The Lime Pit (18 page)

"Do you know any names or places. Customers I
might talk to or houses where they might keep their store of little
boys and girls?"

Coral shook her head. "For a talkative man, Abel
could be mighty close-mouthed when it came to things that really
counted."

"Damn it!" I said. "I've got to meet
that girl tonight. And I need some kind of edge."

Coral looked about the room as if she were checking
to make sure that no one was listening. "You know about Escorts
Unlimited, right?"

I nodded. "And the office on Plum Street. And
the prostitution in Newport."

She shrugged. "Then I don't know what more I can
tell you. Abel was just a part-time handyman for them. I do know that
they had him working over in Kentucky. And that sometimes he'd be
gone for a couple of days at a time. But, knowing Abel like I do,
that could mean any number of things."

I swallowed the rest of the drink and put the glass
down on one of the liquor boxes. "Well, I gave it a try anyway.
I'll just have to bluff it out with what I've got."

"Hold on a second," Coral said. "Do
you know about the other one?"

For a second I didn't know what she was talking
about, what that slightly sinister phrase meant. But it chilled me
just the same. "What do you mean?"

"The partner," she said, looking anxiously
into her drink. "The other one."

"Whoa!" I said and it was as if I'd gotten
a second wind on that hot, windless afternoon.

She looked up from her glass and smiled broadly when
she'd realized that she'd given me something I could use. "Don't
go asking me what his name is. Hell, I don't even know for sure if
he's a he! But I do know that someone else works with them. Abel knew
his name. And I had the feeling that he was the brains behind the
escort service."

"What does he look like, this partner?"

"Oh, Harry," she said, and I thought she
would cry. "Honey, I just don't know."

"Do you know why they wanted Abel to get rid of
those pictures--like the one of Cindy Ann?"

She bit her lip. "They didn't need those
pictures--the ones with just the girls in them. There were others
that they'd keep."

"For blackmail?"

She nodded.

"Where did they take these pictures?" I
asked her.

"That I don't know."

"And you don't know the name of their silent
partner?"

"I'm sorry. Abel would know. But you're not
likely to see him again. And I know I sure as hell don't want to see
him." She looked so damn eager to please that I began to feel
guilty for making what, after all, was nothing more to her than a
show of gratitude into a full-scale exam. So I let up, feeling
content with what I'd learned, and changed the subject.

"You're taking off with that big Oakie?"

"Uh-huh." She grinned and her whole body
relaxed. "What does he do for a living--your Bobby?"

"He's got prospects, Harry."

She said it in a way that made me think that she'd
said the same thing many times before. For just a second, I think she
caught the echo, too. And her dark, handsome face reddened with the
memory of all the Abels and the Bobbies and their prospects that
never turned out. When she realized that I was thinking the same
thing, she blushed more deeply and looked up at me with a touch of
defiance in her eyes.

"I better be going," I said quickly. "You
take care of yourself, Coral. And if you ever need a detective, give
me a call."

"I'll remember that," she said,
brightening. "But we'll be halfway to Colorado by tonight, so it
isn't likely we'll be seeing each other again."

I guess, finally, we were both glad of that. We said
goodbye. Bobby came stomping onto the porch and pounded on a newel
post like a jealous stag sharpening his antlers on a tree trunk. I
went out. He went in, slamming the screen door behind him. And I
walked back up the marl slope to the car, thinking I'd learned a lot
more than I'd expected for one short morning.
 
 

17

I DROVE down to the Riorley Building after finishing
with Coral. There was exactly one letter beneath the mail slot on the
anteroom floor--a bulk-mailed circular urging me to vote for the
right-to-work law--and there was one call on the answerphone from a
woman identifying herself as Ulgine Ruhl. Ulgine spoke with the
sweet, nasal lilt of a soloist in a Baptist church choir. "I
wanchu to find my Wilmer for me," she began. "'Cause. .."
And that was it. She must have changed her mind about Wilmer in the
middle of the sentence, when she couldn't think of one good reason
why she wanted him back. I was proud of her. Wilmer was no good-a
high-stepper with a checked tam and a gold eye-tooth and a taste for
the booze and the ladies. She was better off without him.

I spent a quarter of an hour running through
scenarios for the evening--how I would time my disclosures and how
much I would disclose. I was feeling so good I decided that I
wouldn't even bother bringing a photograph. I would simply go with
what I already knew and make them guess about the hard evidence.

Around two I walked down to the coffee shop in the
lobby and traded stories with Lou Billings, my dentist, who has an
office on the third floor of the Riorley. Preston LaForge seemed to
be the topic of every conversation in the room, which wasn't
surprising; and eventually Lou got around to him, too. Jim Dugan, a
courthouse lawyer who also has an office in the Riorley, dropped by
just as Lou began to theorize about LaForge's motives.

"I'll tell you, Lou," he said. "Something's
not kosher about the whole thing."

"Why do you say that?" I asked him.

"Scuttlebut." Dugan leaned across the table
and whispered, "They found some strange gear in LaForge's
apartment. But the Bengals' brass is trying to keep a lid on it.
Looks like he was a little ..." Dugan rotated his hand in that
classic gesture of equivocation.

Lou sat back in his chair and looked hurt. "No.
I don't believe it. Not LaForge."

Dugan shrugged. "I'm just telling you what I
heard. And I'll tell you something else. He wasn't alone last night
when he did it. He had company."

I squirmed a little in my chair. "Are they
saying who?"

Dugan shook his head and jabbed at his horn-rim
glasses with a meaty forefinger. "Could be they're not saying
for the same reason they're not talking about what they found in his
bedroom."

That was enough to get me interested.

I told Lou I had an appointment to keep, paid my
chit, and walked uptown to the Courthouse.

It was a lazy Monday on Courthouse Square. Outside of
a guard or two manning the gazebo-like information booth on the first
floor, there was very little traffic inside the arcade. There wasn't
much doing on the second floor either. Most of the old hands from the
D.A.'s office were out for lunch, but I did spot one familiar face,
Carrie Harris's, coming out of an office marked "Private."

"Long time no see," I called to her.

She stopped in front of the frosted glass door and
glared at me with foot-tapping impatience.

We'd never been good friends, Carrie and I. We'd
never hit it off. She was bright, bitchy, and pretty in a smug,
aggressive way--one of those attractive women whose charm and beauty
are as depthless as stamped tin, the kind whose dark speculative eyes
are always finishing conversations before they've begun. In the six
years since I'd quit working in the same office with her, she'd found
a suitable object for her attention--a young assistant D.A. named
Harris, who had a thin crocodilean smile and a solid political
future. But old grudges die hard. And I could see from the bare
tolerance on Carrie's face that she hadn't forgotten the bad feeling
between us.

"Got a minute?" I asked her.

She glanced at her watch. "Maybe half of one."

"I hear you got married. Congratulations."

She shrugged, just as I thought she would. The ring
was already chafing her finger, and that gave me something to work
with.

"Marriage not all it's cracked up to be, huh?"
I said sympathetically.

She smiled a tight-lipped smile and ducked tier head.
She couldn't pass up the opportunity to cornplain, not Carrie.

I took her by the arm and she looked suitably
mortified; then she struggled with her conscience for half a second
and won; and down we went, the spider and the fly, to the Courthouse
coffee shop to talk over old times and new.

By the time Carrie and I had finished our talk it was
close to four. I'd heard all about Dick, about what a well-hung beast
he was and about how Carrie kept feeling that there had to be
something "more"--meaningful glance--to a man-woman
"thing." Not that she was a prude. Far from it. She loved
sex and she loved to do it in funny places and she was always
protected. And, so on.

I got a little hot under the collar. I'll admit it.
Carrie Harris was a sexy lady and she liked to flaunt it. She was
also personal secretary to Walker Parsons, the district attorney.
Between intimacies, I managed to pump her about Preston LaForge.

They knew all about Preston down at the D. A.'s
office. He had quite an arrest record. Indecent carriage. Soliciting
minors. D & D's. Window peeping. Just about every unsavory
misdemeanor on the books. But there had been no convictions, because
none of the charges brought against Preston had ever been pressed.
He'd been too valuable to the Bengals and to the city; so he'd gotten
away with a handslap and a promise to behave.

I could have guessed that much from what I'd seen of
him. What I would have had trouble guessing was what the cops had
found in his bedroom. Good old Preston had kept a photo collection of
his own on the dresser. And chief among his mementos were snapshots
of an unknown sixteen-year-old girl with a thin, avaricious face.
There were dozens of them, Carrie said. Most picturing carnal and
sadistic acts between the girl and Preston.

What I never could have guessed was what they found
with those photographs.

On the dresser, beside the cache of photos, was a
little note in Preston's childlike hand. The gist of it was that he
had murdered the girl in the pictures one drunken night, mutilated
the body, dropped it in the murky Ohio, and now felt so guilty about
what he had done that he couldn't live with himself. And, so, he had
bid the world goodnight, had Preston LaForge.

There was some indication that the apartment had been
visited after Preston had gone to his reward. But, aside from that,
the Preston LaForge suicide seemed to be a closed case. In fact, the
D.A. was getting a court order that very afternoon to start dredging
the Ohio down by the locks.

"There's no chance that the suicide was faked,
is there?" I said, trying to sound cool and casual and not doing
a very good job of it. "That the note was forged?"

She shook her head. "The forensic team went over
the whole place three times. They wanted to be sure. Walker told them
to make absolutely sure." She wrinkled her nose. "You
wouldn't believe how disappointed he was when the ballistics team and
the coroner and the handwriting people said that murder was out. Can
you imagine how much hay he could have made out of prosecuting
Preston LaForge's murderer? Preston LaForge, for Christ's sake! He
walked around all morning in a black funk. It was as if he'd lost the
nomination for governor."

"And the other people in the house--the ones who
arrived after the suicide?"

"We don't know for sure. But it appears they
didn't stay for more than a few minutes. Just time enough to spot the
body and vamoose."

"Nothing was taken?"

She shook her head. "Why are you so interested,
Harry?"

"Well, after all," I said with grim humour.
"Preston LaForge!"

"It is hard to believe, isn't it'"' Carrie
said. "You'd think a man like that could have found other ways
to amuse himself."

"Yeah. You'd think so."

"There's probably no chance of finding the body
now. That's what Dick says. Not after a week or so in the river.
There are so many backwaters and marshy spots and things. It'll
probably pop up by itself a year from now--all slick and bloated."
She shivered and pressed my hand for comfort. "I wonder who she
was?"

"Just a girl," I said with a heavy heart.
"Who was very unlucky."

"I guess so,"
Carrie Harris said.

***

I got back to the office around four-thirty. Although
I'd been expecting it, Cindy Ann's murder had shocked me. Preston
LaForge just hadn't seemed as if he'd had that kind of violence in
him. Crazy he had been, without a doubt. But crazy enough to murder a
teenage girl? To mutilate her body? Then to pretend that he was going
to rescue the girl he himself had killed? That was crazy with a big
C, as a psychiatrist friend once put it. But, then, I was being crazy
with a little c to dispute what was indisputable. The girl was dead.
LaForge was dead by his own hand, with a note of apology pinned to
his sleeve. Even a die-hard sentimentalist, suspicious of any theory
that confutes what the heart and the gut say must be so, balks at the
cold fact of death.