Pale Gray for Guilt (20 page)

"Today?"

"Well, so far. I mean the final returns for the day aren't in, but it will be pretty close to that. The Dow is off a little over five points. You look astonished. Oh, I see why. This morning before I left I opened her margin account with cash money, pending the power of attorney that you forgot to give me. I put in enough to buy her a thousand shares, and I got them at fifteen and a quarter."

I gave him the power of attorney. He put it in his dispatch case, and took out all the fake correspondence to My dear Ludweg and the fake reports on plant location data.

"So," he said, "it was worth the chance and now I reimburse myself out of this money and put the rest into her account to cover the order I placed for the opening tomorrow. Another twenty-five hundred shares. That will commit her account up to maximum. Then I have to go sit and stare at the tape, day after day, ten in the morning to three thirty in the afternoon. Bring me sandwiches." He waved the sheaf of counterfeit letters and documents. "When these are confetti and flushed away, my heart might slow down some you think?"

He went into the bathroom with them and I placed a credit card call, station to station to the Santo offices, and after a short wait I got Mary Smith.

The approach, to be convincing, had to be that of the male who'd been brushed off.

"McGee here," I said. "What was Santo's decision?"

"Oh. Trav. I've been so impatient for you to call, darling."

"I bet. What did he decide."

"I want to tell you something else first, because I have the hunch that if I tell you first, you'll hang up."

"Can you think of any good reason why I shouldn't?"

"Darling, I can think of a very good reason. My darned telephone was acting up. I knew it was you, but it just kept making a horrid ringing sound in my ear when I picked it up." Her voice was intimate, cheery, persuasive.

"Nice try, kid."

"But I'm telling the truth! Really I am. What could make you possibly think I wouldn't be there? If you want to be such a grouchy old bear, you can call the phone company and ask them if a certain Mary Smith raised absolute hell with them Saturday afternoon. I got the message you left at the office, and I left one for you, hoping you'd call back."

"At least you make it sound good; Miss Smith."

"Travis, I know how disappointed and angry you must have been."

"How come the phone company couldn't fix the phone?"

"Actually they swore there was nothing wrong with it. They tested and tested, and when I made them come back the second time, they took out the instrument and put in a new one."

"Which didn't work either. Which didn't work on Saturday night."

"I… wasn't there."

"You said you had the weekend open. So why didn't you hang around? How about four o'clock Sunday morning, kid?"

"I… I was told you'd made other plans, dear."

"By who?"

"To tell you the truth, I drove up to Lauderdale just to find you. I saw that fantastic boat of yours, dear. It must be a marvelous way of life. A man told me you might be at a party on another boat and I went there, but a very odd-looking girl told me I'd missed you and you might come back. So I waited there. You can ask those people. A lot of them are your friends, I guess. It is quite a… lively group. Then that strange girl came and told me that she found out you had left with another girl, so you probably wouldn't be back. So… you see, I really tried."

The persuasive lilt of her tone was dying away, fading back into the monotone of a deadly exhaustion. "So even at four in the morning, you weren't home yet? I guess you had a good time."

"Not terribly. But it was pleasant. I… called up an old friend and she invited me over, and it got to be too late to drive back so they put me up for the night, dear."

"So when did you get home?"

"I think it was about… ten o'clock last night. I spent the day with them. Why, dear? You had a date, didn't you? There was hardly any point in roaring home and sitting panting by the phone, was there? Listen, dear, I don't blame you for having a date. After all, it was perfectly reasonable for you to assume I stood you up, and so you said the hell with Mary Smith and her lousy steak. Don't I get any points for driving all the way up there to find you?"

I said in a marveling tone, "And all it was was a phone out of order. You know, there must be a hex on us."

"I guess there must be," she said. She sighed audibly and heavily.

"So expect a man at about nine tonight, honey, Okay?"

"Oh no, darling! I'm sorry."

"What now?"

"Well… I guess the hex is still working. I… uh… my friends have this little boat at their dock. They live on a canal. And they were going to take me out in the boat, and like a clumsy idiot I tripped somehow and fell headlong, right off the dock into the boat. Honestly I'm an absolute ruin. I was waiting for you to call so that I could get out of here and go home and take a hot bath and go to bed. I've been tottering around here today like a little old lady."

"Gee, honey, that must have been a nasty fall. Where did you hurt yourself?"

She gave a tired laugh. "Where didn't I? There were a lot of… you know… fishing tackle things in the boat. I must have hit my mouth somehow because it's all puffed out, and when I looked at myself head to toe in my mirror this morning, I swear I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I'm battered and bruised from head to toe. I couldn't let you see me like this. I'm a fright."

"That could be dangerous, Mary, a fall like that."

"I know. I strained my back somehow, I think. It's such a shock I guess it takes a lot out of you. My bones ache even." She sighed again. "Darling, give me time to get all well again, just for you. Please?"

"Sure. Take care of yourself, kid. Sorry our luck was running bad."

"Friend McGee, you are not one tenth as sorry as I am," and there was total conviction gleaming through the drag of her words. "The decision was yes, by the way."

"Good. How much."

"He said it depends on how it goes. At least one and a half. Maybe up to three, or anywhere in between. He said to tell you he'll be doing it through different accounts, scattered across the country. He wondered if you mind the amount being a little vague."

"I expected that. If it gets too much play from the traders, he won't be able to slow it down enough."

"Dear, may I wish us better luck next time?"

"You may indeed. Hurry home to bed, honey."

I hung up and looked into the bathroom in time to see Meyer sprinkle the last of his confetti and flush the toilet.

"The evidence is destroyed," said Meyer, with big smile and big sigh.

"And Santo has climbed on."

"May he enjoy the trip in good health. May he have asked a few friends to join him even."

I gave him my third of the other claim check and he put it carefully into a pocket of his wallet. "So tomorrow," he said, "I drive up to Broward Beach and go out A-One-A and find a place called the Annex, and at seven I am sitting at the bar, waiting for the pigeon. Correct?"

"Looking important and shifty. Correct."

"Shouldn't you ask me what it is I checked when I arrived for lunch? Don't you care?"

"I do now. Now that I know it must be interesting."

"Here is the scene. Mr. LaFrance rushes to the desk at the hotel. He has the three parts of the claim check taped together. He is panting, right?"

"His hands are trembling. He can't wait for Harry to give him the money," I said.

"So Harry takes the check and he doesn't come back with a big brown envelope. He comes back with a small white envelope. Number ten. Greeting card size. The envelope I checked when I arrived for lunch, so I could get a claim check, so you could make the substitution and tear it up into three pieces and give him one."

"Meyer, remember me? I know all this."

"Shut up. Let me enjoy. So he asks Harry, where is the brown envelope? Where is the money? So Harry says the other fellow claimed it ten minutes after it was checked. Yes, Mr. LaFrance, he had the right three pieces stuck together. He said I shouldn't mention to you that you lost the bet. I know, Mr. LaFrance, this check is torn in three pieces, too, but it isn't the check for the money. It's the check for this card."

"And so," I said, "stunned, bewildered, shocked, our Mr. LaFrance wobbles over to a lobby chair, falls into it and thumbs the white envelope open. Come on, Meyer! What does the card say?"

"Don't rush. It says on the front: 'Congratulations from the Gang at the Office.' You open it. Inside it says: 'It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.'"

"That is very wicked, Meyer."

"But the signature. That's the good part."

"What did you do? Forge my name?"

"Not exactly. He saw your houseboat. He saw the name. Inside the greeting card he finds five playing cards I took out of a deck. I threw the rest of the deck away. The five, six, seven and eight of hearts. And the king of clubs. Right? A busted flush?"

I looked at him admiringly. "Meyer, you have great class. You have an instinct for this kind of work."

"It was nothing, really. Just innate good taste, a creative mind, and high intelligence. It will make a nice signature anytime you want somebody to know who gave it to them good."

"From the talk out front I know you haven't gotten him yet. But have you gotten any kind of line on him, Sheriff?"

"What I got doesn't exactly boost up my spirits, mister. And it's no joy having every newspaper and TV and radio station yappin' on and on about Shawana County having a deputy that turned bad. And it didn't help any to have Monk Hazzard chewing me up long distance and telling me I was crazy as hell. But when I told him about car number three, it slowed him some."

"Where was it? I heard you found it."

"Just before sunset. The Highway Patrol chopper spotted it way over in the southwest corner of the county, run off into a marsh and bogged up to the top of the fenders. I got a call from the boys that went to check it out. There's little places along the lake shore there, spread out. They were checking all Ihe driveways and heard somebody yelling in one of the places. Retired couple, trussed up, scared, and inad as puckered owls. Seems that Freddy drove in, kmocked, real polite, a little after two in the afteriaoon. Asked to come in. Said it was on a complaint an the fish and game laws. Head-knocked them both, tied them up, stuck dishtowels in their mouths: The boys say it's a big tall old man, so his clothes fit Freddy good enough. Left the uniform. Put on the old man's best suit, packed a bag with other clothes and toilet articles. Picked up what money they had around. Thirty or forty dollars. Drove off in the county car. Came back on foot and drove off in their Iwo-year-old Plymouth station wagon. Said he seemed nervous. Told them he was sorry he had to do them that way. Seemed right sorry about it. The old man tongued the towel out of his mouth after a while. When he heard the boys drive down his drive, he started bellering. So we put the car and the clothes on the wire. From there he's twenty miles from the interstate. If he pushed it hard enough, he could have crossed into Georgia before we got the word out."

"Once they calm down," Tom said, "if we get all their stuff back to them and fix up anything busted or lost, and talk nice, they might not press charges."

"We sort of reconstructed the thing with Bannon," the sheriff said. "I say he must have come across Bannon on the road, hiking out to his place and told him he'd been foreclosed and his wife had took off on him; and he must have wanted to drive Bannon back here, but Bannon just wouldn't believe him and wanted a look, so when he insisted, Freddy drove him the rest of the way out. That would account for the fat girl thinking they were talking ugly to each other. Now I'd say Bannon lost his head and tried to bust into the place that used to be his. Now that's against the law and Freddy tried to gentle him some, but that was a lot of man and if he didn't drop with the first knock, and if he rushed Freddy, that boy in his excitement just swang too hard is all. Caved his head bone in, maybe. And he knew Tom and me had chewed him for being too goddang quick with that mail-order pacifier, and I guess Freddy just lost his head is all. Having that girl see how he covered it up was just plain bad luck."

"And was he in line to be the one to come to Lauderdale and bring me back if I was picked up there?"

The sheriff looked uneasy. "That was what was planned, mister."

"I guess I would have tried to open the car door and jump out when we were going seventy-five or eighty. After I got through bounding along the pavement, nobody'd find a little extra lump on my skull."

"Now you can't be sure that would have happened that way."

"I wonder why he told anybody about hearing from his Uncle Press that I was going to be here this morning?"

"Because," said Tom Windhorn, "he knows I play golf Sunday mornings in a foursome with Press LaFrance every week of my life, and Press knew we were hunting you, and Freddy knew there was no way in the world of stopping Press from telling me. So he brought it in first. And the fool thing about it is that Press never did play yesterday. He phoned in he was feeling poorly, too late for us to get somebody to fill out, and so they stuck some old coot in with us that couldn't hit the ground with his hat."

"That poor boy just had plain bad luck all the way around," I said. "He never did get a chance to kill me.

"He's no killer," the sheriff said. "He just lost his head some."

"Nice I get to keep mine. Find the stuff he picked up out at the cottages?"

The sheriff nodded. "It was at his place, under his clean shirts. The narcotics we got packed up to mail in for analysis. No case on that because, without Freddy we can't prove the chain of possession." He opened the shallow middle drawer of his desk and then held an envelope toward me. I reached and took it.

The color prints were sharp and clear. I leafed through them. They did not leave the feral and cynical impression that the posed product of the hardcore studios' induce. This was a tumble of aging children, most of them rather badly nourished. In spite of their placid, dazed, beatific smiles and grimaces, they were a kind of curious sadness, in their weird, bright patterns of love-paint on the scrawn of flesh, in their protest bangles and their disaffiliated bells, crushing the flower blossoms in a dreamy imitation of adult acts that for them had all been bleached of any significance or purpose. The rites of the strobe, frozen in such a sharpness it caught forever a wistful dirtiness of knuckles, the calico of bad bleach jobs, the moles and the blemishes and the sharp, helpless angle of shoulder blade. This was not a rebellion against mechanization, or emotional fraud. This was denying life itself in all eras and all cultures, and instead of being evil or outrageous was merely empty, bland and slightly saurian somehow, as though in a vain attempt to warm the blood that had begun to turn cooler in some gigantic and total regression that would take us all back through geological time, back into the sea where life began.

Said Tom, "Ain't that Arlie the damnedest sight a man would ever want to behold?"

"Unforgettable," I said, and put the envelope on the edge of the desk. "I've been waiting around to ask permission to leave your area, Sheriff. Here's the address where you can get me. I'll come back if you need me. But now I'd like to drive up to Frostproof and see Jan Bannon."

"Get your business done with Press?"

"Yes, thanks."

"Well… I guess there's no call to keep you waiting around. Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. McGee."

"Thank you for your courtesy and consideration, Sheriff."

When I phoned ahead, Connie said that Janine had heard the news and that she was very upset and puzzled. I said it would be well after midnight before I could make it, and she said that it had been too much of a long, hard day to wait up. I told her my day had been on the same order, and told her that everything had gone very smoothly so far.

It was ten after one when I got there and turned under the arch and through the glare of the gate light and drove to the big house. The night was cool and the stars looked high and small and indifferent.

Jan stood in the open doorway waiting for me. And she leaned up to rest her cheek for a moment against mine, with a quick, soft touch of her lips. "You must be exhausted, Trav!"

"And you shouldn't have waited up."

"I couldn't have slept."

I went in and sat down into the depth and softness of a big leather couch. There were two red embers among the silvery ashes of the hearth. She wore a floor-length navy robe with a white collar. She said, "Connie left orders to give you a great wallop of bourbon to unwind on." I said it sounded great. She drifted out of sight and I heard the clink of cubes and the guggle of a generous dose.

"Water?"

"Just the ice, thanks."

She brought it over and fixed the cushions at the end of the couch and told me to lie back and put my feet up. She moved a footstool close. The light behind her from the corner lamp, the only one on in the room, shone through the fine ends of her cropped black hair. Her face was in shadow.

I sipped the strong drink and told her about Deputy Hazzard. "That's what I couldn't believe," she said. "He and the older one, with the funny name. Not the Sheriff."

"Windhorn?"

"Yes. They were the ones who… came out with the padlocks and the notices. And he, the young one, seemed so very shy and nice and troubled about everything. There was no point in taking it out on them. They had their orders."

"Had he been out there before?"

"Several times, yes. To serve papers, and the time they checked to see about the licenses we have to have for the houseboats. A lanky boy with a long face, kind of a red, lumpy face, but sweet. But very official about what he had to do. All leather and jingling and creaking."

"That reconstruction of it doesn't fit," I said. "It doesn't fit Tush."

"I know. He never got mad that way. Not like me. I fly off the handle and want to hit everything I can reach. He'd just get very very quiet and sad-looking and he'd walk slowly away. It's better for me to… to be absolutely positive once and for all that he didn't kill himself, Trav. But it just seems to be such… a stinking trivial way to die, to be killed by that harmless-looking young man."

"Most of the ways people die are kind of dingy and trivial, Jan."

"It just shouldn't have been that way for Tush. But how in the world did that Freddy person get Arlie Denn to tell such an ugly lie about you? She always seemed to me to be sort of dull and placid. She never seemed mean or vicious or anything. It must have been horrible for her-watching like that. I would think she would just… have never told anybody at all, ever."

And that took some explaining and finally I managed to make her comprehend it, up to a point. But comprehension was comingled with revulsion. "But we let that wretched girl sit with our boys a lot of times! She could have taken something… and hurt them."

"I doubt it."

"What kind of people were those others? How old were they?"

"I'd say Roger and Arlie were the oldest. The others looked nineteen and twenty. And the one girl about fifteen or sixteen."

"What are they trying to do to themselves?"

"Drop out of the world. Hallucinate. Turn on. Dig the sounds and colors and feels. Be at one with the infinite something or other. I can't lay too big a knock on them, you know. In another sense I'm a dropout. I don't pay for my tickets. I jump over the turnstile."

"I think I've been dropped out somehow. For good."

"Now I am supposed to tell you about how you're a young woman still in your twenties with most of your life still ahead of you."

"Please don't."

"A guy will need you in the right way sometime." "Tell him not to really need me. That's when I run like a rabbit." She took my empty glass and said, "Another?"

"No. That one is going to do it."

"I made you talk too long. There's more I want to ask. But I'll wait until tomorrow."

She got up and took the glass away. I decided I'd better get up and head for bed while I could. I closed my eyes for a moment and opened them again and a high sun was shining and her middle boy was standing holding a saucer with both hands, and he had his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth to help with the chore of keeping the coffee from spilling out of the cup.

"Everybody's been up a long time," he said disdainfully. "Mom said bring you this and if I stood here, the smell would wake you up. I think it's a lousy crummy old smell and I'm never going to drink that stuff. Oh. Good morning."

My shoes had been removed, belt loosened, necktie removed, collar unbuttoned. There was a blanket over me. The lady had given me bourbon and loving care. I hoped that it would be at least another full year before I had to put a necktie back on.

I sat up and took the coffee.

"You spilled a little bit," he said. "I didn't."

"Like it here?"

"It's neat. Today there's a teacher's meeting, so we don't have to go on the bus. Charlie's going to let me ride on the tractor again with him. It's real neat. I gotta go." And he went at a full run.

I dialed Press LaFrance direct at twenty after ten.

I wanted him to have a lot of time to make some collections. Just as I was ready to hang up, he answered, out of breath.

"Who? Trav? Where are you? What's up?"

"Miami, boy. And I'm getting a little sweaty. Maybe we're in trouble!"

'How? My God, Trav, I thought everything was-"

"I've been making some long distance calls, Press. And it looks as if everything might go through okay. I was with Doctor Meyer a few minutes ago and he as much as admitted that he might wait until Roger Santo gets back from abroad and see if he wants to make a better deal on the side, a fatter deal for Meyer. I told you he's slippery."

"But what are we going to do?"

"If we play it his way, the way he suggested in the beginning, he'll move right ahead with it. But it has to be today. He's on his way up to Broward Beach. Do you know a place called The Annex?"

"Yes, but-"

"I had to take the chance, Press. I had to move fast. I gave him my third of the claim check. Now he's going to be at the bar at The Annex at seven o'clock tonight. I told him that you would meet him there and give him his damned sixty thousand in cash for the two thirds he's holding."