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Overview
Sure, Leo Rice seems like a nice enough guy . . . but why does he have to choose their beach? He could head ten miles up the Florida strip and everyone could just live happily ever after—no questions asked. But Leo Rice does ask questions . . . and suddenly Stebbins’ Marina, an oasis of easy living, hard drinking, and free love for its residents, is in jeopardy. And in less than a month, their paradise will be interrupted by twisted emotions, buried hatreds—and brutal murder.
Features a new Introduction by Dean Koontz
Praise for John D. MacDonald
“The great entertainer of our age, and a mesmerizing storyteller.”—Stephen King
“My favorite novelist of all time.”—Dean Koontz
“To diggers a thousand years from now, the works of John D. MacDonald would be a treasure on the order of the tomb of Tutankhamen.”—Kurt Vonnegut
“A master storyteller, a masterful suspense writer . . . John D. MacDonald is a shining example for all of us in the field. Talk about the best.”—Mary Higgins Clark
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780307827012 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Random House Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 06/11/2013 |
| Sold by: | Random House |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 160 |
| Sales rank: | 405,984 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Date of Birth:
July 24, 1916Date of Death:
December 28, 1986Place of Birth:
Sharon, PAPlace of Death:
Milwaukee, WIEducation:
Syracuse University 1938; M.B. A. Harvard University, 1939Read an Excerpt
ONE
Captain Orbie Derr
It was a right pretty evening when Leo Rice arrived at the Stebbins’ Marina. Friday, it was. The first day of August. It was later on the same month that everything went to hell for just about everybody. Maybe he was, like Joe Rykler explained to me, a catalyst. But I’ve got the general opinion everything was due to go to hell anyway. Things had been working up to it. I won’t deny he didn’t have something to do with it. But it took more than just one man to ruin what Joe Rykler calls a way of life.
It was a fine evening. Breeze out of the east off the Atlantic, moving about four knots. A pink glow of sunset reflected on the quiet thunderheads out over the Atlantic.
A bunch of us were on D Dock, as usual, lounging around on cushions and chairs taken off the boats. Tin washtub full of ice and beer. I’d set my charcoal grill up on the dock and loaded it. Later on we’d light it and cook the ’burgs.
Me and Joe Rykler and Anne Browder and Christy Yale and Gus Andorian. Bud and Ginny Linder. Alice Stebbins, who owns the marina. Charterboat row is opposite D Dock, and on that evening Lew Burgoyne had come over from there and joined us. He captains the Amberjack III.
It was nice there, opening a beer once in a while, having a lazy argument about nothing at all, watching the night come on. The car lights were on over the other side of the Inland Waterway, going north and south on A-1-A, going back and forth across the hump-back bridge over Elihu Inlet. There wasn’t much boat traffic up and down the Waterway, and not much in the big Stebbins’ Marina basin, just kids and old fellas running in to tie up their outboards over at A Dock where they keep the small stuff. On the other side of us, beyond the rickety old marina buildings, traffic moved slick and fast, whispering by north and south on Broward Boulevard. It made D Dock like an island, a special quiet place, water licking gently at the hulls of the tied-up boats.
I was looking out toward the Waterway when I saw the old Higgins Sedan, coming down slow from the north, make the turn in between the rickety markers on either side of the entrance to the basin. I saw right away that he was cutting the north marker too tight. It’s silted-up there. You have to give it a lot of room, just like you do the black nun-buoys on your way out Elihu Inlet on anything less than half tide. I sucked in my breath and held it the way you do watching anybody about to go aground, but somehow he eased over and came on into the basin dead slow, heading for the T at the end of C Dock where the gas pumps are.
Everybody had stopped talking. We were all watching him. Old Billy Looby, who’s been dockboy ever since 1919 when Jess Stebbins had bought the land and started out renting boats and selling bait, went trotting on out the length of C Dock past the cruisers of the winter residents who store them at the marina over the hot months.
The fella at the wheel of the Higgins give it a little reverse power on both engines to stop himself, then cut both engines. Sound carried good. We heard Billy yell, “You want gas?”
“No thanks. I’d like to tie up.”
“For how long? Overnight?”
“Longer than that. Maybe a month.”
Billy turned and stared over toward us and then yelled in his shrill old-man’s voice, “Alice, this here fella—”
“I heard him,” Alice bellowed. When she wants to let go you can hear her over on the public beach. “Put him in D-13.”
“D-13?” Billy repeated blankly. He was as surprised as we were.
“Show him where it is and tell him to back it in.”
As Billy was pointing and explaining, Joe Rykler said, “Alice, you are dumping an inept stranger into our little community. What’s wrong with B Dock where he can be happy with the rest of the tourists?”
“Rotten pilings which got to be replaced, busted dock boards which got to be replaced, and a creosote and cu-prinol job. I got to have Billy and Bunny Beeman move what’s already there. And who is running this god-damn marina anyhow?”
“You are, Alice. You are,” Joe said.
There are fifteen slips along D Dock. Ten boats moored there. The permanent residents. Even though D-13 was the last one out toward the end—right next to Rex Rigsby’s Bahamian ketch, The Angel—we all felt a sort of resentment that Alice was moving somebody in with us.
Billy had trotted back to shore and he went loping out D Dock to help the stranger with the lines. We get hardly any tide movement inside the basin, but I had a hunch the wind was going to bother the guy when he backed into the narrow slip between the pilings. Maybe there was somebody below to help him with the bow lines and fend the Higgins off the pilings, but I had another hunch he was alone.
I saw him ease around and make his swing. He made it too late. Just before he banged his transom into a piling, he went out again and started from further upwind. But he didn’t have the smallest idea of how to use his props and rudders to swing the rear end of that boat. Billy was yelling instructions the guy couldn’t hear over the sound of his engines. Billy is a mean little old son of a bitch, and I knew Billy would enjoy to see him foul up good. Give him something to feel superior about. So I got up and went on out to see if I could give him a hand.
He came in too fast, staring back over his shoulder. He gave the starboard piling a hell of a thump. I ran out the narrow walkway between the slips, made a flying leap and landed sprawling in the cockpit just as the man, un-nerved by the thump, shoved the shift levers forward and moved back out again.
“Let me have it,” I said. “Get the bow lines.”
He gave up the controls willingly and went forward. The port engine was running ragged, and I could tell by the feel of the wheel the steering cable was frayed. I eased it back in, swung the bow left and right so he could slip a loop over both pilings, moved it back to the dock, yelled to him when to make the bow lines fast. I cut the engines. Billy and I rigged the two stern lines.
The man came back to the cockpit and, in what was left of daylight, I got my first good look at him. He was about forty, a big lean guy, deeply tanned, with one of those pleasant ugly faces. He wore khaki shorts and he looked as if he was in fine shape. But he didn’t look sure of himself—I mean in more ways than not being able to handle thirty-four feet of boat. Like he’d been gutted. Like some of the running parts had been taken out of him and put back in with string.
He stuck his hand out. The palm was calloused. “I’m Leo Rice,” he said. “I’m grateful to you. I had the feeling I was going to knock the dock over.”
He spoke in a careful, educated way that didn’t go with the calloused hand or the ropy brown muscles in his shoulders.
“Orbie Derr,” I said. “Guess you’re not used to boats.”
“I bought this up in Jacksonville two weeks ago. They gave me a short course in navigation and boat handling. If there’s anything I haven’t done wrong yet, I can’t think of it.”
I didn’t want to tell him that the first thing he did wrong was to buy the boat. I could tell it had had hard use and not much care. Somebody had fixed it up cheap and flashy for a quick sale. Slapped paint over the corrosion.
“Who do I see about arrangements to stay here?” he asked.
Billy spat into the dark water. “You plug in right here for electric. This is your meter. Better wrap your lines or you’ll chafe ’em. Connect your hose here. Garbage can in the dock box there. You want supplies or laundry or ice or anything, you see me and I’ll fix you up. The office is closed. You can check in in the morning. Dollar a day dockage, mister. Pay your own electric. No charge for water.”
Billy and I left him there and walked back along the dock to the group. Billy snagged a beer, uninvited, opened it and took it along with him back to his little room in the end of the storage shed.
“What’ve we got, Orbie?” Christy Yale asked in her funny, husky voice.
“A waterborn damn fool name of Leo Rice in an old crock of a Higgins he got stuck for in Jax. Didn’t change the name. It’s called Ruthless. Nice-spoken fella about forty, traveling alone. But he don’t know a winch from a wench.”
“Now that’s one thing I got a strong feeling about,” Lew Burgoyne said.
“You got strong feelings about everything,” Alice Stebbins said.
Lew ignored her. “Man has to have a license to drive a hundred-dollar car, but if he’s got enough money to buy thirty feet of boat, he can go right on out and drown himself free of charge. Like the time that big Chris ran the hell right into me and I find out the guy owned it three days. Came from Kansas. Never saw water before.”
We argued that back and forth. I started the charcoal going. We opened some more beers. It was full night. You could see the neon of the hotels over on the beach.
