The Lime Pit

by Jonathan Valin

  “Oh I'd have remembered that,” he said with a roll of his belly. He glanced at Jo and blushed to the roots of his tow-haired scalp. “The answer's no. No one last night a'tall. Though there was somebody asking after you this morning. A sweet young thing with blonde hair. He smelled like a lilac bush.”

  “Leach,” I said to myself.

  “He said he had to get in touch with you. I think he left a note in your box. Now, if you don't mind, I got work to do—cleaning up after your damn mess.”

  As Leo ambled off down the stairs, Jo put a hand to her mouth and whispered, “Is he always like that?”

  “Always.”

  I opened the mailbox and took out Tray's note. Leo was right—it did smell like lilac water.

  Jo peeked at the note. “ ‘Got to see you, Tray.’ ”

  “He's my friend,” I lisped.

  She laughed and jabbed me in the side.

  The wrong side. I groaned and dropped the bag and box.

  “Oh, God, I'm sorry,” she said and started to laugh.

  I glared at her. “That you think is funny?”

  She put on a straight face, but her lower lip kept trembling with laughter.

  I scooped the stuff off the floor with another groan. “Being alive she thinks is serious business. A man in pain she laughs at.”

  We got up to the third floor and, when I unlocked the front door, Jo gasped, “My God!” I dumped all the junk on the couch and went into the kitchenette and fixed myself a Scotch.

  “Me, too,” Jo called out.

  I poured another and walked back in and surveyed the damage.

  “Abel Jones did not have a delicate touch.”

  The room was a shambles. Drawers open, their contents scattered everywhere. Bookshelves ransacked. Cushions torn off chairs. I flipped on the Globemaster and sat down on the couch and stared glumly at the wreckage.

  “It's just as bad in there,” Jo said from the hall. She unzipped her dress and let it fall forward down her arms. “I guess I better start cleaning up.”

  I took a look at her, standing there half-dressed and eyeing the room with housewifely calculation. Her bra was low-cut and wispy, and the tops of her breasts and the pink rounds of her nipples showed through it.

  I leaned back on the couch and took a long pull of the Scotch. “What condition is the bed in?” I said.

  She laughed. “What condition are you in?” she said dryly.

  She stepped out of the frock and kicked it into the bedroom and walked in after it, her firm pink ass half-naked above the bikini panties.

  I started after her and, by the time I got to the bedroom, she was naked on the bed, her hands tented at her lips and a look of spry expectation on her face.

  I took a long look at her and she blushed.

  “God, I need you,” I said heavily.

  She arched her back and hips as I kneeled on the mattress. “Make love to me, Harry,” she said as I moved on top of her. “I want you to make me—”

  I touched her lips with my fingers, then covered them with my mouth.

  ******

  Forget.

  I think that was the word she was about to say. To wipe it all away in a flash of pleasure, an explosion of glands and muscle and nerve endings.

  We'd gone at it, too, in one great roiling, passionate coupling. Pure heat—like a junk rush. Her sex wet with my saliva and her own sticky wetness. And me plunging into her rhythmically. And the only sound the slap of flesh and the small, urgent cries we gave to each other.

  And it worked for Jo.

  As she climaxed, she put a twisted hand beside her mouth, agape with pleasure, and her head rolled away from mine to the mattress. Then she opened her eyes and they were clear of bitterness and bad memory. “Don't go,” she whispered to me.

  I lay on top of her, feeling her heart beat slowly and the brine of sweat along my belly and in the hollow of her loins. In a minute or two, I rolled away. Jo curled affectionately beside me and was soon asleep. I stroked her black hair, warm yet and damp from love-making, and pretended that I, too, was emptied of all terror and rage.

  But, for me, it wouldn't work. Even as I lay there beside her, I knew that in a minute the pleasure would vanish and, instead of staring off blankly into space, I would be seeing Hugo's juicy eyes or Laurie's erotic ones or be imagining the dead doll's stare of Cindy Ann's eye.

  I got to my feet and walked quietly into the living room.

  My back hurt—a dull ache, like an earache but shot with occasional twinges of hot pain. It made me feel sick and old and desperate.

  The thing was, I didn't know where to begin. I wasn't even sure if I wanted to begin again—to hold my breath and go under, into that green world of cool, predatory sex and sudden violence.

  For a second I toyed with the idea of calling Foster. Only I knew what would happen if I turned it over to him. He'd call Tray Leach, who, faced with public exposure and a court trial, would suddenly forget that he'd ever heard of the Jellicoes or of Escorts Unlimited. As for Lance and Laurie, she would bat her sensuous eyes and he would paw at the turf and grumble about persecution. And their lawyer would produce a writ of habeas and, with it, a tax record indicating that Escorts Unlimited was nothing more than a legitimate escort service run by two young people who were being victimized by a brutish detective—who killed a man, by the way, on Monday last—and by a dirty, depraved old man with a screw loose in his noggin. Foster would puff a little cigarette smoke and know that the Jellicoes were lying and that there was nothing he could do about it. Not with Preston LaForge dead and Cindy Ann Evans murdered and not a shred of hard evidence to connect them to the Jellicoes. The D.A. could never get an indictment out of a grand jury on the basis of my testimony alone. Because, as the Jellicoes’ lawyer would be sure to point out, my character was easily impeached. After all, I'd tried to blackmail those two young people. Hell, it was down on tape, and the police had the tape recorder, along with my gun and my license.

  So, where do you go from here, Harry? I asked myself.

  Do you call Tracy Leach and get it all started again? Do you take the chance of getting him and you and Jo killed? Because Foster had been right about that. If they were willing to try once on the basis of a few photographs, they'd be more than willing to try again if I kept pushing.

  Or do you let it all slide now? Because now's the time to decide, while you still have that anger going for you. Next week, maybe even tomorrow, it'll be too late.

  Damn it! I said and slapped myself stingingly on the thigh. I wanted to know who that third man was. Just for my own peace of mind. So I could tell myself that I'd seen it all, before I stepped away. Or didn't step away.

  Hell, who knows what he'll do until he does it?

  I picked up the phone and made two calls.

  The first was to Ralph Cratz—to tell him that I wasn't going to be able to make it up to Dayton that day.

  “It's fine with me,” he said. “But I don't think Dad's going to like it. I told him you were going to come up, and he's been trying to get you all morning. He's got it in his head that something's gone wrong—you know how he is. And I'm afraid he might try to go back to Cincinnati.”

  “Keep him there!” I almost shouted. “For God's sake, keep him in Dayton! If you don't want to see him hurt or killed, you'll do what I say.”

  Ralph promised to try. “But you know Dad,” he said miserably.

  The second call was to Tracy Leach—to find out what he'd been in such a rush to talk about.

  “Preston,” he said. From the sound of his voice, Tracy Leach was either very angry or very frightened. I couldn't tell which.

  “What about Preston?”

  “Are you going to make me say it over the phone?” he said with distaste.

  I thought about the last time I'd been invited to a private meeting to talk things out and said, “Yes. What about Preston?”

  “You're a bastard,” Leach hissed. The rest of it was delivered at a clipped, furious p
ace, like morse code. “Some policemen came here. They asked me about Preston. They said he'd . . . that the Evans girl was dead because of him.”

  “I know that,” I said.

  “They said he'd left a note by some pictures.” Leach paused. “I didn't tell them but I'm telling you. Preston didn't have any pictures like that. I practically lived in his apartment, so I know. Those pictures weren't his. I don't know about the note. It was in his hand. They showed it to me. But I'm telling you”—his voice peaked shrilly—“Preston did not kill that girl.”

  I shivered where I stood in the hot July sunlight. “He didn't kill Cindy Ann,” I said flatly. Not like a question. Like a statement of fact. Trying it out, seeing how it sounded, how it resonated.

  “And I can prove it,” Tray Leach said. “Now will you come over here?”

  “I'll be right over,” I said and slammed down the receiver.

  22

  IT WAS the same overripe, dowager's room, but with a difference. He'd taken the rug up—the one I'd splashed with rose water—and he'd hung black crepe along the walls and put black antimacassars on all of the furnishings; so that, now, it was a dowager's room in mourning.

  “For Preston?” I said, fingering the black cloth on one of the armrests of the settee.

  Tracy Leach nodded.

  He'd decked himself in black, too. Black shirt. Black trousers. Black shoes and socks. Given that impassive, boy-like face, he looked vaguely like Cesar, Caligari's somnambulist.

  He looked ridiculous. And so did the room. The combination was as vapid as a belated condolence card. And it made me squirm to see it.

  “I said a little prayer for him today,” Tray said. “I'm Catholic. Lapsed, of course. The Church doesn't approve of my sexual preferences. But I still go to mass on a few feast days and, every so often, for confession.” He looked at me with ugly self-assurance. “Am I boring you? Sorry, if I am. But, you see, according to the Church, his soul is in hell. I don't know if I believe that or not. But I do know what people can do to you while you are still alive. Or while your memory is. They're going to crucify Preston in the papers. And I will not let that happen. He was a weak man, but he was not a killer. The very idea is absurd. He'd no more have harmed that girl than he would have harmed me. He liked her. He told me so. She had been sweet to him. Sometimes children can be sweet in a selfless way, before they learn who they're not supposed to like or love.”

  “What did he talk about on Sunday afternoon, when he came to see you?”

  “You, of course. And what you had done to him. He didn't know what to do. You see, with an operation like the Jellicoes', if a customer should become, shall we say, dissatisfied, he can never complain to the authorities for fear that Lance or Laurie will retaliate with pictures, tape recordings, films. They have a little something on file for each of their special clients.”

  “What did they have on Preston?”

  Leach leaned forward on the settee. “I'm not sure. He wasn't sure, either.”

  “I don't understand.”

  Tray got up and walked over to the big rosewood chiffonier. He opened the top drawer and withdrew a piece of paper and brought it back to the couch. “A week ago last Sunday, Preston went to a party in Louisville. I was invited but declined. You see, the Jellicoes were doing the catering and I haven't done any business with them for some time. I don't care for either one of them. They're vermin and they were ruining Preston's life.”

  Leach looked up suddenly. “She could be incredibly vicious. Teasing, tormenting. I think she's capable of anything—that one.”

  “Of killing?” I said.

  “Even that. She loves pain and she loves to inflict it. She's extraordinarily artful at what she does. And she can make it go on for hours, until you're begging her for release. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about. That girl frightens me. And I'm not easily frightened.”

  “And Lance?”

  “A clod. A piece of Texas farm land. Big and dumb and brutal. But, perhaps, not as brutal as she is. Not in the mind, where it really counts.”

  “Capable of killing?”

  “I don't know. Probably. If he were cornered and saw no other way out. But, then, most of us are capable of killing, given the right circumstances.”

  He gave me a quick look, and I realized that he knew about Abel Jones. Then, I realized that a lot of people probably did. It would have made the eleven o'clock news on all four channels.

  “You were telling me about a party?”

  “Yes. In Louisville. It was a fund-raiser of sorts. A lot of powerful men were invited. You probably wouldn't believe some of the names.”

  He mentioned two—a state senator and a local politician with a national reputation.

  “It's an open secret,” Leach said with a touch of contempt in his mild voice. “That politicians go for the rough trade. They like to be bullied, those strong men. They like to be dominated by their women. And the more powerful they are, the more they love it. It makes them feel powerless, for once. Gives them a taste of mortality that they don't get in their everyday lives.”

  He was enjoying it, breaking what, I suppose, he thought were my idols. A wicked smile played upon his cruel mouth. “I could tell you stories that would make your skin crawl, about those big, strong, red-blooded American men.”

  “Why don't you tell me what happened to Preston?”

  “I'm getting to it,” he said with a nasty laugh. “I just want you to pay a little for your illusions, first. The fund-raiser was early in the evening. About twelve the real party began. Preston never could hold his liquor. He was a lousy drunk, sick and sick-making and, eventually, passed out by the end of an evening. That Monday was no different. He drank and joked and pretended to be one of the guys.”

  Tray laughed forlornly. “You know I think that's all he ever really wanted.

  “About two, the Jellicoes brought the girls and boys on. Preston told me they had them dressed up and their faces made up. They paraded them on a little band box under a reflecting ball, with the room lights down and blue light reflections playing on their faces. He said it was very beautiful in an eerie way, like it was snowing a melancholy blue snow on those beautiful children. Cindy Ann was among them. Did you ever see her?”

  I shook my head.

  “I did, once. She was an extraordinary thing. Hair the color of licked red candy and skin the white of lace. Made up with rouge spots and black eye liner and dressed in a gold chemise, she was like some dada-esque creature. An expressionist child. And there was a mischief in her eyes, a wildness. It was really quite stunning. Of course, she was ignorant as mud. And sharp with her tongue. She could curse like a sailor. But she could also be kind and loving in a remarkably adult way. She had a certain tolerance for weakness that was quite endearing. I just saw her that once. At Preston's house. But I think I fell a little bit in love with her, too. Like Preston.

  “In any event, she was at the party. And she spent some time with Preston in one of the rooms they'd set up. But Preston got drunk and sick and someone came in and took Cindy Ann out with him. Preston said he couldn't remember who. It was very dark and there were all of those straight-laced types. County and state officials out for a kinky evening. Then they started with the Polaroids and the eight millimeters, like they always did. And some of the children were posing in the white camera lights. Some of them were being used and being photographed.

  Then Preston blundered into another private room and there were movie lights inside and lots of people standing around. He could hear someone moaning from the bed. He couldn't see her face, but they were masturbating her with dildoes. He watched for a while and then went out and drank some more and passed out.”

  “That's it?” I said. “That's all of it?”

  “Not quite. Something happened while he was out. Something terrible. Laurie woke him up by throwing water in his face. The room was empty when he woke and he could see some dawn light through the drapes. Laurie poured coffee into him and t
old him that he had to get out of there—that something awful had happened to one of the girls. When he asked her what, she looked at him strangely, as if he were playing a game with her. You see, they wanted to make him think that he'd been involved, and he was impressionable enough to take the hint.

  “He came to me that Tuesday morning, in tears. And I made him sober up and clean up. Then I made him tell me the whole story, just as I'm telling it to you. I kept asking him what had happened to the girl. And he kept saying, ‘I can't remember, Tray. I was in that room and then I was passed out and then Laurie came along with the water.’ He was very frightened. He was afraid he might have killed the girl while he was drunk. Poor Preston. He would repeat anything that anyone told him, and after a time, he'd forget who had told him and think he'd made it up himself. I'm telling you he was incapable of killing another human being. He just didn't have it in him.”

  “What's on the paper?” I asked him.

  “A confession. I made him write up the story, just as he told it to me. I meant it as a joke, to show him how foolish all his fears were when he discovered the truth. But... it didn't work out that way.”

  “May I see it?”

  He handed the paper to me. I read it through quickly. The hand was childlike—a neat block-print—the hand of a penitent little boy. It stated very simply the same story that Tray had told me. And it was signed at the bottom, Preston LaForge.

  I gave the confession back to him and he put it back in the chiffonier.

  “You know that'll never stand up as evidence,” I told him. “It doesn't prove that Preston didn't kill Cindy Ann.”

  “And chop her up and drop her in the Ohio,” Leach said sarcastically. “And then go back to the party and fall down drunk?”

  “He could have been lying, Tray. He could have been using you to salve his conscience.”

  Leach stared at me with savage contempt. “I made him swear to me that he was telling the truth. I made him swear it on the Bible. And I'm telling you that he didn't lie to me. I'm not an idiot. I knew Preston well enough to figure out when he was playing games and when he wasn't. What I told you is the truth.”