Read The Dreadful Lemon Sky for Free Online Page B

all. I don't know what it is with him."
    "Where do they live?"
    "Oh, right over there, in this end unit in the motel. They built the motel the same time as the marina, and leased it out, and in the lease they get to use the unit at this end, a little bigger than the others. Cal inherited some money and they bought this piece of waterfront and put up the marina and the motel. But they could lose it if it keeps up this way."
    He went and got a mop and a pail and swabbed up the blood. While he was at it he mopped the rest of the floor. A good man.
    I stepped around the wet parts and went back to the Flush. Meyer was annoyed. Where had I been? What had happened to my forehead? What were we going to do about lunch?
    I told him how I'd happened to meet the Birdsongs. Lovely couple.
    When we went to get a car and get lunch, I saw a different fellow in the office. This one was beardless and smaller and rounder, but just as muscular.
    "Jason here?"
    "He went to lunch. Can I help you?"
    "I'm McGee. We're in Slip Sixty."
    "Oh, sure. We talked on the phone. I'm Oliver Tarbeck. I understand you and Cal went around and around."
    "Sort of. If I can get a rental car, where should I park it?"
    "In that row over there where it says Marina Only. If it's full, come here to the office and we'll work something out."
    "Place to eat?"
    "A block to the left, on this side. Gil's Kitchen. It's okay for lunch."
    We had lunch first. The place wasn't okay for lunch. Gil had a dirty kitchen. A fried egg sandwich was probably safe. We went from there to Texaco, which had some sort of budget rental deal, and I tested to see if I could get my knees under the wheel of the yellow Gremlin before giving him the Diner's Card. Nobody will take a cash deposit on a car any more. It forces everybody into cards. As the world gets bigger, it gets a lot duller.
    I asked him if he could tell me how to find Junction Park. He gave me a city map and marked the route.
    The Gremlin did not have air, but it had some big vents. Meyer read the map and called the turns. It was easy to see the shape and history of Bayside, Florida. There had been a little town on the bay shore, a few hundred people, a sleepy downtown with live oaks and Spanish moss. Then International Amalgamated Development had moved in, bought a couple of thousand acres, and put in shopping centers, town houses, condominiums, and rental apartments, just south of town. Next had arrived Consolidated Construction Enterprises and done the same thing north of town. Smaller operators had done the same things on a smaller scale west of town. When downtown decayed, the town fathers widened the streets and cut down the shade trees in an attempt to look just like a shopping center. It didn't work. It never does. This was instant Florida, tacky and stifling and full of ugly and spurious energies. They had every chain food-service outfit known to man, interspersed with used-car lots and furniture stores.
    Junction Park was inland and not far from a turnpike interchange. It had been laid, out with some thought to system and symmetry. Big steel buildings were placed in herringbone pattern, with big truck docks and parking areas. The tall sign at the entrance said that Superior Building Supplies was the fourth building on the right.
    I parked and told Meyer to see what he could pick up at the neighbor establishments, a heating and air conditioning outfit, a ladder plant, and a boatbuilder.
    I went into the front office of Superior Building Supplies. A slender and pretty girl in a dress made of ticking was taking file folders out of a metal file and putting them into a cardboard storage file. She straightened and looked at me and said in a nasal little voice, "It isn't until Monday."
    "What isn't?"
    "The special sale of everything. They're taking inventory over the weekend. And right now."
    "Going out of business?"
    She went over to her desk and picked up a can of Coke and drank several swallows. She gave me a long look of