The Quick Red Fox

by John D. MacDonald

  But something still bothered me, something I could not quite define. So I took them out and shuffled through them again. The clue was there. It was the terrible loneliness on their faces. Each one of them, in all that lazy confusion of intimacies, in that lexicon of clinical descriptions, looked utterly, desperately alone.

  And they were beautiful people. Lysa Dean was the featured player in every shot, and her body was as superb as its promise.

  I felt as if I had glimpsed the edge of some great paradox. The grotesque ultimate of togetherness is the final loneliness of the human spirit. And once you had been that far out on that barren limb, there was no chance of ever coming all the way back.

  I shrugged and looked at them again to see if they told me anything about time lapse. I put them away again.

  From the varying lengths of shadow in the pictures, from the changing positions on the sunny terrace, I could tell that they had been taken over a matter of hours, perhaps on separate days.

  Soon she returned, coming in with a look half challenge, half calculated demureness. “Well?” she said.

  “It doesn’t look as if it was a hell of a lot of fun.”

  That response startled her. She stared at me. “Oh, you are so right! You know, it seems to me as if it was all a thousand years ago. I guess I’ve been trying to fade it out of my mind. Oh Christ, there’s kind of a sickly excitement about it, I guess. But what I remember now is being constantly cross and irritable and impatient. And sleepy. Just terribly sleepy and never being allowed to sleep long enough, and having the feeling that all the rest of them were just one … one thing somehow. Not like the pictures.”

  “Are these exactly like the other pictures you got?”

  “They are the twelve exact same shots, but not exactly like the others. These are fuzzier and grayer, sort of. Not as sharp. But I didn’t save any of the others to compare, of course.”

  “We have to look through these together so you can give me the names to go with the faces, Lee, and tell me what you know about each one.”

  “I suppose it has to be done.”

  “Like a trip to the dentist. I think there’s at least one fair picture of every other person in the group.”

  She made a face. “Those pictures are such a big boost to my pride, Travis. It does something for a girl to look like a fifty-peso floozy in a back-room circus in Juarez.”

  I turned a light on and we sat at the desk in the sunken part of the room. I found a pencil and paper. I pointed to the pictures and asked the questions. She answered in a thin small breathy voice, her face half turned away. I took the following notes.

  1. Carl Abelle—about 27—six-footer—husky—blond—has left the Valley—try Mohawk Lodge near Speculator, New York.

  2. Nancy Abbott—about 22—tall, dark, slender, heavy drinker, good singing voice, believed to have been divorced, perhaps daughter of an architect. Took ski lessons from Abelle at Sun Valley. Believed to be a house guest of …

  3. Vance and Patty M’Gruder, perhaps of Carmel, married couple in middle twenties, apparently well-off, Vance a sailboat buff, ocean racing etc., have house in Hawaii (?), husband very tanned, short, broad, muscular, going prematurely bald, wife lush & fair, very long blonde hair, quarrelsome, strong English accent.

  4. Cass—could be first name, last name or nickname. Seemed to have known M’Gruders previously. About thirty. Dark, hairy, handsome, very powerful. Amusing (?). A painter, perhaps. Friend of …

  5. Sonny, a little younger than Cass, slender, cold-eyed, flavor of violence, untalkative, occupation unknown, who had brought along …

  6. Whippy. About nineteen then. Copper curls, freckles, perhaps a waitress or clerk, scared of Sonny.

  7. Two college boys from the east on a summer trip, apparently joined the group at the bar where Abelle ran into Nancy Abbott. Boys about 20 or 21, Harvey a big blond cheery one and Richie a smaller dark nutty one. Cornell.

  On the clearest prints of each I had marked the corresponding number from my notes. I could sense Lee’s relief when I put the photographs back into the envelope.

  “Who got it all started?” I asked her.

  She tightened up again. “Why? What do you mean?”

  “I don’t think a camera gets that lucky. Somebody had to set you up. Or maybe the real target was somebody else, and you turned out to be a bonus.”

  “It was a long time ago, and I was tight most of the time.”

  “Tell me what you can remember of how it got started.”

  She got up slowly and went over and rested her fists on a windowsill, staring out, the fox-pelt hair softly backlighted. I leaned a shoulder against the wall by the window. She talked. Her voice was small. I could not see much of her profile because of the way the hair swung forward. Round of forehead, soft snub tip of nose. I did not press her. I let her find her own words in her own time. Her memory was more acute as regards textures than incident. Six men and four gals that first evening and night. Four places to go—two bedrooms, a long couch in the living room, the leathery sunpads on the night terrace. It was a prowling thing then, pursuits and tensions, Lysa Dean a primary target for all but Carl, low lights and ultimate arrangements, and some re-pairings when partners slept.

  In phrases and fragments, theatrical sighs and beautifully timed hesitations, she painted the flavor of the hot bright terrace on that first full day of houseparty. Pitchers of Bloody Marys, vodka haze, arrows of white sunlight through squinting eyes, compulsive beat of the music on the portable radio, oil and aromatics of sun lotion, jokes and tipsy laughter. A game of forfeits, with the rules rigged so that to play was to lose, and to lose was to soon be naked.

  In half-sleep, mildly and amiably drunk, after the game had ended, she had fended off the increasing insistence of Cass, whining at him irritably when he became too bold. Finally, propping herself up to drink again, she saw several sound asleep, and saw others who were accepting what she had refused. So, squeezing her eyes hard shut to achieve the illusion of privacy, she had surrendered herself to Cass and her own responses.

  She straightened and turned toward me and hooked the fingertips of both hands into my belt, leaned her forehead against my chest. She sighed and said, “Then I guess it stops mattering so much. I don’t know. You just seem to learn how to turn one whole part of your mind right off. It’s all just something that happens. Everybody is in the same boat. So it doesn’t seem to make any difference any more. Nothing does.”

  She sighed again. In the cold soft light I could see the scalp, clean and white as bone under the coppery spring of hair. “I don’t know who started it. Patty was bossy. I can remember people getting mad. Whippy cried sometimes. Cass knocked Carl down once, I don’t know why. One of those college kids, the big one, kept getting sick. He couldn’t drink. It’s all so vague, sweetie. If you watched, and you were all turned off, it was just sort of stupid and boring, and if you’d started to hum a little, you could get into that one or set up something else, or go take a shower, or go make a sandwich, or go build another pitcher of drinks. It just … wasn’t all that important.”

  She slid her small hands around my waist, laid her cheek against my chest and held tight. I stroked her hair. She took the deepest breath of all and said, “Listen to me! God, I know it was important. There are some kinds of poisons, I heard you look as if you got over it, but you never really do. I wish somebody could stick a knife in my head and cut out those four days and nights, Trav. A girl thinks about herself a different way, after that. I have this lousy dream ever since. I’ve fallen into this empty white swimming pool and the sides are too high to get out. The pool lights are on so it’s bright as a stage. And there are six ugly snakes in there on the tile, all after me. I can run and dodge fast enough to keep away from them no matter how they try to hem me in. They all look exactly alike. Then I keep calling for help and suddenly I see that the walls are all kind of coming in. It is getting smaller and smaller. Then I know they are going to get me. As the place gets smalle
r the snakes get bigger, and I scream and wake up, all sweaty and trembling. Just hold me tight, Trav. Please.”

  She was trembling and I wondered if it was faked. After several minutes she quieted down and moved away from me, shoved her hair back with the back of her hand and said, with a funny little shy smile, “You don’t want me, do you? I could tell. Just from your hands. Kind of gentle and … fatherly and remote. God, I wouldn’t blame you for not wanting such a public piece.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “No? You are certainly not one of those, sweetie.”

  “No. Well, in all honesty, if that’s what you want, I guess the pictures have something to do with it. A man likes the illusion of exclusive option, even on the most temporary basis, I guess. But with or without pictures, let’s just say I’m not a trophy hunter.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Every redblooded American boy should ride a bike no hands and win some merit badges and go to bed with a household name. Some of them don’t get over it, that’s all. I had my celebrity innings, but I’m not a locker room historian. I outgrew my bike too, Lee. It’s a big scene here. Rich silent house and the closed door and your tight pants and that rostrum type bed. And mutual attraction. But it isn’t worth it. It would be like being taught to dance by your elder sister. She would keep trying to lead, and giving irritable little instructions, and counting out loud and spoiling the music. Then she would give you a patronizing pat and say you did just fine.”

  For a moment she had the malignant rigidity of a temple demon. Then an urchin grin, seen often in your favorite movie palace, broke it up. “My God, you are a strange one, McGee. You wouldn’t want me as a gift, eh?”

  “Not unless and until it could be more than this for us, Lee.”

  “You mean like real true love?”

  “Affection, understanding, need and respect. You can be sarcastic about that too, if you want. Bed is the simplest thing two people can do. If it goes with a lot of other things, it can be important, and if it goes with nothing else, it isn’t worth the time it takes.”

  She strolled over and curled up in a big chair and pondered me, finger laid against the side of her small nose. “The next time around, Mr. McGee, can you arrange to show up in Dayton about fifteen years ago?”

  “I can make a note of it, Miss Dean.”

  “I’ve been through too many mills this time.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “But you said respect.”

  “Once in a while you stop posing for me and remembering lines from old movies, and then I could respect the person that shows through.”

  “It could be strange to have a friend like you. I have no female friends, really. And just two male friends, fine old guys, both in their early sixties. I love them dearly. Males in your bracket are either studs or competitors, sweetie, or they want to find an angle to get rich off me.”

  “We might end up friends, Lee. I better go along. I am going to take these pictures along.” As I picked them up from the desk she hopped up out of the chair and came running over and grabbed at the envelope. I did not let her pull it out of my hand. I said, “Either you trust me all the way, or I get off right now, Lee. I need them for information and leverage.”

  After looking at me with a long and searching intensity, she let go. “I never thought I’d let anybody even see those. Trav, will you be terribly careful?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can send Dana over with the expense money tomorrow.

  Will that be all right?”

  “Fine.”

  “Please be careful with those pictures. If they get out, my career is dead right now. And … as you must damn well know, it is the only thing I have left.”

  Tears balanced on her lower lids, and one broke loose and tracked her cheek. It did not look real. A makeup man had darted onto the set and put them there with an eyedropper. Pure glycerine. Maybe they weren’t real. She would have learned to cry almost at will, and cry in a way that would leave her as lovely as before.

  “You be careful, Lee. I don’t like the sound of that note. Sexually disturbed people try to be the sword of the Lord, going around slaying the sinful. See that you get pretty good protection this week in Miami.”

  She walked me to the door. She caught at my arm, gave me a quick kiss, as soft and trusting as a child’s, then went down the corridor with me, found Dana Holtzer in a small room, typing, and turned me over to her. Dana got up and took me down the stairs and out to the waiting limousine. I saw the quick and wary way she glanced at the envelope I was carrying, and caught a flavor of total disapproval.

  The driver’s name was Martin. She told him to take me back, or to wherever I wanted to go. It was after five. I had him stop where I could phone. I phoned Gabe Marchman in Lauderdale and told him I had a problem. He said it was convenient to bring it right over.

  On one of those hunches that may save your life, though you can never prove it one way or another, I had Martin drop me off downtown. I went into one end of a big drugstore and out the other and into a cab.

  Gabe Marchman was a great combat photographer. You have seen his name on those classic Korea things. A land mine smashed his legs all to hell. While convalescing in Hawaii, he met and married a very rich and very beautiful little Chinese-Hawaiian girl named Doris. Gabe looks like a sawed-off Abraham Lincoln. He is still on crutches. They have six kids. With his mobility gone, he has gotten into another aspect of photography. He has one of the most completely equipped private labs in the South, taking up a wing almost as big as the main house. He does experimental work, and problem assignments for large fees. He is a sour little man, adored by all who get to know him.

  Doris, blooming large again with child, sent me on through to the lab. Gabe grunted at me. I said I wanted to know as much as possible about some pictures I had with me. We were in his print room. He turned on more intense lights. He levered himself onto a stool and spread the dozen pictures out in a row on top of the work table.

  From his lack of reaction, they could have been pictures of puppies or flower gardens. “Whadaya know about ’em?” he said. “Just technically.”

  “They were taken a year and a half ago in California on 35mm film. The person involved estimates that the only place from which they could be taken was about a hundred yards away, but that is just an estimate. The person involved saw another set of prints over a year ago, and they were just like these as far as subject matter, but these seem to be fuzzier and grayer.”

  He grunted and got out a large magnifying glass and began to go over them very carefully, one by one.

  I said, “I forgot something. My client saw and destroyed the negatives. The negatives included more than in a lot of these pictures.”

  He continued his careful examination. Finally he swiveled around. “Okay, we accept the hundred-yard distance. I would say it was probably Plus-X using a very fine telephoto lens, one thousand millimeter. Maybe the f/6.3 Nikkor, a reflector type with two mirrors. It’s only about so long and weighs three or four pounds. It was used with a tripod or some other kind of solid rest. With 35mm a lens that size gives you about a twenty-power magnification, so at a hundred yards it would give the same as a normal lens fifteen feet from the subject. These three are the only ones where he printed the full frame. Now, if he printed about half the frame, it would be like being seven or eight feet away from the subject. And this is the average for most of these. Just this extreme close-up was done from maybe a quarter or less of the negative, showing the woman at a viewing distance of about three feet, with less definition. There’s good depth of field and all motion is frozen, so a hundred yards away I’ll buy. Okay so far?”

  “Yes.”

  “Assuming the same guy who took the pictures made the original prints, he’s a good workman. Excellent exposure, good edge to edge definition, and when he masked the negatives and did his printing, he had good quality control. You can tell that he did some burning in and dodging, and
he couldn’t help using a pretty good sense of composition. I would say he took a hell of a lot of shots, maybe several hundred, and came up with the best ones. Very sharp, very clear, and he made high-gloss prints. I’d say definitely a pro, if that’s any help to you. Now then, some clown got hold of a set of the prints. See this little flare here on this one and this one. That’s where his lighting kicked back off the gloss. He made a set of copy negatives and a new set of prints. This is crappy paper, and he butchered his developing and butchered his printing solutions and times, but there was enough quality in the prints he copied so that all in all it comes through not too bad. The guy who did the originals would be incapable of doing such cruddy work the second time around, even if he was operating in a motel closet. But, having the copy negatives, he can make any number of these poor prints. Your client destroying the original negatives means nothing now. It is unmistakably her in every one of these. I would guess she’s the one you’re working for.”

  “Yes. Now I wonder if you can do something with these.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  “From these can you make another set of negatives, and a set of prints that are a little different than these?”

  “McGee, if you start out with crud, you end up with crud. I can’t get back to the original print quality. I can print for more contrast and clean up these whites a little, but a close focus on fuzz gives you fuzz.”

  After an original reluctance, he began to get interested. He used a copy camera, a larger negative size, a copy film with a fine grain. By the time he had developed the negatives, Doris began to howl for a little cooperation, so he hung them up to dry and we went in for drinks. The nursemaid had taken over the bedtime routines. The older ones trudged in to say their well-mannered goodnights. Doris cooked and served an old Chinese-Hawaiian specialty—broiled steaks, baked potatoes and tossed green salad. The three of us, in front of the big fireplace with a very small fire, revamped the State Department, simplified all tax legislation, tore down half of Florida and rebuilt it in a more sane and pleasing fashion.