Pale Gray for Guilt by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online

volume where she said she liked it.
    "Coming, dear?" she said with an excessive primness, and just inside the door of the master stateroom I had to step over the wooly whiteness of the robe on the deck just beyond the sill.
    ***
    The day had warmed up. The Munequita had run handsomely, with a deep drone speaking of a lot more power in reserve. When we had anchored for lunch in Fort Worth, well away from the channel, while we ate the thick roast beef and raw onion sandwiches and shared an icy bottle of dry red supermarket wine, I briefed her on Tush, on how long I had known him, and on Janine and what Tush had told me of his problems.
    "No answer at all on the phone?"
    "Not a thing."
    "Seems odd."
    "Seems very damned odd, Puss. The thing is, he isn't a devious guy. And he's caught in the middle in a very devious situation, with large money hanging on it, and old Tush may try to bull his way through, and he could get hurt twice as bad."
    When we went up the Shawana River, there was a faint, drifting acrid stink. Our eyes watered. When I came around the last bend, I was shocked at the deserted look of the place. The cheerful white houseboats were all gone. All but one storage rack on the in-and-out boat shelter were empty, and the remaining boat was, at a hundred feet, worth perhaps fifty dollars, outboard motor and all. The moored boats were gone, except for a skiff so full of water there were only inches of freeboard left, and an old cruiser hulk that had sunk in the shallows. The forklift truck was gone.
    I tied up and we went ashore. Near the cities, all the old highways of America pass businesses that have gone broke. End of the dream. The spoor of a broken marriage can be kept in a couple of cartons on a shelf in the garage. Broken lives can be tucked neatly away in graves and jails and sanitariums. But the dead business in a sub-marginal commercial strip stays right there, ugly and- moldering away, the frantic advertising signs of the final convulsive effort fading and tattering over the weeds. For every one of them was the big dream, the gala opening, the last dusting and arranging before the doors opened. "We're going to make it big, honey. Real big." Then there is the slow slide into doubt, into confusion, and into the terminal despair. "So we were going to make it real big, were we? Ha!"
    It was a silent place. The acrid river slid by. Dry fronds rattled in the breeze. A sign creaked.
    Even the two marine gas pumps were gone. I went to the marina shed. The tools were gone. We asked each other questions in low, graveyard voices. There was a shiny new hasp and padlock on the marina building, along with a printed notification from the County Sheriff's Department. There was another on the motel office. I could find no note fastened to anything that told how to get in touch with the Bannons.
    "Now what?" Puss asked.
    "There's no neighbors, nobody here to ask. I suppose we could run upriver until we come to something."
    She stared around. "Gives me the spooks," she said. We'd just reached the dock when I heard a car coming. We went back around in front and saw the phone company service truck lurching over the torn-up road. As I moved to wave him down, he turned in and stopped and got out and stared at us as we approached. He looked to be about fifty, a squatty, leathery man wearing silver-rimmed glasses.
    "I'd like to find Mr. Bannon," I said.
    "Why?" It was a very flat and very abrupt question, and there was something about the flavor of it that made me wary. So I reached into the old bag of tired tricks and pulled out the one labeled Real Cordial.
    "Well, it's like this. Quite a while back, I can't remember how many weeks, I had a bilge pump acting up, and I stopped in here and Bannon pulled it and stuck in a loaner, the idea being he'd fix it if he could or sell me the loaner if he couldn't, but I didn't get back as soon as I thought. Now it looks like he's gone out of business or moved someplace else."
    "You could say