The Lime Pit (15 page)

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe an hour
or two."

"You're still angry, aren't you?"

I was, though I pretended not to be. She wasn't the
real reason I was angry, anyway. I was worried about what was waiting
for me on Celestial. I could show up and find Lance Jellicoe sitting
on the stoop. It wasn't all that likely, not if Preston hadn't done
something foolish like waving the Vice Squad at the Jellicoes. But
the melancholy bravado in his voice had made me nervous. While Jo was
in the kitchenette, I went over to the desk and got a .38 caliber
Police Special out of the right-hand drawer. I slipped it in my coat
pocket and pulled a hat from the rack.

"Wait!" Jo shouted.

She came running up to me at the door and kissed me
hard on the mouth.
I laughed. "The
iconoclast's farewell?"

"Just be careful,
Harry. Please. I don't care about broken idols. I just want you to
come back in one piece."

***

It was, indeed, a very nasty night out there.

The wind was shaking the dogwoods as I walked out the
front door, and the footpath that led to the rear lot was slick with
waxy leaves. I was soaked to the skin before I got to the Pinto.

It took me twenty minutes to get to Mt. Adams and
another five to wind my way around the crabbed streets to Celestial
and the Vicarage.

The courtyard was bright and wet and full of rain and
of the sound the rain made as it exploded against the cobbling. Most
of the light was coming from the rear windows of the five or six
condos that faced away from the river and toward Hyde Park. There
were dark figures in some of those yellow windows, but the wind-blown
rain was smeared like jam on the glass. I couldn't tell a man from a
woman, much less make out a face.

I cracked the car door open and made a quick dash to
the sweet-smelling cedar tunnel that led to LaForge's apartment. The
rain made a drum-like sound inside the tunnel, which was lit brightly
by a series of lanterns strung along the west wall. I wiped the water
off my face and shook my sleeve out and started down the walkway and,
right away, I could see that something was very wrong.

There were two condos on the west side of the tunnel.
The one at the rear was LaForge's, and its door was wide open and
banging in the wind. I shivered through my wet coat and pulled the
revolver out of my pocket and edged down the hall to the open door.

There were no lights on inside the LaForge apartment,
but as I neared the door I could hear a woman's recorded voice
singing softly. I ducked down beside the frame. If there was someone
inside waiting, I would make a perfect target coming through the
door. For at least a second, I'd be framed like a picture and
illuminated by the light from the small lantern hanging on the outer
wall. I stood up, back pressed against the redwood, and, reaching to
my right, cracked a pane of the lantern with the gun butt. The glass
made a bright tinkling sound as it hit the walkway and the last third
of the tunnel went dark.

I ducked back down immediately and, pressing an arm
against my torso to reduce the size of the target I'd make, I swung
around the door frame, rolled onto the cream-colored carpet and
flattened myself against the floor.

There wasn't a sound inside but the sweet singing
voice from the record, which I now recognized as Barbra Streisand's
voice. The rain was cascading down the great triangular window across
the room from me, but some diffuse light was filtering through from
neighboring condos. As my eyes adjusted to it, I made out Preston
LaForge lying in the center of the room beneath the cathedral-like
vault of the ceiling. Something about the stillness of that body sent
a thrill of horror down my spine. I crept about five feet into the
room and listened for the sounds of breathing or of movement.

There wasn't any sound but the rain. And, as my heart
beat slowed down and the hair-raising prickle of adrenalin washed out
of my system, I realized that there probably wasn't going to be any
sound but the rain. Not with that body lying in the center of the
room and the front door wide open. Whoever had been there before me
had left in a rush. Either appalled by what was lying on the floor or
frightened away from what he or she had done. On the surface, it
didn't look like a murder or, if it had been, it was a pretty sloppy
one, executed on the spur of the moment. High class killers rarely
leave doors open or track up cream-colored rugs. There was muddy
scuffing on the floor, just visible in the thin greenish light.

I didn't want to do it, but it had to be done. And
quickly, if I was to get out of that building without being spotted.
And God knew, I didn't want to be spotted. Not with a gun in my
pocket and a dead body in the room and a snapshot floating around
somewhere which could be traced back to me. I pocketed the revolver
and walked quickly over to the window and examined Preston LaForge
for any sign of life. The rain-filtered light streaked his face,
making, it look like something seen through the glass of an
ayuarhui;. One side of it looked as boyish as it had when I'd seen
him that afternoon. The blue eye was open and placid. The other side
had no eye and no shape and I didn't look at it long. His babyish
mouth had fallen open in an aghast grin and a thick smear of blood
covered the chin and flowed down the neck and pooled in a shiny spot
on the rug.

That was one stain he wasn't going to get out. Ever.
The poor, sad, son-of-a-bitch.

I took a long look at the body, trying to fix it and
everything around it in my mind. A small caliber automatic was lying
near LaForge's hand. There were foot-tracks beside his left shoulder
and throughout the room. The record was playing "Until the Right
Man Comes Along." There were no lit cigarettes in ashtrays.
There was a whiskey glass on the glass coffee table in front of the
couch. There was something else on the coffee table. Something white.

A tremendous crack of thunder made me jump, and I
almost stepped in the pool of Preston LaForge's blood. I walked
quickly to the coffee table and pulled a damp handkerchief from my
pocket. And used it to pick up the piece of paper sitting on the
table. There was a name written on it and a phone number. It said
"Tracy" and underneath the name was written "8997010."
I dropped the slip of paper back on the coffee table and repeated the
phone number as I walked back to the door.

It's best to do these things boldly, I told myself. A
ridiculous thing to say, since "these things" happen once
in a lifetime. But it gave me a vague sense of confidence.

I stepped out into the tunnel and just kept walking
briskly across the courtyard to the Pinto. I didn't look up or right
or left. If anyone could see me through the rain, it wouldn't do me a
damn bit of good if I saw him, too. I got in the car and pulled out
and didn't turn on any lights until I was well onto Celestial with
the Vicarage a block behind me.
 
 

14

"IT SHOULDN'T have happened this way."

That was the first thing I told myself, when I felt
like I could talk again without my throat backing up.

I was sitting in the car on the Ida Street viaduct
across from Tracy Leach's white stucco dream house. And I'd been
sitting there for ten minutes--smoking Chesterfields, drinking from a
flask I keep in the glove compartment, and trying to calm down.

"It shouldn't have happened this way," I
said again. "No one should have been hurt."

It was logic meant for a dead man with a broken face,
who wasn't going to be convinced by the argument or appeased by the
tone of apology, and it made me feel sick and sad all over again to
say it. I stared out at the rain from the seat of the Pinto and felt
bad for Preston LaForge.

Yet, I knew I had to be right, that it shouldn't have
happened, that LaForge shouldn't have been dead, and that that damn
girl should have been sitting on the car seat next to me. But that's
the trouble with the subjunctive mood; it's always one tempo ahead of
or behind the inexorable, shouldless flow of events.

"I should have had her!" I said aloud. But
she wouldn't be convinced either. And it was just more bad philosophy
to blame her or Hugo for what had happened. They weren't responsible.
I wasn't sure who was.

People killed themselves every day. Even people with
as much to live for as Preston LaForge. And it was barely possible
that his death didn't have anything to do with me or the girl or the
Jellicoes. Barely possible. But not likely. What was likely was that
a plan which should have worked with minimal risk had ended in death.
And it had been my plan; so, to the degree that I'd fobbed it off on
Preston LaForge, I was feeling responsible.

It wasn't as if he'd gone into the whole thing
blindfolded, with me prodding him with a gun in his back. I knew for
a fact that he had weighed the risks. And in good company, too. Tracy
Leach, Preston's "Tray," was not the innocent girlfriend I
had pictured earlier that afternoon. Judging from what LaForge had
said over the phone, she was as familiar with the Jellicoes'
operation as Preston had been. And, therefore, should have been
qualified to judge how far Lance and Laurie could be pushed before it
came to shove. She'd apparently approved LaForge's strategy late that
day, when he'd come visiting in his Ralph Lauren outfit. Which meant
that something that neither she nor Preston had anticipated had gone
wrong enough to drive Preston to suicide or to drive the Jellicoes to
murder him. And it was that something that made me breathe more
easily, because it was that something that I could never have
foretold. Whatever it was, it was somehow connected to a red-haired
sixteen-year-old girl with a thin, avaricious face and a market value
that seemed to keep soaring far beyond any reasonable estimate.
Whatever it was, it was unpredictable and fatal. And, in the rain and
the dark, Tracy Leach had seemed like one of the few people who might
be able to guess.

At ten-thirty, I got out of the car and dashed
through the storm to the Chinese-red door of the Leach house. Lights
were 119on on the first floor, but no one answered my knock. I tried
the doorbell, knocked again, and suddenly realized that Tray wasn't
going to answer no matter how many times I banged at the door. In a
bizarre way, Preston LaForge had told me why. He wouldn't have needed
to write down her phone number. Not if he had a key to the house.
Which meant that Tracy Leach was out for the evening and that the
number I'd memorized belonged to the home she was visiting.

Deep down I was glad she wasn't home. Glad because I
didn't want to break the news to her. Glad because I didn't want to
press her into service, at least not on that unlucky night. Glad
because if she wouldn't cooperate, if Preston's death didn't shake
her into action, I'd have to try the same ploy on her that I'd used
on LaForge. Tell her that I knew that same dirty, ruinous secret and
that I'd tell the world if she wouldn't play along.

Hugo or no Hugo, Cindy Ann
simply wasn't worth it. Not to me. Not on that night.

***

Jo looked shaken when I unlocked the front door of my
apartment. She'd been sitting by the phone in front of the rolltop
desk and, when I trudged through the door, she jumped to her feet and
threw her arms around me.

"You'll get wet," I said softly.

She held me at arm's length and looked me over.
"Thank God, you're all right. You are all right, aren't you?"

I shook the hat off and pegged it on the rack and
said, "I guess I am," without much conviction.

"I heard it on the radio about an hour after you
left. A neighbor found him in the living room. I couldn't believe it!
Preston LaForge!" She pulled me against her. "Then I got
that damn phone call and I didn't know what--"

"What phone call?"

She pointed to a yellow tablet on the desk. "I
wrote it down for you. He said you should call him tonight."

I walked over to the rolltop and read what was
written on the tablet. "Lance Jellicoe called," it said.
"At 10:30. Has to talk with you about tonight."

"That man had a brutal voice," Jo said
nervously.

"He's a very brutal man." I told her.

"Then why...?"

Jo looked at mime haplessly. She was being better
than considerate. She was being good, in the reformed, touching way
that children are good after an argument or an ugly scene. It moved
me enough to want to tell her everything she was dying to know. And I
told her that I would, as I picked up the phone and dialed Jellicoe's
number.

Jellicoe answered on the fifth ring in a grumpy,
inhospitable voice. He sounded edgy and just the slightest bit
confused, as if he weren't quite sure he wanted to talk with anyone.
I could understand that, especially if he thought the police might be
calling.

"This is Stoner," I said to him.

His voice toughened a little. "You go by
LaForge's apartment?"

"Yeah."

"Then you seen what happened to him. Before you
call the police, I want you to know that Laurie and me had nothing to
do with that. You hear? Nothing. Don't make no difference if you
believe me. Truth is, I like Preston. He was a good ol' boy. He had
his faults, but meanness wasn't one of them."