The Long Lavender Look Part 15

"Word gets around."

"Small town. You know how it is. Everybody hears everything. Trouble is that when they pa.s.s it along, they add a little to make it more interesting."

"Then you know Arnstead is missing?"

"I heard about it."

"And Betsy Kapp is missing, too."

He was startled. "The h.e.l.l you say!"

"She had a seven o'clock date last night and didn't keep it and hasn't been seen since."

"That's a weird one. That isn't like old Betsy. I tell you, it would take a lot of pleasure out of having lunch at the Lodge if anything happened to her."

"I understand she and Arnstead were pretty close. Maybe they took off together."

"h.e.l.l, I can't buy that. They had something going, I guess. But that was months ago. Funny, she'd fool around with Lew."

"Maybe it was a business relationship, Johnny."

He leaned back watchful. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I knew the name was familiar, but I didn't connect it up right away. I remembered that a year, year and a half ago, somebody told me that if I ever got stuck in this neck of the woods, I should look up a Deputy Lew Arnstead, and he could fix me up with something real choice, that it would cost, but it would be worth it."

"Do tell."

"You're the one who told me it's a small town. I guess if it was true, you'd have heard about it."

"I think I heard somewhere that Lew had an extra girlfriend or two he'd hire out."

"I guess he'd have to be pretty careful about it, working under a man like Hyzer."

"Mister Norm sees what he wants to see and believes what he wants to believe, just like everybody else."

"He doesn't impress you?"

He shrugged. "I vote for him."

"So it's a nice quiet place, with a very quiet little newspaper."

"There's no point in scaring up trouble by printing a lot of things that agitate people."

"Was the car Linda Featherman was driving brought in here?"

"What the h.e.l.l have you got on your mind, McGee! I asked you in here to thank you for the way you played fair with my boy. I didn't know I was going to get some kind of third degree."

I smiled, stood up. "I'm just curious about your nice little town, Johnny. No offense. I admit I am a little curious about your first litter. I like Ron. He's a good one. But from all reports his sister is as rotten a little tramp as you can find anywhere."

His face turned to a brown mask, and he did not move his lips when he spoke. He spoke so quietly I could barely hear him. "Understand this. n.o.body mentions her in my presence. She is absolutely nothing to me, and the sick sow that bred her is nothing to me. I don't care if they are alive or dead. I don't care if they roast in h.e.l.l or find eternal bliss. Now get out of here."

I got. That much hate is impressive, no matter where you find it. It makes you want to walk on tiptoe and breathe quietly as you get out of range.

I found breakfast and then flipped a coin. Heads was Deputy King Sturnevan. Tails was Mrs. Jeanie Dahl. Had it landed on edge I was going to try Miss Kimmey, in the third grade. It was heads.

King had some reports to finish. He said to wait around. Twenty minutes later he came out and walked over to the Buick. He leaned in and shook his head sadly. "You gotta talent, man. Billy Cable catches you jaywalking, he'll club your head down between your knees."

"Get in, and I'll tell you about it." I told him. I was at the wrong place at the wrong time, and witnessed Betsy chop him down.

King nodded. "I knew he wanted to get into that. But I didn't know he was d.a.m.n fool enough to go after it that way. If Mister Norm heard he tried to use his badge to get her onto her back, he would be out in the street. Seems like she didn't fight you off much, McGee. That's the way she is. She will, but not often, and she has to do the picking."

"She picked Lew Arnstead."

"I know. Surprised folks. The Betsy-watchers. Not her type. But you can't tell."

"King, how much can we trust each other, you and I?"

He shifted his big belly around and beamed at me and winked a scarred eye. "You can't trust me one d.a.m.n bit if it's something the man ought to know."

"I have a crazy question which has been growing and growing, and I have to ask. Make it hypothetical. Could and did Lew Arnstead get away with things that Hyzer would have fired anyone else for?"

I watched him make his slow decision. "It bothered me a long time, pal. Tell you the truth, it surprised h.e.l.l out of me when Hyzer did boot him out and file charges. And I saw Lew's face when it happened, and I think Lew was as surprised as me."

"Do you think Hyzer knew Lew was pimping?"

"You get around good. That wouldn't be easy to come by I guess Lew started four years back, about then. I think maybe Hyzer decided that if a broad was going to peddle it, it's better to have somebody keeping it under control. He had to hear about it, but as far as I know, he never looked into it. And Lew never turned up rich enough to ask for an investigation of where and how he got it."

"Could he have been handling it for Hyzer?"

"I am going to forget you said that, pally. Because if I remember it one minute from now, I am going to pull you out of this pretty car and see if I can rupture your spleen with a left."

"Sorry I asked. I apologize."

"It just couldn't be, believe me."

"Now you know and I know that a cop builds his own string. He doesn't start off with old hustlers. He starts with girls who've gotten out of line and he scares them into making a choice his way. He's usually smart enough to try it on the ones who will take to it without much fuss, or he isn't in business long. He breaks them in himself, then puts them to work."

His broad face was unhappy. "I guess if Mister Norm looked into it and found that was the way it was being done, he would have had to get rid of Lew. So he didn't look into it. I know the score, pally. I remember there was an immigration officer in Miami who put the heat on for whether girls got a renewal or got shipped back to the crummy villages they came from. Then one of them, as I remember it, wrote her kid sister not to come to the States and told her why, and the kid sister gave it to the old man, and he flew up on the money his daughter had been sending back to Peru, and put a knife into that civil servant. He put it in about forty times, starting just above the knees and working his way up. Somebody could have known about Lew and didn't make the move until Lew was no longer a law man."

"I just happened to tell Hyzer about how Billy went after Betsy Kapp a year and a half ago."

"How can one man make himself so popular so fast? You going to run for mayor?"

"I don't know. I think of lots of questions and look for answers. Question: Would somebody kill Arnstead in order to take Hyzer off whatever hook he was on?"

King thought it over. "He doesn't act like anybody with the pressure off. He's pushing harder than ever. I thought over what you said the other night about Lew. He had to be way out on speed. It fits. So how and why does a speed freak get clobbered? Who knows?"

"King, what was the verdict on Linda Feather-man?"

He snapped his head around, completely puzzled. "Verdict? What do you mean? Accidental death. One-car accident. Excessive speed. Fell asleep, maybe."

"Insurance company pay off?"

"What the h.e.l.l are you talking about? Murder? Suicide? What?"

"What if you were absolutely positive she'd been hustling for Lew Arnstead for at least two years?"

"Aw... come on! The Featherman girl? You're out of your tree, buddy boy. If anybody tried to muscle her, she'd go to Dale Featherman and say, 'Daddy, somebody is bothering me.' And daddy would go skin Arnstead and salt down the hide after he sc.r.a.ped it clean, and tack it on one of the stables out there at the ranch. He might saw off the top of Lew's skull and use it for an ashtray. No, sir. That's four generations of Florida money, and senators from Washington and bankers from New York come down in a Featherman jet and land on that private strip. You're way off, my friend. She was a very pretty girl and she drove too d.a.m.ned fast."

"Brothers or sisters?"

"Three of each, I think. She was somewhere in the middle. Got back from college three years ago, I think. There were plans for a wedding, but it got canceled for some reason. There's no lever to use on a girl like that. She could buy her way out of trouble, or have the muscle put out of business."

"Unless the leverage was on somebody else, and that was the only way she could protect them."

He studied me. "Okay. We're trusting each other. I just might take your word for it. Are you positive?" They have a badge and they swear an oath. So whether or not something is off the record depends on how much they value that oath. So when you see the cop-glint way back in the eyes you back off, just a little.

"King, let's say it's a pretty fair a.s.sumption."

"Then you're wandering around out in left field, McGee. Let's say Lew wasn't all too bright, and let's say he was running women. He wouldn't be so dumb he'd try to muscle Miss Linda Featherman into it, pretty as she was."

"Can you come up with any names?"

"I wouldn't want to try, because I might name some it would turn out they were only close friends of Lew's. If he was setting up every woman he'd been out with in the past four years, he'd have to run the operation with IBM cards, and take home the money in a wheelbarrer."

"Wonder what he was doing with what he was making?"

"Salting it away. Slowest man you ever seen when it came to reaching into his pocket to pay for a beer or a cup of coffee. He bought himself some good guns, and one good horse, but that was about it. Had a pretty fair automobile that he bought half wrecked and had Henry Perris put in good shape, then he was too cheap to pay collision, so it was a total loss when he racked it up. He kept his business affairs, and just about everything else to himself. Close mouth and a close pocket. It isn't smart for any cop to have a safety-deposit box. I'd guess Lew'd pack it in fruit jars and bury it in the ground."

"Think he dug it up and left?"

"Not if he could still make more than enough to live on around here. I think he's dead."

"Do you think he had guilty knowledge of the Baither killing?"

"Let's you and me stay friends, pally." He opened the door, slowly pulled his bulk out, flipped the door shut, mopped his forehead. "It's going to get way up there before this day is over. See you around, I suppose. Glad to hear your friend is doing fine."

I arrived at the Kramer Home Building Supply headquarters at eleven-fifteen. It was a mile and a half out of town on the airport road. Big lumber warehouse with truck loading docks, a cement block operation with about two acres of decorative block stacked gleaming in the sun, a retail store with everything for the do-it-yourselfer, and a clerical office at the end of the building which housed the retail outlet. It was a bright brisk operation with that neatness of floor displays which reflects a comforting operating net. Old men were browsing through the hand tools and cupboard latches, spray cans and wallboard just as, in the world of long ago, they had prowled the candy store to find out how best to spend the h.o.a.rded dime.

There were two middle-aged women and one young one behind the waist-high fence. The young one was the Jeanie of the picture, looking slimmer in a short fuzzy pink skirt, a white blouse with a fine vertical red stripe, dark auburn hair chopped to urchin length. One of the other women started toward me, but I smiled and pointed at Jeanie, who was running invoices on a big Burroughs accounting machine. The woman shrugged and looked a little less hospitable and spoke to Jeanie. She turned and looked at me, first a green-eyed speculation, and then recognition. She turned her machine off and came over to the fence, angling so that I had to drift over toward the corner, and we ended up at the maximum distance from the other two women.

Delicate little features, face wide across the fa.r.s.et eyes, fat little mouth over the pointed chin. "Your name is McGee, huh?"

The piped music, which always seems to be Montovani in places like that, made our conversation private. I nodded. She made a head gesture and said, "Those old crows got ears that come to points, believe me. Dori said a big tall guy, kind of battered here and there, with a lot of tan and real pale gray eyes. But she didn't say how tall and how big. I could tell from her voice she's turned on about you. She called me after Fred was gone, like seven this morning, and she sounded a little plotzed. She was scared I'd be sore she'd told you about me. She said you're okay, so if it says, that in her book it says it in mine. I like to dropped my teeth when she says fourteen gals. I would have said ten at the most, the very most." She looked over her shoulder at the wall clock. "I can switch lunch hours with the girl over there on the register. She hates going at eleven-thirty. That's ten minutes. We can't talk so good here. I can feel Mr. Frandel looking at me through that gla.s.s right now, boring a hole in the back of my head with his eyes. Look you mind buying something? It helps. Then I'll be coming out that door there into the back parking at eleven-thirty."

I joined the browsers and came upon something I had been wanting to add to the tools aboard the Flush: a compact, lightweight electric screwdriver, variable speed, reverse, a goodly batch of interchangeable heads, all in a tidy aluminum case for $26.95. No reason why Lennie shouldn't buy his bird dog a little present for the boat. The only flaw in the rig was that some idiot, through cynicism or indifference, had specified steel pins in the aluminum hinges and a steel latch on the case.

So by the time I paid and got out of there, Mrs. Jeanie Dahl was standing in the shade, leaning against the building, ankles crossed, elbow propped in the palm of her hand, cigarette down by a third. She smiled and pushed herself away from the wall and followed me to the convertible. I turned the air high and, when we turned onto the highway I ran the power windows back up.

"Where do we go?" I asked.

"Right down there where the sign is on the right. Bernie's. There's kind of a crazy grove behind it and you can take stuff out there. I'd like a cheeseburger and a vanilla shake."

I carried our food in a cardboard box out to cement tables and benches in the shade of big Australian pines. We were the only customers in the grove. The other five tables were empty. A pair of Florida jays flew down and landed on the end of the table, hopped cautiously toward us. She held her hand out, arm flat on the table, crumb in her palm. The bolder of the pair, after much inspection, grabbed it and flew to the nearest table to eat it. She continued to feed them as we ate and talked.

"I think he had some kind of protection, sure. But he didn't say anything real definite, right out like. More like saying to me a couple of times there wasn't a thing to worry about, because I live with my mother and my kid, and I said to Lew a couple of times that my mother would make my life h.e.l.l on earth, and my lousy ex still wants the kid and it could be a chance for him to get Davie away from me, I mean if there was some kind of raid or something like that."

"So if somebody was in with him, it would be logical for that somebody to pick it up where Lew left off, if Lew is dead."

She wiped her vanilla mustache off on the paper napkin. "McGee, I was thinking I wouldn't exactly be eager to go along with Lew on anything if he shows up again. I mean having him be a deputy makes it one kind of thing, and having him be out on bail, waiting for a trial in circuit court is something else. You know? Maybe if he lost his protection, they might want to charge him with this other thing, too. And if I got a subpoena, believe me, I think I'd go out of my mind. I guess the best thing to do is sort of keep my fool head down for a while. If nothing happens, maybe in a couple weeks or so I can set up a date with a local man I just so happen to know, and I've got the idea it could turn out to be a permanent kind of a thing, and he's so turned on about me, I ought to be able to get like a regular allowance, if he isn't too chicken to try to set us up a place right here instead of going way off somewhere. I don't want to lose the stuff I bought on time, like the color TV. My mother and Davie would be lost if we had to go back to that crummy little black-and-white Sears. Look, what is it you want to know, anyway? She said you'd probably give me back my picture like you did hers. It's better it shouldn't be floating around if something happened to Lew."

"I'm puzzled about how he operated. Certainly he wasn't contacted out at that ranch, or at the Department. He must have had some other base of operation."

"Why would he have to? I don't know how it was when he started it, but by the time I got in, it was on account of one fellow telling another fellow who to get in touch with. Then Lew would meet the fellow someplace, like at the Adventurer bar in the afternoon and size him up and if he looked all right, or there were two or three and they looked okay, he'd tell them the rules, all night only, and no heavy drinking beforehand, and cash on the line in advance. Then they'd pick out who they liked and Lew would phone and say where and when and who to ask for, and if you couldn't make it, the guy made another pick. He tried to steer away from any gal having any regulars. He said that could turn into trouble. There was some locals, not many, and that was pretty much set up for out of town someplace. The next day or a day later, Lew would get the money to me. It was... easier, I guess, not to have to take the money from your date yourself. And it was more like a date that way, even though you'd know and the guy would know it was paid for ahead. What you were supposed to do was tell Lew if you got any kind of a bad time, like a fellow getting mean and slapping you around, or having a friend show up for a spare piece. Then Lew would take the guy off the list for good. I don't think I'd want to be set up by anybody else unless they kept it under control like Lew did. But lately he was getting careless, like the guys weren't such a nice cla.s.s of people, and he took longer coming around with my share, so twice I had to remind him. And the last time I saw him, a month ago anyway, he called the house about eight at night and told me walk down to the corner and meet him. So I did and he picked me up in a police car and drove out into the country like a maniac and wouldn't tell me what it was all about. It started to rain and he took me off to some crazy little shacky place at the end of nowhere and took me in there and liked to ruin my clothes yanking me out of them, and he shoved me onto a cruddy old bed and he was so rough it scared me, and it wasn't ten minutes, I swear, before I was back in that car, sniveling, scared to death of the way he was driving. He let me out at the corner in the rain, and thank G.o.d my mother was too hooked on the television to take a look at me when I came in and went to my room."

"Where was this shack?"

She looked startled. "Hey, that was sort of what you were asking before, wasn't it?"

"Sort of. Was it locked?"

"With a padlock, yes. It was just one room, a pine shack with a crooked old floor, set up on blocks instead of pilings. It had electricity. I remember I saw at hot plate on some packing cases by the wall. There was a little narrow hall to a back door, with e little room with a john and a sink off one side of it, and a storeroom like off the other side."

"Where was it?"

"It was dark and raining and I couldn't find it again in a thousand years. I know we started out C:attleman's Road because I remember wondering if we were going to his place, but it didn't seem likely because he said that if I ever called him there ever, he'd spill my teeth all over the floor. And he would, too."

"You went a long way out Cattleman's Road?"

"A long way. Miles and miles and at a hundred and something miles an hour. Then he turned left, skidding on the corner like a racing driver. We must have been out of the county, or almost. Then he turned right and the road was so narrow the bushes were rubbing on the sides of the car. It went around a lot of curves and the lights shone on the shack and big trees around it and on the rain falling down hard. I asked him where we were and what he wanted. But he... I was going to say he didn't tell me anything, but he did say something that didn't make any sense. I can't remember."

"Please try."

"It was something crazy. He said it was his birthday present. I don't know whether he meant me or the house. Then he was running me through the rain to the door, pulling me by the wrist, and mud was slopping up on the backs of my legs and my hair was getting soaked, and I had begun to wonder if the crazy b.a.s.t.a.r.d had taken me out there to kill me. I think part of my crying all the way home was relief."

"Did he say anything else?"

"No. Oh, when he reached across me and opened the door to let me out on the corner, I started to get out and he grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me back. He dug his fingers into my shoulder so hard I had marks for a week. He said I didn't remember where I'd been, and I didn't want to tell anybody about being anywhere with him or he'd give me a face that would turn my kid's stomach. I wanted to laugh. I didn't know where the h.e.l.l I had been."

She looked at her face in her handbag mirror and told me how this year she was going to get a really good tan. She said she had better be getting back to work. She asked where the picture was. She studied it and started to tear it, then instead put it in her purse, snapped the clasp.

I drove her back and before she got out she said, "Dori told me to tell you maybe she'll be in touch. Look she's a crazy wonderful kid and she's bored out of her skull. Fred is a nice guy. It's been too long since she's had any kind of fun. You'd be doing her a favor, and you shouldn't miss out on it anyway, because she's a really fabulous lay, and she loves it. It isn't a sales pitch, honey. It's a freebie, because she likes you a lot."

"And she's bored."

"I told her they should have a kid, but they keep taking tests and nothing happens. Freddie works hard, but, Jesus, if you tell him a joke, you gotta spend a half hour explaining to him where he should have laughed. Anyway, she's maybe my,best friend, so don't get turned off because she's a little on the chubby side, okay?"

"And if you remember anything more about the tdece, call me at-"