Darker Than Amber

by John D. MacDonald

  Two choices—Griff had located the bundle she had squirreled away, or he had satisfied himself it wasn’t in the apartment. Or, a third choice, somebody had made her very very anxious to explain exactly where she had hidden it. A woman named Bellemer had died, quite badly. Another woman named Tami Western had gone on a trip. Car and luggage gone. When the rent ran out, the management would pack the rest of her stuff and store it, and when the storage charges were up to the estimated value, it would be sold off for the storage. No new problem when a girl’s money stops. They pack the good stuff and leave.

  Another few minutes and I would look as if I’d been standing in a shower with my clothes on. Just as I reached the foyer the door was pushed open. He was a broad one. Thirty, maybe. Orange swim trunks the size of a jock strap. Legs like a fullback. Flyboy sun glasses. White towel hanging around his neck. Black curly hair on top of a broad hard-looking head, and no evident hair anywhere else except some pale fuzz against deep tan from the knees down. There was too much belly, but it was such a deep brown he was managing a precarious hold on the beach boy image. He had a shovel jaw and a curiously prim little mouth.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “That’s a good question, friend. You’d think the way this operation looks they’d be smart enough not to try to rent one of these until they got the last tenant’s crud out of it. Let me out of this sweat box, please.”

  He backed away and I pulled the door shut, tried it to be certain it had locked.

  “You lost me someplace on this rental play, buds. There is a chick has it and she’s on a trip.”

  I frowned at the key, showed it to him. “Seven B. The girl in the Howard office gave it to me. First, I tried to open Five B with it. I thought that was what she said. Then I looked at the tag and tried this one.”

  “So it’s just the key that’s wrong. I saw the car. The door is open. So somebody could be cleaning it to the walls. They get some action like that around here.”

  A sun-drowsy girl-voice drifted over the wall from the adjoining walled court. “Who you talkina, Griff? Whozat, baby?”

  “Just a guy looking, buds. They screwed up and give him the key to Tami’s place, I told him she’s away only. Mack showed yet?”

  “No, and he din even call. How about that?”

  “Well,” I said, “thanks for straightening me out. Would you … recommend it as a place to live?”

  When he shrugged those shoulders he was hoisting considerable poundage of meat. “Depends on what the play is. You got it private. Nobody bothers anybody. No kids mousing around. You got the big beach a quarter mile south, and even slow like now there’s action if you want to check it out. For a guy single, you can’t whip it.”

  “You work around here?”

  “See you here and there, buds,” he said and trudged toward the gate to the next patio where the girl-voice had come from. He wiped his face on the towel and went in and pulled the gate shut without a backward glance. I drove back to the office.

  “They’re really nice, aren’t they?” said Bitsy.

  “Furnished just a little more completely than I expected,” I said and held the key up so she could read the tag.

  “But … but … oh my God, did you walk in on somebody? Who’s in that one?” She ran a thumbnail down a cardex list. “Miss Western. But I told you Five B!”

  “That’s where I went. The key wouldn’t open the door. I looked at the tag and saw it was for Seven B, so I thought you made a mistake about which place was empty. Don’t worry. She wasn’t there. A fellow named Griff, who seems to live in Seven C, saw my car and the open door and he straightened me out.”

  “She does go away quite often on trips.” She spoke over her shoulder as she headed to the wall panel. She took the key from the Seven B hook and said, “This is the one I meant to give you. Darn it! It must be that maybe when Fred was sweeping up he knocked them off with the broom handle or something and put them back wrong.” She stood there checking the other tags. “I guess the rest are okay. Do you want to look at Five B now?”

  “I guess not. It’s the same layout as Miss Western’s?”

  “The color scheme will be different, of course.”

  “Has she lived there long?”

  She looked at the card again. “Almost two years.”

  “Well, she certainly keeps it clean and tidy.”

  “You were asking about maid service. I see here that she has a maid who comes in. We have to keep a record, so we’ll know who’s been given permission to go into the units. Are you interested, Mr. McGee?”

  “Very much. There’s just one other place I want to check, mostly because I promised I would, but I think I’ll settle for Five B.”

  “Then you ought to grab it now. Even this time of year they don’t stay empty long.”

  “How long would fifty hold it, not returnable?”

  “Let’s say … since this is Thursday, until Saturday noon? Then if you take it, it applies to the rent. You would owe … an additional two eighty-four seventy-five, with the tax, and forty dollars deposit on the utilities. We handle getting them hooked up in your name. But you take care of the phone yourself.”

  “Can you give me the maid’s name?”

  “Of course. Here. I’ll write the name and address on the back of your receipt.”

  “Fine.”

  “She’s a colored girl. She works for some of our other people too.”

  After I started the car and put the air-conditioning on high, both vents aimed at my face, before I drove away, I read the name of the maid. Mrs. Noreen Walker, 7930 Fiftieth Street, Arlentown. 881-6810. I tucked the slip in my wallet, and from a drugstore in the corner shopping plaza I tried the number.

  “Noreen, she be back along six o’clock from the bus, she workin’ today.”

  So I used my afternoon time in sorting out the bars and cocktail lounges. You can make a guess from the way they look on the outside, from the names they put on them, but you can’t be certain. You have to go in. You don’t have to drink. Certainly not in the ones you can check off at first glance. You just go look up an imaginary name in their phone book and walk back out. I had no interest in the folksy ones, the ones with the neighborhood flavor and neighborhood trade, cute signs about credit, bartender being a jolly uncle, general conversations including everyone at the bar, and generally a couple of massive women named Myrt or Sade or Pearl bulging over the edges of their bar stools, drinking draft beer and honking their social-hour laughter.

  By five-thirty I had found four probables. They were all within two miles of Cove Lane. Lolly’s Five O’Clock, The Ember Room, The Annex, and Ramon’s.

  They all had certain things in common. Carefully muted lighting, spotless glassware, premium brands in the bottle rack, uniform jackets on the bartenders, carpeting, no television, live cocktail piano, dim and intimate banquette corners, the flavor of profitable professional operation. And they had that other factor I was looking for. You feel it in the back of your neck. A sense of being appraised, added up, categorized. I had drinks in those four. Plymouth over ice. At Lolly’s and The Ember Room, the shot was slightly stingy, the price high. Ramon’s did a little better. At The Annex the fee was a dollar. The gin was poured freehand into a squat thick-based tumbler, a knock better than two ounces, I estimated. The cheese spread in a brown pot was sharp and good. Couples sat in shadowy corners, heads close together, and they were served by cocktail waitresses in white leotards and high-heeled white sandals. Two stools away two florid men in business suits were arguing intensely about one of the provisions of a Swiss corporate setup. A slender girl with a very deep tan and a cap of curls white as snow, and an evening gown with only a double thickness of gray netting over breasts as brown as her arms, noodled a little golden piano on a raised dais, under a small rose-colored spot in a corner beyond the bar, making mouths to match her music. The bartender at my end had the happy face of a young, well-fed weasel. I left him a dollar bonus for the single drink
to keep my image green. The bar was attached to one of the glossier motels. I went through into the motel and made some casual conversation with a desk man with a faint smell of authority about him.

  When I got around to my key questions, I learned that the management operated the dining room and the room-service liquor, but The Annex was on concession.

  Suspicion confirmed. The Annex would have a few sidelines going for it. The casual customer gets a heavy knock, good service in elegant surroundings. The aim would be to make just the costs on that business. The profit would come out of the live ones—live, fat and unwary. Just keep careful watch, sort them out, steer them into whichever behind-the-scenes plucking machine matches their vulnerability. Broads or beach boys, dice or cards, all staged elsewhere. It was nicely named. This was The Annex. The action was in other rooms, other places. The same kind of shuffle is available everywhere, from Vegas to Chicago, Macao to Montevideo. Sometimes it’s a little smoother than in other places. Electronic technology has improved the efficiency.

  I had to find out if Noreen Walker could fill in any blanks.

  Eight

  Arlentown was the dusky suburb of Broward Beach, west of the city. Fiftieth Street improved as I neared her block. The little frame rental cottages were more recently painted, the fences in repair, the yards free of old auto parts.

  I parked in front of her place in the evening slant of sunshine, aware of eyes watching me from up and down the block. I got out and stood at the white gate, knowing there would be no need to push it open and walk to the porch. A heavy woman, very dark of skin, wearing a cotton print, plodded out onto the porch and said, “You about the phone again?”

  “I want to talk to Noreen.”

  “She live here. She my middle daughter. What about?”

  “About some work out at the beach.”

  “Sure then,” she said. “Just come home. Changing her clothes.” She went back in.

  I went back to the car and sat behind the wheel, leaned and swung the passenger door open. Through the open door, in a few moments, I saw her come down the porch steps, push the gate open, come to the car, her head tilted in inquiry. She wore blue sandals, bermuda shorts, a pale blue knit sleeveless blouse with a turtleneck collar. She was a tall slender young woman, very long-legged and short-waisted. She was lighter than her mother, her skin the tone of an old penny. She had a slanted saucy Negroid face, the broad nostrils and heavy lips. Her eyes were set very wide, and were a pronounced almond shape, and very pretty. Her breasts poked sharply against the knit fabric.

  “Askin’ fo’ me, mister?”

  “I phoned earlier and somebody told me you’d be home around six.”

  “Wantin’ maid work done at the beach?” She was bending, peering in at me, manifestly suspicious.

  “Would you please get into the car and sit for a minute, Mrs. Walker?”

  “No need, mister. I ain’t got me no free day at all. Maybe I could get you somebody, you say who to phone up.”

  I took the keys out of the ignition and tossed them onto the seat, toward her. I said, “Mrs. Walker, you can hold the car keys in your hand and leave that door open.”

  “Don’t want no maid work?”

  “No.”

  “What is it you wantin’?”

  I had the folded fifty-dollar bill in my shirt pocket, and I took it out and reached and stuck one corner of it under the car keys. She moved away and I suddenly realized she was going to the rear of the car to glance at the plates.

  She came back, looked in at me. “What you ’spect to buy?”

  “Some conversation.”

  “You tryin’ set me up someways, somebody con you wrong. Could be some other gal. I never mess with no white stud, never been in law trouble. I’m a hard-working widow woman, and I got two baby boys in the house there, so best thing you be on your way.”

  I got out Vangie’s picture, held it where she could see it.

  “That there’s Miz Western. I wuk for her a long time, there at that Cove Lane.”

  “You used to work for her. She’s dead.”

  For the first time she looked directly into my eyes. Her mouth firmed up, and I saw a shrewd light of intelligence behind her eyes.

  “Fuzz doan throw big money to nigger women, ’less it’s got a mark on it, you come back a-raidin’, find it and take me into town sayin’ it’s stole, and get me sayin’ things to frame up who you think done it.”

  “I’m not the law. I just want to know what you know about Tami Western. It might help me get a line on who did it. I want to know her habits. And the longer we keep talking, the more all your neighbors are going to wonder what’s happening.”

  “Big friend of Miz Western maybe?” She had a bland and vacuous expression.

  “She was a cheap, sloppy, greedy slut. Where can we talk?”

  “Where you from, Mister?”

  “Fort Lauderdale.”

  “Down there any chance you know any Sam B. K. Dickey?”

  “I worked with him once. A mutual friend was in trouble.”

  “Likely he knowin’ your name?”

  “Travis McGee.”

  “Please, you wait a piece, mister.”

  It was a ten-minute wait. Some children came to stand and stare warily at me from a safe distance.

  She came back out and leaned in the door as before. Her smile looked tired. “Just to be certain, Mr. McGee, I asked Mr. Sam to describe you. He was quite picturesque about it. But it fits. And he said I can trust you a hundred percent, which is something Mr. Sam would not say too often about our own people. It saved us a lot of time to have you know him. I hope you do understand that the standard disguise is … pretty imperative. If you could come back to this area at nine o’clock, I think that would be best. Four blocks straight you’ll come to a traffic light. There’s a drugstore on the far corner. Park just beyond the drugstore and blink your lights a couple of times.”

  When I returned to that corner it was five after nine. She opened the car door quickly and got in.

  “Just drive around?” I asked.

  “No. Go straight ahead and I’ll tell you where to turn. It’s a place we can talk.”

  It was a narrow driveway, a small back yard surrounded by a high thick hedge of punk trees. There was a small screened porch, lights on, comfortably furnished. I followed her to the porch. She had changed to a dark green jumper dress, worn with a white long-sleeved shirt, with a big loose white bow at the throat.

  As I followed her onto the porch and we sat in two comfortable chairs on either side of a small lamp table, she said, “Friends of mine.” She took a cigarette from her purse, lighted it. “Very conspiratorial, I know. But we’re getting very used to that these days, Mr. McGee. Mr. Sam said I could trust you. I’m one of the regional directors of CORE. I’m a University of Michigan graduate. I taught school before I got married. He died of cancer two years ago and I came back here. Working as a maid gives me more freedom of action, less chance of being under continual observation. Racially I’m what you might call a militant optimist. I believe that the people of good will of both races are going to get it all worked out. Now you can stop wondering about me and my little act and tell me what you want to know. You gave … an accurate picture of Tami Western. If she didn’t travel so often, I would have dropped her from my list. That woman could turn that apartment into a crawling slum in about twenty minutes flat. About all I can say for her is that she was generous. Extra money, clothes she was tired of, presents men gave her she had no use for. But in a strange way, she made me feel … crawly. No one could live in Arlentown without being pretty much aware of the facts of life. But whenever we were there alone when I was doing the housework, the times when she wasn’t sleeping or fixing her face or taking one of her half-hour showers, she was always trying to convince me how much better off I’d be selling myself to white men. She said she could give me all the pointers I’d need, and introduce me to the right people, and I could clear three or four hundr
ed a week with no trouble at all. I just had to keep telling her no God-fearing Baptist church lady could do like that without going to hell for sure. It really shocked me to hear you say she’s dead.”

  “Murdered. How long did you work for her?”

  “I think … fifteen months. Yes.”

  “And she went on trips how often?”

  “On cruises. Cruise ships to the Caribbean. Anywhere from five days to fifteen days. She’d tell me when she was leaving and when she’d be back, so I could clean it after she left and show up again the day after she was due back. She’d leave from Port Everglades. And she’d bring back some little present for me, usually. Those ships, you know, go winter and summer, all year. I’d say she went off, oh, a dozen times while I worked for her.”

  “Was there any predictable pattern?”