The Long Lavender Look Part 14

I was waiting when Dori parked. When I opened the door for her, she came scuttling in, furtive until the door was closed and she had tugged the center gap in the opaque draperies shut. Then she was at her ease. Saw that all I had was gin and Scotch, said gin and c.o.ke would be fine if I could get some c.o.ke, so I got a bottle out of the machine when I went to get more ice.

She wanted to talk. She was all full of her plump and pretty animation, bouncing around in the chair, gulping at her drink, sucking her cigarettes, brief skirt of the waitress uniform at midthigh, exposing the fine skin texture of her pretty legs. Lots of gestures and animation. She had been aching for a chance to tell somebody about the enormous, heartbreaking tragedy which had befallen poor Mrs. Fred Severiss, and had no idea that it was a drab, tiresome and ordinary little story, because she knew it had happened to her, and she could not feel commonplace, nor can anyone in their unique little time around the track.

She had always been "fantastically stupid" about money, and she had been a salesgirl at Garnor's Boutique at the Woodsgate Shopping Center, and Fred was far away and she missed him and she had this thing about buying clothes and shoes to cheer herself up, and she had charge cards, and besides she had this "wonderful crazy girlfriend" and they would go whipping over to the east coast and go to the dog tracks, and she was absolutely true to her Fred etc., etc. So she got in a terrible money jam, and the credit people started getting very ugly, and she missed car payments and she didn't know what she would do if she lost the car, because how would she explain it to Freddie? So she had eighty dollars and she and her girlfriend had gone over to the dog track and she thought that if she could build it into three or four hundred she could get out of the jam, but she lost it all and fifteen dollars more she borrowed from her girlfriend. Then she started clipping the cash sales at the Boutique, saving the halves of the inventory tickets, thinking of it as "just sort of a loan, actually, on account of I was going to live quiet as mice and pay it back before Mrs. Garnor took inventory May first. That was the season before last." Then Arnstead had showed up at night at her little studio apartment, and it was the first she knew that the thieving had been detected, and Mrs. Garnor had asked the law to find out which of the five clerks was doing it. She had tried to deny it and Arnstead had broken her in about five minutes, and she had, at his direction, written her confession about it being a little over six hundred dollars taken over the seven weeks. Then he said he would take her in and bail would probably be about five hundred, and the least she could expect for grand larceny would be eighteen months in the state prison for women. Blubbering and begging and pleading for mercy had done no good. And when she was in total despair, he had given her the little hint that she was so pretty that maybe he could delay it, see what he could do, and she had lunged at that like a starving ba.s.s, taken him into the narrow Bahama bed, telling herself it wasn't like cheating on Fred actually, because what she was really doing was saving their lives and their marriage from absolute wreckage, and she had vowed "to just be a thing, and go through the motions with my mind a thousand miles away" But the deputy had kept seeing her and he was persistent and she had been alone for months and months, and couldn't help herself really, and got so she responded to him, and got to "needing him in a crazy way even though I didn't like him." Then he wanted her to be nice to a friend, and they had a terrible battle about it, and by then, of course, he had taken some pictures of her, and had the confession which he said was good for seven years, and he could mail a picture and a Xerox of her confession to dear Freddie if that was the way she wanted. it. So she had slept with his friend in a motel over in Everglades City a couple of times, and then there had been others, and Lew would bring her fifty dollars, or twenty, or seventy-five, depending. And once, a year ago last July, he'd sent three of them to Naples and they'd gone cruising for four days on a big company boat with a hired captain and three sort of vice-president-type people, and that time it had been a hundred twenty-five from Lew and fifty that the man she was with had put in her purse like a bonus or something. She knew there were other girls, and she had only run into three of them altogether, the two others on the cruise, and one on a kind of double date right here in this motel.

She counted, frowning, on her fingers and said that it had all lasted maybe fifteen months, and she could not remember the number of affairs, or the amount of money. Maybe twenty or twenty-five dates. Lew promised it would end when Fred came home. She had finally realized that Lew knew he could control her, but Fred was something else. Fred would try to kill him and would surely kill her. She'd been terrified that Lew wouldn't keep his promise, and she'd been terrified that Fred would somehow be able to tell what she'd been up to, but it had worked out all right.

By then she had worked her way through the second gin and c.o.ke. She was flushed and her articulation was not quite as distinct.

"I'm just d.a.m.n lucky I got out of it, Trav. I'm just lucky it's over. I keep telling myself that. But it's funny... I don't know. I'm different somehow. I mean I feel I'm sort of faking the happy little wife bit. One time I got to fussing at Lew until he got sore and grabbed my neck and shoved me over to a mirror and hurt my arm and made me look into my eyes and say dirty things about myself. Things like: 'I'm a wh.o.r.e. I peddle my a.s.s. I bang for a living.' Things aren't like what you always think they're like, I guess. It's not real different from dates, where if the guy is sweet and fun you have a good time, and if it's some old fat guy, you just get it over with. I don't know. Sometimes I think of standing on my feet in that place and how long it takes to make fifty, and how long it took to make fifty on my back. Fred is a great guy, really. I think that maybe somebody will come in and look at me and say let's go, baby, and I'll get in his car and never come back."

She lifted her wrist and peered at her little watch. She s.h.i.+fted in the chair, ran her tongue along her lips, took a deep shuddering breath. In a huskier tone she said, "Like now. If you should want it, honey. Like on the house."

"Let's look at the pictures."

She came out of her sensual glaze. "Oh, sure. Jesus! I don't know what's wrong with me lately I really don't. Yeh, let's look at them and then I got to get going because Fred could wake up and get worried and wonder what the h.e.l.l and phone the place and find out I've been gone forever."

I laid the pictures out on the countertop under the lamp, one at a time. She came and stood beside me. Thirteen of them.

"'That's Donna Lee something. She was on that cruise. She's a real fun kid, real lively, and she's got a real cute body as any fool can plainly see. She works in a real estate office. Up over the bank. a.s.sociated Realtors, Inc. No, I don't know this one at all. I don't remember ever seeing her around town anyplace. I have seen this girl somewhere. Let me think. I think she works in the courthouse. I'm pretty sure. This one I know. Sort of. Her name is Brenda Dennis? Dennison? Denderson? A name like that She was on the double date with me. She's sort of quiet and hard to know, and she isn't built very good, is she? She works at Elian's Stationery, but I haven't been in there in so long I don't know if she's still there. I've seen this girl someplace I think, but I don't know where. This one is older, huh? I never saw her before as far as I know."

When I turned the seventh picture she gasped and said, "Holy Maloney! It can't be! This is Miss Kimmey, for G.o.d's sake. She teaches third grade and sings in the choir at our church. She's got a real nice soprano voice. The kind of clothes she wears, you'd never guess what a great body she's got. Now how in the world did Lew ever nail her? Boy, would I like to find out."

She drew another blank on number eight. But she knew number nine. "That's Linda Featherman. I nearly dropped my teeth when she turned out to be number three on that cruise. I mean there's lots of money there. Big ranchlands and grovelands in the northeast part of the county. At first I thought she was going to spoil that cruise by acting as if she was so much better than Donna Lee and me. It was her car we went to Naples in, and she drove and hardly said a word all the way. She took darling cruise clothes along, worth like a fortune. But then she was okay after the first day, a lot more human. Poor gal, I couldn't believe it when I read about it."

"About what?"

"She got killed a little while ago. Let me count back. Two weekends ago, I think. The state police said she had to be going at least a hundred miles an hour, heading back out to the ranch at three or four in the morning, about fifteen miles north of here, and they said she probably fell asleep because there weren't any skid marks. She just went right off a curve in a straight line and right into an enormous pine tree and broke it right off and hit the next one sideways. They say it took hours to identify her for sure."

Number ten was one Jeanie Dahl, and on seeing the picture she remembered Lew saying that Jeanie was in the club. She and Jeanie had both been in the Miss Cypress City contest when they were in high school, and Jeanie had been second runner-up and Dori had been third runner-up. Jeanie had been married and divorced, and lived with her mother who took care of her little kid while Jeanie worked in the office at Kramer Building Supply. Eleven was an unknown. Twelve was somebody she thought she had seen often around town, but had no idea where.

I had adjusted them to leave Lillian (Lilo) Hatch (Perris) until last. She actually recoiled from the picture, and made a little coughing, gagging sound and turned away.

"What's the matter?"

"Her name is Lilo Perris. I don't want to talk about her."

"Why not?"

"Give me a minute. Fix me a drink. That made me go cold all over. That girl is crazy. I mean for real crazy. That girl is a maniac."

I made her the third drink. She was back in the chair. When she settled down she told me.

"It was about the fourth time Lew sent me to meet somebody. He was a spook. He wanted things I didn't want to do. So I wouldn't. He got mad and I got mad and it broke up fast and I went home. I was waiting for Lew to come around so I could tell him not to send me to spooks like that. He sent Lilo to see me. That girl is crazyl She hurt me so bad I fainted, I don't know how many times. After she went away I kept throwing up. I was so weak I stayed in bed two days. Then Lew came around and said the spook was a very important man in Tallaha.s.see, and I was going to have another date with him. He said if I didn't want to make the spook happy, he'd have Lilo come to visit me again. I think I would really rather die than have her start doing things to me again, smiling at me and giggling and calling me love names and saying how much fun it would be to really kill me. She's as strong as a man, and she knows every way there is to hurt a girl. She's absolutely insane, Trav!"

"How long ago was this?"

"Maybe... a year ago last June. Look at me. Look at the goose b.u.mps on my arms and legs just thinking about her. I used to get nightmares about her and wake up bellering and twitching around."

"Do you know of anybody else who was in on it, where I don't have a picture here?"

"Gee, I don't think so. I can't think of anybody."

"Possibly Mrs. Betsy Kapp?"

"In the dining room at the Lodge. The old blonde with the huge b.o.o.bs. No, and I can tell you why I'm so sure, even." She started to say something, then closed her mouth and looked guilty.

"What's the matter."

"Well... I guess I lied a little. But only about one of the gals."

The truth came out. She had lied about Jeanie Dahl, about only remembering Lew mentioning Jeanie when she saw the picture. She saw quite a bit of Jeanie, as a matter of fact. Why shouldn't old friends see each other? As a matter of fact, Jeanie was the crazy friend who'd go with her to the dog tracks, and Jeanie had gotten in as bad a jam about money as she had. And as a matter of fact once she'd started having affairs that Lew lined up, she had some drinks with Jeanie and told her all about it, and how it was, and what the payoff was, and found out Jeanie had been clipping a little bit now and then from petty cash at Kramer Building Supply and was scared of getting caught. So she had asked Jeanie if it was okay if she told Lew that Jeanie might be interested, and at first Jeanie said no, and then she changed her mind. And it was nice to have a friend who knew the whole score, and was in it with you, and you could talk to them the way you couldn't talk to anybody else in the whole world, and compare notes, and tell about the weird things that happened. So because of Jeanie's mother and the kid, they had set it up for Lew and Jeanie to meet at Dori's apartment while Dori was working, and when she got off work Jeanie was still there, alone and asleep, and said she and Lew had made the deal, and sealed it with a lot more than a handshake.

"I kinda sluffed over Jeanie's picture because... maybe I felt a little weird about getting her into it all, too. But when you're in a bind, you wish somebody you knew was in it, too. At least I warned her about that Lilo and told her she better not ever get choosy about anything if she got set up with a spook. Since Freddie came home seven months ago, I go have lunch with Jeanie whenever my s.h.i.+ft works out right. It's like... resigning from something and you want gossip about what's going on since you left. She took a whole week off from work last January and flew to Jamaica free, and her date was there waiting, and it turned out to be... well, never mind who. Anyway an important businessman in this town. She came back with a marvelous tan and brought me some fantastic perfume, and she made five hundred dollars!"

"What about Betsy Kapp?"

"Oh. Lew came by when Jeanie was getting off work one day, last November, I think, and he drove her out into the country someplace and parked and he came all apart. She said he cried like a little boy. She said he cried on her shoulder and she held him, and she said it was funny to feel kind of warm-mother toward him, knowing all the time what a mean son of a b.i.t.c.h he is. He finally told her he had beaten up a woman who'd done him the greatest favor any woman could ever do a man. It was all some kind of crazy'thing about how he fell in love and he all of a sudden couldn't get it up, and the doctor he went to told him it was a common thing, a guilt thing, feeling unworthy and all that, and gave him shots but they didn't help. And the same thing happened with other girls then, and then the wonderful woman had helped him and he could again, and then he had beaten her up and he didn't know why. Jeanie finally found out it was Mrs. Kapp, and so she just naturally asked him if Mrs. Kapp was taking on customers for him, too. Jeanie didn't mean anything by it at all. But he reared back and gave her such a clout on the side of the head her ear rang day and night for a week, practically. He said Mrs. Kapp was a fine woman, not some cheap little piece of a.s.s like Jeanie. So I guess Mrs. Kapp never had any part of the action. Jeanie said he acted strange, and he had been acting strange, and after that he got more weird. Jumpy acting."

"When did you see her last?"

"This is Sunday. I mean it's Monday morning. Let me see. We had lunch a week ago Friday. We talked about Linda Featherman, mostly. And she said she hadn't heard anything from Lew in three weeks and she was wondering if he was sort of easing off. She said she was getting nervous about keeping up payments on things because she'd figured on the extra money. She said, just joking, that maybe the two of us ought to go over to Miami Beach and see if there was any action. But she was joking. Lew made it awful plain to me and to her, too, that if we did any hustling on the side, he'd find out and we'd be the sickest, sorriest gals in Florida. Anyway, it would be stupid to try to work a place you don't have any protection. The cops pull in the free-lance gals, because that's part of the deal they get paid for by the people who have the action all sewed up. If Lew happens to be really dead, like you think it's going to be rough for Jeanie to make out. It comes to maybe a thousand or twelve hundred a year, according to what I was making and what she was making, without any tax on it. Part time, like moonlighting, but there has to be somebody like Lew to set you up and do the collecting ahead so no b.a.s.t.a.r.d can afford to try to cheat you. We used to try to figure out what Lew was making, guessing how many of us were working for him. So it had to be what? Fourteen to sixteen thousand a year? But I guess he had to split that somehow, to keep himself out of trouble."

She stood up, yawning. "Do I get my picture back?"

I handed it to her. She looked at it and said, "I can just look at a piece of pie and gain a pound." She tore it into small pieces and took it into the bathroom and closed the door. She came out after a while and said, "You've got any of the other pictures of me?"

"No.

"I wish I knew where they were. I'd feel better. It was some sort of game, I thought, the camera on the table and he'd set a little thing that started buzzing and hop back in with me and then the flash would go off. It was one of those he was going to mail to Fred. He cut it so it was him from the chest down, but there I was, clear as a bell, laughing my fool head off. If you come across those?"

"I'll destroy them and let you know."

"The wrong clown gets those and he can put me right back in action. I wouldn't have a choice. Poor Freddie."

"Can I talk to Jeanie?"

She looked secretly amused. "How could I stop you? Why ask? You are a nice guy, Trav. You really are. I'd like to do you a nice favor for being a nice guy, but if you wanna know the truth, seeing the picture of that Lilo really blew out my fire. Going to be around awhile?"

"I guess so."

"Maybe we can work something out. You know where to find me. You wouldn't have to worry about anything. I mean I'm a healthy girl from head to toe. 'Night now. Take care."

Fifteen.

YES, INDEED. Take care. I finished the notations on the backs of the thirteen photographs. Six names. Courthouse, third grade, building supply, real estate firm, stationery store.

Arnstead's Irregulars. Sorry little part-time hookers, each one thinking herself such a very special person, able to play the dark and nimble role, yet remain essentially her own true beautiful self.

There are no hookers with hearts of gold. Just lazy greedy, dull-minded girls whose greatest joys are the clothing rack and the mirror and the makeup table. Such a simple little task, to take that ever-familiar tumescent rigidity into the slippery muscular depths, and brace tight, and hip-smack it into its brief leapings and sagging flaccidity. Simple task sometimes pleasurable enough to incite an inner matching clenching, hidden explosion, and sighing release. Then say it was beautiful, tell him he's special, tell him it hardly ever happens like that for you. Give him the mirror-practiced expressions, and use the familiar ways to ready him again, because the better you work him, the more chance of a tip, and the thirty-dollar blue sandals are on layaway, and they are darling.

So simple a task it soon has no meaning, and then there is no meaning in being a woman, in that sense of being a woman. The only meaning left is in the ever-changing adornment of the body, that thing they buy. It is like the mercenary who sits alone, smiling, and with oil and stone, puts an ever finer edge on the combat knife, hoping that the next sentry will die so quickly there will be that little feeling in the belly of professional satisfaction, and a feeling almost of fondness for the unknown sentry because it had worked so well.

No evil in either hooker or mercenary. Just laziness, a small familiar greed, a mild antic.i.p.ation of unimportant sensation, and the ever-challenging problem of what kind of pretty to buy with the fee.

Poor Freddie. Why did she leave and where did she go? She's going, soldier. One day soon. She'll leave because, no matter what the uniform, the mercenary blade always pierces exactly the same heart, stopping it over and over again. Only the angle changes. Until all hearts become the same target. And the hooker receives from all customers exactly the same plum-taut glans, slaying it in the same rocking lubricious clench of inner muscle ring, clasp of outer l.a.b.i.a, pumping it to its small jolting death, welcoming it ever again, affixed to the loins of another stranger, but always the same in its greed for death. Only the duration changes. Until all erection is the same, including the husband one, all equally meaningless except for the chance of pleasure-feeling, and the money.

I thought of Betsy and her silly, touching, romantic conviction that each episode was unique and meaningful and full of glory. Faith and conviction made it so, and a stereo at cost and free tapes were gestures of friends.h.i.+p, and a hard man could understand a little of this, and weep for having beaten her.

It was nearly four-thirty in the morning, and again her phone did not answer. I tried the sheriff. He was not available. I stretched out to think of what to do next, how to fit the parts together, and suddenly it was bright morning outside, the room lights still on, my mouth stale, and my eyes grainy.

The phone rang just as I was reaching to turn on the shower. It was Sheriff Hyzer to tell me they had not located Mrs. Kapp or her car yet, but that they had found Lew Arnstead's black jeep hidden in the yard of an empty house four doors down Seminole from Mrs. Kapp's cottage. Maybe I'd like to stop by.

I didn't ask any questions. I hurried the shower, and it was twenty after eight when I got there. Hyzer's cruiser was in Betsy's driveway. He seemed to be alone. Fresh suit, s.h.i.+rt, tie, shoes. He'd nicked himself twice shaving.

We walked up the street. The chain was unhooked. A deputy was dusting it with professional care and deftness, lifting fragments and sections of prints, making notations of location.

"It made me wonder, Mr. McGee, if Arnstead had hidden this here yesterday evening, gone to Mrs. Kapp's house and taken her away with him in her car."

"I suppose that could have happened."

"Not when you see this. Come here." He took me around to the front, pointed to a brown object fastened to a protected place under the headlamp. "Mud dauber," he said. "Fresh. They turn pale when they dry. They don't work at night. This nest is nearly done. You wait a minute you'll see her come flying in with another mud ball. She had to start yesterday morning to get this far. She had to build it up to a certain point then go find the right kind of spider and paralyze it with her stinger and shove it in there. Soon now she'll have just a little hole left. She'll lay her eggs in it and then seal it up, and when the young hatch they'll have spider meat to live on before they break out."

"Very interesting."

"So it was left here Sat.u.r.day night, probably. You spent the night with her. Hear anything?"

"Not a thing."

"We had a telephone report of an altercation at three in the morning in this neighborhood."

"I didn't hear that, either."

"It doesn't make sense, at least not yet, for him to hide his jeep here and walk away from it and not come back."

"Meaning he couldn't come back."

"Or somebody abandoned it here to leave a false trail. Tom, don't forget to dust that Dr. Pepper bottle on the floor."

"No sir, Sheriff."

"Getting anything usable?"

"Too many smudges. A few pretty good partials and right here at the top of the winds.h.i.+eld, one real good one of the whole heel of a hand. Could be a woman's or a child's from the size."

"Call Johnny's to come tow it in when you're finished, and get those vacuum bags to the Bureau fast as you can."

As we walked back to Betsy's drive I said, "You're a very thorough man, Sheriff."

"We try."

"I imagine you must be aware of everything that goes on in Cypress County."

"All I need to know, I hope. We put through a consolidation a couple of years back, absorbed the city police into the county and put all the law enforcement under the Sheriff's Department. Cuts duplication and expense."

"Excuse me, Sheriff. You seem more amiable toward me today."

"I like to be fair. You said Perris had to leave that station Friday morning. I tried it once more. I phoned Al Storey this morning and asked him if Henry Perris had left the station for any reason whatsoever, business or personal. First he said no, just as he did before, and then he remembered that Perris had finished a brake job on an Oldsmobile and had taken it down the road to the customer, a man named Hummer. It was a combination road test and delivery. Hummer had then driven Perris back to the station. To get to Hummer's road, Perris had to pa.s.s a little roadside park with a public phone booth. Can you fill in the rest of it, Mr. McGee?"

"Make a phone call to someone to pick up the envelope he hid in the phone book."

"Perhaps. Storey did not think of that in the same sense as actually leaving the station. Leaving involves personal business. A delivery is work time. I told Storey not to talk if Perris was nearby. He said Perris was late again, as usual. I told him not to mention the conversation to Perris."

"Are you going to pick Perris up?"

"Not yet. I want him to feel safe. I want to have more to go on."

"Now will you admit the girl is implicated, too?"

His stare was like stone. "If evidence should show at some future date that she is involved, knowingly, in any criminal activity, then she will be arrested and charged."

End of amiability.

End of conversation.

I drove down to Johnny's Main Street Service. Miss Agnes had been taken off the line. I found her on blocks in the body shop, with a big sweaty Ron Hatch wielding a rubber mallet and some curved templates with comforting skill.

He came out and said, "Hi, Mr. McGee. Some of it isn't as bad as I thought. But, Jesus, they used some kind of gauge metal in her." I borrowed the broken fitting from him and made a call from the office to my mechanic friend in Palm Beach. I told him what it looked like and where it went. He had me measure it, and had me hold the phone. He came back on the line in about two minutes and said he had it and where and how should he send it. I had him s.h.i.+p fastest means direct to Ron Hatch at the garage. The operator came back with the report of charges, and I gave the exact change to the office girl and she put it in the petty cash box just as a man in his late forties came in. He was trim and held himself well, and his hair was a little too thick and dark to be entirely unaided. He had a golfing tan, and an elegant sport s.h.i.+rt, and a gold-and-black wrist.w.a.tch with three or four dials and a lot of gold b.u.t.tons to push.

"McGee?" he said. When I said I was, he said he was Johnny Hatch, and invited me back into his office. Small, paneled, cool, windowless, and private. Golfing trophies and trap-shooting trophies, and framed testimonials about his civic services. A color portrait in a silver frame, showing a very lovely young woman smiling out, her arms around a little boy and a little girl. She looked young enough to account for his trimness and his hairpiece and dye job.

"Thanks for treating the kid right on the work he did on that old Rolls truck of yours. It set him up pretty good."

"He's a nice kid."

"Not much you can do with them these days. That Liz Taylor haircut of his makes me want to throw up every time I see it. He won't go back to school. He's a car nut. I'll say this. He'll do the job right for you. Now I got a second litter coming along, and it makes you wonder what kind of problems they're going to be."

"I wasn't exactly eager to put any more money into your operation, Mr. Hatch. It seemed to me like you took me pretty good."

He shrugged. "I could show you the books. We don't get rich on county business. We have to bid it. We lose on some and make out on the others, and hope to end up the year ahead. Don't tell me a fella who can afford Lennie Sibelius is hurting for a little garage bill."