The Quick Red Fox Part 7

The world is s.h.i.+ny and the surface is a little too frangible. Something can reach out of the black and grab you at any moment. Everybody wears a different set of compulsions. You can be maimed without warning, in body or in spirit, by a very nice guy. It is the luck of your draw. I did not feel like a nice guy. His red coat was a little too brave and pretty. Now it was a child's toy on the beach after the child drowns. This one was not villainous. He was just a silly stud. A ski slope, and less reptilian, version of Harry Diadem, a specialist in racing wax and erogenous zones.

I drove on down into Speculator, looking for a place to take him. The snow banks made it difficult. I turned west on Route 8, and after about a mile I found a darkened structure on the right, some sort of a building supply establishment. The drive and parking lot in the rear had been plowed out. Nearby houses were dark. I could see no pedestrians in the glow of the s.p.a.ced street lights of the village. No traffic was coming in either direction at the moment.

So I turned in quickly, skidding the back end, b.u.mping it off a snow bank, turning off the car lights as I reached the parking lot. I backed it around behind the building, ready to head out. I got out quickly, looking around to see if I had attracted any attention. Snow laid a silence across the land. A dog barked, a comfortable distance away. Night sky speckled with silver. Bare trees in silhouette. Moving flicker of light as cars went by. It was about twenty degrees, I guessed, not too uncomfortable with no wind.

I opened the door on his side. He was coming out of it enough to strain for balance, but he came rolling out, onto the packed soiled snow of the parking area. I bent, braced myself well, and picked him up, the two hundred and twenty or so pounds of him, striving to make it seem effortless.

The mature male is seldom picked up. It resonates the lost memories of babyhood. It induces a feeling of helplessness. I walked four strides with him, and dropped him into the slope of the five-foot bank of bulldozed snow, dropped him b.u.t.t first, as into an armchair. He chunked down into it, tilted slightly back, feet free, knees up, lashed wrists holding him hunched and about as helpless as a man can be.

He shook his splendid leonine head slowly and said, "Sick. Real sick. Please."

When anything begins to fit their television or movie preconceptions they try to move toward the hero role. So one must give it a flavor they can't comprehend. Cops are good at it. Jocular. You can learn a lot from cop technique.

I stood close and reached to him and rumpled his blond locks with the casual affection you extend toward a small boy. I chuckled. I patted his cheek three times, and on the fourth pat I gave it a little more steam. It was not a blow, yet not a pat. It was a sharp demand for attention. Pay attention to teacher, boy.

My eyes had adjusted, I could see him clearly. Things had moved too quickly for him. He was staring at me with a dumb willingness to ingratiate himself. It was exactly the right att.i.tude. It was a cheap tin box and a joke lock, and it had opened at a touch.

"Carl, baby, Lee is over a thousand miles from here, and she wouldn't say h.e.l.lo if she met you on the street."

"What are you..."

"She's a big investment. The people I work for get very nervous about her. You can understand that, Carl baby."

"I don't know what you..."

"They are very very annoyed with you, sweetie. You've been very stupid and very naughty. And you've gotten their investment very upset. You shouldn't have played ball with the people who wanted to give Lee a hard time. You should have realized we'd come after you sooner or later, baby."

"This is some kind of a mis..."

"Don't play dumb. It's too late for that. You have had it. They don't give me much discretion. At the very least, Carl, I have to break you up a little. Like two or three weeks' worth. And at the very most, I get my little shovel out of the trunk and stick you under this snow."

The bulge of his eyes tipped me, so when the mouth opened wide for a roar of terror and protest, I packed it swiftly with. a handful of snow. After he had coughed and huffed and spat, I used a handkerchief to wipe the snow water off his face. His teeth c.l.i.ttered. He was melting himself wet, but it was fright and cold both.

"Please!" he said. "I don't know what..."

I rumpled his hair again. "The pictures, sweetie! The photographs, the pies, the way she got set up for it on that terrace. Like this one."

I had it in an inside pocket, folded once. I held it in front of his eyes, a lighter flame off to one side. A Lysa Dean sandwich. I put it away when he closed his eyes.

"Oh," he said weakly. "Oh G.o.d."

I said softly, "Now can you tell me a good reason why you shouldn't die young, sweetie?"

Seven.

I GOT back to the motel room a few minutes before nine. The door was unlocked. As I came in, Dana got up from the room's only armchair and came toward me, silhouetted against the lamp light.

"You were gone so long," she said.

The room was warm. I took my jacket off and stretched out on one of the beds. "A long time and a long way away" I said. "Scratch one ski instructor. We can leave now, if you want."

She looked down at me for a few moments, and then went and fixed another drink in that silver cup. I perched on one elbow and sipped it. "A lot bigger than the last one," I said.

"It seemed like a good idea."

"You've got good instincts." She sat on the foot of the bed. I s.h.i.+fted my feet to make room for her.

"Did... you hurt him?"

"I didn't leave a mark on him. I just finished sneaking him to his room up there at the lodge. He didn't want anybody to see him. His legs didn't work very well. I had to help him out of the car. I had to walk him, with my arm around his waist. He was crying like a kid. He had the snuffles. He kept telling me how grateful he was I didn't kill him. He likes me. It's a quick dependency relations.h.i.+p, something like getting emotionally hooked on your psychiatrist. At his door I patted him on the shoulder and told him to get a good night's rest. No, Dana, I didn't leave any visible marks. But I left the other kind. They last longer."

After a silence she said, "Trav, why do you do this sort of thing if it bothers you so much?"

"Maybe I like it. Maybe that's what bothers me."

"Look at me and tell me you like it."

"Okay. So it was just smart-a.s.s talk. I left him with less. Less a.s.surance, less faith, less confidence. Maybe his mask will start to slip a little from now on. The tone of voice won't be exactly right. The snow bunnies will detect it. And one of them will be a little too knowing, and push the right b.u.t.tons, and big Carl Abelle will come up impotent just once. Once is all it will take, because that's about all he's got left."

She put her hand on my ankle, a light quick touch, like a pat of a.s.surance. "Travis, if you can feel this way, and keep on feeling this way, isn't it all right for you? What if you should become indifferent to... this business of opening people up like little dirty boxes?"

"Maybe I care less now than I did a few years back."

"Is Abelle so valuable?"

"Isn't that the key to it, Dana? This act of judging the value of anyone? Is it something I am ent.i.tled to do for money? If we're judging value, why am I working for your boss?"

"Why am I?" We watched each other. Suddenly she grinned. "Don't try to fool me or yourself, McGee. If you'd learned anything important from him, you wouldn't be acting like this."

I admitted it. She fixed me a new drink. I told her what I had learned. Not very much. He was certain of one thing. No one had followed Lysa Dean to the Chipmann house. None of the playmates could have tipped anybody off that she was there, because he had not said who he was shacked with, and after they all got there, no one left until it was all over, and the phone was disconnected.

Ca.s.s was Caswell Edgars, a San Francisco artist. Abelle had not known that Nancy Abbott had gone off with Sonny Catton, nor that Sonny was dead. He had confirmed that Nancy had been houseguesting with the M'Gruders in Carmel, and had said that Vance M'Gruder was a friend of Alex Abbot, Nancy's elder brother.

"Nothing else?" she asked.

"Just guesses. But how good are they? A terrorized man tries to please, like a hypnotic subject. Rule out the Cornell boys. Rule out Ca.s.s Edgars and the waitress. And, according to Abelle, we can rule out Lysa Dean too. Security was good. So who was the target? Nancy Abbott? Vance M'Gruder? Patty M'Gruder? There's money there. Blackmail targets. Miss Dean was pure profit. The pictures sent Nancy's father were not the same as the ones sent Lee. Okay, so the fellow took perhaps a dozen rolls. Two dozen. Two hundred and fifty to five hundred shots. He could have another set to sell Vance, another to sell Patty, maybe a set for everybody until he could find out which ones had the money. Maybe he started out, for G.o.d's sake, after nesting water birds and hit a jackpot on the terrace a hundred yards away"

"But the idea of it being an accident doesn't appeal?"

"No. Before they bought the groceries, they all knew the name of the absentee owners of the house where they were going. If it was set up, either somebody in the group, during the milling around before they took off in the cars, tipped the cameraman off. Or they were being followed. Somehow I like the first choice, Dana. It goes with the way the party developed, as if it was being staged that way."

"Could he tell you who started it?"

"He said it just happened. Everybody tight. One of those real swinging parlor games, revised for a sun terrace. Somebody gets blindfolded, crawls around, and the first person they touch has to hold still, not make a sound, and be identified by touch. Guess right and the one identified loses one item they're wearing, and gets the blindfold. Guess wrong and the guesser loses one item and tries again."

"Sounds gaudy."

"He said n.o.body really started it. They made up the rules as they went along."

"With much jolly laughter."

"It's a funny thing about Abelle. He had absolutely no idea any pictures were taken. But he did have the feeling that something was wrong. And he is not a sensitive guy. He couldn't put it into words. After the group had broken up and he was alone again with Lee, he had the feeling that something was going to work out badly for somebody."

"Wouldn't anyone have that feeling after all that?"

"If it was new to them, I guess so. But Abelle has had that kind of group action before and since, and the other times didn't hit him that way. Something gave him that feeling. Somebody made him react that way. But he was drunk. I couldn't dig it out. He had the feeling somebody was going to kill somebody sooner or later, because of that house party."

"Where do we go next, Travis?"

"I want to know how Nancy Abbott's father got her pictures, and if there was any more contact."

I put the silver cup aside. It seemed that moments later Dana was gently shaking me awake. There was a delicious aroma in the room. She had walked to a place almost next door called The Log Cabin Restaurant, eaten there and brought me back a huge bowl of homemade clam chowder and a broiled hamburger as thick as her wrist. It tasted as fine as it smelled.

I awoke again. The room was dark. My shoes were off. There was a blanket over me, but the cold had awakened me. A glow of the sign outside came through the blinds, and I could see the sleeping shape of her in the other bed, hair dark against the pillow. I made a silent trip to the bathroom, came back and undressed to my shorts and slipped into the cool sheets and was asleep in an instant. You can seldom guess what will exhaust you emotionally. That hulk of brave muscle had been a weak and pretentious child. In my dreams I heard him sob. Oh please don't. Oh please. Oh please, mister.

She had flight schedules indicating we could do better out of Syracuse. So we got an early start and went down to the Thruway and west to the Syracuse airport, through a cold gray morning and some tentative snow flurries. She found the best way out, through to Chicago and then non-stop to San Francisco. I noticed something about her, in the ticketing and the baggage arrangements and turning in the rental car, and even with the stewardesses.

With absolutely no fuss at all, she got the maximum service merely by an att.i.tude-smiling and polite-which seemed to make anything less than perfect service unthinkable. She could raise one eyebrow and bring a porter hustling from eighty feet away. It is a rare gift.

I tried to take over some of the ch.o.r.es, but it seemed to make her feel uncomfortable. It was her job and she was used to it, and she knew how to keep everything straight. I had all the benefit of her efficiency. People stared at me as though trying to remember where they had seen me. This knack of getting exactly what you want exactly when you want it is something shared by great ladies, royalty and the very best executive secretaries.

Also I must admit that her strong and handsome face, and the sparkling intensity of her dark eyes gave the impression that if things did not go her way, all h.e.l.l would break loose immediately. But it was odd to have someone else taking such efficient care. I began to feel a little like the honeymoon bride of an important widower. Or a boy being taken to camp by one of those super-mothers.

She tried to resist being given a window seat. After we'd latched the seat belts, she checked her little note book and said, "We'll have an hour and fifty minutes in Chicago. I'll make some phone calls from there. Are you perfectly comfortable, Travis? Is there anything you'd like?"

"You'd better hustle up forward and help them with the check list for takeoff, honey."

Her mouth tightened and her face got slightly red. "I'm not trying to be officious."

"You are a little overwhelming, Dana."

"You could do it all just as well. But why should you?"

"Okay. Thanks. You're very good."

It was not gracious. Most of my women have not been particularly useful outside the home. I looked at her emotionless profile and sighed and said, "Aw come on, Myra."

Reluctantly her mouth softened. "You get these ugly moods, Frank."

"I keep worrying about how things are going back at the office."

"Honey, I bet they hardly know you're gone."

"Oh, thanks. Thanks a lot. That's a big help." She was laughing with me. Her eyes laughed too. It went deep. That kind of affection is seriously underrated among the hack and grab set. To whom should they give trust? To someone who likes them.

When she laughed or smiled broadly I could see that one of the eyeteeth, the one on the left, was set in there aslant, making a little overlap with the tooth in front of it. When an imperfection looks very dear to you, heed the message. Lysa Dean's teeth were mercilessly perfect. No message there.

Maybe some of my awareness made a little mark. Dana Holtzer suddenly stopped the real laughter, and went along for a little while on some fake laughter, and then folded herself back into herself, out of sight and out of reach, becoming once again the secretarial presence beside me, smart in wool, laced, girdled, hammocked and erect, her neck severe, eyes distant, seat belt pulled tight for takeoff.

Alexander Armitage Abbott, A.I.A., lay dying in room 310 of University Hospital in San Francisco. There was a waiting room at the end of the corridor. A gray rain which was going to continue forever streaked the waiting room windows, obscuring the view of gray hills. It was Friday afternoon. Dana and I sat like dulled pa.s.sengers in a heavy train sidetracked at the end of noplace. She put a frayed magazine back in the rack and came over to sit beside me on the couch.

"You're doing fine," I told her.

"I don't like that young man. Or his wife."

"It shows a little. It doesn't hurt anything. They're not anxious to be liked."

The young man came back. Not as young as he looked, or perhaps tried to look. Nancy's brother. Alex. Meaty, dark, bland. The kind who have a smell of pine and a perfect manicure. He gave us a smile of measured sadness and sat facing us. "Sorry about the constant interruptions. You know how it is." He shrugged. "One or the other of us should be with him. It seems to help him a little. Elaine is being so good about it. You have no idea."

"I guess he wouldn't want to see Nancy," Dana said innocently.

"G.o.d, no!" Alex said. "I believe, I really believe that he might have lived years longer if it wasn't... for all the shame and heartbreak she's given him. She's my only sister. But I can't be the least bit sentimental. Some people are just born rotten." He made a helpless gesture. "Nothing we've tried to do for her has done any good. She's made life difficult... for all of us."

"You understand our viewpoint in this, Mr. Abbott," I said.

"Of course. Of course. I appreciate the fact you want to handle this on a completely informal basis. I think I understand her present condition, as well as Mr. Burley's concern. And I am perfectly willing to write to him personally guaranteeing the thousand dollars a month for as long as... as she can remain there. Frankly, I was responsible for the selection of the retreat. I wanted her just as far from San Francisco as possible. Dad is leaving her nothing, of course. But I can tell you in confidence that the estate is... sizable. And I would consider it a moral obligation. I'm very glad you and Miss Holtzer had to come here on another matter. It's good to talk this over."

I sensed that he was trying to brush us off. Thanks and goodby. He was an elusive fellow.

"We haven't settled it yet, Mr. Abbott," I told him. "Mr. Burley has certain moral obligations too, and he is aware of them. He is not set up to give her the mental care she needs. Under the present arrangement, he can't afford to bring someone there at regular intervals to treat her there. We are functioning here merely as... friends of Hope Island, Mr. Abbott."

"I understand, but..."

"If the monthly fee could be doubled... "

"That's out of the question," he said with a regretful air. "I guess it would be better if Mr. Burley did arrange commitment to a mental inst.i.tution, if that's what he thinks she needs."

"There's just one small problem," I said. "At times she seems perfectly healthy and rational. And she has built up a whole structure of conspiracy. We understand that it isn't true, of course, but it does sound very plausible, and if she went to some other place, they might think it necessary to make a complete investigation."

"I don't believe I understand," he said.

I glanced at Dana and nodded and she took over. "Nancy insists that a year and a half ago, you put her in the custody of some people in Carmel named M'Gruder."

"In the custody!" he said indignantly. "It wasn't like that at all. They were just helping me out. They knew Nancy, of course. They knew she could be a problem. It was just a case of getting her away from a very unsavory group she was running with, and..."

"I am just telling you Nancy's story. We all know she isn't well, Mr. Abbott. She claims that the M'Gruders, as a favor to you, got her drunk and got her into a situation where certain pictures were taken of her under compromising circ.u.mstances. These pictures were then sent to your father so you could be certain you would be the sole heir. She claims you and your father then tried to put her away, but she fled and remained at large for quite a while until you caught up to her and sent her to Hope Island."

Dana did beautifully with it. I watched his face. He had a big choice of reactions. He tried for amused indignation, and almost made it. But not quite. You have to watch for the not quites.

"Do you mean to tell me she could make anyone believe such nonsense?"

"Not necessarily" I said. "They might want to check it out."