Bright Orange for the Shroud (13 page)

“We’ll have to think about this and talk about it later. What’s the name of your expert?”

“He might be busy with something else. You’ll get in touch?”

“Soon.”

“In the meantime, just for the hell of it, and it can’t do any harm, call your man and act excited and tell him you think there’s a chance you can get him into something that will double his money in a year. Is he interested in doubling his money?”

“He wants to be nationally known as a wheeler and dealer.”

“What line of work
are
you in?”

“Salvage and demolition.”

“On your own?”

“Without overhead. Whenever the right kind of job comes along, I bid it in, rent the equipment, subcontract everything I can, come out with a low profit percentage that’s big enough to live well until the next chance opens up.”

He nodded. “Very smart. Very nice. So why all this sudden larceny, friend?”

“I wasn’t the low bidder the last few times, and the operating capital is getting a little too puny.”

“How can I contact you, McGee?”

“I’m staying with friends. I’ll be in touch.”

I did not see Vivian when I left. And I could well imagine how Crane Watts would feel the next morning when he remembered the conversation. The man suddenly and artificially sobered has a period of fraudulent lucidity. He thinks he is under control, but the cerebral cortex is still partially stunned, all caution compromised. Attempts at slyness are childlike and obvious. The business of the shower had reassured him. If I was that careful to drown out any listening devices, then, hell, I had to be okay.

In the sober morning it would have a dreadful flavor to him, and he would be aghast not only at all he had told me, but at
the memory of even contemplating the same sort of thing with so much money involved. He’d know it was too big for that same kind of operation.

But he was hungry. His seams were splitting and the sawdust was leaking. I wondered if he was bright enough to realize that under the seedy look of failure was an old time conscience, prodding him into self-punishment. Such as playing losing bridge for high stakes.

Now I had things to go on, pieces to pry loose. The solo operator is often invulnerable. But group operations are weak as the weakest thief in the team. An equation applies. The weakest is usually the one who gets the smallest end of the take. And knows the least. But because of the quasi-legality of this operation, Crane Watts had useful information. The big con often needs a plausible local front man. I could guess how Arthur’s money had probably been split. A hundred thousand to Stebber, fifty to Wilma, fifty to G. Harrison Gisik, the balance to Watts, Waxwell, the Kippler executor and operating expenses. The role of Boone Waxwell troubled me a little. Beating Arthur so severely had been stupid. But maybe they felt they needed an enforcer. For whom? Watts wasn’t likely to get out of line. Perhaps there’d been a germ of truth in their story to Arthur, that Waxwell was essential to negotiations on the Kippler tract. That could mean control of the executor. And where was the coldly efficient Miss Brown? And would that cheap redhead with the improbable name—Dilly Starr—know anything useful if she could be found?

I drove slowly toward the center of the very rich and pleasant little city of Naples, wondering how good old Frank was enjoying Spain.

When I walked into the big drugstore on Fifth Avenue in Naples, I was slightly surprised to see that it was not yet nine o’clock. There were some rowdy teenagers at one of the counter sections, and I sat as far from them as possible. I like them fine in smaller units. But when they socialize, showing off for each other, they sadden me. The boys punch and shove, and repeat each comment in their raw uncertain baritone over and over until finally they have milked the last giggle from their soft little girls with their big, spreading, TV butts. And they keep making their quick cool appraisals of the environment to make certain they have a properly disapproving audience of squares. And have you noticed how many fat kids there are lately? And the drugstore comedians are usually the rejects. The good ones, as in any year, are taut, brown, earnest, and have many other things to do, and can even—unthinkably—endure being alone. This little fatpack was nearing the end of
their school year and, predictably, would slob around all summer, with a few of them impregnating each other. They would dutifully copy the outlook and mannerisms of their momentary idols. Some of them would check out this summer as a bloody stain on a bridge approach. The survivors, ten years hence, would wonder how come their luck was turning so bad, why life wasn’t giving them any kind of break at all.

I had coffee and a sandwich, and went to a booth to check the thin Naples phonebook. Mrs. Mildred Mooney was listed. 17 Twenty-first Avenue. After the fifth ring she answered in a listless voice, said she was Mrs. Mooney.

“I wondered if I could stop by and talk to you about something. My name is McGee.”

“I guess not. Not tonight. I was supposed to babysit and I got one of my sick headaches and I had to get somebody else, and I already gone to bed, mister.”

“At least I can tell you what it’s about, I’m trying to help a man you worked for. He needs help. Arthur Wilkinson. You might have some information I could use, Mrs. Mooney.”

“He’s a
real
nice man. He was
real
good to me. He had some terrible bad luck, losing all his money like that, so sudden and all. But I don’t see how I could help.”

“I won’t take up much of your time.”

After a long silence, she said, “Well, I can’t seem to get to sleep anyhow.”

“I’ll be along in a few minutes then.”

She sat in a corner chair in the small living room of her efficiency apartment, sat in the dimness of a single small lamp
burning in the opposite corner. Dumpy woman with a worn face and bushy gray hair, wearing a quilted wine-colored robe.

“When I’m like this,” she said, “it’s like bright light was needles sticking into my eyes. It comes on me about three or four times a year, and then I’m just no good for anything until it goes away. I got regular people, and I can get enough work to keep me going. Working at that big beach house last year was more than I like to take on. It was good pay, for around here, and just the two of them, but she didn’t lift a finger. And I lost a lot of regular people taking steady work like that, and it took so long to get my regular people it seems like I ended up about even, except for working harder. Oh, I don’t mind work, but when they come and go you have to look out for yourself so you have something coming in steady. But I want to tell you right now, I make it my rule not to talk about my people. You start that and the first thing you know it gets around, then they don’t want you. Land, the things I seen, I could fill a book, and you better believe it.”

“I wouldn’t want to ask you to talk about any of your regular people, Mrs. Mooney. I want you to consider something that maybe you never thought of. I want you to think back, and see if it would make any sense to you to believe that Wilma was a part of a conspiracy to defraud Arthur Wilkinson of his money.”

“But wasn’t she his wife like they said?”

“They went through a ceremony. Maybe she wasn’t free to marry. Maybe it was just one of the ways of setting him up, to make it easier to take his money.”

She made several little clicking sounds with her tongue. After a thoughtful silence she said, “I came close to quitting a
lot of times out there, believe me, and stayed on account of him. She was a pretty little thing, and real lively, but I’d say older than maybe he knew. She sure did spend an awful lot of time on her face and hair. You know one thing she would do I never did hear of before? She would
sandpaper
her face, and that’s God’s truth, take little strokes and get it raw almost and then put on white goo and some kind of mask and lay down for an hour. She was loving to him, most of the time, nice enough to me when he was close, but with me and her alone, I was just a piece of furniture. She didn’t see me, and if I said anything, she didn’t hear me. She’d turn on me sometimes, just as mean as a wasp, eyes all narrowed down. Not hot angry, but cold as can be. I don’t have to take that from anybody. But he was a nice nice man. I tell you, the way she used him was wicked. She had him waiting on her hand and foot, something she wanted that was closer to her than him, he had to go get it and bring it to her. He brushed her hair, that real pale thin kind of hair, a hundred strokes, putting a little bitty dab of some kind of perfume oil on the soft brush every ten strokes, with her whining if he lost count. She had him oil her head to foot for going in the sun, and another sickening thing, I tell you, she had him run her little electric razor, shaving the fuzz off her pretty legs, then she’d feel to see if he did it good, tell him where he missed, and pat him when he finished. My husband Mr. Mooney, God rest his soul, was a man, and no woman ever lived could have turned him into a lady’s maid like she done with Mr. Wilkinson. I felt so sorry for that poor man. I don’t know, Mr. McGee. I thought it was just bad judgment, him investing in something that turned out bad for him. But I guess she was the kind out for herself and no regard for anybody else.”

“So let’s say she was setting him up for Mr. Stebber to cheat him. Would that fit?”

“Mr. Stebber seemed like a real gentleman, the kind that thanks you nicely for any little thing. A smiley man. And you could tell he was a real big man, successful and all. She knew him from someplace. Then there was that tall sick-looking man with the funny name.”

“Gisik.”

“He didn’t have much to say at any time. He acted as if he was busy thinking about important things happening far away. I guess if Mr. Wilkinson got cheated, then young Crane Watts must have got the same dose. They say he’s going down hill something terrible, drinking and gambling and his practice going down to nothing, and probably they’ll lose the house, so it’s a blessing there’s no children. It’s children get hurt the worst in a thing like that. They don’t understand. They’re not regular people of mine, or ever were, so it isn’t like I’m saying anything nearly everybody doesn’t know already.”

“I understand.”

“There was one hanging around they called Boo. From out of the swamps around here from the way he talked. Low class man I’d say. And if anybody was robbing anybody, I’d say he was the one. And if she was in on it, I’d say she was in on it with that Boo fellow.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I guess because he kept dropping in.” I sensed reservations.

“There must have been something else.”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Any little thing might help.”

“It … it isn’t a decent kind of talk, and I don’t want you thinking the wrong thing of me for staying on where that
kind of thing was going on. It’s not I’m an old maid. I was married twelve years to Mr. Mooney, God rest his soul, and had three dear babies who died, every one of them, breaking my heart every time, and breaking it for good when Mr. Mooney passed away in such terrible pain it was a blessing when it ended. What happened, it was an afternoon not long before they had to give up the house, and Mrs. Wilkinson and that Boo fellow were out by the pool, side by side in those tip back chairs, her keeping her face turned up to the sunshine. The mister had gone into town for some reason, and I just happened to look out the utility room window where I was sorting laundry. I was looking at them sideways, sort of, her in a naked little white suit, the bottom part like a little narrow band with fringe on it. And I just happened to see him reach over slow and put … put his hand down into her lap. It came into my mind that she was sleeping and she’d wake up fighting mad. But she didn’t move. You know how you want to stop looking at something and you’re kind of froze? When she did move … it was just to make things a little bit easier for him, her face still turned up for the sun and her eyes closed. When she did that, I stopped looking, and I worked like a crazy woman, throwing those clothes around, getting them all mixed up, so I had to sort them all out again, spilling soap all over when I got them in the machine. When I heard them sploshing around I looked out and by then they were in the pool, laughing around. I knew then and there that the mister had a wicked wife, and I made my plans to give notice the end of the month, but before I could tell them, they told me they were giving up the beach house. That Boo man was around there a lot, and by then, those last weeks, Mr. Stebber and the sick one had gone away, back to Tampa I guess.”

“Tampa?” I said it so loudly I startled her.

“Well, of course, it being where he lives.”

“How are you sure of that?”

“Because I’m a real good cook. Mr. Mooney, God rest him, said I was the best he ever knew of. And that man loved to eat. I don’t measure things. I just put things together the way they
seem
right. I did restaurant work once, but I hated it. There you have to measure everything because you have to make so much. I’m not lying when I say there’ve been visitors down here offered me more money than I’d care to mention to go back north with them. Mr. Stebber is one of those who lives for eating. You can tell it. Mostly it’s fat happy men like him. They shut their eyes when they take the first taste, and they make a little moan and smile all over themselves. He came out there to the kitchen at that beach house and said it was just between the two of us, and when the Wilkinsons didn’t need me any more, I should come to Tampa to cook for him. He said I’d have no heavy housework, and my own room and bath with color television. He said he was away a lot and when he was away it would be like a vacation for me. He said that I’d never have to cook for more than seven or eight at the most, and that wouldn’t be often. He said he had a great big apartment in one of those cooperative places, looking out over Tampa Bay, with a colored woman that came in by the day to do the heavy housework.

“Well, I told him that I just couldn’t bring myself to move that far away from Mr. Mooney’s grave. The three babies lived a little while, every one, long enough to have their names given to them, Mary Alice and Mary Catherine and Michael Francis, marked on the stones. There isn’t a Sunday no matter how I might feel or how the weather is, I don’t go out and
neaten up the plot and set there and feel close to the only family I ever had.