The Lime Pit

by Jonathan Valin

  11

  THE SECOND time I awoke that morning the bells of St. Anne's were sounding sext. I rolled over in the bed and brushed a lock of black hair from Jo's face.

  “Sunday,” I said and kissed her lightly on the lips.

  She opened her eyes and smiled at me. There was sunlight in the western windows, and the bedroom was hot and bright. Her face looked almost wan in the white sunlight and sleepy-pretty. “Sunday,” she said dreamily and rolled out of bed.

  I showered and shaved while Jo made coffee in the little cubicle off the living room—the “kitchenette” as Robert Realty calls it. What it is is a shelfless pantry with a two-burner stove on one wall, a midget refrigerator on another, and an aluminum sink crammed in between. There's just enough space for a normal-sized human being to stand amid them, though it's rather like standing in the U of a U-shaped control console. Moreover, since I'm slightly larger than normal size, I have to stoop a bit and sidle in an out of the U if I want to, say, turn from the refrigerator to the stove. It makes cooking and washing dishes a challenge, which is why I generally eat out.

  There was something pleasantly domestic about having Jo in there doing the sidling and turning. Although I couldn't help thinking as I towelled off and stared critically at my lumpy, unshaven face—the face of a busted Roman statue, as a romantic lady-friend once put it—that there was something fairly fragile about the little sounds of satisfaction and frustration she was making in the kitchenette. And from the way my own hand was shaking, I understood why. You can't kid the heart, cajole it the way you would a temperamental child. It'll have its say, regardless. But you can't hurry it, either. And, as the morning progressed, as those nighttime resolutions melted away in the sun and the seasonableness of everyday living, it was getting harder and harder for the heart to say what it wanted to say, without stuttering and blushing and holding a finger to its lips. Too much longer and it might not speak at all. And that was why I was shaking and Jo was sounding fragile and sad.

  I was almost relieved when the phone rang.

  “I'll get it,” I shouted.

  I walked into the bedroom, picked up the extension and said, “Stoner.”

  “Harry, this is Red Bannion. I've got some news that'll interest you.”

  I sat down on the mattress and dabbed with the sheet at my wet face. “Like what, Red?”

  “That girl,” he said. “I jus’ knew I'd seen her before. And I was right. Ol’ Bill Hallan who works the bar at the Deer says he seen her more'n half a dozen times. But she ain't no freelance hooker. Everytime she come in, she come in with somebody different. And once she come in with somebody real special. Does the name Preston LaForge mean anything to you?”

  I didn't say a thing for a second. “You're shitting me, aren't you, Red?”

  “Naw, sir, I ain't. Last time she come in the Deer, Bill Hallan says she was with LaForge.”

  “I don't believe it,” I said, half to myself.

  “It do seem strange,” Red mused. “Don't seem like a man like that would cozy up to a kid like her. Not with his connections.”

  I guess you never know about people in the public eye. From what I'd seen of him, Preston LaForge seemed like the ail-American boy. An all-star in college. A rookie sensation with the Bengals and a perennial all-pro. He was barely thirty and a rich man, a popular man, with a rock-solid future in national broadcasting ahead of him once he'd quit the pros. His pink, chubby, boyish face was already familiar from after-shave ads and beer commercials. And, during the post season, he'd been in the color commentary booth joking and gabbing with Merlin Olson. It shook me a little to think that a man like that would go for green fruit, and bruised fruit, at that. And I think it shook me a little more to think that Preston LaForge didn't have brains enough to keep his bad habits to himself.

  But it did make a kind of bizarre sense that he would end up with Cindy Ann on his arm, especially if she was working for the Jellicoes. Ol’ Lance was certainly the pro-football type. And I'd seen him working out at the Nautilus Club, where many of the Bengals keep in shape. It wasn't hard to picture him and Preston going out for a drink, maybe stopping at the Jellicoes’ apartment for some smoke and talk and a peek at the family album.

  “Two more things,” Bannion said. “I got me a name—Escorts Unlimited. Seems like that's the outfit your youngster was workin' for. They're on Plum Street, but I'd be willin' to bet there ain't nothin' in the office but an answerin' machine.”

  I jotted down the name “Escorts Unlimited” on a pad. “What's the other thing?” I said to him.

  Bannion made a small, tired noise—a sort of unambitious sigh—that came out “hem.” Then he said, “She ain't been around in near a week, and she was showing up pretty regular before that. Or so Bill Hallan tells me.”

  I made a little “hem” of my own. “That's not so good,” I said.

  “I didn't like it none, either. ‘Course she could've been cut loose. Those things happen. Or she could've gone off on her own.”

  “At sixteen?”

  “Oh, hell, Harry,” Bannion said wearily. “She's sixteen goin' on forty. She probably ain't got an unused part left.”

  I thought of Hugo Cratz and bit softly at my lip. “Well, thanks, Red. You've been a big help.”

  “Hold on, Harry,” he said. “Don't you go off half-cocked on this one, lad. This is sixty hard years talking to you, now. This boy LaForge is bound to have him some mean friends. And those folks runnin' that escort service ain't likely to be playschool children neither. You tangle with them, Harry, and they're goin' to kill you, lad. You'd be best advised to forget this whole thing. Just chalk 'er up on the wrong side. And tell that poor old man to forget her. He don't know it, but he'd probably be better off not findin' out what become of her.”

  I didn't say anything.

  “How much is that man payin' you?” Red said in his achy voice. “Couldn't be near enough to cover the risk of somethin' like this.”

  I laughed hollowly. “Nothing,” I said. “I'm doing it for nothing.”

  “Then, boy you're as crazy as a loon if you don't drop this whole damn thing right now. Listen to Red. I been through it and I know. Ain't nothin' worth gettin' killed for.”

  “Nothing,” I said dully.

  “Nothin’ you hired yourself out to do,” Red Bannion said. “A man don't take wages for his life.”

  After hanging up, I thought a few minutes about the things a man does take wages for. A man like Lance Jellicoe and a man like Preston LaForge. But, somehow, I just couldn't work up any real indignation. That angry little man who'd gotten me into this mess in the first place was deliberately looking the other way now, with his hands clasped behind his back and his toe swivelling in the dirt and a sheepish grin frozen on his red face.

  “Cindy Ann,” I said out loud and it came out sounding like a curse.

  “Harry?” Jo called from the living room. “Did you say something?”

  “No. Didn't say anything.”

  “Come on in and have some coffee.”

  I wrapped a robe around me and walked into the living room, where Jo was lounging in the recliner next to the Zenith Globemaster. She was wearing a cup of coffee in her right hand.

  I let my eyes travel up and down that magnificent body. She looked so damn good to me at that moment, so ripe and uncomplicated and full of health that I almost shouted. Her breasts were flattened a bit because she was lying back in the chair. She had one leg on the cushion and the other stretched to the floor. When she saw the look on my face, she smiled and brought the other leg up and, leaning forward and clasping her knees, propped her chin on her kneecaps and stared speculatively at me. She'd have looked like a kid stealing a last glimpse of a movie from the back of a theater, save for the firm, round, throat-tightening curve of her breast and the very naked flesh between her thighs.

  “So,” she said. “We're back together, now.”

  “I'm glad,” I said and meant it.

  “I can see that
,” she said with a little laugh and ducked her head. “So am I, Harry. I kept waiting for it. Sometimes I'd start to say something myself.” She looked boldly up at me. “I think it could work this time. At least, I'm willing to give it a try.”

  “Right now?” I said.

  She put her coffee cup down next to the Globemaster and, rising to her feet, walked gracefully over to me and tugged at the loose cord of the bathrobe. “Right now,” she said.

  ******

  I didn't want the day to start.

  I didn't want to think about anything but Jo. No Hugo Cratzes, no Lance and Laurie Jellicoes, no Cindy Anns, no Preston LaForges.

  It was the lady herself who brought me back to reality with a feathery kiss. I felt her weight shift on the mattress, and then she was gone.

  “Hey!” I said. “Where're you going?”

  She looked slyly over her shoulder and said, “I'll be back. I've got a few errands to run. And a few things to pack. Like toothbrush, comb, change of clothes. A girl scout kit for grownup girl scouts.” She walked into the john and, in a minute, I could hear the hiss of the shower.

  I lay back on the bed and bellowed. Jo laughed.

  “Roar!” she shouted over the shower.

  At half-past two, Jo kissed me and marched to the front door. She'd put on her disguise for the trip out—the bridge-club spectacles, the bee-hive hairdo, the subdued plaid secretary's suit.

  “You can't fool me!” I called out from the bedroom.

  “Beneath this mask of tragedy,” she said, pivoting at the door, “is a leering face. I'll see you around six.”

  “Vale,” I said and sank back into the bed.

  I spent about five minutes shuffling a deck of cards, five minutes browsing through the Sunday paper, five more changing channels on the T.V., five just staring at the ceiling. And then I yanked the phonebook from the nightstand and looked up Escorts Unlimited.

  It was a quaint address for an escort service, right in the middle of the wholesale garment district on lower Plum. Just for the hell of it, I gave Escorts Unlimited a call. I got a pleasant recorded message telling me that no one was in the office at that moment and directing me to phone a different number after six. I jotted down the second number and, just for the hell of it, looked up the Jellicoes' phone number in the directory. They weren't listed.

  Those “just-for-the-hell-of-its” were wearing thin. But it was a hot, sleepy Sunday and I didn't have anything else to do. So, just for the hell of it, I went ahead and placed a call to an old friend at Ma Bell. And, sure enough, she came up with the Jellicoes' home number.

  It was identical to the one the recording had referred me to. After six, at least, the Jellicoes were Escorts Unlimited. And I had the feeling the Escorts Unlimited only operated after six.

  I doodled on the note pad, and pretended that what Bannion had told me hadn't shaken my resolve. What we had was one very young girl, venal and possibly crazy. Certainly well and variously used, as Red had pointed out. And, from the look of it, perfectly happy in her work. Then we had two rather unusual pimps, an attractive, middle-class couple, venal and possibly crazy themselves, who might or might not run a legitimate escort service but who certainly catered to rather kinky customers on the side. And, then, we had one professional football player—wide-receiver, to be precise. Six-two, eyes of blue, sandy hair, cherubic face, all the money and prestige he could want, and a taste for little girls whom he could poke and prod like when he was a kid playing “Doctor.” Just your typical American grouping. And what family would be complete without the old 'un. And, yet, Hugo, for all his chicanery, despite his unwashed, seedy self, didn't seem to fit in. The dirty old man outdirtied by a congeries of more or less respectable types.

  What a good one on the dirty old men. What a good laugh the clean-cut ones would have. Except, perhaps, for Cindy Ann, who wasn't so clean and was temporarily vanished into the dark and grisly night world of Newport.

  Would she resurface? Would Hugo Cratz live to see his “little girl” returned to him? Not likely. And not funny, either. It would “do” him, all right—to hear the truth. He'd blow an artery when he was told. Or, maybe, he wouldn't. Maybe he'd go out and dummy another P.I. into hunting up his Cindy Ann. He wasn't going to get what was left of her back on his own. He'd need some truly professional prying and finagling for that.

  I threw the note pad down on the nightstand and got to my feet. It wouldn’t do to try the þhotos out on the Jellicoes after what Red had told me. They just wouldn't bite. As long as Cindy Ann was missing, they could stick to their story and no one could prove they weren't telling the gospel truth. No one could prove that they had taken the photos in the first place. An operation like theirs was bound to be fairly well insulated. Layers of lawyers and business contacts and witnesses who would swear the Jellicoes were allergic to SX-70 film and, if things got really tough, strong-arm hoods like Abel Jones who would make me eat the film and the camera, too, and then shove a tripod up my ass and hire me out for studio work. But, a good ol’ boy like Preston LaForge, with those little gobs of apple pie still sticking to his lips and those blue, blue eyes and that all-American face—he I could work on, because he had everything to lose if those pictures found their way to the police. And, happily enough, Preston had a listed number and an address in the swell part of Mt. Adams.

  12

  THE VICARAGE is a multi-leveled complex of condominiums set on a steep hillside overlooking the Ohio. From below, it looks rather pleasantly like a gigantic redwood aviary propped on telephone poles. From the entrance on Celestial, it has the luxe and manicured look of a well-run apartment. There is a small cobbled courtyard from which the condos radiate out in a broad semicircle. Here and there, a paved avenue carries back into the complex itself. The apartments are A-frame, chalet-like buildings—mostly tilted redwood roof and plate glass. I’d been in one of them once, at a posh reception I was hired to oversee, and the best thing about it had been the view from the porch. The interior was groined and vaulted like a church—a great, high-ceilinged dead space filled with rich, bored people, handsome furniture, and tasteless objets d'art. I wouldn't have let my lease on the Delores expire to move in there; but, then, the chances of me being invited to move into the Vicarage were very slim. It was, in fact, peopled by invitation only. And, only the choicest people were invited. Johnny Bench lived there. Thomas Schippers, when he was alive, had lived there. The Gambles of P & G had a little retreat on the hillside. And so did Preston LaForge.

  I parked the Pinto in a stall marked Visitors and walked out of the sunlit courtyard and through a sweet-smelling tunnel of weathered cedar to the door of LaForge's apartment. There were plexiglass inserts in the tunnel, looking out above the green hillside toward the blue reach of the Ohio. It was an impressive sight, but all I could think about was how mean a drop it would be to tumble off one of the rough-hewn porches that terraced the hill. And that's exactly where I could find myself if Preston LaForge didn't fancy the picture I was going to show him or the idea of being blackmailed into helping me find Cindy Ann. I patted the gun in my pocket and raised my hand to the door.

  LaForge answered on the first knock. He'd been waiting for someone and his big grin died when he saw that it was only me. He had to be over thirty but he looked barely nineteen, with the sensuous blonde face of the California beach boy. Behind him, the room seemed to climb and climb. The far wall was one great triangle of glass and a huge triangle of white sunlight fell through it, setting the cream shag rug and the chrome and glass and brass furnishings ablaze.

  I shaded my eyes and said, “Do you have to wear sunglasses to live in there?”

  LaForge giggled. And I don't mean laughed. I mean giggled. A kid's chortle that, in all decency, should have been covered with a hand before it left his mouth. “That's ƒunny!” he said all agog. “That's really funny! Do you mind if I use that myself?”

  “Feel free,” I said.

  “Say, who the hell are you, anyway?” he said aff
ably. “You want a drink?” He just walked away from the door, leaving it wide open and me standing on the stoop. “I got liquor here somewhere,” he said, rummaging a glass-and-chrome tea cart parked on the south wall beneath what looked like a genuine Mondrian. “Sunglasses!” he chuckled. “I'll have to tell Oscar that. He's the fag that decorated this place.” LaForge turned to me, a pair of ice tongs in his hands. “You know they write that in the lease? You've got to have a fag decorator come in and camp the place up or they won't rent to you. Bourbon, O.K.?” he said, dropping the ice with a clunk into a cut-glass goblet.

  “Sure,” I said and walked right on in.

  “I'm a Scotch man myself,” he said over the drinks. “But I ran out last night. Like the man said, though. Between bourbon and nothing, I'll take bourbon.” He picked up the glasses and brought them over to where I was standing. “Pull up a chair,” he said, handing me a glass.

  We sat down on opposite ends of a big gray leather sofa. LaForge stretched out and slopped a little bourbon on one of the cushions.

  “Damn,” he said. “Oscar's going to kill me when he sees this.” He chuckled and made a halfhearted effort to wipe off the spot with his shirt-sleeve. “Does leather stain?” he said. “I mean does bourbon stain leather?”

  “Damned if I know.”

  LaForge stopped wiping and looked up at me as if he'd just noticed I was in the room. “Say,” he said pleasantly. “Who the hell are you? Or did I ask you that already?”