The Quick Red Fox

by John D. MacDonald

  Dana rolled her head toward me and smiled and said, “I was almost asleep.” She put a fist against her yawn. “You know, when you are thinking of something and then it all turns crazy and then it turns real again, and you know a dream got mixed into it.”

  “Tell me the crazy part.”

  “It’s just plain dull, Trav, really. I was wondering if the car would be there as I ordered, and then suddenly I was remembering the last time you and I wanted a car—we didn’t ever, of course—and we walked out and got into it and it didn’t have any wheels. You were furious and you kept saying they always did that to us. And I was thinking that this time I would look for the wheels before signing the slip, and suddenly I realized how nutty that was. I suppose some psychiatrist would have a ball with that.”

  “I suppose he’d say you were realizing I can’t get anyplace with you.”

  I said it off the top of my mind. She looked at me for another moment and then said, too casually, “I guess you could make it mean almost anything.” She turned her face away again, and I saw the redness climb her throat and up her cheek, suffuse her forehead and slowly die away. It had been too logical a guess, and she had for a moment accepted it, and then taken the next step of translating what it meant to dream that this time she’d look for the wheels before signing the slip. I realized I had innocently created the sort of awareness which would keep her doubly on guard against any kind of emotional involvement with me, no matter how minor.

  She arranged the car while I claimed the luggage. When she got in beside me, she had a marked map in her hand. She showed it to me and said, “Just the general idea. I’ll call the turns.” A most valuable gal.

  “Food?” I asked.

  “Woops,” she said, and scrambled out and hustled back into the terminal. She came out with new marks on the map, and we went a few blocks out of our way into North Utica into one of those Italian-Tourist-Close-to-Motels enterprises called the Diplomat. It wasn’t going to excite any farflung gourmet exclamations, but the shots of anti-freeze were excellent protection against the 35-degree afternoon, the lowering sky, the chill moistness of the air. Hot Italian sausage with spaghetti al dente was a similar precaution.

  You know how it is. You wonder. We had drifted into a silence not entirely comfortable. I hadn’t seen much lift or life in her. If we were going to spend a lot of time together, it could become a drag. So you wonder, and you think something up. When you say it, you more than half expect a totally blank look and some kind of query like, for example, “Hah! What’s that?”

  So when she just started to wind a fork of spaghetti, I said to her, “By God, Myra, I bet you forgot to turn the thermostat down.”

  Her fork clattered on the plate and she said instantly, “I forgot to turn it down? Frank, dear, it was on your list. Remember?”

  “Of course it was on my list. I reminded you and crossed it off.”

  “I’d think that once, just once, you could … What was it set for?”

  “Seventy-five. What else? Sixty-eight is enough for normal people. You have to have seventy-five.”

  “Oh God, all that lovely oil. Darling, maybe we could phone the Hollisbankers.”

  “So how do they get in?”

  She hesitated a moment. “I have it! With Helen’s figure, Fred could slip her under the door.”

  I broke up. A clear victory for her side. You never know until you try. We laughed like a pair of idiots, and then her very next chuckle turned into a strangled howling sob and she jumped up and fled for the ladies’ room, nearby lunch customers staring at her and me. She had finished most of her lunch. I finished mine. I would say she was gone a good ten minutes. When she came out her color was not good. Her fine eyes were red-rimmed. She slipped meekly into her chair. She told the waitress she was finished. Just coffee, please.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to me. “I didn’t expect that. It got a little too close. All of a sudden. I’m sorry, it was just a little too much like … another game I used to play. Don’t look so concerned. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “I won’t try it again.”

  “That’s probably better.”

  The coffee came. The silence was laborious. As we were getting ready to leave, she suddenly gave me a strained and vivid smile and reached a trembling hand across to touch my wrist and said, “Darling, did you remember to mail the cards to Mom and Sis?”

  “I mailed them. Your mother got the one of the bucks with their horns locked.”

  She pursed her lips for a moment, and I knew she was thinking how to cue me so I could win. “I wonder if Mom will think there’s some kind of symbolism there, dear, and get upset or anything.”

  “Baby, fighting over dough is the thing she does best.”

  She laughed. Acknowledgment of defeat. Bad jokes win. Her eyes glistened, but she laughed. I was proud of her for coming through, but I could not help feeling guilty too. She had her adjustment, her acceptance. It wasn’t fair to stir her up. It wasn’t fair to her for me to want to see her lift a bit, to see what she looked like behind the iron control. Two games had set a pattern. We were Myra and Frank. If I tried another round, she would feel obligated. So I would leave it up to her to start the next one. And she would know I was leaving it up to her and why. That was the funny thing about us, back in the beginning. I had the absolute confidence in her knowing what I was thinking.

  We went north up Route 8 into the hills. We went through a village named Poland. It looked like a Christmas card. The roads were dry, the snow banked high. It was the sort of town that you do not particularly want to live in, but wish you had come from. It looked like a very good place to be from.

  Further up into the Adirondack Forest Preserve, the air was clearer and colder. The heater in the little sedan was comforting. Winding road, winter lakes, blackness of the evergreens against snow, tree-stubbled hills like the hump backs of old browsing beasts, eating away at eternity. At least we had changed the quality of our silences. Or that lovely land had changed it.

  Speculator, at almost four in the afternoon, was about the size of Poland, but with about one-fifth the charm. Progress had begun to clomp down its main drag, whanging at a tin drum, sending off little clusters of neon. The ski kids were roaming the area, hooting their rut cries at each other, speckling the snow banks with their bright empty beer cans. I parked in front of a big supermarket-type general store called Chas Johns, where all the fluorescence was on in the gray dullness of the overcast afternoon, and Dana called from an outdoor phone booth. She was back in a few moments and said, “They say he went down to Gloversville to pick up a railway express shipment of skis or something, and they expect him back at six.”

  “So, accommodations I guess. I want a chance to measure him a little, get the right time and place to break him open.”

  “Remember, he’ll recognize me.”

  “I know. And I may need you for the finale, after he’s gone soft. We’ll see.”

  “It’s strange. You make him sound like a locked box.”

  “That’s what they are, Dana. And usually somebody skimped on the design. Bad welds and a dime-store lock.”

  There was a small and relatively new motel jammed into almost the center of town at a strange angle. I made a try. The gentleman in command said he had one twin-bed room only because he had a cancellation, and he could let it go for one night only, because he was reserved from Thursday right through the weekend, and so was everybody else. It was good snow and a good forecast, and it looked like one of the big weeks of the season.

  I went back out and got in behind the wheel and said, “Dana, I can’t help how this sounds, believe me. It’s a high-school routine all the way. You can go in and ask him.” I told her what I’d learned, and said, “Suppose I take it and you drive back down to Utica and stay there and come on back out in the morning.”

  She hesitated for four seconds and then said, “If you’d just do something about that horrible snoring, see a doctor, anything, then we wouldn�
�t have to go through this all the time.”

  “Myra, I freely admit I do breathe a little heavy.”

  “A little heavy! When you get going, the neighbors run out into the night screaming ‘Lion, Lion.’ ”

  “Only when I get over onto my back, dear.”

  “Then you have a back on both sides. Anyway, dear, I’ll sleep so well in this mountain air, I don’t think you’ll bother me tonight. But do try to hold it down to a dull roar.”

  “You act as if I enjoyed it.”

  “Because, my pet, you sound as if you were enjoying it.”

  A car came in and I was afraid we would lose the room if we waited the game out, so I went in and signed us in as T. McGee and wife. The two three-quarter beds seemed to crowd the room. We did a lot of polite walking around each other, getting organized. An electric wall heater kept the room reasonably comfortable. With one quick trip to the ice machine, and with a considerable magic, she materialized a squat broad silver cup, the right amount of gin on ice, the two drops of bitters.

  “The celebrity treatment?” I said ungraciously.

  “I wouldn’t want to get out of practice.”

  “Well … thanks. It’s fine.”

  “You are so welcome, Travis.”

  We decided it would be best to leave her right there while I took the first little prod at Carl Abelle. The Mohawk Lodge was seven or eight miles out Indian Lake Road, over some impressively hilly highway. The grounds were aglare with floodlights against snow. The establishment was garishly new, pale varnished pine, A-frames, Swiss-kwaint gables. The sign advertised three tows, eight downhill runs, instruction, beginners’ slope, Icelandic bathhouse, prime steaks, cocktails. The whole place was noisy, bursting at the seams, with much coming and going and giggling and hooting.

  I worked my way into what seemed to be the main lounge. An ox could have been roasted on a spit in the fieldstone fireplace. The ceiling was low, beams huge. There were a lot of overstuffed couches and chairs, and deep rugs underfoot. There seemed to be a great number of young people sprawled on the floor. I saw several legs in casts, arms in slings. Sweating waiters brought drinks from a corner bar, stepping over and around the people, grimly ignoring the shouts for service. A big stereo juke made loud Beatle-music, and some snow bunnies were energetically trying to revive the Twist, wearing their indoor-fireside-snuggle-pants rather than their outdoor togs.

  I angled toward a waiter and stuffed a bill in his shirt pocket. It bought me four seconds of attention. “Carl Abelle,” I asked.

  He pointed with his head, and said, “Red jacket.”

  Abelle was leaning against a paneled wall. He wore a red blazer with an Olympic pocket patch, silver buttons, a white silk ascot. He stood with his head bowed, a dainty little snow bunny in each arm. One of them was talking directly into his ear. She writhed and she worked her face in the curious manner of many women telling a dirty joke. I held off until she had made her point. Silvery glissandos from the girls. A hohoho from Abelle. I moved in and the three of them looked up at me with the polite glaze the ingroupers give the outsider. I wasn’t wearing the garments.

  The girls looked very young, and the out-of-doors had given them both a lovely healthy flush. But their eyes looked wise and old. Carl looked magnificent. The bronzed blond hero, white of tooth, clear of eye. But somehow it all looked like makeup. And in spite of the tailoring, he seemed to be getting a little thick around the middle.

  “Abelle?”

  “Yesss?”

  “I bring you a message from friends.”

  “Zo?”

  “From Cass. From Vance and Patty. From Lee and Sonny and Whippy and Nancy and the whole gang.”

  “I know zose people?”

  “Yes, you know zose people.” I didn’t say any more. I let him hang there. He added them up. He wasn’t very good at it. His face got sulky and wary.

  “Oho,” he said. “Would you mean Miss Abbott? And the M’Gruders?”

  “And the Cornell boys too.”

  “Giff them all my best regards, ya?”

  “That wasn’t exactly the message, Carl.”

  “Zo?”

  “If we could take a two-minute walk.”

  He hugged the bunnies, whispered to them, sent them off toward the fireplace with an identical little stroke at each upholstered little behind.

  “Now we can talk here, Mister …?”

  “It’s something in the car I want to show you.”

  “Bring it in.”

  “I’m sorry. I have to follow Miss Dean’s instructions.”

  He gained a little confidence. “Zo, you work for her. A very lovely little lady, ya?”

  “She sends her very special regards.”

  He puffed up very nicely. But then he remembered the names I had given him. He was not intellectualizing anything. He merely had the animal’s awareness of something not quite right. “What could that dear woman send me you could not bring in?”

  I winked at him most solemnly. “Herself.”

  He puffed up and he glowed. “Of courze!” He nudged me. “I understand.”

  “She isn’t exactly waiting out in the car, you understand. She’s at a private lodge down by the lake. She heard you were here. She said it was a very pleasant surprise. She’s staying with old friends. Incognito.”

  “She sent you to bring me there?”

  “On impulse. You understand.”

  “Oh, of courze!”

  “Shall we go?”

  He nibbled at his mouth, an Airedale frown between the hero brows. “I must come back later. Social obligations here. But yes, it would be rude not to come at once.”

  We went out to the rental car. His red blazer was handsome in the floodlights, between the snow banks. He strutted. There was a Teutonic wrinkle across the back of his neck. Maybe it had grown there in response to the faked accent. I had two inches in height, and he had at least fifteen pounds in weight. I couldn’t risk taking any sporting chance with him. He might know how.

  I hurried past him and opened the car door for him. He accepted it with regal satisfaction. As he started to bend to duck into the car, I screwed my feet firmly into the packed snow, pivoted very smartly, and with the best right hook I have, made a very good attempt to drive that middle silver button of the jacket right through to his backbone. These little melodramas always make me feel like a jackass. But you must do them briskly. A sudden, merciless, ugly violence is the great leveler. Men revert to childhood. The night is full of spooks and ghosties, and they are reminded of death. A man whipped in a fair fight retains stubborn remnants of pride and honor. A man rendered helpless without warning is much more suggestible. With a great gassy belch, he doubled. With hands clasped together, I chopped down against the back of his neck, off to one side, just below the mastoid bone. As he crumpled, I body-blocked him into the car, kicked his dangling legs inside and slammed the door. I imagine it took about three and a half seconds.

  I got behind the wheel. He was edged partially under the dash. His relaxation was total. I could hear him snore. A few hundred yards down the highway I pulled over, hauled him onto the seat, removed his white silk scarf and tied his wrists together with it. I tied them together in crossed position, under his husky thighs. He toppled over against the door and moaned. Pathos in silver buttons. The world is shiny and the surface is a little too frangible. Something can reach out of the black and grab you at any moment. Everybody wears a different set of compulsions. You can be maimed without warning, in body or in spirit, by a very nice guy. It is the luck of your draw. I did not feel like a nice guy. His red coat was a little too brave and pretty. Now it was a child’s toy on the beach after the child drowns. This one was not villainous. He was just a silly stud. A ski-slope, and less reptilian, version of Harry Diadem, a specialist in racing wax and erogenous zones.

  I drove on down into Speculator, looking for a place to take him. The snow banks made it difficult. I turned west on Route 8, and after about a mile I found
a darkened structure on the right, some sort of a building supply establishment. The drive and parking lot in the rear had been plowed out. Nearby houses were dark. I could see no pedestrians in the glow of the spaced street lights of the village. No traffic was coming in either direction at the moment. So I turned in quickly, skidding the back end, bumping it off a snow bank, turning off the car lights as I reached the parking lot. I backed it around behind the building, ready to head out. I got out quickly, looking around to see if I had attracted any attention. Snow laid a silence across the land. A dog barked, a comfortable distance away. Night sky speckled with silver. Bare trees in silhouette. Moving flicker of light as cars went by. It was about twenty degrees, I guessed, not too uncomfortable with no wind.

  I opened the door on his side. He was coming out of it enough to strain for balance, but he came rolling out, onto the packed soiled snow of the parking area. I bent, braced myself well, and picked him up, the two hundred and twenty or so pounds of him, striving to make it seem effortless. The mature male is seldom picked up. It resonates the lost memories of babyhood. It induces a feeling of helplessness. I walked four strides with him, and dropped him into the slope of the five-foot bank of bulldozed snow, dropped him butt first, as into an armchair. He chunked down into it, tilted slightly back, feet free, knees up, lashed wrists holding him hunched and about as helpless as a man can be.