Cinnamon Skin (18 page)

When we agreed, she turned and loped off toward the tow truck in a clumsy, pigeon-toed trot. As she climbed in, Meyer said, "I better come back alone. I think it will work better."

"Then we better check back into the motel." I headed south. "You got more than I ever thought you'd get."

"When people have something they don't want to think about, they'll talk about other things, sometimes too much. One time, long ago, I visited a friend in the hospital one afternoon and found out that they had told him that very morning he wasn't going to make it. He babbled at me for two hours. He was quick and funny and intense. He told me the dirty details of his failed marriage. I suspected he had never intended to tell all that to anyone. It was a strange and uncomfortable period for me. Then he started to cry and ordered me out. I went to see him again, but he resented me because he had told me too much. I took advantage of the way she was feeling. She didn't want to think about Jesse."

Meyer left me in the motel with some magazines and the Saturday afternoon television. I took a lateafternoon walk but the heat was still too intense. It inade you feel as if you could not breathe deeply enough. I phoned Annie's private line, but there was no answer. I watched a portion of a bad ball game. I took a nap. I read the magazines. I tried television. Lawrence Welk had replaced the ball game. He had a batch of very old citizens there, playing old music very well on shiny horns. They had doubtless come out of the big band era and were happy to find work playing the same old stuff.

Meyer got in at ten fifteen. He looked grainy and old. I knew he'd tell me about it when he was ready, so I didn't push him. Inexpensive bourbon has its own aroma, and he smelled as if he'd had more than two. He took a shower and came out and stretched out on his bed, fingers laced behind his head.

"I think that what we had was a two-person wake, without the body. She thinks she's glad he's dead, but she isn't sure. She couldn't stop looking at the picture of the grown-up Cody. She said he had turned out to be a really good-looking man, like his father. I let her keep the picture. All right?"

"Of course. We've got three left. Anyway, why ask me? This is your parade."

"Every time I'd try to ease in on the identity of her correspondent in Eagle Pass, she'd sidestep. Nothing else was going to work. So I told her some stories. I told her all about Doris Eagle and Isobelle Garvey and Norma Lawrence. I told her about Larry Joe and Jerry and Evan. You see, Travis, Cody was her hero. The little brother, corrupted by the stepmother, had escaped and had made a successful life somewhere and was able to send money to his beloved big sister. She pictured him in a big house with a wife and kids and two cars. She couldn't stand what I was telling her. When she finally came to believe that the photograph she held in her hand had been positively identified by all concerned as Cody T. W. Pittler, her next line of defense was that Doris Eagle had died in a legitimate accident, that Izzy Garvey had gone off with Cody and run out on him later, and that he had been blown up aboard my boat. I asked her why all the names, and she said it was because the police still wanted him for what had happened at Eagle Pass. I had showed her the Doris Eagle clippings and the clippings about Norma's death. I told her about Norma's life, what kind of a woman she had been. She kept drinking. I kept drinking. We wept. I kept asking her why she wanted to protect such a man, even if he was her brother. She kept saying he was all the family she had.

"Finally she said that whenever she had changed her address, she had phoned the best friend she ever had, a woman in Eagle Pass named Clara Chappel. They had been all through the grades together back when she had been Clara Pitts. Because seating was alphabetical, they always sat near one another. They had double-dated, and they had Uoth gotten drunk on tequila on the same date and lost their virginity the same night. They had been married at the same time, she to Sonny Fox, and Clara to Sid Chappel. Clara had always told her she wished Cody was a little older so she could marry him. She said she had moved seven times, since she had gone north with Sonny Fox, and had phoned Clara each time. Cody stayed in touch with Clara. She didn't know how. Clara never told her. She said it proved Cody was smart. He knew that if his sister knew how to get in touch with him, the police could find out from her. And she would never tell anyone about Clara. Then she seemed to realize she was telling me and shouldn't be. She drank more. It became difficult to understand what she was saying.

"At one point she led me out into that dreadful backyard and reached into the bottom of an old iron stove and took out a tiny candy box and opened it, shone the flashlight into it, onto a wad of hundred-dollar bills. Jesse had never found out about the money. She said he would have just taken it and left. She said Jesse wasn't good about money. Then she told me it had arrived early last month, early June. Seven thousand two hundred. You realize of course, Travis, that it was Norma's money. I told her it had been Norma's money. She wanted me to take it. I wouldn't. She put it back in the stove and clanged the old door. We were both crying. We supported each other back to the house. She said her head was aching terribly from being hit by Jesse. She called it his last love tap. She tripped on the top step and fell heavily into the trailer. I pulled her to her bed and lifted her onto it, half of her at a time. I drove back here with one eye shut so there would be one center line instead of two, one pair of oncoming headlights instead of two. It is a criminal act to drive in such a condition. I could have killed innocent people. I feel very sad and soiled and old. She really hasn't anything left now."

"I'll see if I can reach Paul Sigiera."

"You do that."

He kept his eyes shut while I tried. His breathing became heavier. He produced a long rattling snore. I finally reached Sigiera despite the efforts of two other officers on duty.

"Ah so," he said. "The Consultant and the Professor. What are you all consulting and professing?"

"Cody sends money to his sister at irregular intervals. Cash. From four to ten thousand in hundreds. Over a dozen shipments since he took off. He keeps track of her through a woman named Clara Chappel. She used to be Clara Pitts. Married to a Sid or Sidney Chappel. She phones Clara her changes of address and Clara relays them to Cody.So you know a Chappel family?"

"Hope to spit. There is no place in Maverick County high enough to stand on and see everything Sid Chappel owns."

"I have the feeling that when sister Helen June sobers up tomorrow, she is going to get to a phone and let Clara know that McGee and Meyer know about Cody's pipeline. So I thought if you got to Clara Chappel first-"

"And leaned on her? You've got to be kidding. Maybe I can do it with footwork and fancy talk. How's Helen June?"

"Living among junk with a piano player until today; then he rolled his Bronco over on himself and squashed his head."

"Just a coincidence?"

"You could call it that."

"Why in hell did Helen June tell you people anything?"

"The Professor talked nice to her. And she was in kind of a shocked condition. I would appreciate it if you would do what you can and let me know."

I gave him my phone number aboard the Flush. He said he would give it a try, but not right now, not on a Saturday night. There was too much action going on among the lower classes, such as cops, he said. Meyer slept on. I walked to the restaurant and had a bowl of chowder and a hot dog. A leggy sixteen-year-old girl with blond hair black at the roots, wearing a quarter pound of eye makeup, gave me the fixed challenging stare of the seasoned hooker while she ate her strawberry cone. There's no VD any more. Now it is all STD, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, and there are a lot more of them than there used to be, and a lot more people have them than used to, and some of them are resistant to all known antibiotics. I walked back through the hot night, thinking sad bad thoughts.

"Try me tomorrow," she said. "I don't know what tomorrow will be like, but it won't be any worse than today. Any luck on your quest?"

"Quest? Nice word for a series of blind alleys. I got kicked in the ear. Otherwise fine. Take care of yourself. Happy computing."

When I tried her on Monday on her private line, I got a solemn and heavy masculine voice saying, "Eden Beach, Howard Pine speaking."

"May I speak to Anne Renzetti, please?"

"I'm the new manager. Perhaps I can help you."

"This is personal, thanks."

"Oh. She flew back up to Chicago this morning out of Fort Meyers with the comptroller. I would say she'll probably be back Wednesday. But it might be Thursday. I can give you a number where-"

"No thanks. I'll try again."

Meyer had gone over to B-80 to look at the thirty-one-foot Rawson. After that he had an appointment with the insurance agent. Then he was going to go buy clothes. And get a haircut.

I roamed around the houseboat, seeking out small chores, trying not to notice the big ones that needed doing. Restless, restless. I knew too much About Cody T. W Pittler, and at the same time not nearly enough. I wanted to bounce what we knew about him off some knowledgeable person, and I suddenly realized that the ideal person would be Laura Honneker. About eleven years ago, after she had been practicing her profession of psychiatry in Fort Lauderdale for a little over two years, an unstable patient had broken into her office and made off with a batch of patient files. Though in the files she had referred to the patients by initials other than their own, she had foolishly left her crossindex in the same file cabinet and he had taken that too.

Her patients had begun to complain. They were outraged at the calls they were receiving from the thief. Along with all the usual dirty words, he was telling them details of their lives known only to them and to Dr. Honneker.

She did not want to take the matter to the police. She did not want the responsibility of what that would do to the patient who had taken the files. A mutual friend told her about me, and she asked me to come see her. I explained that I attempted to recover things of value which could not be recovered in any normal manner, and I usually kept half the value. She said that in one sense the files had no value, but in another sense, if the misuse of them destroyed her in Fort Lauderdale professionally, they were very valuable. So we agreed that I would bill her according to the difficulty I encountered.

She was about my age, maybe two years younger. She was a big Norse-looking woman, fair and well scrubbed, with a trick of establishing very direct eye contact, her eyes a skeptic green. She was tall and aglow with health. I found out that she ran miles on the beach at first light every day, back when it wasn't dangerous.

I phoned in and brought her crazy man to the office the next day, files and all. He was a heavy little man who believed the world was out to get him, and the best defense was to be offensive. He sat in the corner like a naughty child while she went through the files to be certain they were all there. She asked me if it had been a lot of trouble, and I smiled at the heavy little man and said, "No trouble at all."

She ordered him into the next room, and he trudged in and closed the door without making a sound.

"What would be a fair fee for your trouble, Mr. McGee?" she had asked.

The question seemed to be put in a challenging way. So I had replied, "We should set up an appointment and negotiate it, don't you think?"

"What did you have in mind?"

"We could negotiate over dinner."

She thought that over, smiled, agreed. We set a date. I picked her up at her place. It was a pleasant evening. We had a lot of attitudes in common. The way we negotiated it, she bought the dinner and I bought the wine. I sensed that she had all her defenses ready in case I threatened to presume too much. When we said good night at her door, I said I would give her a ring sometime. She said that would be nice. But we both knew it wouldn't happen.

About six months later I went to a big party at a conspicuously large and expensive house on the bay. I do not generally go to cocktail parties. I forget why I went to that one. Some people named Hunter gave the party. I arrived late and found, among the celebrants, one Dr. Laura Honneker, solemnly, quietly smashed. She walked and talked very very carefully. She told me in a slow and precise speech pattern that she did not drink, but that the previous night, at 3:00 A.M., a woman she thought she was helping had put the bedside gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger, thus awakening her husband in the ugliest possible way. So she had decided to have a cocktail. Or two.

I soon discovered she had been targeted by Ron Robinette, who was then living aboard a half million worth of motor sailer over at Bahia Mar, with an income from mysterious sources. He was big and ruddy with hair dyed black, teeth capped white, a lot of chest hair showing, and a constant smile underneath his little mean eyes. He hovered close and managed to keep touching her, establishing management and control. I saw him muttering into her ear and saw her shaking her head no. But Robinette manages to score in situations much less promising than this one.

So I worked it out and went over to them and said, "Time we took off, Laura honey, or we'll be late for dinner with the others."

"Others?" she said.

I got her by the elbow, and she resisted for just a moment and then came along, docile and unsteady.

"Now hold it, McGee," Robinette said, following closely. He put his hand on my shoulder.

I spun, shrugging his hand off, and said, "Screw around with me, Ronnie, and I'll do exactly what I did last time."

He tried to bring himself up to the point of actual resistance, but his memory was too good. He shrugged and gave me an evil look and turned away. Ten seconds after I handed her into the passenger side of my old Rolls pickup, she passed out. I wanted to take her to her place, but I couldn't rouse her. I rifled her purse and found her apartment keys, but they had no number on them. I knew the building but not the number. So I took her back to the Busted Flush, toted her aboard-she was a considerable burden-and laid her down on the bed in the spare cabin. I eased her shoes off. She was so slack I wondered if she had something else beside too much booze, some kind of illness. I took her pulse. It was a heavy, slow ta-bump, ta-bump, ta-bump. She didn't feel feverish. So I left her there. I fixed myself a light supper and then read until after eleven.

Before I went to bed, I looked in at her. She had pulled her dress off and dropped it on the floor. I put a blanket over her and left a robe and a disposable toilet kit on the chair near the bed.

By midmorning, when I was on the second half of the paper and the second cup of coffee, I heard the shower. Soon she came out wearing the robe, her head wrapped in a white towel.

She said she felt rotten. She turned gray at the offer of eggs and settled for coffee, black. She seemed very ill at ease. Finally she said, "What am I doing here anyway?"

"Nursing a hangover, I think," I told her. And I told her about snatching her away from one Ron Robinette, thinking to drive her home, but having her pass out on me.

"Robinette. Big fellow with a red face. Smiles a lot?"

"The same."

"What was wrong with him taking me home?"

"I thought you deserved better. After all, you are an old acquaintance of mine, right? And Robinette has a case of what you professional people call satyriasis. You'd have been screwed lame by now, conscious or unconscious, sitting, kneeling, lying down, or standing on one leg. You'd walk funny for a week. And I didn't touch you, except to tote you from my pickup to your bed."

I felt a lot of tension go out of her, tension and suspicion. "Oh," she said. "And thanks. Who took my dress off?"

"It had to be you, because it wasn't me, Laura."

"I can't even remember," she said. "I guess you saved me from an ugly experience, which would have been my own fool fault. I was depressed. I hardly ever drink. I had some martinis. Then things got kind of blurred. It isn't fair. A man can get depressed and drink too much and he… he isn't vulnerable the way a woman is."

When her hair was reasonably dry, she combed it out, went in and dressed, and I drove her back to her car. Before she got out of Miss Agnes, she frowned at me and said, "If you hadn't known me at all, would you have rescued me from that man?"

"I doubt it. I can't run around under the trees catching everything that falls out of the nests, Doctor. Why should I steer Robinette to somebody else who might have just as bad a time?"

"Then I'm very glad poor Mr. Finch broke into my files and you came to that party. Very glad." She leaned toward me and put a quick light shy kiss on the corner of my mouth. It was not invitational. It was the kiss a young girl gives her uncle at Christmas.

My upright behavior must have intrigued her, because she began to appear at the right places and right times with such uncanny accuracy that we drifted into an affair which lasted not more than a month and was called off by mutual consent. We were able to say the right things, do the right things, satisfy each other, enjoy each other, but there was something lacking. We were friends making love, not lovers making love. The bodies functioned, but the hearts never took to the wild leaping. So it had a faint flavor of the mechanical, an aura of the incestuous. And, also, I had the feeling she was watching both of us with her professional eye, a surveillance guaranteed to chill any alliance.

So now, needing advice, I phoned her office. The Noman who answered told me the doctor was with a patient, but she could be disturbed if it was an emergency. I said it was a social call and left my name and number.

Laura called back twenty minutes later. "Travis! How good to hear your voice."

"I've been trying to remember when I saw you last. About four years ago, I think."

"Closer to five. We ran into each other at Sears. Housewares."

"It's been five years? How are you anyway?"

"One hundred forty and holding."

"Married yet?"

"Almost was, but I backed out at the very last moment, almost when he was putting the ring on me. Turned chicken. I know you aren't."

"How would you know that?"

"Let's just say that your social circles and my professional clients overlap a little here and there. And sometimes we talk about you."

"Favorably?"

"Sometimes, sure."

"The reason I called, I want to pick your doctor brains over dinner. I want to tell you what I know about someone, and you tell me what you can guess about him. I buy the food and the wine."

She said she was free that very evening, but she had some dictation to catch up on and had planned to stay in the office for a couple of hours after the last patient, so she thought she had better meet me at the restaurant. She named one of the new French ones. She said she would make the reservation.

They are popping up all over Florida like toadstools after a rain. They vary from wretched to superb. The very best one I know, and I think it the best between Miami and New Orleans, is over on the west coast of Florida, at a shopping mall called Sarasota Square. It is outside the mall, in an area containing a Kmart and a supermarket. It is called the Cafe La Chaumiere and is owned and operated by an agreeable type named Alain who used to be a chef at the Rive Gauche in Washington.

When I got there at eight, they were all smiles when I said I was joining the Doctor Honneker. Would I go to the table? No, thank you, I would wait luere at this little corner bar. She came in looking elegant in her office business suit. A little heftier in the hip, a trifle thicker around the waist, some horizontal lines across the throat and verticals bracketing the mouth. But a fine figure of a woman, with a lovely green-eyed smile.

I carried my drink to the table and we ordered bc-sr one. She told me her practice was booming, alI due mostly to having some luck with the nosecandy crowd: young lawyers, doctors, contractors, merchants, dentists, politicians. "I get them of course after they are finally willing to admit they are in serious trouble. So they are pretty well habituated by then, and very jumpy. Have you ever used it?"

"Tried it twice and didn't like it either time. The great big rush of confidence and well-being is just fine, but when it fades it's hard to remember just exactly what it was like. You just remember you felt real good, and now you don't feel so great."

"My reaction exactly. I've been having some luck with diet, drug therapy, and analysis. One thing I am sure of: when I have a patient who backslides and comes back to me six months later, there is a discernable diminution of intelligence and awareness. I'm administering standard intelligence measurements to all my cocaine patients now as standard procedure. If I can accumulate enough data, I'm going to try to do a paper on it."

Over the soup she asked me what I wanted to ask her. I had gone through some mental rehearsals. "Here is your hypothetical patient, Laura. He is now forty-two. When he was thirteen, his mother died suddenly. He had one sister, five years older. When he was fifteen his father married a twenty-five-year-old woman who worked in his office. She was a very sexy item, with a chronic case of the hots. The father was promoted to a job where he had to travel three and four days a week and stay away overnight. When he was seventeen, after his sister married and moved out, the patient was seduced by his stepmother and they entered into a relationship that lasted perhaps three years. Call it two years, plus the vacations when he came home from college when he was twenty."