The Scarlet Ruse Part 18

"Another of Mary Alice McDermit's delicate aphorisms."

"Afor what?"

"Hush."

I tuned the channel another hair and got rid of some of the blur. We listened for the full fifteen minutes. There were calls for other boats and calls from other boats, but no traffic for us. She'd had a nap. She was getting hungry again. She was bored. She wanted a drink but didn't know what. There was a whiny sub-tone in her voice. I let her play with the radio, and she found some country music and turned it too high. It wasn't worth trying to get her to turn it down. She sat cross-legged on the floor, swaying back and forth, singing the lyrics she knew, scratching her bites.

He didn't phone on the second segment either. She was tired of the radio. She went in and changed her clothes and came back in a yellow terry thing like a body stocking that she said was too tight in the crotch. She kept tugging at it. It made her cross. She rummaged through the cabinet over the wall desk and found some cards. The only game we both knew was gin. She didn't give a d.a.m.n what I might be holding and paid no attention to what I picked, so she constantly discarded right into my hand, and she constantly lost. She turned the radio on again and played solitaire on the floor in front of it. I don't know what her rules were, but she went out every time.

On the third and final fifteen minutes of monitoring, the marine operator came up with a call for "the motor yacht Busty Flush Busty Flush." She had a short list, and I came in and identified and took the call. Meyer sounded as if he were calling from the bottom of a big laundry bag. As soon as he'd start to come in clear, they'd dump in more laundry. But I managed to extract from the blur that there had been a fellow looking for me. I felt my pulse give a hefty b.u.mp. I waited for the next part of our little code. Mary Alice stood at my elbow, listening to the insectile low fidelity of my tin speaker and, with her thumb, trying to relieve the undue stricture of the nether end of her yellow garment.

It was sick excitement to know that I had placed a bet on a three-legged horse and every other horse had fallen down on the clubhouse turn and my choice was lumping home at historic odds.

Yes, the fellow had a beard. "His name is George Sharsh. He said you know him. Do you know him?"

"George who?" This was beyond the limit of our code, and I was puzzled.

"Sharsh. S as in sniper. T as in telescope. A as in arson. R as in rage. C as in careful. H as in hide. Sharsh."

"Starch?"

"Right!"

"Sure, I know him."

"He said he'd be back tomorrow in the late afternoon or early evening."

"Tomorrow? Thursday?"

"Right. What will I tell him?"

"Stall him." I hesitated. That was wrong. Meyer might think I wanted him to try to delay Sprenger. "No. Just find out what he wants and see if you can take care of it."

Out of the depths of the laundry he said goodbye. I hung the Bakelite mike back on the hook and flipped the set off.

"Who is this George Starch guy?" Mary Alice asked.

"Oh, he comes around with a problem now and then."

"Like what?"

"Well... like a disposal problem."

"I don't get it."

She followed me back to the lounge. I had an urge to experiment. "George is sort of an agent. Somebody might be holding stock certificates that don't belong to them. George finds a way to unload them."

"He comes to you with stuff like that?"

"Once in a while."

I stretched out on the yellow couch. She leaned on the back of it, standing behind it, looking down at me. "I got this idea you were straight, sort of. What do you do, work both ends?"

"I do favors for friends."

"But Meyer wouldn't get involved in anything like that."

"Like what?"

"Fencing anything."

"Last night before I came aboard, I saw Meyer. He had a suggestion about your car. By now some friends of ours are baking a different color onto it, and they'll put Alabama tags on it and sell it right in Miami. Alabama tags make it easy. There's no t.i.tle certificate. Meyer will probably clear three hundred."

"He suggested it? I'll be d.a.m.ned! Gee, you never know, do you? Whyn't this George Starch move things through... you know, regular channels?" suggested it? I'll be d.a.m.ned! Gee, you never know, do you? Whyn't this George Starch move things through... you know, regular channels?"

"That's like selling to a supermarket, M.A. They're so big they beat the price way down. I'm a corner grocery store, and I can make better deals."

"Unless they find out you're making better deals."

"I'm not a total d.a.m.n fool, honey. If some hungry clown contacted me with a problem about a couple of barracks bags full of gra.s.s from Jamaica or Barbados, fresh off somebody's Piper Apache, I would route him to Frank."

She swallowed and licked her mouth and started to speak and had to speak again, the first attempt was so ragged.

"Frank? Frank who?"

"Frank Sprenger. What Frank do you think?"

"How would I know what Frank? How would I know?"

I reached up and patted her hand. It felt damp and cold. "Sorry. That's right. How would you know? He isn't in operations. He's just a guy who's acceptable to all parties at interest, and he works as a sort of traffic manager and resident auditor. I guess because you saw him all those times at the bank, I had the idea you would know what he did."

"Investments," she said in a small voice.

"All kinds, dear. All kinds. I never got to ask you this question. It's been in my mind. Frank is very very heavy with the ladies. You are far from being dog meat. I imagine he made his move. What happened?"

"He... isn't the sort of person who appeals to me."

I laughed. She asked me what was so humorous. I said it was like a deer in deer season refusing to be shot by a hunter in the wrong shade of red hat.

"Okay, so maybe he doesn't like girls as big as me. Some men are really turned off by tall girls."

"If everything else is in the right place, I think Frank might start to get turned off if a girl was fifteen feet tall and weighed four hundred lovely pounds."

"Well... he never tried anything. I had no no idea you knew him at all. You never idea you knew him at all. You never said said anything about knowing him." anything about knowing him."

I stretched and yawned. "It was sort of a confidential relationship. He gave me a little fee to sort of represent him in the Fedderman problem. I wouldn't have fooled with it otherwise."

She gasped and stood erect. She ran around the end of the couch and came thumping down onto her knees on the floor beside me, sat back on her heels, and stared at me. "He paid paid you!" you!"

"A token. Two round ones for expenses. What's the matter with you anyway?"

She thumbed her hair back. "Exactly what did he tell you to do?"

"Why are you getting so churned up?"

"This could be very important. Please."

"He told me he heard that Meyer wanted me to help Fedderman, who thought that the properties in Sprenger's investment account had been switched. He said he heard that it didn't appeal to me. I told him that it didn't appeal because I thought he could handle his own problems better than I could. He asked me, as a favor to him, to check it out. To keep my eyes open and keep his name out of it, insofar as our private agreement was concerned. I'd say he took care of it himself without my help. You and I know who made the switch."

I waited for a reply, but I had lost her. She was still there, but her eyes were focused on something further than the horizon. She was chewing her underlip. Her eyebrows went up over the bridge of her nose, separated by two new deep wrinkles.

I wondered if I was wearing an identical pair of wrinkles. Good ol' Meyer had found a Meyer-like way of imparting ugly information. Frank Sprenger was enraged. And I had better be very careful and do an efficient job of hiding, because Sprenger was planning to take care of things with a rifle with telescopic sights and then burn my house to the ground. I could not imagine Sprenger, no matter how enraged he might be, confiding his battle plans to Meyer, no matter how much Meyer encourages confidences.

But I could imagine Sprenger asking specifics of the location of the Flush Flush, the terrain, the cover, and asking details of her construction and fuel, enough to enable Meyer to make one of his intuitive yet logical series of guesses.

"So he knows you then," she asked. "He knows where you live and how you live?"

"Certainly. Dave Davis and Harry Harris have been aboard this houseboat. You wouldn't know them, I guess. They work for Frank."

"If he came looking for you or sent somebody, would they ask Meyer where you are and if anybody is with you?"

"I would imagine so. But Meyer would say he doesn't know."

"Would Frank know Meyer would probably know?"

"I guess so."

"Oh dear Jesus G.o.d."

"You better tell me your problem, girl."

"He can make Meyer tell him."

"If Meyer sees that Frank is serious about it, he'll tell him. He'll tell him the Flush Flush is set for long cruising and you're aboard with me." is set for long cruising and you're aboard with me."

Her face crumpled. She toppled onto her side and wound her arms around her head. She began to sob.

I sat up and reached down and patted her. "Hey! Hey, what's wrong?"

She sat up, snuffing, eyes streaming. "Wrong! I'm dead, that's what's wrong. You killed me, you dumb son of a b.i.t.c.h!"

She scrambled up, stumbled and nearly fell, and ran back to the stateroom and slammed the door behind her.

I leaned back and closed my eyes. Now I could sit at the game table and take some of the square pieces and turn them the way they belonged and glue them to the table. Too few to be able, from them, to discern all of the pattern.

The brain is a random computer. Fragments of experience, sensation, distorted input, flicker across multiple screens.

... The last time I felt I had lost my luck, I made some bad moves which should have cost me more dearly than they did.

... None of Fedderman's older investment accounts would have been likely to know Sprenger or to put him in touch with Fedderman. Sprenger could have used a name given to him by someone else.

... Meyer's first instinct was that Frank Sprenger had been setting Fedderman up, using the inventory lists Fedderman gave him as a basis for buying subst.i.tute junk, using a double for Fedderman to make the switch easily.

... w.i.l.l.y Nucci had been very emphatic about how eager Sprenger would be to cover up any personal goof before it became public knowledge.

... When Meyer and I had talked about Sprenger at the steak house that night after I saw w.i.l.l.y, we had agreed that, on second thought, it did not seem to be Sprenger's style to try to go for a double by cheating Fedderman, when it would be easier to play the tricks and games he was used to. Easier and safer.

... "I like people. I really do." Mary Alice had said that as we walked to the bank. The people who really like people are so genuine about it they are unable to imagine how it would be not to like people. And so they don't go about proclaiming.

... Mary Alice had leafed back through the book, looking for the page which had Barbados stamps to see if there would be room for more from the same island on that page. She did not have her gla.s.ses. Hirsh often bragged about his vision. She knew he could see the pages. Hirsh was volatile. Was he expected to react, to reveal the discrepancy then and there, so that Sprenger could demand that Hirsh live up to his guarantee?

... In the store last Thursday, I had believed her declaration of honesty. But she had wept more readily than I would have guessed. Meyer had called her amiable and gentle. She had become just what I wanted her to be. For just long enough.

... Had her explanation at lunch that day, of how long it would take to switch the stamps from book to book, been designed to induce me to have the brilliant thought that maybe the whole book had been switched? If so, I struck out.

... My decision at lunch that day, to trust her and believe her, had been based upon my a.s.sumption that if she had the art, the guile, and the energy to project a false image so skillfully, she would not have spent five years in that little store.

... Had she sensed when I was vulnerable enough so that she could play that old game across the table, the blue eyes which become trapped in the silence of the stare of realization, widening in a kind of alarm, then, with obvious effort, breaking contact?

... Why would Jane Lawson wait fourteen years before stealing anything? Why would she wonder about the authenticity of the items in the other investment accounts when Mary Alice didn't, not until much later? Jane Lawson was a very bright woman. If she had planned the action and made the switch the one and only time she filled in for Mary Alice, she would know that eventually I would find out about it. I would ask the right question of Hirsh or Mary Alice, and they would remember. So wouldn't she look a lot better if she casually volunteered the information? If she had done nothing wrong, she might not think of bringing it up.

... After five years of working with Mary Alice, it was Jane Lawson's diagnosis that Mary Alice would rather work with her hands than make decisions. They were close during working hours, but after working hours Jane never saw her. In the politest way possible, Jane had said she thought Mary Alice to be a little bit on the dumb side. Today I could agree. But not until today.

... Jane had called the device of putting a hair from her head under the rubber band around Judy's books one of her "sneaky spy tricks." It showed a certain talent for subterfuge. Would she mention the rubber band trick if she had used that same talent more profitably?

... Harris and Davis got to me much too fast, much too soon after I became involved. And their first objective was to sideline me, to pay me to back away from Fedderman's problems and wait for word from my anonymous employer.

... I remembered Harris being silenced by Davis. Harris had said, "That was one of the questions. To find out if McGee was-" Was what? Susceptible to being scared off? Too committed to the Fedderman problem already? Apparently if I couldn't be bought off or scared off, the third step was to clue me in by saying their boss was interested in the Fedderman situation-which was the same as naming him-and wanted to be certain I was not going to help somebody pull something dumb and fancy which would leave Sprenger on the short end. I could not have let them go back and report that I knew how to keep a good scorecard and I'd refused the money. To Sprenger that would have been tantamount to saying I was out to try to clip him.

... Mary Alice had reacted all too greedily to the ripe and pungent smell of money within the restricted tailored gardens of the Key Biscayne Yacht Club. She had almost visibly salivated. And when she got over believing I was probably the caretaker on the Flush Flush, the touching began. Hand on my shoulder, hip b.u.mping into me. People establish private s.p.a.ce around them and do not move into yours or let you into theirs unless you establish intimacy or the promise of it. She had abruptly diminished the s.p.a.ces we both maintained, moving into mine, letting me into hers. There must be a mutual willingness to reduce the s.p.a.ce, or one person becomes uneasy and uncomfortable. Meyer uses that phenomenon to rid himself of the very infrequent person who bores him. He moves inside their s.p.a.ce rather than trying to back away. When he stands with his nose five inches from theirs, they begin to falter and move back. Meyer keeps moving in, smiling. They see somebody across the room they want to talk to and excuse themselves. Or remember a phone call they have to make. With Meyer it is a deliberate kindness to do it that way.

... Out there afloat in the night off Lauderdale, she had told me that if she ever did want to take the risk, it would be with somebody so hard to kill that maybe he could keep her alive too. And after soliciting me, she tried to turn me off again, with both of us knowing it was too late at that particular time and place for any stopping.

... She had wept very quickly and abundantly when I had told her about Jane Lawson last Sunday. As she had wept easily in the store. As she had wept not long ago, right here, when she had toppled over. In the kind of early life she had, of foster homes and the school for girls, could the luxury of genuine tears be sustained, or would tears be one of the weapons of survival?

... "Don't come to my place. That's asking for trouble." I'd never been inside it. When I'd first seen it, she had answered my unspoken question, saying that there was a lot of difference in size and in rent between the big apartments on the top floors in front, and the little studio apartments on the lower floors in the rear. "Don't phone me there."

... w.i.l.l.y Nucci heard of my new relationship with Sprenger very quickly. But not too quickly for w.i.l.l.y. His network is all over the beach. Switchboards, housekeepers, doormen, car rental girls, apartment managers, bartenders. I'm only guessing. There is probably an unlisted number to call, an anonymous voice, and cash money in a plain envelope, enough to keep the flow coming in, as much cash as the information is worth. w.i.l.l.y wouldn't be so stupid as to be known as the destination of the flow. Then sharpsters would start feeding bad information, to con something out of w.i.l.l.y. Probably somebody close to Harry Harris told her hairdresser about the fabulous old houseboat some fellow in Lauderdale named McGee owns. Harry saw him on business. Which, to w.i.l.l.y, who might have heard it within twenty minutes, meant I was on Sprenger's team.

... In the thunderous night, in the darkness, she had lain naked under percale, squeezing my hand and saying ooo and ahh at my modest account of my deductive brilliance. She said she didn't want to go rummaging around inside her head. She said it was all junk, all throwaway. The news of Jane's in-law wealth had galvanized her, lifted her up out of the bed. In alarm? And she could not comprehend why Jane had never gone after that money. She thought it freak behavior. I thought it odd. But I could understand. The next morning she was up unexpectedly early and diligent and brisk.

... Alfred, the night bell captain, thought he had seen Mary Alice somewhere before. And she would not give him her name.

... When I had asked Sprenger, in his office, how he had gotten onto me so quickly, his explanation was detailed, garrulous, and unconvincing. So was his explanation about the source of the investment money. I think that what made both stories unconvincing was the ease with which he could have sidestepped my questions. How did you get onto me? I keep good track of things. Where did the money come from? An investor. Sprenger had not gotten where he was by saying one word more than required in any situation. And the explanation about the test with the courier in West Germany seemed more as if he was trying to sell me on how good an idea it was.

... I'd believed Sprenger when he said he had not gotten agitated when he learned Jane Lawson was dead. Yet he should have been. If he believed his investment account was intact, he might not have reacted at all. Yet he knew knew something was wrong. The only answer was that he knew Jane Lawson was not involved. That meant he had to know who was. something was wrong. The only answer was that he knew Jane Lawson was not involved. That meant he had to know who was.

... I went to the shop from Sprenger's office where she had been working diligently all morning. And suddenly there were a lot of things pointing right at Jane Lawson. But when was the label on the gaffed box typed? And when and why were new alb.u.ms imprinted in gold for Frank A. Sprenger and J. David Balch? Sprenger's, at least, had only a few pages left empty. "Jane, honey, while you're over there, whyn't you take these two and make me up the blue one for Sprenger and the green one for Balch, okay?" Had the figures written on the inventory sheets been for simplicity in finding a specific stamp or to make it easier to make up a whole duplicate book?