Free Fall in Crimson (14 page)

"Must have been very hard."

"I would have done it if it was twice as hard. Oh, I asked him if there was something I should tell you. It doesn't make sense to me. I hope it does to you. His mind seemed to be kind of wandering. Here is exactly what he said: 'Tell Sarge there is a legend about how Dirty Bob and the Senator made it all the way in fifty hours flat out, popping Dexamyls, and then faded away.'

Mean anything?"

"Not right off."

"I think his head has gone all weird. I held his hand. It was like ice."

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"Say it again?"

"'There is a legend about how Dirty Bob and the Senator made it all the way in fifty hours flat out, popping Dexamyls, and then faded away.' He made me say it twice too."

I found that interesting. It meant the message was significant in the shape and form it was told.

"Could those be biker names, Mits?"

"Oh, sure. I've heard about Dirty Bob, but I don't know where or when. And when they take a long hard ride, they do it on uppers and coffee. Night and day, they really go. And it's safer there's two at night, riding side by side, with the two headlights showing, the two tail-lights in back."

"Fifty hours would be how many miles?"

"All the way acrosst. I knew a cat went from Toronto to Mexico City without sleep. A while back, there was kind of a thing about setting records. But it's dumb. People got killed. You can lose your best troops that way." She picked up my wrist and looked at my watch. "I think I'll head back in there. I'll stay as long as they let me. You sure you don't mind?"

"You go ahead. I'll wait. Good luck."

"There isn't any more of that left. But thanks." She came back at ten after six, dry-eyed. "Look, you want to take off, it's okay. They're going to let me set with him. They got curtains around the bed. He doesn't know me any more, or know anything, I guess. But everybody has to be somewhere, and I might as well be here."

"You going to get anything to eat?"

"I couldn't eat."

I gave her my number again. "You call me when you want to leave. It will take me fifteen or twenty minutes to get here. Is that all right?"

"I hate to have you doing this for me."

"If I didn't want to, I wouldn't."

There was a nod and a fleeting smile and she turned and went back to the hospital.

The phone woke me a little after three in the morning. She was waiting by the bench where we had sat. She climbed up into the Rolls, chunked the door shut, and said, "He died at a quarter to three. He stopped breathing and then tried to kind of rise up and fell back with his eyes half shut and his mouth open. I got his stuff here in my bag they took from him. The watch and ring and wallet and keys."

"I'm sorry, Mits."

"F.T.W."

"What? Oh. Right."

"I signed a couple of things there. I signed them Marilyn O. Blaylock. They didn't ask for any ID.

I always liked the name Marilyn. I think what they do, maybe, they get to collect from the VA somehow."

"Probably. Did he have any living relatives?"

"I never heard of any at all."

"What will happen to the place out there?" I asked as I started up, heading north.

"He said he had it all worked out, but he never said how. His lawyer has the papers on it, he said. Man name of Grudd up in West Palm."

We rode in silence. She sighed heavily. "Oh, God, somebody's got to go through all his stuff and decide what should happen to it."

"Maybe Mr. Grudd has instructions. Better contact him first."

"First thing."

"Hungry?"

"Like some kind of wolf."

So I pulled into 24 HOUR CHICKEN and she ate one of the big breast baskets all by herself, with fries and a chocolate shake. I told her I was going to be given a kind of associate-type pin
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that put me under the protection of the Fantasies, that Cal was going to get it for me.

She studied me for long moments as she sucked up the shake, cheeks hollowed by the effort.

"What could save your life and save your ass, you shouldn't try to be funny about, okay?"

"I wasn't trying to be funny."

"There isn't anything funny about that Knucks. He is genuine through and through crazy.

Someday they are going to put him away."

"Cal is going to get the badge to me. I've been voted in."

"I know. Because it got the message to Knucks about not messing with me any more. At least I hope it did. I hate being grabbed like that. And he's so rough, he hurts a lot."

"Have you got people close by?"

"Not close by. They're all down near Monroe Station on the Trail. Lots of brothers. When this thing is settled, I might go down there awhile, sew up some tourist skirts, get a good rest, go frogging."

"It would probably be good for you."

"What the hell would you know about what's good for me?"

"Excuse me all to hell, lady."

She came sliding over and put her hand on my arm., "Oh, Jesus, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it.

Look, I'm hurting and I want to hurt back, but I shouldn't be hurting you."

"Forget it. No harm done."

She had nothing to say the rest of the way. She got out with helmet and shoulder bag and thanked me. I waited until she got the door unlocked and turned and waved.

By the time I tucked Miss Agnes away and biked from the garage back to the Flush, there was a faint pallor across the eastern sky, close to the horizon line. I chained the bike up and went walking on the empty beach, not too healthy a night activity of late. Some of the jackals cruise our area from time to time, and have shot an innocent man in the head, raped a woman on the beach, cut a man up while removing his wallet and watch. Sub-human freaks, looking for laughs.

I stashed my sandals where I could find them, rolled up the pants legs, walked the water line. The sea thumped in and slid up the sand, pale suds in starlight.

I walked and thought about the lieutenant. I could never feel easy about his gratitude toward me.

If I hadn't helped carry him down the hill in the rain, somebody else would have. And maybe he would have been better off not being carried at all, being left there. But he didn't think so. I had run into him again by accident, fifteen years after he was wounded. It had been up to him to recognize me. He was fifty pounds lighter and a hundred years older than I remembered.

Okay. Okay. Okay. But, by God, it seemed that an awful lot of people were into dying. The "in"

thing this year, apparently. No chance for practice. You had to do it right the first and only time you got to do it. And you were never quite certain when your chance was coming. Stay braced at all times.

Eleven

THE BYLINE did not come hulking into the marina until midmorning on Thursday the twenty-third. Meyer and Aggie were standing up in the bow. I went along with the yacht, keeping up easily at a walking pace. They both looked several shades darker and very content.

"Lovely cruise," Aggie called. "Just lovely."

I helped with the lines and went aboard when the crew had rigged the gangway. They greeted me. I kissed Aggie on the cheek and asked them how far they had been.

"Just up to Jupiter Inlet," Meyer said. "We anchored in a very secluded cove. And we had a nice time. And then we came back."

"I admire the way you seafarers put up with the rigors of the deep dark ocean blue."

"Don't be snide, darling," Aggie said. "No one needs to be bounced about on a lot of angry ugly
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waves in order to enjoy a cruise. Don't you agree, Meyer dear?"

"Aggie, I always agree with everything you say."

"Mary time?" she asked. "Below or up here? It does seem nice up here, don't you think, Travis?

Raul, tres marias picartes, por favor."

She sorted herself out on a sun chaise on the upper deck, crossing her long tanned elegant ageless gleaming legs, arching her magnificent back just a little, tossing that rich ruff of hair back, favoring me with a slow and sardonic wink. It was not invitation. It was confirming our mutual approval of the effort that had made the tight pink bikini feasible, with only the smallest roll around the middle. She was a big glorious engine, and a very smart tough lady who, a bit belatedly, had come into her own in every way and was enjoying every moment of it.

"Aggie is flying out from here at one o'clock," Meyer said, "instead of cruising back to Miami."

"I was going to be a day late," she said, "but after two phone calls, I learned better. One of the media monsters is nibbling at my poor little string of papers, salivating. Wants to stick us in with all their magazines and television stations and bulk carriers and tampon factories and give me a fat consultant contract."

Meyer spread his hands apart and said, "Aggie, it depends on what you want. If you take the cash, put it in tax-frees after paying capital-gains taxes, you could have over half a mil a year with very small tax to pay on it. You could spend a lot more time aboard this vessel."

"What I want, dear man, is to run my world better than anybody ever ran it before, or will again.

A business person, making business moves all day."

"So you shouldn't sell."

"I seem to have a business I can't sell," I said. They both stared at me and Aggie Sloane said,

"You have a business? How quaint, dear boy! Of what sort?"

The drinks arrived, and I took a swallow before I turned to Meyer. "You heard me talk about Ted Blaylock."

"Yes, of course. The crippled lieutenant."

"He died Monday night."

"Sorry to hear it."

"An attorney named Daviss Grudd, two s's, two d's, phoned me and told me about it Tuesday afternoon. That whole enterprise of his, Ted Blaylock's Oasis, Inc., was in a closely held corporation. Very closely held. One hundred shares of stock outstanding. So he left fifty to me and he left fifty to a skinny little half-Seminole woman named Millicent Waterhawk, called Mits, one of the famous Fantasy Foxes. And I can't sell that damn stock or give it away until there has been an appraisal of the value of the whole damn thing, and God only knows how long that is going to take. Grudd says the thing has got to keep operating or the value of the shares left to Miss Waterhawk will go down, and Grudd said that there is a note in his office to me from Blaylock, saying that it was the only way he could think of to protect Mits's interest and he was sure I would make sure she didn't get a tossing."

I jumped up so quickly I splashed some of my drink on the back of my hand. In a higher than normal voice, I said, "I don't like all this! My God, when it got so you couldn't rent a car or check into a good hotel without a credit card, I had to sign up. I had to have a bank account to get the credit cards. I keep getting into more and more computers all the time. Boat papers, city taxes, bank records, credit records, IRS, army records, census records, phone company records.... God damn it, I feel like I'm getting more and more entangled Like walking down a dark corridor into cobweb after cobweb. I didn't sign up for this kind of lousy regimentation! I don't want to be a damn shareholder, owner, manager, or what the hell ever. I'm getting smothered."

They were both staring at me. "There, there," said Aggie. "Poor baby." She turned to Meyer,

"Poor baby doesn't comprehend the modern way of guaranteeing anonymity and privacy, does he?"

"Tell him, dear," Meyer said, looking fatuous.

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"Sit down, Travis. The computer age, my rebellious friend, is strangling on its own data. As the government and industry and the financial institutions buy and lease more and more lovely computers, generation after generation of them, they have to fill them, they have to use lots and lots of programs, lots of softwear to utilize capacity. How am I doing, Meyer?"

"Very nicely."

"Meyer taught me this. What you should do from now on, Travis, is to make sure you get into as many computers as possible. Lots of tiny bank accounts, lots of credit cards, lots of memberships. Have your attorney set up some partnerships and little corporations and get you some additional tax numbers. Move bits of money around often. Buy and sell odd lots of this and that. Feed all the information you can into all their computers."

"And spend my life keeping track of what the hell I'm doing?"

"Who said anything about keeping track? If you can get so complicated you confuse yourself, imagine how confused the poor computers are going to be."

"Is she putting me on, Meyer?"

"She's giving you good advice. If you try to hide, you are easy to find. You are leaving only one trail in the jungle, and the hounds can follow that one. Leave forty trails, crossing and recrossing.

The computers are strangling on data. The courts are strangling on caseload. Billions of pieces of paper are floating around each month, clogging the inputs, confusing the outputs. A nice little old lady in Duluth had twelve post office boxes under twelve different names, and had twelve social security cards and numbers, and drew checks on all twelve for eight years before they caught up with her. And they wouldn't have, if she hadn't signed the wrong name on the wrong check five years ago. The government seeks restitution. She says she lost it all at bingo. Think of it this way, Travis. With each new computer that goes into service, your identity becomes more and more diffuse and unreal. Right now today, if every man, woman, and child were put to work ten hours a day reading computer printouts, just scanning the alphabetical and numerical output of the printers, they could cover about one third of what is being produced. Recycling of computer printout paper is a giant industry. We're all sinking into the oblivion of profusion, and one day soon we will all be gone, with no way to trace us."

Aggie began to giggle and gasp. "Millicent Waterhawk," she said in a strangled voice. "Your business partner."

"What's so damn funny?" I asked.

Meyer started laughing, and pretty soon I had to join in. It was such a dreadful blow to my selfimage that it took me a while to see any humor in it. But there was a lot, I guess.

The funeral service was on Friday noon in the little Everglades settlement of Bonahatchee. There was a better turnout of the Fantasies than Mits had expected. She was obviously pleased that almost a hundred and fifty machines had assembled at the Oasis and had rumbled at slow funeral pace to Snead's Funeral Home in Bonahatchee and, subsequent to the eulogy and service, had followed the hearse out to where the flowers covered the raw dirt mound of the pre-dug grave.