The Quick Red Fox

by John D. MacDonald

  “I’m just visiting. My name is Trav.”

  “Are you visiting Jackie? She doesn’t throw up as much. Maybe she can go home. Just to visit.”

  “As a matter of fact, I’m here to visit you.”

  All the warmth and light went out of her face. “He just sends people. Tell him I don’t give a damn. Not now. Not ever. Screw him. Tell him that.”

  “Nobody sent me. I just know some people who know you. I was down this way. So I stopped in. That’s all, Nancy.”

  “What people?”

  “Carl Abelle. Vance and Patty M’Gruder.”

  Scowling, she turned away from me and went back and sat on the log. I followed and stood near her. She squinted up at me. “I know that Carl. A strong back and a weak mind, believe me. He had that stupid idea. The perfect orgasm. Can you imagine? Maybe he thought it worked me up. Damned coward. Too scared to light a fire in that line shack. My God it was always cold in there, way up on that ridge, with Auntie thinking I was on the slopes all day. He stole a key from the office. Fifty dollars a day she was paying him for personal instruction. We’d pile everything on that bunk. What was he trying to get? Tell me that? You either come or you don’t. Right? And I almost always do, no matter how quick they are the first time. Last week or last year I was trying to remember Carl’s name. My God, he was beautiful on skis. When we’d leave that cabin he’d push me down in the snow and rub snow on my face to get me all pink and outdoorsy-looking, and then guide me down the slopes, all the way to the lodge, half stoned on that brandy, like dreaming and floating. But he said some real dumb things. What was I then? He probably told you. Nineteen? I guess so. I’m remembering better. You ask Stan. He’ll tell you. But what good is it? I mean some of the things you remember. Sit by me. But please, I don’t want to talk about those puke M’Gruders. I don’t have to, do I?”

  “No.”

  “What have you got there?”

  “Some pictures.”

  “May I see them, please?”

  She held them in her lap. She looked at them slowly and solemnly, one by one. I watched her face carefully. She sorted one onto the top. She stroked a thumb along the line of Sonny’s back. “Burned, burned, burned,” she said softly.

  “Sunburned?”

  “Oh no. He hit a wall. It was his supercharged Merc with special cams and like that. I wore the big red hat so he could spot me, and I sat on the wall by the pits that day. We towed that car all over everywhere, and it burned him up in Georgia. It bounced and bounced.” She stroked her thigh. “Sonny liked me in whore clothes. He bought them all. Tight short skirts and tight bright sweaters, and he said I had to swing it when I walked. Proud as a rooster, and mean as a snake, Sonny was.”

  She ran her thumb across his image on the photograph. “This one right here. Sonny Catton. He took me along when the party pooped out. I was with him maybe two weeks, and he kept beating me up, for taking another drink, or somebody making a pass at me, or sometimes just from remembering things from the party. Like this picture here, me with this one. What was his name? Cass? Cass something. He drew funny pictures of people. He gave me one of me and I lost it. You know, I’ve lost every single goddam thing I ever owned? I got sick of him hammering on me and I went home and what do you know, my fa-fa-f-f … the man who married my mother, he had pictures like this. He said tell my friends it was no sale. They could publish them in the Chronicle. Boy, what a smack across the face he gave me! His face was like a stone. I guess it bugged him to see pictures of his wife laying people. Wife! Did you hear that! I’m his d-d-daugh-daughter. Made it!”

  My skin had the cold quivers, just below the nape of my neck. “What did you do then, Nancy?”

  “Are you another doctor? For a thousand years I’ve been up to my hips in doctors. I was a woman when I was fourteen, and when I got caught doing it, that was when they sent me to the first one, and I could tell he would have liked it too, if he could get up the nerve. He used to get sweaty and clean his glasses and walk around. They all make a big thing out of stuttering when I try to say … ef aye tee aitch ee are. Are you going to give me tests?”

  “My name is Trav. I’m not a doctor.”

  “Trav. Trav, why did he tell you to bring me these pictures? They aren’t even the same. There were more of me. Hey, you know who this was? This one with no face? A very famous movie star. Lysa Dean! Honestly, I’m not kidding. She’s just a little thing, but so gorgeous.”

  “Who took the pictures?”

  “How should I know? I didn’t know anybody took any pictures until I walked into his study and he had them. He gave me money and I caught up with Sonny again. I was with him a long time. Months, I guess. All over. Wherever he raced. I remember the day he died and the next thing I remember is in the hospital in Mexico City. Somebody had to take me down there, but who? I couldn’t have wandered down there, could I? Somebody dumped me in the hospital parking lot in the middle of the night, I found out later. I had bronchial pneumonia and two broken fingers. I was hallucinating and I had a dose of clap. When I could tell them who I was, they wired … him. As soon as I could be moved, he sent people to bring me back and put me in … Shady Rest? Refuge Mountain? One of those crappy names. How do you expect me to remember. I can’t even remember being brought here!”

  “How did your father get those pictures anyhow?”

  “How do I know? He thought I knew all about it. He thought it was friends of mine, and we cooked it up to get money out of him.”

  “This is a pretty good place to be, Nancy.”

  “I guess so. I guess I like it. Sometimes I get very very nervous. After that I get sad. I’m sad a long time. I hum sad songs all day without making a single sound.”

  “Did anybody at that house party say anything about pictures of Lysa Dean?”

  She turned toward me with an exasperated look. “You know, you get to be a terrible bore about those pictures. No. Nobody said anything. I didn’t see a camera. Let’s drop it, shall we?”

  I put the pictures away. “Why are you mad at the M’Gruders?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Then we won’t.”

  “You know, you are terribly nice, Trav.” She smiled at me, all abeam with innocence. She put her hand on mine.

  “Thank you. You’re a nice girl.”

  “I’m a slut, darling. I’m a drunk and a slut. May I ask you a very personal question?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why don’t we go over in the bushes a minute, sweetheart?” She tugged at my hand quickly and strongly, trying to press it against herself. I yanked my hand away. “It keeps me from getting nervous,” she said. “Please, honey. Please, please, please.”

  I stood up quickly and she jumped up to try to press herself against me. I held her off with my hands on her shoulders. She dipped her head sharply to the side and licked my hand.

  I shook her. “Nancy! Nancy! Cut it out!”

  She shuddered, smiled sadly, backed away. “It never makes any difference to a man. Why should you care one way or the other?”

  “I have to get back. It was nice to visit with you.”

  “Thank you,” she said politely. “Come and see me again.” She squared her shoulders like a child about to recite. “When you get back there, tell my f-f … tell him I am being a good girl. Tell him that … I am getting good marks.”

  “Of course.”

  “Goodby.”

  I walked the hundred feet to the entrance to the path. When I turned and looked back at her, she shook her fist at me and yelled, “You ask that Patty M’Gruder why she kept locking me up! You just ask that goddam bitch!”

  Halfway back to the compound I stopped in the path and leaned against a tree. My knees felt strange. I lit a cigarette, took one drag and threw it away. Stan Burley was in the small office talking to Dana. He got up and brought me some iced tea and said, “How did it go?”

  “I don’t know. Her memory was pretty good. It damned near broke my h
eart listening to her trying to call him father. What’s the matter with that son of a bitch? He threw her away. He threw away a pretty good person, I think.”

  “Was she any help?”

  “I don’t know. I have to check it out. Stan, she made a hell of a direct pass at me.”

  He raised his ridged monkey brows. “Little early for that. I’ll start keeping a close watch on her. Thanks.”

  “What’s the prognosis?”

  He wiped his hand across his face. “I don’t know. The highs don’t seem to get any higher, but the periods of apathy seem deeper and seem to last a little longer. And when she comes up out of them I have the feeling … there’s a little less of her. She’s lost some songs she knew a month ago. She’s getting a little more awkward and untidy feeding herself and caring for herself. I … I guess we’ll keep her here as long as we can. She loves the beach so. She hates to be locked in. This place has the illusion of freedom. Maybe a big institution could arrest it, even improve her a little, but never enough to let her out into the world. She isn’t dangerous to anyone. She’s a victim. He made her a victim.”

  “What happened to her mother?”

  “She died in a hotel fire when Nancy was seven. She was with a lover at the time. Nancy has a strong body. I am afraid it will keep going long after the brain is gone. Maybe for another forty years or more. There is a brother. Older, and from all reports, extremely righteous. Nice to see you again, Trav. Nice to talk to you, Miss Holtzer. It’s a strange world, you know. We can defend ourselves from our enemies, and even from our friends, but never from our family. That tyke was sent to boarding school at age seven. She had lovers at fourteen, alcoholic dementia in a mild form at fifteen, and her first shock treatments at sixteen. I am off to paint chairs. My cure for depression and indignation. Come by any time, either of you.”

  We stopped at a fish house in town for lunch. We had the privacy of a corner booth. I told her about the dead one. Sonny Catton. I told her about the eight pictures, the slap, the hostility toward the M’Gruders, her final strange comment.

  “From the way you look it was rough, Travis.”

  “I guess so. I don’t know why it rocked me so. I guess because she looks so fresh and clean and bright. I guess a man gets the feeling … a lovely mixed-up girl, if you could take her along, love her, treat her well, she’d shape up. But you know you can’t. Maybe the last one to be in a position to do anything was Catton, but he wasn’t the type for it. I guess she got handed around quite a bit, with none of them doing her much good.”

  I told her about Carl Abelle. The corners of her strong mouth turned downward in an ironic smile. “The Galahad of the slopes. I met him once. I’d been working for her just a matter of weeks. It was quite a while later they went off to stay in that Chipmann house. He was pretty gorgeous. Dark blond curly hair, huge shoulders, bronzed face, custom sports coat, silk ascot, and a little faky German accent. Hair a little much over the ears. You know. A little wave there too. Lots of huge white teeth, and a very Continental handshake. The almost too typical Hollywood stud.”

  “Smart enough to rig a blackmail thing on Lee?”

  “Oh, I doubt it. I doubt it very much. It couldn’t have been his idea in any case. Somebody could have bullied him into it. I think he would shatter quite easily under pressure. Only a damn fool would have tried to use him that way. He would crack too easily. And it wasn’t a fool who arranged it all.”

  “Have any ideas?”

  “Who there had money or reputation or something to lose? Lee, and the architect’s daughter, and the M’Gruders. Cass apparently, and Sonny and Whippy and the college boys and Carl would be very small fry, not worth the effort compared to the others.”

  “Agreed. Keep going.”

  She shrugged. “There’s nowhere else to go. We know that two out of the three were contacted. Lee paid off. Mr. Abbott apparently didn’t. And we’ll know about the M’Gruders later on. We should go to San Francisco, I imagine. After Abelle or before?”

  “After.”

  “Tomorrow?” I nodded. She slid out of the booth. “I’d better do some phoning right now then.” She walked to the cashier for change.

  When we got back to the boat, Dana checked her copy of Lysa Dean’s promo schedule and found that Lysa would be starting a rest hour in about another fifteen minutes. She waited twenty minutes and phoned her on a private line that did not go through the hotel board. They talked together for about fifteen minutes. Then Dana called to me, holding the phone with her palm over the mouthpiece.

  “She wants to talk to you. I’ve caught her up to date on all of it.”

  When I spoke to her, Lee said in a lazy drawl, “Sweetie, how do you like the little giftie I sent you?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The highly efficient tragic figger, stupid.”

  “Oh fine, just fine.”

  “She’ll keep you honest and keep you scrambling, dear. I miss her already. Little things are starting to get fouled up. So don’t keep her too long.”

  “I didn’t make any request, you know.”

  “Oh, don’t be stuffy! And by the way, McGee, don’t waste your time in any idle hopes. She’s quite something in a sort of swarthy hearty way. The look of banked fires or something. Some of the greatest experts in the industry have taken their Sunday hack at that, dear, and wandered glassily away with icicles forming on their whatsis. It is sort of an in-group joke.”

  “I’m laughing myself sick.”

  “You are really a wretched chap, aren’t you? Why do I still like you? I understand the Abbott girl is out of the ball park.”

  “Did she seem odd to you at the time?”

  “Not particularly. She kept belting herself pretty good, so who expected too much sense? And she was pretty rowdy now and again. Roughhousing into other people’s little games. She kept talking about her dear daddy. And singing that song at very strange moments. My Heart Belongs to and so forth. When you see Carl, dear, grasp his hand, smile, give him my love, and kick him solidly in the jewels. I would pay a small bonus for that.”

  “Just one thing. Is that little accent of his genuine?”

  “God, no! It’s for the ski trade.”

  “Are you getting good protection?”

  “So far it looks fine. Take care of yourself. Dana will keep me informed.”

  “Want to speak to her again?”

  “Goodby and love to you both. Happy hunting.”

  I hung up and said, “You plan to keep her informed?”

  She had taken the checkbook from the desk drawer to post the cash deposit she had made. She looked over at me, one dark eyebrow lifting slightly. “In that business, she’s so used to intrigue. Everybody watches everybody. And if you work for somebody you have to be at a certain established level, a pecking order. She’s just trying to fit you into the ranks, Travis, somewhere between a script writer and an associate producer. She doesn’t know it won’t work, but there’s no point in … in making a point of it. I’ll tell her what she should know, and enough to keep her happy, and no more or less than that.

  Okay?”

  “Divided loyalty?”

  “Not really. You are both after the same thing, aren’t you?”

  “Should that be a question?”

  “Mr. Burley told me about a girl named Marianne. I don’t have as many questions about you as I used to.”

  “I’m reasonably honest, Dana, in my own way. That’s about as far as I can go with it. Maybe I have a price. Nobody’s come up with just the right amount yet. But maybe next time. Let’s see how quick you can get us out of here, Efficient Girl.”

  Six

  She managed to switch it to earlier arrangements on Wednesday. By noon, in a gray February world, we had come down through snow flurries to land at Albany, and had taken off again. When the snow ended the sky was a luminous gray. I looked down at the winter calligraphy of upstate New York, white fields marked off by the black woodlots, an etching without
color, superbly restful in contrast to the smoky, guttering, grinding stink of the airplane clattering across the sky like an old commuter bus.

  Dana seemed pensive. She had tilted her window seat and had her face turned toward the window, and I could not tell whether her eyes were open or closed. I looked at her still hands resting in her lap, against the nubbly fabric of her suit skirt. You look at hands long enough, you can turn them into animal paws. Her hands were a little larger than perhaps they should have been, the fingers very long and firm, the nails oval, quite narrow, convex. The pads of fingers and palm were heavy. The backs of her hands were very smooth and youthful. You look at hands as animal paws, and you think of the animal aspects of the human, and suddenly you are back on that Pacific terrace, seeing that final and most dangerous form of gluttony.

  Perhaps, I thought, the most absolute way of categorizing people is by what they are capable of, and what they are not capable of. Temptation does not deliver most of us into evil, because temptation is a constant and evil is a sometime thing with most of us.

  So far I had seen only two people whose pattern of life had led, almost implacably, toward that terrace. One of them had been on exhibition all her adult life, driven by restless greed, emotional instability, a desire to be noticed. Her artificiality had made this just another act, not particularly real to her while it was happening. The younger one had become food for Jack London’s Noseless One long before Abelle and the M’Gruders led her onto that terrace. It, like Mexico, like the tour with Sonny Catton, was just another part of the self-destruction.

  I would never talk to Catton. Perhaps it had not mattered a damn to him one way or the other. For the soul to be offended it must first exist. Perhaps to snake-mean Sonny, broads were broads were broads, and if they came in a bundle instead of in separate rooms, he could not care less. He had brought one along and discarded it for one that suited him better. Perhaps for him it was like an exchange counter.

  I could not be Sonny. I had the old illusions, including the one that maybe I might be gaining a little bit, just a very damn little bit, in wisdom as my time went by. And wisdom says there are no valuable goods on the bargain counter. Wisdom says the only values are the ones you place on yourself. And I have locked myself into this precarious role of the clown-knight in the tomato-can armor, flailing away at indifferent beasts with my tinfoil sword. A foible of the knight, even the comic ones, is the cherishing of women, and perhaps even my brand of cherishing is quaint in this time and place. Though I have faltered from time to time, I do want the relationship, if it does become intimate, to rest solidly on trust, affection, respect. Not just for taking, or scoring, or using, or proving anything. That knocks out group adventures right there. Not for recreation, not for health rationalizations, not for sociologically constructive contacts. But because she is a woman, and valuable. And you are a man, and equally valuable. There are more than enough girls and boys around. Break down, McGee. Say it. Okay, for love and love alone. They are people, goddam it, not pneumatic, hydraulic, terrace toys. Not necessarily Heloïse and Abelard, Romeo and Miss Capulet, or even Nappi and Joe. But just a crumb of some kind of love there, lad. Love that makes her sweet to hold, warm to murmur to, after there’s no more fireworks left in the park. And you can’t do that with a terrace toy.