"But how do I know you-"

"Or I can come back with Hack Ames, or Deputy Fletcher, or anybody you might think of who can rea.s.sure you."

"Why are you smiling like that?"

"Because the angrier I get, the more I smile. It"s a form of nervous anxiety. When I break out laughing, I usually hit people."

He sat down behind the desk, picked a pencil up and put it down, and moved a stapler a few inches to the left to line it up with the edge of the small desk.

"There"s nothing I"ve said or done to get angry at."

"When did she leave here?"

"Do you know how many times I"ve had to answer-"

"Stanley, I"m smiling again."

"Oh. She left here on the twenty-third. The precise time cannot be established. She had a visitor at ten thirty that morning. The police were very interested in that, and they finally were able to identify the visitor as Mr. Tuckerman, who was then living in Symphony Four. After he left, she drove out and was gone the rest of the day. People were interested in her movements because of her-coughrelationship with Mr. Lawless, who at that time was believed drowned out in the bay. They were searching for the body. Her car was seen back in her carport at about eleven on the night of the twentythird; however, it was gone when I walked around the area at six the following morning. I rise early. So the a.s.sumption is that she departed during the night of the twenty-third, or very very early on the morning of the twenty-fourth."

"She took everything with her?"

"Well... practically everything. All her personal things, of course. But she left a few things she had bought for the unit. Let me see now. Two very primitive-looking pottery bowls. Ugly things, actually. One small table, of blond wood with the top in set with blue and green tiles. One framed print that I can"t make head or tail of you can hardly tell which way up to hang it. Our storage s.p.a.ce here is very limited. There"s a limit to how long I can hold these items. I might say that Miss Petersen was not exactly my favorite tenant here at Vista. She made very disparaging remarks about the decor and the architecture. My wife and I have worked very hard to make these units attractive and livable. She had no reason to call them vulgar. We do not set ourselves up as moral arbitrators or-"

"Arbiters."

"What?"

"I have been listening to a man named Meyer too long. Go ahead. You were saying?"

"People"s morals are their own affair. But she did, time and again, "entertain" Mr. Lawless here overnight. His car would be parked in her drive and I would sometimes see him leave in the early morning."

"Shameless!" I said.

"What else do you want to know?"

"Did mail keep coming for her?"

"Yes, until I filled out a permanent change-ofaddress card and signed her name to it. I had it sent to the Atlanta address she gave me when she rented Melody Three. Of course, I have told all of this so many times that-"

"Did she have any particular friends among the other renters?"

"Not one that I know of."

"And you would know."

"I like to think so. After the projects for which Mr. Lawless had hired her were indefinitely delayed, we thought she would probably go right back to Atlanta, but she stayed on. She would go over onto our beach for a little while every day, and she would swim in the pool. I know that quite a few men tried to strike up a conversation with her. She was quite... noticeable in her swimming attire. But she"never responded at all."

"What do you think happened to her, Mr. Moran?"

"Why do you want to know what I think?"

"Why do you always answer a question with a question?"

"Do I? Excuse me. My wife and I think she ran away with Mr. Lawless. We think they are living in Mexico under new names."

"Why would she leave her profession?"

"Because of being in love with Mr. Lawless, I would guess. Anyway, I don"t know that she was really good at being an architect. They say that the other things she has designed were really not great successes. They say she wasn"t in great demand, actually."

"Did she leave owing you money?"

"Heavens, no! We ask for the first and the last two months in advance. Technically you could say she was paid up through this month, through May."

"Did she pay by check on an Atlanta bank?"

"Yes. I can tell you which bank. Just a moment. I noted it on my copy of the lease."

He got it out of the file. "The first check was for fifteen hundred and sixty dollars, including tax, on Atlanta Southern Bank and Trust, check number eight-twenty, account number four-four-eight, fourfour-one."

I wrote it down and said, "You keep good records."

"Thank you, mister-"

"McGee," I said, moving toward the door. "And thank you for everything."

"No trouble at all," he said. "Any time."

The world is full of contention and contentious people. They will not tell you the time of day or day of the month without their little display of hostility. I have argued with Meyer about it. It is more than a reflex, I think. It is an affirmation of importance. Each one is saying, "I can afford to be nasty to you because I don"t need any favors from you, buster." It is also, perhaps, a warped application of today"s necessity to be cool. Stan Moran in his half gla.s.ses and brush cut and improvised office, managing the Vista in order to save rent, was all too conscious of being n.o.body, and it had curdled him. I guessed he would have some sort of disability pension from somewhere. Or maybe he was a retired enlisted man who had been company clerk for too many abusive officers. If I were King of the World I would roam my kingdom in rags, incognito, dropping fortunes onto the people who are nice with no special reason to be nice, and having my troops lop off the heads of the mean, small, embittered little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who try to inflate their self-esteem by stomping on yours. I would start the lopping among post-office employees, bank tellers, bus drivers, and pharmacists. I would go on to checkout clerks, bellboys, prowl-car cops, telephone operators, and U. S. Emba.s.sy clerks. By G.o.d, there would be so many heads rolling here and there, the world would look like a berserk bowling alley. Meyer says this shows a tad of hostility.

As Meyer was not yet back, I decided to walk all the way around to the Cedar Pa.s.s Marina and take a look at the Julie and have a couple of words with Dee Gee Walloway, resident aboard. It was a fine time of day for walking, and there was lots to look at around that great curve of Say Street. I whistled one of my tuneless tunes, strode my loose-jointed, ambling, ground-covering way, squinted when the sun shone between the buildings on the bay sh.o.r.e. I smiled at a brown c.o.c.ky city dog and nodded at a fish-house cat nested into a windowsill. Gulls tipped and dipped, yelling derision and dirty gull-words. Steel tools made music when dropped on concrete floors. Cars and trucks belched blue, gunning at the lights. A paste-white lady with sulfur curls, wearing bullfighter pants and a leopard top, slouched in a doorway and gave me a kissy-looking smile. Spillane had shot her in the stomach a generation ago, and she was still working the streets. I told her it was a lovely evening and kept going. Even the wind-sped half sheet of newsprint that wrapped itself around my ankle had some magic meaning, just beyond the edge of comprehension. I picked it off and read that firebombs had crisped four more West German children, that 30 percent of Florida high-school graduates couldn"t make change, and 50 percent couldn"t comprehend a traffic citation. I read that unemployment was stabilized, UFOs had been seen over Elmira, the latest oil spill was as yet unidentified, and, to make a room look larger, use cool colors on the walls, such as blues and greens and grays.

I wadded it to walnut size and threw it some fifteen feet at a trash container. The swing lid of the trash container was open about an inch and a half.

If it went in, I would live forever. It didn"t even touch the edges as it disappeared inside. I wished it was all a sound stage, that the orchestra was out of sight. I wished I was Gene Kelly. I wished I could dance.

I went into the marina office. It was shipshape, clean, efficient-looking. The man in white behind the desk looked like a Lufthansa pilot. "Sir?" he said with measured smile.

"My name is McGee. I phoned from Lauderdale earlier in the week about dock s.p.a.ce for a houseboat."

He flipped through his cards. "Yes. The arrival date was indefinite. I have it here you will arrive between the twenty-fifth, next Wednesday, and the twenty-ninth. Let me see. Marjory took the call. I a.s.sume she told you it is no problem this time of year. Fifty-three feet. The Busted Flush?"

"As in poker, not as in plumbing."

"Length of stay indefinite?"

"That"s correct. I"ll let you people know as soon as I know." I hesitated, and decided to try it out. "Captain Van Harder is bringing her around for me."

It did startle him. The eyes of eagles clouded for a moment. The muscles of the square jaw worked. "I probably should not say anything to you. Van is as good as there is around here. I don"t think he should have lost his license. Did you know he had?"

"Yes."

"This is something a lot of people do not know-if you hire a man to operate your boat and he doesn"t have a license, if there is any trouble, you might have difficulty with your insurance company."

"I knew him years ago when he fished charter out of Bahia Mar at Lauderdale, before he went into shrimp and had his bad luck. He"s bringing it around as a favor to me. No hiring involved and no pa.s.sengers aboard. So I think it"s okay."

He nodded. "I would think it"s okay too."

"What is the status of the Julie?"

"The legal status? Clouded. The bank has put a lien on her. So she just sits, G.o.d knows how long. I know that n.o.body is going to move her until we get our dock rental. The mate is living aboard."

"Is he there now?"

He started to say he didn"t know, but a smallish, dark, and pretty woman came in from the room behind the office. He introduced us. She remembered my call. He asked Marjory if she"d seen Walloway leave the marina and she said she thought he was still aboard.

I remembered the Julie from having seen her at Pier 66. She looked even better in the dying day. She sparkled from one end to the other. The brightwork was like mirrors. Varnish gleamed. Lines were smartly coiled, all the fenders perfectly placed. The boat basin had two main docks at right angles to the sh.o.r.eline, with finger piers extending out on either side of the main docks. Small stuff was moored at the finger piers between the two docks, where there was less maneuvering room. The Julie was on the outside of the left-hand dock, moored to one of the middle finger piers, stern toward the dock, starboard against the finger pier.

A hinged section of rail was turned back amid ships to make s.p.a.ce for the little boarding ramp. Its wheels moved very slightly as the breeze moved the hull of the vessel.

DeeGee Walloway came toward the ramp, stuffing his keys into the pocket of his tight whipcord cowboy pants. He wore boots, a silver-gray shirt with lots of piping and pearl b.u.t.tons, a blue neckerchief, and a Sat.u.r.day-night cowboy hat. He looked like Billy Carter, except he was half again as tall and twice as broad.

I knew at once why that name had rung a small bell in the back of my head. He stopped and stared at me. He snapped his fingers, rubbed his mouth, shoved his hat back, and said, "McGee!"

"How you, Deej?"

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h! Hey, is Van bringing your houseboat around from the other side?"

"Word sure gets around."

"What happened, he phoned Eleanor Ann the other day, and she said he sounded a little more up than he has lately, and he told her everything would be working out for him, but I don"t see how the h.e.l.l it can. He told her he was bringing a houseboat around-and it would take maybe seven or eight days-for a fellow name of McGee he used to know in Lauderdale. So I figured it might just be the same one. I only knew you that one time, but I never forgot it."

Somebody had brought him to Meyer"s annual birthday chili bash one year. After enough drinks he had decided to whip people. He told me later that it usually came out that way. Not ugly, not loud, not mean. Just an urge to whip people for the fun of it. If I had gotten him fresh, I don"t think I could have handled it. But he had whipped Jack Case and Howie Villetti before Chookie looked me up and told me some jerk named Walloway was spoiling the party. Jack and Howie had put quite a strain on Deej. He had a little sprain in his neck that made him hold his head funny, and he wasn"t going to be able to see out of his left eye much longer. We had the party that year on a sandspit called Instant Island. He was ginning and chuckling. He was a happy man, doing what he liked best. I spent a disheartening fifteen minutes before he finally stayed down. He came at me the next day and, because I had learned his tricks, it took about ten minutes. He came at me the third day, and that was the day I saw one coming at me so late that all I could do was duck my head into it. It broke his hand and left me with double vision for two weeks.

"I just know," he said, "that I should have been able to whip you."

"No, DeeGee. No. Get your mind off it."

"It still bothers me. But what the h.e.l.l. I"m not in no kind of shape like I was then. Look at the gut on me. And I hardly got any wind at all. You, you look like you"re in training for something. You get yourself lean and mean to come over see old DeeGee Walloway?"