The Scarlet Ruse

by John D. MacDonald

  There must be a mutual willingness to reduce the space, or one person becomes uneasy and uncomfortable. Meyer uses that phenomenon to rid himself of the very infrequent person who bores him. He moves inside their space rather than trying to back away. When he stands with his nose five inches from theirs, they begin to falter and move back.

  Meyer keeps moving in, smiling. They see somebody across the room they want to talk to and excuse themselves. Or remember a phone call they have to make. With Meyer it is a deliberate kindness to do it that way.

  Out there afloat in the night off Lauderdale, she had told me that if she ever did want to take the risk, it would be with somebody so hard to kill that maybe he could keep her alive too. And after soliciting me, she tried to turn me off again, with both of us knowing it was too late at that particular time and place for any stopping..

  She had wept very quickly and abundantly when I had told her about Jane Lawson last Sunday. As she had wept easily in the store. As she had wept not long ago, right here, when she had toppled over. In the kind of early life she had, of foster homes and the school for girls, could the luxury of genuine tears be sustained, or would tears be one of the weapons of survival? Don't come to my place. That's asking for trouble."

  I'd never been inside it. When I'd first seen it, she had answered my unspoken question, saying that there was a lot of difference in size and in rent between the big apartments on the top floors in front, and the little studio apartments on the lower floors in the rear.

  "Don't phone me there.". Willy Nucci heard of my new relationship with Sprenger very quickly. But not too quickly for Willy. His network is all over the beach. Switchboards, housekeepers, doormen, car rental girls, apartment managers, bartenders. I'm only guessing.

  There is probably an unlisted number to call, an anonymous voice, and cash money in a plain envelope, enough to keep the flow coming in, as much cash as the information is worth. Willy wouldn't be so stupid as to be known as the destination of the flow.

  Then sharpsters would start feeding bad information, to con something out of Willy. Probably somebody close to Harry Harris told her hairdresser about the fabulous old' houseboat some fellow in Lauderdale named Mcgee owns. Harry saw him on business. Which, to WUly, who might have heard it within twenty minutes, meant I was on Sprenger's team. In the thunderous night, in the darkness, she had lain naked under percale, squeezing my hand and saying ooo and ahh at my modest account of my deductive brilliance. She said she didn't want to go rummaging around inside her head. She said it was all junk, all throwaway.

  The news of Jane's in-law wealth had galvanized her, lifted her up out of the bed. In alarm? And she could not comprehend why Jane had never gone after that money.

  She thought it freak behavior. I thought it odd. But I could understand.

  The next morning she was up unexpectedly early and diligent and brisk..

  Alfred, the night bell captain, thought he had seen Mary Alice somewhere before. And she would not give him her name.

  . When I had asked Sprenger, in his office, how he had gotten onto me so quickly, his explanation was detailed, garrulous, and unconvincing.

  So was his explanation about the source of the investment money. I think that what made both stories unconvincing was the ease with which he could have sidestepped my questions. How did you_ get onto me? I keep good track of things. Where did the money come from? An investor.

  Sprenger had not gotten where he was by saying one word more than required in any situation. And the explanation about the test with the courier in West Germany seemed more as if he was trying to sell me on how good an idea it was.. I'd believed Sprenger when he said he had not gotten agitated when he learned Jane Lawson was dead.

  Yet he should have been. If he believed his investment account was intact, he might not have reacted at all. Yet he knew something was wrong. The only answer was that he knew Jane Lawson was not involved.

  That meant he had to know who was. I went to the shop from Sprenger's office where she had been working diligently all morning. And suddenly there were a lot of things pointing right at Jane Lawson.

  But when was the label on the gaffed box typed? And when and why were new albums imprinted in gold for Frank A. Sprenger and J. David Balch?

  Sprenger's, at least, had only a few pages left empty.

  "Jane, honey, while you're over there, whyn't you take these two and make me up the blue one for Sprenger and the green one for Balch, okay?"

  Had the figures written on the inventory sheets been for simplicity in finding a specific stamp or to make it easier to make up a whole duplicate book?. Hirsh might remember if Jane Lawson had taken a package along that day and mailed it. She could have been given the package by a girl too sick to go to the bank ' day.

  "Please mail it for me, Jane honey.". The poisoning episode was increasingly hard to buy.

  She had to claim it happened, because that meant Jane Lawson had arranged it when she was ready to make the switch. How do you measure exactly how much emetic to give a big healthy girl, an amount that will render her too ill to go to the bank but not so ill as to have to be taken home? Banks have phones. Fedderman would have left a message for Sprenger. Sickness is easy to fake. A hunk of soap slides down easily.

  Send Jane off to the bank this time, and make the switch in July, at the next visit.

  Sprenger would probably call the signals. Easy for him to lean across the table and point down to one of the new purchases and ask Fedderman a question about it. Plenty of time for her to switch the books..

  Miss. Moosejaw had said Jane Lawson would have added up how it was probably accomplished and had tried to test her theory. By asking a question? And the old lady had not thought Mary Alice morally incapable of robbery that devious, just mentally unable to plan and carry out something so complex. But with Sprenger to plan it, could she carry it out? If Sprenger was worried about somebody trying to get cute, was it hard to figure out who he had in mind?

  I stood up. I wished I could somehow stand up and leave myself still stretched out on the couch. I wanted to shed myself, start brand new, do better.

  Had I been spending the last many years selling real estate or building motels, I could not be expected to recognize that special kind of kink exemplified by our Mary Alice Mcdermit. There are a lot of them, and they come in all sizes, sexes, and ages. They are consistently attractive because they are role players. Whatever you want, they've got in stock. They are sly-smart and sly-stupid. They would much rather tell an interesting lie than tell the truth.

  Never having experienced a genuine human emotion, they truly believe that everybody else in the world fakes the emotions too, and that is all there is.

  I once knew an otherwise sane man who became hopelessly infatuated with the peppy, zippy little lady with the bangs" who used to do the Polaroid commercials on television. He bought every kind of camera they make. He took pictures of her picture on the tube. He cut her picture out of magazines. He wrote and wrote and wrote, trying to get a name and address. He went to New York and made an ass of himself visiting advertising agencies and model agencies. It took a long time to wear off. It was totally irrational.

  I had seen somebody I had invented, not Mary Alice. I explained away her inconsistencies, overlooked her vulgarities, and believed her dramatics.

  And so it goes. It is humiliating, when you should know better, to become victim of the timeless story of the little brown dog running across the freight yard, crossing all the railroad tracks until a switch engine nipped off the end of his tail between wheel and rail.

  The little dog yelped, and he spun so quickly to check himself out that the next wheel chopped through his little brown neck. The moral is, of course, never lose your head over a piece of tail.

  Goodbread merely pretended a vast stupidity. Mine, nourished by the blue eyes and the great body, had been genuine. But last night some strange kind of survival instinct had taken over. The body seems to have its own awareness of the realit
ies. In the churny night, the tangly bed, abaft that resilient everlasting smorgasbord, body knowledge said "Whoa!" And whoa it was, abruptly. One just doesn't do this sort of thing with monsters. Not with a big plastic monster which would kill you on any whim if it was certain it would never be caught, and if it anticipated being amused by the experience. Body-knowledge said she'd killed Jane Lawson. Not at the moment of Whoa.

  Afterward, in a growing visceral realization.

  She had mousetrapped Sprenger somehow, and it was probably within her power to make him look like such a fool, the people he served would feel a lot better if he were on the bottom of the Miami River. Willy Nucci had explained the occupational hazards to me and to what lengths Sprenger would go to cover up any indiscretion, any violation of the code. The parties at interest had brought in the hard man from Phoenix to police one of their neutral areas, and after six years of service, he had gone sour. Over a woman. And that was his vulnerable area, right?

  Right.

  I had set it in motion, knowing that if Sprenger ignored Meyer's information, all my guesses were wrong. So I could wait for him or run.

  I could bring Mary Alice into it all the way or use her as bait.

  I could try to negotiate with him or hit first.

  I tried to guess what I would do if I were Frank Sprenger, but I found I did not know enough about the situation, the relationships, Mary Alice could tell me, but I did not like to think of the ways I might have to use to make sure she was telling me all of it. There was no way to appeal to her, except through her own self-interest. She was afraid of being hurt. She had said so after I had mended the flap of elbow skin.

  Not the casual bumps and bruises and abrasions. But really hurt, with infections and drains and IVs. And that I could not do.

  Eighteen.

  I found her snapping the catches on her train case. She had changed to pale pink jeans and a light blue work shirt with long sleeves. She had tied her head up in a blue and white kerchief. She wore new white sneakers.

  She straightened and looked at me almost expressionlessly. There was a little contempt there. Not much else.

  "I'm splitting," she said.

  "You've thought it all over, eh?"

  "You blew it, baby. You really blew it. It could have been okay for us.

  Frank will have guys watching every place for five hundred miles where you could dock this boat. I don't give a damn what you do,"

  "Where are you going?"

  "You know something? That's dumb. That's really dumb. All you are going to know is that you put me ashore back by that bridge where the cars were. When Frank wraps wire around your dingus and plugs it in and starts pushing the button, you're going to wish to God you had something you could tell him about where I went."

  "Why should he care where you go?"

  "Oh boy. He can talk his way out of how I could run when he wasn't looking and how he'll find me and so forth. But he can't risk what I'll say to the Mcdermits about him. How long before it gets dark here?"

  I looked at my watch.

  "Little over an hour."

  "How long would it take the little boat to get back to that place where the bridge is?"

  "Fifteen minutes."

  "I'm taking the train case and this suitcase and leaving this other junk. I want it to be a little after dark when you let me off. You better put on better clothes for the bugs out there. You got some kind of repellent to put on?"

  "What's he got to do with the Mcdermits?"

  "Huh? Oh, I'm married to Ray. He's the middle brother. They got him on tax fraud and conspiracy and a couple of other things over five years ago, and he's in Lewisburg.

  He's doing easy time. Except he can't do any balling in there, and he's as spaced out on it as old Frank is. Ray was going to get out last year on parole. But the silly jackass got into some kind of mess, and it will be at least another year. Maybe two. Are you going to change?" "This is probably as true as the last version you told me."

  "So forget the rest of it. All right?"

  "And forget the boat ride, MA."

  She had the little automatic tucked into the waist band of her jeans on the left. It was not an especially deft draw, that cross-draw recommended to the FBI agents, but it was fast enough for somebody six feet away too stupid to anticipate it.

  "We will definitely not forget the boat ride, friend," she said. She backed away, aiming more carefully.

  "I can't run the damned thing, and I am definitely not going to ruin you so bad you can't run it. Unless you get cute and I make a mistake, and then I'll try to run it. It can't be a lot different than a car.

  I'd rather you run it. What's the best place? Right up there over your collarbone, maybe.

  Through that big muscle that comes down from the side of your neck? You want to hurt while you run the boat, or do you want to be okay and feel good and say goodbye nicely?" "You read me wrong," I said.

  "I said forget the boat ride, because according to the tide tables, there shouldn't be anything out there now except mud flats and sand flats and a trickle of water here and there. Can't you feel how solid the deck feels under your feet. And the little list?

  We're aground, and so is the Muhequita."

  I watched her expression and her eyes. She glanced toward the port.

  She couldn't see from that angle. She sidled to her left, and the instant her eyes swiveled away from me, I took the long step, the long reach, caught her by the wrist and by the elbow and gave the funny bone a powerful tweak. She yelped as her hand went dead and the gun fell. I yanked my eyes and face back just in time, and her hooking slash with her left hand left four bleeding lines high on my chest and packed her fingernails with tissue. I shoved her onto the bed so hard her legs rolled high and she almost went over the other side. I picked up her automatic and swiveled the little safety up into the notch on the slide and put it into my pocket.

  She sat on the side of the bed, and the tears rolled as she looked dolefully at me.

  "I'm sorry. I'm so s-scared, honest, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm sorry, darling."

  "That doesn't work either."

  "What?"

  "Sprenger wants you. So if I want to maintain good relations with him, the easiest thing to do is wrap you up and hand you to him. I'll say, "Frank, old buddy, she conned both of us, but here she is."

  " The tears had dried and stopped in moments. She sat scowling in thought, nibbling her thumb knuckle.

  "No.

  I'm trying to give it to you absolutely straight. It would finish the both of us, not just me, because he couldn't be sure of how much I told you. He can't afford any part of it getting out."

  "So the more you tell me, MA." the more dangerous I am to Frank, and the more chance I might want to play it your way."

  She studied me and then gave a little nod as something seemed to go click way back in those blue eyes.

  After Ray was sentenced, she said, it became obvious that there were some people in Philadelphia who believed he had done some talking to make his sentence lighter, and they were willing to get back at Ray Mcdermit through his young wife. Ray didn't want her visiting him.

  He said it drove him up the walls. Sprenger kept an eye on the Mcdermit interests in the Miami area. He was new then, about a year in the area.

  He flew up and brought Mary Alice back down. She was to find a job where she would stay out of trouble. The Mcdermits provided rent on a handsome apartment and the utilities, a car, but no cash in hand. Ray had said it was his wish that if he wasn't getting any, he wanted to be certain Mary Alice wasn't giving it to anybody else. She said he was called "the crazy brother." He wasn't crazy, but it was hard to guess what he would do. From inside prison he exercised a lot of power with the threat of revealing the damaging information he had in his head.

  "I thought I could cut it," she said.

  "Besides, Sprenger wasn't about to get careless about keeping an eye on me.

  And if I goofed, I had no idea what Crazy
Ray would want done to me.