The Long Lavender Look

by John D. MacDonald

  So what do you do? The big soft sleepy deputy shifted in his chair, creaking it. One thing you do is stop thrashing and flapping. You back up a couple of steps, tuck the elbows in, get the jaw out of range.

  “Question?” I asked.

  “Can you change your mind about your rights? Yes. At any time.”

  “That wasn’t what I was going to ask.”

  “What then?”

  “I can tell you exactly what I did with that envelope, where, and when. But I don’t know you, Hyzer. It’s planted evidence. You had somebody dance Meyer around. I don’t like the way you think. I don’t like the way you do your job. If I don’t want to answer any more questions, and if you have nothing to do with the plant, then you are going to be that much more convinced you’ve got the right people to make your case. But if I tell you about the envelope, and you are in on building the case against us any way you can, then you can listen to the truth and go plug the holes in your evidence. I don’t even know if this is going onto tape and, if it is, whether you erase the ones you don’t like. I’m boxed because I can’t figure out what you are, so I don’t know which way to go. You talk about some action four years ago, something we are supposed to have planned with this Baither. Check us out. There’s no record of any convictions.”

  “Which means only that up until now you haven’t made any serious mistakes, McGee.”

  “So why, Sheriff, would I go to all the trouble of faking up this wedding story and having the fishing gear and the bass in the car, just to come sneaking into your county after dark to knock off a recent graduate of Raiford? Where’s the sense to it?”

  “About nine hundred thousand dollars worth of sense, which you are quite aware of. And the chance you might have to go through a roadblock on your way out of the area with it. Misdirection, McGee. A car so conspicuous no fool would use it for this kind of purpose. Fresh bass packed in ice. It should have worked, McGee.”

  So another shaft of light in the murk. That much money is worth a lot of care and attention. And it could maybe buy a matched set of Hyzers.

  “I think I’d better stop right now, Sheriff. I’d like to phone an attorney.”

  “A particular attorney?”

  “Yes. In Miami. He’ll accept a collect call.”

  “May I have his name?”

  “Leonard Sibelius.”

  I looked for a change of expression. Nothing. He said, “You can make your call at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, McGee.”

  “Why not now? Isn’t that a violation of my civil rights?”

  “It would be if you’d been booked, and I’d turned your file over to the State’s attorney for indictment by the grand jury. You chose to answer questions. You’ve been in custody for interrogation since eight-forty hours this morning.”

  “Tomorrow is Saturday, Sheriff.”

  “The twenty-fifth. King, have Priskitt put him in a single twelve or fourteen, and move somebody if he has to. I want no contact between McGee and Meyer.”

  I fitted the two parts of the big deputy’s name together. King Sturnevan. I looked at him again and made sure. I’d seen him fight years ago at Miami Beach, at about two hundred then. Maybe sixty pounds heavier now. A spoiler, a mawler. Looked slow, but surprisingly hard to hit. Clever on the ropes and in the clinches, ripping those hooks up into the body, snuffing and grunting with the effort. Would have done better in the division except he had a tendency to cut, which put too many TKO’s on his record. So the smart way they took him was to put the little twist of the wrist on the end of the jab, hoping to open up his brows before he bombed their innards to pulp.

  “Sheriff, would you please tell this fat, sloppy, old pug not to try to do me the way he did Meyer? Lennie Sibelius can give you enough trouble without that, too.”

  “There were three witnesses to your partner’s accident, McGee. He had taken his shower. He was stepping into the issue coveralls when he lost his balance and fell, striking his face on the wooden bench in the shower room.”

  “Then I guess if the same thing happened to me, it would look like a strange coincidence.”

  He didn’t answer. He picked up the phone. Sturnevan beckoned to me and held the door open.

  As we went along the corridor he said, “Hey, you knew me, huh? You seen me in there, ever?” His voice was soft, husky, high-pitched.

  “Miami Beach, just once. Eight or nine years ago.”

  “That must have been close to the last. Who was I going with?”

  “I can’t remember the name. A great big Cuban boy.”

  “Sure! That was a ten-round main. Tigre something. Tigre means ‘tiger,’ and he had a big long last name, and I knocked him out in the ninth, right? You know what? That was the last one. Honest to Christ, that boy was, I mean, conditioned! Like an oak tree, the whole middle of him. He kept moving the wrong way and giving me perfect shots, and I couldn’t even take the grin off his face. Then like twenty seconds into the ninth, he cut me. See this one? He popped it just right by dumb luck and opened it up, and I knew it was bad. All I could do, see, was keep turning to keep the ref from getting too good a look at it and hoping before he did, that boy would tangle his feet and move the wrong way again, so when he did I had to put the right hand right on the shelf. I knew it would bust and it did. But he stayed down. All the time I was in there, what I had was bad managers and bad hands. I had to go for the middle because my hands bust too easy. So you saw that one, hey! I was going to go again, all lined up with I forget who, and I bust the hand in the same place on the heavy bag, working out.”

  As we went down the stairs, I said, “But you didn’t chop Meyer bad enough to hurt your hands?”

  “He fell on the bench, like Mister Norm said.”

  “And his head bounced up and down on that bench like a big rubber ball. Must have been interesting to watch.”

  “What I can tell you is I didn’t work him over. Mister Norm got on me about that, and I swore on my baby daughter’s grave I never touched him and didn’t see anybody else touch him. I told Mister Norm it didn’t make sense after all the times I worked a little on some of the people without marking them, all of a sudden I forget how and start hitting a man in the head? Not me. Not the King. Right through here. Hey, Priskie? Fresh fish. Mister Norm says single twelve or fourteen.”

  “We can give you twelve, sir. A very nice room. I’m sure you’ll be very happy with it. Anything you want, just ring.” Priskitt was somewhere between fifty and ninety, spry, bald, and shrunken by the heat of time and fortune. He dug into a bin, selected a tagged bundle, put it in a wire gym basket. “All our guests wear costumes,” he said. “Gets you in the spirit of the thing.”

  “Priskie, this here fellow saw my last fight, where I chilled the big Cuban kid and busted my hand. I told you about that one, right?”

  “Not over forty times.”

  I said, “I don’t want to spoil your comical routine, Priskitt, but how is Professor Meyer making it?”

  “I got him some aspirin and some ice to suck on. I wouldn’t say he feels great. But maybe not as bad as he did.”

  “I got to look in Nat’s book and find out what the last name was on that Cuban kid,” King said. “I’ll get him showered. Come on, McGee. Tote that basket.”

  The cement shower room smelled of mildew, ammonia, and Lysol. There was a sliver of green soap and a drizzle of tepid water from a corroded shower head, and a thin gray towel.

  What you need on the inside of any institution whatsoever are friends. “King, I’m a little ashamed of thinking you busted my friend up. I should have known you’ve got more class than that.”

  “Aw, what the hell. I mean I can see why.”

  “No, really. I saw you fight. You could have been one of the great ones. You know that? A few breaks here and there.”

  “Breaks, sure. They woulda helped. But I coulda stood better equipment. I cut too easy and my hands were brittle. But I could always move good, and I could take a punch off anybody.”
r />   “Where are you from originally?”

  “New Jersey. Nutley. Fourteen years old, I was in the Golden Gloves. Fleet champion in the Navy, coming in light heavy. Had fourteen years pro, two in the amateurs. Ninety-one bouts. I win sixty-eight, lose seventeen, draw six. It’s all in the record. McGee, what do you go? Maybe around two-o-eight?”

  “Very close.”

  “The clothes on, I would have said one ninety, maybe less. You fooled me. You holding pretty good shape, fella. You ever do any fighting when you were a kid?”

  “Nothing serious. Just horsing around.”

  “You can keep your own underwear. And put the coveralls and these here straw scuffs on and put your other stuff in the basket.”

  I did as directed. The twill coveralls had been washed threadbare, and they were soft as the finest lightweight wool.

  “Come at me a little, McGee. I want to see if you know how to move. Good Christ, don’t look at me like that! I’m not making up some kind of way to bust you up.”

  So I shrugged and went at him, doing my standard imitation of a big puppet badly manipulated from above, jounce and flap, keeping an assortment of elbows and shoulders and wrists in front of the places I don’t like to have thumped, keeping a wide-focus stare aimed at his broad gut, because that is the only way you can see what the head and hands and feet are doing, all at the same time.

  I don’t know how many years older he was. He moved in a slow, skilled, light-footed prance, and the slabbed fat on his body jounced and shook like the pork fat on a circus bear. He held his big paws low and stayed pretty much in the same place. Had it been for real, I would have had as much chance against him as a little kid with a piece of lathe against a member of the Olympic fencing team. Pro is pro. I slapped empty space, sometimes a shoulder. Each effort of mine resulted in a quick little stinging whack of fingertips against jaw, cheekbone, rib cage. Then I decided to try to protect myself. But here is how it is with a pro: You duck under a high left jab, and you see the feet, body, shoulder, head, all moving into the logical right hook, and when you move to defend from that, you are suddenly open for two more quick jabs. You shift to handle that, and there is the right hook you were going to block earlier, so you rush him to get inside, and he isn’t there because he has twisted, tipped you off balance, and stands braced and ready for you to bounce back off the wall. Explosive snort. Grin. Hands raised in signal of peace.

  So I gratefully emerged from my ineffective shell and said, “You are real quick, King.”

  “Hell, I’m slowed down to nothing. Reflexes all shot. Seems quick to you because I know where you’re going to be by the time I tap you. Listen to me huff and puff. McGee, you would have made it pretty good if you started soon enough. It would be hard to take a good shot at you. I’d have to bomb you downstairs until you couldn’t get your arms up. Then drop you.”

  He led me to the single cell, telling me, on the way, of the time he had come the closest to top ranking, when Floyd Patterson had nailed him as they came out for the second, and he had faked rubber legs well enough to bring Patterson in, too eager and careless, and he had pivoted and stuffed his big hand and glove deep into Floyd’s tough middle, just above the belt, turning him gray and sweaty and very tired. Chased him for seven rounds, while Floyd had slowly regained his strength and health despite all King Sturnevan could do in the way of wearing him down. And then Floyd stabbed and chopped and split his way to the technical knockout.

  He dogged the door shut, big face still rueful with the memory of not being able to nail down the disabled Patterson. I said, “What’s with this sheriff of yours, King?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “What kind of an act is it?”

  He shifted the wire basket to his other arm. “It’s no act. Mister Norm upholds the law, and the County Commission backs him a hundred percent. We got modern stuff here, McGee. We got a teletype tied into FLEX, and one of the first things he did was see if there was any package on you with the F.C.I.C. and then the N.C.I.C., and it puzzled him some, maybe, to come up empty on both of you.”

  “Real modern methods, King, spoiling Meyer’s face.”

  “All you got is my word, but it isn’t like that around here.”

  “Then why did Deputy Billy Cable bring me through here to admire Meyer before he took me to Hyzer?”

  “Billy got gnawed down to the bare bone on that one. He was off in the MP’s for a while. Sometimes he forgets Mister Norm doesn’t like those little tricks.”

  “Now how would you know Hyzer came down on Billy Cable?”

  “You learn to read that man’s face. It isn’t easy, but you have to learn. I saw he was upset, and I could guess why. He’d already found out about Meyer, and he was upset about that, too, about it happening at all. By now he’s got Billy all peeled raw.”

  “Who did it?”

  “I didn’t see a thing.”

  Priskitt came to the cell. “I thought this man had probly jumped you and made good his daring escape, champ. You want me to lock you in there with him so you can keep the dialogue going, or do you want to go back to work? As a special favor to Mister Norm.”

  “He called for me?”

  “He surely did.”

  And with a single bulge-eyed look of anxiety, King Sturnevan went off, in a light-footed, fat-jouncing trot.

  “The department seems to have a plentitude of deputies, Mr. Priskitt.”

  He looked at me happily. “Plentitude! One rarely hears the good words around here, Mr. McGee. I would say that Mister Norm has an adequacy of deputies. Not a superfluity. Whatever Mister Norm feels is necessary for the pursuit of his sworn responsibility, he asks for. And gets. We must chat later.”

  He hurried away and I stretched out.…

  Four

  Immovable bunk and a thin hard mattress pad. Cement floor with a center drain. Bright bulb countersunk behind heavy wire mesh in the cement ceiling. Iron sink with a single iron faucet and no drain pipe so that water from the sink would run down the pitch of the floor to the drain three feet away. Toilet with no lid or seat. No window. No way to see any other cell through the top half of the door which was of sturdy bars. The lower half was steel plate.

  Stretch out on the back, forearm across the eyes. Shove the whole damned mess over into a corner cupboard and kick the door shut. Save it until later, because trying to think about it would only bring the anger back. Angry men do a bad job of thinking.

  There had been a lot of waiting-time in my life. Sometimes it was cat-time, watching the mouse hole for all the endless dreary hours. Sometimes it had been mouse-time, waiting all the day through for the darkness and the time for running.

  So you learn the special resources of both memory and imagination. You let the mind run through the old valleys, the back hills, and pastures of your long-ago years. You take an object. Roller skate. The kind from way back, that fastened to the shoes instead of coming with shoes attached. Look and feel and design of the skate key. With old worn shoes you turn the key too much and you start to buckle the sole of the shoe. Spin one wheel and listen to the ball-bearinged whir, and feel the gritty texture of the metal abraded by the sidewalks. Remember how slow and strange and awkward it felt to walk again, after all the long Saturday on skates, after going way to the other end of town. Remember the soreness where the strap bit into the top of your ankle. When it got too sore, you could stop and undo the strap and run it through the top laces of your shoe. Thick dark scab on the abraded knee. The sick-making smack of skull against sidewalk. Something about the other end of the skate key.… Of course! A hex wrench orifice that fit the nut on the bottom of the skate so you could expand it or contract it to fit the shoe. If you didn’t tighten it enough, or if it worked loose, then the skate would stealthily lengthen, the clamps no longer fitting the edge of the shoe sole, and at some startling moment the next thrust would spin the skate around, and you either took one very nasty spill, or ended up coasting on the good skate, holding the other foot w
ith dangling skate up in the air until you came to a place to sit down and get the key out and tighten everything again. Roller skate or sandbox or apple tree or cellar door. Playground swing or lumberyard or blackboard or kite string. Because that was when all the input was vivid. All of it is still there. So you find a little door back there, and like Alice, you walk through it into the magic country, where each bright flash of memory illuminates yet another.

  It doesn’t work that way for everybody. Once I worked a stakeout for two months with a quiet little man. We were talked out after two days. But he seemed totally patient, totally content. After a month I asked him what he thought about. He said he was a rubber bridge addict. So mentally he would deal himself a random hand, then out of the thirty-nine cards left, deal a random hand to the opponent at his left, then to the one at his right, and give what was left to his partner. Then he would go through the bidding, the play of the cards, and mark the result on the running score-pad in his head. He said that sometimes when he was a little fatigued, he might forget whether the jack of diamonds had been dealt at his left or his right. Then he would have everybody throw their hands in and he would deal again.

  When the people we were covering finally made their move, there was a communication problem. We couldn’t get through to the vehicle parked six blocks away. So the bridge player handled that problem, at a dead run. He got there in time and they closed that door before the quarry tried it. He sat in the back seat, they said, and gasped and laughed, then squeaked and died. I saw him for a couple of moments, and thought of all the bridge games that died inside his head when all the other things stopped.

  “McGee?”

  I looked up and got up and went over to the door. “Sheriff?”

  “I researched that problem you raised, McGee. I do not want to take any chance of reversal of conviction on a very minor point. I think I am right. If tomorrow were a working day, I would take my chances. But running it over into a Saturday might be questionable. It’s a little after four now, but you should be able to reach your Mr. Sibelius, I think.”