The Deep Blue Good-By (10 page)

He came lounging out, thumbing a new load into his pipe.

"Personal matter?"

"I came up from Florida this afternoon just to see you."

"You could have phoned and I would have told you I have too heavy a load here."

"This. won't take much time. Do you remember a crew chief named Sergeant David Berry?"

It snapped him way back into the past. it changed his eyes and the set of his shoulders.

"Berry! I remember him. How is he?"

"He died in prison two years ago.)

"I didn't know that. I didn't know anything about that. Why was he in prison?"

"For killing an officer in San Francisco in nineteen forty-five."

"Good Lord! But what's that got to do with me?"

. I, m trying to help his daughters. They need help."

"Are you an attorney, Mr. McGee?"

"No."

"Are you asking me to help Berry's daughters financially?"

"No. I need more information about David Berry."

"I didn't know him very well or very long."

"Anything you can tell me will be helpful."

He shook his head. 'it was a long time ago.

I can't take the time right now." He looked at his watch. 'Can you come back at eleven?"

"I'm registered here."

"That's better. I'll come to your room as near eleven as I can make it."

*Room seventeen-twenty, Mr. Callowell."

He rapped on my door at eleven-twenty.

He'd had a full measure of good bourbon and a fine dinner and probably some excellent brandy. It had dulled his mind slightly, and he was aware of that dullness and was consequently more careful and more suspicious than he would have been sober. He refused a drink. He lowered himself into a comfortable chair and took his time lighting his pipe.

"I didn't catch what you do for a living, Mr. McGee."

"I'm retired."

He hoisted one black eyebrow. 'You're young for that."

"I keep myself busy with little projects."

"Like this one?"

"Yes.

I think I better know a little more about this project."

"Let's lay down the shovels, Mr. Callowell.

I'm not on the make for anything you have.

Berry came home rich from his little war. I'd like to find out how. And if I can find out how, maybe I can get a little of it back for his girls.

His wife is dead. All this will cost you is a little time. And a little remembering."

For a little while I thought he had gone to sleep on me. He stirred and sighed. 'There were ways to get rich over there. They said it was even better earlier in the war. Berry had been there a long time before I came along. ATC. Flying C-46's out of Chabua in Assam. Passengers and cargo.

Calcutta, New Delhi, and over the Hump to Kunming. Go sometimes to twenty-two thousand feet in those creaking laboring bastards, and then come down through the ice and get your one and only pass to lay it down at Kunming. I'd say I made twenty-five flights with Berry. No more.

I didn't get to know him. Crews didn't stay together too long in that deal. The first one I had, my first airplane over there, quit.

Structural failure, and the landing gear collapsed, and I slid it a long long way. Just three in a crew. They split us up. I got the ship Berry was on. Berry and George Brell, copilot. I was uneasy, wondering if Brell thought he should have been moved up. Their pilot wangled a transfer out."

"Sugarman?"

"That was the name! He was killed later.

Brell didn't resent me. it worked out all right.

Brell and Berry were competent. But they weren't friendly. Berry was pretty surly and silent, but he knew his job. I think he was sort of a loner. We had probably twenty-five flights together, probably ten of those round trips to China. Then one night we came up from Calcutta and I had let down to about a thousand feet when the starboard engine caught fire without any warning at all. It really went. Too much for the extinguisher system. I goosed it up to as much altitude as I dared, leveled it off and we went out one two three. Five seconds after my chute opened, the wing burned off and it went in like a rock, and five seconds after that I landed in a bed of flowers right in front of the station hospital and wrenched my ankle and knee. Very handy indeed. I hobbled in with my arm around a great big nurse.

Berry and Brell visited me and thanked me and brought me a bottle, and I never saw them again."

"Did you hear any rumors about Berry making money?"

"I seem to remember hearing a few vague things. He was the type. Very tough and silent and cute."

"How would he have done it?"

"By then the most obvious way was by smuggling gold. You could buy it in Calcutta, and sell it on the black market in Kunming for better than one and a half times what you paid for it. And
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get American dollars in return. Or, take Indian rupees and bring them back and convert them into dollars at Lloyd's Bank. Or buy the gold with the rupees. it could be pretty fle,-dble. But they were cracking down on it. It was a risk I didn't want to take. And I knew that if Berr or Brell was doing it, and got y caught, there would be a cloud on me. So I kept my eyes open. You could do a lot with gold in China then. They had that runaway inflation going, and damn few ways to get the gold in there. You could even make a profit by smuggling rupee notes in large denominations into China. They say the Chinese used the rupees to trade with the Japs. The Japs liked the rupees to finance their espionage in India.

Hell, the Chinese were trading pack animals to the Japs in return for salt. it was a busy little war.

I think Berry was a trader. He had that native shrewdness. And I think he had the knack of manipulating people. Once I think he actually sounded me out, but there was nothing I could put my finger on. I must have given him the wrong answers."

"Was he close to George Brell?"

"Let's say a little closer than a sergeant and a lieutenant usually get, even in an air crew.

They were together quite a while."

"Then Brell, if still living, is the next man to talk to."

"I know where you can find him."

VI, "Real He hesitated. It was the business syndrome.

He had something somebody else wanted and he had to stop for a moment to consider what advantage might be gained. This reflex brought him all the way back from the jungly old war in the back alcove of memory, where he was Lieutenant Callowell, agile, quick and very concerned about the ways of hiding and controlling the fear he felt every day. He fell back into the portly disguise of William M.

Callowell, cushioned with money and authority, shrewd builder and bidder, perhaps privately worried about impotence, audits and heart attacks. I could sense he did not often think of the war. There are middle-aged children who spend a part of every day thinking of their college or their war, but the ones who grow up to be men do not have this plaintive need for a flavor of past importance, and Callowell was one of these.

He, relit his pipe, shifted his weight. 'Two years ago there was a short article in Newsweek about our operation, in connection with the interstate program. They used my picture.

I got letters from people I hadn't heard from in years. Brell wrote me from Harlingen, Texas, sounding like a dear old flyboy buddy, which he wasn't. Letterhead stationery, thick parchment bond, tricky type-face. Brell Enterprises I think it was. One inch of congratulations to me, and a yard of crap about how well he was doing, closing with the hope we could get together and talk over old times. I answered it with a very short cool note, and I've heard nothing since."

"You didn't like the man."

"For no reason I can put my finger on, McGee. We had dull, dirty, dangerous duty over there, but, after all, it was Air Transport Command. Brell was the tailored uniform type, with the
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hundred mission cap, and when we were in Calcutta he'd put on the right hardware and turn himself into a Flying Tiger and cut one hell of a swath through the adoring lassies. And he totted a thirty-eight with pearl grips Instead of the regulation forty-five. And he didn't like to make landings. He would get very sweaty and overcontrol when he made landings."

"He would have the information on David Berry, then."

"if he's willing to talk. if he was in on it, on any cute money on the side, why should he talk to anybody about it?"

"I've leveled with you, Mr. Callowell, but I might try something else with Brell."

"And use my name in vain, McGee?"

"it might occur to me."

"I would advise against it We have lawyers without enough to do. They get restless."

"I'll bear that in mind."

"I don't often do this much talking for so little reason, McGee. You have a nice touch.

You're an eager listener. You smile in the right places. it puts people on. And, of course, you haven't leveled with me."

"How can you say such a thing?"

He chuckled and pulled himself to his feet.

"End of session, McGee. Good night and good luck." At the door he turned and said, 'I'll have you checked out, of course. Just for the hell of it. I'm a careful and inquisitive man."

"Can I make it easier by giving you my address?

He winked. 'Slip F-18. Bahia Mar. Lauderdale."

"Mr. Callowell, I am impressed."

"Mr. McGee, any reasonably honest man in the construction industry either sets up his own CIA or he goes broke." He chuckled again and trudged toward the elevators, trailing fragrant smoke.

IN THE morning I placed a station call to t the number listed for George Brell in Harlin gen. I got a lazy-toned switchboard operator who put me through to a sharp-voiced secretary who said that Mr. Brell was not in his office yet. As she had no way of knowing it was a long distance call, I side-stepped her request for my name and said I would phone later.

Then I phoned my barge boat. After three rings, I heard her voice, small, tense, cautious.

"Hello?"

"This is your night nurse speaking."

"Trav! Thank God."

"What's the matter? Is something wrong?"

"Nothing in particular. Just... I don't know

... tension, I guess. I got so used to you being nearby. I hear sounds. And I jump. And I had bad dreams."

"Cook them out in the sun."

"I'm going to. On the beach, maybe. When are you coming back?"

"I'm going to Texas today."

"What?"

"There's a man there I want to see. I might be back there by Friday, but I'm not certain.

Take your pills, honey. Don't agitate yourself Eat, sleep and keep busy. You're smack in the middle of hundreds of boats and thousands of people."

"Trav, a woman phoned and she's very anxious to get in touch with you. She said it's an emergency. It sort of put her off stride to have a woman answer and say you're away. I said you might phone and she said to tell you to phone her. Miss McCall. With a very strange first name. I don't know if I have it right."

"Chookie."

"That's it."

I had her look in my book and give me the number. By the time I hung up, Lois sounded pretty good. I wondered if I had been a damn fool not to lock up my liquor supply, or at least to arrange to have somebody stay with her.

Hurry home, Mother McGee. People have their acquired armor, made up of gestures and expressions and defensive chatter. Lois's had all been brutally stripped away, and I knew her as well as anybody ever had or ever would. I knew her from filled teeth to the childhood apple tree, from appendix scar to wedding night, and it was time for her to start growing her new carapace, with me on the outside. I caught her raw, and did not care to be joined to her by scar tissue when healing began.

Chook's phone went to nine rings before she answered in the gritty rancor of interrupted sleep.

But her voice changed when she recognized mine. "Trav! I phoned you last night.

Who is that Mrs. Atkinson?"

"One of your more successful rivals."

"I mean really. is she the one that whosis took on when he dropped Cathy?"

"Yes.,)

"Trav, I phoned about Cathy. She worked the first show last night. She seemed fine. And then they found her unconscious out on the beach there at the hotel. She'd been terribly beaten. Her face is a mess. Two broken fingers. They don't know yet if there's any internal injuries. She regained consciousness before they got her to the hospital. The police questioned her. She told them she went out to walk on the beach and somebody jumped her and beat her up. She couldn't give them a description. I talked to her next, after they'd given her a sedative. She acted very strange about it. I think it was him, Trav. She won't be able to work for two weeks anyway, maybe longer. She's really a mess."

"Does she want to talk to me?"

"She doesn't want to talk to anybody. It's in the paper today. Show girl assaulted on private beach. Mysterious assailant and so on."

"Are you going to see her today?"

"Of course!"

"I might not get back before Saturday. Look in on Lois Atkinson if you get a chance. Our friend left her in pretty sad shape. She's a lady." "Oh, really?"

"With ragged edges. You'll like her, I think.

Make girl talk. Then I'll try to phone you tonight at the hotel, for a report on both of them."

"McGee's clinic?"

"The Junior Allen discard club. Take care."

A travel office at the hotel helped me find the best way to get to the Rio Grande Valley. A direct 707 out of Idlewild to Houston, a twohour layover and then a feeder flight down to Harlingen with one stop at Corpus Christi. I had barely missed a better deal, and so I could take my time getting out of Idlewild.

The flight took off with less than half the seats occupied. The whole country lay mistybright, impersonal, under a summer high, and we went with the sun, making noon last a long time. The worst thing about having a hundred and eighty million people is looking down and seeing how much room there is for more. A stewardess took a special and personal interest in me. She was a little bigger than they usually are, and a little older than the norm. She was styled for abundant lactation, and her uniform blouse was not. She had a big white smile and she was mildly bovine, and I had the curious feeling I had met her before, and then I remembered where-in that valuable book by Mark Harris, Bang the Drum Slowly, the stewardess that "Author" runs into when he is on his way out to Mayo's. My stewardess perched on the edge of the seat beside me, back arched, smiling.