The Quintessence of Quick (The Jack Mason Saga) Read online

  “Go” had gotten only partially past her lips before they were shut by the back of Floyd’s hand. Rick, the closest to the pair, moved quickly to clamp Floyd’s wrist in his hand and lever him off the couch and onto the floor, converting the wrist hold to a hammerlock, his knee between the prone man’s legs. Floyd’s response was a descent into unconsciousness.

  “Whoever it was that talked about something ending ‘not with a bang, but a whimper’ sure as hell wasn’t talking about a party at Cordelia’s,” Linda said to the lazy counterpoint of the wagon’s windshield wipers.

  “Eliot, I think. Yeah, pretty much par for the course with Buster and Cordelia,” Jack observed as he rolled open the driver’s-side vent window to augment the defroster’s efforts. “The final bang’s probably still going on, in her back seat.”

  “I felt bad for Margie; even if that slap of Floyd’s was accidental, it looked like a pretty solid shot, the way she fell back from it. And hauling away a comatose husband from a party at the boss’s house has got to be awkward, at best. It was nice of Gene Debs to say he’d follow them home.”

  “Twenty years in the Navy’s given him expertise in quite a few things,” Jack said, “not the least of which is seeing drunks into a safe berth. And I sure as hell didn’t want any further part of ol’ Flaw-id this evenin’.”

  “Buster didn’t seem too upset about the whole thing.”

  “Nope; he was just glad to see the couch vacated so he could pass out on it.”

  “Which certainly didn’t appear to upset Cordelia.”

  “Again, par for the course,” Jack grunted. “Guess I’ll get a blow-by-blow from Rick tomorrow on his ‘ride home’.”

  “That’s saying a lot in very few words, Skippy; guess I’ll be getting Cordelia’s perspective at about the same time.”

  “How’s that?”

  “She’s taking me over to Augusta for lunch and a check on how they’re coming with the boat- unless that conflicts with anything that you had in mind.”

  “Good God, what’s goin’ on with you guys?”

  “Well, she said that she and Ríni did everything together, and she hadn’t had a real girlfriend since your mom ‘went back north.”

  “Damn . I didn’t think Cordelia had room for a girlfriend, what with all the boyfriends. Well, it doesn’t look like you’ll have decent weather for motorcycling, so if you want to seek out other perilous activity, just remember you’ve been forewarned.”

  8 ON THE STEP

  Jack woke early. The sky hadn’t lightened, and wouldn’t, he figured, for at least another hour. Padding barefoot into the Coconut Grove house’s kitchen, he was careful with coffee-making sounds so Pete and Linda would go on sleeping. God knows, he thought, I need this time to myself. Nouveau riche, Pensacola-bound, and all of a sudden the earth’s surface’s awash with ball bearings.

  The Hamm County Beverage Company’s sale netted him close to ten million dollars, which would, of course, be whittled down significantly by the grasping of government. He’d known that the grasping would be minimized by Pete’s foresight (his friend, mentor, benefactor and father confessor, now Pete for evermore, the Bisque years as Moses Kubielski sealed in tamper-proof, hermetically-sealed storage, the way you’d stow the Star of India before driving through dead-of-night Calcutta) in setting up a trust for him years before that last flight out of Bisque. That, and mandating Bruce Goode’s consulting with a high-powered Atlanta firm of tax attorneys on his behalf. Anticipation, though, was one thing; realization quite another. Beyond his pending obligation to the Navy, there would be no need, whatever taxes’ ultimate bite, for Jack Mason ever to contemplate working another day in his life.

  His greetings from the Hamm County Selective Service Board had arrived a few days after Rick’s departure for Fort Jackson. His aversion to becoming a dogface, and Gene Debs’ tales of his twenty years in Naval Aviation, had led to his acceptance as a Naval Aviation Officer Candidate. That commitment would take a five-year plug out of his life, as opposed to the two years of the numbing monotony of life as a private soldier. His only other option had been graduate school, a monotony more exquisite, but no less numbing. Whatever the coming five years might hold for him, he felt sure that numbing monotony wouldn’t be part of it.

  Naval Aviation’s most immediate attraction was his removal from current circumstances. The time between now and his June 15th reporting date wouldn’t be, he was sure, anything like enough to get a handle on where his life was going, or of the roles that Pete and Linda would play in it. The four months of relative seclusion prescribed for Aviation Officer Candidates by the U.S. Navy School of Preflight seemed more attractive to him with every day that passed. Even after commissioning, life as an officer flight student wouldn’t include a lot of spare time, and he looked forward, guiltily, to leaving the ultimate question of Linda in Pete’s hands.

  Not that being with her wasn’t fun; far from it. Smart, sexy, self-sufficient and a talented hell-raiser, she’d fucked his brains out all these years and clamored for more. She’d made their Bisque sojourn uproarious, unsettling fun, especially after she hooked up with Cordelia to plumb the nether regions of Bisque and the surrounding countryside. And by now they’d been together long enough for him to conclude that a lifetime with her, if that had ever been an option, was definitely not in the cards for him. She was, unquestionably, an alcoholic, meaning that sooner or later, among other things, she’d say the wrong thing to the wrong person about how the three of them happened to be together. If, the chilly thought intruded, she hasn’t already. But if anyone on the face of the earth can handle a situation like this, he thought, it’s Pete.

  Having gone down that road as far as he cared to for the moment, he turned his thoughts to Pete’s plan, that he now knew had begun years ago, which had made him a rich man. Boy, actually; he’d been nineteen when ownership of the Hamm County Beverage Company was dropped in his lap. He wondered, off and on, if he’d imagined it making him this rich this fast, or if he was benefiting unduly from Pete’s desire to repay the late Dieter Brück for saving his life during the Spanish Civil War. He’d fought this notion to a standstill countless times before, and satisfied himself that Pete was, as he said, very happy with the way things had turned out. The thought, however, would still creep back at odd moments, along with its corollary that his, Jack’s, taking responsibility for Linda had been part of the master plan. Pete had, after all, been a deeply-experienced Abwehr agent, and long-range planning of that sort would be second nature to him.

  Linda could have, inadvertently or otherwise, dropped him a hint or two over the years about their summer liaisons. As a matter of fact, Pete hadn’t been that specific about when Linda had told him that they’d been lovers since he was sixteen. After Pete introduced them when he and a Jack came to New York together in 1953, they’d seen each other regularly during his summer and Christmas holiday visits to his father. Dr. Lawrence Mason, Professor of Physics at Columbia University, had seemed not to notice, or to have been indifferent to, his absences, regardless of the excuse. Linda had been a significant part of his growing up, no question, and not, by any means, just where sex was concerned. But they’d been together now, as adults, for long enough to have taken each other’s measure.

  It was evident to him on the run back to Florida that their relationship, still comradely and promiscuous, wouldn’t be permanent. Pete would, of course, figure that out for himself in time, but Jack still had no answer to the question that would define what the three of them would be to each other in the future. Did Pete have feelings for Linda that he’d suppressed to promote the relationship between her and Jack? She’d told him that she and Pete would make love now and then after Dieter was killed, and that she’d initiated it. They’d both lost someone whom they loved, and after that Cuba seemed to shrink under their feet. Both she and Pete missed Dieter, but she hadn’t realized until they’d become intimate how much Pete still loved Serena Mason. He’d never, she said, called her Ríni
, as most of her friends in Bisque did. It was always Serena, and always with a light, loving caress.

  Jack wasn’t all that surprised; she’d just confirmed his own conviction that Pete still loved his mother, and he was certain that she felt the same way about him. While she attempted to avoid showing it, her grief over Pete’s apparent death seemed to be a good deal more than what she’d shown over his grandfather. He had no conception of how, or if, his mother and Pete might get together in the future, but it sure as hell didn’t simplify the problem at hand. He and Pete needed to talk about Linda, and soon. After what he’d heard from Gene Debs about the rigors of Preflight, he wanted to be rid of as many distractions as possible before that ordeal began.

  Other important, if less crucial, decisions had to be made. Dealing with Linda, the closing of the HCBC sale, his draft notice and the Navy had put the decision of what to do about his Bisque property on the back burner. He hadn’t put the house on the market, although no fewer than three of his former Bisque High classmates had prevailed on him to list it with them. Gene Debs would take care of things there for the near term, but there was no getting around the fact that he’d need to go back before reporting in at Pensacola. The well-worn Buick wagon was company property, and had been handed over to Ralph Williams when he dropped them off at the boatyard, so buying a car was near the top of his to-do list. Hell, he thought, maybe I should buy two; get Linda some wheels. She’ll need transportation of her own while she and Pete are sparring around, and with luck she won’t drive it off the end of some pier. I’d better go get a cup of coffee and feel my way out onto the beach, because thinking about her reckless nature’s gettin’ my dick hard…

  A hard red golf-ball sun had made it three or four fingers above the horizon when he heard footsteps, too heavy for Linda’s, crunching dead sea oat stalks behind him. Tilting his head as far back has he could, he looked up through the forest of hairs on the back of Pete’s fingers, and felt the pressure of their tips on his forehead. “Mornin’, Bird,” said the voice from on high.

  “Mornin’, Buzz.” they had, somewhere along the line, contracted these names for each other from their earlier extended forms, Shitbird and Shitbuzzard.

  “Been up long?”

  “‘Bout an hour.”

  “Skipper’s still sawin’ Z’s,” Pete said as he sat down beside Jack, reaching back with his left hand to steady his descent, the fingers of his right hooked through the handles of the coffee pot and a crockery mug that matched Jack’s.

  “Still gettin’ over the trip, I guess,” Jack responded, holding out his mug for a refill. “The burden of command, y’know. That’s some trip, I’ll tell you that.”

  “Surprised you guys didn’t freeze your asses off. I never did figure out whose idea it was.”

  Jack shot him a tight grin. “You know damn well it was hers, but it didn’t take much to talk me into it.”

  “‘Ignorance is bliss,’ huh?” Pete said with a chuckle.

  “And how. I’m glad we did it, though; before she showed me the charts, if you’d told me that you could get a boat that size that close to Bisque, I’d never’ve believed it.”

  “Well, it’s good to have you back, buddy. How’re all the Bisqueants?” The appellation, the punch line of an old private joke, rhymed with ‘miscreants.’

  “Just about what you’d imagine; everybody misses you; some, like Lee Webster, more than others. The rest seem to be chasing their tails in the same tight circle as when you left.”

  “Good ol’ Lee; I miss his sorry ass, too. Where’dya run into him, Ribeye’s?

  “The cafe. Only got to Ribeye’s once, around 11 one night, when Cordelia put a gun to my head. Then she put the gun to Ribeye’s head and made ’im stay open for another hour.”

  Pete’s raised eyebrows accompanied a brief smile that bordered on a grimace. “Guess there was no way around y’all’s gettin’ involved with her. Was anybody killed?”

  “No,” Jack laughed, “Just a couple of scuffles and another cuckolding or two. “Turns out she and Linda got on quite well together.”

  “I don’t think I’m quite ready to hear about that. Besides, I’ve got a little surprise for you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It has to be seen to be believed,” Pete chuckled. “C’mon, let’s go hold reveille on th’ Skipper.”

  As they roared along in the cool comfort of the old Buick limo’s two new air conditioning units, Jack confirmed yesterday’s impression that Pete was really enjoying driving the old warhorse. He’d first ridden it into Bisque thirteen years ago, right after what everybody around there still called “de waw,” relinquishing it to the Buick dealer in favor of a new Roadmaster wagon, the first in a series that would haul him around Bisque for a decade. It was then driven for years by the remarkable Bishop twins, White Whale to his Ahab, a perpetual and irritating reminder of his turbulent life before Bisque. When they left town for college, it returned to the hands of the Buick dealer, from whom Jack bought it. After a from-the-frame-up restoration that had taken over a year, Jack awaited the call that he knew would come, drove it to Miami and returned it to Pete. A bit of a gamble, but he bet on the car’s striking blue color, the urge of its heavily-modified engine, the icy cool of its interior, and, most of all, on Pete’s appreciation of all things ironic. Basking in his own prescience, he banished his earlier misgivings and gave himself up to the gemütlichkeit of the moment. Looking for a long instant at Pete’s profile, he catalogued the differences between then and now. More, grayer, hair, less nose, deep tan, pencil-line moustache and the Cuban-born penchant for guayaberas, the loose-fitting, open-weave white shirts cut to be worn with the tail out. Customarily long-sleeved, Pete wore them short-sleeved; whether he’d found a place that sold them that way or had someone cut them, Jack had yet to ask. But the profile included a familiar element; the massive right arm, fully extended in his characteristic one-handed driving style.

  A few minutes’ drive north brought them to US 41; turning left, Pete gave the big straight-8 its head. The speedometer was flirting with triple digits when the saw-toothed skyline of hangars up ahead on the left tipped off his passengers to the nature of his surprise. “This oughta be good,” said Linda, prompting a broad smile of implied agreement from the burly chauffeur, who drove, as expected, through the field’s entrance, past a sign that identified it as Tamiami Airport. The staccato boom of the big car’s exhaust bounced off the sheet metal sides of hangars and outbuildings, rivaling the noise of a taxiing bomber as it threaded between them. He braked to a stop in the shadow of a towering blue and gray rhinoceros of an airplane, crouched expectantly on its fat main landing gear and comparatively dainty dual nose wheels, wing pontoons as long as a man reaching down in quest of non-existent water. Foot-high white block letters aft of its portside cargo door proclaimed NAVY. “What’s this?” she asked, her voice a mix of awe and anticipation.

  “She’s a Grumman UF-1T,” Pete said with quiet satisfaction. “Amphibian; Wright R-1820 Cyclone engines, two each, top speed around 230, cruise 150. Designed for three crew and eight passengers. And I almost know how to fly it.”

  “To say nothing of the fact,” said Jack, shooting him a grin across the top of the Buick, “That you definitely knew how to buy it. Right?”

  “Can’t fool you for a minute. Last one aboard’s Mao Tse-tung!”

  The introduction to this Albatross, as Grumman dubbed the last in its line of sturdy amphibians that had its roots in the ’20s, would, in typical Pete Weller fashion, be a thorough one. “She’s a honey, ain’t she?” he said, slapping bunk beds, passenger seat backs and various bulkheads as he passed by them, stepping spryly through a watertight door worthy of a combat ship, leading Linda and Jack to the cockpit. “Ol’ Sy’ll be here pretty soon, and we’ll get ’er airborne.” He stood aside to let them squeeze past. “Slide in there and get the feel of her.”

  “This thing’s huge,” Linda said from the pilot’s seat, her eyes oscillati
ng rapidly from instrument gauges to flight controls.

  “She’s pretty good-sized, all right,” Pete acknowledged. “About the same as a DC-3. We’re gonna have some fun with this rascal.”

  Jack smiled to himself as he looked out the co-pilot’s window at the number 2 nacelle. “Another Grumman. Same engine as the F3F?”

  “Sure is; little different version, more horsepower, but definitely the old reliable R-1820 Wright Cyclone . Sump’m else it has in common with Gooney Birds.”

  “Who’s ‘Ol’ Sy,’ anyway?” Linda asked. “The guy you bought it from?”

  “Nope. He flew it for the guy I bought it from. Name’s actually Wilbur. Old Coast Guard hand; got close to four thousand hours in these things. Said to call him Sy, so that’s what I call ’im. He’s part of the deal; a hundred hours of him, that is. Says he can probably check me out in fifty, now that we’ve been out a few times, but I don’t plan to plow through the water in this baby until I know exactly what I’m doing. Couldn’t very well check you guys out without having a damn good handle on ’er.”

  They’d just stepped back onto the ramp as the strangled whine of an overworked six-cylinder engine pulled their eyes toward the nearest hangar. A boxy, faded-yellow Dodge van was approaching the aircraft at a high rate of speed. “Here’s ol’ Sy now,” Pete exclaimed. The truck ground to halt underneath the tail; a short, spare individual, snow-white pompadour a shocking contrast to his mahogany tan, stepped out. Wilbur Szymanski returned Pete’s wave, smiling broadly as he approached them.