The Deep Blue Good-Bye Part 7

"Cook them out in the sun."

"I'm going to. On the beach, maybe. When are you coming back?"

"I'm going to Texas today."

"What?"

"There's a man there I want to see. I might be back there by Friday, but I'm not certain. Take your pills, honey. Don't agitate yourself. Eat; sleep and keep busy. You're smack in the middle of hundreds of boats and thousands of people."

"Trav, a woman phoned and she's most anxious to get in touch with you. She said it's an emergency. It sort of put her off stride to have a woman answer and say you're away. I said you might phone and she said to tell you to phone her. Miss McCall. With a very strange first name. I don't know if I have it right?"

"Chookie."

"That's it."

I had her look in my book and give me the number. By the time I hung up, Lois sounded pretty good. I wondered if I had been a d.a.m.n fool not to lock up the liquor supply or at least to arrange to have somebody stay with her. Hurry home, Mother McGee. People have their acquired armor, made up of gestures and expressions and defensive chatter. Lois's had all been brutally stripped awy, and I knew her as well as anybody ever had or ever would. I knew her from filled teeth to the childhood apple tree, from appendix scar to wedding night, and it was time for her to start growing her new carapace, with me on the outside. I caught her raw, and did not care to be joined to her by scar tissue when healing began.

Chook's phone went to nine rings before she answered in the gritty rancor of interrupted sleep. But her voice changed when she recognized mine. "Trav! I phoned you last night. Who is that Mrs. Atkinson?"

"One of your more successful rivals."

"I mean really. Is she the one that whosis took on when he dropped Cathy?"

"Yes."

"Trav, I phoned about Cathy. She worked the first show last night. She seemed fine. And then they found her unconscious out on the beach there at the hotel. She'd been terribly beaten. Her face is a mess. Two broken fingers. They don't know yet if there's any internal injuries. She regained consciousness before they got her to the hospital. The police questioned her. She told them she went out to walk on the beach and somebody jumped her and beat her up. She couldn't give them a description. I talked to her next, after they'd given her a sedative. She acted very strange about it. I think it was him, Trav. She won't be able to work for two weeks anyway, maybe longer. She's really a mess."

"Does she want to talk to me?"

"She doesn't want to talk to amybody. It's in the paper today. Show girl a.s.saulted on private beach. Mysterious a.s.sailant and so on."

"Are you going to see her today?"

"Of course!"

"I might not get back before Sat.u.r.day. Look in on Lois Atkinson if you get a chance. Our friend left her in pretty sad shape. She's a lady."

"Oh, really?"

"With ragged edges. You'll like her, I think. Make girl talk. Then I'll try to phone you tonight at the hotel, for a report on both of them."

"McGee's clinic?"

"The Junior Allen discard club. Take care."

A travel office at the hotel helped me find the best way to get to the Rio Grande Valley. A direct 707 out of Idlewild to Houston, a two hour layover and then a feeder flight down to Harlingen with one stop at Corpus Christi. I had barely missed a better deal, and so I could take my time getting out of Idlewild.

The flight took off with less than half the seats occupied. The whole country lay misty-bright, impersonal, under a summer high, and we went with the sun, making noon last a long time. The worst thing about having a hundred and eighty million people is looking down and seeing how much room there is for more.

A stewardess took a special and personal interest in me. She was a little bigger than they usually are and a little older than the norm. She was styled for abundant lactation, and her uniform blouse was not. She had a big white smile and she was mildly-bovine, and I had the curious feeling I had met her before, and then I remembered where-in that valuable book by Mark Harris, Bang the Drum Slowly, the stewardess that "Author" runs into when he is on his way out to Mayo's. My stewardess perched on the edge of the seat beside me, back arched, smiling.

" Houston is going to be wicked hot," she said. "I am going to get me into that motel pool as fast as I can, and come out just long enough every once in a while to get a tall cold drink. Some of the kids just stay in the rooms, but I think they keep them too cold. It gives me the sinus. I layover there and go out at ten tomorrow, and somehow Houston is always a drag, you know?"

The mild misty blue eyes watched me and the mouth smiled and she waited for my move. You can run into the Tiger's Perpetual Floating House Party almost anywhere. At 28,000 feet, and at the same 800 fps muzzle velocity of a.45 caliber service pistol. n.o.body leaves marks on anybody. You meet indirectly, cling for a moment and glance off. Then she would be that hostess in Houston and I would be that tanned one from Florida, a small memory of chlorinated pool water, fruit juice and gin, steak raw in the middle, and hearty rhythms in the draperied twilight of the tomb-cool motel cubicle, riding the grounded flesh of the jet-stream Valkyrie. A harmless pleasure. For harmless plastic people, scruff-proof, who can create the delusion of romance.

But it is a common rudeness to refuse the appetizer without at least saying it looks delicious.

"I'd settle for Houston," I said with a manufactured wistfulness. "But I'm ticketed through too Harlingen."

The smile did not change and the eyes became slightly absent. She made some small talk and then swayed down the aisle, smiling, offering official services. Most of them find husbands, and some of them are burst or burned in lonely fields, and some of them become compulsively, forlornly promiscuous, sky sailors between the men in every port, victims of rapid transit, each night merely a long arc from bed to bed.

I saw her later in the Houston terminal, stilting along, laughing and chattering into the face of a big florid youngster in a nine-gallon hat.

I was in Harlingen at a little after five, the sun high and blazing, the heat as wet and thick as Florida 's. I rented an air-conditioned Galaxie and found a tall gla.s.sy motel with green lawns, pool and fountains, and checked into a shadowed icy room facing the pool. I showered and changed to sport shirt and slacks. I drove around. it was a village trying to call itself a city. Pale tall buildings had been put up in unlikely places for obscure reasons. it was linked to Brownsville by the twenty-five mile umbilicus of Route 77.

The George Brell residence was at 18 Linden Way, Wentwood. Big plots, big sweeping curves of asphalt. Architectured houses, overhangs, patios, sprinklers, driveways wad turnarounds pebbled in brown, traveler palms, pepper trees, Mexican gardeners, housewives in shorts, antique wrought-iron name signs. Number eighteen was blond stone, gla.s.s, redwood, slate. Formal plantings. A black Lincoln and a white Triumph in the drive, a black poodle in a window of the house, glaring out at the world.

I went back among the common people and found a beer joint. Standard opening conversation gambit. "Sure hot." Standard answer. "Sure is."

The beer was so cold it had no taste. The juke played hill country laments. I found a talkative salesman. Local economy: d.a.m.ned town had been too long at the mercy of the Air Force. Close the base, open the base, et cetera. Oranges and grapefruit were basic. Bad freeze year and everything goes to h.e.l.l. Little winter tourist business building up pretty good. Padre Island and so forth. More transient traffic through into Mexico now the Mexicans fixed their d.a.m.ned road decent from Matamoros to Victoria. Quickest way from the States to Mexico City. He was talkative and cranky.

I got him onto local success stories, and when he got onto George Brell I kept him there. "Old George is into a lot of things. His wife had some groves, and now he's got more. His first wife, dead now. G.o.d knows how many of these Beeg-Burger drive-ins he's got now. A dozen. More. And the real estate business, and warehouse properties, and the little trucking business he's started up."

"He must be a smart man."

"Well, let's say George is a busy man. He keeps moving. They say he's always in some kind of tax trouble, and he couldn't raise a thousand dollars cash, but he lives big. And he talks big. He likes a lot of people around him all the time."

"You said he married again?"

"Few years back. h.e.l.l of a good-looking girl, but I don't think she's more than maybe three years older than his oldest girl from his first wife. Built her a showplace house out in Wentwood Estates. Gerry, her name is."

My salesman had to get on home, and after he had gone I went back to a booth and phoned George Brell. It was ten to seven. I got him on the line. He sounded emphatic. I said I wanted to see him on a personal matter. He became wary. I said that Bill Callowell had suggested he might be able to help me.

"Callowell? My old pilot? Mr. McGee, you come right on out to the house right now. We're just sitting around drinking, and we'll have one ready for you."

I drove out. There were a half-dozen cars there. A house man let me in. Brell came hurrying to me to pump my hand. He was a trim-bodied man in his late forties, dark and handsome in a slightly vulpine way, and I suspected he wore a very expensive and inconspicuous hair piece. He looked the type to go bald early. He had a resonant voice and a slightly theatrical presence. He wore tailored twill ranch pants and a crisp white shirt with blue piping.

Within ten seconds we were Trav and George, and then he took me out to a gla.s.sed back deck where the people were. A dozen of them, seven men and five women, casually dressed, friendly, slightly high. As he made the introductions he managed to give me the impression that all the men worked for him and he was making them rich, and all the women were in love with him. And he made it known to them that I was a dear friend of one of the most influential road builders in the country, a man who had flown desperate missions with George Brell, and had survived only because George was along. His wife, Gerry, was a truly stunning blonde in her middle twenties, tall and gracious, but with eyes just a little cold to match a smile so warm and welcoming.

We sat around on the sling chairs and leather stools, and talked the dusk into night. Two batches left, cutting the group down to five. They made it unthinkable not to stay to dinner. The Brell's, a young couple named Hingdon and me. A little while before dinner, Brell took Hingdon off to discuss some business matter with him. Mrs. Hingdon went to the bathroom. Gerry Brell excused herself and went to see how the preparation of dinner was coming.

I went wandering. A harmless diversion. It was a big rambling house, obviously furnished by a decorator who had worked with the architect. And they had not been in it long enough to add those touches that would spoil the effect. There was a room off the living room, a small room with lights on inside. I saw a painting on the far wall of the small room that looked interesting. I listened and there was no sound of voices from the small room. I thought Hingdon and Brell might have gone in there. So I wandered in for a closer look at the painting. Just as I reached the middle of the room I heard a gasp and a scuffling noise. I turned and saw there were two people on a deep low couch to the right of the doorway. The couch had high sides, and I had not noticed them.

One was a pale-haired girl of about seventeen. She was slumped back in the couch against pillows. She had on short khaki shorts and a pale gray blouse unb.u.t.toned to the waist. She had the long sprawled luxurious body of maturity, and she was breathing deeply, her face revealing that telltale slackness, the emptiness of prolonged s.e.xual excitement. It was a child's mouth and a child's eyes set into a woman's face. Her lips were wet and her nipples swollen, and she was very slow in coming back from the dreamy land of eros. The boy was older, twenty possibly, and he was a ma.s.sive brute, all hair and muscles and jaw corners and narrow infuriated eyes.

Left to my own devices, I would have gone very quietly away from there. But her warrior gave me no chance. "Why don't you knock, you silly son of a b.i.t.c.h?" he said in a gravelly voice.

"I didn't know it was a bedroom, boy."

He stood up, impressively tall and broad. "You insulted the lady."

The lady was sitting erect, b.u.t.toning her blouse. The lady said, "Deck him, Lew!" Sick him, Rover. He swarmed at me, obedient as any dog.

I am tall, and I gangle. I look like a loose-jointed, clumsy hundred and eighty. The man who takes a better look at the size of my wrists can make a more accurate guess. When I get up to two twelve I get nervous and hack it back on down to two oh five. As far as clumsiness and reflexes go, I have never had to use a flyswatter in my life. My combat expression is one of apologetic anxiety. I like them confident. My stance is mostly composed of elbows.

Lew, faithful dog, wanted it over right now. He hooked with both hands, chin on his chest, snorting, starting the hooks way back, left right left right. He had fists like stones and they hurt. They hurt my elbows and forearms and shoulders, and one glanced off the top of my shoulder and hit me high on the head. When I had the rhythm gauged, I counter punched and knocked his mouth open with an overhand right. His arms stopped churning and began to float. I clacked his mouth shut with a very short left hook. He lowered his arms. I put the right hand in the same place as before and he fell with his mouth open and his eyes rolled up out of sight.

The little lady screamed. People came running. I ma.s.saged my right hand. "What's going on!" Brell yelled. "What the h.e.l.l is going on!"

I was too angry for polite usage, for the living room turn of phrase. "I walked in here to look at the painting. I thought the room was empty. This crotch jockey had his little girl all turned on and steaming and they resented the interruption, and she told him to deck me. But it didn't work out."

Brell turned on the girl, anguish in his voice. "Angie! Is this true?"

She looked at Lew. She looked at me. She looked at her father. Her eyes were like stones. "What do you really care who gets laid around here anyway!" She sobbed and brushed by him and fled. After a stunned hesitation, he ran after her, calling to her. A door slammed. He was still yelling. A sports car rumbled and snorted and took off. Rubber yelped. it faded, shifting up through the gears.

"G.o.d love us," Gerry Brell said. She took a vase from the table and stood thoughtfully and dumped it on Lew's head, flowers and all. The Hingdons and I were busy trying not to look squarely at one another.

Lew pushed the floor away and sat up. He looked like a fat sad baby. His eyes were not properly focused.

Gerry sat on her heels beside him and put her hand on that meaty shoulder and shook him gently. "Sweetie, you better haul your a.s.s out of here right now, because if I know George Brell, he's loading a gun right this minute."

The eyes focused, comprehended, became round and wide with alarm. He jumped up and without a glance at anyone or another word went running heavily and unsteadily out.

Gerry smiled at us and said, "Excuse me, please." She went off to find George.

Little Bess Hingdon stayed close to her big and rather solemn young husband as we went into the long living room. "Dear, I really think we should go."

"Just leave?" Hingdon said uncertainly. There was a nice flavor about then, that scent of good marriage. Separated by a room of people, they were still paired, still aware of each other.

''I'll find Gerry," she said and went off.

Sam Hingdon looked curiously at me and said, "That Lew Dagg is a rough boy. Linebacker. One more year to go, and the pros are watching him."

"Like what did I hit him with?"

He grinned. "Something like that."

"Maybe he's out of condition. He should use the summer for a different kind of exercise. Is that Angie George's eldest?"

"Youngest. She's the onlly one left home. Gidge is the eldest. She's married to a boy in med school in New Orleans. Tommy's in the Air Force. They're Martha's children."

Bess came hurrying in, carrying her purse. "It's all right, honey. We can leave now. Good night, Mr. McGee. Hope we'll see you again."

I went out to the terrace and made myself a weak drink. I could hear Gerry and George yammering at each other. I could hear the music but not the lyrics. Fury and accusation. A pretty girl in dark braids and a uniform came onto the terrace and gathered up the debris of the c.o.c.ktail snacks, gave me a shy glance and cat-footed away.

Finally George came out. He looked sour. He grunted at me, poured bourbon over one cube and downed it before the ice had a chance to chill it. He banged the gla.s.s down. "Trav, Gerry has a headache. She said to apologize. Jesus, what an evening!"

"Apologize to her for me. Tell her I didn't stop to think that could be your daughter when I spoke so rough. I was still angry. And about hitting that kid, he gave me no choice."

He stared at me with evident agony. "Just what were they doing, McGee?"

"I didn't actually see them doing anything. He had her blouse unb.u.t.toned and her bra unhooked, but she had her shorts on."

"She doesn't even start college until fall. G.o.dd.a.m.n that ape! Let's get out of here, Trav." We went out and got into the Lincoln. He drove swiftly through a long maze of curving roads and then slowed as we pa.s.sed a house as conspicuous as his. I caught a glimpse of the Triumph. He speeded up. "Gerry said that's where she'd go. It's her closest girlfriend."

He didn't speak again until we were on 77 heading south. "It's a h.e.l.l of a thing for something like that to happen, the first time you're in my home."

"Worse for you than for me."

"How the h.e.l.l am I supposed to keep an eye on her? That's Gerry's job and she's goofing it. She says she can't control her. She says Angie won't listen to her. I'm a busy man, G.o.dd.a.m.n it. I've got to send the kid away, but where? Where can you send them in August, for G.o.d's sake? There's no relatives to park her with. Did you hear what she said to me?" He banged the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. "What do you think, McGee? Do you think that ape is actually s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g my little girl?"

"I think you're driving too d.a.m.ned fast, George. And I don't think he is. Yet."

"Sorry. Why don't you think he is?"

"Because if he was, he would have had her off someplace where he could, without interruption. And from the look of her, that was the next step, George."

He slowed down a little more. "You know, that makes sense. Sure. He's probably trying to talk her into it. He's been hanging around for about a month. Trav, that's the second good turn you've done me tonight."

"And she doesn't care too much for the boy."

"How do you know?"

"When she ran out, he hadn't moved a muscle. She couldn't know but that I'd killed him."

"That's right! I'm feeling better by the minute. McGee, you must have a very nice punch."

"He's very easy to hit. And you're going too fast again."

We came into Brownsville. He took a confusing number of turns and put the car in a small Iot on a back street. We walked half a block through the sultry night to the shabby entrance of a small private club, a men's club, with a comfortable bar and a good smell of broiled steak, and a cardroom with some intent poker players under the hooded green light.

We stood at the bar and he said, "A key for my friend, Clarence."

The bartender opened a drawer and took out a bra.s.s key and put it in front of me. "This is Mr. Travis McGee, Clarence. Trav, that key is good for life. Life memberships one dollar. Give Clarence the dollar." I handed it over. ''Cash on the line here for everything. No fees, no a.s.sessments, no committees. And a good steam room."

We picked up our drinks and I followed George over to a corner table. "We can eat right here when we're ready," he said. He frowned. "I just don't know what the h.e.l.l to do about that girl."

"Didn't Gidge and Tommy work out fine?" It startled him.

"Yes. Sure."

"Don't worry about her. She's a very lush looking kid, George. And probably as healthy as she looks. Probably if you knew everything about Gidge and Tommy at the same age, your hair would turn white."

"By G.o.d, if you were twenty years older, McGee, I'd hire you to watchdog her for what's left of the summer."

"You wouldn't be able to trust me."

"Anyway, whatever you came to see me about, consider it done. I owe you that much."