A Tan and Sandy Silence - Softcover
From a beloved master of crime fiction, A Tan and Sandy Silence is one of many classic novels featuring Travis McGee, the hard-boiled detective who lives on a houseboat.
Travis McGee is unnerved when he receives an unexpected guest—real estate developer Harry Broll, who is convinced that McGee is hiding his missing wife. Angry and jealous, Harry gets off a shot before McGee can wrestle his gun away. The thing is, McGee hasn’t seen or heard from Mary Broll in three years, and it isn’t like her to keep troubles to herself—if she’s alive to tell them.
“As a young writer, all I ever wanted was to touch readers as powerfully as John D. MacDonald touched me.”—Dean Koontz
McGee is a heartbeat away from crisis. He’s getting older, Lady Jillian Brent-Archer is trying to make him settle down, and he’s just been shot without fair warning. Nervous that he’s losing his touch, McGee decides to get Harry off his case and prove he’s still in top form all in one fell swoop.
McGee’s search for Mary takes him to Grenada, where he’s soon tangling with con artists and terrifying French killers, not to mention a slew of mixed motives. No longer wallowing in self-pity, McGee has more pressing concerns—like saving his own skin.
Features a new Introduction by Lee Child
Travis McGee is unnerved when he receives an unexpected guest—real estate developer Harry Broll, who is convinced that McGee is hiding his missing wife. Angry and jealous, Harry gets off a shot before McGee can wrestle his gun away. The thing is, McGee hasn’t seen or heard from Mary Broll in three years, and it isn’t like her to keep troubles to herself—if she’s alive to tell them.
“As a young writer, all I ever wanted was to touch readers as powerfully as John D. MacDonald touched me.”—Dean Koontz
McGee is a heartbeat away from crisis. He’s getting older, Lady Jillian Brent-Archer is trying to make him settle down, and he’s just been shot without fair warning. Nervous that he’s losing his touch, McGee decides to get Harry off his case and prove he’s still in top form all in one fell swoop.
McGee’s search for Mary takes him to Grenada, where he’s soon tangling with con artists and terrifying French killers, not to mention a slew of mixed motives. No longer wallowing in self-pity, McGee has more pressing concerns—like saving his own skin.
Features a new Introduction by Lee Child
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
John D. MacDonald was an American novelist and short-story writer. His works include the Travis McGee series and the novel The Executioners, which was adapted into the film Cape Fear. In 1962 MacDonald was named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America; in 1980, he won a National Book Award. In print he delighted in smashing the bad guys, deflating the pompous, and exposing the venal. In life, he was a truly empathetic man; his friends, family, and colleagues found him to be loyal, generous, and practical. In business, he was fastidiously ethical. About being a writer, he once expressed with gleeful astonishment, “They pay me to do this! They don’t realize, I would pay them.” He spent the later part of his life in Florida with his wife and son. He died in 1986.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
From the Trade Paperback edition.
One
On the most beautiful day any April could be asked to come up with, I was kneeling in eight inches of oily water in the cramped bilge of Meyer’s squatty little cabin cruiser, the John Maynard Keynes, taking his automatic bilge pump apart for the third time in an hour.
The socket wrench slipped, and I skinned yet another knuckle. Meyer stood blocking out a sizable piece of the deep blue sky. He stared down into the bilge and said, “Very inventive and very fluent. Nice mental images, Travis. Imagine one frail little bilge pump performing such an extraordinary act upon itself! But you began to repeat yourself toward the end.”
“Would you like to crawl down in here and—”
He backed up a hasty half step. “I couldn’t deprive you of the pleasure. You said you could fix it. Go ahead.”
I got it apart again. I spun the little impeller blade and suddenly realized that maybe it turned too freely. Found the set screw would take a full turn. Tightened it back down onto the shaft. Reassembled the crummy little monster, bolted it down underwater, heaved myself up out of the water, sat on the edge of the hatch, and had Meyer flip the switch. It started to make a nice steady wheeeeeeng, gouting dirty bilge water into the Bahia Mar yacht basin.
Meyer started to applaud, and I told him to save it until we found out if the adorable thing would turn itself the hell off like it says in the fine print. It took a good ten minutes to pump the water out. Then it went weeeeeeng-guggle-chud. Silence.
“Now cheer,” I said.
“Hooray,” he said mildly. “Thank you very much and hooray.” I looked at him with exasperation and affection. My mild and bulky friend with the wise little blue eyes, bright and bemused, and with the bear hair, thatch black, curling out of the throat of his blue knit shirt.
“Another half inch of rain last night,” I told him, “and you could have gone down like a stone.”
He had stepped out of his bunk in the dark after the rain stopped and into ankle deep water. He had sloshed over to my houseboat, the Busted Flush, and told me he had a small problem. At three in the morning we had toted my auxiliary pump over and set it on the dock and dropped the intake hose into his bilge. His home and refuge was very low in the water, the mooring lines taut enough to hum when plucked. By first light the Keynes was floating high again, and we could turn the pump off and carry it back. Now the repaired automatic bilge pump had taken out the last of the water, but he was going to live in dampness for quite a while.
“Perils of the sea,” he said.
I stepped up onto the dock and squatted and began to rinse the grease and bilge water off my hands under the hose faucet. Meyer shaded his eyes and looked toward the Flush. “You’ve got a visitor, Travis. Isn’t that what’s-his-name?”
I stood up and stared. “It sure is. Good old what’s-his-name. Harry Broll. Do you think that son of a bitch has come to try me again?”
“After the showing last time . . . Was it two years ago?”
“At least.”
“I think he’s at least bright enough not to try again.”
“Not the same way. But he did catch me with one very nice left. True, he broke his hand, but it was one to remember.”
“Want company?”
“No thanks.”
Harry turned and saw me when I was about fifty feet away. He was big, and he had gotten bigger since I’d seen him last. More gut and more jowls. Not becoming. He wore a pale beige suit, a yellow shirt, and he had a chocolate-colored neckerchief with an ornate, gold slip ring.
He raised his hands in the most primitive gesture of reassurance. Palms out. Sickly smile to go with it. As I came up to him he said, “Hi, McGee.” He put his hand out. I looked at it until he pulled it back. He tried to laugh. “Jesus, are you still sore?”
“I’m not sore, Harry. Why should we shake hands?”
“Look. I want to talk to you. Are you busy or anything?”
“What about?”
“About Mary. I know you’ve got no reason in the world to do me any favors. But this concerns . . . Mary’s well-being.”
“Is something wrong with her?”
“I don’t know. I don’t really know.”
I studied him. He seemed concerned and upset. He had the pallor of desk work. His black hair had receded since I had seen him last. He said, “I couldn’t think of anybody else to come to. I can say please if it’ll help. Please?”
“Come on aboard.”
“Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
We went into the lounge. I had on an old pair of denim shorts and nothing else. The air-conditioning cooled the sweat on my shoulders and chest. He looked around, nodding and beaming, and said, “Nice. Real nice. A nice way to live, huh?”
“Want a drink?”
“Bourbon, if you’ve got it.”
“Got it.”
“On the rocks.”
I put out the bottle and the glass and said, glancing down at my soiled hands, “Ice is in the bin there. Help yourself while I clean up, Broll.”
“Thanks. You sure keep yourself in shape, McGee. Wish I had the time. I guess I better make sure I have the time one of these days.”
I shrugged and went forward, dropped the shorts into the hamper and stepped into the oversized shower, thinking about Mary and wondering about her as I sudsed and scrubbed away the rest of the grime from the repair job. Miss Mary Dillon when I had known her. Then abruptly—maybe too abruptly—Mrs. Harry Broll. When I put my watch back on I saw that it was nearly four o’clock. Meyer and I were invited for drinks at six aboard the Jilly III. I put on fresh slacks, an oyster-white sailcloth sports shirt, my ancient Mexican sandals. On the way back to the lounge I stopped in the galley and put some Plymouth on the rocks.
He was sitting on the yellow couch, and he had lit a small cigar with a white plastic mouthpiece. “It must really be something, being able to just take off any time you feel like it.”
I slouched into a chair facing him, took a swallow of my drink, and put it on the coffee table. “You’ve got a problem, Harry?”
“About that time I made such a damn fool of myself . . .”
“Forget it.”
“No. Please. Let me say something about that. Like they say, the first year of marriage is the hardest, right?”
“So they say.”
“Well, I knew you and Mary were old friends. I couldn’t help knowing that, right? I mean, you and Meyer came to the wedding and all. I wondered how good friends you had been. I couldn’t help wondering, but I didn’t want to really know. Do you understand?”
“Sure.”
“The way it happened, we got into a hassle. It was the first real one we’d had. People shouldn’t drink and fight when they’re married. They say things they don’t want to say. I started saying some pretty ugly things about her and you. You know Mary. She’s got a lot of spirit. She took it and took it, and finally she let me have it right between the eyes. I deserved it. She blazed right up at me. She said she’d been cruising with you alone aboard this houseboat, down through the Keys and up the west coast to Tampa Bay, and she’d lived aboard for a month and cooked your food and washed your clothes and slept in your bed, and you were kind and decent and gentle and twice the man I am. So that Sunday afternoon I slammed out of the house and got in the car and came over here to beat on you. I could always handle myself pretty good. I wasn’t drunk enough for that to be any excuse. Jesus, I never hit so many arms and elbows and shoulders in my life.”
“And the top of my head.”
“That’s what popped the knuckles. Look. This knuckle is still sort of sunk in. How many times did you hit me? Do you know?”
“Sure I know. Twice.”
“Twice,” he said dolefully. “Oh, shit.”
“I waited until you ran out of steam, Harry. I waited until you got arm weary.”
He looked at me in an appraising way. “I wish I’d done more good.”
“I had a pair of sore arms. You bruised me up, Harry. And a three-day headache.”
“I guess I had to get it out of my system. Do you understand it’s still pretty hard for me to come to you to ask for anything?”
“I suppose it might be.”
“Mary kept telling me to grow up. Okay. I’m trying to grow up. I’m trying to be a mature, rational human being. Like they say, I’ve been examining my priorities and my options.”
“Good for you. But where do I fit in?”
“Here’s what I want you to tell Mary.”
“But I—”
“Give me a chance. Okay? Tell her that as soon as the SeaGate project is all set up, I think we ought to get away, just the two of us. A cruise or fly over to Spain, whatever. And tell her that the Canadian girl didn’t mean a damn thing to me, that I didn’t bring her back down here or ask her down, that she came on her own. And tell her to please get in touch with me so we can talk.”
“Hold it! I don’t know where Mary is.”
His face turned red. “Don’t give me such crap. You willing to let me search this houseboat?”
“She isn’t here, you damn fool.”
“I’ll find something of hers. Clothes, lipstick, something.”
“Harry. Jesus. Look around all you want.”
He settled back in the chair. &ld...
On the most beautiful day any April could be asked to come up with, I was kneeling in eight inches of oily water in the cramped bilge of Meyer’s squatty little cabin cruiser, the John Maynard Keynes, taking his automatic bilge pump apart for the third time in an hour.
The socket wrench slipped, and I skinned yet another knuckle. Meyer stood blocking out a sizable piece of the deep blue sky. He stared down into the bilge and said, “Very inventive and very fluent. Nice mental images, Travis. Imagine one frail little bilge pump performing such an extraordinary act upon itself! But you began to repeat yourself toward the end.”
“Would you like to crawl down in here and—”
He backed up a hasty half step. “I couldn’t deprive you of the pleasure. You said you could fix it. Go ahead.”
I got it apart again. I spun the little impeller blade and suddenly realized that maybe it turned too freely. Found the set screw would take a full turn. Tightened it back down onto the shaft. Reassembled the crummy little monster, bolted it down underwater, heaved myself up out of the water, sat on the edge of the hatch, and had Meyer flip the switch. It started to make a nice steady wheeeeeeng, gouting dirty bilge water into the Bahia Mar yacht basin.
Meyer started to applaud, and I told him to save it until we found out if the adorable thing would turn itself the hell off like it says in the fine print. It took a good ten minutes to pump the water out. Then it went weeeeeeng-guggle-chud. Silence.
“Now cheer,” I said.
“Hooray,” he said mildly. “Thank you very much and hooray.” I looked at him with exasperation and affection. My mild and bulky friend with the wise little blue eyes, bright and bemused, and with the bear hair, thatch black, curling out of the throat of his blue knit shirt.
“Another half inch of rain last night,” I told him, “and you could have gone down like a stone.”
He had stepped out of his bunk in the dark after the rain stopped and into ankle deep water. He had sloshed over to my houseboat, the Busted Flush, and told me he had a small problem. At three in the morning we had toted my auxiliary pump over and set it on the dock and dropped the intake hose into his bilge. His home and refuge was very low in the water, the mooring lines taut enough to hum when plucked. By first light the Keynes was floating high again, and we could turn the pump off and carry it back. Now the repaired automatic bilge pump had taken out the last of the water, but he was going to live in dampness for quite a while.
“Perils of the sea,” he said.
I stepped up onto the dock and squatted and began to rinse the grease and bilge water off my hands under the hose faucet. Meyer shaded his eyes and looked toward the Flush. “You’ve got a visitor, Travis. Isn’t that what’s-his-name?”
I stood up and stared. “It sure is. Good old what’s-his-name. Harry Broll. Do you think that son of a bitch has come to try me again?”
“After the showing last time . . . Was it two years ago?”
“At least.”
“I think he’s at least bright enough not to try again.”
“Not the same way. But he did catch me with one very nice left. True, he broke his hand, but it was one to remember.”
“Want company?”
“No thanks.”
Harry turned and saw me when I was about fifty feet away. He was big, and he had gotten bigger since I’d seen him last. More gut and more jowls. Not becoming. He wore a pale beige suit, a yellow shirt, and he had a chocolate-colored neckerchief with an ornate, gold slip ring.
He raised his hands in the most primitive gesture of reassurance. Palms out. Sickly smile to go with it. As I came up to him he said, “Hi, McGee.” He put his hand out. I looked at it until he pulled it back. He tried to laugh. “Jesus, are you still sore?”
“I’m not sore, Harry. Why should we shake hands?”
“Look. I want to talk to you. Are you busy or anything?”
“What about?”
“About Mary. I know you’ve got no reason in the world to do me any favors. But this concerns . . . Mary’s well-being.”
“Is something wrong with her?”
“I don’t know. I don’t really know.”
I studied him. He seemed concerned and upset. He had the pallor of desk work. His black hair had receded since I had seen him last. He said, “I couldn’t think of anybody else to come to. I can say please if it’ll help. Please?”
“Come on aboard.”
“Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
We went into the lounge. I had on an old pair of denim shorts and nothing else. The air-conditioning cooled the sweat on my shoulders and chest. He looked around, nodding and beaming, and said, “Nice. Real nice. A nice way to live, huh?”
“Want a drink?”
“Bourbon, if you’ve got it.”
“Got it.”
“On the rocks.”
I put out the bottle and the glass and said, glancing down at my soiled hands, “Ice is in the bin there. Help yourself while I clean up, Broll.”
“Thanks. You sure keep yourself in shape, McGee. Wish I had the time. I guess I better make sure I have the time one of these days.”
I shrugged and went forward, dropped the shorts into the hamper and stepped into the oversized shower, thinking about Mary and wondering about her as I sudsed and scrubbed away the rest of the grime from the repair job. Miss Mary Dillon when I had known her. Then abruptly—maybe too abruptly—Mrs. Harry Broll. When I put my watch back on I saw that it was nearly four o’clock. Meyer and I were invited for drinks at six aboard the Jilly III. I put on fresh slacks, an oyster-white sailcloth sports shirt, my ancient Mexican sandals. On the way back to the lounge I stopped in the galley and put some Plymouth on the rocks.
He was sitting on the yellow couch, and he had lit a small cigar with a white plastic mouthpiece. “It must really be something, being able to just take off any time you feel like it.”
I slouched into a chair facing him, took a swallow of my drink, and put it on the coffee table. “You’ve got a problem, Harry?”
“About that time I made such a damn fool of myself . . .”
“Forget it.”
“No. Please. Let me say something about that. Like they say, the first year of marriage is the hardest, right?”
“So they say.”
“Well, I knew you and Mary were old friends. I couldn’t help knowing that, right? I mean, you and Meyer came to the wedding and all. I wondered how good friends you had been. I couldn’t help wondering, but I didn’t want to really know. Do you understand?”
“Sure.”
“The way it happened, we got into a hassle. It was the first real one we’d had. People shouldn’t drink and fight when they’re married. They say things they don’t want to say. I started saying some pretty ugly things about her and you. You know Mary. She’s got a lot of spirit. She took it and took it, and finally she let me have it right between the eyes. I deserved it. She blazed right up at me. She said she’d been cruising with you alone aboard this houseboat, down through the Keys and up the west coast to Tampa Bay, and she’d lived aboard for a month and cooked your food and washed your clothes and slept in your bed, and you were kind and decent and gentle and twice the man I am. So that Sunday afternoon I slammed out of the house and got in the car and came over here to beat on you. I could always handle myself pretty good. I wasn’t drunk enough for that to be any excuse. Jesus, I never hit so many arms and elbows and shoulders in my life.”
“And the top of my head.”
“That’s what popped the knuckles. Look. This knuckle is still sort of sunk in. How many times did you hit me? Do you know?”
“Sure I know. Twice.”
“Twice,” he said dolefully. “Oh, shit.”
“I waited until you ran out of steam, Harry. I waited until you got arm weary.”
He looked at me in an appraising way. “I wish I’d done more good.”
“I had a pair of sore arms. You bruised me up, Harry. And a three-day headache.”
“I guess I had to get it out of my system. Do you understand it’s still pretty hard for me to come to you to ask for anything?”
“I suppose it might be.”
“Mary kept telling me to grow up. Okay. I’m trying to grow up. I’m trying to be a mature, rational human being. Like they say, I’ve been examining my priorities and my options.”
“Good for you. But where do I fit in?”
“Here’s what I want you to tell Mary.”
“But I—”
“Give me a chance. Okay? Tell her that as soon as the SeaGate project is all set up, I think we ought to get away, just the two of us. A cruise or fly over to Spain, whatever. And tell her that the Canadian girl didn’t mean a damn thing to me, that I didn’t bring her back down here or ask her down, that she came on her own. And tell her to please get in touch with me so we can talk.”
“Hold it! I don’t know where Mary is.”
His face turned red. “Don’t give me such crap. You willing to let me search this houseboat?”
“She isn’t here, you damn fool.”
“I’ll find something of hers. Clothes, lipstick, something.”
“Harry. Jesus. Look around all you want.”
He settled back in the chair. &ld...
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherFawcett
- Publication date1996
- ISBN 10 0449224767
- ISBN 13 9780449224762
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages336
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