The Scarlet Ruse (7 page)

"Would Mary Alice rather be making decisions?"

She pursed her lips. "N-No, I don't really think so. I'm more the cerebral type, and she's the manual type. That's oversimplifying. She loves to cut mounts and fix up pages. She loves to appraise estate stuff, item by item, and bring out the watermarks and count the perforations and check the color charts. She'd rather not have me handling any of the really good things. She got furious at me last year. When there is envelope paper stuck to the back of a stamp, you put it in a little wet box called a Stamp Lift, and after a while you can peel that paper right off the stamp. The old gum softens in the dampness. It was a pretty good Columbian, a four-dollar denomination with a light cancel. I took it out too soon, and I peeled part of the stamp right off. That's like making confetti out of a couple of hundred-dollar bills. She got so mad she wouldn't talk to me for hours."

"But usually she's easy to get along with?"

"A personal or official question, sir?"

I wondered if my ears looked as red as they felt. "It has to be personal, doesn't it?"

"Who should blame you? That is a pretty vivid hunk of lady. And you seem to have that old familiar look."

"Fox in the henhouse?"

She laughed. "More like a pro linebacker trying to line up on the wrong side. But on the personal side, I can't tell you much. She's fun to work with. The three of us make a good little team. I don't see her after work. Maybe there have been a lot of men trying to get close to that. If it works out the way it works out with the customers and the guys who work near the store, then they don't get anywhere either."

"How am I doing?"

"Who knows? It's early. I shouldn't give advice. I would go very very slow."

"What's her trouble?"

"I don't really know. I don't know a thing about her marriage. She won't talk about it at all. And as far as I can tell, she has absolutely no sex life at all, and that is a lot of big healthy girl with a lot of little motors running. From a couple of casual remarks I'd say that she certainly was turned on to it at one time. The only thing I can think of is that it was such a rotten, hideous marriage that it somehow turned her all the way off. And she keeps herself quieted down with all that exercise. The impression I get, the minute the man makes the first grab, she's off and running, and he never gets another chance. You spent a lot of hours with her. What did you really find out about her?"

I went back over it in my mind. "Not a hell of a lot. No family apparently. And she lived in Philadelphia when she was a kid."

"And also in Scranton. I've asked her direct questions. She says, 'Jane, someday when we have a lot of time, I'm going to tell you all about it.' But we haven't had enough time yet."

The door opened onto the shallow hallway, and a young girl came in. She was slender, taller than her mother, with brown hair darker than Jane's dark blond. Her hair was long and lifeless, half-hiding a sallow and strangely expressionless little face. She wore missionary barrel work pants, too heavy for September in Florida, a soiled body shirt. Her feet were bare. Her hands were as grimy as her feet. She carried a notebook and two schoolbooks in the crook of her arm.

She gave us one swift, opaque glance and headed past us toward the rear of the apartment.

"Judy!" her mother said. She stopped and turned slowly.

"You want something?"

"This is Mr. McGee. My daughter, Judy."

"Hello, Judy."

She gave me a briefer taste of that original look. She swept it across me. I was absolutely without meaning to her. She was something in a forest, aware only of other creatures like herself. I was a tree, and she did not give a damn what brand of tree. She half-nodded and made a small sound and turned back on her way. I sat down again.

"Judy?" her mother said.

She stopped in the doorway. "Now what?"

"I want to talk to you."

"So talk."

"Not this minute. I'm talking to Mr. McGee. I just don't want to come looking for you and find you've gone out again."

"They're waiting on me."

"Go tell them to be patient then."

"Screw that. I don't want you hassling me. I told you that already."

"Go to your room and wait right there!"

"Is that an order?"

"What does it sound like?"

"Shove it, you silly old bitch. Phone the probation officer and tell him I've gone out. Okay?"

Jane Lawson started up when the girl left and then sat back down again. She put her fists on her bare knees and bent forward at the waist and rested her cheeks on her fists. In a little while she straightened, blinking, and gave me a frail smile. "Sorry."

"There's a lot of it going around."

"Judy… is at a difficult age. It's very difficult for young people these days."

"Don't you want to go talk to her?"

She gave me a grateful and appreciative look. "I'll just be a minute."

Very difficult for young people these days. Or any days. In what golden epoch was being a teenager a constant joy? There has always been a generation gap. It is called twenty years. Too much talk about unresponsive government, napalm, irrelevant education. Maybe the real point is that young lives have no accepted focal point. The tribe gives them no responsibilities, no earned privileges, no ceremonial place. In the family unit they do not fit into a gap between generations, because the generations are diffused.

Maybe that is why they are scurrying pell-mell back to improvised tribal conditions, to communes. The schools have tried, in loco parentis, to fill a vacuum, condition the young on a fun-reward system. It has been a rotten try. The same vacuum spawns the rigid social order of the Jesus freaks, another try at structure and meaning. The communes themselves are devices of the privileged, because if everybody went into communes, the communes would become impossible.

So the kids float. They ram around, amble around, talk and dream, and rediscover all the more simplistic philosophical paradoxes. And the ones in the majority who make it (as apparently Miss Linda Lawson was making it) find some bottom within themselves. A place to stand. A meaning derived from fractionated nonsense. They are not a brighter generation than ever before. They have been exposed to more input, so much they have been unable to appraise and assimilate it, but are able to turn it into immediate output, impressively glib, and commercially sincere.

And the few that can't make it, like the younger daughter, exude the ripe odor of the unwashed as opposed to the animal tang of healthy sweat. Their tangled and musty locks make the shining tresses of the others repugnant to all those Neanderthal spooks who would hate and resent youngness no matter how it might be packaged. The lost ones, like Judy, get so far into the uppers and the downers and the mind benders, hardly ever knowing what they are taking, seeking only something in the blood that will bring the big rush, and warp the world-that if told it would make a nice high, they would stuff a dead toad into their ear. The lost ones trade the clap germs back and forth until they cultivate strains as resistant to penicillin as were the Oriental brands of yore.

It is relaxing to climb down off the egomanic pedestal of guilt and blame and shame and responsibility and say, 'Who told me I have to understand the causes?' There are bad kids. There are bad trees in an orchard, bad apples on any tree, sick worms in any decaying apple. A world of perfection would be absurd. Even Doris Day couldn't sustain that kind of concept. Who needs it? We need the flawed ones, the lost ones, as a form of emotional and social triangulation, to tell us if we've gained an inch since Hammurabi. Rough rough rough on the people who love them, but by some useful design in the human fabric, the rejects manage to kill most of that love by the time they are grown. Think of it, dear Jane Lawson, as a trick of nature whereby some great smirking cowbird came long ago and laid its egg in your nest.

She came back in and said, "Thanks anyway."

"Something wrong?"

"She'd gone out the back way. I… had to check up on one of my sneaky spy tricks. That green rubber band around her books. I put a hair from my head under it the day before yesterday. It's still there. If she's not going to school, they're going to pick her up. They'll put her in a state school for girls."

"Probation for what?"

"I'd rather not say. She's in my custody, but I can't control her." The tears threatened to come again. "My lawyer said if we could find a place that would take her, we could jump the gun and go to the judge and get a transfer of custody. A private place. But either they won't take her, or the cost is so fantastic… He's still looking." She hit her knee with her fist "What am I supposed to do? Chain her to the wall in her room? Beat her senseless?"

What do you say? My best guess would do Jane Lawson no good whatsoever. My best guess was that the girl was on the edge of leaving for good. And in some city as yet unknown, she would be studied with great care by experts. And if they were to decide it was merchandise worth salvage, she might indeed be beaten into total submission, cleaned up, dressed up, trained, and marketed for a few years. The merchandising experts cruise the bus terminals, and they watch the downtown streets for young girls carrying suitcases or packs. Impersonal appraisal. No uggos, no fatties, no gimps, no rich kids, nothing too too young.

"You didn't come here to get involved in a family problem," she said. She sighed. "Maybe in time she'll straighten out."

"Sure," I said. We smiled at each other. It was that special social smile people use when they don't believe anything they are saying.

She thought about it and decided that maybe the health club could be canceled out with no problems. That left the necessary shopping and seeing Hirsh and how about noon at that yacht club, okay? I told her twelve-thirty would be better for me, and she said fine.

I phoned the lunch order and told them when I would pick it up. I was unsnapping the big tarp cover off the Muсequita when somebody called my name. Two men stood on the dock, silhouetted against the glare of blue sky, looking down at me. I said I was indeed he. I freed the rest of the snaps, folded, and stowed the tarp, climbed up onto the side deck of the Flush and went aft, wanting a better look at them before deciding whether or not to ask them aboard.

"Permission to come aboard?" one of them said.

"Please do." They came onto the shallow aft deck. Solid handshakes. One was Davis and one was Harris. No first names volunteered. I have spent a lot of years making quick guesses, and at times my health has depended on accuracy as well as speed.

Both in their thirties, both of a size, six feet or a hair under, both somewhere shy of two hundred pounds, both softening in the middle and around the jaws, but not too much. The dark one had a Joe Namath hairdo and a villain's moustache. The other was red-brown and crinkly, with a swoop of sideburns.

The first impression was that they were used to working together. Men who do not know each other well express an awareness of each other in body movements and expressions. Familiar partners act more as if each were alone.

I couldn't put any geography together. The voices were Everywhere voices, like the men who do local news on television. Moustache was tanned, and Sideburns was permanently burned several shades of red, several degrees of peeling. Big hands. Old nicks on the knuckles. A very intent expression in the eyes, at odds with casual stance. I could read it very close to cop, but a few things canceled that out. The teeth were the persuasive, gleaming white you get from expensive show biz caps. Twenty-dollar haircuts. A drift of male cologne, leather and pine and fresh paper money. Summer weight knits, both slacks and shirts, and shoes so funny looking they had to be very in. Moustache had a fat gold seal ring on his pinky with a green stone in it.

In the back of my head all the troops hopped up out of the sack, grabbed weapons, and piled into the vehicles. They raced out to the edge of camp and set up a perimeter defense and then lay and waited, weapons off safety, loaded clips in place, grenades handy.

"Can we talk, Mr. McGee?"

"No reason why not," I said. I sat on the rail, one leg swinging free, the other foot braced, the knee locked.

Moustache was Davis. Memory trigger: Jeff Davis, dark hair, moustache. Harris: Harris tweed, tweedledee and dum. I didn't believe either name. I made no suggestions about where to sit. There was no awkward social hesitation. Davis folded himself into the deck chair, and Harris sat on the curve of railing six feet from me.

"We're representing somebody," Harris said. "He doesn't want his name brought into the deal yet."

"What deal?"

"There's a situation he wants you to look into," Davis said. "He thinks he's been had. He thinks he got tricked into the short end of a deal."

"You're confusing me, gentlemen."

"What's to confuse?" Harris asked, faking bewilderment. "He may want you to take a shot at salvaging the deal for him, getting back what he got conned out of. Isn't that what you do?"

"Do what?"

"Salvage work!"

"I don't do anything. I'm retired. Oh, sometimes I do a favor for a friend. I think the man you represent needs a licensed investigator."

"No, Mr. McGee," said Harris. "He needs you. He was very firm on that particular point. The way this thing is shaping up, he maybe might need you at a moment's notice. So he would be very grateful to you if you would just sit tight and wait to hear." He reached into his pants and took some bills folded once out of his side pocket. He pulled the bills out of a gold clip which said "After Tax" in block letters. He crackled and snapped five one hundreds, one five hundred free of the pack, reclipped the rest and put it away, folded the bills and took a long reach and shoved them into my shirt pocket. "Just to show he isn't kidding around."

"I couldn't help anybody I don't know."

"If he needs your help, you'll get to know him."

I pulled the money out and held it toward Harris. He pulled back. I tossed them into Davis' lap and said, "Sorry."

"You busy or something?" Harris asked with just a shade too much casual innocence.

"I'm doing a favor for a friend of a friend. Trying to, at least."

"What I think you should do is drop that one," Davis said.

"Should I?"

"The man we're talking about," he continued, "he heard about you someplace or other, and he got a good impression. He's not used to asking people for help, and they say they're busy or some damn thing."

"We all have these little disappointments in life."

"Is that smartass?" Harris asked.

"I didn't mean it that way. Think of it this way, gentlemen. If we all got exactly what we wanted all the time, wouldn't life get very dull?"

"This man gets what he wants," Davis said.

"Not this time."

"Suppose he wants to give you a choice, McGee," Harris said. "Suppose he keeps the deal open, and when you get out of the hospital and you can move around again pretty good, he sends somebody to ask you again."

I stared at him and then at his partner. "Now come on! What's your script anyway? Kick my spine loose and drive away in your 1928 LaSalle? You two looked and acted and talked like you know the names and numbers of all the players. All of a sudden, Harris, you open up with this hospital shit, and you sound like somebody got you from Central Casting."

Davis in the deck chair gave me the smile of a lazy hyena. "Every once in a while he does that," he said. "Remember that old movie, The French Connection? Want to know how many times this crazy turd went to see it?"

"Oh, come on, Dave," Harris said petulantly.

"The thing is," Davis said, "he gets hung up on some kind of image thing, and he likes to use it when he talks to civilians, because if they've been to all the same movies, they almost wet their pants when Harry comes on hard."

"You should learn to read people," I told Harry Harris.

Harry shrugged. "So it worked. That was one of the questions, right? To find out if McGee was-"

Davis cut him off. He evened the edges of the six pieces of money as he spoke and folded them once lengthwise. "Suppose you happened to be nibbling around the edge of something where this man we're talking about has an interest, and so he gets a reading on you, and he gets some kind of idea of what you do. So let's imagine that having you in the picture makes him back up and take another look at that particular deal. So not knowing how you fit, he thinks the easy way is to give you a retainer so you would come in on his side of it if things are getting fancy, if somebody has been stupid enough to play games with him, even though that somebody came highly recommended."

"How would this man think I'd fit?"

"What he said was you might even be trying to work out a way to give him the short end of that deal."

"I'm only interested in getting back something someone has lost. When there's no other way to get it back."

"The man could have thought you were trying some kind of Robin Hood bit. Or he might think you could be conned."

"Can we start using his name?" I asked.

"It's better we don't," Harris said. "Dave and me, we might not even know his name. Lots of things go through channels."

Davis said, "I can tell you one thing. The man would feel better about this trip we took if you would take this round one." He held the money out. "Kind of like a sign you're not trying to slip it to him. You don't have to back off from anything you have going on. It would make him keep on wondering about you if you don't take it."

I took a step and took the bills and put a haunch back onto the railing. They both looked relieved. The jargon changes constantly due to the telephone taps. Ten bills made a round one. Five round ones to a victor. When we first heard that, Meyer deduced that it came from V for Victor, V being the Roman five. Two victors make a spot. X marks the spot maybe? Ten spots make a big round one. Ten big round ones make a mil, and thus we are back into English.

I was not certain about my own judgment in taking it. It set up a dependency relationship. If you take the money of a man like Sprenger and then work against him, they can find you behind a shed in Tampa in the trunk of a stolen car, shotgunned and six days dead in the bake-oven heat, a silver coin in the rotting mouth.

We shook hands again. Away they went. Dave Davis. Harry Harris. I saw them stop and admire a big new Rybovitch fishing machine, looking like a pair of mod Indiana businessmen hunting for a charter. Dave Davis and Harry Harris?

I went below, went up to the bow and down through the service hatch into the bow bilge. I opened the false hull and stepped back from the slosh of seawater that spilled down and started the automatic bilge pump. I reached in and got my waterproof box, opened it, and put nine bills in with the dwindling reserve fund. It fattened it a little, but not enough.

I was beginning to run late. On the way over to pick up the picnic lunch, I wondered just what micro-percentage of the thousand dollars I had taken came from the pocket money and lunch money of Judy Lawson's high school class. I wondered what kind of little death they were peddling in the girls' rooms this week.

I buttoned up the Flush, tight and secure. I wanted to talk over the visit with Meyer and get his opinion, but there just wasn't time. All the required gear was in the Muсequita. She burbled her way past the moored fortune in transient and local cruisers and motor sailers and elegant houseboats. A few friends hallooed. Teak baked in the sun, and brightwork shimmered, and toilet-paper danced in my wake in the bourbon-colored water of the boat basin. I went down past the gas docks, under the bridge, nudging the throttles up as I went through a little tide chop in the pass. I turned her south short of the sea buoy and angled out. The port engine coughed out at three thousand rpm, kept dropping below two thousand, building up to three, and coughing out again. I called Davey some unhappy names. He swore he had them both running perfectly. I pulled them both down to idle, waited a few minutes, and then popped them up to full throttle. Little doll came surging up onto her plane and scooted, with rpm moving up into the red.

I backed them off to thirty-eight hundred rpm, listened, made my apologies to Davey Hoople, master marine mechanic, age nineteen. A half millimeter nudge on the starboard throttle put them into final perfect sync. I was out far enough to make my straight shot to the Miami ship channel, so I held it on the heading and threw it into automatic pilot. I watched the needle as it searched. I had it about a degree too much west, so I took it out and tried again and hit it perfectly. I took a brew out of the cooler and stood on the pilot seat and sat on the backrest part, sea wind in my face, the horizon misty-pale and glassy, the Muсequita doing her thirty-eight knots without effort, the wake straight as a line on a chart.

I kept trying to sort out my guesses as to how and why Sprenger had sent a couple of members of the first team, but some bottomless blue eyes kept getting in the way. Fine day, fine boat, fine beer, and it had been a long long time since blue eyes. So I wrapped up the whole problem and shoved it into a cubicle over in a side corner of my mind and slapped the little door shut. A man should have his weekends, no matter what he does.

I tried to spot a yellow Toyota in the parking area as I came easing down the line of private markers into the protected basin of the Royal Biscayne Yacht dub. The small-boat area was off to the left beyond the rows of yachts and was built of those floating slabs of aluminum and floatation material which move up and down with the tide, simplifying access and mooring. A young Cuban, uniformed in the club colors, came running out, waving me off. "No, no, no!" he yelled. "Ess private! Ess cloob."

"Soy socio, hombre."

He looked startled and uncertain. He looked back over his shoulder for help. "Eh? Nuevo possible, seсor?"

"No. De muchos aсos."

"Pero-"