Augie shrugged again. 'They might still be here, for all I know.'
Mulvane took a last pull of his lukewarm coffee, held the ear of the mug with the pen and pad still twined between his fingers. Then he slid his chair back and got up.
'Sergeant,' said Nina, rising with him and trying to keep her tone free of panic, 'are you going to help us?'
Mulvane made an involuntary sound that was halfway between a sigh and a growl, the gruff and weary complaint of one who always seemed to end up caring more than he wanted to and doing more than he told himself was worth it. 'Officially, no,' he said. 'We have two open murders and a suspicious suicide on the books. I go to the chief, he's gonna tell me no crime has been committed, leave it alone. I'll do what I can. But quietly.'
'Thank you,' Nina said.
The beefy detective waved the gratitude away like a fly. 'First thing,' he said, reaching for his jacket, 'make a list. Anybody here in town who has paintings-'
'They're friends,' said Augie. 'The pictures were gifts. They wouldn't be selling…'
Mulvane didn't want to be around while Augie dragged himself to the bitter end of that line of reasoning. He kept on talking to Nina. 'I don't care how much you think you trust them-I want the names. Call me later. We'll check car rentals. After that…'
He hunched his shoulders, and the movement made him realize that his cop-blue shirt was already damp, another sweaty day in Key West had begun. He squinted toward the sun, it rudely pawed its way like hot hands between palm fronds and through the gaps in branches. He glanced at Augie and Augie met his eyes but didn't say a word. A lousy thing, thought Joe Mulvane, to be bumped off by a friend; and since he didn't have anything to say to make it seem less lousy, he walked unescorted through the Silver house and back into the relentless sunshine on the other side.
34
The way it worked, the cars were put in neutral and then hooked one by one to a conveyor chain. The chain ran under a metal groove that was like a knife gash in the earth. There was an electric eye that started the water when the cars pulled even with the washing frame. Then the jets hissed all around, above the cars and on both sides. The water came out hot but went lukewarm almost instantly as it vaporized. It vaporized into little fuzzy globes like dandelions, and sometimes rainbows cropped up in it; the vapor moved but the rainbows hung in space where they had started. After that the brushes came down, they squeezed in softly but insistently like a fat aunt's arms and didn't let go till they had felt the car all over.
Then the water stopped and the car paused in the metal shed between the wash frame and the rinse frame. That's where Jimmy Gibbs stood, in the clanging, steamy place between cycles. He wore green rubber boots and held a rag. He worked the vehicles' starboard side, and his job was to rub away the dirt and stains too stubborn for the brushes: the bird shit that sometimes needed scraping with a fingernail, the exploded bugs that congealed to the color and consistency of baked-on egg.
People wanted a clean car when they rented. Spotless. That fact had been drummed into him from the instant he'd applied for this idiotic job. Didn't matter if the engine pinged, didn't matter if the body rattled. The car had to look good, festive, vacation-like for the off-season deadbeats with their cheapie vouchers and their plastic nose protectors. Was it part of what made it feel like vacation, Gibbs wondered, to look as ridiculous as possible? To wear a nose protector, a flowered shirt, and to drive around in one of these silly-looking ragtops in their frippy Florida shades of plum, persimmon, turquoise?
Wave on wave the cars came through the shed, a dreary parade of dripping doors and fenders emerging from a fog of mildew and the smarting stench of strong detergent. Gibbs's toes itched maddeningly inside his rubber boots. He'd wanted to work barefoot, give his cracked and soggy dogs some air. The boss wouldn't let him; some insurance bullshit. That was the thing about working on land-there was always some rule, some regulation, some suit making it his business how you had dealt with the fungus between your toes. They blocked you from the light, these land jobs; they stank up the air worse than fish guts ever could. In all, going from sea to land seemed a terrible descent, a punishing demotion.
Jimmy Gibbs had come down in life. He admitted it, in some crazy way he savored it, it confirmed the way he'd always figured things would turn out. Except he wasn't finished yet-that's what no one realized. He had a plan, and this jerked-off job was part of it. A big part. Gibbs had to laugh. Could anyone imagine that he was standing melting in this metal hell of steam for the four-fucking-thirty-five an hour they were paying him?
Another turquoise convertible rolled dumbly up to him and waited to be scrubbed. He clutched his fraying rag and attacked a patch of guano on its windshield. All alike, these rented cars, alike as fish in a school. That was the worst thing about them, and the best. Gibbs rubbed some limestone grit off the vehicle's sleek flank as the conveyor yanked it past him. Hell, he thought, these cars aren't even from a place; on the bottom of the license plate, where the home county was stamped, these just said Lease. Lease County, famous for its cheapskate deadbeats. Cars from nowhere, going nowhere.
Unlike himself. Jimmy Gibbs was moving up. He'd sunk low, he'd sink a little lower still, but after that he knew that he was springing to the top. This job was going to do more for him than the boss man with his dry hands and his tie clip could ever have imagined. With a wet hand Gibbs patted the yard keys in his pocket. Satisfying, the feel of those keys. He raked a forearm across his streaming hairline and turned back, just slightly refreshed, to the unending line of ridiculous convertibles.
At around four o'clock that afternoon, the telephone rang at the Silver house. It was Joe Mulvane. He'd done some checking up on the list of names that Nina had called in to him a few hours before. She switched on the speakerphone in the living room so that she and Augie could listen together, sitting on the couch. With the speaker on, Augie thought, it seemed less like talking on the phone than listening to the radio, passively taking in a news flash not on one's own life but on some stranger's.
'The agent and her husband,' Mulvane said, 'they checked out of the Flagler House around two p.m. yesterday.'
'Ah,' said Nina. 'So they were gone.'
'No,' said Mulvane. 'They didn't fly out till nine-thirty. But they didn't rent a car. I checked both names.'
Augie let a long breath out.
'Of course,' the detective went on, 'there are other ways to get cars. Theft is popular. Fake I.D. s. But in the meantime, somebody did rent. Ray Yates. Rented a ragtop, turquoise, Friday night, and hasn't been seen or heard from since.'
'Maybe he went on vacation,' Augie said.
'His employer didn't know about it,' said Mulvane. 'I called the station. Yates phoned in yesterday morning, he didn't say from where, and told them he didn't know when he was coming back.'
'Can you find him?' Nina asked.
The answer was quick and definite. 'No. I checked his boat, I asked some neighbors. I don't have the resources to do more.'
There was a pause. Augie caught himself staring at the speaker and felt suddenly pathetic, having a conversation with a plastic box, looking to the box to solve his life for him.
'Maybe we can find him,' Nina said.
Mulvane cleared his throat. It was a skeptical sound that seemed to go with the lifting of eyebrows, the rolling of eyes. 'We might be dealing with a killer here,' he said.
The words hung in the air; Augie tried to get his mind around them. Ray Yates a killer? It seemed preposterous. But then, was it any more unlikely than the notion that the would-be murderer was his agent, or Clay Phipps his oldest friend, or any of the other buddies with whom Augie had drunk and sailed and fished and eaten? No, Yates was neither more nor less fantastic as a villain than the others. As in a nightmare, everything was taking on a tinge not only of horror but of a dread perverted flatness; all things were equally misshapen and equally possible. The painter, suddenly dizzy, let his head swim backward onto the settee cushion.
After what seemed a long time, Mulvane continued. 'If you learn anything, through friends, whatever, call me. Don't do anything crazy.'
