The Lime Pit

by Jonathan Valin

  Rich laughed hollowly. “He ain't a family man, Mr. Stoner. Not like me. He likes to hurt. I'd advise you to stay away from him.”

  Morris Rich didn't want any trouble, from the police or the F.B.I. or anyone who might bring a curse on his house and business. But he'd made me think twice before I got out of the Pinto and hiked down to that lone frame house. In the flats, the nearest help was a good two hundred yards to the east, which meant that anything short of a canon blast would die away in the hot, fetid wind coming off the river. It really did smell like jungle warfare in the yard, although the only tree in sight was a dead elm painted white on the trunk.

  I tried to shake the bad memories out of my head as I walked up to the porch. There was no bell by the screen door, so I rattled the frame with my fist. A few seconds later, a young woman dressed in a long red shift padded up.

  “Are you from the gas?” she said belligerently.

  She had long black hair braided in a ponytail, black eyes of the dull, opalescent sheen of oil paintings, and a round, Indian face that would have been pretty if it weren't for a yellow birthmark that ran down her left cheek like Ahab's ivory scar.

  I told her I wasn't from the gas.

  “Well, somebody better come out,” she said wearily. “Cause we paid the damn bill over a week ago.”

  She made a little smile of excuse, while her eyes worked me over. “You're a cop, aren't you?” she said.

  Some people have that gift. But they've usually paid a price for it. This one looked too young to have paid in full. So I guessed that cops and gasmen were no strangers to the house.

  “I'm a P.I.,” I told her. “I'm looking for Abel Jones.”

  “He's not here.”

  “Then I'll wait.”

  She shook her head slightly, as if what I'd said had amused her. “No, you won't. He won't want to see you.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because I don't want to see you,” she said flatly. “Now, beat it!”

  She started to walk away from the door when a man's husky voice called to her from upstairs. “Who is it?”

  She gave me a quick amused look over her shoulder—half-warning, half-reproach. It made me like her a little, though I'd be damned if I knew why.

  Abel Jones came trundling down the stairs. I got him a little at a time. First his bare toes. Then three feet of black gabardine slacks. Then three more feet of thin pink belly and hairless chest. Then his face, shaded with a day's growth of beard. He looked to be around forty, and he had the sharp mean features of the Appalachian tough—narrow lips, a nose that could open an envelope, black eyes, and gaunt, grooved cheeks.

  He passed a hand through his dark, unkempt hair and said, “What is it? What do you want?” in a drunken, hostile voice.

  “I'd like to talk to you, Mr. Jones.”

  He laughed a little when I said “mister.”

  “You would?” he said. “What about?”

  “This porch is no place to talk.”

  “It's my house!” he shouted, as if I were about to put a torch to it. “Don't dare talk down my home!”

  He looked me over, the way the girl had. “Well, come in, then.”

  He pushed at the screen door and I walked through.

  “You dicks is all alike,” he said. “Think you can come in and run down a man's home.”

  I followed him through an archway into a living room that could have been decorated by Hugo Cratz. All plaid and plastic and faded stripe, dotted like a prize booth at a county fair with stuffed animals and plastic trophies. The same stale smells hung in the air, mixed with a tang of whiskey and tobacco.

  Jones sat down on a torn vinyl recliner. “Get us something to drink, Coral,” he said to the girl. He said it with relish, as if he were hoping I’d turn him down.

  Coral winked at me and sauntered out of the room. She was naked under that shift and she moved with a studied sensuality.

  “I understand you sell pictures,” I said, sitting across from him on a hard, red plastic chair.

  “Who told you that?”

  “That isn't important.”

  I took one of the photographs of Cindy Ann out of my pocket and tossed it over to him.

  Jones slapped the snapshot face-down on his knee. Then he flicked its edge and peeked at it the way a man peeks at a hole-card. It occurred to me that he wouldn't have to squeeze out that look if there wasn't a good chance that he wasn't going to like what he saw.

  “So what?” he said, pitching the photo back to me.

  “I want the girl,” I said to him.

  “Well, you can want what you want, mister. But you ain't going to get nothing out of me.”

  Coral came back into the room with a bottle of Old Grandad and three glasses in her right hand.

  She poured three drinks and handed one to me and one to Jones.

  “Cheers,” she said, raising her own glass.

  Jones tossed down the bourbon. He hadn't taken his vicious little eyes off me since I'd showed him the snapshot. But that didn't mean much. A man like Jones only has one expression and, like a kid on Christmas day, he likes to set it up and see it work. I concentrated on the girl and tried to read his mood in her face. If my reading was correct, I was in for some trouble, because Coral's dark eyes touched on everything in the room but me. It was as if she were calculating just how much damage she'd have to repair when Abel got through. From the disgust on her face, she saw a lot of work ahead.

  “You ain't touched your drink, mister,” Jones said.

  Coral let out a sigh. “There doesn't have to be any trouble, does there?”

  “Shut up!” Jones said.

  “No, Abel. I'm not going to shut up. This is my house, and I'm not going to see it busted up again. Let me see that photograph.”

  Jones stood up and walked over to where Coral was standing in the archway next to the front hall. “Get the hell out of here,” he said to her. “Or there will be trouble.”

  That was my cue. I stood up. “No, there won't, Abel.”

  He whirled around to face me.

  He balled his fists and started toward me when Coral shrieked. And I mean shrieked—a real movieland scream that made the room ring and stopped Abel Jones in his tracks.

  He lowered his fists and turned back to where Coral was standing. “Now just why the hell'd you do that, Coral?” he said in a cranky voice that was probably as close to amusement as Abel Jones ever got. “You ‘bout scared the shit out of me.”

  “Good,” she said.

  He shook his head forlornly and looked back at me.

  “Takes most of the fun out of it, doesn't it?” I said.

  Jones shook his head again, walked back over to the recliner, and plopped down.

  “That's the first sane thing you've done in a month,” Coral said to him. “Now, show me that picture.”

  I dug it out of my coat pocket. She studied it dispassionately for a moment.

  “Before I say anything,” she said. “I want to be clear. That mean son-of-a-bitch over there would just as soon kill you as look at you. And don't think he couldn't, mister.” She tossed her handsome head at Abel. “You're big all right. But he's as merciless as a New Mexican rattlesnake. And I don't want to see this place get torn up again.”

  “I'm not the law,” I told her. “I'm a private cop. And your boy can pander as many dirty pictures as he likes, once I find that girl.”

  “What's so important about this little slut?” She tapped the photograph.

  “Her father wants her back.”

  Coral glanced at Jones, who was still sitting stock still in the chair, contemplating a world of freakish folly.

  “He's no pornographer,” she said with a touch of contempt in her voice. “He does favors for the people who gave him those photographs. He's supposed to get rid of them, but Abel there just can't stand to see an easy buck slide by. So every now and then he sells a bundle to Morrie Rich.”

  She nudged my arm with her elbow. �
�Look at him there. Just meditating like a Krishna what he's going to do to me once you leave.” She laughed grimly. “You're going to cost me a black eye, mister. Doesn't that make you feel good?”

  I started to volunteer some help, but Coral gave me a quick furious look, full of family pride and short temper.

  “Don't,” she said simply. “Not if you want to get out of here in one piece. Just leave it alone. I don't know about that girl. Neither does he, even though he'd die and take you and me with him before he told you that. But the people he gets those pictures from do a lot of business over in Newport. You might try over there.”

  “What kind of business do they do?”

  Coral shook her head. “I've said enough. Now why don't you just get the hell out of here before he comes out of that trance and kills you.”

  ******

  I was halfway across the desolate front yard when I heard someone coming up behind me. It gave me a start, the way Coral's scream had startled me. I'd already drawn my pistol before I realized it was the girl and not Abel Jones. She glanced scornfully at the gun in my hand.

  “You and Abel aren't as different as I thought,” she said.

  I tucked the gun in my pocket. “Yes, we are,” I said.

  She didn't believe me. And, for a brief second, I wanted to tell her why she was wrong.

  I liked Coral. She was tough, handsome, and honest, and she deserved better than the likes of Abel Jones. The sad part was that the Abel Joneses of this world were precisely the ones she would always end up with. She'd always be that wrong about her men, always mistake petty cowardice for a tender heart and cruelty for strength. And she'd always be too damn hopeful to undo the mistake.

  I wanted to tell her that, but I didn't.

  “I only came out here to get away from him,” she said, brushing a strand of black hair from her face. “He'll go upstairs in awhile and fall asleep again. And if I'm lucky, he won't remember much of it when he wakes up.”

  She shaded her eyes and stared up at the embankment, where the steep green hills came down on the west side of River Road. The sun was dropping behind them, now, and behind us, the river was all golden to the Kentucky shore. “Must be close to five,” she said and looked shyly toward me.

  “What is it, Coral?” I said. “What do you want to tell me?”

  “I'm going to be leaving here soon,” she said. “Just pick up and go. Let the house, if anybody'll have it.” She looked back at the porch. “That's my inheritance. That's all I got left, holding me here.”

  “Maybe Jones'll come with you,” I said.

  She smiled sadly. “No. I don't think so. But it's good of you to say it. He'll stay on, probably. He wouldn't know what to do without his liquor and his friends.” Coral took a deep breath. “I guess what I came out here to do was to say all of that to you. It's kind of like saying goodbye, without saying it face to face.”

  I nodded. “Glad I could help.”

  She straightened up and pulled at her shift where it had bunched at her waist. Then her dark face turned red, and she looked down at the marl. I had the feeling that, having said goodbye to Abel, she'd suddenly remembered that she was an attractive woman and that I was a man. And it had embarrassed her, as if she'd done something wicked behind Jones's back.

  “He really doesn't know about that girl,” she said, changing the subject. “They never tell him the names.”

  “Why do they need to get rid of the pictures at all?”

  “I couldn't say. He just gets ‘em. And sometimes he throws them out and sometimes he sells them.”

  “What kind of business do they run?”

  “A rough one. I guess I can tell you that much. It sure doesn't pay to be on the wrong side of that girl.”

  “Laurie Jellicoe?” I said.

  Her eyes darted to my face. “If you knew that name, why'd you come here?”

  “Because that name is all I know. All I'm trying to do is find out what they're doing with the girl. Whether it's pornography or something more.”

  “Look, mister,” she said and her face grew somber. “Why don't you tell whoever it is that's looking for this girl to forget her? You'll save yourself a lot of trouble. They don't give things up easy, those two. I know. I've seen how they work. People they don't like, people that get in their way, just don't last very long. That girl who went off with them knew what she was doing. Why not just leave it at that?”

  “It's not up to me,” I said.

  “Well, then, keep that kid's old man out of harm's way,” she said sternly. “Or both you and he will regret it. Get out of here, now. Before he comes out and starts a ruckus.”

  “Good luck,” I said to her.

  I started up the clay embankment and looked back once when I got to the car. But she'd already gone in.

  She was right about one thing. From the looks of Abel Jones, a meddlesome old man like Hugo would be better off out of the way. Better for him, better for me, and, maybe, better for Cindy Ann.

  7

  WE WENT out to dinner that night, Hugo Cratz and I. We drove down Cornell to Ludlow and three blocks south to the nondescript gray and white cube of the Busy Bee.

  He'd cleaned himself up for the meal. Put on a fresh checked shirt and a red cardigan sweater and scraped at the stubble on his chin. And, as we walked from the parking lot to the street, I caught a bit of bounce, a bit of military cadence, in his step. He was enjoying it, what he thought was the honor of it, which was fine with me. A little back-slapping and a few beers and we both might find the nerve to strike a compromise.

  The restaurant was crowded, so I took Hugo up to the big dark U-shaped bar on the second level—an elevated terrace about six steps above the ground floor—and introduced him to Hank Greenberg, the barkeep.

  We ordered two beers and, after taking a quick look at Hugo, I decided it would be better if we both sat down to talk. “We’ll be over in the corner,” I called to Hank and pointed to an empty booth to the left of the bar.

  “Right,” he said.

  We were almost there. We'd almost made it—Hugo tottering a little as we maneuvered through the crowd, me pushing gently at his back—when a big square sallow-faced man, with the name “Mike” tagged on his shirtfront and a blue Navy anchor tattooed on his left forearm, inadvertently clobbered the old man and sent him tumbling back into me. I caught Hugo by the arms and pulled him to his feet. Big Mike dropped drunkenly into our booth and, with a sigh of unexpected pleasure, started drinking the beers that Hank had just deposited on the table.

  “Hey!” I shouted over the top of Hugo's wispy head. “Those are our beers.”

  “He's drunk, mister,” a gaunt man with the name “Al” on his shirt said from the bar rail. “Don't mess with him. He's just plain red-eyed mean when he's stiff like that.”

  “Those are our beers,” I said to him.

  Al shrugged. “It's your funeral.”

  Hugo was wobbling a bit, so I turned him around and looked him over. A little blood was oozing from his nose.

  “It ain't nothing. That moose just clipped me is all, with his elbow. Say, mister?” he said to Mike. “You ought to watch where you're going.”

  Mike looked up balefully, the way a big, bad-tempered shepherd dog looks up from his food bowl. “Go to hell,” he growled.

  The moralist in me was getting a good work-out that day. But I managed to check him. He had bigger fish to fry than a barroom loudmouth.

  “C'mon Hugo,” I said. “Let's get you cleaned up.”

  Hugo washed himself off in the john, and as we walked back down to the restaurant level, Big Mike raised a glass to us. “Goddamn pissant,” Hugo hissed. And gave me a withering look.

  Jo Riley, the hostess at the Busy Bee, seated us at a relatively quiet table in a corner of the main room.

  On duty Jo wears pale pink lipstick, piles her coal-black hair in a massive bee-hive, and carries a pair of sequined glasses on a silver-metal chain around her neck. She fancies long, high-necked, color
less dresses for the same reason she wears her hair unfashionably and sports those bridge club spectacles. In a job like hers, in a place like the Busy Bee, the last thing Jo needs is a table full of rowdies making passes at her. And, believe me, with her hair down, her skirt shortened, and those glasses in the case where they belong, Jo is something to become rowdy about. I'd gotten pretty rowdy myself about three years before, and there was still something volatile between us. We'd been lucky. We'd shared some good times and we'd parted. And there'd been no big scene at the end. No blow-up to color what had come before, to make the pleasure seem illusory. We'd just drifted apart, each to another partner and another bed. Both of us had sense enough not to tempt fate by giving it a second try; both of us, I think, knew that if it didn't work this time, there would be that blow-up; and neither of us wanted to forfeit that legacy of past perfect. So we generally smiled at each other, blushed, and chatted nonsense, while memory whispered in another language beneath our patter.

  “This is Hugo Cratz,” I said to Jo. “A client.”

  “Really?” she said, raising a friendly eyebrow. She was perfect, Jo. So good at her job she was breathtaking. The eyebrow had been just right. Not coy, not condescending. Just warm and deferential like a tip of a hat. “What can I get you?” she said sweetly to Hugo.

  It worked. He hemmed and hawed and smiled and blushed and finally said, “Beer?” like he was asking his pretty fourth-grade teacher if she were already married.

  “I thought so,” Jo said approvingly. “Two Buds, then, Harry?”

  I nodded and smiled at her. Some Jo.

  We ordered the shrimp salads with the Bee's tangy, horseradishy dressing, and when Jo walked off to the bar, Hugo said to me: “Nice girl. You two friends?”

  “You don't miss much, do you, Hugo?”

  “Nope,” he chuckled. “Like seeing how there was no reason we couldn't talk back at my place, I figure you brought me here to tell me something you wasn't prepared to say on my home turf.”

  I shook my head. “Drink your beer, will you, Hugo?”