The Girl In The Plain Brown Wrapper Part 4

"I didn't think about that."

"Walter Albany said her resources were 'substantial.' "

"Meaning how much?"

"Hmmm. To interpret the trust attorney lingo, taking into account the area where Walter practices, I would say that adequate would mean up to a quarter million, comfortable from there up to a million, and substantial could mean anything from there on up to... let's say five or six million. Beyond that I think Walter could say 'impressive.' So you thought it over and you came to see me because you want to know how many people knew there was was such a letter. Me and my secretary and the deceased. And you, and whoever you may have told." such a letter. Me and my secretary and the deceased. And you, and whoever you may have told."

"And a nurse?"

"Possibly. I wouldn't know."

"I told Miss Pearson, the sister, yesterday when she came over to the motel to have a drink with me. She had no idea her mother and I had stayed in touch the past five years. I had to account for being fairly up to date. But I said nothing about what Helena asked me to do."

"You brought the letter with you? It was in the room?"

"No."

"If somebody were looking for it, would they look elsewhere? At your home in Fort Lauderdale?"

"They might, but they wouldn't find it."

"Would you know someone had looked for it?"

"Definitely."

He looked at his watch. It was after five. He frowned. "What kind of work do you do, Mr. McGee?"

"Salvage consultant."

"So what you want to find out from me is whether you should trust your initial judgment of Mr. and Mrs. Pike and Miss Pearson or whether the incident at your hotel room is sufficient cause for you to look more closely?"

"Mr. Hardahee, it is a pleasure to deal with someone who does not have to have detailed drawings and specifications."

He stood up. "If you can manage it conveniently, you might join me for a drink at the Haze Lake Club at seven fifteen. If I'm not in the men's bar, tell Simon, the bartender, that you are my guest. I have a date to play doubles in... just twenty minutes."

When I walked in, I saw that D. Wintin Hardahee had finished. He was at the bar with a group of other players, standing with tall drink in hand in such a way that he could keep an eye on the door. When I appeared, he excused himself and came over to meet me and took me over to a far corner by a window that looked out at the eighteenth green. In the fading light the last foursomes were finishing.

Hardahee was in white shorts and a white knit shirt, with a sweat-damp towel hung around his neck. I was correct about his fit look. His legs were brown, solid, muscular, and fuzzed with sun-bleached hair. The waiter came over and Hardahee said the planter's punch was exceptional, so I ordered one without sugar and he asked for a refill.

"Win your match?"

"The secret of winning in doubles is to carefully select and train your partner. That blond boy over there is mine. He is constructed of rawhide, steel wire, and apparently has concealed oxygen tanks. He's keeping my name fresh and new on the old trophies and making all the other players hate me."

"Everybody hates a winner."

"Mr. McGee, since talking to you, I have been synthesizing all the bits and pieces of information I have concerning Tom Pike. Here is my subjective summary. He is energetic, with considerable fiscal imagination, a great drive. He has personal charm with magnetism. A lot of people are rabidly and warmly loyal to him, people who from time to time have been on his team, or connected with his team in one way or another, and who have made out very well and had some fun doing it. They think he can do no wrong. He has the traits and talents of the born entrepreneur, meaning he is elusive, fast-moving, and very hard-nosed, as well as being something of a born salesman. So there are people who have necessarily been in the way of the deals he has a.s.sembled from time to time and they have been bruised and are eager to claim they were tricked, and quite obviously they hate him. I know of no successful legal action brought against him. As you said, everybody hates a winner. It is a mistake to confuse shrewdness, misdirection, and opportunism with illegality. I can think of no one who knows Tom who is indifferent to him. He polarizes emotions. My guess would be this. If he knew you had a letter his mother-in-law wrote before her death and if he thought there was any information in it of any use to him, he would have come to you and sooner or later you would have found yourself telling or showing him the part or parts he wanted to know about."

"How would he manage that?"

"By studying you to find out what you want and then offering it to you in such a way you would feel grateful toward him. Money or excitement or advance knowledge or whatever happens to be your choice of private vices. If he had to have something, I think he would go after it his own way first."

"And if that didn't work?"

"He'd probably turn the problem over to one of the many people aching to do him a favor, no matter what it might be."

"And you don't like him."

He pursed his lips. "... No. I think I like Tom. But I would be uneasy about getting into any kind of business a.s.sociation with him. I'm quite sure I'd make out very well, as have many others, but the inner circle seems to become... a group of faceless men. In any kind of speculation tight security is imperative. They seem to become very... submissive? No. That isn't accurate. Retiring, discreet, and slightly patronizing toward the rest of the working world. I guess I am not a herd animal, Mr. McGee. Even if it would fatten my purse."

"So if it wasn't Pike or one of his admirers, how come I had a visitor, then?"

"My considered opinion is that it beats the h.e.l.l out of me."

"Well, if somebody was looking for something they think I have, and wants it badly enough to take a chance of getting caught going in or out of a motel room, the next place to look is in my pockets."

"If it's smaller than a bread box."

"I think I'll hang around and do a little trolling."

"Keep in touch."

"I will indeed."

I drove back to the Lodge and ate one of the fake-Hawaiian special dinners, then went from the dining room into the c.o.c.ktail lounge and stood at the bar. Business was very light. Some young couples were sploshing around outside in the big lighted pool. The bar was a half rectangle and I became aware of a girl alone at an end stool, by the wall, under a display of ancient fake Hawaiian weapons. She wore a weight of red-gold wig that dwindled her quite pretty and rather sharp-featured face. She wore a white dress, which seemed in better taste than the wig and the heavy eye makeup. She had a cl.u.s.ter of gold chain bracelets on one arm, smoked a cigarette in a long gold and white holder, and was drinking something wine-red out of a rocks gla.s.s, a measured sip at a time, as self-consciously slow and controlled as her drags at the cigarette.

I became aware of her because she wanted me to be aware of her. It was puzzling because I had appraised the motel as no hangout for hookers. Also, though she was apparently dressed and prepared for the part, her technique was spotty and inept. There are the ones who operate on the mark of their choice with the long, wide-eyed, arrogant-insolent-challenging stare, then properly leave it up to him to make the next move. There is the jolly-girl approach, the ones who say to the barkeep in a voice just loud enough to carry to the ears of the mark, "Geez, Charlie, like I always say, if the guy doesn't show, the h.e.l.l with him. I'm not going to cry my eyes out, right? Gimme another one of the same, huh." Then there's the fake prim, the sly sidelong half-shy inquisitive glance, and the quick turn of the head, like a timid doe. Or the problem approach, troubled frown, gesture to have the mark come over, and then the dreary little set piece: Excuse me, mister, this may sound like a crazy kind of thing, but a girl friend of mine, she asked me to be here and tell the guy she had a date with she can't make it, and I was wondering if you're George Wilson. Or: Would you mind, mister, doing me a crazy kind of favor? I got to wait here to get a phone call, and there's some nut that was bugging me before and said he was coming back, and if you'd sit next to me, then he won't give me any problems, okay?

But this one didn't have any routine to depend on. Her infrequent glance was one of a puzzled uncertainty. I decided that it was another instance of the courage of The Pill bringing the bored young wife out hunting for some action while hubby was up in Atlanta at another d.a.m.ned sales meeting. I wondered how she'd manage if I gave her no help at all.

What she did was get up and head for the women's room. She had to walk behind me. So she dropped her lighter and it clinked off the tile and slid under my feet. I backed away so I could stoop and pick it up, but my heel came down on her sandaled toes. I recovered in time to keep from coming down with all my weight, but I came down hard enough to make her yelp with anguish. I turned around and she limped around in a little circle, saying, "Oh, dear G.o.d!" while I made apologetic sounds. Then we compounded it by both bending at the same instant to pick up the lighter. It was a solid, stinging impact, bone against bone, hard enough to unfocus her eyes and unhinge her knees. I caught her by the arms, moved her gently over, and propped her against the bar.

"Now I will bend over and pick up the lighter."

"Please do," she said in a small voice. She grasped the edge of the bar, head bowed, eyes shut.

I wiped the lighter off with the paper napkin from under my drink and placed it in front of her. "Are you all right?"

"I guess so. For a minute there my toes didn't hurt at all."

She straightened, picked the lighter off the bar, and made a rather wide circle around me and headed for the women's room. I motioned the bartender over and said, "Amateur night?"

"New to me, sir. You got each other's attention anyways."

"House rules?"

"They say to me, they say, Jake, use your judgment."

"So what do you say to me?"

"Well... how about bon voyage?"

"How was she doing before I showed, Jake?"

"There were two tried to move in on her, but she laid such a cool on them I cased her for strictly no action, that is, until she began to throw it at you."

"She's in the house?"

"I don't know. I'd guess not, but I don't know."

When I heard the tack-tack of her heels on tile returning, I smiled at her and said, "I have liability coverage. Like for broken toes, concussion, lacerations."

She stopped and looked up at me, head tilted. "I think it was a truck, but I didn't get the license number. I could settle my claim for some medication, maybe. On the rocks."

So I followed her and took the bar stool beside her and asked Jake for more of the same for two, and winked at him with the eye farther from her. Ritual of introduction, first names only. Trav and Penny. Ritual handshake. Her hand was very small and slender, fine-boned, long fingers. Faint pattern of freckles across nose and cheekbones. Perfume too musky-heavy for her, too liberally applied. I could detect no evidence of a removed ring on third finger left, no pale line or indentation of flesh.

We made the casual talk that is on one level, while we made speculative, sensual communication on the second level. Humid looks from the lady. Pressure of round knee against the side of my thigh when she turned to talk more directly to me. Parting of lips and the tongue tip moistening. But she was too edgy, somehow, too fumbly with cigarettes and purse and lighter and drink. And her component parts did not add up to a specific ident.i.ty. Wig, makeup, and perfume were garishly obvious. Dress, manicure, diction were not.

So Trav was in town to see a man interested in putting some money in a little company called Floatation a.s.sociates, and Penny was a receptionist-bookkeeper in a doctor's office. Trav wasn't married, and Penny had been, four years ago, for a year, and it didn't take. And it sure had been a rainy summer and fall. Too much humidity. And the big thing about Simon and Garfunkel was the words to the songs, reely. reely. If you read the lyrics right along with the songs while the record was on, you know, the lyrics right on the record case, it could really turn you on, like that thing about Silence especially. Don't you think, honest now, that when people like the same things and have enjoyed the same things, like before they ever met, Trav, it is sort of as if they had known each other a long time, instead of just meeting? And people don't have enough chance to just talk. People don't communicate anymore somehow, and so everybody goes around kind of lonesome and out of touch, sort of. If you read the lyrics right along with the songs while the record was on, you know, the lyrics right on the record case, it could really turn you on, like that thing about Silence especially. Don't you think, honest now, that when people like the same things and have enjoyed the same things, like before they ever met, Trav, it is sort of as if they had known each other a long time, instead of just meeting? And people don't have enough chance to just talk. People don't communicate anymore somehow, and so everybody goes around kind of lonesome and out of touch, sort of.

So I played out the charade and walked her out, her elbow socketed in the palm of my hand, and she was thinking out loud of maybe some other place we could go, and rejecting each one for one reason or another as soon as she mentioned it, and I drew her into a dark alcove near the grinding roar of the central air conditioning, and after a sudden and startled rigidity and instinctive defensive tactics, she somewhat hesitantly made a presentation of her mouth, which somehow imitated avidity yet tasted prim, then she let herself be guided to 109 and ushered in, her voice getting too shrill and tight in her effort to stay loose.

"Gin?" she said. "That's your drink, isn't it? I adore adore it, but I don't like to drink it in public because I get too wildly happy and loudand everything. But could we have some, darling?" it, but I don't like to drink it in public because I get too wildly happy and loudand everything. But could we have some, darling?"

There was a double handful of melting cubes afloat in ice water in the bottom of the ice bucket. She decided she did not want any mix with hers either. We clinked gla.s.ses and she smilingly fluttered her long plastic eyelashes at me. She took a hummingbird sip and sat and put the drink down on the rug and slipped her left shoe off and tenderly squeezed her bruised toes.

I had taken a mouthful of the Plymouth. I am a taster when I like the taste. But it was subtly wrong, just wrong enough so I knew that the hunch had been right. A bad Penny. Under pretext of taking a second swallow, I let the first slide back into the gla.s.s. It left me with an astringent p.r.i.c.kling of the membranes of the mouth and a slight aftertaste of dust.

"Excuse," I said, and went into the bath. There, behind the closed door, I dumped the drink into a pocket I made in a face towel. It saved the ice. I rinsed gla.s.s and ice and made myself some tap water on the rocks. I flushed the toilet and stood for a few moments a.s.sembling the pieces of the procedure before I went back out. She hadn't been near the opened bottle of Plymouth, at least on this visit to my quarters.

So she or some a.s.sociate had done the doctoring. Then she was there to make sure I had a drink, to take the chain off the door if necessary, a.s.suming there was an a.s.sociate in their venture. And unless you wanted to risk putting somebody so far under they might not make it back up again, it was efficient to be there to know when it took effect.

I went back out and noticed that two thirds of her drink was gone. Back among the melting cubes, I a.s.sumed. She had both her shoes off. She was sitting with her legs crossed. The hem of the white dress was hiked to midthigh. She was a little long-waisted girl. Her legs could have been called chunky had they not been beautifully shaped.

"Am I supposed to drink alone?" she asked, pouting.

"Never compete with a gulper," I said, and drained the tap water potion. I went over to the counter where the bottle and ice were and said, "In fact, I will have another one down the hatch before you finish that little piece of gin you've got left, angel."

She came over in considerable haste and came up behind me and wrapped her arms around me. "Darling, let's not drink too too much, huh? It can spoil things for people, you know. I think we've both had... just exactly the right amount." much, huh? It can spoil things for people, you know. I think we've both had... just exactly the right amount."

It was a helpful clue. If the idea of my having two alarmed her, then it had to be fast-acting. But I thought I might quite plausibly give her a little lesson in anxiety before I faked being overcome. So, instead of making the drink, I turned and began chuckling and wrapped my arms around her. She stood very small in her stocking feet. She tried to seem cooperative until I found the zipper at the nape of her neck and opened it in one tug all the way down to the coccyx. Chuckling blandly, I peeled the dress forward off her shoulders, and she became nervously agitated, hopping and struggling, saying, "No! No, darling! Let's be... Hey! More leisurely... Hey!... Please!" I pulled the dress sleeves down her arms, inhibiting her struggles. She wore a pale yellow bra with white lace. "You'll tear my... Wait! Don't..." I found the bra snap and got the edge of a thumbnail under it and popped it open, and the bra straps slid down her arms. "No! Dammit! Hey! Please!"

She got one arm out of the sleeve and tried to pull her dress back up, but as she did so I pulled the other arm free, then caught both wrists in one hand, put the other around her waist, and lifted her off the floor. When I shook her a little, still chuckling, the dress and bra slid off her and fell to the floor, and I swung her in the air and caught her, an arm around her shoulders, the other under her knees, and chuckling inanely, toted her over to the bed. She had begun a silent battle, in deadly earnest, to retain the little yellow matching panties, and finally I took pity on her and groaned as hollowly as I could and toppled heavily across her, my chest across her st.u.r.dy agitated thighs.

She was breathing hard. She pushed at me. "Hey! Wake up!" I did not move. She caught a fold of flesh on the side of my throat under the ear and gave a painful, twisting pinch. Then she pulled my hand toward her and put her fingertips on my pulse. Satisfied, she pushed at me and wormed her legs out from under me. She grunted with the effort. I kept my eyes closed. The bed shifted as she got off it. In a few moments I heard the little clicking snap of the bra catch and soon the almost inaudible purr of the nylon zipper, the rezipping divided into three segments, as it was hard to reach. Then a faint thudding of her footsteps became audible and I knew she had put her shoes back on.

She picked up the phone on the bedside stand and dialed for an outside line. She dialed a number. She waited a few moments, then said, "Okay," and hung up. Clack of her lighter. Huff of exhalation. Smell of cigarette. I identified the next move as her unlatching the door, probably to leave it ajar for whoever had the word that things were now okay in 109. The edge of the bed had caught me across the lower belly. My toes rested on the rug.

"Come on!" on!" she whispered. "Come she whispered. "Come on, on, Rick darling." Rick darling."

Make it six or seven minutes from phone call to arrival. Male voice, after the door was gently closed. "Everything okay, honey?"

"No problems.", "Nice work. I hated the idea of you coming to his room. I was afraid maybe he'd decide he didn't want a drink, and then he's such a big, rough-looking son of a b.i.t.c.h, I was afraid-"

"Just like I hate the idea of your sleeping with your dear wife Janice every d.a.m.ned night, darling?" Her voice was bitter.

"And you know why it has to be that way."

"Do I?"

"No time to open the same d.a.m.ned old can of worms, Penny. Let's see if we're going to do any good."

He took me by the belt and pulled me back off the bed. I let myself tumble, completely slack. I ended up on my side, knees bent, cheek against the bristle of the rug. He pulled at my shoulder and I rolled slowly onto my back. He rolled me another half turn, face down, and I felt him work the wallet out of my hip pocket, heard the distinctive sound as he sat on the bed. Sizable, I guessed. Young voice. Physically powerful.

"Anything?" she asked.

"Not in this. Pockets of his jacket?"

"Just this stuff. Nothing."

"I better check the side pockets of his pants."

"Would there be anything in... in the lining of anything, or in his shoes?"

"I don't know. I'll check it if we draw a blank. The thing that bothers me is that this son of a b.i.t.c.h doesn't have enough on him."

"What do you mean, dear?"

"The average guy has pieces of paper on him. Notebook, notes, addresses, letters, junk like that. McGee here has got car rental papers, a plane ticket to Lauderdale, keys, drivers license, and a half dozen credit cards and... a little over eight hundred in cash. Here. Take these two fifties."

"I don't want want the money!" the money!"

"We want him to think he had a ball. Here, dammit!"

"All right. But I can't see why he'd-"

"Win, lose, or draw, we rumple the h.e.l.l out of that bed, rub lipstick on the pillow, squirt some of your perfume on him, undress him, and leave him in the bed. And dump the rest of that bottle into the john."

"Okay. But you know, he didn't seem seem like somebody who'd-" like somebody who'd-"

"For chrissake, Penny!"

"All right. I'm sorry."

"We knew it was a big man. We know he was from out of town. We know he went to see Pike."

He checked the other pockets. Then the girl asked about the shirt pocket. He rolled me onto my back again. She was standing close. I opened my eyes just far enough to make out the shape and distance of his head as he bent over me. I hit him solidly in the side of the throat with my right fist, rolling my body to the left as I did so to give it more leverage, and then swung my legs in a wide arc at floor level. I clipped her right at the ankles and she landed flat on her back with a very large thud for a girl that size. Her friend had rolled over onto his back and back up onto his knees. He got up just as I did. He was making gagging, strangling sounds. Eyes bulged. Mouth hung open. Sandy-blond with a lot of neck, shoulders, and jaw. Look of the college lineman six years later, twenty pounds heavier, and a lot softer.

But as he got his back against the wall, he pulled a blue-black and very efficient-looking revolver out of somewhere and aimed it at my middle. I stopped very suddenly and took a cautious step backward, and raised my arms, and said, "Easy now. Easy does it, friend."