The Lime Pit (17 page)

I stepped back from the door and looked down at
myself ruefully, at those clothes I had hand-picked for Miss Tracy
Leach. I wanted to laugh, but I knew that if I did he'd start
kicking. It was an awful joke, anyway. And if I hadn't been such a
sentimentalist, I would have seen it coming sooner. Serves you right,
I told myself, for making the world over in your own image.

"Uh ... you're Tracy Leach," I said.
"Aren't you?" He nodded.

"I'm sorry about the mistake in gender, Mr.
Leach. No joke was intended. I was under the impression that Tray was
a girl."

"Tray!" he said and squinted at me. "Do
I know you?"

"No. But I knew Preston LaForge and he mentioned
your name to me."

Leach winced at Preston's name and gripped his belly.
"You're the detective!" he said in a pained, aghast voice.
"You're the one who got him killed!"

Leach bent forward and straightened suddenly, as if
something had locked inside his spine. He let out a blood-curdling
yell and sent his left, shoeless foot flying toward my head.

He shouldn't have yelled. They say that's supposed to
freeze your target, but it only made me jump. The foot whistled by my
temple and I went charging forward, knocking him off his right leg
and back into the house.

He went down on his butt and I pinned him with my
body, but not very successfully. He just kept yelling and kicking and
throwing his head around like a frenzied child. Some of those kicks
were finding their mark on my ankles and on my legs and dangerously
close to my knees.

"Cut it out!" I shouted at him.

When he didn't stop, I clipped him hard--a
foreshortened right cross that landed on the tip of his chin.

His body went limp and his head lolled to the carpet.

"Jesus Christ!" I said as I got to my feet.

I rubbed my sore legs and took a quick look at Tray.
He wasn't going to start kicking again for a few minutes at least,
which gave me a moment or so to examine the room. It was a
rose-colored parlor, an old-fashioned sitting room, furnished
predictably with Chinese screens and Beardsley prints and velvet
Victorian settees with inlaid burl and carved oriental teak boxes
with brass handles and an oversized rosewood chiffonier filled with
expensive knicknacks. It was a rich, eccentric old woman's room--many
homosexuals have a dowager's taste in furnishings, but flashier, like
the old woman discovered sex at the age of seventy. It depressed me.
Tracy Leach depressed me. And so did Preston LaForge. The
all-American boy.

It didn't look like Tray was going to come out of it
on his own, so I grabbed him by the collar of his waiter's jacket and
dragged him over to one of those squat Chinese boxes. There was a
silver bowl on top of it, filled with water and floated with rose
petals. I dumped the whole thing on Leach's head and stepped back.

He sputtered and shook and wiped the petals off his
face.

Leach sat up when he'd gotten his bearings and looked
in horror at the rug. "These things are expensive," he
blubbered. "Who's going to pay to have this cleaned?" He
got slowly to his feet and stared at the waterspot on the carpet.

"Why don't you have Oscar come in and
redecorate?" I said drily.

Leach looked at me with surprise. "You know
Oscar?" I laughed in spite of myself.

"There's nothing funny about this." Leach
kneeled down and prodded the carpet.

For a split second I had the feeling he was about to
attack me again. So I said to him, "Don't try it, Tracy."
"Bully," he said, straightening up.

I folded my arms and shook my head at him. "That's
always the way it is with you guys, isn't it? The world's always
divided into two camps--the bullies and the gays."

"That happens to be the way it is."

"Don't make me sick, Tray," I said. "I
know too much about you to fall for that put-upon crap. You buy
little boys and girls. Just like Preston did. You probably shared a
few with him, calling him up like a housewife passing along a good
recipe. So don't get self-righteous with me."

Tracy Leach squeezed a little rose-water out of his
sleeves and walked over to one of the velvet settees. "What do
you want from me?" he said.

"Some information about the Jellicoes."

He sat down delicately on the edge of a cushion and
looked disbelievingly into my face. "You must think I'm crazy.
You saw what happened to Pres. Why in God's name do you think I would
try the same thing?"

I shrugged. "I thought maybe you'd want to do
something for a dead friend."

"Like what?" he said viciously.

"Like finding out who killed him."

"He killed himself," Leach said. "Preston
would have killed himself someday no matter what I or anyone else
did." He took a husky, sorrowful breath and sat up on the
settee. "He just couldn't handle being gay. He'd do stupid,
dangerous things. Make jokes, expose himself publicly. All he ever
really wanted was to be caught and ... sent home." Leach
massaged his face as if it were a knotted muscle. "I'm not like
Preston, Mr. --"

"Stoner."

"Stoner. I made my choice, if you can call it
that, early in life. And most of the time, I'm not ashamed of it or
disturbed by it. You asked me before how deep my loyalties went.
Well, you won't understand it, but I loved Preston and I tried to
protect him while he was alive. Now ..." Leach dropped his hands
to the settee.

I studied him for a second. Muscling the poor bastard
wasn't going to help Cindy Ann Evans. I reached into my pocket and
pulled out a card and set it on the Chinese box. "All right,
Tray. Call me if you change your mind."

"I won't, you know," he said. "I don't
know why I should say this. I don't like you. And I don't approve of
what you did to Preston. But, if you're smart, you'll leave this
alone. They're a ruthless pair. And if you keep investigating this
girl's disappearance, they will kill you.

"Now get out," he said. "Get out and
leave me alone."

I walked through the front door into the bright July
sun and tried to think of one good reason why I shouldn't find
another line of work.
 
 

16

I WAS out along the river in half an hour, coasting
past the barren industrial landscape of Riverview--past the big oil
depots and the railroad yards, where the track smiled savagely in the
noon sun. And then the tanks and the tank cars vanished, and I could
see the river again, the somber brown Ohio, as it jaunted southwest
down the roller-coaster slope of the Kentucky line.

Five more miles due west and I came to the lonely
frame house on the clay flats. I pulled over to the embankment, cut
the engine and just sat, for a moment, on the seat--smelling the
river again as it was borne in across the desolate yard and up the
marl slope. But this time it didn't carry the jungle smells with
it--the rot and the diesel oil and the burnt-grass smell of the LZs.
This time, the smells were like the fulsome smells of Tray Leach's
Spanish house and of the missing girl herself. The smells of a sweet
and secret decay, half-hidden, half-wanting to be found. And for more
than a moment, I considered nakedly what I was really trying to find.
A corpse, lying like the black, charred tire in the yard of Abel
Jones's house? A killer? A conspiracy? But that wasn't it. The little
man knew better, especially after learning what he had about Leach
and Preston LaForge. He wanted the source. He wanted Nick himself by
the nose.

Suddenly, I was for it, again. For what I couldn't
explain to Jo. For what I can't even explain to myself. For finding
all secret, evil things and making them known.

A shirtless man had come out on the porch of Jones's
house and, with one hand shading his eyes, was gazing up at the
Pinto. Even from a hundred yards away I could tell that he wasn't
Jones. His hair was too light and too long and his skin had been
burned to the color of a mahogany door by the sun. He stared at me
for a minute and then started up the slope, moving with great,
bearlike swipes of his arms. I got out of the Pinto when he was about
twenty-five feet away and leaned against the door handle with one
hand holding the pistol in my coat pocket. I wasn't going to have any
trouble asking questions of this one--he'd do all the talking, at
least at first. It was what happened after he finished that had me a
little worried. He was a big strapping kid, and the closer he got the
fiercer he looked.

"What is it you're looking for?" he said
when he got up to me. He was older than I thought. Maybe thirty.
Brown-haired, high-cheeked, with a touch of Indian blood in his
swarthy face.

"I'm looking for Coral Jones," I said to
him. "She knows who I am."

"I don't," he said plainly. "Maybe you
better tell me what your business is."

"My name's Stoner. Coral is helping me find a
missing girl."

"Shoot, you'd better find him first," the
man said.

"Abel?"

"Yeah."

"He's gone?" I said.

"All weekend."

"And Coral?"

He colored a little on his high cheeks. Just enough
to give me the feeling that he wasn't sure how to answer the
question. Or, perhaps, how Coral would want him to answer it.

"Maybe you'd better talk to the lady," he
said at last.

Down we went into the yard, where the Falcon sat next
to the frame porch. Then up onto the porch and into the hallway.

There had been a few changes since the last time I'd
been there. Most of the portable items--the fairground mementos-had
been packed away in liquor boxes, half a dozen of which were stacked
on the living room floor. The larger furniture had been covered with
throws.

Coral Jones, her head wrapped in a plaid scarf, was
bending over one of the boxes when I walked into the room. She was
wearing tight bluejeans and a man's workshirt, which she'd knotted at
her waist instead of tucking into the jeans. She smiled, a friendly
smile, when she saw me and said to the shirtless man, "Bobby, go
out for awhile."

"You sure, Coral?" he said, warning her
with his eyes that I was trouble.

"I'm sure, honey. You go on."

He let out a steamy breath, looked bothered and,
then, walked out the front door. "I won't be far off," he
called over his shoulder.

"Isn't he the sweetest," Coral said with a
giggle.

"Where'd you find him?" I said.

"Well, I got to thinking after you left how
little I was looking forward to Abel poking me in the eye. And I said
to myself, 'Girl, you don't have to take that, either.' So, when he
got sober, I just told him we were quits. He took it better than I
thought he would. Or worse. I guess it depends on your point of view.
Anyway, he left more than two days ago and I haven't seen him since."

Coral patted one of the boxes. "I'm moving
away," she said brightly. "Going to make a fresh start,
like I told you. That's how I met Bobby. He's helping me move out.
He's a nicelooking boy, isn't he?" She peeked out the front
door to where Bobby was marching back and forth in the yard. "A
little young," she said with a blush. "But he's sure enough
willing."

"I'll bet."

Coral laughed. "I guess I owe all of this to
you, in a way. What brings you around here, anyway?"

"I need some help, Coral," I told her.
"Things just haven't been falling my way, lately. And I need
some help."

"About that girl?" she said.

I nodded.

Coral pointed to the couch and I sat down. "You
want a drink? I've got a bottle right over here."

She lifted a half-filled quart of Old Grandad from
behind the couch and plucked two glasses out of a crate. "Here,"
she said, handing me a glass.

She plopped down on the couch beside me and curled
up, like a cat making herself comfortable. "So what can I do for
you?"

I took a quick look at her--brown and pretty and
fairly bursting her shirt and slacks. And she smiled shyly, as if to
say that it was all right if that's what I wanted. And, I suppose, a
huge disloyal part of me did. But then I thought of Jo and felt
properly chastened. Absurd, in this insanely picaresque universe, to
obligate yourself to one person, to make up loyalties that time
itself, not to mention whim, chance or change of weather, will
explode like hurtled glass. Absurd, I told myself. And knew that it
was even more absurd to protest. So, I shook my head sadly and
balefully and said, "I'm probably crazy, Coral. But what I want
from you is some information."

"I'd like to help you if I can."

"Then tell me all you know about Laurie and
Lance Jellicoe. Because things have changed since Friday. A man is
dead. That girl may be dead. Both at their hands."

"Could be," Coral said. "Like I told
you before, they're a rough pair, although, from what I've seen,
murder's not exactly their style."

"What is their style?"

"Blackmail," she said. "Blackmail and
raw sex. They've got quite a list of customers, too, from what Abel
used to tell me. Abel liked that part best. He liked to see the
mighty brought low. Hell, Abel liked to see anyone brought low."