The Long Lavender Look

by John D. MacDonald

  “When did you see her last?”

  “This is Sunday. I mean it’s Monday morning. Let me see. We had lunch a week ago Friday. We talked about Linda Featherman, mostly. And she said she hadn’t heard anything from Lew in three weeks and she was wondering if he was sort of easing off. She said she was getting nervous about keeping up payments on things because she’d figured on the extra money. She said, just joking, that maybe the two of us ought to go over to Miami Beach and see if there was any action. But she was joking. Lew made it awful plain to me and to her, too, that if we did any hustling on the side, he’d find out and we’d be the sickest, sorriest gals in Florida. Anyway, it would be stupid to try to work a place you don’t have any protection. The cops pull in the free-lance gals, because that’s part of the deal they get paid for by the people who have the action all sewed up. If Lew happens to be really dead, like you think, it’s going to be rough for Jeanie to make out. It comes to maybe a thousand or twelve hundred a year, according to what I was making and what she was making, without any tax on it. Part time, like moonlighting, but there has to be somebody like Lew to set you up and do the collecting ahead so no bastard can afford to try to cheat you. We used to try to figure out what Lew was making, guessing how many of us were working for him. So it had to be what? Fourteen to sixteen thousand a year? But I guess he had to split that somehow, to keep himself out of trouble.”

  She stood up, yawning. “Do I get my picture back?”

  I handed it to her. She looked at it and said, “I can just look at a piece of pie and gain a pound.” She tore it into small pieces and took it into the bathroom and closed the door. She came out after a while and said, “You’ve got any of the other pictures of me?”

  “No.”

  “I wish I knew where they were. I’d feel better. It was some sort of game, I thought, the camera on the table and he’d set a little thing that started buzzing and hop back in with me and then the flash would go off. It was one of those he was going to mail to Fred. He cut it so it was him from the chest down, but there I was, clear as a bell, laughing my fool head off. If you come across those?”

  “I’ll destroy them and let you know.”

  “The wrong clown gets those and he can put me right back in action. I wouldn’t have a choice. Poor Freddie.”

  “Can I talk to Jeanie?”

  She looked secretly amused. “How could I stop you? Why ask? You are a nice guy, Trav. You really are. I’d like to do you a nice favor for being a nice guy, but if you wanna know the truth, seeing the picture of that Lilo really blew out my fire. Going to be around awhile?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Maybe we can work something out. You know where to find me. You wouldn’t have to worry about anything. I mean I’m a healthy girl from head to toe. ’Night now. Take care.”

  Fifteen

  Yes, indeed. Take care. I finished the notations on the backs of the thirteen photographs. Six names.

  Courthouse, third grade, building supply, real estate firm, stationery store.

  Arnstead’s Irregulars. Sorry little part-time hookers, each one thinking herself such a very special person, able to play the dark and nimble role, yet remain essentially her own true beautiful self.

  There are no hookers with hearts of gold. Just lazy, greedy, dull-minded girls whose greatest joys are the clothing rack and the mirror and the makeup table. Such a simple little task, to take that every-familiar tumescent rigidity into the slippery muscular depths, and brace tight, and hip-smack it into its brief leapings and sagging flaccidity. Simple task, sometimes pleasurable enough to incite an inner matching clenching, hidden explosion, and sighing release. Then say it was beautiful, tell him he’s special, tell him it hardly ever happens like that for you. Give him the mirror-practiced expressions, and use the familiar ways to ready him again, because the better you work him, the more chance of a tip, and the thirty-dollar blue sandals are on layaway, and they are darling.

  So simple a task it soon has no meaning, and then there is no meaning in being a woman, in that sense of being a woman. The only meaning left is in the ever-changing adornment of the body, that thing they buy. It is like the mercenary who sits alone, smiling, and with oil and stone, puts an ever finer edge on the combat knife, hoping that the next sentry will die so quickly there will be that little feeling in the belly of professional satisfaction, and a feeling almost of fondness for the unknown sentry because it had worked so well.

  No evil in either hooker or mercenary. Just laziness, a small familiar greed, a mild anticipation of unimportant sensation, and the ever-challenging problem of what kind of pretty to buy with the fee.

  Poor Freddie. Why did she leave and where did she go? She’s going, soldier. One day soon. She’ll leave because, no matter what the uniform, the mercenary blade always pierces exactly the same heart, stopping it over and over again. Only the angle changes. Until all hearts become the same target. And the hooker receives from all customers exactly the same plum-taut glans, slaying it in the same rocking lubricious clench of inner muscle ring, clasp of outer labia, pumping it to its small jolting death, welcoming it ever again, affixed to the lions of another stranger, but always the same in its greed for death. Only the duration changes. Until all erection is the same, including the husband one, all equally meaningless except for the chance of pleasure-feeling, and the money.

  I thought of Betsy and her silly, touching, romantic conviction that each episode was unique and meaningful and full of glory. Faith and conviction made it so, and a stereo at cost and free tapes were gestures of friendship, and a hard man could understand a little of this, and weep for having beaten her.

  It was nearly four-thirty in the morning, and again her phone did not answer. I tried the sheriff. He was not available. I stretched out to think of what to do next, how to fit the parts together, and suddenly it was bright morning outside, the room lights still on, my mouth stale, and my eyes grainy.

  The phone rang just as I was reaching to turn on the shower. It was Sheriff Hyzer to tell me they had not located Mrs. Kapp or her car yet, but that they had found Lew Arnstead’s black jeep hidden in the yard of an empty house four doors down Seminole from Mrs. Kapp’s cottage. Maybe I’d like to stop by.

  I didn’t ask any questions. I hurried the shower, and it was twenty after eight when I got there. Hyzer’s cruiser was in Betsy’s driveway. He seemed to be alone. Fresh suit, shirt, tie, shoes. He’d nicked himself twice shaving.

  We walked up the street. The chain was unhooked. A deputy was dusting it with professional care and deftness, lifting fragments and sections of prints, making notations of location.

  “It made me wonder, Mr. McGee, if Arnstead had hidden this here yesterday evening, gone to Mrs. Kapp’s house and taken her away with him in her car.”

  “I suppose that could have happened.”

  “Not when you see this. Come here.” He took me around to the front, pointed to a brown object fastened to a protected place under the headlamp. “Mud dauber,” he said. “Fresh. They turn pale when they dry. They don’t work at night. This nest is nearly done. You wait a minute you’ll see her come flying in with another mud ball. She had to start yesterday morning to get this far. She had to build it up to a certain point then go find the right kind of spider and paralyze it with her stinger and shove it in there. Soon now she’ll have just a little hole left. She’ll lay her eggs in it and then seal it up, and when the young hatch they’ll have spider meat to live on before they break out.”

  “Very interesting.”

  “So it was left here Saturday night, probably. You spent the night with her. Hear anything?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “We had a telephone report of an altercation at three in the morning in this neighborhood.”

  “I didn’t hear that, either.”

  “It doesn’t make sense, at least not yet, for him to hide his jeep here and walk away from it and not come back.”

  “Meaning he couldn’t come b
ack.”

  “Or somebody abandoned it here to leave a false trail. Tom, don’t forget to dust that Dr. Pepper bottle on the floor.”

  “No sir, Sheriff.”

  “Getting anything usable?”

  “Too many smudges. A few pretty good partials and right here at the top of the windshield, one real good one of the whole heel of a hand. Could be a woman’s or a child’s from the size.”

  “Call Johnny’s to come tow it in when you’re finished, and get those vacuum bags to the Bureau fast as you can.”

  As we walked back to Betsy’s drive I said, “You’re a very thorough man, Sheriff.”

  “We try.”

  “I imagine you must be aware of everything that goes on in Cypress County.”

  “All I need to know, I hope. We put through a consolidation a couple of years back, absorbed the city police into the county and put all the law enforcement under the Sheriff’s Department. Cuts duplication and expense.”

  “Excuse me, Sheriff. You seem more amiable toward me today.”

  “I like to be fair. You said Perris had to leave that station Friday morning. I tried it once more. I phoned Al Storey this morning and asked him if Henry Perris had left the station for any reason whatsoever, business or personal. First he said no, just as he did before, and then he remembered that Perris had finished a brake job on an Oldsmobile and had taken it down the road to the customer, a man named Hummer. It was a combination road test and delivery. Hummer had then driven Perris back to the station. To get to Hummer’s road, Perris had to pass a little roadside park with a public phone booth. Can you fill in the rest of it, Mr. McGee?”

  “Make a phone call to someone to pick up the envelope he hid in the phone book.”

  “Perhaps. Storey did not think of that in the same sense as actually leaving the station. Leaving involves personal business. A delivery is work time. I told Storey not to talk if Perris was nearby. He said Perris was late again, as usual. I told him not to mention the conversation to Perris.”

  “Are you going to pick Perris up?”

  “Not yet. I want him to feel safe. I want to have more to go on.”

  “Now will you admit the girl is implicated, too?”

  His stare was like stone. “If evidence should show at some future date that she is involved, knowingly, in any criminal activity, then she will be arrested and charged.”

  End of amiability. End of conversation.

  I drove down to Johnny’s Main Street Service. Miss Agnes had been taken off the line. I found her on blocks in the body shop, with a big sweaty Ron Hatch wielding a rubber mallet and some curved templates with comforting skill.

  He came out and said, “Hi, Mr. McGee. Some of it isn’t as bad as I thought. But, Jesus, they used some kind of gauge metal in her.” I borrowed the broken fitting from him and made a call from the office to my mechanic friend in Palm Beach. I told him what it looked like and where it went. He had me measure it, and had me hold the phone. He came back on the line in about two minutes and said he had it and where and how should he send it. I had him ship fastest means direct to Ron Hatch at the garage. The operator came back with the report of charges, and I gave the exact change to the office girl and she put it in the petty cash box just as a man in his late forties came in. He was trim and held himself well, and his hair was a little too thick and dark to be entirely unaided. He had a golfing tan, and an elegant sport shirt, and a gold-and-black wristwatch with three or four dials and a lot of gold buttons to push.

  “McGee?” he said. When I said I was, he said he was Johnny Hatch, and invited me back into his office. Small, paneled, cool, windowless, and private. Golfing trophies and trap-shooting trophies, and framed testimonials about his civic services. A color portrait in a silver frame, showing a very lovely young woman smiling out, her arms around a little boy and a little girl. She looked young enough to account for his trimness and his hairpiece and dye job.

  “Thanks for treating the kid right on the work he did on that old Rolls truck of yours. It set him up pretty good.”

  “He’s a nice kid.”

  “Not much you can do with them these days. That Liz Taylor haircut of his makes me want to throw up every time I see it. He won’t go back to school. He’s a car nut. I’ll say this. He’ll do the job right for you. Now I got a second litter coming along, and it makes you wonder what kind of problems they’re going to be.”

  “I wasn’t exactly eager to put any more money into your operation, Mr. Hatch. It seemed to me like you took me pretty good.”

  He shrugged. “I could show you the books. We don’t get rich on county business. We have to bid it. We lose on some and make out on the others, and hope to end up the year ahead. Don’t tell me a fella who can afford Lennie Sibelius is hurting for a little garage bill.”

  “Word gets around.”

  “Small town. You know how it is. Everybody hears everything. Trouble is that when they pass it along, they add a little to make it more interesting.”

  “Then you know Arnstead is missing?”

  “I heard about it.”

  “And Betsy Kapp is missing, too.”

  He was startled. “The hell you say.”

  “She had a seven o’clock date last night and didn’t keep it and hasn’t been seen since.”

  “That’s a weird one. That isn’t like old Betsy. I tell you, it would take a lot of pleasure out of having lunch at the Lodge if anything happened to her.”

  “I understand she and Arnstead were pretty close. Maybe they took off together.”

  “Hell, I can’t buy that. They had something going, I guess. But that was months ago. Funny, she’d fool around with Lew.”

  “Maybe it was a business relationship, Johnny.”

  He leaned back, watchful. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I knew the name was familiar, but I didn’t connect it up right away. I remembered that a year, year and a half ago, somebody told me that if I ever got stuck in this neck of the woods, I should look up a Deputy Lew Arnstead, and he could fix me up with something real choice, that it would cost, but it would be worth it.”

  “Do tell.”

  “You’re the one who told me it’s a small town. I guess if it was true, you’d have heard about it.”

  “I think I heard somewhere that Lew had an extra girlfriend or two he’d hire out.”

  “I guess he’d have to be pretty careful about it, working under a man like Hyzer.”

  “Mister Norm sees what he wants to see and believes what he wants to believe, just like everybody else.”

  “He doesn’t impress you?”

  He shrugged. “I vote for him.”

  “So it’s a nice quiet place, with a very quiet little newspaper.”

  “There’s no point in scaring up trouble by printing a lot of things that agitate people.”

  “Was the car Linda Featherman was driving brought in here?”

  “What the hell have you got on your mind, McGee! I asked you in here to thank you for the way you played fair with my boy. I didn’t know I was going to get some kind of third degree.”

  I smiled, stood up. “I’m just curious about your nice little town, Johnny. No offense. I admit I am a little curious about your first litter. I like Ron. He’s a good one. But from all reports his sister is as rotten a little tramp as you can find anywhere.”

  His face turned to a brown mask, and he did not move his lips when he spoke. He spoke so quietly I could barely hear him. “Understand this. Nobody mentions her in my presence. She is absolutely nothing to me, and the sick sow that bred her is nothing to me. I don’t care if they are alive or dead. I don’t care if they roast in hell or find eternal bliss. Now get out of here.”

  I got. That much hate is impressive, no matter where you find it. It makes you want to walk on tiptoe and breathe quietly as you get out of range.

  I found breakfast and then flipped a coin. Heads was Deputy King Sturnevan. Tails was Mrs. Jeanie Dahl. Had it landed on
edge I was going to try Miss Kimmey, in the third grade. It was heads.

  King had some reports to finish. He said to wait around. Twenty minutes later he came out and walked over to the Buick. He leaned in and shook his head sadly. “You gotta talent, man. Billy Cable catches you jaywalking, he’ll club your head down between your knees.”

  “Get in, and I’ll tell you about it.” I told him. I was at the wrong place at the wrong time, and witnessed Betsy chop him down.

  King nodded. “I knew he wanted to get into that. But I didn’t know he was damn fool enough to go after it that way. If Mister Norm heard he tried to use his badge to get her onto her back, he would be out in the street. Seems like she didn’t fight you off much, McGee. That’s the way she is. She will, but not often, and she has to do the picking.”

  “She picked Lew Arnstead.”

  “I know. Surprised folks. The Betsy-watchers. Not her type. But you can’t tell.”

  “King, how much can we trust each other, you and I?”

  He shifted his big belly around and beamed at me and winked a scarred eye. “You can’t trust me one damn bit if it’s something the man ought to know.”

  “I have a crazy question which has been growing and growing, and I have to ask. Make it hypothetical. Could and did Lew Arnstead get away with things that Hyzer would have fired anyone else for?”

  I watched him make his slow decision. “It bothered me a long time, pal. Tell you the truth, it surprised the hell out of me when Hyzer did boot him out and file charges. And I saw Lew’s face when it happened, and I think Lew was as surprised as me.”