The Long Lavender Look

by John D. MacDonald

  “Travis McGee.”

  “Trav, be nice. Please!” She looked toward the restaurant. “I’ve got to get back before Carolyn gets really scalded.”

  “When do you get off?”

  “I’ve been on since five. I get off at two.”

  “Does your husband pick you up?”

  “That’s my wheels over there on the back corner.”

  “Can you come over to the White Ibis when you get off?”

  A snort of disgusted laughter. “Oh, boy. The same old crap. Be nice to me, baby, and I’ll be nice to you. I must lead some kind of charmed life. Every time old Dori gets boxed in.”

  “Just talk. I want to get an I.D. on as many of the pictures as I can. I want to know how it operated. Can you do it?”

  She looked at me, skepticism in the tilt of the silhouetted head. “I guess. Fred will be asleep on account of he has to get up at six to go to work. I hate this shift every time I pull it. I try to sneak in without waking him up, and he tries to sneak out in the morning without waking me up. Then when he gets off work he comes and eats here and leaves me the wheels and walks home. What’s your room number?” I told her and started to explain where it was. She stopped me. “I know the layout. I’ve been there before. I just didn’t expect to have to go back again.”

  She trotted back and went inside. Through the expanse of glass I saw her, sweater off, standing talking to the other girl, shrugging and gesticulating.

  I had something better than forty-five minutes to continue the dogged search for the plastic sunflower. I tried her number again. Nobody heard the ringing except Raoul.

  As I drove I thought of what I had said to Hyzer, about facts toppling structures built of supposition. You want facts to simplify and clarify. But this one I had stumbled on merely deepened the murk. What I had thought were trophy shots were in truth a salesman’s sample case. Pick your pleasure, sir.

  It is a useful and profitable sideline practiced by venal, underpaid, crooked police officers in every urban area of the nation and the world where police administration leaves enough room for improvisation. A certain number of females are always going to get into trouble with the law. A certain percentage of them are always going to be physically attractive. The investigating officer can make a deal that is mutually advantageous. Play ball or face a conviction, honey. The procurer cop has advantages denied the free-lance pimp. He can more safely strong-arm the unruly customer. He can protect his string from arrest, and at the same time keep them in line with the threat of arrest. If he is careful in his selection, they will never fink on him because they, in turn, have too much to lose by any public exposure of the relationship. And he has a handy source of special favors for politicians and administrators. Tonight, sweetie, you got a date with Judge O’Harran. Here’s the address. He’ll be looking for you about eight o’clock. This one is a freebie.

  It was a big-city sickness I had not expected to come across in a small city in the central flatlands of Florida. And it puzzled me that Deputy Arnstead could operate his string right under the cool nose of a man as diligent and professional and subtle as Norman Hyzer. And it bothered me that Betsy Kapp had been in the sample kit. Maybe a very useful talent was fading, my ability to sense what people were after—what made them struggle and what made them give up. That talent had kept me alive a few times when the odds were against it. And I could think of no game Betsy could play which would enable her to turn a little hustling into some kind of romantic dramatics, into a sentimental eccentricity.

  I was waiting when Dori parked. When I opened the door for her, she came scuttling in, furtive until the door was closed and she had tugged the center gap in the opaque draperies shut. Then she was at her ease. Saw that all I had was gin and Scotch, said gin and Coke would be fine if I could get some Coke, so I got a bottle out of the machine when I went to get more ice.

  She wanted to talk. She was all full of her plump and pretty animation, bouncing around in the chair, gulping at her drink, sucking her cigarettes, brief skirt of the waitress uniform at midthigh, exposing the fine skin texture of her pretty legs. Lots of gestures and animation. She had been aching for a chance to tell somebody about the enormous, heartbreaking tragedy which had befallen poor Mrs. Fred Severiss, and had no idea that it was a drab, tiresome and ordinary little story, because she knew it had happened to her, and she could not feel commonplace, nor can anyone in their unique little time around the track.

  She had always been “fantastically stupid” about money, and she had been a salesgirl at Garnor’s Boutique at the Woodsgate Shopping Center, and Fred was far away and she missed him and she had this thing about buying clothes and shoes to cheer herself up, and she had charge cards, and besides she had this “wonderful crazy girlfriend” and they would go whipping over to the east coast and go to the dog tracks, and she was absolutely true to her Fred etc., etc. So she got in a terrible money jam, and the credit people started getting very ugly, and she missed car payments and she didn’t know what she would do if she lost the car, because how would she explain it to Freddie? So she had eighty dollars and she and her girlfriend had gone over to the dog track and she thought that if she could build it into three or four hundred she could get out of the jam, but she lost it all and fifteen dollars more she borrowed from her girlfriend. Then she started clipping the cash sales at the Boutique, saving the halves of the inventory tickets, thinking of it as “just sort of a loan, actually, on account of I was going to live quiet as mice and pay it back before Mrs. Garnor took inventory May first. That was the season before last.” Then Arnstead had showed up at night at her little studio apartment, and it was the first she knew that the thieving had been detected, and Mrs. Garnor had asked the law to find out which of the five clerks was doing it. She had tried to deny it and Arnstead had broken her in about five minutes, and she had, at his direction, written her confession about it being a little over six hundred dollars taken over the seven weeks. Then he said he would take her in and bail would probably be about five hundred, and the least she could expect for grand larceny would be eighteen months in the state prison for women. Blubbering and begging and pleading for mercy had done no good. And when she was in total despair, he had given her the little hint that she was so pretty that maybe he could delay it, see what he could do, and she had lunged at that like a starving bass, taken him into the narrow Bahama bed, telling herself it wasn’t like cheating on Fred actually, because what she was really doing was saving their lives and their marriage from absolute wreckage, and she had vowed “to just be a thing, and go through the motions with my mind a thousand miles away.” But the deputy had kept seeing her and he was persistent and she had been alone for months and months, and couldn’t help herself really, and got so she responded to him, and got to “needing him in a crazy way even though I didn’t like him.” Then he wanted her to be nice to a friend, and they had a terrible battle about it, and by then, of course, he had taken some pictures of her, and had the confession which he said was good for seven years, and he could mail a picture and a xerox of her confession to dear Freddie if that was the way she wanted it. So she had slept with his friend in a motel over in Everglades City a couple of times, and then there had been others, and Lew would bring her fifty dollars, or twenty, or seventy-five, depending. And once, a year ago last July, he’d sent three of them to Naples and they’d gone cruising for four days on a big company boat with a hired captain and three sort of vice-president-type people, and that time it had been a hundred twenty-five from Lew and fifty that the man she was with had put in her purse like a bonus or something. She knew there were other girls, and she had only run into three of them altogether, the two others on the cruise, and one on a kind of double date right here in this motel.

  She counted, frowning, on her fingers and said that it had all lasted maybe fifteen months, and she could not remember the number of affairs, or the amount of money. Maybe twenty or twenty-five dates. Lew promised it would end when Fred came home. She had fin
ally realized that Lew knew he could control her, but Fred was something else. Fred would try to kill him and would surely kill her. She’d been terrified that Lew wouldn’t keep his promise, and she’d been terrified that Fred would somehow be able to tell what she’d been up to, but it had worked out all right.

  By then she had worked her way through the second gin and Coke. She was flushed and her articulation was not quite as distinct.

  “I’m just damn lucky I got out of it, Trav. I’m just lucky it’s over. I keep telling myself that. But it’s funny … I don’t know. I’m different somehow. I mean I feel I’m sort of faking the happy little wife bit. One time I got to fussing at Lew until he got sore and grabbed my neck and shoved me over to a mirror and hurt my arm and made me look into my eyes and say dirty things about myself. Things like: I’m a whore. I peddle my ass. I bang for a living.’ Things aren’t like what you always think they’re like, I guess. It’s not real different from dates, where if the guy is sweet and fun you have a good time, and if it’s some old fat guy, you just get it over with. I don’t know. Sometimes I think of standing on my feet in that place and how long it takes to make fifty, and how long it took to make fifty on my back. Fred is a great guy, really. I think that maybe somebody will come in and look at me and say let’s go, baby, and I’ll get in his car and never come back.”

  She lifted her wrist and peered at her little watch. She shifted in the chair, ran her tongue along her lips, took a deep shuddering breath. In a huskier tone she said, “Like now. If you should want it, honey. Like on the house.”

  “Let’s look at the pictures.”

  She came out of her sensual glaze. “Oh, sure. Jesus! I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately, I really don’t. Yeh, let’s look at them and then I got to get going because Fred could wake up and get worried and wonder what the hell and phone the place and find out I’ve been gone forever.”

  I laid the pictures out on the countertop under the lamp, one at a time. She came and stood beside me. Thirteen of them.

  “That’s Donna Lee something. She was on that cruise. She’s a real fun kid, real lively, and she’s got a real cute body as any fool can plainly see. She works in a real estate office. Up over the bank. Associated Realtors, Inc. No, I don’t know this one at all. I don’t remember ever seeing her around town anyplace. I have seen this girl somewhere. Let me think. I think she works in the courthouse. I’m pretty sure. This one I know. Sort of. Her name is Brenda Dennis? Dennison? Denderson? A name like that. She was on the double date with me. She’s sort of quiet and hard to know, and she isn’t built very good, is she? She works at Elian’s Stationery, but I haven’t been in there in so long I don’t know if she’s still there. I’ve seen this girl someplace I think, but I don’t know where. This one is older, huh? I never saw her before as far as I know.”

  When I turned the seventh picture she gasped and said, “Holy Maloney! It can’t be! This is Miss Kimmey, for God’s sake. She teaches third grade and sings in the choir at our church. She’s got a real nice soprano voice. The kind of clothes she wears, you’d never guess what a great body she’s got. Now how in the world did Lew ever nail her? Boy, would I like to find out.”

  She drew another blank on number eight. But she knew number nine. “That’s Linda Featherman. I nearly dropped my teeth when she turned out to be number three on that cruise. I mean there’s lots of money there. Big ranchlands and grovelands in the northeast part of the county. At first I thought she was going to spoil that cruise by acting as if she was so much better than Donna Lee and me. It was her car we went to Naples in, and she drove and hardly said a word all the way. She took darling cruise clothes along, worth like a fortune. But then she was okay after the first day, a lot more human. Poor gal, I couldn’t believe it when I read about it.”

  “About what?”

  “She got killed a little while ago. Let me count back. Two weekends ago, I think. The state police said she had to be going at least a hundred miles an hour, heading back out to the ranch at three or four in the morning, about fifteen miles north of here, and they said she probably fell asleep because there weren’t any skid marks. She just went right off a curve in a straight line and right into an enormous pine tree and broke it right off and hit the next one sideways. They say it took hours to identify her for sure.”

  Number ten was one Jeanie Dahl, and on seeing the picture she remembered Lew saying that Jeanie was in the club. She and Jeanie had both been in the Miss Cypress City contest when they were in high school, and Jeanie had been second runner-up and Dori had been third runner-up. Jeanie had been married and divorced, and lived with her mother who took care of her little kid while Jeanie worked in the office at Kramer Building Supply.

  Eleven was an unknown. Twelve was somebody she thought she had seen often around town, but had no idea where.

  I had adjusted them to leave Lillian (Lilo) Hatch (Perris) until last. She actually recoiled from the picture, and made a little coughing, gagging sound and turned away.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Her name is Lilo Perris. I don’t want to talk about her.”

  “Why not?”

  “Give me a minute. Fix me a drink. That made me go cold all over. That girl is crazy. I mean for real crazy. That girl is a maniac.”

  I made her the third drink. She was back in the chair. When she settled down she told me.

  “It was about the fourth time Lew sent me to meet somebody. He was a spook. He wanted things I didn’t want to do. So I wouldn’t. He got mad and I got mad and it broke up fast and I went home. I was waiting for Lew to come around so I could tell him not to send me to spooks like that. He sent Lilo to see me. That girl is crazy! She hurt me so bad I fainted, I don’t know how many times. After she went away I kept throwing up. I was so weak I stayed in bed two days. Then Lew came around and said the spook was a very important man in Tallahassee, and I was going to have another date with him. He said if I didn’t want to make the spook happy, he’d have Lilo come to visit me again. I think I would really rather die than have her start doing things to me again, smiling at me and giggling and calling me love names and saying how much fun it would be to really kill me. She’s as strong as a man, and she knows every way there is to hurt a girl. She’s absolutely insane, Trav.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Maybe … a year ago last June. Look at me. Look at the goose bumps on my arms and legs just thinking about her. I used to get nightmares about her and wake up bellering and twitching around.”

  “Do you know of anybody else who was in on it, where I don’t have a picture here?”

  “Gee, I don’t think so. I can’t think of anybody.”

  “Possibly Mrs. Betsy Kapp?”

  “In the dining room at the Lodge. The old blonde with the huge boobs. No, and I can tell you why I’m so sure, even.” She started to say something, then closed her mouth and looked guilty.

  “What’s the matter.”

  “Well … I guess I lied a little. But only about one of the gals.”

  The truth came out. She had lied about Jeanie Dahl, about only remembering Lew mentioning Jeanie when she saw the picture. She saw quite a bit of Jeanie, as a matter of fact. Why shouldn’t old friends see each other? As a matter of fact, Jeanie was the crazy friend who’d go with her to the dog tracks, and Jeanie had gotten in as bad a jam about money as she had. And as a matter of fact once she’d started having affairs that Lew lined up, she had some drinks with Jeanie and told her all about it, and how it was, and what the payoff was, and found out Jeanie had been clipping a little bit now and then from petty cash at Kramer Building Supply and was scared of getting caught. So she had asked Jeanie if it was okay if she told Lew that Jeanie might be interested, and at first Jeanie said no, and then she changed her mind. And it was nice to have a friend who knew the whole score, and was in it with you, and you could talk to them the way you couldn’t talk to anybody else in the whole world, and compare notes, and tell about the w
eird things that happened. So because of Jeanie’s mother and the kid, they had set it up for Lew and Jeanie to meet at Dori’s apartment while Dori was working, and when she got off work Jeanie was still there, alone and asleep, and said she and Lew had made the deal, and sealed it with a lot more than a handshake.

  “I kinda sluffed over Jeanie’s picture because … maybe I felt a little weird about getting her into it all, too. But when you’re in a bind, you wish somebody you knew was in it, too. At least I warned her about that Lilo and told her she better not ever get choosy about anything if she got set up with a spook. Since Freddie came home seven months ago, I go have lunch with Jeanie whenever my shift works out right. It’s like … resigning from something and you want gossip about what’s going on since you left. She took a whole week off from work last January and flew to Jamaica free, and her date was there waiting, and it turned out to be … well, never mind who. Anyway an important businessman in this town. She came back with a marvelous tan and brought me some fantastic perfume, and she made five hundred dollars!”

  “What about Betsy Kapp?”

  “Oh. Lew came by when Jeanie was getting off work one day, last November, I think, and he drove her out into the country someplace and parked and he came all apart. She said he cried like a little boy. She said he cried on her shoulder and she held him, and she said it was funny to feel kind of warm-mother toward him, knowing all the time what a mean son of a bitch he is. He finally told her he had beaten up a woman who’d done him the greatest favor any woman could ever do a man. It was all some kind of crazy thing about how he fell in love and he all of a sudden couldn’t get it up, and the doctor he went to told him it was a common thing, a guilt thing, feeling unworthy and all that, and gave him shots but they didn’t help. And the same thing happened with other girls then, and then the wonderful woman had helped him and he could again, and then he had beaten her up and he didn’t know why. Jeanie finally found out it was Mrs. Kapp, and so she just naturally asked him if Mrs. Kapp was taking on customers for him, too. Jeanie didn’t mean anything by it at all. But he reared back and gave her such a clout on the side of the head her ear rang day and night for a week, practically. He said Mrs. Kapp was a fine woman, not some cheap little piece of ass like Jeanie. So I guess Mrs. Kapp never had any part of the action. Jeanie said he acted strange, and he had been acting strange, and after that he got more weird. Jumpy acting.”