"MacDonald, John - Travis McGee 06 - Bright Orange for the Shroud" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacDonald John D)

Now, of course, having failed in every attempt to subdue the Glades by frontal attack, we are slowly killing it off by tapping the River of Grass. In the questionable name of progress, the state in its vast wisdom lets every two-bit developer divert the

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flow into the draglined canals that give him "waterfront" lots to sell. As far north as Corkscrew Swamp, virgin stands of ancient bald cypress are dying. All the area north of Copeland had been logged out, and will never come back. As the Glades dry, the big fires come with increasing frequency. The ecology is changing with egret colonies dwindling, mullet getting scarce, mangrove dying of new diseases born of dryness.

But it will take a long time to kill it. And years from now foolish men will still be able to kill themselves off within miles of help, hopelessly lost among islands which all look exactly alike. It is a black land, and like every wilderness in the world, it punishes quickly when a mistake is made, quickly and with a casual, savage indifference.

I studied the chart and picked a spot. I went beyond Marco Pass to a wide pass named Hurricane Pass. The channel was easy to read from the topside controls. The Flush draws four feet and is heavily skegged to protect the shafts and wheels. Roy Cannon Island, deserted, lies just inside the pass. It was low tide as we came in just before sunset. The pass is so wide, Roy Cannon has a sand beach. I edged a little north to get the protection of the headland which forms the north edge of the pass. At dead slow I ran the bow into the beach sand. With Chook and Arthur helping, we put out all four anchors, the two bow ones well up on the beach, wedged into the skeletal whiteness of mangrove killed by the sand which had built up, probably after Hurricane Donna had widened the pass. I carried the stern hooks out into water neck deep, wedged them in, stomped them firm. She would rest well there, lifting free with the incoming tide, settling back at the low. I'd topped off the fuel and water at Flamingo. We swam as the sun went down, and then clouds of mosquitoes, shrill with hunger, drove us below decks to break out the bombs and drop the ones that had come in with us. It was such a hot and airless night, I started the generator and put the air-conditioning on. After dinner, over coffee, I took Arthur through the best physical descriptions of the four men that he could manage, particularly Stebber and Gisik. I wanted to be certain to know them if the names were changed.

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Saturday morning early I saddled up the dinghy and, taking Chook with me, droned south inside the islands to Marco Village. We achieved invisibility. There is an easy way to do it along the coast. I wore khaki pants, a white T-shirt, a baseball hat with a long bill, dark glasses. She wore white denim stretch pants, blue halter, dark glasses, and a little pot-shaped straw hat some female had left aboard, embroidered in red yarn across the frontЧDrink Up. We brought along a tackle box, two rods and a red beer cooler.

Marco Village saddened me. The bulldozers and draglines had gotten to it since my last visit. The ratty picturesque old dock was gone, as was the ancient general store and a lot of the old weatherbeaten two-story houses which had looked as though they had been moved down from Indiana farmland. They had endured a half century of hurricanes, but little marks on a developer's plat had erased them so completely there was not even a trace of the old foundations.

But even the scurry of multimillion dollar development slows to a sleepy pace in the island heat of late May. Loafers identified us instantly by type as we tied up and clambered out of the dinghy, and from then on their total bemused attention was on the fruitful flexible weight encased in the white stretch denim, with Chook quite comfortably aware of admiration and speculation. I asked my question, and we got one bad lead and then a better one, and finally found a sallow, thoughtful young man who took us to where his boat sat lashed to a trailer. Sixteen foot, heavy-duty fiberglass hull, with a forty horse Evinrude bolted to the reinforced transom. Twin tanks. All required gear.

"I don't know about a week," he said. "Figured on using it some myself. I'd have to get"Чhe wiped his mouth, stared into the distanceЧ"a hundred dollars, mister?"

"Seventy-five. I buy gas."

"I got fourteen hundred dollars in it, mister."

"Seventy-five right now, and if I only keep it three days, it's still seventy-five."

He made a responsible show of studying my driver's license, giving sidelong glances at Chook's scanty halter, and got very

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helpful and cheery when he had the seventy-five in hand, desc-ribing places where we could hook into big snook and baby He put it in the water for us. Boldly lettered on the white fiberglass, in pink, and for some obscure reason in Old English calligraphy, was the name Ratfink. We took off se-Idately, towing the dinghy astern, dock loafers watching us out t of sight. Arthur was waiting on the beach when we returned. [Without the burdens of Chook and the dinghy, I took Ratfink Х out into open water and found I had made a good guess on the hull design. It was very fast and stable, and when I came smashing back through my own wake, I found it was a dry boat.

Another can of gas aboard would give it all the high speed range I'd need. It had one of the new control rigs, shift and throttle on the same handy lever. The cable control gave it a quick steering ratio. I taped a piece of white cloth over the too-memorable name, and with some black electrician's tape I made an alteration in the registration number, turning a six into an eight and a one into a seven. It would stand inspection from ten feet away.

I changed to slacks and a sports shirt, stowed a light jacket and tie in the locker under the forward deck, told them to be good kids, and took off up the inside route to Naples, an estimated twelve miles away, less than a half hour in my jazzy craft.

I found an adequate little marina just short of the highway bridge on the southeast side of Naples. I filled the tanks, bought an extra five gallon can, had it filled with the right gas and oil mix and stowed it aboard. I said I might be leaving it there off and on for a week. The man said a dollar a day. And how about leaving a car here when I'm out in the boat? I asked. Right over there next to the building, where that pickup is, it'll be okay there, no charge. I paid him a week on the dockage, and after he had shown me where to put it and wandered away, I tied it up in such a way that though the lines were firm, I could free them with one yank, shove off bow first, hit the starter button and be on my way. This was one of the elemental precautions. Never go in until you are damned well sure how you are going to get out. There are few roads in the Glades country, but more

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waterways than have ever been counted. With the jacket over my arm, I went up to Route 41 and walked across the highway bridge and down the other side of the bayou to the Fish House Restaurant. It was clean and quiet. The decor was seashells stuck into cement on the pillars, beams and ceiling. Tourists had pried out a lot of the ones within reach. I found they served a clam chowder with character. It would cure debility, angry the blood, and turn a girl scout troop into a baritone choir.

I didn't bother phoning Crane Watts' office. His residence was on Clematis Drive. A maid announced it as The Watts Residence and told me, "They's at the Club." And when I asked if it was the Cutlass Yacht Club, she said, "Nome, they play tennis at the Royal Palm Bath Club."

I looked up car rentals, phoned one and was told they couldn't deliver. Just one man on duty. I took a cab to the place the other side of town. I signed up for a dark green Chev, four door, with air-conditioning. The attendant told me to go about another mile north and then look for the Bath Club sign on a road to the left, turn and go about a half mile. I couldn't miss it. I didn't.

I found a parking place in the lot. The huge pool, behind woven fencing, was a gabbling, shrieking, belly-whomping mass of kids. They had a crescent of private beach dotted with bright umbrellas and oiled brown flesh, prone and supine. Despite the early afternoon heat, their dozen asphalt courts beyond the pool area were all full. You could see at a glance it was very proper tennis. Everyone raced about in spotless white, sweating and banging hell out of the ball, calling out Love, Add, Out and Nice Shot.

The club house was a flaking Moorish pastry onto which had been pasted a big wing in supermarket modern. I wandered in and found a bulletin board in a corridor. They are always useful. The bulletin board was folksier than the tennis. There was a mimeographed copy of the last club bulletin tacked to it. Seems that on May tenth the Taylors had given a big farewell bash for Frank and Mandy Hopson, before they left on their dream trip, three whole months in Spain. Crane and Viv Watts were listed among the guests. I found a phone booth and book, but it gave me no clue as to good old Frank's occupation, if any. I roamed