Cinnamon Skin by John D. MacDonald Page A

loved the sea. He grew terribly excited when fish were being caught. His body seemed to thrive on cola and junk food. He could sew bait, rig lines, net little fish, gaff big fish, wash down the boat, clean up the mess, serve the Coke and beer, swarm up to the tuna tower to search the sea for fish sign. He was cheerful, smiling, quick in his motions, polite to everyone. His face had a fat bland look at odds with his tough body. He had a little thin high voice. He filled in when any one of the captains needed a hand for a day or a week. They paid him off in cash. He had some learning defect which kept him from ever being able to read and write.
    I walked down to Charterboat Row and found the Key Kitty with her cockpit hatches open, Captain Ned Rhine staring gloomily down at an electrician working in there.
    Ned gave me a beer and we sat on the side of the dock and talked about the memorial service with the wreaths, and how Gloria was bearing up, and how his wife said Gloria would probably get married again someday. Nobody would ever guess she had those three hulking sons.
    "Seen Pogo around?" I asked casually.
    "Come to think of it, no. Maybe not for a week. Got something for him to do?"
    "If he's available. Where does he stay anyway?"
    "Here and there. Here and there. After Roy got hisself all busted up that time last year when the kid ran into his truck, Pogo slept aboard the Honeydoo and worked mate while Stub was taking the contracts Roy had set up. For a while there I think he bunked in the supply room at Castle Marine until it got sold. Pogo is okay. He does a better job of work than some brighter people around here I could name. And he isn't ever grouchy."
    I changed the subject, and a little later I unchained my bicycle and rode over to Pier 66 and walked out to the gas dock. I don't buy fuel there, so I don't know the attendants. There were two on duty, a narrow-faced redheaded man in the office and a young Cuban with a shaved head filling the tanks of a Prowler from Georgia. The redhead had been on duty the morning of the fifth.
    They remembered gassing The John Maynard Keynes only because it had blown up soon afterward, and the police had questioned them after somebody reported having seen the Keynes at their gas dock at about ten that morning.
    They had noticed the woman in the string bikini but not much else. There were three people on the boat. Or maybe four. It had been a busy morning. The woman had paid cash. She had gone below to get her purse. Ninety-five gallons of regular. A hundred and twenty-nine dollars and twenty cents. She'd asked for a receipt.
    "Sure, I've seen Hack Jenkins around," the redhead said. "I remember wondering what he was doing with that boat instead of his own."
    Neither of them knew anybody called Pogo who worked around the docks over at Bahia Mar. As all the charterboat captains would customarily buy fuel at Bahia Mar, that wasn't unexpected. Every large marina seems to acquire its own village of regulars.
    As I biked on back to Bahia Mar, I kept tugging at the minor improbabilities, hoping something would come loose. Norma Lawrence had not impressed me as the kind of take-charge lady who would jump up and pay the bills. It would be more likely she would get the money from her purse and give it to Evan to pay the bill with. And why had Evan stayed below when they went out past the sea buoy into the chop building up from the offshore storm? That was when the customers were always on deck, holding on, peering into the wind like dogs leaning out of car windows.
    I carried the bike aboard and locked it to the ring I had bolted to the aft bulkhead, under the overhang, unlocked the Flush, and went into the lounge, into the air-conditioned coolness that chilled the sweat the ten-speed generated.
    So what if Evan Lawrence wasn't aboard for the big bang?
    It was an idea that offended my emotional set. A very likable guy with a good grin, a man of warmth, of funny stories, a newly wedded man in