“The imperatives aren’t the same.”
“The what aren’t what?”
“Excuse me. Let’s not get into a hard sell.”
“Are you opposed?”
“Joanna, I don’t know. A fellow who was pretty handy with a boat once said that anything you feel good after is moral. But that implies that the deed is unchanging and the doer is unchanging. What you feel good after one time, you feel rotten after the next. And it is difficult to know in advance. And morality shouldn’t be experimental, I don’t think. I find that the world is full of things which are unavoidable and which cloud my mind. When my mind is clouded, I am experiencing less. I may think it is more, if the mind is warped, but it is less, really. The mind looks inward, not outward. So I just … try to make sure there’s always somebody in the control room, somebody standing watch.”
“Somehow it sounds dull.”
“It isn’t.”
She wrapped her fingers around my wrist. “Okay, smart-ass. Do you think you’d feel good after me?”
“If the reasons are right, sure.”
“Is there more than one reason, friend?”
“The biggest and most important reason in the world is to be together with someone in a way that makes life a little less bleak and solitary and lonesome. To exchange the I for the We. In the biggest sense of the word, it’s cold outside. And kindness and affection and gentleness build a nice warm fire inside. That’s okay. But if you want to set some new international screwing record, or if you want to show off the busiest fastest hips in town, forget it.”
The fingers slackened their hold on my wrist and she pulled her hand back. Tears stood in her eyes. She smiled and shook her head and said, “No way, McGee. Whatever it is you’re selling, I can’t afford it. I went that route once, and it stung. It stung a lot. If that’s the kind of dressing you want on the salad, eat elsewhere. I am a very good lay for the Harry Hascombs of the world, and I always feel good afterward, thanks.”
“Always?”
“Go to hell!” she said and got up. “All I am is your garden-variety man-eater. I like it. Go to hell!”
“To each his dagnab blue-eyed own.”
She smiled. “And I’ll always miss Walt Kelly too.” She held her hand out to me. “Friends? I didn’t exactly come here to set up a friendship. But it’ll have to do. God! I am starving. What have you got here?” She had opened the refrigerator. “Is that corned beef? Cheese. Where’s the bread? I have this terrible food engine inside me. I eat enough for three truck drivers and I’m always hungry and I never gain one little ounce. I could give you bone bruises, dear.”
I sat and watched her make sandwiches. She was very deft, and she made a lot of them. She ate about twice as much as I ate. She ate with such enthusiasm it made her sweaty, even in the air conditioning. She ate with such a lusty, bright-eyed joy that I had the wistful wish to have played her game and bundled her into the sack five minutes after Meyer stepped off the boat. She was intensely alive, as vital and immediate as anyone I had met in a long time.
“How often did she bring the samples?”
“What? Oh, when we were about to run out. Her moving to that Fifteen Hundred place had something to do with the deal. She told me she was getting a free ride on the apartment. But she missed us.”
The phone rang. It startled both of us. I went into the lounge and answered it. It was Meyer. “About the autopsy on Birdsong, it was heart. Some kind of aneurysm. Thought you’d like to know. I hope I … haven’t disturbed you by phoning.”
“You can come back aboard any time.”
“Oh.”
“What’s this with the Oh?”
“Just Oh. Nothing complicated. Oh.”
She sauntered into the lounge and stretched out on the yellow couch, placing her second mug of milk on the coffee table. “This is truly some great boat.”
“What is Chris Omaha like?”
“Nobody can ever figure out how come Jack stayed with her so long. She’s dumb, loud, and greedy. Rotten to him and rotten to the kids. Ever since the kids got old enough to be sent off to school, they’ve been away. She likes to be alone in the house in case something wearing pants comes by to make a delivery or fix something. Jack caught her a couple of times. But leave her? No. Carrie thought for quite a while maybe he would leave Chris and marry her. I don’t know what the hold is. It was a kid marriage for them. Seventeen and eighteen they were. It finally got to be an arrangement, I guess. He could have Carrie, and she could have anybody who happened to come along.”
“Like Ready Freddy Van Harn?”
“Ready Freddy? Wow, you read him right. I’ll have to tell Floss what you called him. No, Fred is the lawyer for the business, and he’s Jack and Harry’s personal lawyer, and he’ll be handling the estate, what’s left, but he wouldn’t boff around with old Chris, not when he can tag the best there is.”
I recounted my reasons for contradicting her. She looked astonished. “What about that! What do you know? I guess old Chris snuck up on his blind side or something.”
“He was Carrie’s lawyer?”
“From being the lawyer for the business. When she wanted to make out a will so that Ben couldn’t get her savings or her car or anything like that, she asked Fred one day when he was in to see Harry about something, and he made some notes and drew up a will and had her come into the office and sign it. I guess he made himself the executor. That would be okay by Carrie. And Betty told me she’d warned Susan about Fred. Susan seems like such a nice kid. Fred even got to Betty one time. I guess it was sort of a challenge to him. Betty is sort of sexless, you know? She has all the equipment and she’s pretty, but something’s left out. Fred got her a little bit bombed on wine and then he took her. It wasn’t exactly rape, but it was as close as it could get and still not be. She hates him. He really hurt her, because she’s built small, and that Fred has … well, all I can say is that you’d never know, looking at him, so kind of slender and girlish almost. And pretty. But he’s a bull. He’s huge. He’s so huge he’s sort of scary. And … he likes to hurt. I don’t like kinky things. I like it, you know, for fun. It doesn’t seem to be fun for him. Oh, he knows a lot of tricks and so forth. But it’s more like he read up on it in engineering school. Once was enough for me. He’s with you but he isn’t. He’s … I don’t know how to say it.”
“Remote?”
“Ri-i-ght! I think Fred is trying to score every girl in Bayside and surrounding area. He’s real hell on wives. Maybe that’s why he put Chris on his list. Men have tried to beat up on him for messing around, but he is just as quick and just as mean as a snake. He’s a good lawyer, but he’s not a very nice person. I don’t know how marriage is going to work out for him. He’s going to get married. It was in the paper. Jane Schermer. Very social and very very rich. It’s grove money from way back. He has some ranchland out near all her groves, lots of it, but nowhere near as big. The Van Harn family used to have money, but about the time Fred was in Stetson Law, his daddy shot himself and it turned out he was almost totally busted. It was something to do with letter stock. I don’t even know what that is. But that’s what they say. Something about pledging letter stock for bank loans, and him being the lawyer for the bank. Fred works hard. I think he’s maybe made back a lot of money. Everybody says he does a good job. But I think that way down deep he’s a creepy person.”
“Bayside seems like a busy place.”
“It’s okay, I guess. I really don’t know whether I’ll stay around. I left once before and came back. Maybe I’ll come to Lauderdale and live on this boat with you for a while. Okay?”
“We’ll keep your name on file, Miss Freeler.”
“You are so nice to me.”
My alarm bell bonged as Meyer stepped aboard, onto the mat on the stern deck. He knocked and came in and smiled at pretty Joanna on the yellow couch. “I like to see healthy young girls drinking milk,” he said. She had set aside a couple of sandwiches for him, neatly packaged in S
aran. She stirred herself and got up, yawning, and said she was going back to the cottage for a nap. I took her by the shoulders and turned her around and gave her a little push toward the staterooms. She trudged off, scuffing her heels, and when I looked in on her she was snoring, a large snare-drum sound for such a small lady.
I sat with Meyer while he ate at the booth in the galley.
“I tracked it down,” he said. “The place Carrie had her car serviced. It’s a big Shell station right across from the entrance to Junction Park. It was handy for her because she could leave her car there while she was working. It was in last Tuesday. They looked up the ticket. They changed the oil and the filter and put on new wiper blades—and filled the tank.”
“And if it was filled Tuesday, and she didn’t go on any trips …”
“She worked all day Tuesday and Wednesday.”
“Very nice work, Meyer.”
“Thank you.”
“About that planet theory of yours, how they find the invisible one by seeing what it does to the orbits of the others, I have a candidate for planet. One attorney by the name of Frederick Van Harn. He impinges on the lives of too many of the people we’re interested in.”
“Including Mrs. Birdsong.”
“Huh?”
“He was coming out of her motel unit when I drove in.”
“Oh, that’s just great. Anyway, he’s top priority. All we can find out. Right?”
“Yessir, sir.”
And despite my protestations that it wasn’t all that urgent, he headed on out again after reborrowing the car keys.
Eight
Joanna woke up at four and said a sleepy farewell and went tottering off. I wrote a note to Meyer and left it where he would see it. I locked the Flush and walked all the way to 1500 Seaway Boulevard, estimating it at a little less than two miles south of the marina. At first it was very hot, but then a quick thunderstorm came slamming in. I stepped over a hedge and took refuge under a tremendous old banyan. A small white dog yapped at me from a screened porch, some of his yapping drowned by thunder. A pale woman came out onto the porch to see why he was making such a fuss. Over the rain sound I yelled, “I’m trespassing!”
“You can trespass on the porch here if you want.”
“I’m terrified of the savage dog. Thanks anyway.”
She smiled and went back into the house. When the rain stopped, mist rose from the pavement. The air was washed clean and was much cooler. I stepped along faster than before.
Fifteen Hundred was a jumble of villas and town houses, of joined and separate structures interconnected by arcades and roofed walkways. The layout established small courtyards of various sizes. It did allow for a maximum privacy of approach and departure, but at the expense of security. In a world where violence is ever less comprehensible and avoidable, people—especially the middle-aged and the old—settle more comfortably behind barred gates, locked lobbies, roving guard dogs. They seek to die in bed, of something gentle and merciful.
I roamed, looking for Walter J. Demos. His was number 60, the ground floor of a town house near the back of the property, looking out at the pool area. A pretty lady in jeans and work shirt and tousled hairdo opened the door and said, liltingly, “No vacancies, none at all; so sorry.” She started to close the door.
“I want to talk to Mr. Demos.”
“He isn’t even adding any names to the list, it’s so long now.” She had sweat beads of exertion on her forehead and upper lip. Behind her I could see a mop pail with a wringer fastened to it.
“I don’t want to live here.”
“Then you must be out of your tree. If it’s about something else, well, let me think. Mary Ferris was after him to do something about her disposer. I think he’ll be there by now. That’s Twenty-one. Go past the pool and through that arch at the right and it will be … the second? No, the third doorway to your right. Go up the stairs and come back toward the front of the building.”
• • •
Walter J. Demos wore gray coveralls and an engineer cap. The coveralls were wet-dark around his middle in a wide irregular band. He did indeed look something like a shorter broader Kojak, his face and jaw massive, almost acromegalic.
He showed me what he had in his hand. It looked like a tangled ball of dirty string.
“Do you know what this is? Can you guess?” he asked.
The woman giggled. She was plump and coy and under-dressed.
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Miss Mary here had a lovely artichoke yesterday, and she put all the inedible parts of it into her disposer. Artichoke leaves, my friend, are made of string. And in a little while the string wound itself into a tangled mess and stopped the machinery.”
Mary giggled again and switched back and forth, chewing a knuckle, scuffing her sandaled foot.
She thanked him and he gave her the string to dispose of in a less damaging manner. He picked up his tin toolbox, and we left to walk slowly back toward his apartment.
“I could tell them all to call the repair people. I could spend all my time in the pool. But it would drive me quite mad, I think. I have to keep busy. That’s the way I am, Mr. McGee. And it saves my people money, which is increasingly important these days. Everyone chips in and helps whenever and wherever they can. We’re a family here, helping and protecting each other.”
“Meyer told me he got that impression.”
“Oh, then you must be the friend he mentioned. I chatted with him for just a few minutes, but he struck me as charming and highly intelligent. I like intelligent people. That’s the way I am.”
“Have you found out who trashed Carrie’s apartment?”
“What? Oh, no, we haven’t. And I doubt we ever will. No one resident here would ever do a thing like that.”
“Even though she was resented by the other … members of the family?”
He stopped and peered at me. “What would give you that idea?”
I was tempted to remind him of Meyer’s intelligence, but I thought I could make a little more mileage by using the dead lady, so I said, “Mrs. Milligan was quite aware of it.”
He grunted and we walked on, right to his door. The lady had stopped sweating. He took her hand in both of his. “Thank you so very much, Lillian. You know how much I appreciate it.”
She went smiling off, purse in hand. He closed the door and looked around. “Nice job,” he said to himself. “Very nice.” He turned to me and made a wry grimace. “I have to be so very careful. If one of them cleans up for me too often, the others get jealous. Please sit down. You were telling me that Carrie had some fantasy about resentment.”
“Purely a paranoid fantasy. She thought that because you put her at the head of the list and gave her the first empty apartment, the others resented her. She thought that because she was getting a rent-free ride, they resented her. She thought that because she didn’t care to mingle, they resented her. She would rather have stayed with her friends in the cottage at Mangrove Lane. Maybe you should have told the whole family that Carrie wasn’t a very special and dear friend, but just part of the pot distribution system. Jack Omaha, Cal Birdsong, Carrie Milligan, and you.”
He was good. He stared at me. At first he chuckled and then he laughed and then he roared. He slapped his thighs and rocked back and forth and lost his breath. Finally he held his wrists out and, still choking, said, “Okay, officer. I’ll go quietly. You’ve got me.”
“Why the special treatment she got from you? Tell me so we can all laugh.”
He lost all traces of mirth. “You’re beginning to annoy me. It’s no business of yours, but I’ll tell you anyway. A friend of mine asked me to make the apartment available to Mrs. Milligan. Jack Omaha asked me. My books show the rent paid every month. She may have a free ride, but it wasn’t from me. Probably Jack felt that it would be more pleasant to have … more privacy and more access to the lady.”
I lifted my eyebrows and looked at him politely. “I’m beginning to annoy you, Mr.
Demos?”
“Frankly, yes.”
There are a lot of choices in every instance. And it is easy to make a bad choice. A man will react badly to the promise of some unthinkable punishment. The musician will buckle at the thought of smashed hands. The choice cannot be made with the thought of taking any pleasure in the choice. It has to be businesslike, or it will not be convincing. This man was the benign daddy, the solid meaty big-skulled patriarch, full of such amiable wisdom and helpfulness that he would appeal to the little girl in any woman who might be still searching for poppa. A gregarious man. A sensualist. A skilled, successful, and unlikely womanizer who had built himself a profitable world teeming with prey. He was pleased with himself, and evidently still greedy.
“I’m thinking of alternate ways of annoying you, Mr. Demos.”
“What do you mean?”
“We have a specialist we could import. His nickname is Sixteen Weeks. He’s very bright about guessing just how much punishment a given person can endure and still recover. He can guarantee you sixteen weeks in the hospital, Walter. At your age you might not ever get about as well as you do now.”
His attempt at a smile was abortive. “That’s grotesque.”
“Or, if we decide to head in another direction, I’d turn the problems of disposition over to Meyer. He works things out so there isn’t any fuss. As you noted, he’s highly intelligent. We gave him the problems of Mr. Omaha, Mr. Birdsong, and Mrs. Milligan. He’d find something plausible for you. They could find you on the bottom of the pool some morning.”
The Dreadful Lemon Sky Page 10