An attendant had pointed me out to him as the man who was waiting for him. A drink appeared on the bar and he took it and walked away toward the view windows. A powder snow was falling, and the wind whipped it against the curved glass. I followed him as he expected I would.
"In thirty seconds make me believe you could spoil anything for me, or I'll have you thrown out." He spoke without turning to look at me.
I said, "Golly, sir, gee whiz, now you've got me so terrified I can't hardly think straight."
He pivoted and stared at me. "What the hell is this?"
I smiled upon him. "I guess I don't like jackasses. I guess I don't like rich jackasses. I guess I don't like rich, rude, double-gaited jackasses. Now would you like to try again? You got off on the wrong foot, Gadgey."
I didn't realize he could get those eyebrows so high. "Who the hell do you think you are!"
"T. for Travis McGee. I know. You'll buy the ground I'm standing on and have me torn down. I am an old buddy of the Widow Geis. Doctor Fort shoved the first legal team into the fray and Miss Heidi got very well. Am I getting past that hair in your ears? I wouldn't want you to leave town without answering a question. Are you a miserable enough bastard to have found a way to gouge Heidi's winnings back out of her poor old dad's hide?"
"Gouge? Gouge?"
"There's no estate left."
"I know."
"Now how would you know Gadgey?"
"Her brother Roger was wringing his hands about it. He's a goddam stuffed shirt and... What gives you the right to ask me questions anyway?"
"Because I am helping the Widow Geis find out where all the money went."
"All the money? For God's sake, McGee, sure Heidi took a pretty good cut. I've still got eleven million in tax-exempt municipals, if you can comprehend what I'm talking about."
"You're talking about at least three hundred and thirty thousand a year you don't even have to report on the good old ten-forty. Cut the shit, Trumbill. If it was a hundred and ten million, you still couldn't impress me. You can afford to buy me a drink in your own club, can't you? A double Plymouth gin on ice, plain. I'll wait right here while you go make the arrangements."
I watched him head for the bar and I wondered how far he could be pushed. He did not lumber. He had a springy and youthful stride. As he approached bearing my drink, I heard him chuckling. He handed it to me, bowed, and said, "Golly, sir, gee whiz, now you've got me so terrified I can't think straight."
"Thank you for the drink, Mr. Trumbill."
"My pleasure, Mr. McGee," he said. "Let's sit in the lounge and get acquainted. There's no particular reason why I give a goddam about your opinion about anything, but there's one thing that needs correcting."
I followed him to two wingback chairs with a small table between them, angled to look out at the scenery and provide privacy for conversation. "You have met Heidi?" he asked.
"Yes."
"The ice queen. The snow maiden. But when you look at her, everything points the other way. When I married her three years ago, I thought I had the optimum solution. McGee, I am not a locker-room sex hero. I just happened to be born with a hell of a lot of sexual drive and capacity. Sleeping around is a damned bore. Everything about her looks as if she was made for it. Fantastic body. Healthy as a field hand. The way she walks, the timbre of her voice, the shape of her hands, it's all provocative and invitational. I. thought to myself, hell, Gadge, there's the answer. She was twenty-two and I was forty-eight. She'd be thirty-five when I was sixtyone, and she'd be getting ready to slow down a little when I damn well had to. But finding out she was a twenty-two-year-old virgin should have told me something. Let me tell you, I worked like a slave on that damned girl. The harder I tried, the nastier she thought it was. Finally I could practically see her flesh crawl when I touched her. The only response I ever got was a goddam martyred sigh: Sexual frustration is a hell of a sorry condition; McGee. So I went out to get what I couldn't get from her. I think I was a little out of my mind. I grabbed onto anything warm and breathing that came within reach. And a couple of times when I was pig-drunk it happened to be her willowy little art-class boyfriends who wanted a way to get a hand in the till. When I gave no big gifts of money, they went whimpering to her about her gross, horrible brute of a husband. Now I give her this. She knows she's frigid, and she knows that her condition had a lot to do with the situations I got into after I gave up with her. So she wasn't going to try for a big settlement and big alimony. But her darling daddy egged her on and got her some hot legal talent, and they gave me a pretty fair bruise. It could have been even big ger if she'd really wanted to take it all into court, but they still had enough pressure to extract a generous agreement. Those months were the only time I ever went the AC-DC route, and it isn't going to happen again because I'm never going to get into that kind of desperate mood again. So drop back on the double-gaited. I like girls. Always have. Always will. And I prefer girl-girls with all the girl-girl equipment to the girl-boys with the long locks and the squeaky voices: I don't know why I should give a goddam about your opinion..."
"You're repeating yourself. There's another question I Want to..."
He looked at his watch. "Okay. Come down to the apartment and ask it there. I'm expecting some people and I want to be there when they get there."
I got my coat from the attendant and we rode down to the sixteenth floor and got off. He explained that quite a few of the members kept an apartment in the building as a convenience, and if they were going to be away for six months or longer, the club management would arrange a sublet.
He unlocked it. It was as impersonal as a decorator's advertisement.
As soon as I had a chance I asked my question. "Mr. Trumbill, last year, in April or May or June, while you and Heidi were still together..."
"I moved out the last week in May."
"Okay. During those last two months did anything happen which seemed odd."
"Odd?"
"Any kind of accident which could have been dangerous, or any near-accident, where Heidi was involved?"
"Why?"
"It could be important and the reasons would take too long to explain."
"Important to whom, McGee?"
"Does it matter? Come on."
"There wasn't anything.. , unless you mean something like that damned candy."
"Candy?"
"Oh, there was a kind she was nuts about. Chocolate cherries. A lot of juice inside. She never bought them for herself. Her father would bring her a box or have them sent over on special occasions. Birthdays, anniversaries. Sometime in early May-we'd had a big scrap-I walked through the living room. She was watching the news on television. I was going out, and I knew she damned well wasn't going to say good-bye dear have a nice time. The Way she ate them, she didn't nibble. She'd lift one out of the box, pop it into her mouth, and mash it. The box was half gone. She was down to the second layer. Suddenly she began making the damnedest noises, gasping and whoofing and spitting pieces of chocolate all over. She went to the kitchen on a dead run, scaring the hell out of the maid. She kept rinsing her mouth in cold water. Her eyes were running and her nose was running. She couldn't say a word we could understand. Finally after she ate some crackers and rinsed her mouth out some more, she started chewing me out for pulling such a nasty trick. I finally convinced her I didn't know what the hell she was talking about. She had gotten a chocolate that instead of having a cherry and cherry juice inside had apparently been filled with about a quarter ounce of straight Tabasco. She was furious. I was running late, so I left."
"How did it happen?"
"She never found out. She opened all the ones left in the box. They were all perfect. She phoned her father and told him about it. He said it must have happened after the box was opened, because he had bought it one day, and brought it over to our place the next day in person, and the shop was certainly reliable. He said maybe it was some friend of mine who knew her habits. I guess you could classify that as an accident.
It made her very uncomfortable, but I guess there are things you could put in candy that would do more than..."
The phone rang and he answered it, then hung up and told me his people were on the way up. I thanked him and said I'd run along. He said, "Meet the group, McGee. Highly talented people. We're going to Guadeloupe and make a motion picture. Highly unusual script. Be released in France. Some of the crew is there now, picking locations."
There was a brisk rap on the door, and he went and let four of them in, two young women, two young men. They were laughing and gay and all a little tight. One was a Limey lass, the height of mod exhibitionism,. her little-girl skirt a good four inches above the kee, and a metallic golden serpent wrapped around her left leg just below the knee. While she was saying, with little chopping motions of her hands, "What a fantastically gawstly city Gadge darling, ectually!" he was introducing her as Pansy Perkins, certainly I'd heard of her.
"Certainly I haven't, sorry" I said. "I live a quiet life."
With a speculative glint she started appraising me, but Trumbill put a huge paw on her slender shoulder, and as he introduced a busty Italian girl whose name was vaguely familiar (she took a slender cigar out of the center of her considerable mouth to acknowledge the introduction) and then a Pierre something, talented director, all in black, even to little black onyx buttons in his pierced ears, and a Willy something, fat, pasty, scruffy, with too blatant an Irish accent, Gadge was at the same time stroking the throat of his Pansy with a spatulate thumb, an attention which unfocused her eyes, loosened her mouth, and sagged her head like a wilting poppy.
"We are going to go down there and do something true," Trumbill said. "We are going to work hard and we are going to work well, and get it all down the way it happens."
Suddenly I realized who he was trying to be. "For God's sake, Papa, don't forget the wineskins. Catch a brave and true marlin. But if this curious quartet has conned you into backing some feelthy movies, why bother trying to snow me? I don't care who reels you in, Pansy or Pierre. Papa never had that kind of problem."
Pierre hissed like a pooty tat, and the Italian gave an evil grin around her cigar, and Irish belched loudly, and Pansy murmured a few gutter words. Martin Hollinder Trumbill the Fourth gave a tight grin and rolled his big shoulders, clapped his hands like a gunshot, and came at me very Black Belt, springing and landing this way and that, paws in chopping position as he yelled, "Huhh!" and "Haaah!"
His quartet backed out of the way, looking expectant. Their imitation Papa would defend the honor of the group and throw Bigmouth all over the place. I pointed beyond him at Pierre and yelled, "No knives, you!"
Gadge turned quickly to see the imaginary knife, and opened up his left side just enough. I screwed my heels down into his gunmetal carpeting, pivoted hips and shoulders like Palmer needing an eagle on a par five, and bombed him on the left side, just above the belt, slightly around to the rear, straight punch, hooking slightly at impact, good snap, lots of follow-through.
He groaned, arched, grabbed at the impact point with both hands, and stood with his face screwed up like a little brave boy on the playground trying not to cry.
As I headed for the door I said, "Get it looked at before you leave, Trumbill. I may have tore up that kidney some."
The four rushed to him with little coos and murmurings and cries of compassion. I left as they were leading him to a chair. As I was going down in the elevator I realized that my appraisal of the relationship was not quite accurate. Those four might be under the impression they had a captive placid beast and if they kept scratching it behind the ears, it would moo with joy and give milk indefinitely.
They would discover eventually that it was much more like the relationship of shark and remora fish. The four remora fish would suck hold of the shark for the ride. Sharks are messy eaters. Remora are sustained by the bits of torn meat afloat when the shark feeds. But when any remora becomes too greedy and a little. careless, he becomes a part of the very meal he is trying to share, an accident seldom noticed by the shark.
I did know that I wanted no judo or karate games. The expert can whip you with no fuss, and the amateur can kill you without meaning to, if you give them a chance to play their Asiatic game. The mystique of judo is based upon an irrationality. It supposes that the opponent is going to play by their rules. The way to meet it is with a hefty glass ashtray smacko in the chops, or knocking a kneecap loose with a leg off a chair or coffee table, or faking them out and giving them enough bright and sudden pain they forget their trick art. The gutsy dramas on the mass media tend to make us forget that the average urban male is so unaccustomed to sudden pain that if you mash his nose flat, he'll be nauseated for hours, spend two days in bed, and be shaky for the rest of the week.
The temperature had dropped. Snow was bounding like wedding rice off the pavements. It stung my tropical nose, and the wind yanked at my topcoat, congealed my blood, and made my bones feel like old icicles wrapped in freezer bags. Santas dinglejangled their street-corner appeals, hopping from foot to foot, changing the bell from hand to hand, saying thank you sir with a huff of frosty breath, and the department stores sang "Ave Maria" in stereo high-fidelity while stocky ladies whomped each other with purses and elbows as they competed for Bargain Gifts Galore, and the stone-faced virgins who staff the toy areas drove away the urchins who had come to play with the trains.
I found a warm and tranquil place where they put beef in the beef stew, and ground their own Colombian coffee beans, and even had a waiter who expressed a certain tender anxiety that I should be content with what he brought me. In the darkness of the afternoon when I left the car lights were on, the snow was horizontal, the girls hugged and scuttled, and I couldn't get my rental car started.
EIGHT
THE PHONE was ringing when I unlocked my room door at the Drake. It was Maurie Ragna phoning to see if I had talked to Smith and if he had been cooperative.
"I'd say he was very anxious to please, Maurie." "Good. Good. Kid, what I wanted to tell you, I suddenly have to make a little business trip. Three days, four days. But what I am going to do, I'm going to have somebody stand by this number with the word if you call for any help, you get it."
"Don't go to all that trouble."
"Right now I'd be dead a long time and he talks about trouble! Look, I worry about you. It's a big pieCe of money you're working on, sweetie. I can give you some top-quality walkaround muscle for as long as you want. Looks like a bond salesman. Drives like Phil Hill. Knows the fastest route from anywhere to anywhere. Licensed to carry. Quick as a cat, with a left hook you got to see to believe. Kid, I would feel a lot better about you, and I swear to God, which you should know anyway, it isn't a way of moving in on your action."
I assured him that such a thought would never enter my mind, and I managed to refuse the offer without hurting his feelings too much.
My full and rightful share of Chicago's pollution had fallen onto me all day, a Monday fallout, rimming my collar with gray, It was four in the afternoon, but from my hotel window it looked like midnight. I ordered up a jug of ice, broke out my travel-keg of Plymouth, and built a tall one. I showered first, then drew a tub as hot as I could stand it, and once I had made a gingerly descent into it, I reached and gathered up the icy glass and took one long draw upon it and put it back away from the steam.
Some of the small sybaritic enhancements of life are worth far more than they cost, and one of them is the very hot tub combined with a sup of dry and icy gin which goes freezing down the throat, bombs the gut, then spreads its inside warmth in pleasant counterpoint to the tub water. To hell with all their hot rocks, whipping each other with greenery and diving into snowbanks. McGee will take a hot hotel tub and a very cold gin.
This is when the mind works. There is a hairy chimp caged in the back of the mind. The bananas hang out of reach. If you can make him stop leaping and chittering and clacking his angry teeth, make him settle down and look around the cage, usually he can find some boxe
s which he can pile on top of each other, and some sticks, and some string to tie the sticks together. Then he can climb onto the top box and knock down some bananas.
The biggest box in my cage was the concept of how very busy that month of May had been, nineteen months ago. A singing fellow had snatched Branton Fortner Geis and let him go loose in a downtown park. Ethel the Cat had been skewered by a prowler and left in her blood puddle on the nurse's kitchen floor. Heidi, the snow virgin, had chomped tabasco candy and sprung into considerable activity.
Symbols of violence. Demonstration. Kindly note, Dr. Geis, that I could have strangled the kid instead of letting him loose. I could have skewered the nurse instead of the cat. The candy could have had the bland and deadly flavor of almonds instead of the heat of tabasco. So let us start negotiations, Doctor, sir, and you can give me six hundred thousand arguments as to why l should not ugly up your last year or so of life.
One Fearful Yellow Eye Page 12
