He walked out past a civilized little stand with a blue-and-white striped awning, where iced tea, beer, frozen yogurt, and hot dogs were sold. A mixed crowd, he noted; kids, holiday fishermen, and a somewhat more well-heeled set who probably belonged with those sleek craft he saw in the prime slips just after the refreshment stand.
Nobody who looked like Ron Zygmore, with or without beard.
It was funny how drug-dealers fell into the same sub-groups the rest of society did. The three men who hired him in Atlanta were not Miami-Vice type criminal overlords; they were businessmen, members of the Jaycees, the Masons, and the Knights of Columbus. And twenty years ago, when they’d run a thriving illegal business, they hadn’t been chic cocaine dealers passing merchandise in clubs to a soundtrack of throbbing rock; they’d been four college students running marijuana up from
Mexico on a secondhand boat, playing Jimmy Buffet and exchanging dreams in roadhouse cafes.
It was the most exciting time in their lives. Bailey heard that, in their voices; Bailey always listened, and watched, and took in everything. You never knew what would work, later.
The most exciting time, and the most pure. Their friendship had been a sacred thing. They believed in it the way some motorcycle gangs believed in the brotherhood of the road, the way officers and gentlemen believed in the concept of honor.
Bailey respected their sincerity. It was the kind of thing he did not consider himself capable of.
“It’s not like we really think there’s anything wrong,” Alan Tillman said. Tillman did most of the talking; he owned a computer supply company and wore his usual business suit when he spoke to Bailey.
“No,” agreed the other two men. It was probably a coincidence, they told him. You could hear the embarrassment in their voices at even bringing it up.
It was probably a coincidence that Ron Zygmore, D’Artagnan to the other three, had disappeared just after retrieving the last cache of money from their first, shared business.
“We always planned to retire on that money, you see,” Tillman explained. “We’d made about three-quarters of a million dollars, altogether — way too much to explain to anyone how we’d gotten it. And we didn’t want to use a bank. So we found …” He hesitated. “A place to store it. And we agreed that every ten years or so, one of us would go and retrieve another portion. Well, inflation being what it is—” The others nodded at this, “—this was going to be the last trip. There was about four hundred thousand left. We were going to split it four ways.”
It was odd, in a way, Bailey thought. You could listen to these middle-class businessmen talk and you could still hear the country boys underneath, like some kind of skeleton. They’d used their stakes to open supply stores and car dealerships and they’d forgotten about retiring, giving up their dreams to paperwork. But you could still hear the distant clank, under the words, of rebuilt cars and bar brawls where somebody pulled a knife.
“Ron went to pick it up on a Saturday afternoon,” said Tillman. “On Sunday he was dead.”
“Maybe,” said one of the others under his breath. No one commented.
Ron Zygmore, classmate and owner of the Elly Ann, the old wooden fishing boat whose hold they’d once stuffed with bags of Mexican Gold.
Two months ago he’d bought a spanking new fiberglass boat, that he’d taken out into a tropical storm off the coast of Florida. Now the boat was gone, and so was Ron. So was the four hundred thousand, and even though the money rankled, Bailey suspected that what rankled more was the possibility that they’d been made fools of by one of their own.
So Bailey had checked: Zygmore had been divorced one year previously. He had one child in college, with whom he was not very close. Another child had been killed in a car accident years ago. And the boat that had presumably gone down with Zygmore had not even been paid for.
Not Zygmore. Ron. Bailey preferred to start thinking of the people he searched for by their first names as soon as possible. It seemed to help the process.
“I’ll take it,” he said, interrupting another homage to coincidence from Alan Tillman.
Tillman looked at him. “We don’t just want the money,” he said finally.
“I know what you want,” said Bailey.
There was always something they couldn’t give up. There were two Monterey Clippers in the marina; one was a newer boat, of fiberglass, and he passed it by to walk out along the last pier to the wooden vessel moored there. He looked at the photograph he’d brought with him, then back at the boat. A new paint job; a new name, obviously — it wasn’t the Elly Ann any more. This one was white with green trim, and its name in cheerful green script on the back: Bastard Luck. Gee, we weren’t a little bitter, were we?
Three months ago, his sources told him, Ron had finally parted with his beloved boat, selling her to a buyer on Galera Cay. Bailey wasn’t really familiar with any form of transportation that didn’t keep four wheels on the ground, but he’d called the Coast Guard while he was still in Georgia and asked for the hull number. Now he walked around to the bow and checked the numbers there against his information.
Not a match. Well, you wouldn’t expect life to be that convenient.
He scanned the area; no one seemed to be watching or caring. He stepped over the gunwale and onto the deck.
Someone had taken loving care of this boat, and recently. The deck was clean, sanded, and had a fresh coat of green paint. They were a little messy with their possessions, though; Bailey moved aside a tangle of gear from the back of the boat and found the brass plaque with manufacturer’s name and date: Bowman and Sons, 1951.
Also not a match. Damn. Because if it wasn’t a match, this wildcard theory was going nowhere, and he really ought to say goodbye to Lilith and fly out of here tonight and see what he could pick up back in Atlanta—
— Which he was about as likely to do as he would be to flap his arms and fly out under his own power. Which meant blowing this case and giving the retainer back to his clients, or at best postponing the fieldwork and jeopardizing the possibilities of success.
Bailey was not happy, and he found himself looking over the evidence again, as though it might suddenly change from the last moment he’d seen it. Good thinking, Phillip Marlowe. Except … now that he was down on his knees examining the damned thing, didn’t those brass screws holding the plaque look bright and shiny and new? Almost unseemly in their contrast to the darkened plaque itself.
He stood up and brushed off his jeans, then headed for the stairs to the hold. A few steps down and he was standing in the dim light of a galley — well, there was a tiny stove and a sink, anyway. A toilet sat on the floor opposite, unencumbered by so much as a shower curtain. Either the owner lived here alone, or the concept of physical privacy was not much regarded. A bunk was set back in the rear of the boat. There was a pile of waterproof clothing, but nothing else in the way of personal possessions. No books or papers saying “Ron Zygmore owns me. And he banks at Credit Lyonnais …”
Bailey didn’t know boats, but he knew how to research. He pulled out his penlight and examined the overhead beam supporting the deck above … hull numbers on older boats were often carved into the rafter. A library is a useful thing, God wot. But damn, Mr. New-Paint-Job had gotten here first, too. High-gloss white, applied with enthusiasm. You could see the brush strokes against the rough grain of the wood.
Well, screw that, he refused, he refused to go back to Atlanta just because the universe was conspiring against him. There had to be …