The Lime Pit (4 page)

He was waiting for me on the porch, looking red-eyed
and haggard and eager to hear what Laurie Jellicoe had told me. I
supposed that he thought I'd backed her into a corner and beaten the
truth out of her. A neat trick with ol' Lance standing around. But
Cratz didn't seem suprised when I reported to him, word for word,
what Laurie had actually said. He just shook his head and said, "You
believe that crap?"

I bit the bullet and said, "Yes."

Hugo sat back in his porch chair and meditated a
moment. "What if I was to tell you that I was watching Laurie's
house from the time Cindy Ann left here until first light Monday
morning and didn't see nobody on no bicycle drive up?"

"Are you telling me that?"

"I am."

I sighed. "Then I'd have to tell you that I
don't believe you, Hugo. What possible reason would Laurie Jellicoe
have to kidnap Cindy Ann?"

"They was using her," he said smugly. "For
their damn sex orgies, is why."

"You're reaching, Hugo."

"Am I?" he said mildly. "Just you wait
out here for a second.

He went into the house and came out about two minutes
later with a tan shoebox under his arm. "You got a good look at
that Laurie whilst you was in there?"

I nodded.

"Nice-looking woman, ain't she?" Hugo said
and smiled a sickly, broken-toothed smile. "Why'd you think I
sent you over there? Think I was expecting you to get past that tree
she keeps in the living room?"

"You mean Lance?" I said, feeling damn
uncomfortable about this sudden coyness. A crafty Hugo Cratz was a
different item than the grief-stricken, sentimental old man I'd
foolishly committed myself to. I'd known he was devious when I'd
first talked to him on the phone; but it had seemed such a
transparent, clumsy sort of trickery that I hadn't really given it
another thought. This new twist bothered me. For just a second I had
the sickening feeling that Hugo Cratz had been using me since the
moment we'd met.

"You take a look in there," he said,
handing me the shoebox.

I tipped the lid and looked inside. There was still
enough daylight in the western sky to make out the face of the girl
in the photographs. It was Cindy Ann's face. I didn't look through
them all. There was a tragic sameness about each one. They were
Polaroids-SX70s-taken, most of them, in room light; some of them by a
flash that had made Cindy Ann's naked blue eyes glow a demonic red.
She didn't have much of a body, Cindy Ann. Her ribs and sharp
hipbones were clearly visible in the photos. Her small girlish
breasts already sagged like little pockets on her white chest. There
were hands in most of the snapshots, reaching at her, caressing her,
gouging her. Smooth red-tipped hands, chunky hairy ones. Holding
cigarettes, clothespins, safety pins in one. And through it all Cindy
Ann wore a bewildered, glassy-eyed smile. Staring straight into the
camera, oblivious to the pain, she looked as properly posed as if a
studio photographer had instructed her to look up and say, "Cheese."
I slapped the lid on the box and shoved it back at Cratz. He was
still smiling his sick, factitious smile.

"Where'd you get them'?" I said hoarsely.

"Found 'em. After she left."

"Why the hell didn't you show them to me right
away?" I said, as the anger hit me. A jolt of adrenalin that
made me bitedown hard and pound hard at the arm of the rusted lawn
chair. "What kind of game are you playing, old man?"

"Didn't know if I could trust you," he
said. "Wanted you to see them first. The two of them. Listen to
their lies. Let them know you were listening. Same crap they told the
police."

"Did you show these"--I pointed to the
box--"to the police?"

Cratz knitted his brow savagely and looked at me with
genuine disappointment. "I love her," he said through his
teeth. "You got that, boy-o? You think I'd go showing them kind
of pictures to men I don't trust? Anyway, those two'd just claim they
didn't know nothing about them. Don't take but twenty-some dollars to
buy one of those cameras. And I got one more reason. I don't want
them bastards to know. I don't want to take no chances till I got
Cindy Ann back home with me. They find out I got them pictures, they
might get antsy, do something foolish. I can't take that chance."

"So ..." I said, letting out a deep, amazed
breath. "You tricked me, Hugo."

"I did," he said. "I did indeed."

He smiled shyly and wet his lips. "Thought I was
a blabbering cry-baby, didn't you? That's what ol' George thinks. He
hates Cindy Ann for it, too. Thinks she's made a fool out of me. He
can think what he damn well wants to. Point is I know what's going
on. Them two are doing some awful things up in that apartment. She
dresses so fine and he's such a looker, it ain't no wonder that Cindy
Ann got messed up with them. I don't blame her none. Hell, I couldn't
give her no love like that even if I could still get it up. Never
felt that way about her after that first day in the park. I just
wanted you to know that I'm no fool. I didn't spend some twenty years
in the Corps and come out a coward. I can whine for the folks and
play it as silly as they want. It ain't all show. Not by half. I
start thinking about them photographs and it tears me up inside. But
I wanted you to know--after I got a look at you and figured you was
all right--that you can count on me.

"No police," he cautioned. "I just
called them to throw a scare into them two. Let 'em know somebody's
watching them. I want this done on the sly. And I want them bastards
to get what's coming to them. And I don't ever want nobody to know
what they done to my little girl. Is it a deal?"

I didn't really think about it. I wasn't in a
thinking mood. Which is no way to run a business as perilous and
actuarial as mine. Those photographs had touched a nerve, right down
to the root, awakened the strict moralist who hides inside me and
makes cheap ironic patter at the expense of my clients. Like an
insult comedian, he's a sentimentalist, quick with the apologies, the
gush about how all his needling is well-meant; and, like the insult
comedian, his apologies are as phoney as his laughter. All he really
understands is anger--a comprehensive anger that extends to anything
that falls short of the ideal. Which is why he stays hidden most of
the time. He's a vehement, childish cynic--all moralists and
comedians are; and, in a different city, in a line of work less
likely to give him occasion to rail, he'd probably get me into a lot
of fights. But if Cincinnati is good for anything, it's good for
beating the dickens out of a latent Puritan. There are too many of
the real articles walking around. Too many of them with too much
power. You can't beat a real Cincinnati moralist for cheap,
stomach-turning sentimentality. I like this city; it keeps me sane.

But it's in my blood, too. And, sitting on that
porch, pretending that banalities like idyllic childhood and the
beauty of youth were as real as the chair I was sitting on, I was all
Cincinnati Puritan, and as mad and vindictive as I could be. For
Jellicoes gave me a royal case of the fantods. They made me nervous
and sick at heart. Whether Cindy Ann had wanted to join their little
circus, whether she'd be willing to give it up, didn't matter to me
at that moment. All I wanted to do was to see that they got what was
coming to them. And that Hugo got his "little girl" back.

"Yes," I said to Hugo Cratz. "It's a
deal."
 
 

4

WE SAT on the porch for another half hour, watching
the daylight fail and listening to the pigeons on the skirts of the
roof burble and coo. And, eventually, the detective in me began to
ask his questions, a schoolboy's questions filled with whos and whys
and wherefores.

By nightfall 1 had a reasonable understanding of the
events leading up to the disappearance of Cindy Ann Evans--her last
name was Evans, Hugo told me. I found out that it wasn't unusual for
the girl to spend time with the Jellicoes or to sleep over at their
tidy apartment. On that score, Laurie Jellicoe had been telling me
the truth. Only the girl had never been gone for more than a night
and had always left word with Hugo about when she'd be coming back
home. Which meant that Laurie Jellicoe hadn't been telling the whole
truth. And, as it turned out, neither had Hugo Cratz.

Hugo had seen someone leave the apartment house
during his all-night vigil. The Jellicoes' yellow van had driven off
around six on Sunday night and returned at seven the next morning.
Whether Cindy Ann had been in it when it left or when it came back,
Hugo couldn't say.

"They unloaded the damn thing in the lot behind
the house," lie said crankily. "If I'd a'had any gumption,
I would a'gone on over there the minute I seen 'em come up the
driveway."

"Gumption," I said to him, "is one of
the things you don't have to worry about."

He chuckled drily. "You know, it's a strange
thing about them two. They just don't seem to be around all that
much. That's what first got me to thinking that something was wrong.
That and the way Cindy Ann would look when she got home." He put
a wrinkled hand to his mouth and lowered his voice, just like we were
two old men sharing secrets on a park bench. "Think she might
have been smoking some of that marijuana. Had a dazed eye, sometimes.
Talked slurred, too. Had marks on her arms."

Great, I said to myself. An addict as well as a
prostitute. Some Jellicoes.

"You said the two of them were out of their
apartment a lot?"

"More than a lot." He nodded toward the
building. "From what I seen they're in there maybe a
couple-three days a week."

"Do you know where they go when they're not at
home?"

He shook his head. "I heard Cindy Ann talking to
them on the phone a couple of times. And she'd say, `Frankfort!' or
`Lexington!' like it was a real pleasant suprise to her. I figure
Kentucky is where they do their business, but it seems to be all over
the state, like they was travelin' salesmen, selling ..."

His mouth began to tremble again. I patted his arm.

"We don't know what they're selling, yet, Hugo.
It could be just the pictures."

"Could, could it?"

He shook his head sadly. "I thought I'd seen it
all. Been through wars. Been in a few dirty places. But this"-he
patted the shoebox-"this just ain't human. How could they do a
child like that?"

"Hugo," I said, feeling the end of that bad
day in my bones. "I've given up asking that question--how could
they? It just can't be answered. Give them both enough of a grudge
against the world to make them users, manipulators trying to live out
their childhood hurts on other children, and you can understand as
much about the Jellicoes as can be understood."

"I guess," he said. "Only I ain't got
that much charity in me." He looked at me expectantly. "So,
I guess you'll get on top of them, now ... now that you know how
things stand?"

"I would have," I said. "But, thanks
to your little trick, they know who I am, which means that the next
time I see them, I want to be able to make more than vague
accusations."

"Well, you could still follow them, couldn't
you?" Hugo said irritably. And, suddenly, I had the certain
knowledge that Hugo Cratz not only intended to hire me, he intended
to run me, too.

"The way I see it, following them would be a
very long and expensive proposition, with no guarantee at the end of
it that we'd come up with Cindy Ann. We're lucky, in a sense. We have
a piece of hard evidence. Let's make the most of those pictures.
Let's find out where they came from and who they were meant for."

"Came from the Jellicoes," he said with
disgust.

"Seems likely. But they may not be the only
folks involved. And it's no good going into a game without knowing
your competition."

"Pressure 'em," Hugo said, wringing Lance's
neck with his hands.

"I'll do this my way, Hugo," I said with
about as much firmness as I could command. "You went to a lot of
trouble conning me into this deal. Don't blow the good will by
telling me my job."

"Sorry. Sorry." He let go of Lance's throat
and threw up his hands in apology. "Won't happen again."

Sure, I said to myself. And it won't be hot tomorrow,
either.

I got to my feet. "I have to get some sleep."

"You'll come out here tomorrow?"

I told him I would. In the evening.

A big harvest moon--the size of a blood-red sun--was
hanging above the maple trees on Cornell Avenue. "Bodes fair
weather," Hugo said.

He started for the apartment house door.

"'Course I've known
it to be wrong," he called out in a grim voice. And I knew he
was thinking of his "little" girl and what the moon boded
for her.

***

"Lance and Laurie Jellicoe." I said their
names aloud as I walked to the car.

What a sweet, chiming ring they had, a sweet and
improbable pairing. How thoroughly and excusably middle-class they'd
seemed in their smug little apartment with its picture of a sailing
ship on the wall. Too fundamentally decent for something like this
business. Only that was the moralist again, popping up in his
sentimental garb. What better disguise for pornographers than solid
Republican decency, I asked myself. And when it comes down to it,
what criminal isn't middle-class in fact or aspiration? It could be
the definition of a thief.