The Lime Pit (3 page)

"We had a real good year together, mister. A
real good year. And, right off, I made her promise me that if she
ever wanted to leave she would tell me first. So's I wouldn't spend
another afternoon like I did when she didn't show up in the park. And
she promised. That's how come I know something's happened to her. She
never said goodbye, and Cindy Ann would never've done me that way.
She was good to me. Looking after me. Cleaning up this hole."

Cratz began to cry, tears rolling down his cheeks and
dropping heavily to the rug. "Ain't supposed to fall in love at
my age," he said. "Ain't supposed to care too much. Too
near the end. Too near the grave. Mistake, maybe." He swallowed
hard and swiped at his red nose. "You see, I didn't force her to
do nothing. She come of her own free will, like you said. And I just
... I just ain't got enough . . . it ain't fair they should've taken
her from me." Cratz began to sob. "It ain't fair."

"Who are `they,' Mr. Cratz?"

"Them!" he said ferociously and pointed to
the window. "Them! Them! Them damn heartless bastards that
called themselves her friends. That's who!"
 
 

3

I KNEW what she'd say before she said it. I knew
because I knew that Hugo was a tired man at the end of his own
particular road. Maybe I just wanted to hear her say it, so that I
could tell myself I'd given the old man his full half-hour's worth.
Maybe if Laurie B. Jellicoe had lived on Lorraine or Newman, instead
of two houses down on the opposite side of Cornell, I would have
called it a mistaken afternoon. Mistakes happen. Hugo Cratzs happen,
although we don't usually see them unless they're selling newspapers
in front of a rusted tarbarrel on a windy street corner. Maybe if it
hadn't been so sleepy hot that I had to pack my sportscoat over my
sleeve like a waiter's napkin, I'd have been thinking more clearly
about Hugo Cratz. Maybe I'd have seen him for the bigoted reprobate
that he was. Using his devils and his debilities to perpetuate the
myth of one Cindy Ann X. Who, judging from the dogeared photograph
that Cratz had shown me before I went a-hunting, was probably fell
and feeble-minded. Blonde-haired, buck-toothed, sixteen-year-old
girlchild with a thin, pale, avaricious face. Who was probably five
states away by now on the back of a motorcycle, hanging on for dear
life to the belt of whichever rambler she had spotted at Reflections
or the Dome and taken a liking to. Probably.

But all I was thinking about that late July
afternoon, as I trudged through the maple trees up to the two-story
brownstone apartment house that Cratz had designated with trembling
hand--as if he were pointing to Gehenna and the altar of Baal--was
that old man's apartment and the old man smells of ripe, unimpeded
decay. There were nights when my own rooms smelled of the same death
that Hugo was trying to lie his way out of. And, after hearing his
story and seeing the way he lived, I just didn't have it in me to
tell him it was a hopeless cause.

So I trudged across the street and up the concrete
pathway of 1309 and into the blue-tiled lobby with its brass
mailboxes set in stippled yellow plaster and ran my finger across the
name slots until I came to Jellicoe. Number Four. I walked up to the
second landing and, either from force of habit or simply from the
sheer contrast with Cratz's place, noted the swirl of detergent on
the freshly mopped floors, the woodlight sheen of the balustrade, and
the framed print of a sailing ship hung in the hall. It was a nice,
expensive little apartment house and Laurie B. Jellicoe when she
answered the door--seemed a nice, smart-looking young woman.

"Yes?" she said in a breathy, little girl
voice. "Can I help you?"

I took a good look at her and balked. Tall, about
twenty-five, dressed tastefully out of Cardin, with a blonde, bland
Farrah Fawcett face and a great mane of ash-blonde hair, Laurie
Jellicoe looked like the last person on earth who would have
befriended a gamine like Cindy Ann.

"Well?" she said.

"Well-" I said. "You're a nice-looking
girl." She nodded almost imperceptibly. "I guess that's not
news."

"What is it you want?" she said with an
edge in her voice. "If you're selling anything-"

"No, I'm not selling. I'm working for Hugo
Cratz. I'm a private detective."

Laurie Jellicoe's eyes widened and her arm slithered
down the door like a snake gliding down a tree trunk. "I don't
believe it!" she barked with laughter. "He hired a private
detective?"

I reddened a little.

"Hey, Lance," Laurie called over her
shoulder to someone sitting in the living room. "Old man Cratz
hired a private cop. Can you believe that!"

There was a terrific creak, like the sound of a tank
shifting onto its tracks, and then a pound, pound, pound that shook
the floorboards. The door flew open and Lance, all ten feet of him in
a T-shirt with a "have a good day" face on it, blue jeans,
cowboy boots that curled at their tips like a witch's toes, blocked
the light. Laurie Jellicoe patted him proprietarily on the butt and
said, "Easy there, baby," in a low jocund voice.

Lance was a sandy-haired giant, a long-nosed,
square-jawed, big-chinned Texas boy. Men his size don't come along
all that often; and I realized as I stood in his shadow that I had
seen him once before in the University Plaza at the corner of Vine
and McMillan, striding across the arcade toward the Nautilus Health
Club. I was buying cigarettes at Walgreen's at the time, and ol'
Lance had practically emptied the rear of the store in his wake.
Shopgirls and lady customers had plastered themselves against the
window to watch him pass. "What a hunk!" one of the
shopgirls said to a girlfriend, who whistled soft agreement.

In the flesh, Lance was a mean-looking hunk, with one
of those vain, stupid, pretty-boy faces that get very tough and very
shrewd around the eyes.

"You say you're working for that tired piece of
shit?" he said in a low Southern baritone. "What kind of
man would earn his living like that? No kind of man I'd like to
know."

"Why'd you ask, if you already knew the answer?"

Lance took a breath and, I swear, I could hear the
elastic threading of his T-shirt pop.

"Go back inside, honey," Laurie said
quickly. "I'll handle this."

Ol' Lance gave me one helluva angry look and plunged
a finger the size of a dollar cigar at my chest. "Be seeing
you," he said sharply. He managed to pack enough real menace
into those three words to make me think twice before I ever wised off
to him again. He patted Laurie on the rear and rumbled back into the
living room.

Laurie watched him retreat and then turned to me.
"Mister," she said in that little girl voice. "You
don't know how close you came."

"I think, maybe, I have an idea."

"No, you don't," she said. She gave me an
appreciative look, a cold professional sizing-up, and smiled
favorlessly. "He'd squash you like a bug."

I hadn't realized it before--the clothes, the little
girl good looks, and the timid breathy voice had disguised it--but
this Laurie was a hunk herself. Big-boned, big-breasted, with long
handsome legs and a firm round rear that showed seamlessly beneath
her tailored slacks, she made a good match for ol' Lance. I couldn't
help thinking she made a good match, period. She caught that look in
my eye--girls that are built like she was never miss it--and shook
her head, no.

"Don't even think about it," she said with
a cautionary grin.

"Can't kill a man for dreaming."

"You don't know Lance." She glanced quickly
into the living room. "Another place, another life, maybe it'd
be different."

"I'll take that as a compliment," I said.

"What is it that Cratz expects you to find out?"
Laurie Jellicoe said, leaning back against the door. "Where we
stashed Cindy Ann?"

I nodded. "That's it."

She didn't say anything for a second. Just stared at
me with a mild worry in her stone-blue eyes. "Look, Mr.-"

"Stoner. Call me Harry."

"Look, Harry," she said. "In the last
couple of days we've had the police here two times. Cratz has called
us every hour on the hour since Monday. And we're just a little sick
and tired of the whole thing. I wish to God at this point that I'd
never met the girl."

"You two were friends?"

Laurie Jellicoe shrugged. "Yeah, I guess so. We
did laundry together down on Ludlow and we'd go shopping at Keller's
together. To tell you the truth, I think she had a crush on Lance."
Laurie passed a tan hand through her golden hair. "I felt sorry
for her. Coming from a broken home. Having to live the way she did.
She was one of those runaway kids who you just know are going to end
up in trouble. She had that victim look about her. You know? So
washed-out that her eyes were the only color in her face. And skinny.
And just as awkward and naive as hell. In a way she was lucky, tying
up with Cratz. At least he didn't abuse her physically. Not that he
wouldn't have if he'd been able to." Laurie Jellicoe grimaced.
"He's such an awful old man. Dirty and repulsive. It was no
wonder she couldn't take it anymore--living over there. Especially
after his stroke. Cleaning up his messes. Practically feeding him by
hand. It gives me the fantods to think about it," she said with
a shudder.

"Fantods?"

"Just a word that my grandma used to use."
Laurie smiled half-heartedly. "You know I've told this to the
police. Do you really want me to go through it again?"

"Please."

"All right. Last Sunday Cindy Ann came over here
to talk. She told me that she'd found a guy--I don't know who. Some
biker in Norwood who worked days at the General Motors assembly
plant. She'd met him at a V.F.W. dance that Cratz had sent her off to
and she'd just gone crazy over him. And, now, she didn't know what to
do about the old man. I never did understand why she cared for him.
But there must have been something decent about Cratz, because she
didn't want to leave him in the lurch. She came to me to talk it out.
Girl to girl, you know? She was such a pathetic little thing, and she
always looked up to me like I was some sort of, you know, authority.
Because of Lance and all. Well, we talked and she said she was afraid
that Cratz would get steamed if he knew that she was running off with
a young guy. He was very jealous in that way. So, I suggested that
she tell him she was going home to see her folks and that she was
going to spend the night before she left with us. You see Lance has a
car and she could say that he planned to drive her down to the bus
station around midnight. I mean it wasn't that unusual. She'd stayed
overnight before to listen to music and just to talk. So, she told
Cratz what she was going to do and came over here on Sunday night.
About eleven or so some kid rode up on a chopper and Cindy Ann left
with him. She told me before she left that if Cratz asked about her
to tell him that she'd be in touch when she could. And she cried a
little. And we hugged and kissed each other. And that was it."

"That's the last time you saw her?"

Laurie nodded. "Cratz thinks we've made off with
her. I guess that's partly my fault for concocting that cock and bull
story about her folks. Somehow he managed to get their number in
Sioux Falls or wherever the hell she was from. And they hadn't heard
from her and weren't interested in hearing.

Some family, huh? So he called the cops and told them
we'd kidnapped her! Can you believe it! On Monday morning a fat
little man showed up and started asking all kinds of questions about
the 'alleged' Cindy Ann. Eventually we figured out what was going on
and told him the whole story, just like I'm telling you. But that
wasn't good enough for Cratz. He's a sick old man. Sick in the head.
That stroke must have really addled his brains. On Tuesday he called
the cops again. And he hasn't quit calling them or us since. Our life
is really getting to be a mess. Both Lance and I were late to work on
Monday and Tuesday and, of course, having police cars pull up in
front of your house is really good public relations. And, now, he's
hired you!"

"Laurie!" Lance boomed from the living
room.

"Look," Laurie said breathily. "I
gotta go before there's trouble. Be a good guy, will you, and tell
Cratz the truth? Make him believe it. Please. I gotta go."

She ducked quickly into
the living room and closed the door.

***

It was almost six o'clock when I finished with Laurie
Jellicoe. Outside of Lance, there'd been no surprises. She'd told me
exactly what I'd expected to hear and left me with the distasteful
job of convincing Hugo Cratz that Cindy Ann was gone for good.

Eight and one half dollars sure buys a lot of your
time, Harry, I thought as I walked back beneath the maple trees and
waited at the street corner for a white-haired woman to maneuver a
Dodge station wagon into a narrow driveway. But I'd known what I was
letting myself in for when I'd driven out to North Clifton that
afternoon. I'd made a rich, easy buck off of Meyer and Cox, and I'd
needed a Hugo Cratz to balance the books. That's all there was to it.
A case of conscience. I get one every six months or so, after a
particularly ugly or particularly easy job; and I hire myself out for
charity work, to assuage that old monster inwit. Hugo was going to
settle the account for a long, long time to come.