The Lime Pit

by Jonathan Valin

  “You did.”

  “Oh,” he said vaguely. He sipped at his drink and stared darkly at the floor. “I'm sorry, but I just don't have a good memory for names. Who did you say you were?”

  “Stoner. Harry Stoner.”

  “Oh, yeah.” LaForge smiled again and nodded equably. “What paper are you with, Harry?”

  “I'm not with a paper, Mr. LaForge.”

  “Oh, hell, call me Preston. Everybody does.” A gloomy look passed across his boyish face. “All my life, they've been calling me Preston,” he said remotely. Whatever it had been, it was gone in a second. “Better than Johnny, huh? Why the hell do baseball players always have names ending with ‘ee'? Johnny, Davey, Jackie, Bucky . . .”

  “Dopey, Sleepy . . .”

  LaForge giggled again. “Say, I like you, you know that? You're a funny guy. You sure you don't write for a paper or a magazine? Oh, hell, I guess you'd know that, wouldn't you?”

  He sipped at his drink again. “So, what can I do for you?”

  I stared at him a minute. In amazement. “This isn't an act, is it, Preston?” I said.

  “What?” he said and his face made ready to laugh again.

  “I mean this incredibly affable, dumb, schoolboy bit. That's the real you, isn't it?”

  He shrugged. “I guess.”

  “Well,” I said with a mild laugh. “Then I just don't understand it.”

  He started to giggle. “What?”

  “I mean, how did it happen? Did your daddy slip it to sis while you were watching? Did the school marm make you stand in the corner in wet pants? And did all the little girls laugh at you?”

  LaForge knitted his bland brow. “What are you talking about?” he said cheerfully.

  “Well . . . this.” I pulled a snapshot of Cindy Ann out of my pocket and tossed it over to his side of the couch. He spilled a little more of his drink flagging it down.

  “Damn,” he said. “Does bourbon stain wool?” He toed at the carpet and glanced at the snapshot. “Oh, God,” he said quietly and dropped his drink quite completely on the couch.

  “You'd better clean that one up, Preston,” I said. “That'll surely leave a stain.”

  He brushed fecklessly at the cushion and continued to stare at the photograph. I could see what was going to happen, and I felt bad for him.

  “Poor thing,” Preston LaForge said and his little boy's mouth trembled. “Poor, poor thing.”

  He began to cry, chewing his lips and staring vacantly at the picture of Cindy Ann. “I'm going to be sick,” he said.

  “I wouldn't do it on the rug, Preston.”

  He dropped the photo, got up, and ran agilely across the big cathedral-like room to a hallway that angled off next to the door. He disappeared down it and, in a second, I heard the sound of his retching and the flush of the toilet.

  I was feeling a little sick myself and sad. But not for Preston. I'd gotten over that as soon as he'd started to cry. Like anything too sweet, Preston LaForge was cloying. I was feeling sad for Hugo. Because it seemed apparent, now, that something pretty terrible and pretty final had befallen his “little girl.”

  In a few minutes, LaForge came back down the hall. He looked awful. His face was a sick, bloodless white and his wrists seemed to dangle from his cuffs as if they were sewn to the cloth. “This is terrible,” he said miserably. “What the hell am I going to do?” He looked at me helplessly.

  “You wanna tell me about her, Preston?” I said.

  He plopped down on a slung leather chair and held his face in his hands. “What's to tell. Her name is Cindy Ann Evans. She's sixteen. I. . .” He lowered his hands and stared forlornly at my face. “You know all this. Why do you want me to say it?”

  “I'm looking for her. Her father wants her back.”

  “Oh, Christ.” LaForge shook his head and sobbed. “I've got this . . . this thing,” he said weakly. “I don't know where it comes from. I really don't.” He took a deep breath and steadied himself. “I've been to psychiatrists. I'm seeing one now. It has to do with my mom. With the way she . . . she overprotected me. Dressed me up, you know?” He took another deep breath. “I only saw Cindy a couple of times. I swear to God, it was only a couple of times. I knew I was being bad, but I just... I can't help it.” LaForge broke down again in tears.

  “What happened to the girl?” I said to him.

  He shook his head. “Don't know.” LaForge wiped his eyes. “She was a nice kid. Sweet in a way. They had her on drugs. Half the time I don't think she knew what was going on. And the other half. . . she didn't seem to mind.”

  “Who are they?”

  “What!” he said in alarm.

  “The ones that had her on drugs.”

  “Oh. Laurie and Lance. They run a little service.”

  I got up from the couch and walked over to the big picture window and stared blankly down the hillside. He'd taken a lot and he'd spoken freely, irrepressibly, as if he were glad of the chance to say it. Some men are like that. They suffer remorselessly from what the French call délire de confesser. But this was the critical part, and as pitiable as Preston's good boy-bad boy personality was I wanted to make the hard truth stick.

  “You've got a big future ahead of you, Preston. Big money, prestige, a family. I'd hate to see it all go down the drain.”

  “How much?” he said dully.

  I turned around. With his arms on the armrests and his feet dangling to the floor and his face red and tear-stained, he looked like a hapless, crucified child. “I don't want money. I want to get Cindy Ann back. And, if that isn't possible, I want to find out what happened to her.”

  “That's it?” he said. “That's all?”

  “Not quite. I want the Jellicoes, too. I want to put them out of business. Permanently.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “You're going to call Lance up. You're going to tell him you got a ‘thing’ for Cindy Ann. You're going to arrange a date.”

  “What if...I mean what if she isn't around?”

  “You're not going to take no for an answer, Preston.”

  “You don't understand,” LaForge said. “The Jellicoes . . . they run a safe business. That's how come people like me go to them. They guarantee safety. The girls are always ... safe. You know? They're homeless. And you never see the same girl more than a couple of times.”

  “That's your problem, Preston,” I said to him. “I don't care how you do it. But you either bring Cindy Ann to me or you find out where she is.”

  LaForge started to say something but I cut him off. “You do it, Preston. Because if you don't, I'm going to take that picture and ruin you with it. They're going to put you in jail. And do you know what they do to sweet young things like you in jail, Preston? Man, they'll eat you alive. So, get cracking, Preston.” I took a card from my wallet and tossed it on the rug. “You call me tonight at that number when you've got it arranged. And remember this—I've got twenty-five more pictures just like that one and every damn one is going to the cops if you double-cross me. And with them goes enough of a deposition about you and Cindy Ann and the Jellicoes to get a grand jury working overnight.”

  I started for the door. “As the man said, you'll thank me for this some day, Preston.”

  I heard him laughing stupidly as I walked out.

  13

  I FELT sorry for Preston LaForge. He was a sad little boy trapped in a world that has no use for the weak or the winless. On any given day I might have tried to help him—the way I was helping Hugo at that very moment. But I would never be able to trust him the way I trusted Hugo. He just wasn't sane enough for that.

  So I didn't leave the Vicarage right away. Instead, I got in the Pinto and waited, hunching down in the car seat and peering up at the rearview mirror.

  And, sure enough, at half-past five, Preston popped into view.

  He was dressed a little too carefully for a stroll—in a Ralph Lauren western outfit. Striped cowboy shirt, designer jeans, red scarf and
topsiders. He looked like a picture from the sporting-wear section of a Neiman-Marcus catalogue. There was even something of the sportsman in the set of his face—the kind of martial alertness that hunters show when they're about to shoulder a gun. It occurred to me that that pretty beach boy was on the prowl. Perhaps out to prove that he could still have his way after I'd slapped his wrists and said, “No.” It would be an understandable enough impulse in a man like him.

  He walked across the lot to a Jaguar two-seater and glanced quickly at the sky before hopping in. It was clouding up overhead. A thick porridge of a sky. And I said a little prayer for rain as I started the Pinto and followed Preston out of the Vicarage lot.

  It was cooler on the streets, with the storm brewing up. The air had a nervous thrum in it, and the picturesque bungalows along St. Martin's looked stark in the gray, pre-storm light. LaForge sped past them up to Paradrome and the Jaguar made a little whine as he down-shifted at the corner and turned left on Ida.

  Most of Mt. Adams is too trendy for my taste, too expensive to enjoy and too characterless and chameleon-like to fall in love with. But Ida Street... that's my exception. Built on an arched viaduct above a green grove of flowering apple trees, it runs like a bright ribbon between the Art Museum and the East Bottoms. And, for a block or two beyond Seasongood Pavillion, it is as attractive as a crowded urban street can be. The houses along that stretch are those rarities of big city architecture—homes that the architects have built to please themselves. Each of them is unique, in this city of red-brick St. Louises and ranch-style suburbs. Each one of them is full of character and thought and good, adventuresome taste.

  LaForge pulled up abruptly in front of one of my favorites—a lovely white stucco building, vaguely Spanish in style, with two Chinese red doors in front and tall blinded windows between them. I watched him unlock the right-hand door with his own key and flash a puckish grin at someone standing inside.

  I pulled a pair of Leitz binoculars out of the glove compartment and took a look at the door. The placard by the bell said, “Tracy Leach,” which could be a man or woman. From the way Preston had been dressed, I guessed a lady. And it was obvious that Tracy Leach was a very close friend.

  I liked the fact that he'd gone to a friend to talk things out. It meant that Preston wasn't as impulsive as he'd seemed, that he had an adult sense of the precariousness of his position.

  It was best, I decided, to leave him to his own counsel. If I stuck my nose in again, I might frighten him into running to the Jellicoes or to the police. And I didn't want that to happen until I had Cindy Ann Evans back. Or, at least, until I knew where her bones were resting. A thin splatter of rain dashed the windshield as I turned the ignition key. And it continued to drizzle all the way back to the Delores.

  ******

  When I got upstairs—fourth floor, right wing, Apartment E—I stripped off my sports shirt, sat down on the recliner and pretended to read the sports page of The Enquirer. But the langorous smell of perfume and the slightly sugary smell of face powder—Jo's scent—distracted me. I kept seeing her in my mind's eye, standing in the hall that led to the bedroom or by the pointed arch that opened on the kitchenette or by the front door. What I was doing was moving her around, mentally, as if she were a piece of outsized furniture and I was trying to fit her in the room. But she was just too large for the two and one-half shabby rooms of the Delores. I started thinking that maybe I'd have to move to a place spacious enough for the two of us. And for the next half hour I settled into a quaint domestic mode of speculation—outfitting the new place, imagining Jo and me in bed, naming the kids. Which only goes to prove my theory that a thirty-six-year-old bachelor is just a thirty-six-year-old husband without a marriage license.

  At ten of six, the old Delores rocked like a boat when the sky finally opened up and bellowed, “Enough!” Thick rain, thunderclaps, and lightening poured down on Cincinnati; and I spent a couple of minutes closing windows, a couple more looking out on the waving branches of the dogwoods in the front yard and wondering if Jo was getting drenched. It was going to be a long, sore, wet night—a real mid-summer deluge. And I didn't look forward to driving back up to Mt. Adams in the midst of it.

  By a quarter past, I was beginning to worry about Jo and about why Preston was taking so long with the Jellicoes and with Cindy Ann. My first problem was solved almost immediately, when Jo, black hair collapsed about her face and neat secretary's suit sopping, came laughing and shaking and dripping through the front door.

  “My God,” she said merrily. “It could have waited a few minutes longer!”

  I jumped up and gave her a hug and a long, damp kiss; She was as slippery as soap in her wet skin, but otherwise no worse for the weather. She wandered off into the bedroom to towel dry and change clothes, and I sat back down, feeling aglow, and stared at the phone on the desk. By all dramatic rights, it, too, was about to ring and Preston would then say, in his cheeky, affable voice, “I've got Cindy Ann for you.” And then we'd all join hands and form a ring.

  But Preston didn't call until after Jo and I had dined on scrambled eggs and on each other. We were lying in the bed, holding hands and listening like nervous children with the lights out to the beating of the rain on the dormer window and the tremendous claps of thunder when the phone rang.

  I'd told Jo a little bit about Preston while we were eating supper. I'm not usually a gossip about my work, but LaForge was too juicy and out-of-the-ordinary for me. And I'd told her about Hugo, whom she'd already met and liked and felt sorry for. That seedy old man had a way with women. Jo'd thought he was “sweet” and wanted to see him again. I hadn't said a thing about the Jellicoes, because I hadn't wanted to spoil our lovemaking with the thought of how they made their living. Jo knew that Hugo's “little girl” was in trouble and that LaForge was somehow involved and that he was an odd fellow who was going to help me crack the case.

  Anyway, when the phone rang, she giggled and said, “That must be him!”

  I reached over and pulled the phone down to the bed and, with Jo cocking an ear against the receiver, said, “Stoner.”

  Either the telephone lines were damp or Preston was drunk, because his voice sounded scratchy and lethargic. “I did what you said, Mr. Stoner,” he said. “I got it all arranged. I've been a good boy.”

  Jo looked at me and I looked at her and shrugged.

  “That's good, Preston. That's very good.”

  “You know,” he said languidly. “In a way I'm glad this is going to work out this way. I'm really tired of the whole thing. After this, I'm going to be good. You'll see.”

  I felt a little heart-sick, and Jo stopped listening and stared at the ceiling. “You don't have to be good, Preston,” I said, trying to sound friendly. “Maybe if you stopped thinking about yourself in those terms you'd be better off.”

  He laughed, his little boy's chortle. “You sound like Dr. Fegley.”

  “Well, maybe Dr. Fegley knows what he's talking about.”

  “He doesn't know,” Preston said blandly. “Nobody does.”

  I took a deep breath and changed the subject. “What time should I come by tonight?”

  “What?” he said. “Oh. About ten, I guess. That's when they usually drop the girls off. Lance is going to call me in an hour or so to let me know for sure. Boy, I really shook him up, Mr. Stoner. I really gave it to him. He's not going to use me anymore. Not me or any of my friends.”

  A very ugly thought crossed my mind. “You didn't threaten him, did you, Preston? I mean you didn't tell him you'd gone to the cops or anything, did you?”

  “I did what I had to do,” he said. “I should have done it a long time ago.”

  I started to say something cautionary and Preston said, “Don't worry about Cindy Ann, Mr. Stoner. He says he won't hurt her as long as the cops aren't called in. And he won't hurt me, either. Tray and I know too much. I'll tell you this, though. As soon as you get Cindy Ann back to her folks, I am going to go to the police and tell them e
verything I know about the Jellicoes. I want to. I've wanted to for years. I'm not a very courageous man, Mr. Stoner. I never have been.” He laughed unhappily. “Now, I won't have to pretend any more.”

  I blew a cold breath out of my mouth. “What makes you think he'll show up with Cindy Ann?”

  “Like I said, Mr. Stoner. All Lance cares about is the police. I gave him my word they weren't involved.”

  “You've done well, Preston,” I said to him. “You're a good man.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “I'll see you tonight at ten.”

  When I hung up, Jo was lying on her side with her shoulder to me. Something about the curve of that shoulder told me that she didn't want to be touched. At least, not by me. Not at that moment. And, to tell you the truth, at that moment I couldn't blame her.

  ******

  The rest of the evening didn't go well for Jo and me. The scarey, shivery storm became just a storm. The bedside lamps dispelled the sweet privacy of the darkness. We sat in bed and read—Mary Ellmann for her, Dashiell Hammett for me—and chatted occasionally and pointed out fun things in what we were reading and pretended that nothing had gone wrong.

  I should never have said a word about the case is what I thought. I should have buttoned my lip and kept mum about Preston LaForge, the all-American boy.

  Around nine I got up, got dressed and drank a cup of coffee in the living room. Jo came in and asked if I was going out in the storm.

  I nodded.

  She looked at me affectionately and said, “I guess I must have thought of Preston LaForge as one of the immortals. To find out he was so damn human ... it just upset me. Don't mind me, Harry. You broke one of my idols, that's all.”

  “He was one of my idols, too, Jo,” I said testily. “And I didn't break him. He broke. You don't think a man spills his guts like that because another man flashes a few dirty pictures in his face? Preston LaForge has been breaking down since he was an adolescent. And if he hasn't made good resolutions a thousand times before—and then forgotten them—I'll eat the radio.”