‘Y’m sure.”
Meyer wrote it down on Kline’s piece of paper. “No great problem to check it out on Monday, if you’d like.”
“Ed like.”
Ready for stew?’9
“Right after the next drink. If it all checks out, 111 forget my paranoia and phone them and tell ally’
“And what if it doesn’t checlc out? What if your instincts were accurate?”
‘.Then Em going to have to try to figure out what they were really after. The cover story was very elaborate. I wouldn’t think they’d have gone to all that trouble just for me. I would be incidental to something more important to them, or to someone.9’
I had one drink more than I needed. Meyer dished out the stew. I managed almost half of what he served me. He wanted to clean up, but I shooed him out, sent him home.
After I washed the dishes, I locked up and went over the pedestrian bridge to the beach. A high gray overcast had moved in, pushed by a cool fitful breeze off the sea. I had put on good shoes for walking, and I headed north on packed damp sand, lunging along, carrying with me my sorrow, my mild headache, my sour stomach, and the dull pain in my right thigh which cold and damp will cawe. I plodded along the beach all the way up to Gait
The Green Ripper
Ocean Mile, and from there on I alternated between the beach and A-1-A, depending on obstacles. The cold and the oncoming dusk had emptied the beaches. The glassy facades of the condominiums glittered down at me.
I pushed hard, but even so it had been dark a long time when I crossed back over to the mainland on the Atlantic Boulevard bridge at Pompano Beach. I walked the seven short blocks to North Federal Highway. They were promoting Christmas carols at the big shopping center, pumping them out into the night wind. Jangle bells. And the silent stars go by.
When I found a saloon, I had a small draft beer and phoned a cab. One Oscar Lopez amved in a ratBe-bang rig that smelled strongly of cigar and faintly of vomit. He was dubious about The length of The trip compared width the appearance of the passenger, and I had to show him that I had money. Though he played loud rock and drove badly, he did not have to be told to turn east at Sunrise. He let me off at the marina. I walled to my houseboat, let myself in. It was empty. I had gotten used to a certain amount of emptiness after she had moved way out There to Bonnie Brae. But it had been a conditional emptiness. She could and would return. But now it was a hollowness beyond belief. Even the promise of life and warmal had been drained out of chat clumsy old hull. She was hollow, brittle, tacky, and old, sighing in a night wind, smelling faintly of onion, unwilling to admit that Gretel had ever lived here with me. My legs were leaden with fatigue. The small beer was caught in the back of my throat. Gretel was turned to ash and confined in bronze. The green ripper sailed by on the night wind, looking for more customers. I suggested, politely, that I would give him no big argument this time. But there were others with a higher priority tonight.
I got through Sunday with a little help from my friends. It was a day of cold December rain. I uncrated and hooked up my new speakers. They had been delivered ten days ago. Once they were positioned and adjusted, I tied them down. I had been going to give the old ones to Gretel to give to a friend, but I couldn’t remember the friend’s name.
The new ones had a great big full rich sound for such small enclosures. They worked all day long. Big music and Bloody Marys. People came by and brought bottles and food and stayed for a time and left again. When it would begin to get too noisy, somebody would remember that too much merriment was probably in bad taste, and things would quiet down, but not for long. It was a party related to a wake.