by Ed McBain
“And there’s also mastitis,” she said, “which is an udder infection, and colic, which you flush out with mineral oil, administered orally from a garden hose. I know a rancher out West who lost ninety percent of his calf crop because his cows were eating pine needles that caused them to abort. Moldy hay can do it too. We haven’t had any of that yet, thank God; when our cattle are stressed, they go for the palmettos. The ranchers out West also have to worry about poison grasses like larkspur and senecio—pretty little blue and yellow flowers, but deadly. Locoweed too, out there, which isn’t deadly, of course, but which makes the cows go bananas—they’ll run right over you, go through fences, knock down posts, who needs it? It isn’t an easy business, cattle breeding. Do you suppose snapbean farming is less work?”
Her mind kept circling back to the farm, I noticed, and what I was sure she considered a foolish investment on her son’s part. We passed a pair of deer standing some fifty feet inside the pasture fence on our left. They stared at the Jeep in surprise for a moment, and then turned and went loping off gracefully. I unfastened the chain on another gate, and we drove into yet another pasture on yet another muddy road. We passed a grove of orange trees—“I keep two hundred acres in citrus,” Mrs. McKinney said. “It’s a nuisance more than anything else”—and we passed a huge, black wild hog rooting in a copse of trees she said was called “Happy Hammock,” for reasons she could not fathom. And at last we drove past the small clapboard house where her manager lived, and her hand’s mobile home, and the horse barn—a brown quarter horse was grazing outside now—and the two rusting gas tanks. She parked the Jeep under a huge old oak and we walked together up the porch steps and into the main house. She had set the air conditioning too low. The temperature inside was virtually subarctic.
“Ah, nice and cool,” she said. “I’ll just call Erik from the office, it won’t take a minute. Would you like a drink? Something a bit stronger than tea?”
“No, thanks,” I said.
“Well, make yourself comfortable,” she said, and opened a door beyond which I could see one corner of a cluttered desk. The door closed. From upstairs in the house someplace, I heard a record player blaring a rock-and-roll tune. Sunny, I thought. I sat in one of the wicker chairs in the fern-cluttered corner nook where Sunny and I had earlier had our brief conversation, and I wondered why I felt it easier to talk to her mother, who—by strict arithmetical calculation—was far more distant in age from me than was her daughter.
I still found it hard to believe that anyone her age could be so—well, there were no other words for it—well preserved. I know divorced men of my age who won’t dream of “dating” (a word I despise) anyone older than twenty-five. Thirty-eight is a dangerous age for a man. For a woman too, I suppose, but I’m not qualified to speak for the opposite sex. At thirty-eight, a man starts looking over his shoulder to see how closely the shadow of forty is following. Forty is a dread age. Forty means you’d better grow up fast if you’re going to grow up at all. Forty means taking stock of where you’ve been and where you’re going. At thirty-eight, forty is only two years away (in my case only eighteen months away) and forty means problems. You can go bald when you turn forty. Your teeth can start falling out, if they haven’t already been knocked out by a football player in Chicago. You can hurt your knees. Your back can start troubling you. Forty is a pain in the ass. My partner Frank had turned forty in April. He said it was easy. Just like falling off Pier Eight, he said. I didn’t know where Pier Eight was. I supposed it was in New York City someplace.
But Veronica McKinney was fifty-seven years old. Fifty-seven! Almost twenty years older than I, and looking fit and trim and healthy and vital. Veronica McKinney made a person believe that forty would indeed be a piece of cake. Veronica McKinney had found the fountain of youth that Ponce de Leon had come down here looking for, and had drunk of it deeply, and was living proof that all of us terrified men trembling on the brink of middle age had nothing at all to fear. Veronica McKinney was a glowing promise of hope for the future, and that was reason enough to feel comfortable and secure and somehow content in her presence.
The door to her private office opened. She stepped out into the vast living room and walked briskly to where I was sitting in the corner nook. She moved like a sprightly teenager; I couldn’t get over it. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like a drink?” she asked.
“Work to do when I get back to the office,” I said.
“I’d offer you a swim, but we haven’t got a pool. Do you have a pool, Mr. Hope?”
“I have. And please call me Matthew, won’t you?”
“Oh good,” she said, “I hate formality, it seems so out of place here on the ranch. Will you call me Veronica, then?”
“Is that what your friends call you?”
“Some of them call me Ronnie, but I find that more suitable for someone my daughter’s age. Veronica will do nicely, such as it is. I’ve never felt completely comfortable with it, I must admit. Back in the early forties, when I was a teenager, I began combing my hair like Veronica Lake—does she mean anything to you?”
“Yes, of course,” I said.
“Big movie star,” she said. “Used to wear her hair hanging over one eye, I forget which one now, either the right or the left—it was very sexy, actually. Made her look as if she’d just tumbled out of bed. I’d demonstrate, but my hair’s too short now. Anyway, I started imitating her. She was a blonde, remember? I began wearing my hair like hers, and talking in that low breathy voice she had—my friends must have thought I was crazy,” she said, and suddenly began laughing. “But she was the only other Veronica I knew, and it was such a relief to be able to identify with someone. Adolescence is such a difficult time, isn’t it? I can understand why my daughter clings to it so tenaciously.”
I said nothing.
“Anyway,” she said, “you don’t want to listen to me prattling on about my green and salad days.”
“I’m enjoying it,” I said.
“Well, I’m glad,” she said, and smiled. “What we’ve decided, Erik and I, is to tell this Mr. Burrill, as simply as possible, that my son left no estate that we know of—other than his personal belongings and his automobile.”
“Yes, those would be part of his estate.”
“Well, Mr. Burrill is certainly entitled to those if he insists on pressing the matter. The car’s three years old, a Ford Mustang. But what Erik suggested—and I’d like your opinion on this as well—Erik thought Mr. Burrill might be willing to forget the entire matter if we simply forfeited the four thousand dollars you’re already holding in escrow. It’s Erik’s opinion that if there’s no estate—and in essence there isn’t—then Mr. Burrill hasn’t a prayer of collecting the additional thirty-six thousand. Erik said that even if I were a billionaire—and I assure you I’m not—there’s no way Mr. Burrill could proceed against me directly.”
“That’s right.”
“He can sue the estate, of course, but if there are no meaningful assets in it, what would be the point?”
“That’s good reasoning,” I said.
“Do you think Mr. Burrill would be willing to keep his damn farm and settle for the four thousand?”
“I have no idea. But I’m sure that once your attorney makes him familiar with the facts—”
“Which, by the way, is something else Erik and I talked about. He was wondering—since you’ve put in so much work on this already, and since he’s really not familiar with either Mr. Burrill or his attorney—do you think you could?”
“Could what?”
“Represent me in this matter? As though you were still representing Jack?”
“Well...yes, I’d be happy to.”
“You sound hesitant. If it presents any difficulty for you...”
“No, I was simply wondering whether there’d be any ethical problems, but I can’t imagine any. Yes, I’d be delighted to represent you.”
“Well, good,” she said. “Then that’s settled. I hate loose ends
.”
“I’ll call Loomis...”
“Loomis?”
“Mr. Burrill’s attorney. To ask whether his client might consider settling for the four thousand. In fact, if I can call him from here, maybe I can stop by to see him this afternoon.”
“You can use the phone in my office,” she said.
I went into her office. The large desk there was strewn with papers and back issues of a magazine called The Florida Cattleman. What I had learned was a Hereford cow—brown and white-faced—stared out at me from the cover of the October issue. Hanging on the wall behind the desk were framed plaques of appreciation from the Cattleman’s Association, all of them looking like law degrees, their ornate Old English script citing Drew McKinney for this or that outstanding achievement or service. I dialed information and asked for Harry Loomis’s number in Ananburg. I dialed the number and waited. Across the room, hanging on the wall, there was an oil painting of a brown-eyed, black-haired man who looked a lot like an older version of Jack McKinney; I assumed he was Jack’s father, the late Drew McKinney. He was smiling out of the painting, his dark eyes crinkled, his black mustache overhanging a mouth tilted in a lopsided grin. He was wearing the same sort of pearl-buttoned shirt my cowboy friends Charlie and Jeff had been wearing. He looked like Clark Gable. Or, to update the version, he looked like my daughter’s current movie-star flame, Tom Selleck.
“Attorney-at-law,” a brisk female voice said.
I told the woman who I was and asked to talk to Mr. Loomis. When he came onto the line, I explained that I was here with Jack McKinney’s mother, and was wondering if he might have a little time to see me, since I was so close to Ananburg and all. He told me to come by at three o’clock.
Veronica McKinney was standing near the huge fireplace when I came out into the living room again. In her right hand she was holding a tall drink with a lime floating in it. A young man sat in the green-cushioned wicker chair I had occupied earlier. They were not in conversation. In fact, Veronica’s back was turned to him.
“This is Jackie Crowell,” she said, gesturing toward him with the hand that held the glass. “My daughter’s friend,” she said. It seemed to me she punched home the word friend, as though she found it, and by extension the boy himself, distasteful. “Jackie,” she said, “this is Mr. Hope.”
Crowell rose from the chair and walked toward me, his hand extended. Bloom had described him as a pimply-faced “twerp,” but he was in fact as tall as I was, and much huskier, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist, and bulging biceps showing where his denim vest ended. His complexion, as far as I could tell in the light streaming through the windows, was entirely free of any acne whatever. He looked, in fact, like your average, healthy, all-American boy, clean-scrubbed (and even smelling faintly of soap) with dark hair and dark eyes, and a pleasant smile.
“Nice to meet you,” he said.
We shook hands.
“Sunny should be down in a minute,” Veronica said, and dismissed him abruptly. “Did you reach Loomis?” she asked me.
“On my way to see him now,” I said.
“Good luck,” she said, and raised her glass in a dubious toast. She took a quick sip, placed the glass on the fireplace mantel, and showed me to the door. As I stepped outside, I heard Sunny’s voice calling, “Jackie? Are you here already?”
It was blisteringly hot outside. A white Chevette was parked alongside my Ghia. I assumed it was Crowell’s. I drove up the long, rutted road without passing another vehicle. The main gate to the ranch was still wide open. As I made the right turn toward Ananburg, it occurred to me that never once in my conversation with Veronica McKinney had she expressed the slightest grief over her son’s death.
3
* * *
YOU DID not have to drive very far past the Sawgrass River State Park to realize how important cows were to Florida’s economy. The McKinney ranch was still within the confines of Calusa County, some twenty miles from the center of town, and only one of a handful of ranches before you crossed the border into De Soto County. No sign marked the dividing line between the two counties. Nothing said WELCOME TO DE SOTO COUNTY. But you knew at once that this was true cow country, and the moment you drove through Manakawa, the only town on the way to Ananburg, you felt you’d crashed through some sort of geographic time warp to find yourself in what appeared to be a mixture of Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana—the deep South blending imperceptibly with the Southwest.
The regional dialects in Calusa were largely Midwestern tourist, harsh and flat and somewhat abrupt, with here and there an off-American dollop of Canadian English thrown in. But here in the boonies the accent was pure Dixie, and the inhabitants looked like anyone you might find on a dusty back road in Georgia. The men wore bib overalls here, and boots and straw hats, and they chewed tobacco and rolled their own cigarettes. The women wore those patterned cotton things my mother used to call house-dresses. The roadside restaurants in Manakawa featured “home cooking,” which invariably meant country ham and black-eyed peas, green beans and fatback, hominy and collard greens, corn bread and fried catfish. Forsaking the restaurants offering down-home fare, I found a greasy spoon across the street from what appeared to be a courthouse, ordered a hamburger, a side of fries, and a cold beer, and was on the road again at two-thirty.
Ananburg was only forty-four miles from downtown Calusa, but by comparison it looked like The Last Picture Show, a shabby, sunburned town with a wide main street flanked by palm-lined sidewalks and wooden two-story buildings that appeared temporary, as if they were part of a movie set that would be torn down and stored as soon as the showdown gunfight was shot at high noon. This was the heart of central west Florida’s cow country, and the home of the annual All-Florida Championship Rodeo, which took place every January. There were a lot of cowboys in town. They clattered along the dusty sidewalks, bowlegged in their boots and jangling spurs, straw ten-gallon hats shading leathery brown faces, hand-rolled cigarettes dangling from sun-cracked lips. They called each other “Clem” and “Luke” and “Shorty,” and they slapped each other on the back a lot, and they had pint-size whiskey bottles in brown paper bags stuffed into the back pockets of their tight, faded jeans. This was Charlie-and-Jeff country, and I felt a certain amount of uneasiness as I walked up the main street looking for the address Harry Loomis had given me.
The wooden shingle read HARRY R. LOOMIS, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW, and a pointing dismembered hand painted onto the lower left-hand corner of the sign indicated a flight of wooden steps that led to the second story of the shingled building. The steps were narrow and many of the treads were either loose or entirely broken. I wondered if Harry Loomis was a good negligence lawyer; it seemed to me he might need one if someone fell and broke a leg on his rickety staircase. There was only one door on the second floor, the name HARRY R. LOOMIS hand-lettered in black on a frosted glass panel in its upper part. I opened the door and stepped into a small waiting room.
In the one and only telephone conversation I’d had with Avery Burrill, he’d informed me that his attorney ran “a one-man operation, just him an’ the girl answers the phone.” The “girl” sitting behind the desk just inside the entrance door had to be in her late fifties, approximately the same age as Veronica McKinney, but there all similarity ended. Where Veronica was tall and slender and blonde, the woman who peered at me over her rimless glasses was short and squat, with hair the color of iron. Where Veronica wore clothes that were casual and youthful, this woman wore a tailored blue pinstriped suit that looked as if its father had been a getaway car. Veronica’s smile could melt a glacier. This woman’s tightly set mouth could turn a desert to glass. Veronica’s voice was soft and breathless and a bit ragged. This woman’s voice, when at last she spoke, was fired from a secret concrete silo somewhere in Siberia.
“What is it?” she snapped.
“I’m Attorney Hope,” I said. “Mr. Loomis is expecting me.”
“Oh yes,” she said, and wrinkled her nose as though mer
e mention of my name had recalled aromas of dead rats decomposing under attic eaves. “You’re late,” she said. “Sit down, if you like. I’ll tell him you’re here.” The tone of her voice indicated that if I accepted her invitation to sit, I did so at my own peril. In any case, the only unoccupied chair in the small room seemed to have been carved from the same inhospitable oak as her face. I chose to stand. She picked up the phone and informed Mr. Loomis that “the lawyer from Calusa’s here.” She held the phone to her ear a moment longer, and then crashed it down on the cradle like the cutting edge of a guillotine blade. I thought suddenly of the squeeze chute on the McKinney ranch. “Go on in,” she said. I almost answered, “Yes, sir.”
Harry Loomis looked like a hanging judge in a fifties Western movie. He was wearing a dark winter-weight suit, a white shirt, and a black string tie, and—I will swear to this in a court of law—he was chewing tobacco. In fact, he spat a wad of it at what appeared to be a porcelain chamber pot the instant I came into the office. His face was the color of the tobacco juice that arced across the room and missed the chamber pot, adding another stain to those already on the wall. The wall was papered with what appeared to be a design of flattened locusts. Harry Loomis’s college diploma, his law degree, and his license to practice in the state of Florida were hanging in black frames against the squashed-bug pattern. I did not recognize the names of either of the schools he’d attended. I thought that the ornate Old English script on his law degree read University of the Virgin Islands, but surely I was mistaken. Harry Loomis kept looking at me from behind black-rimmed spectacles that magnified his watery blue eyes. He kept chewing tobacco. I hoped he would not spit again. I hoped he was in a better mood than his “girl” had been. I hoped I would never have to see him again after today.