Free Fall in Crimson by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online Page B

you on back at your car. Seems like a quiet night around here, thank the good Lord. I better knock wood. Soon as I say quiet, those grove workers start sticking knives in each other. Or rolling their pickups over and over, dogs and shotguns flying every whichaway."
    He drove me back to the jail. We shook hands. He went off down the dark streets, a man alone in a county car on an overcast evening, waiting for somebody to do some damn fool thing to himself or to somebody else, wondering, as he made his patrol, if he was going to have to peddle the Suzuki to be able to help out with his mother-in-law's new schedule of dialysis.
    Five
    I CHECKED out of the motel after breakfast and headed southwest in my little dark blue rental Dodge, a Mitsubishi, I think, with a VW engine and almost enough legroom. I took it over to Interstate 4 and made the mistake of staying on 4 all the way to the outskirts of Tampa before turning south on 301.
    It had been a couple of years since I had driven that route, and I found all north-south highways clogged full of snorting, stinking, growling traffic, the trucks tailgating, the cowboys whipping around from lane to lane, and the Midwest geriatrics chugging slowly down the fast lanes, deaf to all honkings. Bradenton, Sarasota, Venice, Punta Gorda, Fort Myers-all the same. Smoggy vistas and chrome glitterings down the long alleyway between the fast food outlets, the sprawl of motels, car dealerships, shell factories, strip shopping centers, gas stations, and gigantic signboards. It is all that bustling steaming growth that turns the state tackier each year.
    Newcomers don't mind at all, because they think it has always been like this. But in two years, they all want to slam the door, pull up the ladder, and close the state off. Once in a great while, like once every fifty miles, I even got a look at a tiny slice of the Gulf of Mexico, way off to the right. And remembered bringing the Flush down this coast with Gretel aboard. And wished I could cry as easily as a child does.
    I had phoned ahead to the Eden Beach, and they had a second-floor single for me, with the windows facing inland. After I put the duffelbag in the room, I went over to the lobby to find Anne Renzetti.
    I saw her coming diagonally across the lobby, walking very swiftly, her expression anxious and intent. Today she wore an elegant little dress: a cotton dress in an unusual shade of orange coral, which fitted her so beautifully it underlined the lovely fashioning of hips, sweep of waist, straightness of her back and shoulders. The color was good for her too. A small lady, luxuriantly alive.
    "Hey, Anne," I said.
    She came to a quick stop and stared at me, an instant of puzzlement and then recognition. "Oh, Page 19

    hello there. Mr. McGraw."
    "McGee. Travis McGee."
    She was looking beyond me. "Yes, of course. I'm so sorry. Travis McGee. Is Meyer with you?"
    "He had to get back."
    She started to sidle away. "You will have to excuse me. I really have to-"
    "I was hoping you would introduce me to Dr. Mullen. I want to ask him about Ellis Esterland's condition at the time he-"
    Even the sound of his name made her glow. It seemed almost to take her breath away. Her smile was lovely. "That's why I'm so busy at the moment. He didn't get in yesterday. He's due any minute. I just checked the room I set aside for him, and the damned shower keeps dripping and dripping. Excuse me just a moment, please."
    I followed her to the desk. She told Marie about the leak, and Marie picked up the phone to get the maintenance man on it. Anne turned back to me and looked beyond me toward the entrance.
    Her smile went wider, and she flushed under her tan and slipped past me, quick and cute as a safety blitz. She half ran toward the entrance, arms outstretched, and I heard her glad cry of welcome.
    The man was in his middle thirties, with a russet mustache, blow-dried hair, tinted glasses with little gold rims. He had a likable look about him. Strong irregular