The Lime Pit (6 page)

Morris Rich was a sly, sentimental man of about
fifty. A Reds Rooter. A Shriner. A big contributor to the Ruth Lyons'
Christmas Fund. A soft touch to his children, who would probably pay
for that generosity in later years when someone finally got fed up
and told them what selfish, soulless bastards they'd grown up to be.
But he was first and foremost a thief I knew that as soon as I saw
him at his huge kidney-shaped desk, sitting behind that photographic
phalanx of family and kin. Some men wear their consciences on their
sleeves; Morris Rich had his arranged like an army at his feet.

He was a short man with a smooth, hairless head the
exact size of a schoolyard kickball and the bright, famished eyes and
tiny upturned mouth of a rat. I didn't like him or trust him. And,
after a few minutes of listening to him talk about his boys, I
realized that he wasn't going to tell me a thing about where the
three photographs I'd shown him had come from. Not unless I made
finding Cindy Ann a family affair.

"Oh, we ship from all over the world, Mr.
Stoner," he said, making a globe with his stubby arms and
hugging it to his chest. "It would really be impossible for me
to say exactly where this item or that item from a lot came from. You
see, we're just distributors here at Gem. We don't pack no goods. We
don't have no say over what goes into a crate we deliver. Of course,
a customer gets mad if what comes out don't tally with what was
shipped." He chuckled blandly and dropped his arms to the desk.

"That's too bad," I said. "The girl's
family will be very disappointed."

He shook his head sadly. "To be a parent is
sometimes a terrible burden. I know. Believe me. Cory, my youngest,
is just turning eighteen. I give him a car and he wrecks it. I warn
him about girls and he goes out and knocks one up. Cost me eleven
hundred dollars to send her to a clinic in New York. And he's still
hanging around with her. You explain it."

"I wouldn't know what to say," I said,
making my voice cozy and sympathetic. "Hell, I don't know what
I'm going to tell the girl's parents as it is. It looks bad when a
politician's daughter goes as wrong as this girl has. I don't know
what he's going to do. Make a real fuss, I guess."

He bit. Just like I thought he would. His bright,
beady eyes danced across the photos and he said, "In the
government," in a voice as tight as his little mouth.

It's a shameless business-blackmail. But, like a
football coach, you go with what works. And with Morris Rich what
worked was whatever could bring the roof down on his household of
boys.

"Ah, it's worse than that." I said. "The
guy's got a lot of friends. Listen, if I told you his name you'd
understand. He's going to blow a gasket when he learns that I
couldn't turn anything up." I shook my head. "What the hell
do I care? I did my job. I'll show him the pictures and tell him you
just couldn't help me out. I mean business is business, right?"

Morris Rich nodded his head, but his eyes didn't move
from my face.

"I hate to take up any more of your time,"
I said. "But I guess I'd better get a deposition, just in case
this thing goes to court. As far as I'm concerned, he'd be be better
off letting the Feds handle it anyway. They can get court orders,
wire taps. You know. Their hands aren't tied. Let them take care of
it. Would you mind calling your secretary in for a minute. She can
take your statement down. Then we can get it notarized at a bank."

Morris Rich leaned back in his Eames chair and put a
finger beside his nose. "You ain't exactly the man you pretend
to be, are you, boy-chik?"

I threw out my hands. "Hell, Mr. Rich. I'm just
a guy trying to make an honest dollar."

"Uh-huh," he said.

Rich held out his hand. "Maybe I should take
another look at the photographs."

"Sure," I said politely. "It sometimes
pays to take a second look. Just like with people, sometimes a first
impression ... you don't see clearly."

I handed him the photos and he looked them over
quickly.

"What the hell was I thinking of?" he said,
slapping his bald head roundly. "I know where these come from.
Look, it's"-he glanced at his watch--"almost
one-thirty. I'm going to shut down for lunch anyway. What say we go
back up to Gem and take a look at the manifests, just to be sure?"

"I already saw the manifests, Mr. Rich."

He got a pained look in his eyes. "You ain't
supposed to look at those books, Mr. Stoner. I don't know what Pete
was thinking of to show them to you."

"Well, I guess he just got carried away by the
pictures."

"Uh-huh." Rich tapped nervously at the
picture frames on his desk and I dragged one foot across the floor
and made swirls in the plush carpet. And that's the way we would have
remained--me making swirls and Rich playing those picture frames like
a brassy xylophone--if I hadn't gotten to my feet with a mild groan
and told him what he would never know was the absolute truth.

"I'm getting tired of this game, Mr. Rich. If
you've got some information about the whereabouts of this girl, it
would be in your best interest to tell me now, before this thing gets
out of hand."

"Are you threatening me?" he said with
alarm. "I got lawyers who can handle this, if you're threatening
me."

"We both know it would be cleaner to keep this
thing out of court, Mr. Rich. You don't want cops crawling around
your warehouse and your bookstore, do you?"

"What bookstore?" he said. "I don't
know nothing about no bookstore."

I looked at him ruefully. "All right, Mr. Rich.
I guess you know better than I do how much heat you can take."

I was almost to the door, past those walls of smiling
Rich boys, when he called me back.
 
 

6

THE WHITE frame house was on River Road, along the
stretch of bottomland that is flooded yearly when the Ohio crests in
the spring. I could smell the rot from where I'd parked the car on a
clay embankment--that fecal smell of decay that troubles the river
where it goes shallow and dead. It made me think of the war and of
the jungle heat and of the bodies that puffed up like drowned men in
the steamy rain forests.

A beat-up white Falcon was parked next to the house,
and there was an old tire lying on its side in the grassless front
yard. It looked a likely enough spot for a pornographer to hole up,
although an hour before Morris Rich had tried to convince me that the
man who was holed up there would be better off left alone.

"Jones is his name. Abel Jones," he said to
me. "But, believe me, it should have been the other one--Cain.
He's a very tough customer, Mr. Stoner. I get snapshots from him once
and a while. Polaroids. He's the only one who sells me Polaroids.
That's why I know the ones you showed me are from him. I bought 'em
maybe a month ago. Always they're different girls. And sometimes I
can't even display them."

Rich laughed hollowly. "He ain't a family man,
Mr. Stoner. Not like me. He likes to hurt. I'd advise you to stay
away from him."

Morris Rich didn't want any trouble, from the police
or the F.B.I. or anyone who might bring a curse on his house and
business. But he'd made me think twice before I got out of the Pinto
and hiked down to that lone frame house. In the flats, the nearest
help was a good two hundred yards to the east, which meant that
anything short of a canon blast would die away in the hot, fetid wind
coming off the river. It really did smell like jungle warfare in the
yard, although the only tree in sight was a dead elm painted white on
the trunk.

I tried to shake the bad memories out of my head as I
walked up to the porch. There was no bell by the screen door, so I
rattled the frame with my fist. A few seconds later, a young woman
dressed in a long red shift padded up.

"Are you from the gas?" she said
belligerently.

She had long black hair braided in a ponytail, black
eyes of the dull, opalescent sheen of oil paintings, and a round,
Indian face that would have been pretty if it weren't for a yellow
birthmark that ran down her left cheek like Ahab's ivory scar.

I told her I wasn't from the gas.

"Well, somebody better come out," she said
wearily. "'Cause we paid the damn bill over a week ago."

She made a little smile of excuse, while her eyes
worked me over. "You're a cop, aren't you?" she said.

Some people have that gift. But they've usually paid
a price for it. This one looked too young to have paid in full. So I
guessed that cops and gasmen were no strangers to the house.

"I'm a P.I.," I told her. "I'm looking
for Abel Jones."

"He's not here."

"Then I'll wait."

She shook her head slightly, as if what I'd said had
amused her. "No, you won't. He won't want to see you."

"How can you be sure?"

"Because I don't want to see you," she said
flatly. "Now, beat it!"

She started to walk away from the door when a man's
husky voice called to her from upstairs. "Who is it?"

She gave me a quick amused look over her
shoulder--half-warning, half-reproach. It made me like her a little,
though I'd be damned if I knew why.

Abel Jones came trundling down the stairs. I got him
a little at a time. First his bare toes. Then three feet of black
gabardine slacks. Then three more feet of thin pink belly and
hairless chest. Then his face, shaded with a day's growth of beard.
He looked to be around forty, and he had the sharp mean features of
the Appalachian tough--narrow lips, a nose that could open an
envelope, black eyes, and gaunt, grooved cheeks.

He passed a hand through his dark, unkempt hair and
said, "What is it? What do you want?" in a drunken, hostile
voice.

"I'd like to talk to you, Mr. Jones."

He laughed a little when I said "mister."

"You would?" he said. "What about?"

"This porch is no place to talk."

"It's my house!" he shouted, as if I were
about to put a torch to it. "Don't dare talk down my home!"

He looked me over, the way the girl had. "Well,
come in, then."

He pushed at the screen door and I walked through.

"You dicks is all alike," he said. "Think
you can come in and run down a man's home."

I followed him through an archway into a living room
that could have been decorated by Hugo Cratz. All plaid and plastic
and faded stripe, dotted like a prize booth at a county fair with
stuffed animals and plastic trophies. The same stale smells hung in
the air, mixed with a tang of whiskey and tobacco.

Jones sat down on a torn vinyl recliner. "Get us
something to drink, Coral," he said to the girl. He said it with
relish, as if he were hoping I'd turn him down.

Coral winked at me and sauntered out of the room. She
was naked under that shift and she moved with a studied sensuality.
"I understand you sell pictures," I said, sitting across
from him on a hard, red plastic chair.

"Who told you that?"

"That isn't important."

I took one of the photographs of Cindy Ann out of my
pocket and tossed it over to him.

Jones slapped the snapshot face-down on his knee.
Then he flicked its edge and peeked at it the way a man peeks at a
hole-card. It occurred to me that he wouldn't have to squeeze out
that look if there wasn't a good chance that he wasn't going to like
what he saw.

"So what?" he said, pitching the photo back
to me. "I want the girl," I said to him.

"Well, you can want what you want, mister. But
you ain't going to get nothing out of me."

Coral came back into the room with a bottle of Old
Grandad and three glasses in her right hand.
She
poured three drinks and handed one to me and one to Jones.

"Cheers," she said, raising her own glass.

Jones tossed down the bourbon. He hadn't taken his
vicious little eyes off me since I'd showed him the snapshot. But
that didn't mean much. A man like Jones only has one expression and,
like a kid on Christmas day, he likes to set it up and see it work. I
concentrated on the girl and tried to read his mood in her face. If
my reading was correct, I was in for some trouble, because Coral's
dark eyes touched on everything in the room but me. It was as if she
were calculating just how much damage she'd have to repair when Abel
got through. From the disgust on her face, she saw a lot of work
ahead.

"You ain't touched your drink, mister, "
Jones said.

Coral let out a sigh. "There doesn't have to be
any trouble, does there?"

"Shut up!" Jones said.

"No, Abel. I'm not going to shut up. This is my
house, and I'm not going to see it busted up again. Let me see that
photograph."

Jones stood up and walked over to where Coral was
standing in the archway next to the front hall. "Get the hell
out of here," he said to her. "Or there will be trouble."

That was my cue. I stood up. "No, there won't,
Abel."