John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 09 - Pale Gray for Guilt

by Pale Gray for Guilt(lit)

He got into the truck and stared out at me. "Not this time. They run this boy off. He was in the way, and they run him off. But you didn't hear me say that, mister."

  "I didn't hear you, friend."

  He headed back over the lumpy road. I walked around to where Puss still sat on the sawhorse. She looked up at me.

  With a small frown she said, "My heart bled for you the way you went reeling around in shock, McGee. You really took it hard. Your dear old buddy has gone to the big marina in the sky. The hard way. Came to get your bilge pump! God's sake, Travis!"

  I sat on my heels and squinted up at her. Dark red hair and disapproval, outlined against a blue December sky.

  "Win a few, lose a few, honey," I said.

  "What are you?" she asked.

  I stood up and put my hands on her upper arms, near the shoulders and plucked her up off the saw horse and held her. Maybe I was smiling at her. I wouldn't know. What I was saying seemed to come from a strange direction, as if I were standing several feet behind myself. I said some nonsense about smelling these things out, about sensing the quickest way to open people up, and so you do it, because if you don't, then maybe you miss one little piece of something you should know, and then you go join the long long line of the dead ones, because you were careless.

  "And," I heard myself say, "Tush killed himself but not with that damned engine block. He killed himself with something he said, or something he did, and he didn't know he was killing himself. Maybe he didn't listen very good, or catch on soon enough. I listen very good. I catch on. And when I add up this tab and name the price, I'm going to look at some nice gray skin, honey. Gray and pale, oily and guilty as hell, and some eyes shifting around looking for some way out of it. But every damned door will be nailed shut."

  I came out of it and realized she was making little hiccupy sobs and looking down and to the side, and her cheeks were wet, and she was saying, "Please, please."

  I released her and turned on my heel and walked away from her. I went a little way up the road. I leaned against the trunk of an Australian pine and emptied my lungs a few times. A jay yammered at me. There were tree toads in a swamp somewhere nearby. Puss came walking very slowly up the road. She came over to me and with a quick, shy smile leaned her face into my neck and chest.

  "Sorry" she whispered.

  "For nothing?"

  She exhaled. "I don't know. I asked you what you were. Maybe I found out, sort of."

  "Whatever it is, I don't let it show, Puss. Ten more minutes and I would have been kindly Trav forevermore."

  She pushed herself a few inches away and looked up at me. "Just smile with your eyes like kindly ol' McGee, dear, to kind of erase that other... that other look."

  "Was it that bad?"

  "They could bottle it and use it to poison pit vipers."

  "Okay now?"

  She nodded. "Sure." Her eyes were a sherry brown, almost a tan, and in that good light under the tree I could see the area right around the pupil, a corona of green. "He was a special guy?"

  "He was that."

  "But can't even a special guy... give up?"

  "Maybe, but if that one ever had, it wouldn't have been like that."

  We walked back toward the dead marina, my arm around her strong waist. "Call it enemy country," I explained. "He's dead, and it solves some problems for some people. And they'll want to forget all about it as fast as they can, and they won't know anything about anything."

  I got the camera off the boat, a battered old Retina C-III, and put in a roll of Plus X. I hand-cranked the block as high as it would go before it wedged against the tripod poles. I got wire and pliers out of the toolbox aboard, fastened wire to the ratchet stop. I took pictures as I went along. When I yanked the wire, the great weight came down to thud against the hard dirt with a shock I could feel in the soles of my feet, while the drum clattered and the cable rasped through the rusty pulley. I craned it up and left it the way it had been.

  She watched, and had the grace not to ask why. I didn't rinse my hands in the river. I waited until we were well out into the bay.

  Then I put it at dead slow, right at 700 rpm, and told her to head down the channel. I climbed out onto the forward bow shell and leaned back against the port windshield.

  One approach: Go storming into Sunnydale, promising stink and investigations and general turmoil.

  Or: Find some kind of cover story that might open up some mouths. See who can be conned. See who can be turned against whom.

  Or: Go in fast and quietly and come out with one Preston LaFrance and take him to a nice quiet place and open him up.

  Or: What if some mysterious buyer picked up the Bannon property? Then the boys couldn't put the whole two sections together. And that might bring them out of the woodwork.

  The last had the right flavor, if it could be worked. But first there had to be a first thing, and it had to be poor damned Janine. And if I couldn't get to her before the Sherf told her the bad news, I could at (east arrive shortly thereafter.

  So I hopped down and took the wheel and ran at lrlgh cruise to Broward Beach and tied up at the city rnarina. I left Puss at the drugstore counter and shut myself into a booth and made a person-to-person credit card call to Sheriff Bunny Burgoon in Sunnydale. I yapped at him in the excited tones of a writer-wash commercial and told him that CBS news had researched him and discovered he was a truly fine law officer, and had they located Mrs. Bannon yet, and her three kids, and it was a great human interest story and we might do a little feature.

  "Sure," he said. "Just before Christmas and all that. Yeh. Locate her? Well, not exactly yet, but we're doing everything that any human person could expect or ask for, and that's the truth. We got aholt of her folks in Milwaukee, and they're all upset as any human person could imagine, but they haven't heard a word from her, and they don't know any friend of hers of the name of Connie. Now if it was to go on national television, she'd turn up right off, I imagine. The name is Sheriff Hadley-that's an e -y, Burgoon, B-u-r-g-o-o-n. And I've been elected here three times as Sherf of Shawana County and-"

  "Could you read me the note she left her husband?"

  "Did you get the name wrote down with the right spelling?"

  "I did, Sheriff."

  "It's personal-like, but I see no harm in reading it to you, as any human person could tell it's a public service to find that poor lady. Just a minute. Let me see now. Here it is. It goes like this. 'Dear Tush, I'm sorry. This last thing was just the bitter end. Somehow it made me so ashamed. The boys are so upset and confused. I had to handle it alone because you weren't there, and it took the very last bit of strength and courage I had. Don't be angry with me. I'm worn out. I'm going to go stay with Connie for a while. I'm leaving this note and a suitcase with the things you'll probably need with the Sheriff. When you get the details and all straightened out, please phone me. Don't come charging up here, because I might not be ready to see you yet. I have some thinking to do, and then we have a lot of talking to do, about what's going to happen to you and me. Don't worry about me or the boys. We'll be fine. It was all so ugly, the way it happened. I suppose those men tried to be nice, and it wasn't their fault, but it was a terrible thing. Jan."

  "I certainly appreciate your cooperation, Sheriff. We'll be in touch. Yes, sir, we'll stay in close touch with developments."

  I went back to the counter. Puss was sitting on the stool sipping her cola drink, eyes a bit narrow, and on her lips a dangerous little smile. A plump man with a vulgar shirt and a hairline mustache sat two stools away, blushing furiously. He tried to sip his coffee with trembling hand and spilled a dollop of it into his saucer.

  "Darling!" she cried, turning toward me, her voice of such a penetrating clarity it reached all the way back to the remedies for iron-poor blood. "This dear little fat fellow wanted to show me all the sights. What's your name, dear little fat fellow?"

  He clapped two bits onto the counter top. "GeeeSUSS!" he muttered. He fled out of the cool into the midafte
rnoon sunlight.

  She gazed somberly toward the door. "Seems to have turned chicken. Have you noticed the progressive emasculation of the American male, Travis? Present company excluded, of course."

  She finished the soft drink with a rattling slurp amid the cracked ice, cheeks sucked hollow, and stood up in her sky-blue linen boat shorts, and her basque shirt, shook her hair back and smiled benignly up at me. "I counted myself in," she said in a low voice.

  "How's that?"

  "Since we left the river, I've felt like a bulky package you were tired of carrying around, and you were looking for a coin locker. I never knew Tush. I never met Janine. But I have a very hard nose, dear, and I don't scare, and I want to share."

  "I'll give it some thought."

  "You do that."

  Four

  I HAD to give a lot of thought right then and there to getting a good quick line on Connie. Janine's parents didn't know her. But somebody who had been close to the Bannons would know who she might be. I had to dig through the fragments of old memories and piece something together. I tried walking and thinking, Puss quietly, patiently trudging along beside me.

  I found a dark little cocktail lounge, and a dark table in a corner. They had one cocktail waitress, and the small percentage of her that was not bare was cruelly bound and laced into the compulsory bunnyfication of tiny waist, improbable uplift and separation of breast, revelation of cleavages front and rear. She had a tired, pretty, sour little face, a listless manner. When she left with the order, Puss clamped her hand on my arm and stared after her, saying, "Santa Claus is coming to town."

  They had their Christmas decoration up. It was a lush plastic spray of mistletoe, affixed exactly where the nubile legions of the Heffner Empire affix their fluffy white bunny tails. It expressed such a perfect comment on commercialized Christmas, it gave Puss a case of gasping chuckles that turned into hiccups, which were soon quelled by her big swallows from the steinkrug of dark beer on draft.

  I shoved my memory back to the drinks at Tush and Janine's breakfast bar two months earlier, when we had played what happened to who. And I finally came up with Kip Schroeder, the quarterback who, after seven years of high school ball, New Jersey AllState, and five years of college ball, a couple of AllAmerican mentions, had been held together with wire, tape and rivets. He had been obsoleted by giant strides in nutrition. He was structured like a fireplug, and every year the line he had to see over was higher and wider. But where the hell was he? He and his wife, whose name I couldn't remember, had been best man and matron of honor at the wedding of Tush and Jan. I had to have a football buff, one of those nuts who know every statistic and what happened to everybody.

  I tried the bald bartender, breaking up his murmured conversation with the mistletoe lass. His frown wrinkled the naked skull almost all the way up to the crown of his head.

  "I think maybe Bernie Cohn. He does the sports on WBRO-TV It ought to be a good time to catch him there at the station. Janie, look up the number of the gennaman, and plug the phone in over there, huh?"

  It was a little pink phone with a lighted dial. She had to use a lighter to find the baseboard phone connection. She started to tell me the number, then shrugged and dialed it herself and handed me the phone.

  I got the switchboard and then I got Bernie, who said, "Yes, yes, yes?" with irritable impatience until I told him my question. Then he sounded pleased. "Let me see now. Schroeder. Schroeder. I'm not drawing a blank buddy. You can put odds on that. I'm running through the career, up to the last thing I heard. Okay. Here it is. Two years ago Kip was athletic director, Oak Valley School, and that's in... just a minute... Nutley, New Jersey. Right?"

  "Sure appreciate it."

  "Did I win you a bet, fella? Express your appreciation by telling all your friends to watch the Bernie Cohn show at six fifteen every weekday on your Big Voice of the Big Bay, WBRO-TV Right?"

  Listless Janie came over when I signaled her, and I ordered two more draft and asked her if I could make a credit card call on the phone. When she came back with the beers, she said, "He says okay if I stand here while you make the call. You know. On account of any long distance comes in on the bill, it's a deduct on him."

  Puss reached out with a foot, hooked a chair over from the nearby table and said, "Rest your mistletoe, honey."

  With her first smile, the waitress sat down, saying, "My feet are like sore teeth, honest to God. I worked waitress three years and no trouble, but in this costume the owner says high heels, and now after three months I hurt all over, honest to God."

  I got through to area information on my station to station call for anyone at the phone listed in Nutley for Kip Schroeder. They didn't have one. They had a K. D. Schroeder. I tried that and got a Mrs. Schroeder, and she said yes, she was Kip's wife, Alice. Kip was out.

  I said I had met her once, and she pretended politely that she remembered me perfectly. I was glad she sounded so bright. I said I was trying to locate a very good friend of Jan Bannon, named Connie.

  "Connie, Connie. Can you hold a minute while I get my Christmas card list? It's laid out even, but we haven't gotten started on it yet."

  She came back and said, "I think this is who you want. Connie Alvarez. It used to be Tom and Connie, and he died. I think she was one of Jan's teachers in school. Here's the address I've got for her. To-Co Groves. That's capital To, capital Co, with a hyphen. Route Two, Frostproof, Florida. Frostproof! And you should see the sleet coming down here today. It's worth your life to drive."

  I thanked her and told her to give Kip my best, asked her how he was doing. She said he'd had two good seasons in a row and he was happy as a clam. So she asked how Tush and Jan were. What can you say? I said that the last time I'd seen the two of them, they were fine. It wasn't a lie. She said that if I saw them soon again, to tell Janine she owed her a letter and she'd write right after the holidays for sure.

  I didn't want to make the next call from there, not with tired Janie listening. So I paid her, and added on top of the tip a little balm for sore feet.

  Back toward the city marina, toward the drugstore, and I briefed Puss en route. "She didn't need much travel money to get there. Less than two hundred miles, I'd guess."

  In the drugstore booth, on the off chance that Jan might answer, I made the call person to-person to Mrs. Alvarez. I heard a maid answer the operator and say she would get Mrs. Alvarez. It was at least two minutes before Connie Alvarez answered, sounding out of breath.

  "Yes?"

  "Is Jan staying there with you?"

  "... I... I'm afraid I'm wouldn't be interested, thank you."

  "Look, Mrs. Alvarez. This isn't Tush."

  "Then, perhaps you could explain more about it, Mr. Williams."

  "I get the message. She can hear your end of it Now, listen very carefully. Please. Don't let her answer any phone calls, and keep her away from the newspapers and the radio and the television."

  "I suppose there would be some reason for that."

  "My name is Travis McGee. I'm going to try to get there this evening. And it might be a good idea if you could have a damned good tranquilizer handy. I'm an old friend of Tush's. I wasn't going to tell you this if you sounded bird-brained, Connie. But you sound solid. Tush is dead. And it was messy."

  "In that case, Mr. Williams, I might be willing to listen. Perhaps if you could come out this evening? There's loads of room here. We can put you up, and it will give us a good chance to talk business. I know a little bit about the sort of proposition you mention, I mean, the background data. I'll look forward to seeing you. By the way, we're eight miles northeast of Frostproof. Go north out of town on US Twenty-seven and turn right on State Road Six thirty, and we're about five miles from the corner on your left. I'll turn the gate lights on at dark."

  And then came the fat argument with Puss Killian as we walked back to the city marina. At last she said, "Old buddy, you are leaving out one ingredient. You say she was a steady one. Great. She can cope. So maybe she
is one of those who can cope with all the mechanics of a situation. A real administrator. But maybe she can't hold people. Maybe it makes her feel itchy to try to hold somebody and hug somebody and rock somebody. I have this rusty nail for a tongue, and I kick where it is going to hurt the most, but I am a warm broad, like in the puppy sense of touching and being touched. Contact with flesh. That's where the messages of the heart are, McGee.

  Not in words, because words are just a kind of conventional code, and they get blurred, because any word doesn't mean just the same to any two people. And I am very familiar with that old spook with the scythe and the graveyard breath. And I do not care to be sent back to Lauderdamndale to sit around in that sexpot houseboat and crack my knuckles. Think of me as a kind of tall poultice. Or a miracle drug. Part of your kit. And if the lady administrator can supply the same item, I will not enter a competition. I will stay the hell out of the way. But this is women's work, and two are better than one, and it is going to be ten times worse for her because she ran for cover, and there will be guilt up to here."