“McGee, all meat and reflexes.”
“And illusion. One of the last of the romantics, trying to make himself believe he’s the cynical beach bum who has it made. You permit yourself the luxury of making moral judgments, Travis, in a world that tells us man’s will is the product of background and environment. You think you’re opportunistic and flexible as all hell, but they’d have to kill you before they could bend you. That kind of rigidity is both strength and weakness.”
“Aren’t you swinging a little wild tonight, Prof?”
He stuck a fist against a huge and shuddering yawn. “I guess so. A funny hunch that Miss Jane Doe is very bad news. And I’ve seen how you take on problems. You get deeply involved. You bleed a little. Indignation makes you take nutty risks. All that splendid ironic detachment goes all to hell when you detect a dragon off in the bushes somewhere. I wouldn’t want you to get the same professional kind of attention she got. I’d miss you. Where would I find another pigeon who gets clobbered by the queen’s gambit? Or knows how to lead Meyer to the fat snook. Good night, pigeon.”
After I had made my nest on the big yellow couch in the lounge and put the lights out, I forgave Meyer for prodding me with his parlor psychology. He’d depicted me as a little too much of a gullible ass. Sometimes, sure, I’d identified a little too closely with a customer, and when you couldn’t help them, it could leave a lasting bruise. But I have been there and back time after time, and had my ticket punched. No matter how much I despised the fat cats who devise legal ways of stealing, I had learned not to give them any odds-on chances of puncturing the brown hide of McGee. It had happened enough times to teach me that in spite of the miracles of modern medicine, hospitals are places where they hurt you, and that when you hurt enough the cold sweat rolls off you and the world goes black. I knew I had some parts nobody could replace if they got smashed, and once deep in the wormy comfort of the grave there would be no chance to identify with the gullible ones, or any chance to nip in and snatch the meat out of the jaws of the fat cats.
The dead-eyed cookie was not likely to elicit any warmth and sympathy from the McGee, or send him off in any galloping charge to recover the magic grail. Besides, I had enough bread for months of joyful leisure, for cruising, beachcombing, getting happily plotzed with good friends, disporting with the trim little jolly sandy-rumped beach kittens, slaying gutsy denizens of the deep blue, and slipping the needle into every phony who happened into my path. When it came time to embark on the next profitable crusade, it would be for the sake of someone considerably more helpless than our Eurasian Jane Doe.
But those certainly were fantastic legs. I started mousing around the galley early, certain both boat guests were asleep. It startled me when Meyer came aboard. He came onto the stern deck and knocked softly on the lounge door. I went and opened it for him.
“Lock yourself out? Why?”
“For the same reason I got up and buttoned the whole boat up after you’d sacked out last night. I started wondering if anybody could have stayed on the bridge to make sure she stayed down. Not likely. But it’s not a bit of trouble to lock up.”
“Where have you been, Meyer?”
“A morning stroll. The view from the bridge. About two miles there and two miles back. That adds up to a six-egg breakfast. I wanted to confirm some guesses.”
“Such as?”
“It sounded to me as if they took off in the direction of Miami. The tire marks check out. They swerved over onto the wrong side of the bridge to jettison their sweet cargo. Skid marks. And then more skid marks where they scratched off and swerved back into their own lane. They stopped fairly near this end of the bridge, and it has enough center rise so they couldn’t see the road behind them while stopped. But from the top of the rise you have a good straight shot for about four miles south. And, from where they dumped her over, you can see a good mile straight ahead. With their lights out, nobody coming from the direction of Marathon would notice them on the wrong side of the bridge. But they had to know it would be clear enough. So I walked further and, about two hundred yards south of the bridge, the shoulder is so wide you can park there and see around the bridge. Tires had mashed the grass down.”