Mermaid

by Margaret Millar

  “Jeez, am I glad to see you.”

  Aragon wished he could say the same, but everything about Donny seemed swollen—his short puffy fingers, his cheeks distended like those of a squirrel storing food for winter, his thighs bulging out of the cutoff jeans. Even his eyelids looked blistered from the heat of either tears or sun.

  He said, “I forget your name.”

  “Tom Aragon.”

  “Listen, man, I got to split this dump. They put me on a diet, me and those two back there. All we’re allowed for lunch is lettuces and cottage cheese, rabbit food, yuck. They even locked the candy machine. How’s that for a low blow? You don’t happen to have a chocolate bar on you?”

  “No.”

  “Pack of Life Savers?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  “Screw you.”

  “You told me that yesterday.”

  “So? It still goes. If you help me get out of here, I bet I could help you find Cleo. I know about chicks from all my dad’s chicks. They’re the same, even a nut like Cleo. How about it, do we have a deal?”

  “What happened to the kidnapping theory you had yes­terday?”

  “Down the drain, I figure, now that she flew the coop. A lot of my dad’s chicks did the same.” Donny removed the huge wad of chewing gum from his mouth, examined it critically and put it back in. “Look, man, I’m ready to deal. I can lay my hands on some money. You must need money or you wouldn’t be driving this hunk of rust. How about it?”

  “You’re not actually a prisoner here, are you, Donny?”

  “You want to know what would happen if I walked out without one of those dimwit counselors tagging along? They’d call the cops.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m on probation. If I stick around here, I stay out of the slammer. It was a bum rap. I don’t belong with the crazies you see in this joint. I’m not retarded either. I got an A in school once. Want to guess what in?”

  “Tell me.”

  “Eating,” the boy said somberly. “It was a joke, ha ha.”

  “What bum rap did they pin on you, Donny?”

  “That was long ago and far away, man. Anyway, my dad fixed it. He’s a great fixer, dear old dad, specially when it leaves him free to mess around with the chicks without competition from me. Maybe you think I’m not much competition, right?”

  “I’m not a chick,” Aragon said. “I have to go up and see Mrs. Holbrook now. Want to come along for the ride?”

  “Naw. She makes me puke.”

  Waiting in the small reception room outside Mrs. Hol­brook’s office, Aragon wondered what the charge against the boy had been. Donny wasn’t likely to talk, Mrs. Holbrook probably even less so, and juvenile records were often ordered sealed by the judge in the case.

  Mrs. Holbrook greeted him with a neat professional smile. She did not sit down or ask him to sit down. The omissions seemed a neat professional way of informing him that she was busy and suggesting that, even if she weren’t, his presence wouldn’t be welcome. It was evident that she sensed trouble.

  She said, “I gather nothing’s been heard from Cleo?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t be of any further help, Mr. Aragon. I gave you all the information you asked for yesterday.”

  “Perhaps not quite all, Mrs. Holbrook. I’d like to speak to Roger Lennard.”

  “He hasn’t been at work most of this week.”

  “That was one of the things you didn’t tell me yester­day.”

  “You didn’t ask yesterday.”

  “How long has he been absent from the school?”

  “He called in last Wednesday morning and said he had the flu. We have to be extremely cautious, since some of our students are very susceptible to such contagions, so I told him to stay home until he felt better. He did. There’s no mystery about Mr. Lennard’s absence. I hope you’ve abandoned that silly idea of any romantic attachment be­tween Mr. Lennard and Cleo.”

  “I may have other silly ideas,” Aragon said. “How long has he worked here?”

  “Since last Christmas, when one of our regular counse­lors left for Europe on a Fulbright scholarship.”

  “Can you give me Lennard’s address and phone num­ber?”

  She opened a drawer of one of the maroon-painted filing cabinets that lined the rear wall.

  “His address and phone number are still the same as these on his application form. Four hundred Hibiscus Court, Space C, telephone 682-3380. I still don’t under­stand why you insist on dragging Mr. Lennard into this. Roger is a conscientious young man, totally dedicated to his students. He tries to make them feel normal, human, not social outcasts.”

  “Is there a picture of him in his file, Mrs. Holbrook?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I see it, please?”

  The picture was almost as vague in detail as the descrip­tion Timothy North had provided of the man with the basset. It could have been almost any dark-haired youngish man trying to look earnest on an application form for an earnest-type job.

  “Do you mind if I borrow this?”

  “It’s beginning to look,” Mrs. Holbrook said grimly, “as though you’re determined to discredit our school. I’ve a good notion to call Roger right this minute and let him speak for himself.”

  “That would suit me fine.”

  She pressed the numbers on the phone and waited a full minute before hanging up. “He’s probably asleep,” she said.

  “Suppose I check that out.”

  “Go ahead. You will anyway.”

  “I have to, Mrs. Holbrook.”

  Timothy North was still working out on his exercise machine in the small stucco bungalow. The pink sweat band around his head had turned dark with moisture. He wiped his face and hands on a towel before glancing at the picture.

  “Sure, that’s him all right. Not a happy chappy, is he? Well, maybe he has reasons.”

  “Bet the rent on it,” Aragon said.

  Hibiscus Court was a mobile-home park separated from the luxury condos along the beachfront by the railroad track, and from the city proper by the rickety old frame houses and buckling sidewalks of the barrio where Aragon had spent his youth.

  Space C was occupied by one of the smaller units. It was well-kept, its handkerchief-size lawn trimmed, the azaleas in ceramic pots carefully shaped. The window frames and the posts of the carport were newly painted in light green. A card on the main door bore the name Roger E. Len­nard. The Venetian blinds on the windows were closed tight and the carport was empty. Aragon knocked anyway. There was no answer.

  After a time he became aware of someone watching from the rear of the building. He turned and said, “Hello? Hello there.”

  A man stepped out briskly and started walking toward him. There was nothing furtive or guilty in his manner. He gave the impression that spying on a neighbor was merely part of his lifestyle. The straw sombrero he wore emphasized his shortness. His face was deeply tanned and creased like a piece of paper that had been scorched by the sun and folded and refolded a hundred times.

  “Looking for Mr. Lennard?”

  “Yes. I’m Tomás Aragon.”

  “Spanish?”

  “Yes.”

  “Spanish, Latino, Hispanic, Mexican, Chicano—what do you fellows like to be called, anyway?”

  “Fellows is good enough.”

  “No slur intended and none taken, I hope. After all, I’m used to being called a few things myself.” He pushed back his sombrero and revealed a head as brown and hairless as a basketball. “Baldy. Curly. Kojak. Don’t bother me a bit being called names like that. The real one’s Abercrombie.”

  They shook hands. Then the old man took out a pouch of tobacco and a package of cigarette papers and began rolling himself a cigarette with the clumsiness of a novice. “Trying t
o save a bit of money, but I can’t seem to get the hang of this. I see it done in old movies all the time, slick as a whistle, but it never works out like that for me. Must be trick photography.”

  “Are you the manager of this place, Mr. Abercrombie?”

  “Not exactly. I get a little something off my space rental if I go around making sure the rules are obeyed. No par­ties or loud television after ten. No dogs or cats or birds that talk.”

  “Mr. Lennard had a dog, did he not?”

  “Not for long, he didn’t. To tell the truth, I was sur­prised at him trying to break the rules like that. Then I found out he was only keeping it for a friend. Mr. Len­nard’s the quiet type who don’t have many friends, so I told him the dog could stay for a day or two until he found another home for it. He must have found one pretty quick because I never heard the dog after that. I haven’t seen Mr. Lennard either. Matter of fact, I don’t see much of him anyway. During the day he works at that peculiar-like school and at night he often goes out by himself, to the movies or library—that’s what I used to think anyway. Like I said, Mr. Lennard’s not the type to have a lot of friends. He just came to town last winter from Utah. His car had Utah plates on it, a red Pinto wagon.”

  Abercrombie lit the cigarette. Some of the burning to­bacco fell down the front of his shirt, adding two or three more holes to the dozen already there.

  “I got it too loose this time,” he explained. “Sometimes it’s so tight I can hardly get a drag out of it. Trick photog­raphy, that’s how they do it in the movies, trick photogra­phy. Anyhow, when I went over to tell Mr. Lennard he had to find another place for the dog he handed me a real surprise. He asked me if it was all right if he got married and his wife moved in with him. How’s that for a kicker?”

  It was a kicker, all right, Aragon thought. And the kickees included himself, the Jaspers, Mrs. Holbrook and her school, and probably most of all, Cleo. “Did Lennard announce the date of his wedding?”

  “Right away. ‘The sooner the better’—those were his very words.”

  “Did he appear happy?”

  “Excited, more like. And scared, too. Marriage is a big step. I never took it myself. Maybe my legs were too short.”

  Abercrombie paused, obviously expecting a laugh. Ara­gon obliged. It wasn’t very convincing but it seemed to sat­isfy the old man. He went on:

  “I told Mr. Lennard he could bring his bride to live here as long as they didn’t have any children. That’s an­other of our rules, no children. Well, sir, you should have seen him blush, just like some pimply little teenager. I said, you’ll have to bring the lady around and introduce her to the other people in the court. He said he would but he never did.”

  “When did this conversation take place?”

  “About the middle of the week. I’m not sure what day.”

  “And where?”

  “Right here where we’re standing, under the carport.”

  “You didn’t go inside?”

  “He never invited me inside. It’s not my business to go where I’m not wanted.”

  “Were the Venetian blinds closed, the way they are now?”

  “He kept them that way.” The old man squinted as he took another puff of the cigarette. “Are you hinting the woman might have been in there all the time I was talking to him?”

  “Possibly.”

  “That’s no normal behavior, an engaged man hiding his intended like she had two heads. Unless she’s the real shy type. There are a few shy women, I guess. I never get to meet any of them . . . I didn’t think to ask if you were a friend of Mr. Lennard’s.”

  “No.”

  “You’re not a bill collector, are you?”

  “Not exactly,” Aragon said. But it was time for Roger Lennard to start paying his debts.

  It was mid-afternoon when he finally stopped for lunch at a taco stand near his apartment. The early morning mist had long since been driven out to sea by a hot dry wind blowing in from

  the desert on the other side of the moun­tain. He sat under the thick shade of a laurel tree, sipping iced tea and thinking of Cleo. The evidence was circum­stantial but there seemed little doubt that she had run away to marry Roger Lennard. He tried to imagine Cleo as a bride in long white gown and veil or even an ordinary dress, but all he could conjure up was the picture of a skinny, blank-eyed girl wearing a navy-blue jumper and white blouse and knee socks. According to Frieda Jasper, Cleo hadn’t taken any clothes with her, so she would prob­ably use the thousand dollars from her bank account to buy a trousseau of some kind. Perhaps, however, she had enough business sense—or Roger Lennard had it for her—to have saved the cash and made any

  purchases for her wedding at the department store where she held a charge card.

  Cleo and Roger. A bride and groom as unreal as the plastic figures on top of a wedding cake, standing on ground no more stable than sugar frosting.

  Aragon finished his tea, fed the remaining ice cubes to the laurel tree and the plastic cup to the trash bin and went back to his car. He knew that he had to tell the Jas­pers and that the rest of the day would be all uphill. He felt the need to touch home base before going off into an­other game, so he drove to his office.

  Charity Nelson must have been watching the world as she often did from the windows of Smedler’s quarters on the top floor. The steel cage of the outside elevator descended the wall and she came charging out, hanging on to her wig so it wouldn’t blow off in the wind.

  He was glad to see her and told her so.

  She looked shocked. “My God, junior, you having a heat stroke or something? Come on up and I’ll put a cold pack on your head.”

  “Where’s the boss?”

  “Smedler had a very important client who wanted to play golf. Smedler, of course, wanted to stay here and work like a beaver but he forced himself to go to the country club. A man of sacrifice, not so?”

  “Not so.”

  “Come along.”

  They took the elevator up to Charity’s office. It was filled with the plants that were her children, raised from infancy, nurtured, nursed tenderly through diseases: the dieffenbachia whose scale she scraped off with her finger­nails, the marantas and crotons she misted night and morning to discourage red spider mites, the coleus whose mealybugs she treated with Q-Tips dipped in alcohol, the Hawaiian elf which required a drink of warm unchlorinated water every noon, the aphelandra which kept losing its limbs to aphids, these were her special darlings. To the hardier plants that could pretty well fend for themselves she gave a good home but little real love.

  She perched on the edge of her desk, swinging her legs and examining them critically as they swung. “My legs are the only vestiges of my youth. They’re still pretty good, don’t you think?”

  “Do you want me to tell you you’ve got great gams?”

  “I wouldn’t mind.”

  “You’ve got great gams.”

  “Thank you, junior. Now I suppose you want a compli­ment in return.”

  “It might be a nice switch.”

  “Okay. Smedler says you’re a young man who’s going places. Of course he didn’t specify what places—that’s a lawyer for you, can’t make a statement without leaving himself an out . . . Want some orange juice?”

  “Please.”

  She poured the juice not into the small plastic cups be­side the water cooler but into the crystal stemware she re­served for special occasions. He wondered what the occa­sion was and if he had, however reluctantly, played a part in it.

  She raised her glass. “Here’s to the twenty-third anniver­sary of my first divorce. His name was Harold and he was a teetotaler. You ever been married to a teetotaler?”

  “No.”

  “It’s like being married to an aardvark. It’s okay if you’re another aardvark. Harold never drank anything but orange juice. It’s weird,
every time I drink the stuff I think of him. Memories can be a real drag. Anyway, here’s to Harold, if he isn’t dead of an overdose of vitamin C.”

  She made a face when she drank the orange juice as if it tasted of Harold.

  “Sit down, junior, and tell all.”

  “Sorry, I have orders from Smedler not to blob, as you may recall.”

  “I’ve done a little detective work of my own and found out what you’re working on anyway. This man Jasper has big bucks in oil and copper. He’s going to be deep-down-in-the-pocket grateful if you find his sister. You could be rich.”

  “Money can’t buy happiness.”

  “You got that mixed up, junior. Happiness can’t buy money, though God knows I keep trying.”

  “When Mr. Jasper hears what I’ve got to tell him,” Ara­gon said, “I’ll be lucky to get out of this with two cents and a handshake.”

  “You found her? You actually found her?”

  “Not exactly. But I know why she went away. It’s not the kind of information Mr. Jasper will be happy to hear.”

  “What happened?”

  “She eloped with one of her counselors.”

  “What’s the matter with that? I think it’s romantic.”

  “He’s gay.”

  “Well,” Charity said, and again, “well. That’s not quite so romantic, is it?”

  “No.”

  “However, maybe he’s only half gay, or three fifths. Or even seven tenths. That would leave—”

  “I don’t know the exact percentage.”

  “To a normal woman even a little is too much.”

  Charity poured another round of orange juice. She was beginning to feel more kindly toward the long-gone Har­old. A teetotaler, yes, but he sure as hell wasn’t a pansy.

  She went on to tell Aragon more about Harold than he wanted to know and certainly more than Harold would have wanted him to know. He listened patiently until, hav­ing finished off Harold, she started in on George. George, it seemed, was not a teetotaler. In fact, he drank like a fish.

  “But he was not a pansy,” Charity said solemnly. “None of my husbands has been a pansy.”