The Quick Red Fox Part 3

"You be careful, Lee. I don't like the sound of that note. s.e.xually disturbed people try to be the sword of the Lord, going around slaying the sinful. See that you get pretty good protection this week in Miami."

She walked me to the door. She caught at my arm, gave me a quick kiss, as soft and trusting as a child's, then went down the corridor with me, found Dana Holtzer in a small room, typing, and turned me over to her. Dana got up and took me down the stairs and out to the waiting limousine. I saw the quick and wary way she glanced at the envelope I was carrying, and caught a flavor of total disapproval.

The driver's name was Martin. She told him to take me back, or to wherever I wanted to go. It was after five. I had him stop where I could phone. I phoned Gabe Marchman in Lauderdale and told him I had a problem. He said it was convenient to bring it right over.

On one of those hunches that may save your life, though you can never prove it one way or another, I had Martin drop me off downtown. I went into one end of a big drugstore and out the other and into a cab.

Gabe Marchman was a great combat photographer. You have seen his name on those cla.s.sic Korea things. A land mine smashed his legs all to h.e.l.l. While convalescing in Hawaii, he met and married a very rich and very beautiful little Chinese-Hawaiian girl named Doris. Gabe looks like a sawed-off Abraham Lincoln. He is still on crutches. They have six kids.

With his mobility gone, he has gotten into another aspect of photography. He has one of the most completely equipped private labs in the South, taking up a wing almost as big as the main house. He does experimental work, and problem a.s.signments for large fees. He is a sour little man, adored by all who get to know him.

Doris, blooming large again with child, sent me on through to the lab. Gabe grunted at me. I said I wanted to know as much as possible about some pictures I had with me. We were in his print room. He turned on more intense lights. He levered himself onto a stool and spread the dozen pictures out in a row on top of the work table.

From his lack of reaction, they could have been pictures of puppies or flower gardens. "Whadaya know about 'em?" he said. "Just technically."

"They were taken a year and a half ago in California on 35mm film. The person involved estimates that the only place from which they could be taken was about a hundred yards away, but that is just an estimate. The person involved saw another set of prints over a year ago, and they were just like these as far as subject matter, but these seem to be fuzzier and grayer."

He grunted and got out a large magnifying gla.s.s and began to go over them very carefully, one by one.

I said, "I forgot something. My client saw and destroyed the negatives. The negatives included more than in a lot of these pictures."

He continued his careful examination. Finally he swiveled around. "Okay, we accept the hundred-yard distance. I would say it was probably Plus-X using a very fine telephoto lens, one thousand millimeter. Maybe the f/6.3 Nikkor, a reflector type with two mirrors. It's only about so long and weighs three or four pounds. It was used with a tripod or some other kind of solid rest. With 35mm a lens that size gives you about a twenty-power magnification, so at a hundred yards it would give the same as a normal lens fifteen feet from the subject. These three are the only ones where he printed the full frame. Now, if he printed about half the frame, it would be like being seven or eight feet away from the subject. And this is the average for most of these. Just this extreme close-up was done from maybe a quarter or less of the negative, showing the woman at a viewing distance of about three feet, with less definition. There's good depth of field and all motion is frozen, so a hundred yards away I'll buy. Okay so far?"

"Yes."

"a.s.suming the same guy who took the pictures made the original prints, he's a good workman. Excellent exposure, good edge to edge definition, and when he masked the negatives and did his printing, he had good quality control. You can tell that he did some burning in and dodging, and he couldn't help using a pretty good sense of composition. I would say he took a h.e.l.l of a lot of shots, maybe several hundred, and came up with the best ones. Very sharp, very clear, and he made high-gloss prints. I'd say definitely a pro, if that's any help to you. Now then, some clown got hold of a set of the prints. See this little flare here on this one and this one. That's where his lighting kicked back off the gloss. He made a set of copy negatives and a new set of prints. This is c.r.a.ppy paper, and he butchered his developing and butchered his printing solutions and times, but there was enough quality in the prints he copied so that all in all it comes through not too bad. The guy who did the originals would be incapable of doing such cruddy work the second time around, even if he was operating in a motel closet. But, having the copy negatives, he can make any number of these poor prints. Your client destroying the original negatives means nothing now. It is unmistakably her in every one of these. I would guess she's the one you're working for."

"Yes. Now I wonder if you can do something with these."

"I was afraid of that."

"From these can you make another set of negatives, and a set of prints that are a little different than these?"

"McGee, if you start out with crud, you end up with crud. I can't get back to the original print quality. I can print for more contrast and clean up these whites a little, but a close focus on fuzz gives you fuzz."

After an original reluctance, he began to get interested. He used a copy camera, a larger negative size, a copy film with a fine grain. By the time he had developed the negatives, Doris began to howl for a little cooperation, so he hung them up to dry and we went in for drinks. The nursemaid had taken over the bedtime routines. The older ones trudged in to say their well-mannered goodnights.

Doris cooked and served an old Chinese-Hawaiian specialty-broiled steaks, baked potatoes and tossed green salad. The three of us, in front of the big fireplace with a very small fire, revamped the State Department, simplified all tax legislation, tore down half of Florida and rebuilt it in a more sane and pleasing fas.h.i.+on.

Then we went back to work. He would put a negative in the enlarger and focus it on the base, and I would tell him what I wanted. Then he would go to work. He would cut a piece of masking paper to fit Lysa Dean's projected face. He would use sufficient exposure time to give him opportunity to dodge and burn in so that the face of someone else was emphasized. I ended up with fourteen useful prints, on double-weight paper. Some of those that took in more people were duplicated, altered slightly to highlight one and then another.

Somewhere in the processing they ceased to have any fleshy impact. They became problems in light and shade and emphasis. He put them in his high-speed dryer, and after he had flattened them in a bonding press, I studied them under the bright lights. Lysa Dean's features were white censored patches. Gabe was careful to give me the negatives as well as the test prints which hadn't worked out. We argued price, with me trying to increase it, and agreed on a hundred dollars. Doris had gone to bed.

He crutched his way to the door with me, and came out with me into the cold windy night.

"Taking a little trip, I suppose," he said.

"Yes."

"None of my business. I suppose somebody got too greedy."

"That's usually the way."

"You watch yourself, Trav. A little animal like that, if she'd see a way out by pus.h.i.+ng you over the edge, she'd take it. That's an interesting little face, but it isn't a good face."

The taxi slowed, putting his spotlight on the numbers. He turned into the drive. When I looked back I saw Gabe still standing there.

Four.

WHEN I got back to the Busted Flush I saw my lights still on. It was a little past eleven. The lounge door was locked. I went in and found Skeeter sound asleep, face down on the yellow couch in her baggy gray coveralls, one frail long-fingered hand trailing on the floor. Drawings of Quimby were propped everywhere. They were wise and funny and good. I admired them. In the middle of the floor was a big stamped brown envelope and a note to me: This LOUSY mouse. I am p.o.o.ped out of my mind. PLEASE would you stuff him in this envelope. He is all weighed in and everything, and PLEASE would you seal him and run him to the P.O. He's an airmail-SPECIAL mouse. Honestly, I had to sleep or DIE!!!

I looked down at her. It was typical. G.o.d knows how long she'd gone without sleep or when last she had thought of eating. Perfectionists who meet deadlines are usually pretty whipped out.

I went through to the bow of the Flush and put my dirty pictures in the hidden safe. It might not take an expert all night to open it, but he'd sure raise h.e.l.l finding it first. I a.s.sembled Quimby and sealed him and turned off one of the lights.

She stirred and raised a sleep-bleared Raggedy Ann face, shoe-b.u.t.ton eyes peering, cobweb hair afloat. "Whumya timezit?" she mumbled.

I squatted beside the couch. "You eat anything?"

"Huh? Eat? Uh... no."

I knew the problems. I had lived with them. I went into the galley, picked cream of mushroom soup, opened the can, heated it, poured it steaming into a big two-handled mug. She was gone again. I sat her upright and fitted the mug into her hands. When I was sure she was going to keep on sipping at it, I left and took Quimby to the post office and dropped him into an airmail slot.

By the time I got back, the empty mug was on the floor, and she had sagged off to sleep again. I picked her up. The fool girl seemed to have no substance at all. My guest stateroom would have to serve. I carried her in there and then, instead of dropping her into the bed and covering her over, on a strange and lonely impulse I sat on the bed still holding her in my arms. A faintness of marina lights came through the ports. Water slapped and licked at the curve of the barge hull. Mooring lines creaked.

She put her arm around my neck and said, "I thought we gave up on this."

"We did. I thought you were asleep. Go back to sleep."

"I was asleep, d.a.m.n it. What's this brooding sorrow bit anyway? It's the tenderness keeping me awake."

"I guess I wanted to hold onto you. That's all. Go to sleep."

"Why should you want to hold me? My G.o.d, Travis, we ripped each other up pretty good and got over it a long time ago."

"Why do you have to know everything? That's one of your problems."

"I have to know because I can't go back to sleep, that's why."

"Okay. I don't have too many illusions. I just ran into something rotten, that's all. I don't feel shocked. Just sad."

"It was a rotten girl?"

"I don't know. It's a kind of waste, I guess. Go to sleep."

She settled herself more snugly into my lap, arm around me, face in my neck. In a little while she drifted off, and the arm fell away. Her breathing turned deep.

I guess it can be touching. A special kind of trust. Something warm to hold. The way a kitten will drowse in your lap, totally confident.

Holding something alive, warm, sleeping is like handling fresh moist soil under the sun's heat. Restorative.

After a little while I had the idea that it would be an act of good fellows.h.i.+p to peel her out of those coveralls and slip her into the bed. A nice gesture. Sure. This is how McGee kids McGee.

I gave a little shake like a hound coming out of water. During that little time when it had been good, before we had started sawing chunks off each other, I had discovered that narrow little body to be amazingly strong, curiously luxurious. And I had the lonelies.

So I stood her on her feet and held her until she could stand up. "What the h.e.l.l!" she said. I stood up and kissed her, gave her a swat on the f.a.n.n.y and told her to sleep tight. I heard the coverall zipper before I got the door entirely closed behind me.

I showered with the strange feeling I was was.h.i.+ng off the sweat and sunoil I had acquired on a bright terrace three thousand and more miles away.

I put on a robe and went topside for a nightcap pipe, a load of Irish aromatic in a battered old large apple Comoy. I perched a haunch on the sundeck rail. The wind had died, but the surf still made that endless freight-train sound on the beach. Across the way the Alabama Tiger's perpetual floating house party was muted down to a few girlish squeals and somebody playing bad bongo. Meyer's craft was dark.

Go mention it in the locker room, McGee. There you were with Lysa Dean, and she had on these skin-tight pants, fellas, and there was that big d.a.m.n bed over there, and her hanging on me, sighing. Go on, McGee. Go on, man!

Boys, once when I was riding my bicycle no hands, I hit a stone and removed about one-half a square foot of hide from a.s.sorted painful places. And once upon a time I won free dancing lessons from Arthur Murray because I knew, right off, what happened in 1776.

When I got up in the morning Skeeter was gone, leaving the bed unmade and no coffee in the pot. But she left a drawing on the sink in the head. A rangy mouse who looked extraordinarily like me sat holding a Skeeter-like girl mouse asleep in his arms. The caption said, "Notorious mouse spares innocent prey. Vitamin deficiency suspected."

After breakfast I phoned her. She said her apartment was smelling much better, thank you.

"McGee," she said. "We might be turning into friends. That's pretty good, don't you think?"

"You're too dangerous on any other basis. What's with this vitamin gag?"

"I guess I was just sort of asleep. You started breathing hard. Then pow! On your feet, girl. And you went off like you used starting blocks."

"Friends play fair, Skeet."

"Well, h.e.l.l. I don't know. I hadn't decided. You were blue. I practically had a Band-Aid complex. Woman's work or something. I pa.s.sed the buck by sort of sleeping. Anyway I was terribly tired."

"Quimby is a fine mouse."

"Trav, dear, I am going to sleep for three days, and then you can take me fis.h.i.+ng."

"Deal," I told her. She hung up. It was a sad thing that we had a strange s.e.xual antagonism that made us want to chop each other to bits. We had to cut deep to see how much it would hurt. And it hurt aplenty. You can't live with that. But you can learn to live very nicely without it.

At eleven o'clock Dana Holtzer, as carefully poised as an unfriendly diplomat delivering an ultimatum, arrived with the money. Five thousand in cash. She had a receipt form for my signature, made out in the form of a letter of intent. The money was for "expenses in connection with research for a moving picture as yet unt.i.tled, to be purchased in treatment form at a price to be negotiated..."

Apparently I was dealing with something called Ly-Dea Productions. She had a file copy of the letter for me. She sat erect on the cus.h.i.+oned top of one of the stowage lockers along the lounge wall under the ports. She wore no hat. She wore a tailored navy blue suit with pleated skirt over a crisp white blouse. I could see no concession to anything in the set of her heavy mouth, the waiting attentiveness of very vivid dark eyes. Had I not seen her reaction to Skeeter's mouse, I would have given up on her.

"Tax reasons," she said.

"Of course," I said, and signed her copy. She refolded it briskly and tucked it away.

I wondered if anything would dent that efficient calm. I expected her to get up and trot off. But she had something else on her mind, yet wanted me to make a move first. I could guess why she had no particular enthusiasm for me. Her confidence would be given to large organizations with computers in the airconditioned bas.e.m.e.nt to tell the other machines which cards to drop into the slot.

Lysa Dean was in trouble. When you are in trouble, you go to J. Edgar Hoover, not to an obviously shopworn beach b.u.m, a marina gypsy, a big shambling sharpshooter without an IBM card to his name. To Miss Holtzer I would look like more trouble, not less. My khakis were faded to pale beige, and the toes were out of my topsiders, and the old blue sweats.h.i.+rt was fringed at the elbows. So I just fell into a chair, hooked a leg over one arm of it, and watched her mildly.

She took it well and took it long, and then the pink climbed up her throat. "Miss Dean should be the one to tell you this," she said.

"Tell me what, dear?"

"She could answer any objections better than I could. The agency is sending a competent girl out, to take over for me temporarily with Miss Dean. I'll catch her up to date this evening." She took a deep breath. "Miss Dean has a.s.signed me to work with you on this matter, Mr. McGee."

"That is absolutely ridiculous!"

"Believe me, it wasn't my idea. But in all fairness, it does have some merit. I can get through to her immediately at any time. There may be information about her you might want to have, and information about her friends and a.s.sociates. Also I may be able to take some details off your hands, travel arrangements, accommodations, notes, financial records. Miss Dean would feel... more at ease about all this if I am with you."

"I work alone, Dana. My G.o.d, I don't need any Katie Gibbs-type services, believe me. I wouldn't know how to act with you trudging behind me with a note book and a ledger. In a thing like this I might have to do a lot of... impersonations."

"I am quite flexible and resourceful, Mr. McGee."

I stood up. "But you don't belong in this sort of thing. It looks as if it would be pretty messy, if I have any luck at all."

"I said yes to Miss Dean, but I do have one reservation. I must ask you if... if you are employed to kill anyone."

I boggled at her. "What?"

"That's a risk I wouldn't care to accept."

I sat down and I laughed. She let me laugh it out, without a smile, with quiet patience. When I was through she said, "That's answer enough. I had to ask. I have to think of risks."

"Miss Holtzer, I don't know if I could stand the continuous weight of your disapproval."

"What does that mean?"

"I understand you saw those pictures by accident, the ones left at the desk at The Sands, and you wanted to quit then and there. Life is full of a number of things, Miss Holtzer, and many of them get a little grim from time to time."

Her dark eyes flashed. "Do they really?"

"Haven't you noticed?"

With a thoughtful expression she took cigarettes from her purse, snapped her lighter, huffed a dragon-plume of smoke toward me. "What I tell you now is, of course, none of your business. But I think we should understand each other a little bit in the beginning. My personal life is out of bounds for any future discussion. I am in the business of selling skills, tact, great energy, adequate intelligence and total loyalty. I sell this package to Lysa Dean for fifteen thousand dollars a year. a.s.signed to you, you get the same package. When I saw what those pictures were, I went through them to see how damaging they might be. I read the note. To me it meant that Lysa Dean was not as good a gamble for me as she used to be. I worried about that before, when I went through that thirteen-week charade."

I saw her hand tremble slightly as she lifted her cigarette to her lips. "I am married, Mr. McGee. Or was married. My husband was epileptic. He was a talented writer, with a few very substantial television credits. Marriage was a calculated risk. We had a child, a boy. At first he seemed quite normal. Then we learned gradually that he was so seriously r.e.t.a.r.ded an inst.i.tution would be the only answer. It had no connection with my husband's difficulty. We had to get away after we put the little boy in. He would never know us, or anyone. Bill had made a good sale. It was a good trip, actually, as good as two emotionally exhausted people could expect. We got well enough to head home. We stopped at a place at night for coffee, along the road. It was a bar. We were not drinking. Bill had a sudden seizure. They never lasted long, but they were quite violent. An off-duty police officer thought he was a murderous drunk and shot him in the head. He did not die. He is permanently comatose, Mr. McGee, with tubes for feeding and elimination, and the alcohol rubs to keep bed sores from rotting him away. It is a medical miracle, of course. That was four years ago. I need that fifteen thousand. It is barely enough for me and my family. If Lysa Dean is going down the drain in a messy way, it is my responsibility to leave her before it happens and go where an equivalent job has been offered. The job might not be open if I was in any way connected with scandal. Yes, Mr. McGee, the world can get a little grim from time to time."

"What can I say?"

"Nothing, of course. I thought it would be easier to tell you now before you said more things you might regret later, that's all. You haven't hurt me. I'm not certain anything could hurt me, actually. I am sorry it is all so soap opera. I haven't the... self-involvement necessary to make moral judgments. Lee was terribly foolish. The pictures offend me because they are vulgar. And they endanger me. If you can't work things out for her, I will have to leave her. I think she senses that."

"Maybe you could be some help."

"Thank you."