“Well now, Mr. McGee, I do respect Debra’s instinct, and I must say that she was correct. You have not the faintest odor of the law. You do not look irrational, and you do not look a fool. So do sit down, young man, and we will have our little chat. Sit there, please, where you won’t get the glare in your eyes.”
He wore a dark green blazer, grey flannel trousers, a yellow ascot. He looked ruddy and fit, chubby and wholesome as he smiled across at me.
“And,” he said, “our little telltale in the foyer has advised us you are not carrying some lethal hunk of metal. Cigar, Mr. McGee?”
“No thank you, Mr. Stebber.”
“Please, Debra,” he said. She went to a table, took a fat foil-wrapped cigar from a humidor, peeled it, and, frowning in pretty concentration, clipped the ends carefully with a little gold gadget. She lit a kitchen match, waited until the flame was right, then lit the cigar, revolving it slowly, getting a perfect light. She took it to him, her every move theatrically elegant, and this time all elegance was directed at him, and without irony, more as if it was her obligation to herself and to him to be as consciously lovely as she could manage to be. A gift for Calvin.
“Thank you, dear. Before we begin, Harris phoned up here about your companion, Mr. McGee, and I suggested he bring her up.”
“It might be a pretty good trick.”
“Harris can be very persuasive.” A buzzer sounded. “There they are. Do let her in, dear. And tell Harris to bring the car around at five.”
I did not get a look Harris, but Chook told me later that he was so much beef in a grey chauffeur’s uniform, he would make me look shrunken and puny. She said he had plucked her out of the car the way she would lift a kitten out of a shoebox. I realized later that the long wait when I had phoned upstairs was to give Debra time to alert Harris on another phone, possibly a house line to the service area.
Chook came into the room, thin-lipped with fury, rubbing her upper arm. “Trav, what the hell is going on!” she demanded. “That big clown lamed me. And you, fat little man, I suppose you’re the chief thief.”
Stebber scurried over to her, great concern on his face. He took her hand in both of his and said, “My dear child, the last thing I wanted was to have Harris hurt you or anger you or frighten you, really. I merely thought it rude to have you waiting down there in the car in the hot sun. But seeing what a striking creature you are, my dear, it’s doubly a pleasure to have you here. Come over and sit with me here on the couch. There! Now what is your name?”
“But I … Look, I only … Well … Barbara Jean McCall.” It was a measure of his charm that I had never known her name until that moment. She made no attempt to pull her hand away. She looked bedazzled. I glanced at Debra and she gave me a wise, measured wink. “Chookie, people call me. Chook sometimes. I … I’m a professional dancer.”
“Chookie, my dear, with all that grace and vitality and presence, I can’t imagine you being anything else. I bet you’re very good!” He released her hand, gave her an approving little pat on the arm, turned and looked up over his shoulder at Debra, leaning against the back of the couch and said, “Debra, dear, say hello to Chookie McCall, and then you might fix us all a drink.”
“Hello, dear. I’m tremendous with daiquiris if anyone cares.”
“Well … sure. Thanks,” Chook said. I nodded agreement.
“Four coming up swiftly,” Debra said, and Chook did not take her eyes off the willowy grace of Debra until a door swung shut behind her.
“Spectacular creature, isn’t she,” Stebber said. “And, in her own way, quite natural and unspoiled. Now let’s get to it, Mr. McGee. You used a name over the phone. A password. And you show a certain amount of resource and ingenuity. But, of course, we have a problem. We don’t know each other. Or trust each other. What is your occupation?”
“Semi-retired. Sometimes I help a friend solve a little problem. It isn’t anything you need an office for. Or a license.”
“And this handsome young woman is helping you help a friend?”
“Something like that. But when a friend gets caught in a big con, it isn’t easy. Old grifters like you keep the action safe and almost on the level. Maybe you even pay taxes on the take. And you train your ropers and shills and let them take the risks. I suppose you’re so used to living nice, Stebber, you don’t want to risk taking any kind of a fall. How badly do you want to avoid a fuss? When I know that I know how much pressure I’ve got.” I kept it very casual.
He stared at me for long alert seconds. “Certainly not bunko,” he said. “Wrong type, completely. Could you have been with it?”
“Not with it. Close to it a few times. Helping friends.”
Chook said irritably, “What’s going on?”
Debra reappeared, bringing four golden-pale daiquiris on a teak and pewter tray. I said, “Cal Stebber’s in the bait business, honey. He gets the hungry ones, and they get hauled aboard and gutted.”
Debra made a face at me as I took my drink from the tray. “What a dreadful way to say it. Really! You must have made some very bad investments, Mr. McGee.”
“Debra, dear,” Stebber said. “Have we given up waiting for our cues?” It was said with loving patience, and with an almost genuine warmth. But the girl’s color changed, the tray dipped, the glasses slid an inch before she regained control. She made an almost inaudible murmur of apology. Discipline was rigid on this team.
After one imitation sip, I put my drink aside. Debra sat graceful and subdued on the arm of the couch. Stalemate. I decided I’d better gamble on my knowledge of the type. Perhaps, twenty years ago, he could have taken chances. Now his life would seem shorter to him. If I had no information he wanted, I wouldn’t have gotten into the apartment. Now he was regretting even that. And I could say with almost total certainty that my chance of prying any of Arthur’s money out of this one was zero. I had to give him some confidence. And I thought I might have the name that would do it.
“Know The Moaner, Cal?” I asked him.
He looked startled. “My God, I haven’t thought of Benny in years. Is he still alive?”
“Yes. Retired. Lives with his son-in-law in Nashville. Phone is under the name of T. D. Notta. You could say hello.”
“He knows you?”
“It isn’t a real warm friendship.”
He excused himself and left the room. Chook said, “Somebody could give me a scorecard.”
“When the Moaner was young and spry, back, they say, in Stanley Steamer days, he got his start in Philadelphia, diving into the front end of slow-moving cars. He’d bounce off and roll away and moan like to break your heart. His partner wore a cop suit and came running up and spilled the fake blood on the Moaner when he bent over him to take a look at him. He worked up from there. Fake masterpieces, they say. And he worked the ships. Ran bucket shops, telephone swindles. All the longtime grifters know each other.” Debra made a sound of amusement. Her morale was returning. But when I tried to pump her, she was both silent and amused.
When Stebber returned he had shed large hunks of his public personality. “The old bastard sounds pretty shaky, McGee. He doesn’t like you. One of the last scores he made, a little one, you got it back before he could get out of range.”
“For a friend.”
“He says you don’t holler cop. He says … Debra, dear, why don’t you take Miss McCall to your room and make girltalk?”
When Chook looked at me in query I nodded approval.
They left.
As the door closed, Stebber said, “Benny says you can get cute. And he says it isn’t a good idea to send anybody after you. He said you made two good boys as sorry as could be. He said don’t try to figure you for a mark in any direction. And you’re pretty much a loner. But if you say you’ll deal, you’ll deal.”
“So you want to know what I’ve got and what I want.”
“I know Wilma didn’t send you. She’s not damn fool enough to think of making a deal to come back in. And she would
have given you the phone code. It’s a simple number switch, based on what day of the week it is. Seven digits in the phone number. Seven days in the week. When she asks the caller to repeat the number, you just add one to whatever digit represents that day. You would have said seven one three–one eight seven eight.”
“And having told me, to show how much you trust me, you’ll change the code as soon as you can.”
“You hurt me, my boy.”
“The secretarial type who fed Arthur the knockout at the Piccadilly Pub. Could have been Debra, I suppose.”
“You have a good eye. Few men could see how severe and plain she can make herself look. And how is poor Arthur?”
“Insolvent.”
“It had to be him, of course. Wilma’s most recent venture. Your Miss McCall. She has a special interest in Arthur?”
“You could put it that way.”
He awarded me a sad, sweet, knowing man-of-the-world smile. “Odd, isn’t it, how those very vital and alive ones are attracted to such shadowy, indistinct men. Poor Arthur. Not much sport there. Like shooting a bird in a cage.”
“You must have felt sorry for him, Stebber. Or you would have taken his last dime.”
“Wilma had her way. No pity, no mercy. He was just another symbol of what she has to keep killing, over and over.”
“That’s one of the shticks of the half-educated, this bite-sized psychiatry, Stebber. You do it pretty well.”
Ruddiness deepened and then faded. It was nice to mark him a little in an area where he least expected it. “But we aren’t progressing, McGee. We want information from each other. And the magic word is Wilma.”
“For a top operator in the big con, which you seem to pretend to be, Stebber, you put together a damned shaky team. Crane Watts and Boone Waxwell are weak links.”
“I know. Also Rike Jefferson, the executor. Weakness and unpredictability. But it was a … sentimental flaw. I couldn’t take the time to set it up more soundly. Harry couldn’t spare the time. Mr. Gisik. An old associate. A valued friend. He died six weeks ago in New Orleans after heart surgery, God rest his soul. As this venture was … reasonably legal, I took the risk of operating with weak people. But they were paid what they were worth. Your being here is, I suppose, one of the penalties of a clumsy operation. But let me assure you, Travis McGee, clumsiness stops out there beyond the main gate.”
“I think there’s another penalty too.”
“Yes?”
“I think Wilma is dead.”
It hit him very solidly. He reverted to that mask face which can be acquired only in prison or in the military. It shows nothing, asks nothing. He stood up slowly, paced to the window and back. “I’ve thought so too,” he said. “Without quite admitting it. Let me put it this way. She was with me for fifteen years. And it is not an emotional loss. It’s the end of … an effective professional relationship.”
“Fifteen years!”
“She was nineteen when we found her. I had a steady partner at the time. Muscle. I went in for more active gaffs at that time. Southern California. She was in a place that catered to movie money. In little frocks and jumpers and pinafores. Alice in Wonderland haircut, face scrubbed, talking in a thin little lisp, doll in the crook of her arm, bubblegum in her little jaw, she could pass for eleven or twelve. There’s a steady demand at good rates for that sort of thing. But they couldn’t control her. She kept going on the gouge on her own. Greedy and reckless and merciless. We took her off their hands. She responded to discipline when she found we weren’t at all squeamish about it. We improved her diction and cleaned up her vocabulary. We put her in full make-up, high fashion clothes, and worked the class lounges and hotels. She had a good natural eye for a mark. After the fun and games, the gaff was to hit the mark in broad daylight on his grounds—home or office—the three of us, Wilma as a scared, bawling fourteen-year-old saying she truly loved the scared clown, my muscle as her murderously inclined father, me as an officer of the juvenile court, with her faked birth certificate in hand. The way out we’d finally give him was for him to spring for two or more years in a private institution for her, with the fee adjusted to how we had checked him out before the visit. You want to see real horror, you should have seen their faces when we laid the gaff on them. When we were home free, my God how she would laugh! A laugh to chill the blood. She learned fast. She was a quick study. She read a lot, remembered a lot. And lied a lot about herself. I think she even believed most of it.”
He sat in silence on the couch, almost unaware of me. He was a dumpy, tired little thief dressed for a costume party.
“I gave up the rough lines. She became a partner. She’d cruise on her own, rope them, bring them back within range, set them up, clean them out, divorce them. Had she been more merciful I think she would have been a poisoner. Mercilessness can be a flaw. And believing your own lies. And she had another flaw too. She could never get any sexual satisfaction from the marks. After the scores she’d almost invariably find some brute stud, usually ignorant, rough, dirty and potentially dangerous. But she always kept the whip hand, drove them hard, walked out when she was ready.” He sighed, stirred, pumped himself back up to full con artist scale, aimed personality at me like a two-mile flashlight.
“McGee, do I do all the talking?”
“I think she must have been carrying her share in cash. And was killed a few days after she left the motel in Naples while Arthur was off on his bus trip. I’d guess the playmate who killed her has spent at least twenty-five thousand. Cars, a boat, guns, toys. I’m helping my friend Arthur. If I could come up with a good way of making a recovery from you, I’d give it a try. I take expenses off the top and keep half the net salvage. So moving in on her playmate could be full of ugly surprises, and if I knew how much she was carrying on her, I’d know if there was a balance worth the risk.”
“And if I give you the figure?”
“Then I’d have to figure out whether to tell you who and where. And if you’re lying. Suppose she was carrying just twenty-five. So you tell me a hundred so I will go prodding and maybe get jammed up in a way that will keep me from ever coming back with some cute idea for you. Or maybe I eliminate the playmate, which would satisfy you up for the way he cooked your future plans for Wilma. Or suppose she was carrying a hundred and you tell me it was twenty-five. I say who and where and you send muscle after it.”
He pondered it. “Stalemate again. I see your point. There’s no way I can get you to take my word that the very last thing I would do these days is go after a hijacked take, or send anyone. Risks alarm me, Travis McGee. I have too much to lose. You could check something out. I own twenty percent of the West Harbour Development Corporation. And some other things here and there. Muscle is seldom combined with wits. You seem to be a striking exception. Someone gets killed and the muscle gets tricked into a state’s evidence revelation, and the middleman I would use implicates me. No thanks. Besides, Debra and I are negotiating a score as big as the one Arthur contributed. By falsifying records, bribing minor officials, making some careful changes in old group pictures—school and church—and with the help of some brown contact lenses, some minor changes in hair and skin texture, we have given Debra an ironclad identity as a mulatto, as a pale-skinned girl who actually did disappear at fourteen. This curious revelation has come as a horrid shock to her young husband of four months, and an even worse shock to her wealthy father-in-law, the ex-governor of a southern state, a fevered segregationist, a man with political ambitions. The positive rabbit test—also faked—is bringing things to a climax. The fat settlement is for divorce, abortion and total silence. There was a real chance they might solve it by having her killed. But Debra is not squeamish. Actually, she takes too many chances. Very good family. She was risk-hunting when I found her. Jumping out of the airplanes, racing overpowered little boats and automobiles, skindiving alone and too deep, potting at cape buffalo with a handgun. She’s incredibly quick and strong. Now she has found something, finally, whic
h satisfies her. The hunt. Along with the constant and very real danger of displeasing me.
“McGee, all I can ask you to do is accept my story of what happened. There was a hundred and thirty-five thousand left in that trustee account for the syndicate in the Naples bank. I arranged in advance for them to have cash available. It is not difficult in Florida where cash is used so often in real estate closings. The day Arthur came up to meet me, my man Harris drove me to Naples. I closed out the account at noon, kept five thousand for incidental expenses and took the balance to that grisly motel room and gave it to Wilma. She was almost packed. We had arranged she would return to Tampa in the car with me in time to catch a Nassau flight. I had her ticket. The money represented the final take for both of us. I gave her the prepared deposit slip for my share. Bahamian banks have a pleasant policy of never divulging information on an account unless the depositor appears in person and signs a specific authorization. She said she’d made other arrangements, that someone was going to drive her to Miami and she would fly over from there. I made mild objections.”
“And you let her fly off with all that money?”
“She liked money. Without me, she’d have a lot less to spend. We were together fifteen years. Taking cash into the islands is easy. She was shrewd and tough. And far from retirement.”
“So, as I said at first, maybe you’re fattening the figure.”
He called Debra in. I gave them no chance for signals, made her face me with her slender back toward him. She verified the details and the amount, asked no questions, left without a word when he told her to go.
I could have gathered Chookie and left. I doubted he’d have tried anything. But there was an implied obligation. And if he did indeed come after what Boo might have left, it could turn into a diversion I might be able to use.
Bright Orange for the Shroud Page 16