I said, “No, thank you. I don’t want any souvenirs. All I want of this is a faint recollection.”
“Then stay out of trouble,” he told me.
The warden had my dossier on his desk. He looked from it to me and said, “I’d planned to talk to you, White. You’re several cuts above the average man we get here and I don’t want to see you back. But right now you’re so filled with self-pity and feeling, so pushed around that nothing I could say would do a bit of good.”
He laid a typed receipt, a sealed envelope, a small sheaf of bills, and some silver on the corner of his desk. “So if you’ll sign a receipt for the one hundred and twenty-six dollars and fifty cents that is credited to your account, I’ll keep my mouth shut and let someone else do the talking.”
That would probably be Father Reilly. The priest had given me the only news I’d had of Beth. I knew she was clerking in a store in Palmetto City. I knew she knew about Zo. But if Beth had filed suit for divorce, I hadn’t been served with the papers.
“Goodbye and good luck, White,” the warden concluded the interview.
I started to crack, “Thanks for nothing,” but something stopped me. Perhaps it was the fact I had plenty for which to thank him. The warden had leaned over backwards to see that the attempted break hadn’t earned me any bad time.
The same guard took me in tow again. But we weren’t headed for the chaplain’s office. It was the first time I had been in a death house. I didn’t like it.
Swede was sitting on the edge of a desk in a small windowless conference room. He looked much the same as he always had except his tan was gone, the lines in his face were deeper, and his eyes seemed even bluer.
The guard said I had ten minutes, and closed and locked the door. The lump in my throat grew still larger. Ten minutes wasn’t long enough to even start thanking the old man for what he’d done for me. I’d have been in the attempted break up to my eyes if Swede hadn’t landed a hard right on my jaw that had belted me back on my cot unconscious.
When I’d come to again, Mickey and Saltz were dead, and Swede had picked up the big tab for caving in a guard’s head.
“Stay out of this, kid,” he’d warned me, “You only got six months to go. I got life and ninety-nine years.”
Swede sucked hard at his cigarette as if with time running out on him he wanted to enjoy every puff to the maximum. “Ten minutes,” he said, “isn’t long. So let me do the talking, kid. Would you say I was a Holy Joe?”
The lump in my throat let go and I laughed nervously.
“Then keep that in mind,” Swede said. “You and me are a lot alike, Charlie. We both like the water. We’ve both made a good living on and out of it. But were we content with that? No.” He gestured with his cigarette.
“That’s why I asked the warden if I could talk to you. A man does a lot of thinking when he gets in one of these quick-fry joints. And it all boils down to this: A man hauls in the fish he baits for and at the depth at which he fishes.”
He lighted a cigarette from the butt of the one he was smoking. “In the old days it was different. A man had to depend on himself and there was a lot of wide open space for him to do it in. But times have changed. After years of sailing by guess, society has set out certain buoys and markers.” He asked if I had a silver dollar. There was one in the silver the warden had given me. Swede traced the lettering on the head side with a finger. “E Pluribus Unum. Know what that means, Charlie?”
I said, “Something about one for all or all for one.”
Swede shook his head. “No. It means one out of many. And that’s you and me, Charlie. And the screw who brought you here. And the warden. And the guy who’s going to fry me tonight. We’re all just one out of many. And you’ve got to swim with the school and keep its rules or – Well, look what’s happened to me. Look what happened to you when you tried to sail on your own.
“As rackets go, you had a good one. But let’s add up the score. On the debit side it cost you your wife, your boat, and got you three years in the can. On the profit side you had a dozen roaring good drunks in Habana, a fancy dame, and the false knowledge that you were smarter than your fellow fishing-boat captains. There were no lulls in your business. You brought in a good load every time. Okay. How much dough have you got?”
I told him. “One hundred and twenty-six dollars and fifty cents.”
Swede hooted. “For three years of your time. There are guys netting mullet out of Naples, and Palmetto City for that matter, who are making that much in one night. But netting mullet is hard work. So is fishing the grouper banks. And you and me had to be wise guys. You hear from your wife yet?”
I said I had not.
“Well,” Swede admitted. “I don’t know why you should. A man can starve a dame. He can cuss her. He can beat her every night and twice on Sunday and she’ll still think he’s her personal Marshall plan in a silver champagne bucket. But only if she knows she’s the only woman in his life.”
He went on before I could speak.
“But are you willing to admit you made a mistake and cut bait or fish? No. You’re so rotten filled with self-pity and hate, it’s a shame.” He snuffed out his cigarette. “I know how you feel, Charlie. I’ve got a temper, too. That’s one of the reasons I’m here.” He read my mind. “But don’t do it. Killing your former partner because he ran out on you when the law stepped in, will only bring you back here. And I mean here.”
Swede lighted a third cigarette. “Look. When you came back from that mess over there in ’45 or ’46 you’d been living in a bloody tide for four years. Life meant nothing. A thousand lives meant nothing. We had a similar red tide in the Gulf while you were gone. Fish died by the tens of millions. The shores and tide flats were heaped so high with dead fish they stunk. Everyone swore things would never be the same again.
“But they are. The water gradually cleared and the fish began to spawn again. Nature is building back. And that’s what you’ve got to do, Charlie. Forget this. You’re in clean water again. If you’re smart, you’ll stay there. Get a job fishing on shares. Swab out a charter boat if you have to. Then when you get something to offer her, find your wife. Get down on your knees if you have to and beg her to forgive you and come home.”
I said that sounded like good advice.
Swede looked at me a long minute, then snuffed out his cigarette. “But you aren’t going to take a damn word of it. Okay, kid. It’s your funeral.”
The guard opened the door. “That’s it.”
“I’ve been wasting my time,” Swede told him. He walked out of the room without offering to shake hands. “I won’t bother to say goodbye. It’s just auf Wiedersehen, Charlie. I’ll try to save a quart and a blonde for you down there.”
I walked back through the yard with the guard and out the front door of the prison. It was the same sun on the outside of the wall but it was brighter somehow. It almost blinded me. I stood on the steps for a moment looking at the cars in the parking lot and flipping a mental coin.
If Beth was waiting for me, I’d follow Swede’s advice. If she wasn’t, I was off to the races. I’d identify, locate, and kill Señor Peso if I had to call for the quart and the blonde that Swede had promised to save.
Señor Peso was obviously a nom de plume and a cover. It sounded like a gag. The prosecutor had made much of that fact at my trial. But it was the only name I had.