Blowback(40)

I nodded, watched him put the top back on the thermos and replace it in the tackle box. And then I threw him a curve to see what he would do with it. “You wouldn't happen to have seen Walt Bascomb around, would you?”

He did not do anything with it; he heard me all right, but he neither acknowledged the question nor answered it. Without looking at me, he reached around and jerked the outboard into stuttering life.

“Mr. Jerrold? About Walt-”

I did not get the rest of it out because he had already hit the throttle and was backing the skiff away from the pier; as far as he was concerned, I was no longer there. Then he hit the throttle again and swung off to the north along the shoreline.

I stood staring after him until he and the boat blended into a dark speck in the distance, like a smudge on tinted glass. You could make something out of his ignoring the question about Bascomb, or you could chalk it up to simple neurosis. No way of telling which one-no way of telling any damned thing at all, it seemed.

It's not up to you, I told myself again. The only thing that's up to you right now is seeing to it he goes away from here without trouble.

I went back along the pier. As I came down off it I noticed that over in the parking circle the rear door of the Rambler wagon was standing open and there was somebody working inside. I started in that direction, saw a bucket of soapy water on the gravel near the door and then Sam Knox's head raise up into view. Cleaning up the vomit, I thought, and grimaced a little-and he pulled back out of the car in that moment, to dip a rag into the bucket, and turned his head and saw me.

He straightened up away from the door, shoulders jerking slightly, his face closing up in a pained way; but there did not seem to be any tension in him, as there would have been if he were harboring a grudge over what had happened in the hotel bar. I came to a standstill, and we stood looking at each other across thirty feet of ground, Knox twisting the wet rag back and forth in his big hands. I could not think of anything to say to him.

Ten or twelve seconds went by; then he dropped the rag into the bucket and walked over to me in hesitant stride. The hangover he was suffering was as apparent as Jerrold's-blotchy features, red-veined eyes, cracked lips.

“How's it going?” he said.

“All right.”

“Look, I, uh, I'm sorry about yesterday.” He seemed to have to force the words out; he was not the kind of man to whom apologies came easy. “I was shit-faced, that's all, I didn't know what I was doing.”

“Forget it,” I said. “It happens.”

“Yeah, well, I owe you for getting me out of there, keeping me out of trouble with the cops. Talesco told me about that.”

“You don't owe me anything. It's water under the bridge.”

He nodded as if relieved at the way I was reacting to his apology. Then, abruptly, he said, “Talesco and I are heading home this afternoon.”

“Oh?”

“Best thing for both of us-you know?”

“That mean you've patched it up between you?”

“Maybe, yeah. We've done some talking.”

“Glad to hear it.”

He looked past me toward the lake. “Anything I might have said yesterday-it was just drunk talk. We forget that too, huh?”

“Sure.”

There was a brief awkward pause. Then he gestured loosely toward the Rambler and said, “Well…”

I said, “You see anything of Walt Bascomb yesterday morning, or when you went into The Pines?”

He blinked, but that was all. “Bascomb?”

“Uh-huh.”

“No,” he said. “Last time I saw him was Sunday night.”

“When Sunday night?”

“Around dusk. I was down getting a beer and he came back in his car.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“Said hello. He stopped to get a beer too.”

“What did he do then?”

Knox shrugged. “Dunno. I went back to the cabin.”

“Was anybody else around?”

“Didn't see anybody else.”

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

He dipped his head again, and paused again, and then put out his hand. When I had taken it and let go of it again, he pivoted and returned to the bucket and the inside of the Rambler.

I went to Harry's cabin, found him inside making a light breakfast and looking as haggard as the bath-alcove mirror had told me I looked. I accepted his offer of coffee, but declined one of eggs and toast; I had no appetite today, none at all. Even the smell of the eggs frying in the pan made me feel faintly nauseated.

I said, “Jerrold went out fishing a little while ago. I talked to him for a couple of minutes on the pier.”

“Fishing? He didn't change his mind about leaving-?”