The Lime Pit

by Jonathan Valin

  “That's the last time you saw her?”

  Laurie nodded. “Cratz thinks we've made off with her. I guess that's partly my fault for concocting that cock and bull story about her folks. Somehow he managed to get their number in Sioux Falls or wherever the hell she was from. And they hadn't heard from her and weren't interested in hearing. Some family, huh? So he called the cops and told them we'd kidnapped her! Can you believe it! On Monday morning a fat little man showed up and started asking all kinds of questions about the ‘alleged’ Cindy Ann. Eventually we figured out what was going on and told him the whole story, just like I'm telling you. But that wasn't good enough for Cratz. He's a sick old man. Sick in the head. That stroke must have really addled his brains. On Tuesday he called the cops again. And he hasn't quit calling them or us since. Our life is really getting to be a mess. Both Lance and I were late to work on Monday and Tuesday and, of course, having police cars pull up in front of your house is really good public relations. And, now, he's hired you!”

  “Laurie!” Lance boomed from the living room.

  “Look,” Laurie said breathily. “I gotta go before there's trouble. Be a good guy, will you, and tell Cratz the truth? Make him believe it. Please. I gotta go.”

  She ducked quickly into the living room and closed the door.

  ******

  It was almost six o'clock when I finished with Laurie Jellicoe. Outside of Lance, there'd been no surprises. She'd told me exactly what I'd expected to hear and left me with the distasteful job of convincing Hugo Cratz that Cindy Ann was gone for good.

  Eight and one half dollars sure buys a lot of your time, Harry, I thought as I walked back beneath the maple trees and waited at the street corner for a white-haired woman to maneuver a Dodge station wagon into a narrow driveway. But I'd known what I was letting myself in for when I'd driven out to North Clifton that afternoon. I'd made a rich, easy buck off of Meyer and Cox, and I'd needed a Hugo Cratz to balance the books. That's all there was to it. A case of conscience. I get one every six months or so, after a particularly ugly or particularly easy job; and I hire myself out for charity work, to assuage that old monster inwit. Hugo was going to settle the account for a long, long time to come.

  He was waiting for me on the porch, looking red-eyed and haggard and eager to hear what Laurie Jellicoe had told me. I supposed that he thought I'd backed her into a corner and beaten the truth out of her. A neat trick with ol' Lance standing around. But Cratz didn't seem surprised when I reported to him, word for word, what Laurie had actually said. He just shook his head and said, “You believe that crap?”

  I bit the bullet and said, “Yes.”

  Hugo sat back in his porch chair and meditated a moment. “What if I was to tell you that I was watching Laurie's house from the time Cindy Ann left here until first light Monday morning and didn't see nobody on no bicycle drive up?”

  “Are you telling me that?”

  “I am.”

  I sighed. “Then I'd have to tell you that I don't believe you, Hugo. What possible reason would Laurie Jellicoe have to kidnap Cindy Ann?”

  “They was using her,” he said smugly. “For their damn sex orgies, is why.”

  “You're reaching, Hugo.”

  “Am I?” he said mildly. “Just you wait out here for a second.”

  He went into the house and came out about two minutes later with a tan shoebox under his arm. “You got a good look at that Laurie whilst you was in there?”

  I nodded.

  “Nice-looking woman, ain't she?” Hugo said and smiled a sickly, broken-toothed smile. “Why'd you think I sent you over there? Think I was expecting you to get past that tree she keeps in the living room?”

  “You mean Lance?” I said, feeling damn uncomfortable about this sudden coyness. A crafty Hugo Cratz was a different item than the grief-stricken, sentimental old man I'd foolishly committed myself to. I'd known he was devious when I'd first talked to him on the phone; but it had seemed such a transparent, clumsy sort of trickery that I hadn't really given it another thought. This new twist bothered me. For just a second I had the sickening feeling that Hugo Cratz had been using me since the moment we'd met.

  “You take a look in there,” he said, handing me the shoebox.

  I tipped the lid and looked inside. There was still enough daylight in the western sky to make out the face of the girl in the photographs. It was Cindy Ann's face. I didn't look through them all. There was a tragic sameness about each one. They were Polaroids—SX70s—taken, most of them, in room light; some of them by a flash that had made Cindy Ann's naked blue eyes glow a demonic red. She didn't have much of a body, Cindy Ann. Her ribs and sharp hipbones were clearly visible in the photos. Her small girlish breasts already sagged like little pockets on her white chest. There were hands in most of the snapshots, reaching at her, caressing her, gouging her. Smooth red-tipped hands, chunky hairy ones. Holding cigarettes, clothespins, safety pins in one. And through it all Cindy Ann wore a bewildered, glassy-eyed smile. Staring straight into the camera, oblivious to the pain, she looked as properly posed as if a studio photographer had instructed her to look up and say, “Cheese.” I slapped the lid on the box and shoved it back at Cratz. He was still smiling his sick, factitious smile,

  “Where'd you get them?” I said hoarsely.

  “Found ‘em. After she left.”

  “Why the hell didn't you show them to me right away?” I said, as the anger hit me. A jolt of adrenalin that made me bite down hard and pound hard at the arm of the rusted lawn chair. “What kind of game are you playing, old man?”

  “Didn't know if I could trust you,” he said. “Wanted you to see them first. The two of them. Listen to their lies. Let them know you were listening. Same crap they told the police.”

  “Did you show these”—I pointed to the box—”to the police?”

  Cratz knitted his brow savagely and looked at me with genuine disappointment. “I love her,” he said through his teeth. “You got that, boy-o? You think I’d go showing them kind of pictures to men I don't trust? Anyway, those two'd just claim they didn't know nothing about them. Don't take but twenty-some dollars to buy one of those cameras. And I got one more reason. I don't want them bastards to know. I don't want to take no chances till I got Cindy Ann back home with me. They find out I got them pictures, they might get antsy, do something foolish. I can't take that chance.”

  “So . . .” I said, letting out a deep, amazed breath. “You tricked me, Hugo.”

  “I did,” he said. “I did indeed.”

  He smiled shyly and wet his lips. “Thought I was a blabbering cry-baby, didn't you? That's what ol' George thinks. He hates Cindy Ann for it, too. Thinks she's made a fool out of me. He can think what he damn well wants to. Point is I know what's going on. Them two are doing some awful things up in that apartment. She dresses so fine and he's such a looker, it ain't no wonder that Cindy Ann got messed up with them. I don't blame her none. Hell, I couldn't give her no love like that even if I could still get it up. Never felt that way about her after that first day in the park. I just wanted you to know that I'm no fool. I didn't spend some twenty years in the Corps and come out a coward. I can whine for the folks and play it as silly as they want. It ain't all show. Not by half. I start thinking about them photographs and it tears me up inside. But I wanted you to know—after I got a look at you and figured you was all right—that you can count on me.

  “No police,” he cautioned. “I just called them to throw a scare into them two. Let 'em know somebody's watching them. I want this done on the sly. And I want them bastards to get what's coming to them. And I don't ever want nobody to know what they done to my little girl. Is it a deal?”

  I didn't really think about it. I wasn't in a thinking mood. Which is no way to run a business as perilous and actuarial as mine. Those photographs had touched a nerve, right down to the root, awakened the strict moralist who hides inside me and makes cheap ironic patter at the expense of my clients. Like an insult come
dian, he's a sentimentalist, quick with the apologies, the gush about how all his needling is well-meant; and, like the insult comedian, his apologies are as phoney as his laughter. All he really understands is anger—a comprehensive anger that extends to anything that falls short of the ideal. Which is why he stays hidden most of the time. He's a vehement, childish cynic—all moralists and comedians are; and, in a different city, in a line of work less likely to give him occasion to rail, he'd probably get me into a lot of fights. But if Cincinnati is good for anything, it's good for beating the dickens out of a latent Puritan. There are too many of the real articles walking around. Too many of them with too much power. You can't beat a real Cincinnati moralist for cheap, stomach-turning sentimentality. I like this city; it keeps me sane.

  But it's in my blood, too. And, sitting on that porch, pretending that banalities like idyllic childhood and the beauty of youth were as real as the chair I was sitting on, I was all Cincinnati Puritan, and as mad and vindictive as I could be. The Jellicoes gave me a royal case of the fantods. They made me nervous and sick at heart. Whether Cindy Ann had wanted to join their little circus, whether she'd be willing to give it up, didn't matter to me at that moment. All I wanted to do was to see that they got what was coming to them. And that Hugo got his “little girl” back.

  “Yes,” I said to Hugo Cratz. “It's a deal.”

  4

  WE SAT on the porch for another half hour, watching the daylight fail and listening to the pigeons on the skirts of the roof burble and coo. And, eventually, the detective in me began to ask his questions, a schoolboy's questions filled with whos and whys and wherefores.

  By nightfall I had a reasonable understanding of the events leading up to the disappearance of Cindy Ann Evans—her last name was Evans, Hugo told me. I found out that it wasn't unusual for the girl to spend time with the Jellicoes or to sleep over at their tidy apartment. On that score, Laurie Jellicoe had been telling me the truth. Only the girl had never been gone for more than a night and had always left word with Hugo about when she'd be coming back home. Which meant that Laurie Jellicoe hadn't been telling the whole truth. And, as it turned out, neither had Hugo Cratz.

  Hugo had seen someone leave the apartment house during his all-night vigil. The Jellicoes’ yellow van had driven off around six on Sunday night and returned at seven the next morning. Whether Cindy Ann had been in it when it left or when it came back, Hugo couldn't say.

  “They unloaded the damn thing in the lot behind the house,” he said crankily. “If I'd a'had any gumption, I would a'gone on over there the minute I seen 'em come up the driveway.”

  “Gumption,” I said to him, “is one of the things you don't have to worry about.”

  He chuckled drily. “You know, it's a strange thing about them two. They just don't seem to be around all that much. That's what first got me to thinking that something was wrong. That and the way Cindy Ann would look when she got home.” He put a wrinkled hand to his mouth and lowered his voice, just like we were two old men sharing secrets on a park bench. “Think she might have been smoking some of that marijuana. Had a dazed eye, sometimes. Talked slurred, too. Had marks on her arms.”

  Great, I said to myself. An addict as well as a prostitute. Some Jellicoes.

  “You said the two of them were out of their apartment a lot?”

  “More than a lot.” He nodded toward the building. “From what I seen they're in there maybe a couple-three days a week.”

  “Do you know where they go when they're not at home?”

  He shook his head. “I heard Cindy Ann talking to them on the phone a couple of times. And she'd say, ‘Frankfort!’ or ‘Lexington!’ like it was a real pleasant surprise to her. I figure Kentucky is where they do their business, but it seems to be all over the state, like they was travelin' salesmen, selling . . .”

  His mouth began to tremble again. I patted his arm.

  “We don't know what they're selling, yet, Hugo. It could be just the pictures.”

  “Could, could it?”

  He shook his head sadly. “I thought I'd seen it all. Been through wars. Been in a few dirty places. But this”—he patted the shoebox—”this just ain't human. How could they do a child like that?”

  “Hugo,” I said, feeling the end of that bad day in my bones. “I've given up asking that question—how could they? It just can't be answered. Give them both enough of a grudge against the world to make them users, manipulators trying to live out their childhood hurts on other children, and you can understand as much about the Jellicoes as can be understood.”

  “I guess,” he said. “Only I ain't got that much charity in me.” He looked at me expectantly. “So, I guess you'll get on top of them, now . . . now that you know how things stand?”

  “I would have,” I said. “But, thanks to your little trick, they know who I am, which means that the next time I see them, I want to be able to make more than vague accusations.”

  “Well, you could still follow them, couldn't you?” Hugo said irritably. And, suddenly, I had the certain knowledge that Hugo Cratz not only intended to hire me, he intended to run me, too.

  “The way I see it, following them would be a very long and expensive proposition, with no guarantee at the end of it that we'd come up with Cindy Ann. We're lucky, in a sense. We have a piece of hard evidence. Let's make the most of those pictures. Let's find out where they came from and who they were meant for.”

  “Came from the Jellicoes,” he said with disgust.

  “Seems likely. But they may not be the only folks involved. And it's no good going into a game without knowing your competition.”

  “Pressure ‘em,” Hugo said, wringing Lance's neck with his hands.

  “I'll do this my way, Hugo,” I said with about as much firmness as I could command. “You went to a lot of trouble conning me into this deal. Don't blow the good will by telling me my job.”

  “Sorry. Sorry.” He let go of Lance's throat and threw up his hands in apology. “Won't happen again.”

  Sure, I said to myself. And it won't be hot tomorrow, either.

  I got to my feet. “I have to get some sleep.”

  “You'll come out here tomorrow?”

  I told him I would. In the evening.

  A big harvest moon—the size of a blood-red sun—was hanging above the maple trees on Cornell Avenue.

  “Bodes fair weather,” Hugo said.

  He started for the apartment house door.

  “‘Course I've known it to be wrong,” he called out in a grim voice. And I knew he was thinking of his “little” girl and what the moon boded for her.

  ******

  “Lance and Laurie Jellicoe.”

  I said their names aloud as I walked to the car.

  What a sweet, chiming ring they had, a sweet and improbable pairing. How thoroughly and excusably middle-class they'd seemed in their smug little apartment with its picture of a sailing ship on the wall. Too fundamentally decent for something like this business. Only that was the moralist again, popping up in his sentimental garb. What better disguise for pornographers than solid Republican decency, I asked myself. And when it comes down to it, what criminal isn't middle-class in fact or aspiration? It could be the definition of a thief.

  Well, I'd find out more about their business in the morning. I'd make the rounds of the local smut shops—the half-dozen storefronts on the north side of the city. Perhaps a clerk would recognize Cindy Ann's face, or, better still, I might find that face being pandered in one of the shop windows. If my luck held true, I might even be able to work my way back through the dealer to the Jellicoes' place of business or to the girl herself. On the other hand, if the photos were meant for sale, if nobody recognized the girl, then I could be sure that the Jellicoes were using them as advertisements. Which would be bad for Hugo and bad for his little girl, because what they advertised was a very rough trade indeed.

  Adult News was the fourth shop I visited that hot Friday morning, and the only thing th
at distinguished it from the first three was the fact that its front window was painted red rather than green. The storefront was situated on the verge of the Vine Street tenderloin at the corner of Twelfth, next to a Pentecostal church, which, I suppose, should count for something when it comes to distinguishing features. I'm sure it counted for something to the Pentecostalists, three of whom were standing in the doorway of the church damning every customer that went into or came out of Adult News.

  I tried my best to look saved as I walked past them. But judging from the frowns on their faces, I don't think they were convinced. The roadside to perdition must be crowded with such faces—lean and pitiless and full of smoke.

  An unpainted square in the center of the smut shop window served as a teaser to passers-by. Behind it, a corkboard was posted with two dozen tame, unattractive nudes. And one of them was Hugo's Cindy Ann, reclining on a white cushion. She looked a bit more sophisticated in the Adult News photograph than she had in the ones I'd seen the night before—her face was carefully made up and she'd thrown her chest out, what little there was of it, and sucked in her round tummy like a professional model. Looking at her on display, I felt a wave of indignation rock me again. And I had to remind myself that it was a job and that there were unpredictable folks involved and that getting mad again wasn't going to help Hugo or his little girl.