The Lime Pit

by Jonathan Valin

  “Let me go to the bathroom,” she pleaded. “I'm going to be sick.”

  “Is that what Cindy Ann said, Laurie? Did she dirty her drawers when you killed her?”

  For a second she couldn't catch her breath. “Didn't,” she sputtered. “Didn't kill her.”

  “Who did.”

  She shuddered and I slapped her again.

  “Who did?”

  “At the party,” she moaned, clutching her belly. “Someone at the party.”

  “Who?”

  “Bascomb. Howie Bascomb.”

  “The real estate man?”

  She nodded. “I'm going to be sick. Please.”

  “Be sick,” I said to her. “Why did you set Preston up?”

  Her face grew bright red. She couldn't hold it any longer. And she stooped a little and evacuated on the tile. When she looked back up at me her face was bloated with hatred. And I didn't blame her a bit. But I wasn't about to lay off, either. She deserved it. Maybe not at my hands. But, she deserved it and I was the only one around who knew how much.

  “Answer me, Laurie,” I said to her. “Or I swear to God I'll make you eat that mess.”

  “I didn't set him up,” she said between her teeth. “We got there after he was dead.”

  Her eyes glittered like razors. “I'm going to kill you for this. Somehow I'm going to kill you. And it won't be quick. I'll do it like I used to do Cindy Ann. Only worse.” Her voice throbbed. “So much worse!”

  “I believe you would, too.

  “Who set Preston up? Who brought the pictures to his apartment?”

  She glared at me.

  I slapped her again so hard that her nose gushed blood.

  But she just glared. The indignity she'd suffered had put iron back in her spine. And I knew that I could kick her around from now till tomorrow and she wouldn't tell me another thing.

  I dragged her over to the chair and tied and gagged her. I should have blindfolded her, too. She never stopped glaring at me—torturing me with her eyes. When I'd gotten her tied down good, I retied Lance and left them both in the kitchen while I went house hunting.

  Six beautiful children—two boys and four girls—were on the second floor, hiding in a bedroom. They'd heard the fracas downstairs and banded together. They were very frightened, but then they were used to being frightened. Several of them had cigarette burns on their round little tummies and ugly scars on their wrists and ankles. Not one of them was older than sixteen. And they were all rather waif-like and ascetic-looking. Pale, thin, blondish children with the look of refugees.

  Eventually I got one of them—the oldest one—to talk to me.

  She was Cindy Ann's age. Blonde-haired and milk-white in the face. With very regular features and large, beautiful green eyes. She had a little swagger about her, where the others were timid and featureless. And her name was Cissy Hill.

  Cissy spoke with a nasal Kentucky twang. She had no parents, she told me. All the children were parentless. And, unbelievable as it sounded, that clean white farm house was licensed by the Commonwealth as a halfway house for homeless children. Which helped explain the new paint.

  “We ain't orphans exactly. We had folks. All of us but Becky. But they done died or got killed like mine in an auto crash. When we went on the state, they sent us here. It ain't half bad, 'cept when Laurie gets riled. Then it's bad. The rest of the time it's mostly fun. Hell, I was gettin' poked ‘fore I was thirteen. Don't make me no never mind whether I do't for fun or for Laurie and Lance. We get to dress up nice.”

  I asked her to show me the rest of the house.

  And she smiled cunningly. “You mean where they keep the pictures, don't you.”

  I said that was exactly what I meant.

  She said O.K., but warned me to lock the rest of the kids in the bedroom or they'd go downstairs to be with Lance and Laurie. So I locked the five of them in the bedroom and followed Cissy downstairs and down a hall to a paneled room, hung with photos of Laurie and furnished with black vinyl furniture. There was a desk on the east wall. Cissy walked over to it and said, “In there. But it's locked.”

  I tried the handle on the file drawer. It wouldn't budge. So I told Cissy to stand back and she said, “Oh, good. You're going to shoot it!”

  And I did shoot it with the magnum.

  The gun made a terrific roar and the desk drawer exploded.

  “Far out!” Cissy said.

  I walked back over and pulled out what was left of the drawer. It was filled with pictures and several tins of eight millimeter film and a fat black address book stocked with names and notes. All of the stuff that the Jellicoes held over the heads of their clients. It was a perfect haul that would put them out of business and behind bars. I asked Cissy to find me a bag. She got one out of a closet and I dropped all the evidence into it. And then we sat down on the black vinyl couch, with Laurie Jellicoe peering down at us from every wall, and had our chat about Cindy Ann.

  “Were you at the party the night she was killed?” I asked her.

  Cissy got a sad look on her face and said, “Oh, yes. It was awful.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “I ain't for sure, exactly. They was in a different room from us, and it was real late. And we heard this explosion, like when you shot the desk. Then Lance come out all upset. And Laurie kept talking to him, trying to calm him down. He didn't like what happened none. He's always been a soft touch. But she sure ain't. I ain't for sure what happened. I liked Cindy Ann. She was ‘bout my age, you know. And some of them others is just kids.” She was older than the others and, in a few years, those beautiful green eyes would become lively green predators in a predatory world. She caught me studying her and smiled raffishly. “They made us leave real quick after that explosion. And I ain't seen Cindy Ann since then.”

  I stared at the desk and thought, suddenly, that I would never know. Not if this eager girl couldn't tell me. That Hugo's darling might as well be drowned in the river. So lost was she from the world. Buried, burned. Gotten rid of after the embarrassment of her death—after some drunken realtor had killed her for fun or in rage—by the Jellicoes or their silent friend.

  “Does anybody else come out here and talk with the Jellicoes?” I asked Cissy.

  “Aw, him,” she said disgustedly. “He's just a dumb old cracker.”

  “Who?”

  “That man. He come out here with a mean nigger once and awhile. Most times just the nigger comes out. He stays with us while Lance and Laurie ain't around. That old cracker don't like Lance much. He talks to Laurie mostly.”

  “What's he look like?”

  “Just an old man. With glasses.”

  “O.K., Cissy. I guess that's it.”

  She looked at me curiously. “What's going to happen to us, mister? What you going to do?”

  “I'm going to call the police,” I said. “And see that they get you to some decent homes;”

  “Aw, shucks,” she said morosely. “I was afraid of that. There goes all our fun.”

  I laughed at her. “You'll still have fun, Cissy. There's lots of girls and boys your age at high schools.”

  “They may be my age. But they ain't lived.”

  “You can teach them.”

  “Hey!” she said, brightening. “That's a thought!”

  There was a phone on the desk. I picked it up and called the Highway Patrol. The local cops would probably have been thoroughly bribed. Judging from what Leach had said about the clientele at the Jellicoes' party, I wasn't even sure that the state troopers were safe. Just to be sure, I called the F.B.I., too. I told them both where I was—about six miles west on the Belleview road. And told them a little of the situation. They said they'd dispatch cars right away. And then I went out to the kitchen to check on Lance and Laurie.

  He'd come around a little. And she was still sitting there, murdering me in her mind.

  Cissy peeked through the door and said, “What a smell!”

  At ten A.M., the highway
patrol arrived. And ten minutes later a khaki-colored government car pulled up outside the farm house. After a few minutes of hassling about jurisdictions, the cops joined hands and began the long process of legal action against Lance and Laurie Jellicoe.

  25

  I WAS in the Highway Patrol station at Belleville for three hours, explaining my part in the business. The kids, especially Cissy, were eager to cooperate. And, soon, they had a whole bank of stenographers working double time. It was a very ugly bust, and it had statewide ramifications. Someone had certified the Jellicoes to house wards of the court and someone had been sending selected children to them. Disentangling the mess was a job for the federal district attorney and for the attorney general at Frankfort. By two in the afternoon, the little office was buzzing with prosecutors and special investigators from the capital.

  “Boy, to look at ‘em, it sure is hard to believe,” one of the troopers said to me.

  I nodded. “They're a handsome pair.”

  The last time I saw the Jellicoes, they were being loaded into a station wagon. Lance's jaw was bruised and swollen and Laurie had a split lip, but, outside of that, they were indeed a handsome pair. They held their manacled hands in front of their faces when the photographers started shooting. Then a deputy stepped in and whisked them away.

  Cissy, who had developed a mild crush on me, started to cry. “Damn!” she said. “There goes the easy life.”

  “Buck up, honey,” I told her. “You'll be better off without them.”

  At three some agents from the Juvenile Court came to pick up the children. And as they were rounding them up, Cissy ran up, threw her arms around my neck, and gave me a sultry kiss goodbye. It made me sad to think that she would probably never know how wrong that kiss had been.

  “Goodbye, honey,” she said cheerfully. “I'm off to the work farm.”

  “Take care, Cissy.”

  “I shall,” she said. She started to walk away, then turned back. “I thought of something I meant to tell you at the house. You know that man you was asking me about—the one that come to see Laurie and Lance fairly regular?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Well, I don't remember his face none. But I do remember that car.” She got a dreamy look in her eye. “It was a Cad-ee-lac,” she said lovingly. “A pink Cad-ee-lac. And it had the funniest thing on the hood!”

  I shivered up and down my spine. “Bull's horns.”

  “Sure enough,” she said with surprise. “How'd y'all know that?”

  “A lucky guess.”

  “Yeah.” She looked at me oddly, then a smile broke across her face. “Goodbye, Harry. Some day I'll come see you. You can count on that.”

  ******

  There was a pay phone in the hall of the Highway Patrol building. I got a couple of dimes out of my trousers, sat down in the booth, and closed the folding door. A little fan went on overhead with a whisper. I just sat there for about five minutes, juggling the coins until they were warm from my palm and thinking about Red Bannion—an ordinary old man with glasses and a pink Cadillac.

  It made perfect sense that it would have been him. He had the connections throughout the state to set the Jellicoes up in business and to keep the local police away from the farm. And it had been Red Bannion who had touted me onto Preston LaForge, when I started asking questions about Cindy Ann. And, if Laurie could be trusted at all, it had also been Red Bannion who had driven up to Preston's house—in the heart of that storm—and frightened him into committing suicide.

  It did make sense.

  That's why Lance had been upset the night of the suicide. Preston's death truly hadn't been his doing. Perhaps, at that point, he didn't know what had happened. Perhaps, Laurie didn't either. But she had learned by the following night—when she met me at the Busy Bee. And she'd kept me occupied with drinks and small talk, while Abel Jones searched the apartment and prepared to murder me. That had probably been Red's idea, too. He'd seen three of the pictures. He wanted to see them all. And Abel Jones was just the man to jump at the chance to do Red Bannion a favor.

  Good old Red, who only wanted to be a help.

  Well, he had warned me off, in a way. Although he must have known I'd go after LaForge. In fact, he'd probably wanted me to. Preston panics and kills himself. Cindy Ann's death is accounted for. The Jellicoes go on with business as usual. And nobody ever has to be the wiser. Escorts Unlimited must have been a sweet and profitable enterprise to make a man like Bannion take so many chances to protect it. But, then, to keep Howie Bascomb—who owned half of the Riverside Mall—in your back pocket, along with most of the officials in Boone and Franklin counties, you'd be willing to take risks.

  I juggled the coins and listened to the fan blades whirring through the hot enclosed air. There was no way around it. Sooner or later I was going to have to ask myself just how big a part Porky Simlab had played in Red's scam. On the surface, the Jellicoes' operation seemed as far from Charles Street as you could get. But then, on the surface, Red Bannion had seemed a tough and earnest old man, eager to put some unsavory characters out of business.

  Well, I owed Porky something after ten years. And what it came down to was the benefit of the doubt. I don't have that many loyalties in my life—if loyalty was the right word for what I felt for that seedy, amiable old hoodlum with his cracker barrel speech and winking mouth. But after what I’d done that morning to Lance and Laurie Jellicoe, after what had happened the night before between Jo and me, after seeing Hugo being wheeled to the grave, I felt the need to show some loyalty to someone. Just to reestablish my own sense of myself as a decent man. Or as a sentimental fool. Sometimes I can't tell the difference.

  I slipped the coins in the phone slot and dialed the Charles Street house. If Porky could be kept out of it, I'd do my part. I wouldn't bring the state police down on his greasy old head until I knew for sure just where he fit in.

  Bannion answered almost immediately. “Yessuh?” he said. “Red Bannion heah.”

  “This is Harry, Red.”

  “Harry, boy,” he said warmly. “We heard some rumor y'all got shot at last night. T'aint true, is it, son? I done warned you about them fellas.”

  “Yeah. You sure did.”

  “What's wrong, son?” He was a quick old man. He'd heard right through my voice to the heart of it.

  “I know, Red,” I said wearily. “I know all about the Jellicoes and the farm outside Belleville. I know about Preston. And I know what happened to Cindy Ann.”

  “I see,” he said.

  “Why, Red? Why'd you do it?”

  “Aw, hell, son. For the money. Why else?”

  I sighed heavily. “I'm going to go to the police, Red. I just figured I owed you the courtesy of a call.”

  “Well, you go on right ahead, son. Do what you think is best.”

  That bothered me. “You don't care?”

  He made that sound again—that plaintive “hem.”

  “I ain't going to jail, son. I know too many people for that. I ain't sayin' that you couldn't be a bother. No sir, I ain't sayin' that at all. You know a good deal ‘bout my affairs. And I ain't sure who all you done already told. But, son, I been hanging round courthouses most of my life and you may bring the law down on me, but they ain't going to be able to prove a thing. That girl, for example. Don't have to be no lawyer to know that without a body there ain't no crime.”

  “Where is it, Red? Where did you stash her?”

  He snorted merrily. “Hell, son, I tell you that and we wouldn't have nothing to discuss. I'm a gambler, Harry. I been one most of my life. You want to find out what happened to Cindy Ann, you come to me. But I got to warn you, son. You best come prepared.” Something calm and wintry filtered into Red's voice like that blue snow that Preston had seen falling on those beautiful children. “Might be better that way. Just you and me. I ain't got no hankering to see this drag through the courts. I ain't got that much time left. You want to know about that girl, you meet me at Willie Keeler's th
eater in about an hour.”

  I didn't say anything.

  “It's a slim chance, son. I ain't really offering you nothing but a shot at me—head-on. And, of course, a chance of finding out what's left of that girl. If I was you, I'd turn me down. But, then, I'm not you.” He hung up.

  ******

  I hadn't had any sleep in some thirty hours, and I was feeling too fuzzy to drive. I popped the bennies at a water fountain beside the phone booth. Then sat down on a wood bench and waited for the rush. In ten minutes, I was rarin' to go again. I checked out with the desk sergeant and walked through the station house door into the clean blue afternoon. The Pinto was parked in a gravel lot beside the station. I climbed in, spun my wheels in the loose rock, kicked up a little white dust, and, in a minute, I was back on the expressway, heading north.

  I thought about Red Bannion as I breezed along the highway. He was going to try to kill me. That much was sure. But not until he knew how much I knew and whom I'd told it to. That's the only way I could account for this recklessness. As for my own . . . maybe it was the bennies, but I had the strange feeling that I was driving through that bright beautiful afternoon to participate in an old-fashioned drama of justice and revenge. I was a little drunk on the absurdity of it. A gunfight in front of the shoe stores and liquor stores and dry cleaners of North Main Street. Just like the old Golden Deer days, when Red had been chief of police and Seventh Street had echoed with gunfire. It tickled some dark spot inside me to think of it. And I had to make myself calm down and relax. Remind myself that meeting him face-to-face was probably the only way to settle this business. Scare up sanity like a ghost, to mask the insane excitement—the vicious need to know what had become of the girl and to seek revenge for it. And for myself, too. Because he'll get away, Harry, that little man was whispering in my ear. He'll get away, just as he said he would. Bribe a judge, pack a jury.

  And go free. After all the bloodshed and the death. He'd go free. And that was an imperfection that little man couldn't abide. A crack in the damn world.

  I shivered and told myself I was talking sense, while the countryside whirled past me in a dream.