Spiral

Unlocked.
    Inside was a dimly lit reception area with idyllic seascapes on the wall. Thankful that the decorator hadn’t let the exterior sherbet colors seep in, I didn’t see anybody behind the counter or in the open doorway beyond it.
    ”Dr. Forbes?”
    ”You’re early. I’ll be right out.”
    A muffled, echoing tone to his words. Then I heard the flushing of a toilet and the surging of water into a sink.
    A short, compact man came through the open doorway, shrugging into a windbreaker over flap-pocket shorts and boat mocs. Pushing sixty from the creased lines on a deeply tanned face, his hair was still that nicotine color that goes white around the ears. He smiled at me and, clearing the reception counter, shook my hand in a no-nonsense way.
    ”Mr. Cuddy, Henry Forbes.”
    ”How are you?”
    He glanced over his shoulder. ”I’d be better if every time I got up from a sitting position, I didn’t sound like a hearthful of crickets.”
    A practiced line—and a finished thought—so I laughed politely.
    Forbes smiled more broadly. ”Still, though, it’s more comfortable than the head.”
    ”The head?”
    ”On the boat.”
    I didn’t bother to follow that up.

    ”You know,” said Henry Forbes from the helm, ”it’s possible to take the Intracoastal most anywhere you’d want to go”
    I nodded, my hair being whipped by the wind.
    We’d driven from his bunglalow/office to a marina, him leading in a Mercedes sedan. Once there, he’d ushered me along a series of catwalks to his motorboat.
    Now, sitting in one captain’s chair, I glanced at Forbes on my right in the other. As we went south on the wide ribbon of water, restaurants and bars with raised wooden decks lined both sides of the Intracoastal, families toting cameras waving to us. Other people were gathered at the seawall docks, getting into or out of green-and-yellow gondolas that seemed to function as buses.
    ”Water taxis,” said Forbes, playing tour guide. ”Pay a flat rate, ride all day, up and down. And over there is Bahia Mar, where John D. MacDonald set the Travis McGee series.”
    I’d enjoyed reading the books, so I looked at the marina going by on our left. Lots of big sailboats and power vessels, their hulls bobbing almost daintily in the constant chop, some folks drinking and eating.
    They didn’t wave to us.
    Forbes moved a lever next to the wheel, throttling down some as he had earlier to go under buttressed causeways. ”There’ s even a monument.”
    ”Sorry?”
    ‘To MacDonald, at Slip F-18 where McGee’s houseboat was supposedly moored.”
    I nodded, and Forbes goosed the engine back to cruising speed.
    After a while, we slowed down again to go under another causeway. Once through the maze of pilings, though, Forbes slowed even further, then anchored, the boat tugging tight on the line until we began to swing a little, left to right. Forbes cut the engine, and it suddenly seemed unnaturally quiet, despite the other boats going by us.
    ”Love the pilings.”
    I turned toward the stem, the closest supports maybe forty feet away. ”Who does?”
    ”Snook, Mr. Cuddy.”
    I just stared at him.
    ”Snook, a game fish. They love to drive mullet or other bait up against the pilings, then tear them to pieces. Look, some are busting right now.”
    The surface of the water near the supports was roiling, almost churning.
    Forbes said, ”My favorite part of the day.”
    From under the gunwale, he pulled a two-sectioned fishing pole, already strung with thick, mustard-colored line, and matched up the halves. ”Fly rod, seven weight.” Forbes pointed to the red and white feathered lure, maybe two inches long, at the end of some clear monofilament. ”And that blood look on the fly just drives them nuts.” He smiled at me. ”If you’ll pardon a shrink’s technical term.”
    ”Doctor, about David Helides?”
    ”Just one second.”
    Forbes flicked the rod back and forth, getting more of the thick line out from the tip each time. Then he made the line already on the water loop and roll forward, like a rodeo cowboy doing a lariat trick, and the little fly at the end of the monofilament plunked into the water almost at one of the pilings.
    ”Roll cast, Mr. Cuddy. Faster way to—whoa!”
    A silvery fish broke water, a speck of white and red at the corner of its jaw, then slapped back on the surface and ran deeper, the line singing off the reel mounted under the rod’s grip.
    ”Nice snook,” said Forbes. ”Maybe eighteen