Dress Her in Indigo

by John D. MacDonald

  So, though curious, it was restful, relaxing, soothing. It was indeed. For quite a while. And then it began to have quite another effect. And when that effect was sufficiently and unmistakably evident, Lady Rebecca Divin-Harrison swung triumphantly and exuberantly aboard, with spurs, whip, checkrein, and posted tirelessly and happily across the endless moors.

  I lay dead, yet managed to say, “Then what happened?”

  “Weren’t you paying attention?”

  “I mean to Bruce and Rockland.”

  “No, dear, I’ve told you much too much. No more for now. I shouldn’t have told you a bloody thing, you know.”

  “Then I think I am going to sleep.”

  “Really? Really?… Really?”

  “Cut it out, Becky. Whatever ancient rite that happens to be, cut it out. Because it is not going to do any good. Look. I am not ashamed to admit I’m finished. All done. I haven’t got any desire at all to set any records. And I don’t feel any childish urge to prove anything to anybody. Okay? I have to go to sleep, Becky.”

  “Yes, darling. I agree. Utterly. I’ve quite finished you off, poor darling.”

  “Then stop.”

  “Don’t writhe away from me like that. It is awfully impolite. Travis, darling, let me just prove to both of us that we are both absolutely correct, that there is nothing more you can possibly contribute to the evening.”

  “It’s been proven.”

  So she hummed to herself. She kept busy. Adjust spark and coil. Hop out and run around to the radiator and try the hand crank. Thumb out of the way in case of backfire. Back to spark, coil, mixture. Prime carburetor. Crank again. What the hell is she humming? For God’s sake, Roll Out the Barrel. Should be humming Bless ’em All. Ancient engine catches, sputters, stops, catches again. And then, by God, settles into a deep-gutted roar. Hop behind the wheel, kick it into gear. And I once again enwrapped all that hot limber skill, endured her delighted chuckling, romped her onto her spring-steel spine, and tried in my endless, mindless, idiot frenzy to hammer her down through the damn silk sheets, down through the foam and springs, down through the carpeting and the tile and the beams and down into the deep black Mexican soil under the lovely and formal old house, where I could be buried without fanfare and sleep forever and ever and ever.

  Six

  Meyer was gone when I woke up at ten o’clock Saturday morning. When I came out of the shower he was sitting on his bed with a bright red flower tucked behind his ear, beaming at me.

  “I heard you come in,” he said. “Just after daylight. I think I should say I heard you come tottering in. I never heard so much heavy sighing. You sounded like a leaky truck tire.”

  I pulled my shorts up and turned and said, “I never noticed what really nasty little blue eyes you have, pal.”

  “What happened after I left?”

  “Poor David passed out and was promoted to the status of houseguest.”

  “Make a note that I am not astonished.”

  “And I went to Lady Rebecca’s house with her for a nightcap.”

  “Again, no surprise. And then?”

  I sat on my bed to rest up a little. “I gathered a few bits of information about Rockland which I shall shortly impart to you, Meyer. I do not make a practice of discussing a lady. I just wish to tell you that the few bits of information were earned.”

  Bland astonishment. “Really, old chap? Why, to look at the lady, I should have thought her a jolly amusing romp, what? All slap and tickle. Good earthy sport, what?”

  “If I had the strength, I swear, I would reach over and hit you right in the mouth, dear friend.”

  He faked sudden comprehension. “Aha! Oh! Like that, eh? It wasn’t because it was distasteful, eh? You mean that she was tasteful and somewhat on the demanding side, old man?”

  “Meyer, believe me, I will never try to explain it to you or describe it to you. I do not want to think about it. Here is what you do for me. Some day, two or three years from now, hire the most luscious, unprincipled, hot-blooded wench you can find. Have her strip down and sneak aboard the Flush and climb into the master’s bunk with the sleeping master. Then you wait outside. If you hear an ungodly thump, it will be her girlish rump bouncing off the deck after I kick her out of bed. When you hear that thump, take the girl away, wait a year, and try again.”

  “Is this the McGee talking?”

  “McGee, the misogynist. From now on, buddy, every broad in the world is going to look as enticing as a rubber duck. I would rather have one handful of cold mashed potato than two handsful of warm young mammalian overdevelopment.”

  “Did you get too much sun yesterday?”

  “Just help me through the day, Meyer. Help me and shut up. Catch me when I start to wobble. Keep me out of drafts. Order me good nourishing food and get me to bed early. Now get me up that hill to the dining room.”

  At breakfast I told him about the Rocko-Brucey affair, as much as I knew of it. We agreed it fit with Bruce Bundy’s asking us in when I used Rockland’s name on him. He had to know if Rockland had devised some way to make him unhappy and had sent us around to set him up.

  Meyer worried at it, hairy dog with an old meatless bone. “Then we go another step. Bundy had to believe Rocko could make trouble.”

  “It begins to look,” I said, “as if Rockland knew just how to make trouble for people. I think the hotel covered up the ugly truth with those hints about theft. I think he was scavenging the older lonely ones. Hustling them. Setting them up with pot, hustling them with sex, male and female, and then putting the squeeze on.”

  “So a type like that comes to Mexico in a truck and camper? Roughing it?”

  “Bix drew out part of the money before they left. She drew out the balance from Mexico. Twenty isn’t a bad score.”

  “If he knew she had it,” Meyer said.

  “And he could lever it out of her easier out of the country. But we have to find one of the others to find out what went on, dammit. Either Rockland himself or the musician or the sculptor or the other girl.”

  At this stage of the game it seemed to be a good idea to split up. Meyer acquires people as easily as a hairy dog picks up burrs. He smiles and listens carefully, and the little blue eyes gleam with good humor and personal interest. He says the right things at the right time, and surprisingly often the random stranger tells him things he wouldn’t tell a blood relative or a psychiatrist. No bore, no matter how classic, ever manages to bore Meyer. It is a great talent, to be forever interested in everyone.

  We agreed that the best thing to do would be for me to drop Meyer downtown and then go off and see what I could learn at Eva Vitrier’s place. I got lost twice in the Colonia district before I located Avenida de las Mariposas. A man driving a delivery truck helped me locate the home of Eva Vitrier.

  It was an estate, enclosed by a high stone wall. The morning sun shone through the shards of glass of the ten thousand broken bottles cemented into the top of the wall. I found a vehicle gate, double-chained and locked. I rattled the gate and hollered, to no effect. I could look through the bars at a curve of driveway paved with brick, disappearing into the trees and plantings, but I could see no part of any building inside the compound. I located the main pedestrian entrance, a solid and massive door of ancient wood, iron-studded. There was a bell button set into the recessed stone beside the door. No one answered.

  Around the corner, on a narrower street, I found a smaller wooden door and, beyond it, a double door which could open wide enough for a good-sized truck. I pushed another bell button by the smaller door and heard a distant ringing. As I was trying it for the third and last time, a hinged square set into the door swung open and a broad, bronze, impassive Indio face looked out at me.

  I asked for the señora. He said she was not there. I asked when she would be back. He said he could not know. Tomorrow? Oh, no. Maybe many weeks, many months, maybe a year. Where is she, then? One does not know. Who does know? One must ask el Señor Gaona. Who is he? He is the lawy
er of the señora. Where is he? In his office, doubtless. Where is his office. It is in the city. In this city? Where else? On what street is his office? It is on Avenida Independencia. What number? One cannot say. It is near the corner of Avenida Cinco de Mayo.

  As I started to thank him, he slammed the little opening. It startled me. A rude Mexican is a great rarity.

  I had to wait fifteen minutes before Señor Alfredo Gaona y Navares could see me. I waited on a rump-polished wooden bench in a musty ten-by-ten office dominated by a large old lady at a large old typing desk, operating a machine that looked as if Mark Twain had invented it. At last two women in black came out of the inner office, arms around each other, sobbing softly. I was directed to go in.

  Señor Gaona was elderly. He had a small pale face and an expression of weary distaste. He did not get up or extend a hand. Complex aluminum crutches leaned against the wall behind him.

  “What is your reason for wishing to see Señora Vitrier?” The English was precise, unaccented, with a delivery that sounded like a programmed computer.

  “I wanted to talk to her about the two American girls who were staying with her as her guests.”

  “With what purpose?”

  “Señor Gaona, I am doing a personal favor for the Bowie girl’s father. He was injured in an automobile accident, or he would be here himself. He was out of touch with his daughter for seven months. He is curious about how she lived here, where she lived, what kind of life it was for her.”

  “Señora Vitrier would not care to discuss it.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  He hesitated. “I do not have to explain, but I will. Out of her generous heart she offered the two young women lodging when they had no place they could go. This was not a wise thing to do. One cannot judge by appearances. The young women might have been of a kind one does not want in the home. After they quarreled and one departed, the other one was killed, as you must know, in an accident in the mountains. Señora Vitrier appeared and performed the duty of identifying the dead young woman, and turned over her possessions to the police. It was a very ugly experience for her. I am quite certain she would not care to be reminded of it, or to discuss it.”

  “Couldn’t you let her decide that? Where can I get in touch with her?”

  “She is a very, very wealthy woman. The house she maintains here is one of several in various parts of the world. I am retained by her to keep her from being approached by strangers, and also to keep her house here in good order so that she can return, unannounced, and begin living here at any time.”

  “What would happen if I were to write her a letter?”

  “It would come here to this office and I would open it and read it and decide if it is a matter which she would wish to know about. If I so decided, I would mail it to her bank in Zurich and they would forward it to whatever address she is using at the time.”

  “What would you do if her house here burned down?”

  “So advise Zurich.”

  “And my letter would not get past you?”

  “Assuredly not, sir. She gave explicit instructions to me that she did not want to hear any more of this affair, not even if the surviving young lady attempted to reach her by letter.”

  “And has she tried?”

  “No.”

  “Has anyone else tried, I mean in relation to the death of the girl?”

  “I have explained the situation to you, sir, in more detail than is my habit. There is no way you can approach Señora Vitrier, no way whatsoever. So we must consider the matter closed. Good day.”

  And indeed it was good day. The old lady had entered behind me, unheard, and she startled me when she said, “Theees way ow.” I was on the sidewalk nine seconds later. And ten minutes after that I was in a briskly modern office where mini-skirted darlings came beaming in and out, emptying the “out” baskets and putting documents in the “in” baskets, and I was shaking hands with Ron Townsend’s friend in the local power structure, Enelio Fuentes. A glass panel in a wall overlooked, from about a thirty-foot height, about two acres of concrete shop space where bug-swarms of Volkswagens were being tuned, inspected, and repaired.

  Enelio was thirty, or a little over, ruggedly handsome, with a yard of shoulders, a contrived casual lock of black hair across the forehead, a narrow waist, a big friendly grin, a massive and powerful handshake.

  “Ol’ Ron phoned me about you. Hey, sit down. How you like our town? How about that bird Ron has got himself? You meet her? That big Miranda. Fonny goddam thing. Ron spend half his life running like hell every time any bird looks at him with that marriage look. This big Miranda, she doesn’t want not any part of it, and he wants it so bad he can’t breathe deep. That one is some batch of girl, I tell you. Hey, you want a bloody mary? Good. Hey you, Esperanza, go make bloody marys for Mister Travis McGee, here, and me, and stop making the hot eye at him and waving that little butt around. Mr. McGee isn’t interested in short, ogly little girls.” She was a lovely little thing, and she went running out, giggling. “Soch a one that is,” he said fondly. “Can’t type, can’t file, can’t run the switchboard. But she can make any drink you ever heard of, man. My old man says, ‘Nelio, why the hell did I waste my money sending you to the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, all you do is hire pretty girls all the hell over the place?’ Me, I don’t say a word, just give him the quarterly breakdown, show the profit we’re turning, ask him if he’d rather give it back to his brother, my oncle, hired women looked like dogmeat, worked their ass off on overtime, and sometimes didn’t even break even. Now my oncle is crapping around with the little feeder airline we bought las’ year, Aeronaves Fuentes, and from the way the books look, I got to pretty soon go shake things up over there. Hey, here she is. Try that, Travis McGee. Delicious? Don’ stand around bugging the boss fellas, girl. Go file something in the wrong place so nobody ever finds it again.” He looked out through the glass wall and suddenly stiffened, the smile gone. He pressed the bar on a call box and bent toward it, and the Spanish was much too fast for me to follow. I looked out at the shop area and suddenly saw a man in a white jacket heading at a half run toward a couple standing helplessly beside an old black Volkswagen.

  Enelio grinned and stretched. “Chrissake, tell them five million times anybody comes in, you find out what the hell they want right away. Quick. Then you tell them how long it takes and how much it costs. And you do it in the time you say, and you charge what you say, and get them out on the street fast.” I saw something I had overlooked. The big grin did not change the eyes. They remained cool and shrewd and appraising.

  A tall solemn girl came in with letters for signature. He nodded and motioned her closer. He read the letters swiftly, scrawled his big signature on each and handed them to the girl, then slapped her smartly across the seat of her skirt as she turned. She yelped and jumped, and he said something in swift, slurred Spanish. She spoke in tones of protest. He spoke again. She smiled and flushed and walked swiftly out.

  “That one,” he explained, “that Rosita, she had the un-hoppy love affair and now she has the long face. I told her I wanted to see if there was any feeling left in the back side. She told me I should have more respect. Then I said something, it doesn’t translate. But it made her face hot and it made the smile, no? Hey, anything you want, just say what it is. Okay?”

  I briefed him on the situation, and on what we were trying to do, and showed him Bix’s photo. He caught on quickly. He understood the father’s need to have all the blanks filled in.

  He looked in the phone book and gave his switchboard a number to call. In a few moments his desk phone rang. He picked it up and, after a few minutes wait, got through to somebody he called Roberto. I could make out a word here, a phrase there. He asked some questions and then thanked the man and hung up.

  “The sergeant who did the investigation has no English at all. Nada. Here is how it will go. At two o’clock today he will come over to the Marqués del Valle. We close this
place at noon today. I will come over in my car. You and your friend and the sergeant, we will go up into the mountains and he will show us the place and I will tell you what he says.”

  “I don’t want to put you to—”

  “Silencio, gringo! How do you know it doesn’t give me the chance to get out of something I didn’t want to do, eh?”

  “Okay. Next problem. How do I get to talk to Mrs. Eva Vitrier?”

  “That one is one rich lady. I remember it was maybe eight, nine years ago, that place was sold. Nearly two million pesos. And then a lot more to fix it up. All the other ricos out in the Colonia, they can’t wait to find out who the owner is. They think there will be entertaining. They want to see how the house has been fixed. All of a sudden they find out the owner is there, this Frenchwoman. They go calling. She will not see them. They leave cards. Nothing. Oh, she has guests come in sometimes, very few, from far away. Sometimes she is seen in the city. She shops, and has servants with her to carry packages to the car, and a man to drive the car. People say crazy things. Maybe she is the mistress of a king. Maybe she is a political refugee. Maybe it is stolen money. I think it is easy, man. I think the lady wants to be left the hell alone.”

  “What does she look like? Have you seen her?”

  He leaned back, eyes half closed, a gentle smile on his lips. “She has no age. She could be thirty. She could be fifty. No difference. She looks like that queen of Egypt, you know. The one with the nose.”

  “Nefertiti?”

  “That one. Very proud. Head high. Very hot eye. One day, three or four years past, I walked behind her from one jewelry store to her car. Black hair. Cool day. Had on a dark red wool dress. She walked slow, like music, man. Long narrow back, narrow little shoulders. Not much in front, but one truly fantastic ass. Firm, round, heavy but not too heavy. Wide but not too wide. It moved just right when she walked. Nothing under that dress, man. She had some great kind of perfume. It came floating back. You know, she got in that car and it drove away, and what I wanted to do, I wanted to lean against a building and pant like a dog. Hell, I tried to meet her. She was worth a good try. Twenty good tries. I never got to first base. First base! I never found the road to the ball park. I tell you, one long look at her, and that Miranda bird of Ron’s looks like somebody’s brother.”