The Lime Pit (13 page)

Those "just-for-the-hell-of-its" were
wearing thin. But it was a hot, sleepy Sunday and I didn't have
anything else to do. So, just for the hell of it, I went ahead and
placed a call to an old friend at Ma Bell. And, sure enough, she came
up with the Jellicoes' home number.

It was identical to the one the recording had
referred me to. After six, at least, the Jellicoes were Escorts
Unlimited. And I had the feeling the Escorts Unlimited only operated
after six.

I doodled on the note pad, and pretended that what
Bannion had told me hadn't shaken my resolve. What we had was one
very young girl, venal and possibly crazy. Certainly well and
variously used, as Red had pointed out. And, from the look of it,
perfectly happy in her work. Then we had two rather unusual pimps, an
attractive, middle-class couple, venal and possibly crazy themselves,
who might or might not run a legitimate escort service but who
certainly catered to rather kinky customers on the side. And, then,
we had one professional football player-wide-receiver, to be precise.
Six-two, eyes of blue, sandy hair, cherubic face, all the money and
prestige he could want, and a taste for little girls whom he could
poke and prod like when he was a kid playing "Doctor." Just
your typical American grouping. And what family would be complete
without the old 'un. And, yet, Hugo, for all his chicanery, despite
his unwashed, seedy self, didn't seem to fit in. The dirty old man
outdirtied by a congeries of more or less respectable types.

What a good one on the dirty old men. What a good
laugh the clean-cut ones would have. Except, perhaps, for Cindy Ann,
who wasn't so clean and was temporarily vanished into the dark and
grisly night world of Newport.

Would she resurface? Would Hugo Cratz live to see his
"little girl" returned to him? Not likely. And not funny,
either. It would "do" him, all right--to hear the truth.
He'd blow an artery when he was told. Or, maybe, he wouldn't. Maybe
he'd go out and dummy another P. I. into hunting up his Cindy Ann. He
wasn't going to get what was left of her back on his own. He'd need
some truly professional prying and finagling for that.

I threw the note pad down on the nightstand and got
to my feet. It wouldn't do to try the photos out on the Jellicoes
after what Red had told me. They just wouldn't bite. As long as Cindy
Ann was missing, they could stick to their story and no one could
prove they weren't telling the gospel truth. No one could prove that
they had taken the photos in the first place. An operation like
theirs was bound to be fairly well insulated. Layers of lawyers and
business contacts and witnesses who would swear the Jellicoes were
allergic to SX-70 film and, if things got really tough, strong-arm
hoods like Abel Jones who would make me eat the film and the camera,
too, and then shove a tripod up my ass and hire me out for studio
work. But, a good ol' boy like Preston LaForge, with those little
gobs of apple pie still sticking to his lips and those blue, blue
eyes and that all-American face--he I could work on, because he had
everything to lose if those pictures found their way to the police.
And, happily enough, Preston had a listed number and an address in
the swell part of Mt. Adams.
 
 

12

THE VICARAGE is a multi-leveled complex of
condominiums set on a steep hillside overlooking the Ohio. From
below, it looks rather pleasantly like a gigantic redwood aviary
propped on telephone poles. From the entrance on Celestial, it has
the luxe and manicured look of a well-run apartment. There is a small
cobbled court yard from which the condos radiate out in a broad
semicircle. Here and there, a paved avenue carries back into the
complex itself. The apartments are A-frame, chalet-like
buildings--mostly tilted redwood roof and plate glass. I'd been in
one of them once, at a posh reception I was hired to oversee, and the
best thing about it had been the view from the porch. The interior
was groined and vaulted like a church--a great, high-ceilinged dead
space filled with rich, bored people, handsome furniture, and
tasteless
objets d'art
.
I wouldn't have let my lease on the Delores expire to move in there;
but, then, the chances of me being invited to move into the Vicarage
were very slim. It was, in fact, peopled by invitation only. And,
only the choicest people were invited. Johnny Bench lived there.
Thomas Schippers, when he was alive, had lived there. The Gambles of
P & G had a little retreat on the hillside. And so did Preston
LaForge.

I parked the Pinto in a stall marked Visitors and
walked out of the sunlit courtyard and through a sweet-smelling
tunnel of weathered cedar to the door of LaForge's apartment. There
were plexiglass inserts in the tunnel, looking out above the green
hillside toward the blue reach of the Ohio. It was an impressive
sight, but all I could think about was how mean a drop it would be to
tumble off one of the rough-hewn porches that terraced the hill. And
that's exactly where I could find myself if Preston LaForge didn't
fancy the picture I was going to show him or the idea of being
blackmailed into helping me find Cindy Ann. I patted the gun in my
pocket and raised my hand to the door.

LaForge answered on the first knock. He'd been
waiting for someone and his big grin died when he saw that it was
only me. He had to be over thirty but he looked barely nineteen, with
the sensuous blonde face of the California beach boy. Behind him, the
room seemed to climb and climb. The far wall was one great triangle
of glass and a huge triangle of white sunlight fell through it,
setting the cream shag rug and the chrome and glass and brass
furnishings ablaze.

I shaded my eyes and said, "Do you have to wear
sunglasses to live in there?"

LaForge giggled. And I don't mean laughed. I mean
giggled. A kid's chortle that, in all decency, should have been
covered with a hand before it left his mouth. "That's funny!"
he said all agog. "That's really funny! Do you mind if I use
that myself?"

"Feel free," I said.

"Say, who the hell are you, anyway?" he
said affably. "You want a drink?" He just walked away from
the door, leaving it wide open and me standing on the stoop. "I
got liquor here somewhere," he said, rummaging a
glass-and-chrome tea cart parked on the south wall beneath what
looked like a genuine Mondrian. "Sunglasses!" he chuckled.
"I'll have to tell Oscar that. He's the fag that decorated this
place." LaForge turned to me, a pair of ice tongs in his hands.
"You know they write that in the lease? You've got to have a fag
decorator come in and camp the place up or they won't rent to you.
Bourbon, O.K.?" he said, dropping the ice with a clunk into a
cut-glass goblet.

"Sure," I said and walked right on in.

"I'm a Scotch man myself," he said over the
drinks. "But I ran out last night. Like the man said, though.
Between bourbon and nothing, I'll take bourbon." He picked up
the glasses and brought them over to where I was standing. "Pull
up a chair," he said, handing me a glass.

We sat down on opposite ends of a big gray leather
sofa. LaForge stretched out and slopped a little bourbon on one of
the cushions.

"Damn," he said. "Oscar's going to
kill me when he sees this." He chuckled and made a half-hearted
effort to wipe off the spot with his shirt-sleeve. "Does leather
stain?" he said. "I mean does bourbon stain leather?"

"Damned if I know."

LaForge stopped wiping and looked up at me as if he'd
just noticed I was in the room. "Say," he said pleasantly.
"Who the hell are you? Or did I ask you that already?"

"You did."

"Oh," he said vaguely. He sipped at his
drink and stared darkly at the floor. "I'm sorry, but I just
don't have a good memory for names. Who did you say you were?"

"Stoner. Harry Stoner."

"Oh, yeah." LaForge smiled again and nodded
equably. "What paper are you with, Harry?"

"I'm not with a paper, Mr. LaForge."

"Oh, hell, call me Preston. Everybody does."
A gloomy look passed across his boyish face. "All my life,
they've been calling me Preston," he said remotely. Whatever it
had been, it was gone in a second. "Better than Johnny, huh? Why
the hell do baseball players always have names ending with 'ee'?
Johnny, Davey, Jackie, Bucky ..."

"Dopey, Sleepy . . ."

LaForge giggled again. "Say, I like you, you
know that? You're a funny guy. You sure you don't write for a paper
or a magazine? Oh, hell, I guess you'd know that, wouldn't you?"

He sipped at his drink again. "So, what can I do
for you?"

I stared at him a minute. In amazement. "This
isn't an act, is it, Preston?" I said.

"What?" he said and his face made ready to
laugh again.

"I mean this incredibly affable, dumb, schoolboy
bit. That's the real you, isn't it?"

He shrugged. "I guess."

"Well," I said with a mild laugh. "Then
I just don't understand it."

He started to giggle. "What?"

"I mean, how did it happen? Did your daddy slip
it to sis while you were watching? Did the school marm make you stand
in the corner in wet pants? And did all the little girls laugh at
you?"

LaForge knitted his bland brow. "What are you
talking about?" he said cheerfully.

"Well ... this." I pulled a snapshot of
Cindy Ann out of my pocket and tossed it over to his side of the
couch. He spilled a little more of his drink flagging it down.

"Damn," he said. "Does bourbon stain
wool?" He toed at the carpet and glanced at the snapshot. "Oh,
God," he said quietly and dropped his drink quite completely on
the couch.

"You'd better clean that one up, Preston,"
I said. "That'll surely leave a stain."

He brushed fecklessly at the cushion and continued to
stare at the photograph. I could see what was going to happen, and I
felt bad for him.

"Poor thing," Preston LaForge said and his
little boy's mouth trembled. "Poor, poor thing."

He began to cry, chewing his lips and staring
vacantly at the picture of Cindy Ann. "I'm going to be sick,"
he said.

"I wouldn't do it on the rug, Preston."

He dropped the photo, got up, and ran agilely across
the big cathedral-like room to a hallway that angled off next to the
door. He disappeared down it and, in a second, I heard the sound of
his retching and the flush of the toilet.

I was feeling a little sick myself and sad. But not
for Preston. I'd gotten over that as soon as he'd started to cry.
Like anything too sweet, Preston LaForge was cloying. I was feeling
sad for Hugo. Because it seemed apparent, now, that something pretty
terrible and pretty final had befallen his "little girl."

In a few minutes, LaForge came back down the hall. He
looked awful. His face was a sick, bloodless white and his wrists
seemed to dangle from his cuffs as if they were sewn to the cloth.
"This is terrible," he said miserably. "What the hell
am I going to do?" He looked at me helplessly.

"You wanna tell me about her, Preston?" I
said.

He plopped down on a slung leather chair and held his
face in his hands. "What's to tell. Her name is Cindy Ann Evans.
She's sixteen. I..." He lowered his hands and stared forlornly
at my face. "You know all this. Why do you want me to say it?"

"I'm looking for her. Her father wants her
back."

"Oh, Christ." LaForge shook his head and
sobbed. "I've got this . . . this thing," he said weakly.
"I don't know where it comes from. I really don't." He took
a deep breath and steadied himself. "I've been to psychiatrists.
I'm seeing one now. It has to do with my mom. With the way she ...
she overprotected me. Dressed me up, you know?" He took another
deep breath. "I only saw Cindy a couple of times. I swear to
God, it was only a couple of times. I knew I was being bad, but I
just ... I can't help it." LaForge broke down again in tears.

"What happened to the girl?" I said to him.

He shook his head. "Don't know." LaForge
wiped his eyes. "She was a nice kid. Sweet in a way. They had
her on drugs. Half the time I don't think she knew what was going on.
And the other half ... she didn't seem to mind."

"Who are they?"

"What!" he said in alarm.

"The ones that had her on drugs."

"Oh. Laurie and Lance. They run a little
service."

I got up from the couch and walked over to the big
picture window and stared blankly down the hillside. He'd taken a lot
and he'd spoken freely, irrepressibly, as if he were glad of the
chance to say it. Some men are like that. They suffer remorselessly
from what the French call
delire de confesser
.
But this was the critical part, and as pitiable as Preston's good
boy-bad boy personality was I wanted to make the hard truth stick.

"You've got a big future ahead of you, Preston.
Big money, prestige, a family. I'd hate to see it all go down the
drain."

"How much?" he said dully.

I turned around. With his arms on the armrests and
his feet dangling to the floor and his face red and tear-stained, he
looked like a hapless, crucified child. "I don't want money. I
want to get Cindy Ann back. And, if that isn't possible, I want to
find out what happened to her."