John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 05 - A Deadly Shade of Gold

by A Deadly Shade of Gold(lit)

  It was about nine feet down to soft earth. I had the right window marked by its relationship to a crooked tree. On my return, I would flip pebbles against the window to signal her. I would toss the line in and she would make it fast. If for any reason we could not anticipate, anyone had to come into the rooms, she would turn my shower on and close the bathroom door before answering the hall door.

  She had the waiting. Maybe that was the hardest part.

  Twelve

  IT was almost over before it began. It was almost over in one of the world's nastiest ways for McGee. I saw a man's body after it had happened to him that way, and it is one of my most persistent memories.

  When I went up the road, the third of a moon was high enough to make the going easy. I stayed in the shadows. Halfway up I heard a car coming and saw lights and had all the time in the world to go down the slope on the sea side of the road and flatten out. It turned into the Escutia driveway, fifty feet before it got to where I was.

  When I got to the Boody place, I stepped over the chain and went around to the side of the house opposite the swimming pool, and made my way to the Garcia wall through the Boody grounds. I stood by the wall a long time, listening, and heard nothing but the normal noises of the night, and the whining of mosquitoes looking for the meat of my neck.

  After debating a moment, I decided to try a place where the top of the wall wasn't shadowed by the trees inside. I might be more visible, but I had that damned glass to fool with. I wanted the hooks to catch the inside edge of the wall. If they'd rounded it off, I'd have to try flying it into a tree. That made retrieving it more of a problem. I straightened the loops out and tossed the hooks over the wall. I heard them clink against the inside of the wall. I pulled them slowly, worrying about sawing the nylon against sharp glass. They caught, but when I put on a little pressure there was a tink of breaking glass, and a piece of glass and the hooks came back to me. After a third try, and more glass each time, I knew the wall was rounded off on the inside, another little touch of professionalism.

  I moved back away from the wall and moved along parallel to it, moving further away from the road, until I came to a tree I liked, growing on the inside. I held the very end of the line in my left hand, the loops between thumb and finger, and swung the grapnel around my head a few times with my right hand and let it fly. It arched into the leaves with too much noise. I listened, then slowly pulled it tight. It was fast, and apparently on a good solid branch, because when I put my weight on it, there was only about a six-inch give.

  The angle of the line took it across my edge of the wall. At least it was out of the glass. I put my rubber soles against the white wall and walked up it, at an acute and unpleasant angle. The damned nylon was so thin it dug painfully into my hands. The concavity near the top was tricky, but I took a giant step and got one foot on the edge, and then the other, and pulled myself erect, wiggling my toes into areas between the shards of glass.

  Holding the line lightly for balance, I looked into the grounds. Off to my right I could see a faint light which I guessed was the gate light. I could see the lights of the main house almost dead ahead, between the leaves. I broke a few shards off, snubbing at them with the toe of my right shoe, and got myself a more balanced place to stand, then tried to yank the damned hooks free. They would not come free. All I did was make a horrid rustling in the leaves.

  I certainly could not go up such a thin line hand over hand to free it. As I decided it was hopeless, I gave a last despairing yank and it came free so unexpectedly that I did a comedy routine on top of the wall, my back arched, waving my arms wildly to keep from falling back outside.

  When I had balance, I brought the grapnel up and fixed it firmly onto the outside corner of the wall at a place where the line lay between the sharpness of glass as it crossed the top of the wall. I lowered myself on the inside, and let myself down in the same way as I had climbed up. I knew I might want to find the line in one hell of a hurry. There were too many trees, and the wall was too featureless, the white of the line too invisible against it. Then I had an idea, and I fumbled around and found some soft moist earth and took it in both hands and made a big visible smear on the white wall. I knew I could find that in a hurry.

  I started toward the house. I had not gone ten feet from the wall when I heard it. Something coming at me fast, with the little guttural sound of effort, a scrabble of nails skidding on the ground. It came into the silver of moonlight a dozen feet away, and made one more bound and launched itself up at me, a big black silent murderous Doberman. A killer dog is peculiarly horrible in the silence of the attack. A long time ago I sat with others on hard benches and listened to a limey sergeant talk about and demonstrate hand-to-hand assault and defense. They gave us three days of him. He knew all the nasty arts, and knew them well. We learned interesting little facts from him-for example, an inch or two of the tip of a knife high enough in the diaphragm, just under the breast bone, will cause an instantaneous loss of consciousness, whereas the whole blade into the chest or belly will give them time to bellow.

  He spent about fifteen minutes on the guard dogs we might run into around enemy supply installations. He had a healthy awe of them. He said they leap for the throat, bowl you over like being hit by a truck, savage you to death in moments. The attack is so swift, a gun or knife is often useless. But he said there was one weak point in their attack. And you had to be very quick to take any advantage of it.

  Once the dog launches itself into its final leap, it is committed. He had his assistant sling an imitation dog at him, a canvas sack of sand with the two front legs sticking out of it. The man swung it close to the ground and hurled it at the sergeant's chest. The sergeant snatched at a forepaw, grasped it, pivoted and fell back, using the momentum of his fall and all the strength of arms and back to hurl the imitation dog on beyond him, in the same direction as its charge. He could throw it a startling distance. I remembered how it bounced in the dust.

  He said that in the leap the forepaws are relatively motionless. Snatch too soon and it can twist and tear your hands off. Wait too long and it is very hard to throw something that has hold of you by the throat.

  He threw it a final time and dusted his hands and said, "Tykes the art out of im. Spoils is bloody leg for im. All you chaps do a spot of practice."

  With that black shape launched at me, I wished I'd given it some more practice. Fear either freezes you or makes you eerily quick and strong. I was pivoting and falling as I felt my fingers of both hands dig into the corded forearm of the dog, with no memory of how I had managed to grasp it, an index finger hooked around the knob of the elbow.

  Unless I could impart enough centrifugal force to keep his head away from my hands, I was going to lose meat in a painful and ugly way, so I heaved as hard as I could, combining his leap, my backward fall, the pivot, into a single flight. I felt something give as I let go, heard a small whistling whine, a meaty thud as he struck the wall combined with a clopping sound as it snapped his jaws shut, a softer thud as he fell to the ground.

  I bounded up, feeling as cold as if I'd handled snakes. From the instant he bounded at me until he fell to the ground at the base of the wall, the total elapsed time was perhaps less than two full seconds. I wiped my hands on my thighs and waited for him. It is possible to age a year in two seconds. Animals that come at you in the night is one of the horror dreams of childhood. You never really get over them.

  I moved to him carefully, screened the small pen beam with my body and took a two second look. He was about eighty pounds of sinew, black hair and fangs-and he was quite dead.

  It put an unknown limit on the time I could spend there. I had no way of knowing when they would call him. Perhaps they pulled in the human guard at nightfall and let the dog roam the grounds all night. He was too near my escape line. I waited until my eyes had readjusted to the night, then with a squeamish hesitation, took him by the hind paw and dragged him a dozen yards into a thickness of shrubbery covered with fragrant w
hite blooms. Some variety of jasmine. Suddenly I wondered if they had a pair of dogs, and the thought nearly sent me hustling toward my escape line. I couldn't expect that much luck twice. Few men have ever given me as much instant fright as that dog gave me. And it was an unpleasant clue to the Garcia attitude about visitors. Uninvited visitors. Watchdogs trained to bark are a lot more common, and more civilized.

  As I moved carefully toward the house, avoiding open patches of moonlight, listening for the slightest sound of a charging dog, I took note of direction and landmarks. I wanted to be able to leave at a headlong run, if need be, with a certainty of hitting the wall at the right place. When I had an unimpeded view of the big pink house, I stopped in the shadows and moved to one side and leaned against the trunk of a tree and hooked my thumbs in my belt and stared at it. By assuming one of the postures of relaxation you can trick your body into thinking things are perfectly under control. I was still shaky from the extra adrenaline the black dog had stimulated. I looked at the roof shape against the sky. There weren't many windows lighted. It was a big house, at least double the size of the Boody place. The complex of smaller buildings behind it was more elaborate, and there were lights showing there, too, and a faint sound of music from there.

  I selected the next spot. There was a shallow patio with a low broad stone wall, the patio next to a wing of the house, parallel to it and up against it. Two sets of glass doors and two windows were encircled by the patio wall. The doors and window to the right were lighted. The light seemed to come through opaque white draperies. The doors and window to the left were dark. Once you decide, it is it strategic error to wait too long. Then it becomes like jumping off a roof. The longer you wait, the higher it looks. I had to cross a moonlit area. I bent double and moved swiftly, angling toward the dark end of the shallow patio. I went over the wall, moved close to the side of the house and lay on rough flagstones close against a low line of plantings. I listened. Now the fact of the dog was in my favor. Nobody was going to stay terribly alert, not with a monster like that cruising the grounds. When they've killed you, they stand and bay until somebody comes to congratulate them.

  I wormed on over to the lighted doors, and found a place at the bottom corner I could look through. I was looking into a big bedroom with a sitting room area at one end of it, the end nearest the doors. A wall mirror showed me the reflection of the end of an elaborately canopied bed. A man sat on a grey chaise, turned away from me, so that all I could see of his face was a shelf of brow, curve of cheek. He wore shorts. One leg was outstretched, one propped up. They were pale legs, thick and powerful, fuzzed with a pelt of springy black hair. He was reading a book. His left side was toward me. Gold wrist watch and gold strap were half submerged in the curl of black hair on forearm and wrist.

  I saw a movement in the mirror and then a girl came into view. She was walking slowly, barefoot, fastening the side of a green knit skirt, her head angled down so that a heavy sheaf of shining blonde hair obscured her face. She wore a white bra covering small breasts. Her upper torso was golden tan, with the narrow and supple look of youth. She fixed the skirt as she reached the foot of the chaise. She threw her hair back with a toss of her head, and stood and looked at the man with a cool, unpleasant expression. It was a very lovely face. I could guess that her earliest memories were of being told how pretty she was. It was a cool and sensuous face.

  The springing blonde hair, with a few tousled strands across her forehead, fell in a glossy heaviness in two wings which framed the sensitive and bad tempered face. I had seen her before, and I groped for the memory, and finally had it. She had stared very earnestly at me many times, looked deeply into my eyes, held up a little squeeze bottle and told me it would keep me dainty all day long. Despite all rumors to the contrary, these huckster blondes were not interchangeable. I knew this one because her eyes were set strangely, one more tilted than the other.

  She said something to the man. The curl of her mouth looked unpleasant. He lowered the book, said something, lifted it again. She shrugged and turned away and walked out of my field of vision. I lay in controlled schizophrenia, split between my interest in the lighted room, and my alertness for any sound behind me in the night. When she appeared again she was fastening the top half of the green knit two piece suit and she wore shoes. She had that contrived walk of the model, like Nora's walk but more so-the business of putting each foot down in direct line with the previous step, toeing outward slightly, to impart a graceful sway to the body from the waist down. She was not tall. Perhaps five-four. She made herself look tall.

  She stopped at the right side of the chaise and perched one hip on it, facing the man. She spoke to him. I could hear the very faint cadence of her voice. She was intent, persuasive, half-smiling. It was like a commercial with the volume turned down. As she talked, he put two cigarettes between his lips, lit them, handed one to her. She stopped talking and looked expectantly at him. He reached and caught her wrist. She sprang up and wrenched her wrist away, her face ugly with sudden fury. She called him a ten letter word, loud enough for me to hear it through the doors. She was no lady. She strode out of range in the opposite direction, and I heard a door slam.

  She left with the look of somebody who was not coming back immediately. There was no profit in watching a hairy man read a book. I eased back and crouched in the moon shadows and stood up slowly. From what I had seen of the Boody house and what I could observe of this one, the dark doors and window would open onto another bedroom unit. They were sliding doors, in an aluminum track. I tried the outside handle. Locked. It would turn down about an inch, and then it stopped. I stood close to it; got a good grip on it, then began to exert an ever-increasing pressure. Just as my muscles began to creak and protest, some part of the inner mechanism snapped with a sharp metallic sound. I waited and listened. I tried the door. It slid open with a muted rumble. I crouched, tensed up, ready to go. Burglar alarms seemed like a logical accessory to a killer dog. It didn't have to be a clanging. It could be a muted buzz at a guard station, inaudible to me. So I counted off six hundred seconds before I slipped through the eighteen inch opening, brushing the draperies aside. I stood in the darkness in total concentration.

  We are given certain atavistic faculties which can be trained through use. You can stand in a dark room and after a time be absolutely certain there is no other person there. When I was quite certain, I used the pencil light, pinching the beam smaller between thumb and finger. It was a big bedroom-sitting room, less luxurious than the one I had looked into. There were no coverings on the two three-quarter beds.

  I went back and closed the door I had broken, and checked the three other doors. One opened into a roomy dressing room. One opened into a tiled bath, where an astonished cockroach sped into the darkness. The third opened onto a broad and dimly lighted hallway. There was a window at the blind end. The other end opened out into a big room as weakly lighted as the hallway. I could see the dark shapes of heavy furniture.

  Four doors opened onto the hallway. Two on each side. Four guest bedroom units, I assumed. The resident quarters would be in the other wing. I could hear no sound. I debated trying iny luck with a quick and silent run into the living room at the end of the corridor, taking a chance on finding a dark pocket behind some of that heavy Iurniture. But there was too much chance of being cut off. I locked the bedroom door on the inside, and went back out through the glass doors, listened for a time, then left the patio and moved along the side of the house and around to the back, feeling more confident.

  That is the familiar trap of course, the one that catches the cat burglars. They begin to feel invulnerable, and they push it a little further and a little further, until one day in their carelessness they wake up the wrong person-and then kill or are killed.

  I sped through an area of moonlight, and crouched beyond the swimming pool, a layout almost identical to the Boody construction, near the building where the servants would be housed. Mexican radio was loud. Windows were lighted. The r
ooms were small and plain. I wanted a reasonable tiead count. The smell of cooking was strong. I saw a heavy woman walking to and fro in a small room, carrying a whining child, while a man sat alone at a table playing with a set of greasy cards. A screen door slapped. Somebody hawked and spat. I saw three men in a room, playing dominoes, placing them with large scowls and gestures, loud clacks of defiance. One of them was my wistful gate guard. A woman sat near them, stirring something in a large pottery bowl. A kitten mewed. The radio advertised Aye-low Shahm-boo. I looked through a gap in a sleazy curtain and saw, on a cot, under the bright glare of an unshaded bulb, in the direct blast of the music of the plastic radio, a muscular man and a very skinny woman making love, both of them shiny with sweat.

  A quiet evening in the servants' quarters. I drifted away, and made my way back across to the big house, and came up to it at the rear, on the other side. I looked into a big bright white kitchen. A square-bodied, square-faced, dark-skinned woman in a black and white uniform sat on a high red stool at a counter, polishing silver. A man leaned against the counter near her. A guard type, in khaki, armed, eating a chicken leg.

  I passed dark windows. I came to a lighted one. I looked in. It was a small bedroom. A thin drablooking, middle-aged woman sat there in a rocking chair without arms. She wore a very elaborate white dress, all lace and embroidery, strangely like a wedding dress. It did not look clean. Her hair was unkempt, strands of grey long and tangled. She had her arms folded across her chest. She was rocking violently, seeming to come close to tipping the chair over backwards each time. Her underlip sagged and her face was absolutely empty. There is only one human condition which can cause that total terrible emptiness. She rocked and rocked, looking at nothing.