Free Fall in Crimson

by John D. MacDonald

I thought it over. “I think he’d tell Grizzel that the killing of Esterland hadn’t been so clean after all. That I was looking into it, and that I was curious about how Hanner had died.”

  “And then,” Meyer said, “he was on the scene when you disposed of Kesner. His meal ticket. His hero. The man who made him a celebrity.”

  “But I didn’t!”

  “How would he know that? You dropped, the woman dropped, and Kesner went up into the power lines. And then you waved at him.”

  “Look. There’s just a vague suspicion that he killed Esterland.”

  “How does he know how vague it is? How does he know he didn’t make some kind of terrible mistake, that somebody wasn’t watching?”

  “Somebody was watching,” Annie said. “Curley Hanner.”

  In the silence I began exercising the knee again. They all watched in mild autohypnosis. “He’d change his appearance,” Ron suggested.

  “Heavy eyebrows?” Meyer asked.

  “Very. Big and black and bushy, speckled with gray. Why?”

  “If he shaved his head, beard, and eyebrows, the eyes might still look familiar to people. Mirrored sunglasses could cure that. And if he changed his mode of dress completely—”

  “Hide forever?” Annie asked.

  “Possibly. Or maybe long enough to take care of the problem of the Norman girl. And then find you, Travis, and see what you know or don’t know. Or maybe not even bother to ask.”

  “Oh, fine! And just how would he find me?”

  “Through Lysa Dean, of course.”

  I stopped flexing the knee. Annie looked out at the dark night and hunched her shoulders slightly. Ron frowned at the floor.

  Meyer said with hearty cheer, “We’re just playing games. The ancient and honorable game of what-if.”

  Long after they had gone, Annie Renzetti made me turn on the light and try once again to reach Lysa Dean on the bedside phone. She nestled close to me and we both listened to the sound of ringing. I let it ring fifteen times and then hung up.

  “But it doesn’t make any sense,” Annie said. “Those people have answering services. They have to.”

  “Maybe not on the private, private line. When friends call long distance, if there is no answer, she’s out. It saves toll charges.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  I reached and turned the light out. “Certainly.”

  “If you really did, you wouldn’t sound so overconfident. Was Meyer trying to scare us?”

  “He likes to make guesses about people. He’s pretty good at it, but he’d be the first to tell you he strikes out a lot.”

  “You’ve known Lysa Dean a long time?”

  “I helped her out of a jam a long time ago.”

  “Did you sleep with her when you went out there in April? That’s not a jealous question, really. I don’t have any claims on you. You’re free to do whatever you want. You know that. I just wondered. It’s such a dumb question, you don’t even have to answer it. I mean, the years go by and she just seems to get lovelier.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Did you want to?”

  “The possibility did occur to me.”

  “Could you have?”

  “I wouldn’t even want to guess.”

  “You know, you don’t have to lie. Not with me.”

  “I know that, Annie love.”

  “Could you just hold me a little bit tighter?”

  “My pleasure.”

  “I have the feeling something is going wrong in the world, something involving us in some terrible way.”

  “Nothing bad will happen.”

  “Why did her phone keep ringing and ringing? You said she has a live-in staff.”

  “It probably doesn’t ring in their quarters. It’s her special private line. Go to sleep, Annie.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Think about your hotel. Count the silver.”

  “One, two, three, four, five …”

  “Silently.”

  “Oh.”

  Nineteen

  That was Sunday night, of course, the twenty-first day of June. On Monday morning Annie showered and dressed early because she had to get back to her hotel chores. She stirred me awake and then went to the galley to fix the waffles and sausage. While doing so, she turned on the tiny Sony machine she had given me: AM, FM, cassette tape, and a fierce sharp little black-and-white screen. She turned the television to Good Morning, America, and in a few moments she came running in to get me. I was just shouldering into a robe and heard only the last part of the news item.

  I tried CBS and NBC and, minutes later, got the item in its entirety—or at least the entirety granted it by those blithe morning people who twinkle and sparkle as they speak of horrors beyond belief.

  “Mystery surrounds the disappearance from the drug rehabilitation center of Jean Norman, the voluptuous brunette balloonist whose testimony was crucial in the indictment of Desmin Grizzel, a.k.a. Dirty Bob, still at large after the Iowa riot on the location of Free Fall, where porno videotapes were being made while Kesner’s lost epic was in production. She had been given the freedom of the grounds and was due to be released in the custody of her parents in another two weeks. When her parents visited her yesterday, she could not be found. Police joined in the search. Another patient saw her at approximately two P.M., talking across a low stone wall to a tall man. A fresh smear of blood on the edge of the stone at that location proved to be of the same type as Miss Norman’s. The patient could not identify pictures of Grizzel as being the man she had seen by the wall.”

  “Meyer is a witch,” Annie said. “Call Lysa Dean.”

  “It’s four thirty in the morning out there. Later.”

  “Okay. Later, but then will you please call me and tell me if you talked to her?”

  “I promise.”

  “Would you like your waffle black or charred? Don’t look so abused, Trav. There’s more batter. That one was supposed to be mine. I’ll start yours when you come out of the shower.”

  I tried Lysa at three that afternoon, and she answered on the second ring.

  “Hi. It’s me. McGee.”

  “You damn thankless bastard! Did you forget I got you that ‘in’ with Peter Kesner? I didn’t know if you got killed and buried, or you sailed off in a balloon, or what. Where the hell are you?”

  “Fort Lauderdale.”

  “Were you in Iowa when it hit the fan?”

  “I was indeed. It got a lot of coverage in the press. I didn’t think you’d need a play-by-play from me. I’m grateful you thought up the idea that got me through the door.”

  “You weren’t as grateful at the time as I wanted you to be.”

  “I thought I thanked you very nicely.”

  “Sure.”

  “Let me tell you why I called. Have you got a minute?”

  “Three, maybe four.”

  “All right, then. Dirty Bob is still at large. It looks as if he got to that girl who was going to testify against him and took her off somewhere. Without going into details, he has, or thinks he has, some very pressing reasons to find me and beat the top of my head in.”

  “I’d even help him.”

  “The only way he can trace me is through you. He saw that letter from you. I think he holed up for a while, and now he is moving again. He might pay you a visit.”

  “So?”

  “He might ask questions in a very ugly way, Lee.”

  “I am not afraid of that big dreary ass-grabbing motorcycle bum, darling. I have no reason to love you, or even like you, but also I have no reason to hand out information about you, so don’t fret. Momma won’t let big bad bully come after poor wittle McGee baby.”

  “Dammit, Lee, think about it. He killed Ellis Esterland, and he killed Curley Hanner, and he has probably killed Jean Norman.”

  “Oh,” she said in a smaller voice.

  “I called you because it’s my fault you’re in the line of fire. I’m sorry. I didn’t think fa
r enough ahead.” I have lost some very great ladies because I was too slow, too stupid, and too careless. This time I was giving warning. “Can you go away for a while?”

  “I’m better off here. I’ve got the Korean couple and a damned good security alarm system. I’ll be careful.”

  “If he shows up, tell him where to find me. I’d like to see him again.”

  “You sure of that?”

  “It would be a lot easier than losing you.”

  She started laughing, and when I finally got her to explain what was so funny, she said, “Sweetie, you can’t really lose something you’ve never really had.”

  “Tell whoever patrols that area to check you out oftener than usual. Tell them you had a nut call.”

  “This is a nut call. I wouldn’t be lying.”

  “Take me seriously, will you?”

  “Honey, I’ve tried that twice already, and it didn’t work,” and still laughing, she hung up.

  I phoned Annie at the Eden Beach immediately and held while they ran her down.

  “Yes? Anne Renzetti speaking.”

  “Just hung up after a talk with Lysa.”

  “Wow! I’m always so glad when one of those bad feelings doesn’t work out. Will she go away? I could hide her out here—well—until somebody recognized her, which would be in about eleven minutes. Bad idea. It would be fun to get to know her. I feel as if I already do know her.”

  “She was impressed. She’s going to be careful.”

  “Good. I’m glad.”

  I locked up and wandered down the dock to Meyer’s cruiser. He wasn’t aboard. Then I saw him coming, evidently from the beach, trudging along, smiling to himself.

  “Back a winner?” I asked.

  “Oh, good afternoon! A winner? In a sense, yes. There was a gaggle of lanky young pubescent lassies on the beach, one of the early invasions of summer, all of them from Dayton, Ohio, all of them earnest, sunburnt, and inquisitive. They were huddled around a beached sea slug, decrying its exceptional ugliness, and I took a hand in the discussion, told them its life pattern, defensive equipment, normal habitat, natural enemies, and so on. And I discovered to my great pleasure that this batch was literate! They had read books. Actual books. They had all read Lives of a Cell and are willing to read for the rest of their lives. They’d all been exposed to the same teacher in the public school system there, and he must be a fellow of great conviction. In a nation floundering in functional illiteracy, sinking into the pre-chewed pulp of television, it heartens me to know that here and there are little groups of young-uns who know what an original idea tastes like, who know that the written word is the only possible vehicle for transmitting a complex concept from mind to mind, who constantly flex the muscles in their heads and make them stronger. They will run the world one day, Travis. And they won’t have to go about breaking plate glass and skulls and burning automobiles to express themselves, to air their frustrations. Nor will these children be victimized by the blurry nonsense of the so-called social sciences. The muscular mind is a cutting tool, and contemporary education seeks to take the edge off it.”

  “As you have said before.”

  “What? Sorry about that. Lecture Eighty-six C.”

  “Did you hear about the Norman girl in Omaha?”

  We settled into deep canvas chairs in the cockpit of the John Maynard Keynes. “I heard on the noon news,” he said, and got up and unlocked the hatch to below-decks, went down, and came back with two icy bottles of Dos Equis, drank deeply from his, wiped his mouth on the back of a heavy and hairy hand, and said, “The body will turn up, perhaps, sooner or later.”

  “Lysa Dean is okay. I talked to her a little while ago. Alerted her. I think she’ll keep her guard up. I told her that if he gets to her, to tell him where to find me.”

  In a little while I noticed how motionless he was, how he was staring into the distance. When a lady stalked by wearing a string bikini, a big pink straw hat, and high-heeled white sandals, Meyer didn’t even give her the glance she had earned. She went off into the dazzle of white hot afternoon.

  Finally he stirred, sighed, finished his beer. “There is certain standard information about Desmin Grizzel. Raised in Riverside, California, out on the edge of the desert, a one-parent family, with the children divided among foster homes when the mother was killed in a midnight brawl in a parking lot. Desmin went from foster home to reformatory to penitentiary, emerged into the close fellowship of the outlaw biker. A passable mechanic. A brawler. A skilled rider. And so there he was, riding toward his very limited destiny, when Peter Kesner came into his life and told Grizzel, Hanner, and their associates he wanted to use them in a motion picture. Probably they thought it some kind of joke. They became Dirty Bob and the Senator, lived the parts, made production suggestions, and so forth and so forth. It’s all in the fan magazines. So they became celebrities, cult heroes to a limited segment of America. Two movies. And the consequent talk shows, endorsements, public appearances at biker meets, races, and rallies. And some bit parts in TV series and B movies.

  “Desmin Grizzel read the press releases about how, by accident, his life had been changed. He had been pulled up out of the great swamp of common folk and placed on a hilltop, where he vowed that he had seen the light, that he would never return to the wicked ways of his prior life. This is always a popular theme. I think that Desmin Grizzel began to enjoy security, if not respectability. He was closing in on forty. He had done a dirty little chore for Kesner, and he had worked Kesner for as much of Josie’s money as he could grab, put it into the security of a beach house, vehicles, bonds, and the lawyer working on his pardon.

  “He had made it possible for Kesner to get seed money for the new motion picture project. He had bunted his old friend Hanner over a cliff, removing an irritant and a possible danger. He was Kesner’s gofer, taking orders perhaps slightly demeaning for a man who had once been a star in his own right. Then, in the matter of the tapes, he had a chance to indulge simultaneously his yearning to be on camera and also his sadistic appetites, apparently not realizing the danger involved in not hiding his identity.

  “And it all went to hell. He saw Kesner die and saw you survive. He hid out somewhere, somehow, for nearly two months. Wanted. Pictured in all post offices. Federal indictment and local indictments in Iowa. Now what is his concept of his future? There is no possible way he can fit himself back into any area of security and respectability. No way at all. The myth of redemption is shattered. The fans of past years are gone. The onetime outlaw biker is once again an outlaw. Back to his origins. Society raised him up and then smacked him down, leaving him no out. He’s not the sort of creature who’d turn himself in. He’s a predatory animal. Big, heavy, nimble, and cruel. The fact he was tamed for a little while makes him more dangerous. He’s on the move because he has somehow acquired a safe identity that gives him mobility. I would say that he probably thinks of himself in some strongly dramatic context, as a betrayed man who will take out the betrayers before the pack brings him down. The betrayers are the Norman girl, Joya Murphy-Wheeler, Lysa Dean, you, and possibly some others. He can take a lot of pleasure in the hunt, sharpened and sweetened by the knowledge that these are the last acts of his life.”

  “Meyer, you can’t climb inside his skull.”

  “I know that. I can try to come close.”

  “He could be into a lot of heavy things that could addle his wits. He could just be thrashing around.”

  “True.”

  “But I might as well try to reach Joya.”

  “It shouldn’t hurt,” he said.

  I couldn’t find the number I had written down for her. I got it from information and then waited until she would be likely to be home from work. I went over what I wanted to tell her. She had seemed very forthright and direct. I remembered how she smiled when I finally experienced that strange pleasure of the balloon journey at low altitude across the land.

  The voice that answered was frail and tentative.

&n
bsp; “Hello?”

  “Is Joya there?”

  “No. Who is calling?”

  “This is Travis McGee. In Florida.”

  “Were you a friend?” The past tense froze my heart.

  “Who are you?”

  “Alpha. I’m her sister. What was it you wanted with her, Mr. McGee?”

  “Is it possible to speak to her?” I knew instinctively how dumb that question was.

  “No, sir. It is not possible. We had the services for her yesterday. She is … she has passed on.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “You aren’t another newspaper person, are you?”

  “No. I went ballooning with your sister.”

  “She was crazy about that. She loved it. She always said it was worth it, but I couldn’t see it. That’s another thing I got to sell of hers, I guess, her share in that stupid balloon.”

  “You’re the executor?”

  “Sort of. She was divorced a long time ago and there weren’t any children. She came back here to stay at the home place all alone. I mean I’ve got a husband and children and a life of my own. I told Joya that she shouldn’t live here alone. It’s on just a farm road, you know. Like two trucks a day go by.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Well, it happened last Thursday, the eighteenth. What she always did, except when the weather was bad, she’d get up and put on her running clothes and take a long hard run and come back and shower and eat breakfast and go to work. She kept herself in wonderful shape. Bruno always ran with her. He’s part Airedale, and practically human. They never have found Bruno. When she didn’t show up at work and didn’t phone in, finally a girl friend of hers that works there phoned me, and I phoned Alan at the store, and we drove out there, and I used my key to get in. The burner was turned low under the coffeepot and it had boiled dry. The clothes she planned to wear to work were laid out on the bed. By then it was noon. Well, by late afternoon there must have been fifty people hunting for her, and they found her body finally in tall grass a quarter mile from the house. She had been beaten. Her poor face was a mess. Somebody had raped her and then knotted one of the pant legs of the jogging suit around her neck, very tight. The grass was all matted, like animals had been fighting there. Practically everybody in the whole area has been questioned about whether they saw strangers around. Whoever it was, they had a long time to get out of the area. It seems like such a terrible waste. I’m almost glad Momma died last year so she wasn’t alive to know what happened to Joya.”