The Lime Pit (7 page)

He whirled around to face me. He balled his fists and
started toward me when Coral shrieked. And I mean shrieked--a real
movieland scream that made the room ring and stopped Abel Jones in
his tracks. He lowered his fists and turned back to where Coral was
standing. "Now just why the hell'd you do that, Coral?" he
said in a cranky voice that was probably as close to amusement as
Abel Jones ever got. "You 'bout scared the shit
out of me."

"Good," she said.

He shook his head forlornly and looked back at me.

"Takes most of the fun out of it, doesn't it?"
I said.

Jones shook his head again, walked back over to the
recliner, and plopped down.

"That's the first sane thing you've done in a
month," Coral said to him. "Now, show me that picture."

I dug it out of my coat pocket. She studied it
dispassionately for a moment.

"Before I say anything," she said. "I
want to be clear. That mean son-of-a-bitch over there would just as
soon kill you as look at you. And don't think he couldn't, mister."
She tossed her handsome head at Abel. "You're big all right. But
he's as merciless as a New Mexican rattlesnake. And I don't want to
see this place get torn up again."

"I'm not the law," I told her. "I'm a
private cop. And your boy can pander as many dirty pictures as he
likes, once I find that girl."

"What's so important about this little slut?"
She tapped the photograph.

"Her father wants her back."

Coral glanced at Jones, who was still sitting stock
still in the chair, contemplating a world of freakish folly.

"He's no pornographer," she said with a
touch of contempt in her voice. "He does favors for the people
who gave him those photographs. He's supposed to get rid of them, but
Abel there just can't stand to see an easy buck slide by. So every
now and then he sells a bundle to Morrie Rich."

She nudged my arm with her elbow. "Look at him
there. Just meditating like a Krishna what he's going to do to me
once you leave." She laughed grimly. "You're going to cost
me a black eye, mister. Doesn't that make you feel good?"

I started to volunteer some help, but Coral gave me a
quick furious look, full of family pride and short temper.

"Don't," she said simply. "Not if you
want to get out of here in one piece. Just leave it alone. I don't
know about that girl. Neither does he, even though he'd die and take
you and me with him before he told you that. But the people he gets
those pictures from do a lot of business over in Newport. You might
try over there."

"What kind of business do they do?"

Coral shook her head.
"I've said enough. Now why don't you just get the hell out of
here before he comes out of that trance and kills you."

***

I was halfway across the desolate front yard when I
heard someone coming up behind me. It gave me a start, the way
Coral's scream had startled me. I'd already drawn my pistol before I
realized it was the girl and not Abel Jones. She glanced scornfully
at the gun in my hand.

"You and Abel aren't as different as I thought,"
she said.

I tucked the gun in my pocket. "Yes, we are,"
I said.

She didn't believe me. And, for a brief second, I
wanted to tell her why she was wrong.

I liked Coral. She was tough, handsome, and honest,
and she deserved better than the likes of Abel Jones. The sad part
was that the Abel Joneses of this world were precisely the ones she
would always end up with. She'd always be that wrong about her men,
always mistake petty cowardice for a tender heart and cruelty for
strength. And she'd always be too damn hopeful to undo the mistake.
I wanted to tell her that, but I didn't.

"I only came out here to get away from him,"
she said, brushing a strand of black hair from her face. "He'll
go upstairs in awhile and fall asleep again. And if I'm lucky, he
won't remember much of it when he wakes up."

She shaded her eyes and stared up at the embankment,
where the steep green hills came down on the west side of River Road.
The sun was dropping behind them, now, and behind us, the river was
all golden to the Kentucky shore. "Must be close to five,"
she said and looked shyly toward me.

"What is it, Coral?" I said. "What do
you want to tell me?"

"I'm going to be leaving here soon," she
said. "Just pick up and go. Let the house, if anybody'll have
it." She looked back at the porch. "That's my inheritance.
That's all I got left, holding me here."

"Maybe Jones'll come with you," I said.

She smiled sadly. "No. I don't think so. But
it's good of you to say it. He'll stay on, probably. He wouldn't know
what to do without his liquor and his friends." Coral took a
deep breath. "I guess what I came out here to do was to say all
of that to you. It's kind of like saying goodbye, without saying it
face to face."

I nodded. "Glad I could help."

She straightened up and pulled at her shift where it
had bunched at her waist. Then her dark face turned red, and she
looked down at the marl. I had the feeling that, having said goodbye
to Abel, she'd suddenly remembered that she was an attractive woman
and that I was a man. And it had embarrassed her, as if she'd done
something wicked behind Jones's back.

"He really doesn't know about that girl,"
she said, changing the subject. "They never tell him the names."

"Why do they need to get rid of the pictures at
all?"

"I couldn't say. He just gets 'em. And sometimes
he throws them out and sometimes he sells them."

"What kind of business do they run?"

"A rough one. I guess I can tell you that much.
It sure doesn't pay to be on the wrong side of that girl."

"Laurie Jellicoe?" I said.

Her eyes darted to my face. "If you knew that
name, why'd you come here?"

"Because that name is all I know. All I'm trying
to do is find out what they're doing with the girl. Whether it's
pornography or something more."

"Look, mister," she said and her face grew
somber. "Why don't you tell whoever it is that's looking for
this girl to forget her? You'll save yourself a lot of trouble. They
don't give things up easy, those two. I know. I've seen how they
work. People they don't like, people that get in their way, just
don't last very long. That girl who went off with them knew what she
was doing. Why not just leave it at that?"

"It's not up to me," I said.

"Well, then, keep that kid's old man out of
harm's way," she said sternly. "Or both you and he will
regret it. Get out of here, now. Before he comes out and starts a
ruckus."

"Good luck," I said to her.

I started up the clay embankment and looked back once
when I got to the car. But she'd already gone in.

She was right about one thing. From the looks of Abel
Jones, a meddlesome old man like Hugo would be better off out of the
way. Better for him, better for me, and, maybe, better for Cindy Ann.
 
 

7

WE WENT out to dinner that night, Hugo Cratz and I.
We drove down Cornell to Ludlow and three blocks south to the
nondescript gray and white cube of the Busy Bee.

He'd cleaned himself up for the meal. Put on a fresh
checked shirt and a red cardigan sweater and scraped at the stubble
on his chin. And, as we walked from the parking lot to the street, I
caught a bit of bounce, a bit of military cadence, in his step. He
was enjoying it, what he thought was the honor of it, which was fine
with me. A little back-slapping and a few beers and we both might
find the nerve to strike a compromise.

The restaurant was crowded, so I took Hugo up to the
big dark U-shaped bar on the second level--an elevated terrace about
six steps above the ground floor--and introduced him to Hank
Greenberg, the barkeep.

We ordered two beers and, after taking a quick look
at Hugo, I decided it would be better if we both sat down to talk.
"We'll be over in the corner," I called to Hank and pointed
to an empty booth to the left of the bar.

"Right," he said.

We were almost there. We'd almost made it--Hugo
tottering a little as we maneuvered through the crowd, me pushing
gently at his back--when a big square sallow-faced man, with the name
"Mike" tagged on his shirtfront and a blue Navy anchor
tattooed on his left forearm, inadvertently clobbered the old man and
sent him tumbling back into me. I caught Hugo by the arms and pulled
him to his feet. Big Mike dropped drunkenly into our booth and, with
a sigh of unexpected pleasure, started drinking the beers that Hank
had just deposited on the table.

"Hey!" I shouted over the top of Hugo's
wispy head. "Those are our beers."

"He's drunk, mister," a gaunt man with the
name "Al" on his shirt said from the bar rail. "Don't
mess with him. He's just plain red-eyed mean when he's stiff like
that."

"Those are our beers," I said to him.

Al shrugged. "It's your funeral."

Hugo was wobbling a bit, so I turned him around and
looked him over. A little blood was oozing from his nose.

"It ain't nothing. That moose just clipped me is
all, with his elbow. Say, mister?" he said to Mike. "You
ought to watch where you're going."

Mike looked up balefully, the way a big, bad-tempered
shepherd dog looks up from his food bowl. "Go to hell," he
growled.

The moralist in me was getting a good work-out that
day. But I managed to check him. He had bigger fish to fry than a
barroom loudmouth.

"C'mon Hugo," I said. "Let's get you
cleaned up."

Hugo washed himself off in the john, and as we walked
back down to the restaurant level, Big Mike raised a glass to us.
"Goddamn pissant," Hugo hissed. And gave me a withering
look.

Jo Riley, the hostess at the Busy Bee, seated us at a
relatively quiet table in a corner of the main room.

On duty Jo wears pale pink lipstick, piles her
coal-black hair in a massive bee-hive, and carries a pair of sequined
glasses on a silver-metal chain around her neck. She fancies long,
highnecked, colorless dresses for the same reason she wears her
hair unfashionably and sports those bridge club spectacles. In a job
like hers, in a place like the Busy Bee, the last thing Jo needs is a
table full of rowdies making passes at her. And, believe me, with her
hair down, her skirt shortened, and those glasses in the case where
they belong, Jo is something to become rowdy about. I'd gotten pretty
rowdy myself about three years before, and there was still something
volatile between us. We'd been lucky. We'd shared some good times and
we'd parted. And there'd been no big scene at the end. No blow-up to
color what had come before, to make the pleasure seem illusory. We'd
just drifted apart, each to another partner and another bed. Both of
us had sense enough not to tempt fate by giving it a second try; both
of us, I think, knew that if it didn't work this time, there would be
that blow-up; and neither of us wanted to forfeit that legacy of past
perfect. So we generally smiled at each other, blushed, and chatted
nonsense, while memory whispered in another language beneath our
patter.

"This is Hugo Cratz," I said to Jo. "A
client."

"Really?" she said, raising a friendly
eyebrow. She was perfect, Jo. So good at her job she was
breathtaking. The eyebrow had been just right. Not coy, not
condescending. Just warm and deferential like a tip of a hat. "What
can I get you?" she said sweetly to Hugo.

It worked. He hemmed and hawed and smiled and blushed
and finally said, "Beer?" like he was asking his pretty
fourthgrade teacher if she were already married.

"I thought so," Jo said approvingly. "Two
Buds, then, Harry?"

I nodded and smiled at her. Some Jo.

We ordered the shrimp salads with the Bee's tangy,
horseradishy dressing, and when Jo walked off to the bar, Hugo said
to me: "Nice girl. You two friends?"

"You don't miss much, do you, Hugo?"

"Nope," he chuckled. "Like seeing how
there was no reason we couldn't talk back at my place, I figure you
brought me here to tell me something you wasn't prepared to say on my
home turf'."

I shook my head. "Drink your beer, will you,
Hugo?"

"O.K., Harry," Hugo Cratz said.

We drank and ate and between Hugo's Marine stories
and my M.P. stories, we generally had a pretty good time. After
supper, the Bee started to empty and Jo pulled up a chair and shared
a beer with us at our table. I'd like to think that Hugo Cratz had an
especially good time that evening. I'd like to think that between Jo
and the beer and me he stopped thinking about his Cindy Ann--at least
for awhile--and about the death that haunted his cramped apartment.
He looked good, for what that's worth. Animated, ruddy. And he
talked--talked for hours in a cheerful, spirited voice--about the
past.

Around eleven o'clock, while Jo tended the tables and
the pianist tickled out a jaunty rendition of "St. Louis Blues,"
Hugo leaned across the table and said, "I guess it's time."