Pale Gray for Guilt (15 page)

Again she drove the little red car. She whirred into the Sultana parking area, cutting off her lights as she did so to keep the front boys from noticing us and whistling her up to the entrance. She unstrung her bead, put her hat on the shelf in back, said, "Um" and splayed her little fingers on the nape of my neck and impacted a kiss with sufficient know-how to leave my knees feeling loose and fragile as I strode to my rental car after she had driven away.

At twenty to midnight, aboard the Busted Flush, after I had washed up after my plate of scrambled eggs and onion, I got the little sheet she had torn out of her notebook. It was oyster-colored parchment, thin and stiff, with tear-out perforations down the left side. And in the bottom right-hand corner was imprinted, in the plainest imaginable type face, in gold: Love, Mary Smith.

I direct-dialed her number.

It rang five times, and then her muffled, silky voice said, "Mmmmm?"

"T. McGee, ma'am."

I heard a small yowly yawn. "W'time zit, sweetie?" "Quarter to Cinderella, almost."

"Mmm. I was having the most interesting dream about you. And I have on this interesting little yellow night garment I bought in Tokyo. And I dumped this and that in the big hot tub, and so I smell interesting, sort of like between sandalwood and old rose petals, and something else mixed in. Some kind of spicy smell that makes me think of Mexico. Do you like Mexico as much as I do? How soon will you be here, my darling?"

"That's a very good question."

"I don't like the sound of that, somehow." "That makes two of us."

"You sound so depressed. Troubles?"

"Out of the blue. Now we've ordered up some food and we're waiting for a third party, and by dawn's early light my guess is that we'll be a. hundred miles from here looking at the property in question, on the Tamiami Trail, just this side of Naples."

"Oh poo!"

"I think I'd use a word with a little more bite to it."

She gave a long sigh. "Well," she said, "down, girl. Bear me in mind, will you?"

"Get all the rest you need. And I will phone you precisely at twelve noon tomorrow and we'll get out the old starting blocks again."

"The old track shoes. Bang. They're off. Anyway, as long as you might have some faint idea what you're missing, dear, drive a very hard bargain. You should be motivated, God knows."

After I hung up, I packed a pipe and took it topsides and stretched out on a dew-damp sunpad, down out of the bite of the breeze, and looked at the cold stars.

Where is the committee, I thought. They certainly should have made their choice by now. They are going to come aboard and make their speeches and I'm going to blush and scuff and say, "Shucks, fellas." The National Annual Award for Purity, Character, and Incomprehensible Sexual Continence in the face of an Ultimate Temptation. Heavens to Betsy, any American Boy living in the Age of Heffner would plunge at the chance to bounce that little pumpkin because she fitted the ultimate playmate formula, which is maximized pleasure with minimized responsibility. What a nice build, Charlie. With a lot of class, Charlie, you know what I mean. A broad that really goes for ft, and she had a real hang-up on me, Charlie. You never seen any chick so ready, Charlie buddy, to scramble out of her classy clothes and hop into the sack. Tell you what I did, pal. I walked away. How about that?

There had to be a nice medal to go with the National Annual Award. With the insignia of the society. A shield with a discarded bunny tail, and an empty bed, and a buttock rampant of a field of cobwebs, with the Latin inscription, "Non Futchus."

A nice pink and white old gentleman would pin the medal to the bare hide of the chest, as recommended by Joe Heller, while a violin would play, "Just Friendship, Friendship."

The ceremonial kiss on the stalwart, manly, unsullied cheek and…

A huff of wind came and flipped the point of my collar against my throat. It ruffled the canvas laced to the sundeck rail. The collar was the tickle of the brisk red hair of Puss, and the canvas sound was her chuckle, and without warning I had such an aching longing for her it was like long knives in my bowels, and my eyes stung.

You never do anything for no reason at all, and you never refrain from doing something for no reason at all. Sometimes it just takes a little longer for the reason to get unstuck from the bottom of the brew and float to the top where you can see it.

I rapped the pipe out and went below. So it wasn't righteous denial at all. Or a lofty, supercilious disapproval. It was the monogamous compulsion based on the ancient wisdom of the heart. Puss had made of all of herself an abundant gift, not just the giving of the body or the sating of a physical want. And no matter how skilled the erotic talents of a Mary Smith, sensation would not balance out that privacy of self that she could not give, nor would want to, nor perhaps could ever give even if she wanted to.

And I knew just how it would have been with Mary Smith, because Puss was all too recent and all too sadly missed. All the secret elegancies of Mary Smith would merely have told me of wrong shapes, wrong sizes, wrong textures, wrong sounds from her throat, wrong ways of holding, wrong tempos and tryings and wrong oils of a wrong pungency. So it would have become with her a faked act of memory and mourning, to end in an after-love depression that would make the touch of her, the nearness of her, hugely irritating.

Puss was too recent.

After I was in bed, I went back and forth across the same old paradox: Then if Puss gave of herself so totally, opening up all the girl-cupboards in the back of heart and mind, how could she leave? Why did she leave?

There was a little chill that drifted across the back of my mind and was gone, as before, still unidentified.

There had been one cupboard unopened, all those months.

But at least I could now stop making wistful fantasies about the little garden of delights in its yellow garment from Tokyo.

Hogamus, Higamus. Mary's polygamous. Higamus, Hogamus. Trav is monogamous.

For a while. It won't be any good until big Red wears off more. It will be a drag. And when it seems time to begin to expect something of it, and the opportunity comes along, don't risk it with a Mary Smith, whose involvement would be about on the same order as all other kinds of occupational therapy.

I direct-dialed my love and hunched over the desk top so I could listen to the earpiece and hold the mouthpiece at the pretested and precalculated distance from the mouthpiece. It only rang twice before she picked up the phone, but twice was enough to give me the duration and interval of the rings.

"Darling?" she said. It was exactly noon, as promised.

I pressed the button, transmitting the raucous clatter of a phone that keeps trying to ring after you've picked it up.

Between the first two imitation rings I heard her say, "… dammit to…" and in the next gap, "… stinking thing… " I heard the clicking as she rattled the bar. "… n of a bitch…" I gave it eight fake rings and that made ten in all, as they instruct you in the yellow pages, and hung up.

Poor guy calls up all steamed up, right on time, and she isn't even home. Fine thing. So he thinks maybe her clock is wrong and she ran out for a paper or a loaf of bread or something. Five minutes later I tried again, and she answered, and I rattled her eager, frustrated, infuriated, helpless little eardrum and this time heard her cry over and above the racket, "Goddamn it to hell!"

So on the off chance, the guy would call the office, so I phoned at once before she would decide I might, and a subdued voice said, "Three one two one. "Is Mary Smith there, please? Extension sixty-six."

"Miss Smith is not in today, sir."

"Well… if she should come in or phone in, would you tell her that Mr. McGee has been trying to reach her, and he'll phone her at home again at three o'clock."

"Is there a number where she can reach you, sir?"

"No. I don't expect to be here much longer, thanks."

She would know I had the right number, as I had reached her before. I had the bell on my phone switched off. I could make outgoing calls, however. So I tried her at twelve thirty. She hung up on the second rasp. At one her line was busy when I tried it. I had been hoping for that. It would be a help. A few minutes later it wasn't busy. She caught it on the first ring. "Hello?" Raaaasp. Cry of pure despair. Clunk as she hung up.

Snoopy the dog wears a guilty and evil grin from time to time. I couldn't work one up.

Meyer and I were in the lounge going over final details when I suddenly realized it was exactly three. I had no time to prepare him for the Electric Alibi. I heard a distinct sob before she hung up.

He stared at me as I came back to the chair. "Sometimes you worry me, Travis. It's something about the way your mind works."

"I often find it depressing." I stood up again. "Hell, we're all set. I'm going to drive up and see Janine and Connie. I'll stay over, and drive down to Sunnydale early Monday. You get there about noon and get a motel room somewhere, and go to the hotel I told you about for lunch. I'll show up with our pigeon. I think that sometime about maybe five or six o'clock Miss Mary Smith will show up and beat on the doors. I think I've described her well enough. Keep an eye out for her and intercept her and tell her you think I'm on the Alabama Tiger's cruiser and point the way."

"Consolation prize?"

"Who for?"

He gave up and sighed and left. I phoned To-Co Groves and Connie's cry of pleasure at my coming was convincing enough. I buttoned up,, switched the Sentry on, and put my gear in the car. Then I walked to the Tiger's permanent floating housepariy. Even with the boat closed up, the Afro-Cuban beat was loud. When I opened the door to the big main cabin area the sound nearly drove me backward. The big Ampex system was blasting, and the regulars were all around the perimeter because Junebug had herself a new challenger. She is a rubbery brown solid chunk of twenty-something-year-old girl, a sturdy mix of Irish, Gypsy and Cherokee. She wore a pink fuzzy bikini, and she was a go-going dervish, black short hair snapping, face and eyes a blur, body flexing and pumping to the beat, which Styles was sharpening with a blur of hands on the battered old bongos. The challenger was one of the king-sized beach bunnies, one of the big young straight-haired blondes about nineteen who look so much alike lately they should wear numbers on the side like stock cars. The money was in three piles on the deck by the Tiger's big bare feet. The big bunny was beginning to lag and flounder, miss the beat and catch up. Her mouth hung open. Her hip action in her zebra bikini was getting ratchety. The Tiger sat in a high glaze, swaying on the stool, smiling to himself, glass in hand. Muggsie Odell gave me her big smile, and I pointed at my watch and raised an eyebrow. She checked her watch, then flashed me seven sets of ten fingers plus four. Except for being so sweaty her body looked oiled, the Junebug looked absolutely fresh after seventy-four minutes of it. Maybe the challengers, can go all day long to the beat they're used to, but they don't realize the additional demand on stamina of the Afro-Cuban tempo. One of them is reputed to have lasted over two hours before hitting the deck, but the Junebug wasn't even close to her own limit.

I crooked a finger at Muggsie. She nodded and followed me out and closed the hatch against the noise. We sat on the wide transom and Muggsie said, "She's good for five more minutes, if that. I just as soon not be in there. They're waiting for her to fall down, and she's a stubborn kid and she'll keep going until she does drop. I just don't like to see them fall down like dead."

"A favor?"

"Depends. Probably yes, McGee."

"I'm going away for a couple of days. A very very nice little package is going to come right here looking for me. I'm having her steered here. The name is Mary Smith."

"No kidding!"

"Tell her I was here with the group but I went away and you think I said I was going to come back, so it would be best for her to wait. Meanwhile, has Hero been around?"

I was interrupted by a yell from the group. The door burst open and somebody stopped the tape. The Junebug came out, yelling Ya HAA, Ya HAAA, and jumping into the air with every third stride. Through the open door I could see the bunny face-down on the deck trying to push herself up, with people reaching to help her. Junebug gave a great leap to the dock, spun the valve on the dock hose and held the nozzle aimed right at the crown of her head. After it had streamed down her face and across her smile and pasted her dark hair flat, she stuck the nozzle under the bildni top for a few moments and then under the elastic of the bikini bottoms and, with an ecstatic smile, worked it slowly all the way around to the back and around the other side of that muscular body to the front again.

"Anybody else?" she yelled. "Any new pigeon, step up and put your bread on the decki The old Junebug is ready."

"I'd watch her fall," Muggsie said grimly. "I'd watch her fall and hope for a couple of good bounces. What's this with Hero? What are you asking about Hero?"

"Has he been around?"

"Who can stop him? You know Hero. Every hour, cruising in and seeing if there's any new stuff he hasn't seen before. With him it's a dedication. Are you saying aim Hero at this Mary Smith? What's the matter? You hate the girl?"

"Let's say they deserve each other. As soon as he starts trying to snow her, Muggsie, you go back to her and say you just heard that I came here in a bad mood and there was girl who wanted to cheer me up and we went off together, so maybe there's no point in waiting."

"Why don't I just chunk her on the head and help Hero carry her back to his pad?"

"Because at is entirely possible she'll chunk him on the head and take him back to hers."

"Oh. One of those. Anyway, Hero certainly is a handsome guy, and he certainly has enough charm for a whole charm school, and he certainly has given an awful lot of lady tourists a vacation they'll never forget. I was saying just the other day I could really go for that guy, if only he just wasn't a real rotten person through and through."

"You mean if you didn't know him."

"That's what I must mean. Wherever you're going, have fun, Trav. I'll unite the happy couple and get her off your hands for good."

As I left I walked by Junebug on the dock, toweling herself dry. "Hey you, McGee," she said, with the big white mocking grin. "Hey, you never tole me when we're gonna start to go steady. How about it?"

I looked at all that brown rubbery, arrogant vitality. "I told you, Junebug, the very next time I get a death wish, I'll look you up."

"Some coward!"

"You can believe it."

"Aww. Poor fella. I wouldn't kill you. Just cripple you up pretty good, hah?"

"I think your trouble is that you're too shy. You lack self-confidence. Get out and meet people." When I was a long way away I could still hear Junebug cawing with laughter.

I made good time and got to the Groves an hour after nightfall. We had drinks by the fire of fat pine, and a good dinner, and good talk. Janine got up and came over to me, hesitated, then leaned and touched her lips to the side of my face, and went off to bed. Connie asked me what I thought of how Jan looked and acted.

"Listless. Thinner. More bones in her face." "She's not eating well or sleeping well. She'll start to read or sew and end up staring into space. I hear her wandering around the house in the middle of the night. She's not coming out of it the way she should. I don't know what to do to snap her out of it. She's a damned fine girl, Trav. She's turning into a ghost."

"It's good of you to have her and the kids here." "Don't be a jackass! I told her she can stay forever and I mean it. Those are three good kids. Five kids make a good kind of noise to have in the house. It's been quiet around here too damned long."

She asked about my redhead, and why I hadn't brought her along. When I said we'd called it off, she was suddenly furious, saying she thought I had more sense than that. I had to explain that it wasn't my idea and I'd been given no chance to make her change her mind. Then she was merely puzzled, saying it didn't make any sense at all.

On Sunday the three of us went fifty miles in Connie's Pontiac at her customary Indianapolis pace up to Rufus Wellington's law office. He had had his elderly secretary come in, and she was just finishing the typing of the deed and other documents pertinent to my sale of the Bannon property to Preston LaFrance. I had the power of attorney with me that Meyer had given me, which, when signed by Janine and witnessed, would authorize him to buy and sell securities in her name in the margin account he was establishing for her at the brokerage firm he used in Lauderdale.

Rufus eyed me and said, "You sure LaFrance will pay forty for an equity that isn't even there? Young man, do me the favor of not telling me what kind of persuasion you're fixing to use on him. I don't think I would like to know. I don't even want to know who this Meyer is, thank you. Any member of the bar is an officer of the court."

"If I have any trouble with the bank approving of the transfer of the mortgage to LaFrance, can you help?"

"I can phone Whitt Sanders and remind him of something that would make him approve transferring it to a little red hen. But I don't want to use it less I have to, just like I didn't have to when Connie went on the note with you. I have the feeling LaFrance is going to have trouble making those payments on the mortgage."

"If you don't want me to tell you anything, Judge, why do you make leading statements and then wait for me to explain?"

"Because I guess I figure you're not likely to tell me, son. But I do have a couple of clients here. You, Connie, and you, Miz Janine, and it would rest my mind to feel sure that nothing would come back on these ladies from anything too cute you are figuring on working on some of those folks down there in Sunnydale."

"Rest your mind, Judge," I said.

He leaned back, looked beyond us into the misty places of memory and said, "When I was a rough, wild young man, which seems like it was all in a different world than this one, I ended up down in Mexico one time, near Victoria, on a horse ranch. You had to prove you were all man. There was a thing they did, called the paseo de muerte. Maybe I don't have the lingo just right, but it's close. It was just riding full out, a full hard run over rocky land on halfbroke horses, and the one who wants to test you, he comes up on you on one side, and he grins and you grin back and kick your feet free of the stirrups and you change horses right there, risking the way the footing is, and spooking one of the horses, or losing ahold. Once you'd show them you were ready to do it anytime, then they'd leave you be, because they weren't any more anxious deep inside to keep doing it than you were. Any fool could see that every time a man did it, his odds got shorter." He shook his head and smiled. "Long hours and short money, and one day out of noplace I could imagine came the idea I could start reading for the law. Why dad I start all this? There was some point I was going to make. Oh. You keep in mind, Travis McGee, that the money game is one wild horse, and the vengeance for murder is another wild horse, and you try riding them both, you can fall between and get your skull stamped with an iron shoe. Bannon was your friend, and Connie's friend, and he was your husband, Miz Janine, daddy of your boys. Murder can come in when the money game goes bad. But don't think of it as being black dirty evil, but more of it being sick and sad, of some stumbling jackass that didn't mean it to come out that way, and he wakes up in the night and thinks on it and he gets sweaty and he hears his heart going like mad. Well, you folks have refused my kind offer to come on home with me for kitchen whisky and side meat and fancy conversation, so you will forgive me if I tell you all to be careful, and speed you on your way."