The Scarlet Ruse

by John D. MacDonald

  "Then it all turned so rotten," she said.

  "They owned race horses, those brothers. I was another thing, like a horse that costs so much to keep, you can do any damn thing you want with it. He liked to hit. He liked to hurt.

  He couldn't really make it any other way. He was trying to break me.

  We had a big fight, and I told him Tom had been a man, and he wasn't a man. He said he had a specialist put a gadget inside the wheel cap on Tom's right front wheel, set so that at seventy it would push a weight against a spring thing and blow the lugs off. He said Tom was dead meat.

  I said he was never going to touch me again, and I was getting a divorce. He said nobody was ever going to touch me again, so I didn't need a divorce.

  He said to get out if I wanted to, but if I let anybody have me, he'd have both of us killed."

  She hadn't really believed him. She'd gone to a lawyer who accepted the divorce action eagerly, then suddenly cooled off. When she insisted on knowing why, he took her into a little conference room and closed the door. He was sweaty. He told her she should go back to her husband. He said the brothers were always involved in legal actions, and sometimes they were indicted, but nothing had ever gone any further than that. He told her he didn't want her business, she didn't owe him a dime, please leave.

  She tried another town and another name, and Mcdermit had phoned her at work to say hello. He found her more quickly the second time. So she had come to Miami and gone back to her own name.

  "His people check on me. Somebody comes around every couple of months.

  You get used to it. Five years, practically. It isn't all that rough, getting along without. It isn't that big a part of life."

  "Why now and why me, Mary Alice?" She sighed.

  "I hope you can find your way in off this ocean in the dark."

  "No problem."

  "Look at all the stars! You can see them better out here."

  "Evading the question?"

  "No man in his right mind is going to take a chance on getting killed, just to get one specific piece of ass out of all the ass there is floating around. And besides, I'm not all that great in bed. I'm a big healthy girl, but I'm just sort of average sexy, like you'd find anywhere."

  "Question still pending, lady."

  "I'm saying it isn't now and it isn't you, because it could have been if I decided, but instead I've told you why it shouldn't happen. It would be stupid of you. And it would be stupid of me to let myself get into it. I've had it all pushed down out of sight, and I'm okay. I get along fine."

  "Then let me ask it a different way. Why did you almost decide on now and on me?"

  "Not because you are so absolutely irresistible, believe me. If I was inventing a guy to... break my fast with, he would sort of be like Michael Landon, only a foot taller."

  "Like who?"

  "If you don't know, never mind. I think that the way it started, I had the idea that if I ever got the nerve to take the risk, it should be with somebody who'd be awfully damned hard to kill, and then maybe he could keep me alive too. It was just... what is the word when you think of things you aren't going to do?"

  "Conjecture?"

  "Right! I conjectured about us. Then I woke up on the beach, and you were asleep, and I looked at you and kind of wanted you. Still conjecture. Then you kissed me, and I was having a dream it fitted into.

  Then I went down the beach and thought about it, and then I began playing some kind of fool game about it, but you have to come to the end of games, right? Something to get killed over? Who needs it?

  Come on, dear. You better start aiming me toward home. I'm sorry. I really am."

  "And you don't play quicky games, do you?"

  She snapped her head around.

  "You better not be asking me to."

  "I'm not."

  "If I wanted to sneak it, I could have had all a girl could need."

  "I know."

  "It would have to be something that starts and keeps going until somebody finally says whoa. Out in the open.

  People would know just by seeing me look at the guy."

  And now, in the shadows of the curtained master stateroom, I wanted to see that look. I slowly ran the ball of my thumb down the crease of her back, from shoulderblades to the little knobs in the small of her back.

  She sighed and moved slowly and made a small murmur of complaint. Then suddenly she stiffened, sprang up and back and away from me, eyes wide and blank in terror, as she grasped the sheet and pulled it up across her breasts.

  She expelled the frightened in-suck of breath in a long grateful sigh, hooked her hair back out of the way with curled fingers, gave me a small and uncertain smile and said, "Talk about having a heart attack, darling."

  "Bad dreams?"

  "Mmmm. Hold me, huh?"

  I stretched out beside her, atop the sheet, and put my arms around her.

  She put her face in my throat. She chuckled.

  "What's funny?"

  "A dirty joke a girl told me where I have lunch. It sort of fits. You know. I'll mess it up if I try to tell it."

  "Try."

  It was the one about the doctor with the gorgeous girl patient who comes in with a hangnail and has to strip for the complete physical, and it ends with the tag line, "Don't be silly, Miss. Jones. I shouldn't even be doing this!" And she didn't tell it very well.

  "Darling?" she said.

  "Wha'?"

  "Tell me exactly what you promised and exactly what you are going to do."

  "Hmm. Let's see. I am going to put extra drums of fuel aboard this here vessel. I am going to equip her and provision her for a voyage of uncertain duration. And at the first hint that your freak husband is after us, whenever you say go, we go, taking the Munequita in tow. If the weather is good enough, we see if we have enough good luck and good management to get over to the islands. If not, we lay at anchor somewhere down Biscayne Bay or in Florida Bay until we get the right weather."

  "When I say we're leaving, what do you do?"

  "I do not argue. I do not discuss. I do not negotiate. I hang up the phone, start the engines, and wait for you."

  She gave me a very strong hug.

  "That's our deal."

  "That's our deal, MA."

  "Time is it?"

  "Moving up onto noon."

  "What! Good Lord!"

  "Something must have relaxed you, honey."

  "Sure didn't look like anything was going to at first. I was absolutely hopeless. I was just too tense and nervous and scared to be worth a damn. You are a very patient guy."

  "In a self-serving kind of way."

  There was a long silence and small motions finally, body language involved in question and answer, query and response, trick or treat.

  And off in the side of my mind was a fleeting recap of Meyer's insight, that we all tend to save good news as long as we can. But sometimes, with a little tickle of guilt, we find a compelling reason to save the bad for a little while too.

  She was still taking her long sloshing steaming soapy noisy shower when I took her Bloody Mary into the head and yelled to her that she would find it on the counter beside the sink. She yelled her thanks.

  Aboard the Flush, under a bunk, there is a big storage drawer full of lady items which have been left behind or bought for emergencies or donated to the cause. No point in even looking, because had there been a previous lady of these dimensions, I would remember. But her yellow top and shorts were still fresh enough.

  The very best eggs and country ham and toasted English muffins with strawberry jam. We sat in the booth next to the stainless steel galley, and she was right about that blue-eyed look of hers. She looked at me often, during and between the forks of egg, the bites of muffin. Anybody intercepting that look would have wondered if it was melting the fillings in my teeth. Bloodhounds look at the moon that way, and kids look into candy stores that way, and barracuda look at bait fish that way.

  We shared the cleaning up and too
k final cups of coffee into the lounge.

  So I took a deep breath and looked over her shoulder, out the port, at the sunny gleam of the row of boats and told her about Jane Lawson.

  Glassy shock.

  Exclamations of disbelief. Yawls and yaw ps of grief, pain, and anger.

  Reddened, streaming eyes, considerable nose blowing and then she wanted to be held, patted, comforted as the residual snuffles and snorts became less frequent.

  She went and fixed her face and came back and phoned Hirsh Fedderman.

  He had to tell her all he knew about it.

  She made wordless sounds of shock and sympathy. The tears began running again, and she made frantic motions at me. I put the box of tissue within reach. She asked questions in a torn and tearful voice and honked into the wads of kleenex. After that was over, she had to have another session of holding, patting, comforting and then go fix her face again.

  She came back and plumped herself down.

  "I'm exhausted," she said.

  "I felt so marvelous, and now I'm pooped. It makes my problems seem like nothing at all.

  Hirsh is really down. The poor old guy. The last straw, sort of. I don't know what he's going to do now. I know what I better do. I better go and be with him. He hasn't really got anybody else. Not near by."

  She got her things. At the doorway from the lounge onto the aft deck, we kissed. For a casual kiss, she felt big and hearty, solid and tall, practically eye to eye with me on her tiptoes. For what she considered any important kissing, she had a strange knack of dwindling herself.

  She curved her shoulders forward, let herself cling, but without much tangible weight, delicately in fact.

  She looked up at me.

  "We're some kind of special."

  "That's what people keep saying about us, all over town."

  "Can I be kind of a coward?"

  "How?"

  "Don't come to my place. That's asking for trouble.

  Don't phone me, there or at the store. Just to play safe.

  Okay?"

  "Don't call us, well call you?"

  "Constantly. You won't believe how often. I'm going to walk all tilted over from the weight of the dunes."

  So I locked my floating house and went on ahead. I went and got Miss. Agnes and came back around and picked up Mary Alice. She nipped in and slunched down, saying, "All of a sudden this is a pretty conspicuous car."

  "And no matter what you ride in, you are a conspicuous lady."

  "Isn't that the damned truth."

  "Would you feel better if I wore a dress and a blond wig?"

  She turned and stared at me.

  "You would make the most incredibly ugly woman in all Florida."

  "Just stop being so edgy."

  "I'll try. But he's a sick, murderous, tricky bastard."

  Ten.

  I drove her to the club. The man at the gate remembered Miss. Agnes far better than he remembered me. And as before, he looked as if it took a great effort of will for him to keep from asking to please never bring such an ugly old handmade pickup into paradise.

  There was a slot where I could park near her Toyota.

  She got in her car, and I put her beach bag in. She gave me a shy, nervous, quick little smile and said she'd phone or maybe just drive up there, if that would be all right. I told her anything would be fine.

  She hit her brakes a foot shy of a lot of sedate gray Continental as she backed out and then thumped over some curbing as she made her turn.

  Goodbye, dear girl. And take care of yourself. And Hirsh.

  I retraced the route I had used when driving Jane Lawson home. We had been talking. I had followed her instructions without paying too much attention to the turns.

  So I got partially lost at about the halfway point and nearly lost when I was almost there. When I came upon it, there were two cars in the drive with that vaguely official look. There was a rental Oldsmobile at the curb, and a burly brown man with a shaved head was leaning against the front fender with his arms folded, managing to look patient and impatient at the same time. He wore a white short-sleeved shirt and blue sailcloth Bermudas. His calves and forearms were thick, sinewy, and very hairy.

  I parked twenty feet in front of the green Olds and came walking back.

  He said, "There is absolutely nothing to see here. Get back into that... vehicle and drag ass."

  I took the final six slow strides that put me in front of him. He was fifty at a distance and early sixties close up. But he was fit. Very fit. He even seemed to have muscles on his forehead. I couldn't fit him into any part of the picture until I noticed the ring on his finger.

  "Are you Jane's father-in-law, sir?"

  "I'm General Lawson. Why? Who are you? If you are another goddamn newspaper "

  "My name is Mcgee. Travis Mcgee. I'm a salvage consultant. I drove Jane home Friday after work. She asked me in.

  While we were talking, Judy came in and left with some friends. I found out about this terrible thing this morning. I live in Fort Lauderdale.

  It is reasonable to assume that in the course of questioning Mr. Fedderman, her employer, and Mrs. Mcdermit, her co-worker, they would ask them when was the last time they saw Mrs. Lawson, and they would say when she left with me. So, in a spirit of cooperation, I thought it would be well to report to whoever is investigating the case. General, I am very sorry about this. I also wish to point out that all of this is none of your goddam business, and I am humoring you because I hear the habit of command is hard to shake."

  He unfolded his arms, and his chin moved six inches toward me?

  "What's that? What did you say?" "I said I gave you more answer than I had to."

  "What were you to Jane?"

  "I'll even answer that, sir. An acquaintance."

  He closed his eyes for a moment.

  "They've been coming by. Creeps. Sickies." He tilted his head, frowning, staring at me.

  "They go by nine times at three miles an hour, or they stop and get out and stand and gawp at the door with no more expression on their face than a ball of suet. Families with little children, standing and staring, with God only knows what kind of dim thoughts moving around in their empty skulls. I've sent a lot of them on their way.

  The sun is hot, and I've got a cheap lunch sitting like a stone in my stomach, and the law is hunting down my granddaughter. In other words, I apologize."

  He put his hand out. I took it without hesitation.

  He opened the car door and sat sideways on the seat and looked up at me.

  "Pride is so god damned wickedly expensive. I have been waiting here, thinking about pride."

  "Sir?"

  "Three sons. Jerry was the only one who went into the service and the only one who died. The other two are doing fine. I retired early.

  Heart murmur. The second star was a going-away present. Bought a little grove in California. Take care of the trees. Gardening. Golf.

  Bridge. Am I boring you?"

  "No, sir."

  "I'm boring myself. Somebody has to get stuck with listening. They paved a road near my place. I went and watched them every day. Isn't that fascinating? Old fart watching the big yellow machines. Made myself agreeable.

  Asked questions. Never saw such a crowd of fuckups, pouring money down the sewer. Found a couple of my re ired NCOs and officers, as bored as I was. All put some money in the pot. Rented equipment after we bid low on a culvert. Made out. Ploughed it back in. Every one of those other six old farts have taken at least two million out of it.

  And I kept fifty percent of everything. Seven corporations. Factory structures in Taiwan. Flood control in Brazil. Bridges in Tanzania.

  Pipe lines in Louisiana. Shrewd old bastard, right? Wrong. Just bored doing nothing.

  Horse sense and energy and being fair. Nothing more.

  There's a Christ-awful shortage of horse sense in the world. Always has been. Ask me where the pride comes in. Go ahead. Ask me."

  "Where does the pri
de come in, General?"

  "Me beginning to make money hand over fist, and Jerry's widow with two little girls. I had to travel a lot, leaving Bess alone. Lots of room in that house, and if there wasn't, I could build more onto it. No, she was too proud.

  She wanted to make her own way. Raise Jerry's kids without help from anybody. Bess wanted to come down here and visit her and talk her into it and bring her back. She was sure she could. So my pride got in the way. If the damned girl wants to act like that, let her. Jane's pride and my pride. Send too big a check along with the Christmas stuff, and she'd send it right back. Oh shit, isn't pride wonderful? She stayed right here in this half-ass place leading a half-ass life, when if she'd wanted to spend a thousand dollars a day of my money, it would have tickled but not pinched. So she's gone down the drain after a lot of scruffy little years, and the youngest girl has gone sour. For what?