"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. "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 instincively 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."
"Are there any suspects?"
"I don't know. I don't think so. After the funeral yesterday, we-Alan and me-we talked to a fellow Alan went to school with. He has something to do with the law. He said it could have something to do with all that trouble over at Rosedale Station, but of course Joya left there before anything happened. Everybody thinks it was just some bum, some vagrant, some kind of drifter. There's so much crazy violence around these days. Well... I'm here trying to pack up, her things. What is your name again? McGee. Oh, God, I was about to say that I'd tell Joya you called. I've got to hang up now. I'm going to cry again."
I talked to Meyer again in the evening, aboard my houseboat.
I explained to him my reservations about the professionalism of one Forgan. "From the conversation I had with Kesner after Forgan left
, I know that Forgan told Kesner that Mrs. Murphy-Wheeler had put in a complaint about their making the dirty tapes on location. A citizen who complains to the authorities should be protected, unless he or she is willing to make sworn statements."
"Maybe she was. Or maybe Mr. Forgan didn't take it all that seriously. Maybe he thought he was dealing with somebody who'd been released or fired, trying to get even."
"Okay. But I was the idiot who told Grizzel about it when I sat with him and with Jean Norman later."
"If you hadn't mentioned it to him, certainly Kesner would have, Travis. And probably long before you saw Grizzel. Kesner would have wanted to warn him about Forgan and his partner looking around the area. You pick up imaginary guilt the way serge picks up lint."
"Joya was a very able and happy lady. She was outraged about how they had turned Jean Norman around. She wanted people punished. And I think it got her killed."
"But you didn't get her killed."
"Okay Meyer. All right. I didn't."
The midnight news told us that the nude battered body of Jean Norman had been taken out of the Missouri River by a police launch after having been reported by a tug captain. It said that authorities believed there was a possible connection between the murder of Miss Norman on Sunday night and the brutal rape murder of Mrs. Murphy-Wheeler near Ottumwa the previous Thursday morning. Law enforcement units all over the Midwest were on the alert for any information as to the whereabouts of Desmin Grizzel. Bikers in nine states were being stopped and interrogated.
"And that is the one way he would not travel," Meyer said.
"I don't see how he can risk any kind of traveling, not with that well-known face."
"He's found something that works," Meyer said. "Think about Jean Norman. Would she have walked over to a wall to talk across it to Desmin Grizzel? To talk to something out of her nightmares? I'll bet she had no idea until he grabbed her and yanked her across and took her into the bushes. Would Joya, dressed for running, let Grizzel catch up with her?"
"He can't disguise his dimensions. He's the size of an offensive guard. Six two, two sixty or seventy, great big gut."
After I thought about it a while, I phoned Lysa Dean. It was a little after ten in the evening her time.
"You again?" she said. "Look, I've got guests."
"I can hear them. I won't take up much time, okay?"
"What is it?"
"Dirty Bob managed to get very close to two people who had every reason to be very wary of him."
"The woman in Omaha and the one in Iowa?"
"You've been keeping track. Good. I'm trying not to be boring about this, Lee. I don't know if there's any chance of him coming after you. I don't know if he wants to get to me that much. I don't know how much risk he's willing to accept, how crazy he is. But you know the dimensions of him."
"Big big old boy."
"Just don't put any trust at all in any stranger who comes in that size, man or woman. He can disguise everything but his size."
"I shall consider myself warned."
"I could come out there. A live-in guard."
"Well, you do tempt me, but no, thanks."
Twenty
THE THURSDAY newspapers carried diagrams of the floor plan of the Lysa Dean house, with those Germanic-looking crosses newspapers use to indicate where bodies are found.
A person or persons unknown had snapped the gardener's neck and flung him into the pool. The slender Korean woman who had served us the salad and tea had been chopped across the nape of the neck with a kitchen cleaver wielded with such force it was clear that she had been dead before her body hit the kitchen floor. Lysa Dean had evidently been caught a few feet from the panic button of her alarm system, in the corner of her bedroom near the bed.
It had happened, as near as could be judged, at eleven in the. morning on Wednesday, the twenty-fourth. Miss Dean had not been on call that day. The dotted line showed that the intruder had been admitted to the grounds by the gardener, through the front gate. He, or they, had killed the gardener near the rear entrance to the kitchen area. He or they had then slain the maid, who had been fixing Miss Dean's breakfast of tomato juice, dry toast, and tea, and gone through the house to find Miss Dean just leaving her dressing room. There she had been chased, caught, taken to her custom bed, and brutalized. Broken fingers, chipped teeth, and bruises, which were said to have happened at least an hour before death, indicated that she had been kept alive for a considerable amount of time before she was finally smothered by being jammed face down into her pillows.
There were the inevitable references to the Manson murders, to which they bore no resemblance at all. There was editorial comment in the newspapers and on television about drugs, terrorism, pornography, the ineffectuality of the law, the vulnerability of prominent persons, the decay of morality, the decline of values.
Sidebar stories detailed her long career in cinema and television, her marriages and divorces, her awards, her life-style. Others gathered comment from people she had worked with and worked for.
"It is a sad and sickening loss. I hope whoever did this terrible thing will be brought to justice."
"She had a lively style, a quick and earthy wit. Television will be the poorer for her loss."
"Lysa Dean was an unashamedly sensuous woman who very much enjoyed her life and enjoyed being Lysa Dean."
"Everybody I know is out buying more locks and chains and alarm systems. You wouldn't believe the panic that has hit this town. It's like we're back to the Charlie Manson days all over again."
An editorial expressed bafflement at how any suspicious person or persons could have avoided detection by any of the public and private patrols. But it did say that it was a lot easier to invade the area during broad daylight than at night. Deliveries were made during the daylight hours, and unlike some of the newer secure communities, there was no central checkpoint through which all traffic had to pass.
I had a feeling of loss, but in some strange way it was diluted by the many faces of Lysa Dean. There was so much artifice involved, so much playing of games, so much posing, I could not identify the single specific person who was gone. And indeed it was that bewildering variety which had made me uncharacteristically less than eager to bed her down both times she had made her availability unmistakable. There is a curious reluctance to play that ultimate game with a composite of strangers, with all the faces of one particular Eve. She was lively, fun to be with, but I did not know her. Perhaps the closest I had come to comprehending the real Lysa Dean was when I had been in her little projection room and seen her collection of X-rated tapes and her little drawer containing the massager. Maybe at the very heart of her there was an icy and unbelievable loneliness.
I looked up the number for Ted Blaylock's Oasis. Mits answered.
"Who? Wait a sec, I got to shut the door there's so much noise out back.... Okay. Who'd you say?... Oh, McGee! Hey, how is it going?"
"How is it going with you?"
"Pretty much okay I guess. I tell you, it is very damn noisy here, with a lot of big yellow machines churning around out in back."
"What are they doing?"
"Lots of things at once. A fence and a wall and an airstrip and some kind of generator plant. They don't tell me anything hardly. We're getting a lot of business from those guys working here, though, and the motorsickle business is holding up okay. Did you get your dividend? No? I got mine. Monday. Five hundred cash, and then there was a check for salary on account of I'm sort of being a manager while they're looking for one. Somebody will probably bring you your dividend. Preach told me, he said, 'Don't declare it, kid. It's for spending.'"
"I want to know how I can get hold of Preach. I tried the number for Karma Imports in Miami and they told me they never heard of anybody named Preach or anybody named Amos Wilson. Then I tried Daviss Grudd and he said that he never gets in touch with Preach; Preach is the one who makes contact."
"Well... I have this number to call in case some kind of county
or state inspectors show up out here asking lots of questions. If it wasn't any emergency, he might get sore at me."
"It's an emergency Mits. Really."
Though reluctant, she gave me the number.
It was a Miami number. I phoned, a man answered, I asked for Preach, and he came on the line.
"I met you out at Blaylock's," I said. "You and the fellow with you talked to me out by the cabins in back."
"How far are you from a pay phone, timewise?"
"Ten minutes."
"Go look at the number, come back and phone this number, and give the pay phone number to whoever answers. Then get back there and expect a call at half past on the button. What time you got?"
"Eleven before three."
"You're two minutes fast."
Click.
I did as instructed and went back to the pay phone affixed to a marine wall in its plastic shell. It rang on schedule. "McGee here," I said.
John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 19 - Freefall in Crimson Page 22