John D MacDonald - Travis Mcgee 18 - The Green Ripper Read online

  "Finally he spoke to us. There was so little movement of his lips it was as if he were a ventriloquist. He had a soft little voice. I am Brother Titus. I am an elder of the Church of the Apocryphal You are inquiring about someone we now know as Sister Aquila. She has asked me to tell you that she is quite happy here and she does not wish to see you or anyone from her previous life.'

  "Billy demanded to see her. He swore at Titus. It had no effect. He said it wasn't possible, not now, not ever. She was happy in her new life, he said. Billy said he was going to see his sister Mitsy, and if it took a court order for a conservatorship, he would get it. He'd gotten that information from the investigator.

  "Brother Titus thought for a little while and told us to wait. In twenty minutes a little crowd of them, about nine or ten, came down to the gate. We didn't see Brother Titus again. The people ranged in age from, I would guess, sixteen to twenty-five. Three or four girls, and the rest boys. At first we thought they had come without Mitsy, and then we recognized her. It was a shock. She had become such a worn, skinny, subdued little thing. She wore a dirty white smock and she had some kind of seri ous rash on her face and throat and arms. They looked badly chapped. The smock was too big for her. All of them had exactly the same look. It's hard to describe. Sort of bland and smug and glassy.

  "They stood very close to her as she stood at the gate. She said, 'Hello, Billy. Hello, GreteL I don't know how you found me, but I'm sorry you did.' BiUy said, What have they done to you, Mitsy?' She said, 'My name is Sister Aquila now. They have made me very happy. I am full of peace and happiness and the love of God. Please don't ever try to find me again. Tell Mama and Papa Em happy here, happier than I've ever been before.' Billy said, Thou better come home. Pop has had a very bad stroke. Things are in terrible shape. We all need you.' She didn't turn a hair. She looked at him with that contented half smile and said, 'All of that is in my previous life. It has nothing to do with me now. My life is here. Go away, please. God bless you.' They all turned and went up the hid to" "ether, so close together they made each other stumble from time to time. They all had exactly that same look. It took the heart right out of Billy."

  "Did you make another try?"Meyer ash

  "Billy did. He went up there several weeks later, but they told him she was gong They said she had been 'called' to another place in the service of the Lord. If it wasn't for the stroke, maybe the family would have taken some kind of action through the

  The Green Ripper courts, but money was scarce, and God knows Billy and I couldn't finance a court order and depro- gramming her and all that. The brother came back from Iran about six months before Billy ran out on me. Carl, his name is. He couldn't understand why we couldn't get her away from those people. He wasn't here. He couldn't know how it was. He lives in Houston now, at least he did the last I heard, and their mother lives with him and his wife."

  "So you saw Brother Titus here, last week?" I said.

  "Definitely. He was so... so out of context, it tools a while to remember where I'd seen him before. But I am positive. Tray, there's another thing that seems odd. After they went by me, they headed for the airstrip, and a little later the blue plane took off. I saw it take off and head west. When Mr. Ladwigg drove back home, he drove on the road. Why did he take Brother Titus on such a roundabout way? Was it because Titus didn't want to be seen by anybody?"

  "Maybe he was showing him some land. Maybe the Church wants to set up an encampment here," I said.

  "Where there isn't any available? That piece was sold months ago."

  "To whom?" Meyer asked.

  "To some kind of foreign syndicate, headquartered in Brussels. I was told they plan to put up a hotel-club where members can come for holidays in the States. They took twenty undeveloped acres over on our western boundary near the airstrip."

  "For foreign members of the Church of the Apocrypha?"Meyer asked with a sweet smile.

  "Oh, no!" Gretel looked horrified. "Mr. Ladwigg and Mr. Broffski and Mr. Slater would have fits. It can't be that, really. Could it, Travis? Could that creep..."

  "Not at the price they're probably getting out there."

  "Two hundred and twenty-five thousand. It was a special price because of no roads or water supply or sewer.''

  "Maybe Brother Titus left the Church," I suggested. "Maybe he's into real estate. That has the status of a religion in south Florida"

  She didn't laugh. She was scowling. 'I keep thinking of Mitsy. Her hands were grubby and her hair was caked with dirt. She had sores on her anHes. She looked exhausted. I am damn well god ing to find out exactly what that man is doing around there. And it can't be anything good."

  "You two are well-matched," Meyer said. "You both have the same kind of compulsive curiosity. I will tell you what I tell Travis, my dear. Proceed with caution. The world is full of damp rocks, with some very strange creatures hiding under them."

  "Herm Ladwigg is an old honey bear," she said. "He would not be involved in anything tricky or

  The Green Ripper dirty. And if I can think of the right way to ask him, hell tell me what's going on."

  The next time we looked at Meyer, we found he had fallen asleep in the chair. He would bitterly resent our leaving him like that, so we stirred him awake. He said he was too tired to eat, and over Gretelts protests that she could stir up something in a hurry, he went clumping on back to his stubby old cabin cruiser moored just down the pier from my slip, the John M~ryru~rd Reynes, sighing in consternation at the state of all the money in the world.

  We buttoned up The Busted Flush. Gretel kicked on her shoes and hung herself around my neck and grinned into my face and said, "Well... will it be before or after the crab-meat feast I am going to fix usl"

  I gave it judicious thought. "How about a little of both?"

  YIow did I know you were going to say that?"

  "Because I usually do."

  "Shut up and deal," she whispered.

  So the gusty winds of a Friday night in December came circling through the marina, grinding and tilting all the play boats and work boats around us, creaking the hulls against the fenders, clanking fit- tings against masts. While in the big bed in the master stateroom her narrowed eyes glinted in faint reflected light, my hands found the well-known slopes and lifts and hollows of her warmth and agility. We played the games of delay and anffcipaffon, of teasing and waiting, until we went past the boundaries of willed restraint and came in a mounting rush that seemed to seek an even greater closeness than the paired loins could provide. And then subsided, with the outdoor wind making breathing sounds against the superstructure of the old barge-type houseboat, and the faint swing and dip of the hull seemlug to echo, in a slower pace, the lovemaking just ended. With neither of us knowing or guessing that it was the very last night. With neither of us able to endure that knowledge had we been told.

  28

  2

  Because Gretel had too many jobs at Bonnie Brae, she went back out Saturday morning to catch up on her desk work, driving off in the riffle Honda Civic I had helped her find and buy. It had belonged to a hairdresser at Pier 66 who had decided to marry her friend and go live in Saudi Arabia. It was pink, with a special muffler.

  She planned to come in again early Saturday ever Ding and stay until Monday morning. It was a bright breezy day. My two best Finor reels were overdue for cleaning and oiling, and I had the first one all apart when Grets phoned me from work.

  Her voice was hushed. "Darling, there is one hell of a mess out here. Herm is dead."

  "Herm?"

  "Ladwigg. Mr. Ladwigg. One of the owners."

  "Heart attack?"

  "They don't know yet. He's been bicycling early in the morning lately, for exercise, riding around the new roads they put in. And they found him in the middle of the road, face down, next to the bicycle. He either blacked out and the fall killed him... they just don't know yet. He was forty-six. What I wanted to say, don't expect me tonight, huh? Catherine Mrs. Ladwigg is in shock. They gave her a s
edative. I'm here at the Ladwigg house trying to get in touch with their son and daughter. The son is a lawyer in Anchorage and the daughter works for the U.S. Embassy in Helsinki, and I haven't got through to either of them yet. When I do, I'm going to stay here until one or both of them get here. There's nobody else to do it. Stan Broffski's wife is a total loss in a situation like this."

  'avant me to come out and help you wait around?"

  "That's nice of you, but no, thanks."

  "Let me know when you think you'll be free, when you have an idea of the time."

  "Sure. Bye, dear."

  So I went back to my fish reels. It was just ten o'clock, Saturday morning, December 8. They were having their weekend in Helsinki and in Anchorage. No telling how long it would take to find either

  The Green Ripper of them. In the meanwhile, poor Hermhadsuccumbed to the age of the jock. The mystique of pushing yourself past your limits. The age of shin splints, sprung knees, and new hernias. An officesoftened body in its middle years needs a long, long time to come around. Until a man can walk seven miles in two hours without blowing like a porpoise, without sweating gallons, without bumping his heart past 120, it is asinine to start jogging. Except for a few dreadful lapses which have not really gone on too long, I have stayed in shape all my life. Being in shape means knowing your body, how it feels, how it responds to this and to that, and when to stop. You develop a sixth sense about when to stop. It is not mysticism. It is brute labor, boring and demanding. Violent exercise is for children and knowledgeable jocks. Not for insurance adjustors and sales managers. They do not need to be in the shape they want to be, and could not sustain it if they could get there. Walking briskly no less than six hours a week will do it for them. The McGee System for earnest office people. I can push myself considerably further because I sense when [m getting too close to the place where something is going to pop, rip, or split.

  Meyer stopped by a little while after I'd finished the reels. He said he had slept fourteen hours and still felt tired. I told him about the trouble out at Bonnie Brae, and he agreed with me that Ladwigg had probably pushed himself beyond his ability. A fall onto asphalt paving from a ten-speed bike going twenty miles an hour can easily be fatal, especially without a helmet. I doubted Ladwigg would wear a crash helmet while cruising his own development in the early hours.

  Gretel phoned again at half-past noon to say she had located the son in Alaska and told him the news, and he expected to be able to get to Lauderdale late this same night.

  '~You sound a little beat," I said.

  "Do I? The phone has been driving me crazy. But I do feel sort of blah. As if I'm coming down with a bug."

  "Can you get somebody to take over?"

  'Y'm trying."

  "I think I'll come on out."

  '4I... I'll be glad to see you."

  Meyer left. I locked up the Flush, went over to the parking area, and cranked up my ancient Rolls pickup, the electric-blue Miss Agnes. The replaced power plant yanked her along too fast for her tall antique dignity, like a dowager blown into an unwilling trot by a gale-force wind. I made a stop on Spangler and picked up a pair of quarter-pounders with cheese, on the assumption that Gretel wouldn't have had time for lunch either.

  I went all the way over to the University Drive intersection and turned north past the new plazas and shopping centers, the caramel-colored condommiums, the undeveloped flatlands where the pal

  The Green Ripper motto still grew, the clusters of wooden town houses with roofs cut into steep new architectural cliches to shed some unimaginable snow load. Bonnie Brae had marled their entrance with squat fat brick pil- lars on either side of their divided-lane driveway. It curved off to the right to the big parking area near the renovated Cattrell place now used as clubhouse, fat farm, and administration building. When the gusty wind slowed, there was heat in the sun. I could see people bobbing and trotting about over on the tennis courts.

  I went into the foyer of the building, hoping to find somebody who would direct me to Ladwigg's new house. A man came out of a room at my right and walked up to me, hand out.

  "Mr. McGee?" He was a boyish thirty-something, with apple cheeks, a bushy blond mustache, thinning blond hair carefully adjusted to hide the thinning, bow tie, gray tweed jacket with leather elbows. When I nodded he shook my hand heartily and said, 'Tm Morse Slater. Maybe Gretel has mentioned me."

  "The manager, yes." He had a bumbling kind of effusiveness about him, a shoe-clerk willingness to please, which was given the lie by the ice-blue eyes, intent, aware, measuring I said, "What I want to know is how I find the ~

  "Gretel told me to look out for you. I just took her up the Drive to the hospital. Got back minutes ago."

  "What happened?"

  "Some sort of bug, I thinlr.She seemed to be in a half faint, and she felt so hot to the touch it frightened me. So I took her right to Emergency and signed her in. They took her temperature and checked her into the hospital and began tests. A Dr. Tower seemed to be the one giving the orders. We accepted financial responsibility, of course. All our people have insurance which... but you're not interested in that. Room one thirty-three."

  I think he tried to say something else, but I was already on my way. The hospital was on the same side of University Drive, and a little more than a half mile away.

  I managed to talk my way to the nurses' station and then down the corridor to the room where Gretel was. It was a two-bed room with an old woman asleep and snoring by the windows, with a curtain drawn between the two beds. I pulled a straight chair close beside Gretel and took her hand. It felt dry and hot.

  "What's going on?" I asked her.

  Her lips were swollen and cracked, and her brown hair was damp and matted. She moistened her lips and gave me a small wry smile. Yt's one of those days," she said. "Oh, boy. I got up and busted my favorite coffee mug that you gave me. Herm Ladwigg died in the street. A bug gave me a hell of a sting in the back of the neck. Later on, when I

  The Green Ripper began to feel dizzy, I fainted and fell and brolce one of the big lamps in the Ladwigg house. And here I am. It's one of those days."

  "What do they say is wrong?"

  '.They don't say. Fever of unknown origin. My ears are ringing so loud you should be able to hear them. I really feel weird."

  "They're running tests, aren't they? They'll find out what you've got."

  A little bit of a sallow blond nurse came hur~ying in. She had a fifty-year-old face and a twenty- five-year-old body. She gave me a disapproving glance, took a temperature reading with an elect Ironic gadget, then took blood pressure on the left arm, pursed her lips, came around and displaced me, and took the pressure on the other arm. She trotted out. I moved close. Gretel found my wrist with her hot dry hand and held tight. array, I feel so hot. [m burning up. I feel terrible, Trav. Terrible."

  When I spoke to her again, she didn't answer. She seemed to be asleep, her eyes about one third open, breathing so rapidly and shallowly through her mouth, it scared me.

  I went plunging out to find somebody and ran into a couple of orderlies pushing a stretcher. I asked them what was going on, and they said they were taking a patient named Gretel Howard to Intensive Care. Other than that, they knew nothing.

  I followed along, after they had raised the bed and pulled her across onto the stretcher. They tried to keep me from getting into the elevator with her, but it didn't work. But they did stop me at the door to the Intensive Care area. I told a very large white-haired nurse that if somebody didn't come and tell me within ten minutes what was going on, I was coming through that door.

  The doctor who came out said his name was Tower. Vance Tower. He led me over to some rattan chairs near a window and we sat down and he said, '] need some background here."

  "What's the matter with her?"

  He had taken a little Pearlcorder out of his At and put it into dictation mode. 'name, address, and occupation, please," he said, and held it up between us. They make you play their game t
heir way, and if you want a lot of delays, just re- fuse to go along. Travis McGee. Slip F-18, Bahia Mar Marina Salvage Consultant.

  "Relationship to patient?"

  I hesitated, then said, "Common-law husband." After ale she had lived aboard the houseboat tenth me for a lot of weeks.

  He was a dumpy-looking man, soft and pale and too heavy, going bald, short of breath, looking out of tired little brown eyes at me, showing no react lion at all to my answers.

  "How can we contact her close relatives?"

  The Green Ripper

  "There aren't any. Parents and only brother are dead. She is divorced from her first husband. No children. I think there may be some distant kin, second cousins and so on, but I would have no idea how to reach them."