The Quick Red Fox

by John D. MacDonald

  She went back and sat on the bench. “At least I know why you two were futzing around out here on my expense money. Making the fun last, eh?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Damn you, tell me the real reason.”

  “The man who took you for a hundred and twenty thousand was murdered. It looked as if M’Gruder might have done it and could be arrested for it sooner or later. Then that house party would have figured in the trial. I wanted to check it out.”

  The quick red fox stared at me with foxy eyes, instantly aware of the implications. She fingered her throat. “Off the hook on that, eh?”

  “Yes. And I have a hunch you’ll be in the clear on the other too. I wonder about you, Lee. Take a look at that house party list. Nancy Abbott is beyond hope. Vance and Patty and Sonny Catton are dead. The photographer is dead. Poor little Whippy is trade for the butch.”

  “Really? What is all this? The hand of God? Punishment? Don’t be an ass, McGee. Sometimes the swingers go quicker. Maybe because they don’t have their feet braced. If that kind of little fun-party could kill, honey, lower California would be shrinking. You know, you do drag a little. Have you noticed it? Oh, hell, I don’t want to fight you. It’s going to be weeks and weeks before Dana can get back on the ball. That’s what they told me. I’ll keep her on salary, of course. And there’s a sick benefit thing she’s entitled to. Scotty will check that all out for her and take care of it. I think …”

  Herm came to the door and beckoned to her. She excused herself and went to him. They talked a few moments in low tones. He left and she came slowly back to me. “There’s a meeting I don’t dare miss. Damn it. I did want to see Dana, at least once more. Herm is going to have to smuggle me into town and bring the stand-in along later. McGee, my darling, I’ve got a thousand things to do …”

  “You sent for me. Remember?”

  She snapped her fingers. “Of course. Darling, you got the thousand expenses? You understand that our deal was to get me completely free and clear. Right? It’s all or nothing, you understand. If your plan works, you come to see me and we’ll settle up. All right? Darling, I do love Dana like a sister, but sick people depress me so. Could you find some nice little dude ranch or something for her, and a woman to take care. I’ll have Victor Scott work out the money end with you. Would you mind terribly? After all, you must find each other attractive. I’m entirely clear publicity-wise on this end because, thank God, there isn’t a shred to link me to Vance in any way.” She patted my face. “Be a dear and take care of our girl. Give her my love, and bring her back to me when she’s truly healthy again.”

  On Thursday afternoon the improvement in Dana was astonishing. The puffiness was gone, but there were saffron marks of the bruises. She wore lipstick. She was propped up. Her smile of greeting was shy.

  They let me have an hour with her. She was anxious to know what had happened. I knew it might tire her, but I had to brief her before some official visited her and asked questions. I caught her up to date, including the plan to trap Bogen.

  When I got back to The Hallmark at four that afternoon, there was a message to call a Los Angeles operator. When it went through, Lysa came on the phone, yapping with glee and relief. “McGee, darling? It worked, you shrewd, shrewd man! Our own people got him, and took away the nasty little gun he was going to shoot me with. Shoot the stand-in, I mean. And they went to his nasty little rooms and got all the photographs, and then they turned him and his nasty little gun over to the law. My God, I didn’t even know the terrible tension I was under. It’s such a relief.”

  “Wouldn’t it be nice if you asked about Dana?”

  “Give me time, for God’s sake! All right. How is she?”

  “Much, much better.”

  “That’s fine. That’s good to hear.”

  “You and I have a little accounting to do.”

  “I know that. Damn it, what makes you so sour? Give me a chance. What’s today? Thursday. Let me look at my book.” I waited five minutes and she came back on the line. “Darling, I’ll be home Monday afternoon. You fly in and come talk to me about it.”

  “Talk to you about it?”

  “Darling, you don’t exactly have a contract, you know. And a frightened person can make some very rash promises. Technically, you really weren’t in at the kill, were you?”

  “Monday afternoon,” I said and hung up. I did not know why I had been sour with her. Something was wrong, and I did not know what it was.

  On Sunday afternoon I found out what my instincts had been trying to tell me. The nurse and I helped Dana into the wheelchair and I rolled her to the big sun room, to a private corner.

  “Here’s the way I have it lined up,” I told her. I sat holding her hand. “Ten days before they spring you, then say a week or so more before you can travel, honey. So I tote you east, get you settled aboard, and after a few days we can go cruising. How does that sound?”

  She gently, firmly pulled her hand away from mine. She looked away from me. “Travis, you have been very good to me.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “It was all … mixed up and crazy. It wasn’t me, really. I don’t know how to tell you. I’m not like that. I’m married. I don’t even know how I could have been so … so silly. I think it was because of working for her, maybe. I’m not going back to her.”

  I put my fingertips under her chin and turned her head and made her look at me. I looked at her until she flushed and twisted her head away. She meant it. A new conception. You could get a hit on the head that could knock love out of you for good and all. When their eyes go that dead for you, there’s no way to ever get back. I knew what my instincts had been trying to tell me.

  “You don’t have to stay around,” she said. “I mean, I’m used to looking after myself. I’ll be fine, really. I do want to thank you for everything. I feel so sorry about … giving you the wrong idea and a lot of false hopes and …”

  “You can still be honest, can’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “How do you feel about my coming to see you here, Dana?”

  She hesitated, then lifted her chin a half inch. “I d-dread it, Travis. I’m terribly sorry. It just keeps reminding me of something I’d rather forget.”

  Then all that was left us was the goodby ritual, which was, after the details of what to do with her belongings, and my promise to send a nurse to wheel her back to her room, a handshake. McGee, the great lover. This was one I wanted to keep. No, not this one. I didn’t even know this one. The one I wanted to keep was the one Ullie had bashed on her way to go kill herself. This Dana wanted to forget that Dana. And damn well soon would. So shake hands with your darling and say goodby and try not to see the evident relief she tries to hide.

  The cab deposited me in front of Lysa Dean’s iron gates on Monday afternoon. The Korean let me through the gates. The maid let me into the house and then disappeared. The house was as silent as when I had been there with Dana. The big oil portraits of Lysa Dean stared emotionally at me through the half-gloom of draperied sunlight.

  I roamed and plinked two notes out of the gold and white piano. Lysa Dean came swiftly into the room, in black knit pants and a white silk overblouse, an effective combination to go with gold-red hair in a room of whites and blacks and golds. She wore woolly white slippers and carried a white envelope in her hand. She hurried to me, stretched up to kiss me with the faked sweet-shyness of a welcoming child, and took me by my good hand to a vast couch in a shadowed alcove.

  “How is dear Dana?” she asked.

  “Marvelously improved.”

  “When can she come back to work, dear? I really need her, desperately.”

  “She’ll have to take it easy for a while.”

  “McGee, darling, do use your influence on her. Tell her Lysa needs her sooooo much.”

  “I’ll tell her that the very first chance I get.”

  “You are a huge old sweetie. Now what about the photos I gave you in Miami?�
��

  “I’ve destroyed the ones I had made, with your face blanked out. When I get back, I’ll destroy the other ones … unless you want them.”

  “God, I don’t ever want to see them again. Darling, they say that little Bogen is way way off. If he’d tried to fire his rusty little gun, it would have blown his hand off. They are going to put him away.”

  “So now your life is all neatened up, Miss Dean. And you’ll get to marry your dear friend. Congratulations. Is that my money you keep hanging onto?”

  She handed me the envelope. I fumbled it open, and saw that it was light, and found that it counted up to ten thousand. It wouldn’t count one inch past that. Before I could get the first word out, she was hanging onto me, laughing and teasing, saying, “Now darling, do be realistic, after all! I gave you all that nice travel money, and sent you off with quite a handsome and exciting gal, and you had some exciting and delicious adventures, all on the house. I’m really not made of money, darling. Taxes are fantastic. Really, when you think of it, I think you are doing terribly well out of this, and some of my advisors would think I was out of my head to give you all this.” As she was talking she got the money out of my hand and slipped it into the inside pocket of my jacket, and was going quite directly and efficiently to work on me, with the quickness of a lot of little kissings, and an arching and presentation of all the celebrity curves and fragrances, a lot of cleverness of little hands, and a convincing steaminess of breath and growing excitement, worming her way astride my lap. This was the artist at work, at the work she knew best, operating from a life-long knowledge of the male animal, and quite convinced, apparently, that a good quick solid bang would send the man away too happy to care about being shorted, too dazed to object. Already she was beginning to work her way out of those soft knit pants and simultaneously beginning the little pressures which were supposed to topple me over onto my back on the big couch under a picture of the lady herself.

  I got my good left arm in between us and my palm flat against her wishbone, then abruptly straightened my arm, sending her catapulting back, scrambling, slipping on the smooth hard terrazzo, sitting hard on a white furry rug and riding it back like a sled to end up under another picture so soulful the artist had indicated a halo effect.

  She bounded up, hair masking one eye, yanking the knit pants up over the white behind. “What the hell!” she squalled. “Jesus Christ, McGee, you could have bust my tail bone!”

  I was standing up, fixing my sling, starting toward the door.

  “It’s okay, Lee baby,” I said. “I’ll take the short count. You don’t have to try to sweeten it. It wouldn’t mean one damn thing to you, and it would mean just a little less than that to me.”

  I left amid a shrieking of ten-letter words, and I was hastened on my way by a hail of elephants. She had a collection. She threw fast, but not well.

  I crunched down the finest grade of brown gravel, past sprinkler water pattering on fat green leaves. The Korean let me out. I could feel the meager money-weight in my jacket pocket. I stopped and took my arm out of the sling and stuffed the sling in a pocket. The arm did not feel good swinging, so I tucked a thumb in my belt.

  I walked and thought of what a weird way to lose a good woman. I saw old men carefully driving lookalike cars with names like Fury and Tempest and Dart. Through a fence I saw a quintet of little girls dashing in and out of the silvery spray of a sprinkler, shrilling. A dog smiled at me.

  What a ridiculous way to lose a woman. They do not like pedestrians in that neighborhood. Polite cops stopped, asked polite questions, and politely drove me to the nearest taxi stand. I got into the cab and the only place to go was my hotel room, and I didn’t want to go there, but I couldn’t think of anything else.

  When we stopped for a light I saw a magic store, and I asked the driver if he thought they might sell love potions in there. He said that if I was looking for action, just say the word. I went back to the hotel, and seventy minutes later I was on the Miami jet.

  Read on for an excerpt from A Deadly Shade of Gold

  One

  A smear of fresh blood has a metallic smell. It smells like freshly sheared copper. It is a clean and impersonal smell, quite astonishing the first time you smell it. It changes quickly, to a fetid, fudgier smell, as the cells die and thicken.

  When it is the blood of a stranger, there is an atavistic withdrawal, a toughening of response, a wary reluctance for any involvement. When it is your own, you want to know how bad it is. You turn into a big inward ear, listening to yourself, waiting for faintness, wondering if this is going to be the time when the faintness comes and turns into a hollow roaring, and sucks you down. Please not yet. Those are the three eternal words. Please not yet.

  When it is the blood of a friend.…

  When maybe he said, Please not yet.… But it took him and he went on down.…

  • • •

  It was a superb season for girls on the Lauderdale beaches. There are good years and bad years. This, we all agreed, was a vintage year. They were blooming on all sides, like a garden out of control. It was a special type this year, particularly willowy ones, with sun-streaky hair, soft little sun-brown noses, lazed eyes in the cool pastel shades of green and blue, cat-yawny ones, affecting a boredom belied by glints of interest and amusement, smilers rather than gigglers, with a tendency to run in little flocks of three and four and five. They sparkled on our beaches this year like grunions, a lithe and wayward crop that in too sad and too short a time would be striving for Whiter Washes, Scuff-Pruf Floors and Throw-Away Nursing Bottles.

  In a cool February wind, on a bright and cloudless afternoon, Meyer and I had something over a half dozen of them drowsing in pretty display, basted with sun oil, behind the protection of laced canvas on the sun deck atop my barge type houseboat, The Busted Flush, moored on a semi-permanent basis at Slip F-18, Bahia Mar, Fort Lauderdale. Meyer and I were playing acey-deucy. He was enjoying it more than I was. He kept rolling doubles. He looks like the diarama of Early Man in the Museum of Natural History. He has almost as much pelt as an Adirondack black bear. But he can stroll grinning down a beach and acquire a tagalong flock of lovelies the way an ice cream cart ropes children. He calls them all Junior. It saves confusion. He is never never seen with one at a time. He lives alone aboard a squatty little cruiser and is, by trade, an Economist. He predicts trends. He acquired a little money the hard way, and he keeps moving it around from this to that, and it keeps growing nicely, and he does learned articles for incomprehensible journals.

  At reasonable intervals one of the Juniors would clamber down the ladderway, go below and return with a pair of cans of cold beer from my stainless steel galley. I always buy the brands with the pull tabs. You stare at the tab, think deep thoughts about progress, advertising, modern living, cultural advances, and then turn the can upside down and open with an opener. It is a ceremonial kind of freedom.

  Just as Meyer got all the way around, blocked me out, and began taking off with exquisite care, smirking away to himself, humming, rolling good numbers, I heard my phone ring. It surprised me. I thought I had the switch at the off position, the position where you can phone out, but anybody phoning you thinks it is ringing, but it isn’t. And that is another kind of freedom. Like throwing away mail without looking to see who it’s from, which is the ultimate test, of course. I have yet to meet a woman who has arrived at that stage. They always have to look.

  Perhaps if Meyer hadn’t been making everything so disagreeable, I would have let it ring itself out. But I went on down to my lounge and answered it with one very cautious depersonalized grunt.

  “McGee?” the voice said. “Hey, McGee? Is this Travis McGee?”

  I stuck a thumb in my cheek and said, “I’m lookin affa things while he’s away.”

  The voice was vaguely familiar.

  “McGee, buddy, are you stoned?”

  Then I knew the voice. From way back. Sam Taggart.

  “Where the hell are you,” I s
aid, “and how soon can you get here?”

  The voice faded and came back. “… too far to show up in the next nine minutes. Wait’ll I see what it says on the front of this phone book. Waycross, Georgia. Look, I’ve been driving straight on through, and I’m dead on my feet. And I started thinking suppose he isn’t there, then what the hell do you do?”

  “So I’m here. So hole up and get some sleep before you kill somebody.”

  “Trav, I got to have some help.”

  “Doesn’t everybody?”

  “Listen. Seriously. You still … operating like you used to?”

  “Only when I need the money. Right now I’m taking a nice long piece of my retirement, Sam. Hurry on down. The little broads are beautiful this year.”

  “There’s a lot of money in this.”

  “It will be a lot more pleasant to say no to you in person. And by the way, Sam?”

  “Yes?”

  “Is there anybody in particular you would like me to get in touch with? Just to say you’re on your way?”

  It was a loaded question, about as subtle as being cracked across the mouth with a dead mackerel. I expected a long pause and got one.

  “Don’t make those real funny jokes,” he said in a huskier voice.

  “What if maybe it isn’t a joke, Sam?”

  “It has to be. If she had a gun, she should kill me. You know that. She knows that. I know that. For God’s sake, you know no woman, especially a woman like Nora, can take that from anybody. I dealt myself out, forever. Look, I know what I lost there, Trav. Besides, a gal like that wouldn’t still be around. Not after three years. Don’t make jokes, boy.”

  “She’s still around. Sam, did you ever give her a chance to forgive you?”

  “She never would. Believe me, she never would.”

  “Are you sewed up with somebody else?”

  “Don’t be a damn fool.”

  “Why not, Sam?”

  “That’s another funny joke too.”