The Long Lavender Look (24 page)

I joined the browsers and came upon something I had been wanting to add to the tools aboard the Flush: a compact, lightweight electric screwdriver, variable speed, reverse, a goodly batch of interchangeable heads, all in a tidy aluminum case for $26.95. No reason why Lennie shouldn't buy his bird dog a little present for the boat. The only flaw in the rig was that some idiot, through cynicism or indifference, had specified steel pins in the aluminum hinges and a steel latch on the case.

So by the time I paid and got out of there, Mrs. Jeanie Dahl was standing in the shade, leaning against the building, ankles crossed, elbow propped in the palm of her hand, cigarette down by a third. She smiled and pushed herself away from the wall and followed me to the convertible. I turned the air high and, when we turned onto the highway I ran the power windows back up.

"Where do we go?" I asked.

"Right down there where the sign is on the right. Bernie's. There's kind of a crazy grove behind it and you can take stuff out there. I'd like a cheeseburger and a vanilla shake."

I carried our food in a cardboard box out to cement tables and benches in the shade of big Australian pines. We were the only customers in the grove. The other five tables were empty. A
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pair of Florida jays flew down and landed on the end of the table, hopped cautiously toward us.

She held her hand out, arm flat on the table, crumb in her palm. The bolder of the pair, after much inspection, grabbed it and flew to the nearest table to eat it. She continued to feed them as we ate and talked.

"I think he had some kind of protection, sure. But he didn't say anything real definite, right out like. More like saying to me a couple of times there wasn't a thing to worry about, because I live with my mother and my kid, and I said to Lew a couple of times that my mother would make my life hell on earth, and my lousy ex still wants the kid and it could be a chance for him to get Davie away from me, I mean if there was some kind of raid or something like that."

"So if somebody was in with him, it would be logical for that somebody to pick it up where Lew left off, if Lew is dead."

She wiped her vanilla mustache off on the paper napkin. "McGee, I was thinking I wouldn't exactly be eager to go along with Lew on anything if he shows up again. I mean having him be a deputy makes it one kind of thing, and having him be out on bail, waiting for a trial in circuit court is something else. You know? Maybe if he lost his protection, they might want to charge him with this other thing, too. And if I got a subpoena, believe me, I think I'd go out of my mind. I guess the best thing to do is sort of keep my fool head down for a while. If nothing happens, maybe in a couple weeks or so I can set up a date with a local man I just so happen to know, and I've got the idea it could turn out to be a permanent kind of a thing, and he's so turned on about me, I ought to be able to get like a regular allowance, if he isn't too chicken to try to set us up a place right here instead of going way off somewhere. I don't want to lose the stuff I bought on time, like the color TV. My mother and Davie would be lost if we had to go back to that crummy little black-and-white Sears. Look, what is it you want to know, anyway?

She said you'd probably give me back my picture like you did hers. It's better it shouldn't be floating around if something happened to Lew."

"I'm puzzled about how he operated. Certainly he wasn't contacted out at that ranch, or at the Department. He must have had some other base of operation."

"Why would he have to? I don't know how it was when he started it, but by the time I got in, it was on account of one fellow telling another fellow who to get in touch with. Then Lew would meet the fellow someplace, like at the Adventurer bar in the afternoon and size him up and if he looked all right, or there were two or three and they looked okay, he'd tell them the rules, all night only, and no heavy drinking beforehand, and cash on the line in advance. Then they'd pick out who they liked and Lew would phone and say where and when and who to ask for, and if you couldn't make it, the guy made another pick. He tried to steer away from any gal having any regulars. He said that could turn into trouble. There was some locals, not many, and that was pretty much set up for out of town someplace. The next day or a day later, Lew would get the money to me. It was ... easier, I guess, not to have to take the money from your date yourself.

And it was more like a date that way, even though you'd know and the guy would know it was paid for ahead. What you were supposed to do was tell Lew if you got any kind of a bad time, like a fellow getting mean and slapping you around, or having a friend show up for a spare piece.

Then Lew would take the guy off the list for good. I don't think I'd want to be set up by anybody else unless they kept it under control like Lew did. But lately he was getting careless, like the guys weren't such a nice class of people, and he took longer coming around with my share, so twice I had to remind him. And the last time I saw him, a month ago anyway, he called the house about eight at night and told me walk down to the corner and meet him. So I did and he picked me up in a police car and drove out into the country like a maniac and wouldn't tell me what it was all about. It started to rain and he took me off to some crazy little shacky place at the end of nowhere and took me in there and liked to ruin my clothes yanking me out of them, and he shoved me onto a cruddy old bed and he was so rough it scared me, and it wasn't ten minutes, I swear, before I was back in that car, sniveling, scared to death of the way he was driving. He let me out at the corner in the rain, and thank God my mother was too hooked on the television to
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take a look at me when I came in and went to my room."

"Where was this shack?"

She looked startled. "Hey, that was sort of what you were asking before, wasn't it?"

"Sort of. Was it locked?"

"With a padlock, yes. It was just one room, a pine shack with a crooked old floor, set up on blocks instead of pilings. It had electricity. I remember I saw at hot plate on some packing cases by the wall. There was a little narrow hall to a back door, with e little room with a john and a sink off one side of it, and a storeroom like off the other side."

"Where was it?"

"It was dark and raining and I couldn't find it again in a thousand years. I know we started out C:attleman's Road because I remember wondering if we were going to his place, but it didn't seem likely because he said that if I ever called him there ever, he'd spill my teeth all over the floor. And he would, too."

"You went a long way out Cattleman's Road?"

"A long way. Miles and miles and at a hundred and something miles an hour. Then he turned left, skidding on the corner like a racing driver. We must have been out of the county, or almost.

Then he turned right and the road was so narrow the bushes were rubbing on the sides of the car. It went around a lot of curves and the lights shone on the shack and big trees around it and on the rain falling down hard. I asked him where we were and what he wanted. But he ... I was going to say he didn't tell me anything, but he did say something that didn't make any sense. I can't remember."

"Please try."

"It was something crazy. He said it was his birthday present. I don't know whether he meant me or the house. Then he was running me through the rain to the door, pulling me by the wrist, and mud was slopping up on the backs of my legs and my hair was getting soaked, and I had begun to wonder if the crazy bastard had taken me out there to kill me. I think part of my crying all the way home was relief."

"Did he say anything else?"

"No. Oh, when he reached across me and opened the door to let me out on the corner, I started to get out and he grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me back. He dug his fingers into my shoulder so hard I had marks for a week. He said I didn't remember where I'd been, and I didn't want to tell anybody about being anywhere with him or he'd give me a face that would turn my kid's stomach. I wanted to laugh. I didn't know where the hell I had been."

She looked at her face in her handbag mirror and told me how this year she was going to get a really good tan. She said she had better be getting back to work. She asked where the picture was. She studied it and started to tear it, then instead put it in her purse, snapped the clasp.

I drove her back and before she got out she said, "Dori told me to tell you maybe she'll be in touch. Look she's a crazy wonderful kid and she's bored out of her skull. Fred is a nice guy. It's been too long since she's had any kind of fun. You'd be doing her a favor, and you shouldn't miss out on it anyway, because she's a really fabulous lay, and she loves it. It isn't a sales pitch, honey. It's a freebie, because she likes you a lot."

"And she's bored."

"I told her they should have a kid, but they keep taking tests and nothing happens. Freddie works hard, but, Jesus, if you tell him a joke, you gotta spend a half hour explaining to him where he should have laughed. Anyway, she's maybe my,best friend, so don't get turned off because she's a little on the chubby side, okay?"

"And if you remember anything more about the tdece, call me at-"

"I know where you are. Thanks for the lunch, McGee."

"You're most welcome."

"And the picture. Say, I didn't get to see the others, damn-it. No time now. Maybe I'd know some she didn't."

"I'll get back to you."

"You do that! Bye now." Knowing I was watching her, she wagged her little pink skirt all the way to the door, turned as she tugged at it, and blew me a small kiss with her pocketbook hand.

I wrote mental ads as I drove into town: Girls, do you want extra pocket money? Have you ever thought of part-time hustling to supplement your Income? Just a relatively few hours a month in pleasant surroundings. Opportunities to travel. Taxfree income. Must be between twenty and thirty, amiable, reasonably pretty and well built, and able to devote time and effort to your second occupation. Do you like people? Are you truly interested in meeting new people of means? Earn as you learn.

It would not be such a nifty little sideline for Jeanie and Dori and company if one of the syndicate operations moved into Cypress City and took over Arnstead's list and picked what looked useful enough and moved them out and put them on the circuit, broke them to total obedience. I remembered the time long ago when Miguel and I forced our way into the circus in Juarez one night, thinking to find the Australian with Miguel's money among the spectators.

Four soft paste-white women of indefinite years under the blue spotlights, sweating with the effort of working their circus routines with the black, the dwarf, the burro, and each other. We brought it to a halt when Miguel hit the room lights, knife ready. No Australian among the eight men and three women spectators. As Miguel made his eloquent apologies to the cold-eyed management, easing their indignation with a gift of pesos, one of the performers, a dead-eyed woman with a curved knife scar from forehead to corner of the mouth, which had nicked the eye and turned it milky, padded over to me, her sweat coppery-sharp in the stifling room and said,

"Mister, didn't you used to live in Dayton, Ohio? Weren't you a young kid selling cars for the Buick agency in Dayton, Ohio?"

I had time to tell her no. Sorry, no, lady. Then the room lights went off and the dwarf stung her across the rear with his little whip and she yelped and leaped and then went tumbling back onto the mattresses under the blue spots, tumbling back into the interrupted performance. We left, and found the Australian a week later.

It has always bothered me that I could just as easily have said yes.

Sixteen

I WENT to the office of the county clerk and put on my most affable and folksy manner and asked if they had any alphabetical list of the taxpayers on the ad-valorem tax roles. They sent me to the assessor's office, and a girl there sent me to the central records department, where they sent me back to the clerk's office. Finally I settled for a look at the big book of aerials of the entire county, and by usIng the line drawing on the front as a guide, I was able to find the pages covering the northern half of Cattleman's Road to the Wagner County line.

I found three places where a northbound car could turn left. Each seemed to have quite a few places where a car could then turn right onto private land. Each photograph had a transparent overlay bound into the book with property owner's names, and the number of the book of deeds and the page in the book which covered the property. Hullinger, Reiter, Rench, Dowd, Albritton, Eggert, Alderman, Jenkins, Hyatt, McCroan, Featherman. Lots of Featherman land, and lots of Hullinger land. So on the second aerial of the last road, I found on the overlay an irregular oblong, far smaller than the surrounding parcels, and it said: "Arnstead 3.12 acres.

Book 23, page 1109."

I could make out the faint track of entrance drive, and part of the shape of a roof hidden by the pines. I measured the scale and found that the entrance was almost exactly two miles from the turn at Cattleman's Road.

The spectacled girl showed me where Book 23 was. I found the old quit-claim deed to Lewis B.

Arnstead, a minor child, from his father, for the sum of one dollar and other valuable
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considerations.

Often when you are the most hopeful, nothing works. Then you try a long shot and come up with it.

Before I left I used a pay phone and tried Betsy and got my dime back.

There was no breeze and the sun of early afternoon was hazy and hot. As I passed Cora Arnstead's place, I saw the black horse standing in the shade near the pond, grazing. The geese were asleep on the grass by the pond, one sentinel sitting with his head high. The stunted cattle were at the far end of the pasture.

I had no trouble finding the turn, nor finding the driveway two miles west of the turn. The brush touched the sides of the white car. An armadillo stared me to a stop, then went trundling off into the thicket.

It was, as Jeanie Dahl had called it, a shack. Old black cypress siding on a hard-pine frame, with a tar-paper roof, gray-white with age, patched here and there with black tar. Holes in the window screens. Curtains yellowed by age. The stout padIock on the door hasp had been broken. I pushed the door open and went into the sickening oven-heat of the interior. It smelled as if lions lived there. An old swaybacked bed was out from the wall, mattress slashed in a half dozen places, soiled old sheets and blankets on the floor. Interior wallboard had been pried loose.