The Quick Red Fox

by John D. MacDonald

  “Yes sir.”

  “Yes, Trav. Can we do it that way, Dana?”

  “Of course, Trav.”

  “When will you get loose?”

  “Actually tonight, about midnight. The new girl is taking my accommodations at the Sultana at Miami Beach. Suppose I check in Monday morning with you right here. Nine?”

  “Make it ten. Or you can come right here tonight when you’re through. There’s an extra stateroom. With a lock on the door.”

  She nodded. “It would be simpler. Lock or no lock, Trav, that’s one problem I don’t expect to have, and know how to handle if I do.”

  I went to the desk drawer, tossed the extra key to her. She caught it with a deft twist of the wrist. I explained it was to the lounge door, in case I was asleep when she got in. I took her on the tour. She said it seemed very comfortable. I was glad that with a morning attack of the neats, I had made up the Skeeter-tossled bed afresh. She went to the galley and rinsed her glass and set it out to dry. She went to my desk, wrote Gabe’s check, altered my dwindling balance, and presented me the check for signature, saying, “Perhaps you would like me to deposit some of that cash tomorrow? I made a note of the account number.”

  “Half of it, I guess. Thanks. Remind me tomorrow.”

  I was asleep when she arrived. The little bong of my warning bell alerted me. When anybody comes aboard it rings. Once. That is always enough. I hate unfriendly surprises. I had left a light for her. Gun in hand I prowled naked to the interior door to the lounge, opened it an inch and looked through, out of darkness, saw her open the door, reach back and get a big suitcase and come in with it, moving quietly. It was ten of one. I went back to my bed, behind the closed door to the master stateroom.

  She was a quiet woman. A thread of light appeared under my door. In time I heard water running in the head. The thread of light went out. Soft click of latch of the other stateroom. Night silence. A faint music from some other boat. Grumble of a truck on the drive. Distant whistling scream of a jet.

  A woman aboard, quite unlike any I could remember. This was a staunch one. A lot of people can be gutsy when there is a tiny morsel of hope. Damn few keep plugging when there is none. The human animal is basically selfish. Neither the damaged kid nor the lost husband could know what degree of care they were getting. Society could not let them perish if she ceased her support. They could not accuse her. But she had a moral obligation so strong, any other course was inconceivable to her. They were her family. There was no other consideration for her. Life had burned her out, but what was left was considerably more woman than was Lysa Dean.

  The night thoughts of Dana Holtzer depressed me. Self-evaluation. It is the skin rash of the emotionally insecure. I felt as if I had spent a lot of years becoming too involved with some monstrously silly people. McGee, the con artist. I would fatten myself off their troubles, and then take the money and coast for a time, taking my retirement in early installments. I was not a very earnest nor constructive fellow.

  But, I thought, what are the other choices? I am not a nine to five animal. I cannot swallow the myths which say that nine to five is a Good Thing because that’s the way nearly everybody else gets stuck. I cannot be an orderly consumer, with 2.3 kids and .7 new cars a year, and an after-hours secretarial arrangement. I am not properly acquisitive. I like the Busted Flush, the records and paintings, the little accumulations of this and that which stir memories, but I could stand on the shore and watch the whole thing go glug and disappear and feel a mild sardonic regret. No Professional American Wife could stomach that kind of attitude.

  I went to sleep feeling critical of the restless animal called Travis McGee, and awoke to the sun-brightness of nine in the morning coming through the small shaggy draperies in the stateroom, awoke to a scent of coffee, and some furtive clinking sounds from the galley.

  After I showered, I went out to find her as full of utterly impersonal morning cheer as a waitress in a good hotel. She said she had slept well, thank you. It’s a lovely day. The wind has stopped. It’s much warmer.

  She said she had taken a chance on the eggs. I said scrambled was just fine. The juice was cold, coffee fragrant, bacon crisp, eggs medium. She served us in the booth. It was a pleasure to watch her move. She gave no impression of haste. Yet each movement was sure, and flowed into the next one without hesitation, and so things got done with a fascinating quickness.

  She was wearing gray flannel slacks and a yellow sweater. She looked better in slacks than I would have guessed. She did not look really good. That long-waisted figure was a shade too hearty in the seat and hefty in the thigh to look splendid in slacks. Venus de Milo would have looked like hell in stretch pants. They look just fine on the gangly just-ripening teenagers, or on the calculated slimness of a Lysa Dean. But there is something forlorn and slightly touching about the rump of the mature female who fills them all too well. Dana could not have managed stretch pants, but she did sneak by with the beautifully tailored slacks. They were high-waisted enough to fake a little figure correction, and she was wise enough to wear sandals with about an inch and a half of heel to get her center of gravity a little further from the deck.

  As we sat eating our breakfast, I could see why she was worth a lot of money to a Lysa Dean. She had the deft knack of fitting herself to every situation and operating efficiently with a minimum of fuss. There was no sycophantic flavor about her. She knew her own dignity.

  I told her about the Busted Flush and how I had acquired it. It is one of my more polished routines. I don’t expect people to roll on the floor, but I generally get a little more amusement than I got from her. Her laugh was polite and came in the right places.

  Over coffee and cigarettes, the little note book came out.

  “I had a chance to spend quite a bit of time on the phone, Travis. Carl Abelle is at the Mohawk Lodge. He operates their ski school on some sort of franchise arrangement, and runs the ski shop. It would be impossible to stay there. They are booked completely. If you want to go there first, we are reserved out of Miami to Kennedy, arriving at two-fifteen tomorrow. There is a feeder flight which will get us to the Utica-Rome airport at four-ten. It is about a sixty-mile drive from there to Speculator up Route 8, and the roads are clear.”

  “What do you mean, if I want to go there first?”

  “Let me tell you about the others. The M’Gruders are divorced. I couldn’t locate her. He has remarried, just a short time ago. They’ve gone cruising down the Pacific coast to Acapulco, and it is possible they may be on their way back by now. I think I will be able to get a line on his ex-wife. But, having a little extra time, I thought I would see what I could find out about Nancy Abbott. Your notes said her father might be an architect. I checked standard reference sources and found a West Coast architect, Alexander Armitage Abbott in San Francisco. I have a friend in San Francisco, one of Bill’s old friends actually, who knows everyone. The architect has a daughter named Nancy, age 24, with matching physical description, so it must be the same one. She has had one annulled marriage. She is a problem drinker. She has been in so many messes, the family has sort of washed their hands of her. He said he would make a couple of calls and phone me back. He did, and said she is in Florida, at some sort of voluntary alcoholic retreat down at Bastion Key. It’s called Hope Island. Do you know about it?”

  “I took them a customer once. I took her back there three times, but it didn’t stick. The same guy may still run it.”

  “A Mr. Burley? I looked it up.”

  “That’s the one. He gave it a good try with my friend. But she borrowed a car, finally, and drove it into a cypress swamp at about a hundred miles an hour.”

  “I wondered if … as long as she’s so nearby …”

  “Right. We’ll go down there tomorrow. Cancel us out on the flight north, and don’t set it up again until after we’ve seen her.”

  “You have a car?”

  “In a manner of speaking. After you left yesterday I was wondering what you think
of all this.”

  “I thought I made that clear.”

  “I mean what do you think of it as a woman.”

  “Is that pertinent?”

  “Perhaps. It might help me in talking to the Abbott girl.”

  She thought for a moment. It was a long strong face, flat planes in the cheeks, very dark and vivid and lovely eyes, a prominent and forceful nose, broad firm mouth.

  “I would say this, I guess. Lee isn’t a suggestible child, you know. She’s had four marriages. And other relationships, some of them not particularly wholesome. But she’s always been pretty cautious. She is very frankly and happily promiscuous, but the situation in those pictures I would say is not her natural style. She was lulled into it somehow, and damned uncomfortable about it later on, and still is. I wouldn’t know how those other females reacted to it. But I don’t think it is accurate to think of Lee as just another woman getting involved in something messy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She is a property, Trav. She has few personal rights and privileges. She’s just worth too much money to too many people. They can’t afford a blemish on her. I’ve gotten used to thinking that way about her. So when I look at those pictures, I see them in terms of risk. Like watching a clown juggle priceless glassware. Those men were aware of it, of course. The unattainable goddess suddenly right there within reach, tired and drunk and sweaty and willing. They talk, you know. It spreads like ripples. It has had a lot of time. Little hints and rumors are coming back home to roost. She’s scared of that, too. She’ll be all right until one picture doesn’t pay off. Then there could be some reluctance. Why take a chance?”

  “How will this picture do, this Winds of Chance?”

  “Very well, I think. It’s the kind of part she always does well. Coffee?”

  “Thanks.”

  After she poured it she hesitated by the table, empty pot in hand. “You didn’t say anything about how you’d like me to dress, Trav. I thought.… I imagine women have stayed here with you. I’d be less conspicuous if I … stayed with resort clothes.”

  “You do fine. Use your own judgment.”

  Five

  On the way down to Bastion Key, Dana was delighted with my stately and ancient pickup truck. It is painted a hideous electric blue and called Miss Agnes by all who know her. It is one of the largest of the old Rolls breed, and some owner of long ago, perhaps after bashing her up, did a backyard job of converting her into a pickup truck. She is high and solid. It takes a long time to move her up through the gears, but when you have a chance to get her up to eighty, she will settle into it all day long in a rushing ghastly silence. She eats gas, but holds a little over forty gallons at a time.

  I liked Dana’s delight. It reminded me of the way she reacted to Skeeter’s mouse. I knew I had to watch it, or I would be trapped into the hopeless project of trying to find ways to delight her, to bring out that little spark so deeply buried.

  At Bastion Key you turn right off the highway beyond the town and follow a shell road out to a little short causeway that leads over to Hope Island. It is not a luxurious retreat. Stan Burley is the Schweitzer of the gin bottle. The buildings are surplus barracks he barged in long ago. He and all of his small staff are reformed drunks. If he has room, he takes you, at whatever you can afford to pay. He has some theories. They work for him. If you took a seven-foot chimp and shaved every hair off and painted him pink, you’d have a recognizable version of Stan Burley. His graduates who stay dry send contributions regularly.

  Before I could turn the motor off, Burley was striding toward us from his little screened office. It was warm and bright, eleven o’clock on Tuesday morning. The Florida bays were blue.

  “Ho, McGee,” he said, hand outstretched toward me, looking with a keen expectation at Dana, doubtless thinking her a new guest.

  I introduced them and said quickly, “We’ve come down to talk to one of your people, Stan. If possible. Nancy Abbott.”

  The welcoming light went out of his face. He gnawed his lip. “Miss Holtzer, you go wait in my office a minute, and Jenny will give you a nice glass of iced tea.” She nodded and walked away. Burley led me over to a wooden bench in the shade.

  “What’s it about, Trav?”

  “She was involved in something a year and a half ago. I want to ask her some questions about it. Is she all right?”

  He shrugged. “She’s dry, if that means very much. Has been since October. I shouldn’t tell you a damned thing about that one. But you worked so hard with me that time with Marianne. God help us, we fought hard, but we lost that one, boy. I’ll have to tell you, it’s on my conscience having her here, this Nancy. It isn’t the place for her, but no place is, not any more. Did her father send you?”

  “No.”

  “A retired policewoman delivered the child here in October. Sick drunk and down to ninety pounds. The D.T.’s and the spasms. Pitiful. I got a thousand then, and I get a thousand a month from a San Francisco bank. I write the bank a condition report once a month. After we began to bring her out of it, she puzzled me. I had a doctor friend look her over. Drunk is only part of it. But the thousand a month takes care of a lot of other ones. I’m an evil old man, Trav.”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Physically she’s as healthy as an ox. She’s only twenty-four. She had nine years of drinking, the last five of them heavy, not long enough to damage her. Mentally, you name it, she’s got it.”

  “She’s mad?”

  “Boy, she isn’t sane. What they did, they got too eager with her long ago. Some people who thought shock treatments were the answer to all. A cure for anxiety and depressive symptoms. As far as I can figure, she had over twenty complete series. That and the alcoholic spasms, there’s degenerative damage. She doesn’t track too well. She can’t handle abstract concepts. She’s trapped in a manic-depressive cycle. You hit her at her best. She’s on her way up now, but not up too high yet. This is her happy time. She could manage in public pretty well if too much wasn’t demanded of her. Pretty soon she’ll get real wild. Violence, compulsive nymphomania, such a craving for drink she’d kill to get it. Then I put her under restraint. Then she falls all the way down to the bottom. She won’t speak for days. Then she starts to slowly build again.”

  “How is her memory?”

  “Sometimes good and sometimes gone.”

  I looked at that tired simian face and remembered the way he had talked of Marianne. Of love and destruction.

  “What did it to her, Stan?”

  “Her? The father did it. The adored, talented, mighty father. It was an ugly marriage. The poor child was too much like her mother, so the father couldn’t help despising her. He rejected her. So because she couldn’t understand why—just like Marianne—she grew up with a conviction of her own worthlessness. Ah, that’s where the compulsions start, McGee. A person can not endure inexplicable worthlessness. So they establish the pattern of proving themselves worthless. For this child it was sex and drink. The guilts made her emotionally unstable. She was after destruction. The shock treatments and the spasms have done the job for her. She’s a destroyed personality. Where can she go? Nothing much can be done for her now. Here is as good as anywhere. Sometimes she is very sweet.”

  “I don’t want to upset her.”

  “What do you want to ask her?”

  “If she can remember some names. If she can remember some pictures being taken.”

  “Pictures?”

  I opened the envelope, sorted out two of them and handed them to him. His face puckered with concern and sorrow. “The poor kid. See what she’s saying, in effect? Love me, love me. Rejection by the father, rejection by the young husband, a butchered abortion, a year in an institution when she was seventeen, for hit and run.”

  “What would showing her these do?”

  “Trav, nothing can do her much good or much harm.”

  “Will she talk to me?”

  “In this part of the cycle sh
e’s very outgoing. She might get agitated. It might strike her as funny. I don’t know. It might accelerate this phase of the cycle. I can’t see as that would do any harm.”

  “Should you be there?”

  “I think you’d get more out of her alone. When there’s two people or more she wants to be entertaining. She reacts too much. She talks better to one. My God, boy, those are some pictures! A year and a half ago? I guess she was bad off then, but it would take a trained man to see it. Now anybody can see it.”

  “What’s the best attitude toward her, Stan?”

  “Just natural, friendly. If she says nutty things, just steer her back to what you want to talk about. Don’t look shocked and don’t laugh. We’re used to Nancy around here, and every drunk in the world has heard everything there is to hear. Treat her as if she was … a bright, sweet, imaginative child.”

  “Where is she?”

  He took me over to the office and pointed. “Go around the dining hall and the path to the beach starts on the other side of it. I saw her heading that way about twenty minutes or so ago.”

  I heard her before I saw her. It was a narrow beach, more shell than sand. It was a lovely contralto voice, very rich and full, singing, with maximum feeling, that cigarette commercial about filter, flavor, flip-top box. She was sitting on a palm log about a hundred feet up the bright beach from where the path exited. As I walked toward her, she heard my steps crunching the shell, stopped singing, turned and stared at me, and then stood up and came toward me with a warm and lovely smile of welcome, teeth very white in her sun-darkened face. “Hello there!” she said. “I’m Nancy. Are you one of the new ones?”

  She wore pale blue Bermudas, and a man’s white shirt with the tails knotted around her waist. Her dark hair was in braids. She was tall and lithe, and her eyes were a dark clear blue. After a mental hesitation, I realized she made me think of Jane in the very oldest Tarzan movies. She was barefoot, unwincing on the shells.