The Quick Red Fox

by John D. MacDonald

  “Not necessarily,” I said. “They might want to check it out.”

  “But why?”

  I nodded to Dana. She took the picture from her big purse. I slipped it out of the envelope and leaned and handed it to Alex Abbott. He held it in two trembling hands and stared at it. He swallowed convulsively. In a small voice he said, “This one wasn’t …” He caught himself. “She had this? My sister had this?”

  “This is one of several. Mr. Burley has them in his safe.”

  “But where would she get them? She didn’t have them when she was taken down there?”

  “They came to her in the mail,” I said. “Mr. Abbott, what was it you started to say? This one wasn’t … This one wasn’t what?”

  He opened his eyes very wide. He smiled sadly. “I guess I should be frank with you people.”

  “We would be most grateful,” Dana said.

  “I will admit that I made a mistake when I … arranged her visit with the M’Gruders. I knew them as a lively couple. I thought they would keep her amused and out of trouble. I had no idea they went in for this sort of thing.” He handed it back to me.

  “I would think you would act a little more angry,” I said.

  “To tell you the truth, there were other pictures of Nancy. They were mailed to my father, with a note demanding money. He had a very nasty scene with Nancy. She left. He showed me the pictures. He was wretched. Heartbroken. He asked me to destroy the pictures and I did so, very gladly. Several days later, after Nancy was gone, someone phoned my father about the money. He told them to go to hell, that they could do any damn thing with the pictures they pleased.”

  “He didn’t contact the police?”

  “No.”

  “Did the man on the phone threaten him with anything?”

  “No. Dad said the man was quite polite. He seemed to have some sort of lower-class English accent. He said he might phone back later on, but as far as I know he never did. In one of the pictures it was … well, it was Vance M’Gruder and my sister. I can tell you that I was furious with him. I went down to see him. He was alone at the house. Patty had left him. I learned later their marriage was being annulled. He didn’t seem guilty or ashamed or anything like that. Just terribly indifferent. I couldn’t make a dent on him. He said he was not and had never been in the nursemaid business, no matter what impression I may have had. He did not know or care where Nancy was. I actually thought I might find her there with them. I wanted to know who had taken the pictures at that … circus.”

  “Did he know?”

  “He said that nobody at the party had taken them. He said it had to be someone with a long lens.”

  “Did he seem surprised to know pictures had been taken?”

  “No. I wondered if he’d been approached for money also.”

  “Did you ask him?”

  “No. He seemed cross and impatient and anxious for me to go.”

  “Did you know any of the other people in the pictures you saw?”

  “Aside from the M’Gruders, just one fellow, an artist I …” He stopped suddenly, frowning at us. “Why are you so curious about the pictures, Mr. McGee?”

  I shrugged. “I guess it’s only natural. Mr. Burley was curious too. They do have some bearing on the girl’s evaluation of herself. I suppose if she feels it was a conspiracy, a trick, she feels better about it.”

  “Mr. McGee, if Nancy ever had any hopes of inheriting half the estate, she spoiled her chances long before those pictures were taken, believe me. Naturally I’ll support her as long as she lives. But what you ask seems …”

  “Oh, I don’t think she could cause you much trouble, Mr. Abbott.”

  “I don’t see how she could cause any.”

  I smiled and shrugged. “An institution might call in somebody to give her legal advice. You know how it is. Contingency basis. And you say the estate is sizable. She does sound plausible. All it could do, I guess, would be delay the probate.”

  He studied his thumbnail. He bit a small piece out of the corner of it and got up and went to the steel window and teetered back and forth, heel to toe.

  “You say she seems happy there at the Island?”

  “She has friends there. And the illusion of freedom.”

  Without turning, he said, “And this deterioration you mention. It is progressive?”

  “From all indications.”

  “I imagine that if I footed the bill for additional care for … say another six months, by the end of that time she …”

  “Let’s say eighteen months.”

  “I’ll take my chances on a year. No more.”

  “I will so inform Mr. Burley.”

  He looked at his watch. “Elaine gets nervous if I leave her in there too long. Uh … thanks for the report. Goodby.” He walked out without looking directly at either of us.

  On the way down in the elevator, Dana looked at me and slowly shook her head. “You are very damn good, Trav. You are better than I realized. You are shameless. You are a bastard, Trav. You know very damn well he thinks you are going to split the increase with Mr. Burley. He thinks you are going to bring suit in her name if he doesn’t play. And you sat there, so righteous and kindly. Oh boy, oh boy.”

  “A man like that can’t believe anything that doesn’t sound crooked.”

  “A man like that makes me want to go scrub. They better not leave him alone with dear Dad. He’s impatient.”

  Before I started the car I turned to her and said, “Itemize.”

  “What? Oh. He didn’t have the pictures taken. The man who took them or had them taken has a cheap British accent. M’Gruder knew about the pictures. And something else. Let me think. Oh, the M’Gruder marriage was annulled. Did I miss anything?”

  “You are very good too.”

  “I am afflicted with an orderly mind.”

  And so we drove back to the heart of the city. San Francisco is the most depressing city in America. The come-latelys might not think so. They may be enchanted by the steep streets up Nob and Russian and Telegraph, by the sea mystery of the Bridge over to redwood country on a foggy night, by the urban compartmentalization of Chinese, Spanish, Greek, Japanese, by the smartness of the women and the city’s iron clutch on culture. It might look just fine to the new ones.

  But there are too many of us who used to love her. She was like a wild classy kook of a gal, one of those rain-walkers, laughing gray eyes, tousle of dark hair—sea misty, a lithe and lively lady, who could laugh at you or with you, and at herself when needs be. A sayer of strange and lovely things. A girl to be in love with, with love like a heady magic.

  But she had lost it, boy. She used to give it away, and now she sells it to the tourists. She imitates herself. Her figure has thickened. The things she says now are mechanical and memorized. She overcharges for cynical services.

  Maybe if you are from Dayton or Amarillo or Wheeling or Scranton or Camden she can look like magic to you because you have not had a chance to see what a city can be. This one had her chance to go straight and she lost it somehow, and it has been downhill for her ever since. That’s why she is so depressing to those of us who knew her when. We all know what she could have been, and we all know the lousy choice she made. She has driven away the ones who loved her best. A few keep trying. Herb Caen. A few others. But the love words have a hollow tone these days.

  Eight

  Investigating a cold cold trail can be deadly dull and very discouraging. This one worked pretty well, perhaps because there were two of us, two sets of hunches, two sets of ideas, two methods of approach.

  We found Caswell Edgars in Sausalito. He looked twenty pounds heavier than in the pictures. He was living in a pigpen litter in the expensive home of a skinny drift-wood blonde on the far side of fifty. She was there too, in extremely tight pants and a high girlish giggle. Any minute now Cassie was going to start working hard getting ready for a one-man show she was going to arrange for him. They had a music system that would have blown the walls
out of a less substantial structure. She had soiled ankles, a grubby neck, and a black eye which had faded to saffron. They were hooked on something. From the way they acted, I suspect one of the hypnotics. The house smelled like old laundry. There was a loose and dangerous and desperate flavor about the alliance, and it was easy to imagine that in their blundering they would sooner or later manage to set fire to the place and scream with laughter until they found all exits blocked. She kept talking about poor little ole Henry, who seemed to be a husband, but I could not determine if he was living or dead. If dead, it was conceivable he was buried in the yard, under the weeds. Edgars knew absolutely nothing about any pictures. But he had no difficulty remembering the occasion. He had musician talk which he didn’t do too well. “Man, that was a bash. That little movie piece was pure stone fox. The boss fox of all time. Somebody trying to scuffle her with the pics? You never said, man.”

  “No. I never said.”

  “Sonny traded the waitress for the tall brunette, and then he burned. It’s a harsh way to make bread, man, that chance of burning. I read it someplace.”

  “Put on my records, Cassie doll baby bug, huh?”

  I don’t think either of them noticed we’d left, or cared particularly. Though it was warm in the car, Dana shuddered.

  “Scratch one more contestant, Dana doll baby bug.”

  “Please don’t,” she said in a thin voice.

  “Like they say, lives of quiet desperation.”

  “Trav?”

  “Yes?”

  “I think that terrace was a damned unlucky place to be. Sonny Catton, Nancy Abbott, Carl Abelle … and Caswell Edgars.”

  “Punishment from on high?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe it can happen, Trav.”

  • • •

  She took care of Carmel with some phone calls. The M’Gruder place had been sold almost a year ago. We had less luck with newspaper accounts. I did dig up some background on M’Gruder. There had been an elder brother, killed in a war. M’Gruder’s father had invented a little gadget. Every cracking plant in the world had to have one or two of them. Vance M’Gruder had married one Patricia Gedley-Davies some three years ago in California, after apparently importing her from London. She had crewed for him in smaller sailboats. There was no social prominence, nor any attempt apparently to achieve any. But there was money, and so one would think the annulment would be more than a six-line paragraph on page 36. It had happened about two months after the house party.

  Dana Holtzer sat in my hotel room with her shoes off and her feet up, frowning thoughtfully after having made a Sunday afternoon call to Lysa Dean.

  “This annulment thing,” she said. “What you think of, in a state with a community property law, it’s the cheap way out.”

  “Yes indeed.”

  “And this was a closed session or closed hearing or whatever you call it, just the judge and them and a lawyer, and everybody agreeing to everything, and a declaration by the judge that the marriage had never existed in fact or something. And this wasn’t a humble woman, Trav. Sort of noisy and bossy. Let’s say she came from nothing, and she married a rich man. Would she give up without a battle? What made her give up without a battle?”

  “And where is she?”

  We couldn’t answer our questions, but we could look for answers. I decided we would split up on Monday, to save time. I would pursue a small idea of my own. She would use Lloyd’s Register as her guide book, and work the boaty people, the ocean sailing types, with appropriate cover story, and see what she could get in the way of gossip.

  It rained all day, matching the mood of the offices I visited. Investigation agencies have very little need for decor. They like to keep the overhead down. Their usual customer does not shop around, looking for better draperies. Most of them are sad, soft, pale, meaty people. They operate with about the same verve as do the people who come to spray your home with bug juice.

  I had my lines down pat by the time I hit the third one. My name was Jones, said with that emphasis which indicated it was anything but Jones. My employment was “managing my own investment program.” That brought a little flicker into tired eyes. My young Italian wife was playing around. I was positive of two men. Perhaps there were three. I wanted somebody who could get some flagrante pictures of her, very quietly and inconspicuously, without her knowing. Then, with the pictures in hand, I could dicker with her and get out of the marriage without too much expense.

  No sir, we don’t do that kind of thing.

  Who does? Where should I go?

  I just wouldn’t know, mister.

  At four o’clock I hit one who was sufficiently unsavory and hungry. He had the cop look. Not the good cop look, but the apple-stealing look. It was a very good guess that he had been busted for the wrong combination of greed and stupidity, and that he wasn’t going to do too well in this line of work either. He had a desk in one of those warehouse offices, the kind where you get the desk, the mail drop, switchboard service and an hourly rate on secretarial help—along with a ragtag collection of phone solicitors, speculators in distressed merchandise, independent jewelry salesmen and so on.

  He listened to my story and looked at me with the concealed anguish of a toothless crocodile inspecting a fat brown dog on the river bank. He wanted to know how to get at me. We hitched chairs close and hunched toward each other. He had that breath which exceptionally bad teeth can create.

  “Now, Mr. Jones, I maybe can help and maybe I can’t. A thing like this, it would be strickly a cash arrangement. You unnerstand?”

  “Of course.”

  “Now I’ve got a guy in mind. He’s tops. What he goes after, he gets. But he comes high.”

  “How high?”

  “Considering the risks and all I would say this guy couldn’t be touched for less than five thousand, but he’s a real pro, and he will come up with shots of that little two-timing wop that’ll nail her but good. This guy, he’s got all the techniques and equipment, but he’s funny. He doesn’t feel like working, he doesn’t work.”

  “I never heard of such a thing.”

  “Like an artist, like, he’s got temperamental, you know?”

  “I guess I know what you mean.”

  “What would happen, he would work through me. Now I don’t want to be wasting my time trying to talk him into anything. What I need, I need a guarantee of good faith on your part, I mean that you want to go ahead at least far enough to take care of the first part of the trouble I’m going to, namely trying to get him on the phone long distance.”

  I took my wallet out below the desk edge, took a hundred-dollar bill and put it near his elbow. “Is this okay?”

  A big paw fell on it and it was gone. With the back of the other paw he wiped his mouth. “Just fine. Now you go wait out in the hall. There’s a bench out there to sit on.”

  I sat for nearly fifteen minutes. Odd-looking people came and went, tenants and clients and customers. Underside people. The ones that somehow seem to be clinging to the damp underside of reality. The ones that look as if they could truly astonish a psychiatrist or a bacteriologist.

  He came out and hunkered in close beside me, to rot my collar with his foul exhalations. “What happened, I can’t get him, but the way it looks I got some leads, there’s somebody can do a nice job, give me a little time on it.”

  “Why can’t you get the man you were talking about?”

  “He’s been dead a while. I didn’t know that. I didn’t hear about it, the way things are, him out of town.”

  “What was his name?”

  “There are guys around just as good. What I want, you give me how I can get in touch with you, and when I get a good man lined up, one I can guarantee will do this little job, then …”

  “I’ll give you a ring in a few days.”

  “On account of I got to do some digging to find the exact right guy for your problem, what about you give me the same figure again as a retainer?”

  “We bet
ter talk about that if you can find anybody.”

  After a few more half-hearted attempts, he went shuffling back into his rental bull pen, pants droopy in the seat, hair grizzled gray on the nape of his thick neck.

  I made it to the nearest rancid saloon in about eight big bounds, shut myself into a phone booth and called back. I had remembered the name of the switchboard girl on duty. It was posted on her board.

  “Miss Ganz, this is Sergeant Zimmerman. Bunco Squad. Within the past twenty minutes you placed a long distance call for Gannon.”

  “Who? What?”

  “Please give me the name, number and location of the call he placed.”

  “But I’m not supposed to …”

  “I can send for you, Miss Ganz, and have you brought down here if you want it that way.”

  “Did … did you say Zimmerman?”

  “If you want to play it safe, Miss Ganz, call me back here at headquarters. We have a separate number.” I gave her the pay phone number. She had been starting to cool off, and I had to take the chance or get nothing.

  In thirty seconds the phone rang. I put my thumb in the side of my mouth, raised my tone level a half octave and said, “Bunco, Halpern.”

  “Sergeant Zimmerman, please.”

  “Just a minute.” After a ten count, I said, “Zimmerman.”

  “This is Miss Ganz,” she said briskly. “About what you wanted, the call was to a Mr. D. C. Ives, in Santa Rosita. 805-765-4434. That number had been disconnected. Then he called a Mr. Mendez in Santa Rosita, 805-384-7942. They talked for less than three minutes. Is that what you wanted, Sergeant?”

  “Thank you very much for your cooperation, Miss Ganz. We’ll protect our source in this matter. We may have to ask you for some other favor along the same line in the future.”

  “You’re very welcome,” she said.

  A nice efficient careful girl. She had to make certain she was really talking to the cops.

  Dana got back to the hotel a little after six. She looked pallid and twitchy. Her smile came and went too quickly. She had called me as soon as she got in, and I went down the hallway to her room. A woman in that condition needs to be hugged and held and patted a little. But we weren’t on any kind of basis where I could do that.