The Lonely Silver Rain by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online Page A

interested. I said the odds were too long."
    "I didn't know you could get so nervous, Trav."
    "Billy, I can get very nervous, and this is one of the times."
    I knew when I reached the Mick I wouldn't have as much trouble making him see the point, and I didn't.
    "Three deads," he said, and I heard him whistle softly.
    "I am making a little bonfire of the photographs, and if you've got anything around there, you better roast a marshmallow too."
    "Very good thinking. Let me see. Why were you trying to get in touch with me?"
    "I changed my mind. Forgot what it was."
    "What's your name again?"
    "McGee. Travis McGee."
    "Never heard of you, pal."
    I made my final call from the outskirts of Fort Lauderdale to the newsroom at the Miami Herald. I told the woman who answered that the Coast Guard had recovered a stolen yacht down in the Keys with the bodies of three young people aboard, and hung up in the middle of the first question she asked. Calling her was easier than calling the Coast Guard. The Guard seems intent on making communication impossible.
    I did not feel the inner knots unwind until I had returned the pickup to Sam Dandie, stowed my gear, bundled my sweaty khakis into the laundry sack, taken a long shower in my stall aboard the Busted Flush, big enough for a bridge game, dressed in cool whites and fixed myself a hearty flagon of Boodles over ice. I took the drink topside and sat on the sun deck and watched the lazy life of the marina and the homebound bustle of traffic over an the avenue.
    Then I let myself think about being young and dying. One of the basic ingredients of good and bad poetry, good and bad drama the world over. The end of all as life is ere begun. A waste of the firm, springy, young flesh, of all the spices and juices. Tens of thousands of the young kill themselves every year. A pity. I wondered if it could be some kind of Darwinian design, getting rid of the ones unsuited for the rest of the ride. But that would leave out the earthquakes, the floods, the little and big wars, the famines and the deadly diseases that knock off the millions without regard to age or merit: No matter how many dead ones you see, indifference is never achieved except by the butchers. The dead young women had rocked me. A cruel waste. The dentist's daughter and somebody else's daughter. Grownups had helped each of them learn to walk, and had cried out their pleasure when the toddler, face screwed up in anxiety, had come tottering into the waiting arms. Somebody had proudly repeated their first words, read their first school papers, bought their first party dresses. And some people somewhere would have a wrenching, stinging, insatiable sense of loss.
    I saw Meyer coming along the dock area and so I got up and walked back to the stern rail of the sun deck and asked him to come aboard. He said he would, as soon as he delivered one fine slab of dolphin to Slip E-10, to the Petersens aboard the Rubiyacht. I told him to step below and fix a drink and bring it up. The long twilight is a fine time of day in October.
    When he was in the neighboring deck chair I said, "May I tell you about my day?"
    "Please do."
    And that was another way of unwinding.

Five
    THE WEATHER held fine for the tag end of October and on further into November than we have any right to expect down here on the Gold Coast. The story of the murders and recovery of the Sundowner was a mini-sensation which died quickly. Buried in the gaudy news report was speculation about the identity of the anonymous tipster who had phoned the Coast Guard with such knowing details about the identity of the vessel and the bodies aboard it. It was assumed that he had something to do with the murders and that it was related to the drug trade. There have been so many drug murders and so many deaths of the young in southeast Florida that nothing much new can be said.
    There was another little flurry when the third victim was identified as Gigliermina Reyes y Fonseca, of Lima, Peru,