"Wish me luck," I told Meyer, and with beer in hand went ambling over to their table. There was one extra chair.
"Join you for a couple of minutes?"
They looked up at me with a quick, identical wariness, and looked away again, and kept talking as if I was not there. Bad tactics. Should have asked the stranger to go away.
So I sat down, smiling blandly, and cut into their conversation, saying, "I am not on vacation, kids. I am not looking for fun and games. I am not drunk. I am not fuzz."
She stared at me with a hot, dark-eyed hostility and said, "Did you catch the strange word, darling? This fellow seems to have some sort of in-group syndrome."
"Fuzz," the boy said thoughtfully. "Wasn't there some sort of quip about that we never understood, Della?" Boston accent.
"I don't recall at the moment, dear."
He put on a minstrel show, end-man accent, doing the Sambo thing very badly. "Hey, you all hear 'bout what happen to Jemima?"
"No!" she said. "Whut happen to ol' Jemima?"
"Got herself picked up by the fuzz."
"Lordy me! That sure musta stung."
"Hyuck, hyuck, hyuck," I said, unsmiling.
"Just go away," Della said. "Be cooperative. Go back to your friend."
"If you had to make a guess, why would you say I came over here?"
They glanced at each other. The boy shrugged. "I guess the most likely thing would be one of those little speeches about tolerance and miscegenation and all that, so that you can pretend to be so terribly understanding and get some queasy little kick out of it, and get some barroom conversational gambits back wherever you come from, and also, let's see, delude yourself into believing that there is something so awfully swinging about you that you can bridge the communications gap."
I laughed. I couldn't help it. He was bright. He was so damned right and so damned wrong, all at once. I rocked the chair back and laughed. They looked startled, then angry, then they fought the temptation to smile, and then they were laughing. He had a piercing giggle, and he had a deep, rhythmic bray. We were being stared at. Finally, when I could get my breath, I said, "My name is Travis McGee. Fort Lauderdale, Florida."
"Della Davis," he said. "I'm Mike Barrington." His was a large, hard, muscular hand.
"Equal time?" I asked. He nodded. She had the hiccups. "I'm loaded with a lot of kinds of tolerance and intolerance, and the only time I get defensive is when I identify some kind of tolerance or intolerance I didn't know I had, or thought was something else. The only people who need queasy kicks are the ones with the sex hangups, and I think I was a little hung up when I was twelve years old, but not lately. I don't need a new supply of small talk. And if I did, I wouldn't look for the raw material on a hotel veranda. Anybody who gives it any thought knows that there has always been a communication gap between everybody. If any two people could ever really get inside each other's head, it would scare the pee out of both of them. I don't want to share your hopes and dreams, Mike. I just want to communicate in a very limited way, politely, with no stress on anybody."
"I guess they aren't with the mining company after all," Della said to him. She turned to me. "We noticed you two and decided you weren't tourists. There's a mine up in the hills northeast of the city. Okay, Mister McGee, let's communicate in our limited fashion."
"If you two haven't been here a month, communication ends."
"We got here... the second of something. May or June, dear?" she asked.
"May," said Mike, "and I change my guess. You're looking for somebody's baby darling, so in your nice, personable, reasonable way you can talk baby darling into coming back home to daddy. Or maybe that's daddy you were sitting with over there. And you locate her-or him-and lay on the tickets, the kind you can't cash in."
"Closer. But that isn't daddy over there. Daddy is back in Florida because he got nearly, but not quite, torn in half. And baby darling went home already. From here. In a box, early this month."
"Oh sure. The one with the country-day-school nickname. What was it they called her, Del?"
"Hmmm. Dox? Nax? Bax?... Bix!"
I put one of the prints on the table, facing Della Davis. She pulled it closer.
"That one?" I asked.
" 'Tis she," said Della. "We saw her around. You know. Stay here a while and you see everybody. Nod and smile. Didn't socialize. The group she was in, or better the groups she ran with, we don't make those scenes. I've got nothing for or against, you understand. Freedom is being left alone to do your own thing. Mike is a painter."
"Wants to be a painter," he corrected.
"And he doesn't want to talk about it. He gets up early and he works all day and he goes to bed. And I prowl around driving hard bargains for tortillas and beans and rice and thinking up new ways to cook them. So today I got a little check from my sister in Detroit. So we're living it up. I mean we aren't here much, so we don't keep good track. Anyway, she's dead. What are you after?"
Mike Barrington said, "If old dads wondered if somebody pushed his baby darling off the mountain, he might send somebody like Mr. McGee to come and snuff around."
"Oh, he doesn't doubt that it was an accident. It was a pretty good police report. They were out of touch since last January, when she came to Mexico. He wants to know what the last six months of her life were like. How she lived and what she thought and how she died."
"And," said Della with an acid sweetness, "I suppose she was always a very good girl."
"Kept her room neat," I said, "got good grades, remembered names, thanked the hostess, brushed her teeth, and said her prayers. I guess he'd like to know who the hell she was."
"None of them know who we are," Mike said. "Or care much, really. Hang in there with an image they can live with, and they love it. You don't know who they are, and they don't know who you are."
"So who was Bix Bowie?"
"A girl who died young," Della Davis said.
"If I had to guess why," Mike said, "and understand I'm not knocking her, I'd say she was probably turned way on. She was high and she was flying, and she was coming down the mountain without knowing if she was there or she was dreaming it, and it turned out she wasn't dreaming it. In a dream, when you hit bottom, you wake up. The thing about Mexico, the stuff that's on prescription in the States, here you can buy it in any drugstore. All you have to know is the name of what you want. Little lists circulate. The right names for Thorazine, Compazine, oral Demerol, Doriden, reserpine. Mardil, Benzedrine, other amphetamines. And in the public market, at the herb stalls, you can buy a kilo brick of very good, strong pot. It's all a big lunch counter. You mix them up in brand new ways and wait and see where and how it hits you. If you like it, you try to find the same combination again."
She put her wiry black hand on his and said, "That used to be the name of your game, sweetheart."
"There's a better high," he said, smiling into her eyes. "I don't ever have to come down off this one." She gave me a bawdy wink, which somehow was not bawdy at all, and said, "Like the old saying, man, I changed his luck."
"It needed changing," Mike said.
"Was she any kind of hooked?" I asked them.
"I wouldn't know," Mike said. "I didn't know her. It's unfair to make guesses. Maybe one of those damned cows came clumping onto the road and she swerved and lost the car. But it's fair to say she was some kind of user, because it was users she was with, mostly, but I don't know how much or how often, or even what."
"Those seven over there at that table. Would any of them know more about her?"
Uella leaned back and made a careful inspection. "I just don't know. If any of them, it would be the girl facing this way, with the round face and the reddish hair and the big sunglasses, and the skinny follow sitting on her left. I think they've been here the longest."
"Got a name for either of them?"
"Mike, isn't that the girl they call Backspin?"
"Yes. God knows why."
I used my little notebook to refr
esh my memory. "liere are the names of the ones she came into the country with back in January. Stop me if I come to anyone you know. Carl Sessions? Jerry Nesta? Minda McLeen?"
"Whoa," Della Davis said. "Little bit of a darkhaired girl. She and that Bix were usually together. Strange-acting girl. Haven't seen her around lately. But that doesn't mean anything. Mike, darling, that horrible bore of a man with the funny hat. Wasn't his name... ?"
"McLeen. I went to the public market last week with Del and he introduced himself. Said he was looking for his daughter."
"He still around?"
"I have no idea."
"Walter Rockland?" They both looked blank, both shrugged.
"They came down in a Chevy pickup, blue, with a new camper body on it."
She looked at Mike. "Rocko?" she asked.
"He says the name is Rockland, and the truck fits. Mr. McGee, is he a little older than the rest of the bunch? Husky?"
"That fits."
"Then Miss Bix came down here in bad company if she came with that one," Della said. "That one is one mean honkey son of a bitch. That one is a smart ass and a hustler. When did we have that fuss with him, honey?"
"About the fourth of July I think. The day after the fourth." They took turns telling me about it. They'd gone to visit a couple they knew, who were living in a travel trailer at the trailer park over near the Plaza de la Danza. Rocko's camper was in a nearby site. Evidently someone had pried open a little door in the side of the camper and stolen his little tank of bottle gas. He came over to the travel trailer in an ugly mood, acting as if it was the fault of the friends of Mike and Della for not seeing it happen. Mike told him to take it easy. Rocko looked the situation over and told Mike he didn't need any advice from him or his spade chick. They were standing outside the travel trailer.
Mike swung on Rocko and missed, and Rocko tagged him as he lunged forward off balance.
"And," said Della, "Mike was out of it right then. And that mean bastard knew it, but he hit him three more times before he could fall down, and then kicked him in the side. I jumped on his back and reached around to claw his face, and he bucked me off right into the side of the trailer. It sprained my neck and I went around for a week with my head way over on the side like this."
"Is he still there?"
"Our friends left not long after that. We had no reason to go back. Maybe he's still there." They told me how to find it. It was on the west side of town. It was near a street carnival. It was near a school. It had an iron fence around it. It was near the Ford garage. Oh. And called Los Pajaros Trailer Court.
With considerable animation, Della said, "We've got a crazy pad, built like into a corner of a walled garden where there used to be some kind of tourist home that burned. We met such a sweet guy in Mexico City at the art school, and we were running out of money, and he said we could stay there. Outdoor plumbing, and a well with a pump that Mike fixed, and all the tame flowers have gone wild. It's about a mile along the Coyotepec road. You ought to come and see us and..."
She froze, and her eyes changed and narrowed. "You are some kind of sneak, man. What the hell am I saying? Who knows you?"
"We know him, honey,," Mike said gently. "You have to go along with your own reaction. We can't keep all the walls up all the time. We can't demand credentials."
"Easier for you," she said obliquely. "The man can be so dear, and then his partner takes over and raps you on your kinky haid until your ears bleed, and then the dear man takes his turn with sweet talk."
"Come and see us if you get a chance. On the left on the way to the airport," Mike said. "Look for an old red jeep parked under the trees by the wall."
"I'm sorry," Della Davis said.
"I'll stop by and say hello. Thanks for the invitation. One thing I forgot to ask. The man who owned the car she drove off the road. Bruce Bundy. Know him? Or the woman who identified her body, the French woman, Mrs. Vitrier?"
They did not know them. Mike said, "There are some eerie people living in these little resort spots in Mexico. Here and in Cuernavaca and Taxco and San Miguel. Some are loaded and some are just making it. And the summer is hunting time, both ways. All the kids come flooding down, and there are weirdo types who stalk the kids, and hard kids that stalk the resident crazies. I used to make that scene. Now I don't need it. I can't use it. Depending on what hangups you run into it can go all the way from laughs and kicks to nightmares you couldn't believe."
Their waiter came with the tab. I made a foolish move to pay it, and nearly lost both of them. I relinquished it to Mike, saying, "It was going to be a deductible contribution to the fine arts."
They softened, their pride undamaged.
We said good-bye, see you around, see you soon, and I went back to Meyer.
Four
JUST AS I was finishing my factual summary report to Meyer, four departed from the group of seven. One of the girls and three of the boys took off and headed slowly along one of the shady walks that angled across the zocalo, in the somnolence of the warm siesta afternoon. Only a half dozen tables on the porch were occupied. The sun was slanting in. The three who were left-the round-faced redhead with the curious nickname, the very skinny boy, and a muscular girl with a tight cap of brown curls under sunglasses with blue lenses-moved back to an empty inside table out of the sun. A yawning waiter went over to them.
A red jeep went by with Mike driving. Della was talking to him, gesturing with little chopping strokes of a slender black hand. The windshield was down, and the breeze of passage streamed back his silky hair and beard.
Our waiter brought us more Negro Modelo, and when I glanced again at the three of them, I saw that after the departure of their four friends, they were no longer turned inward upon themselves, making their own closed world of talk but were now aware of what was around them. They had become interested in us. The redhead, staring at us, said something inaudible to the others. The boy laughed and laughed. The big-shouldered girl in the blue glasses did not react. It was idle interest, and we were fair game, Business types.
Establishment. She was pretty good at her little jokes. She kept the boy laughing, never taking her eyes off me. The quite obvious intent was to make me uncomfortable, and if they could get a reaction it would improve the game. So I provided the reaction.
I gave Meyer a warning wink and got up and walked over to them, properly stuffy and irritated, and said, "Something seems to be very, very funny. How about letting me in on it?"
They were delighted. The victim had walked right up to the gun. The skinny boy took it. He said, "Think maybe big tourist fella like to make bangbang with nice clean American college girl? This one here name Jeanie. Nice big strong girl. Three hundred pesos maybe? Take her up to your room right now, big fella. She give you a good time. She likes you. Right, Jeanie? you like the big fella, sweetie?"
The girl's head turned very slowly and I could not see her eyes behind the blue lenses as she looked up at me. I pulled the extra chair out and sat down. The skinny boy and the redhead waited in mildly pleasurable anticipation for the shocked reaction. This was called blowing the mind of the random member of the establishment. I let my mouth sag in stupefaction as I appraised them, looking for clues to the best approach. At such close range they were far less attractive than at a distance. The bigger girl looked less muscular, more suety, and smelled slightly rancid. There was grime in the creases of the redhead's neck, and stains on the front of her Indian shirt. The dark boy's hands were filthy. The two pair of eyes I could see were not quite right. They were subtly out of focus, with that slightly glassy and benign look of the mind behind the eyes being skewed a degree or two off center.
There were several ways to go with it. I picked the one I thought might sting the most. I shoved my chair around so that I could call to Meyer and at the same time keep the edge of my eye on the trio.
"Hey Charley!" I called to Meyer.
"What do you want?" he yelled.
I said to the trio, "My buddy is
a little hard of hearing." I raised my voice to a pitch that startled the serape sellers. "Charley, there's nothing here worth fooling around with. The big one with the the shades he wants twenty-four bucks for. The redhead would maybe go for thirty. But, honest to God, Charley, they're both of them so damn dirty it would turn your stomick. The redhead has spilled food down her shirt, and you should see her neck."
"Knock it off!" the boy said in a pinched little voice.
"Charley, the big one here is named Jeanie, and she doesn't take baths. And all three of them are stoned out of their skulls on something. The kid has got the dirtiest hands I ever seen. Scrawny little bastard. If you ever could get him cleaned up, I don't think even old Crazy Eddie would grope him."
John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 11 - Dress Her in Indigo Page 4