She slid her small hands around my waist, laid her cheek against my chest and held tight. I stroked her hair. She took the deepest breath of all and said, "Listen to me! God, I know it was important. There are some kinds of poisons, I heard you look as if you got over it, but you never really do. I wish somebody could stick a knife in my head and cut out those four days and nights, Trav. A girl thinks about herself a different way, after that. I have this lousy dream ever since. I've fallen into this empty white swimming pool and the sides are too high to get out. The pool lights are on so it's bright as a stage. And there are six ugly snakes in there on the tile, all after me. I can run and dodge fast enough to keep away from them no matter how they try to hem me in. They all look exactly alike. Then I keep calling for help and suddenly I see that the walls are all kind of coming in. It is getting smaller and smaller. Then I know they are going to get me. As the place gets smaller the snakes get bigger, and I scream and wake up, all sweaty and trembling. Just hold me tight, Trav. Please."
She was trembling and I wondered if it was faked. After several minutes she quieted down and moved away from me, shoved her hair back with the back of her hand and said, with a funny little shy smile, "You don't want me, do you? I could tell. Just from your hands. Kind of gentle and... fatherly and remote. God, I wouldn't blame you for not wanting such a public piece."
"It's not that."
"No? You are certainly not one of those, sweetie."
"No. Well, in all honesty, if that's what you want, I guess the pictures have something to do with it. A man likes the illusion of exclusive option, even on the most temporary basis, I guess. But with or without pictures, let's just say I'm not a trophy hunter."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"Every redblooded American boy should ride a bike no hands and win some merit badges and go to bed with a household name. Some of them don't get over it, that's all. I had my celebrity innings, but I'm not a locker room historian. I outgrew my bike too, Lee. It's a big scene here. Rich silent house and the closed door and your tight pants and that rostrum type bed. And mutual attraction. But it isn't worth it. It would be like being taught to dance by your elder sister. She would keep trying to lead, and giving irritable little instructions, and counting out loud and spoiling the music. Then she would give you a patronizing pat and say you did just fine."
For a moment she had the malignant rigidity of a temple demon. Then an urchin grin, seen often in your favorite movie palace, broke it up. "My God, you are a strange one, McGee. You wouldn't want me as a gift, eh?"
"Not unless and until it could be more than this for us, Lee."
"You mean like real true love?"
"Affection, understanding, need and respect. You can be sarcastic about that too, if you want. Bed is the simplest thing two people can do. If it goes with a lot of other things, it can be important, and if it goes with nothing else, it isn't worth the time it takes."
She strolled over and curled up in a big chair and pondered me, finger laid against the side of her small nose. "The next time around, Mr. McGee, can you arrange to show up in Dayton about fifteen years ago?"
"I can make a note of it, Miss Dean."
"I've been through too many mills this time."
"Not necessarily"
"But you said respect."
"Once in a while you stop posing for me and remembering lines from old movies, and then I could respect the person that shows through."
"It could be strange to have a friend like you. I have no female friends, really. And just two male friends, fine old guys, both in their early sixties. I love them dearly. Males in your bracket are either studs or competitors, sweetie, or they want to find an angle to get rich off me."
"We might end up friends, Lee. I better go along. I am going to take these pictures along." As I picked them up from the desk she hopped up out of the chair and came running over and grabbed at the envelope. I did not let her pull it out of my hand. I said, "Either you trust me all the way, or I get off right now, Lee. I need them for information and leverage."
After looking at me with a long and searching intensity, she let go. "I never thought I'd let anybody even see those. Tray, will you be terribly careful?"
"Yes."
"I can send Dana over with the expense money tomorrow. Will that be all right?"
"Fine."
"Please be careful with those pictures. If they get out, my career is dead right now. And... as you must damn well know, it is the only thing I have left."
Tears balanced on her lower lids, and one broke loose and tracked her cheek. It did not look real. A makeup man had darted onto the set and put them there with an eyedropper. Pure glycerine. Maybe they weren't real. She would have learned to cry almost at will, and cry in a way that would leave her as lovely as before.
"You be careful, Lee. I don't like the sound of that note. Sexually disturbed people try to be the sword of the Lord, going around slaying the sinful. See that you get pretty good protection this week in Miami."
She walked me to the door. She caught at my arm, gave me a quick kiss, as soft and trusting as a child's, then went down the corridor with me, found Dana Holtzer in a small room, typing, and turned me over to her. Dana got up and took me down the stairs and out to the waiting limousine. I saw the quick and wary way she glanced at the envelope I was carrying, and caught a flavor of total disapproval.
The driver's name was Martin. She told him to take me back, or to wherever I wanted to go. It was after five. I had him stop where I could phone. I phoned Gabe Marchman in Lauderdale and told him I had a problem. He said it was convenient to bring it right over.
On one of those hunches that may save your life, though you can never prove it one way or another, I had Martin drop me off downtown. I went into one end of a big drugstore and out the other and into a cab.
Gabe Marchman was a great combat photographer. You have seen his name on those classic Korea things. A land mine smashed his legs all to hell. While convalescing in Hawaii, he met and married a very rich and very beautiful little Chinese-Hawaiian girl named Doris. Gabe looks like a sawed-off Abraham Lincoln. He is still on crutches. They have six kids.
With his mobility gone, he has gotten into another aspect of photography. He has one of the most completely equipped private labs in the South, taking up a wing almost as big as the main house. He does experimental work, and problem assignments for large fees. He is a sour little man, adored by all who get to know him.
Doris, blooming large again with child, sent me on through to the lab. Gabe grunted at me. I said I wanted to know as much as possible about some pictures I had with me. We were in his print room. He turned on more intense lights. He levered himself onto a stool and spread the dozen pictures out in a row on top of the work table.
From his lack of reaction, they could have been pictures of puppies or flower gardens. "Whadaya know about 'em?" he said. "Just technically."
"They were taken a year and a half ago in California on 35mm film. The person involved estimates that the only place from which they could be taken was about a hundred yards away, but that is just an estimate. The person involved saw another set of prints over a year ago, and they were just like these as far as subject matter, but these seem to be fuzzier and grayer."
He grunted and got out a large magnifying glass and began to go over them very carefully, one by one.
I said, "I forgot something. My client saw and destroyed the negatives. The negatives included more than in a lot of these pictures."
He continued his careful examination. Finally he swiveled around. "Okay, we accept the hundred-yard distance. I would say it was probably Plus-X using a very fine telephoto lens, one thousand millimeter. Maybe the f/6.3 Nikkor, a reflector type with two mirrors. It's only about so long and weighs three or four pounds. It was used with a tripod or some other kind of solid rest. With 35mm a lens that size gives you about a twenty-power magnification, so at a hundred yards it would give the same as a normal lens fift
een feet from the subject. These three are the only ones where he printed the full frame. Now, if he printed about half the frame, it would be like being seven or eight feet away from the subject. And this is the average for most of these. Just this extreme close-up was done from maybe a quarter or less of the negative, showing the woman at a viewing distance of about three feet, with less definition. There's good depth of field and all motion is frozen, so a hundred yards away I'll buy. Okay so far?"
"Yes."
"Assuming the same guy who took the pictures made the original prints, he's a good workman. Excellent exposure, good edge to edge definition, and when he masked the negatives and did his printing, he had good quality control. You can tell that he did some burning in and dodging, and he couldn't help using a pretty good sense of composition. I would say he took a hell of a lot of shots, maybe several hundred, and came up with the best ones. Very sharp, very clear, and he made high-gloss prints. I'd say definitely a pro, if that's any help to you. Now then, some clown got hold of a set of the prints. See this little flare here on this one and this one. That's where his lighting kicked back off the gloss. He made a set of copy negatives and a new set of prints. This is crappy paper, and he butchered his developing and butchered his printing solutions and times, but there was enough quality in the prints he copied so that all in all it comes through not too bad. The guy who did the originals would be incapable of doing such cruddy work the second time around, even if he was operating in a motel closet. But, having the copy negatives, he can make any number of these poor prints. Your client destroying the original negatives means nothing now. It is unmistakably her in every one of these. I would guess she's the one you're working for."
"Yes. Now I wonder if you can do something with these."
"I was afraid of that."
"From these can you make another set of negatives, and a set of prints that are a little different than these?"
"McGee, if you start out with crud, you end up with crud. I can't get back to the original print quality. I can print for more contrast and clean up these whites a little, but a close focus on fuzz gives you fuzz."
After an original reluctance, he began to get interested. He used a copy camera, a larger negative size, a copy film with a fine grain. By the time he had developed the negatives, Doris began to howl for a little cooperation, so he hung them up to dry and we went in for drinks. The nursemaid had taken over the bedtime routines. The older ones trudged in to say their well-mannered goodnights.
Doris cooked and served an old Chinese-Hawaiian specialty-broiled steaks, baked potatoes and tossed green salad. The three of us, in front of the big fireplace with a very small fire, revamped the State Department, simplified all tax legislation, tore down half of Florida and rebuilt it in a more sane and pleasing fashion.
Then we went back to work. He would put a negative in the enlarger and focus it on the base, and I would tell him what I wanted. Then he would go to work. He would cut a piece of masking paper to fit Lysa Dean's projected face. He would use sufficient exposure time to give him opportunity to dodge and burn in so that the face of someone else was emphasized. I ended up with fourteen useful prints, on double-weight paper. Some of those that took in more people were duplicated, altered slightly to highlight one and then another.
Somewhere in the processing they ceased to have any fleshy impact. They became problems in light and shade and emphasis. He put them in his high-speed dryer, and after he had flattened them in a bonding press, I studied them under the bright lights. Lysa Dean's features were white censored patches. Gabe was careful to give me the negatives as well as the test prints which hadn't worked out. We argued price, with me trying to increase it, and agreed on a hundred dollars. Doris had gone to bed.
He crutched his way to the door with me, and came out with me into the cold windy night.
"Taking a little trip, I suppose," he said.
"Yes."
"None of my business. I suppose somebody got too greedy."
"That's usually the way."
"You watch yourself, Trav. A little animal like that, if she'd see a way out by pushing you over the edge, she'd take it. That's an interesting little face, but it isn't a good face."
The taxi slowed, putting his spotlight on the numbers. He turned into the drive. When I looked back I saw Gabe still standing there.
Four
WHEN I got back to the Busted Flush I saw my lights still on. It was a little past eleven. The lounge door was locked. I went in and found Skeeter sound asleep, face down on the yellow couch in her baggy gray coveralls, one frail long-fingered hand trailing on the floor. Drawings of Quimby were propped everywhere. They were wise and funny and good. I admired them. In the middle of the floor was a big stamped brown envelope and a note to me:
This LOUSY mouse. I am pooped out of my mind. PLEASE would you stuff him in this envelope. He is all weighed in and everything, and PLEASE would you seal him and run him to the P.O. He's an airmail-SPECIAL mouse. Honestly, I had to sleep or DIE!!!
I looked down at her. It was typical. God knows how long she'd gone without sleep or when last she had thought of eating. Perfectionists who meet deadlines are usually pretty whipped out.
I went through to the bow of the Flush and put my dirty pictures in the hidden safe. It might not take an expert all night to open it, but he'd sure raise hell finding it first. I assembled Quimby and sealed him and turned off one of the lights.
She stirred and raised a sleep-bleared Raggedy Ann face, shoe-button eyes peering, cobweb hair afloat. "Whumya timezit?" she mumbled.
I squatted beside the couch. "You eat anything?"
"Huh? Eat? Uh.... no."
I knew the problems. I had lived with them. I went into the galley, picked cream of mushroom soup, opened the can, heated it, poured it steaming into a big two-handled mug. She was gone again. I sat her upright and fitted the mug into her hands. When I was sure she was going to keep on sipping at it, I left and took Quimby to the post office and dropped him into an airmail slot.
By the time I got back, the empty mug was on the floor, and she had sagged off to sleep again. I picked her up. The fool girl seemed to have no substance at all. My guest stateroom would have to serve. I carried her in there and then, instead of dropping her into the bed and covering her over, on a strange and lonely impulse I sat on the bed still holding her in my arms. A faintness of marina lights came through the ports. Water slapped and licked at the curve of the barge hull. Mooring lines creaked.
She put her arm around my neck and said, "I thought we gave up on this."
"We did. I thought you were asleep. Go back to sleep."
"I was asleep, damn it. What's this brooding sorrow bit anyway? It's the tenderness keeping me awake."
"I guess I wanted to hold onto you. That's all. Go to sleep."
"Why should you want to hold me? My God, Travis, we ripped each other up pretty good and got over it a long time ago."
"Why do you have to know everything? That's one of your problems."
"I have to know because I can't go back to sleep, that's why."
"Okay. I don't have too many illusions. I just ran into something rotten, that's all. I don't feel shocked. Just sad."
"It was a rotten girl?"
"I don't know. It's a kind of waste, I guess. Go to sleep."
She settled herself more snugly into my lap, arm around me, face in my neck. In a little while she drifted off, and the arm fell away. Her breathing turned deep.
I guess it can be touching. A special kind of trust. Something warm to hold. The way a kitten will drowse in your lap, totally confident.
Holding something alive, warm, sleeping is like handling fresh moist soil under the sun's heat. Restorative.
After a little while I had the idea that it would be an act of good fellowship to peel her out of those coveralls and slip her into the bed. A nice gesture. Sure. This is how McGee kids McGee.
I gave a little shake like a hound coming out of water. During
that little time when it had been good, before we had started sawing chunks off each other, I had discovered that narrow little body to be amazingly strong, curiously luxurious. And I had the lonelies.
So I stood her on her feet and held her until she could stand up. "What the hell!" she said. I stood up and kissed her, gave her a swat on the fanny and told her to sleep tight. I heard the coverall zipper before I got the door entirely closed behind me.
John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 04 - The Quick Red Fox Page 4