Dress Her in Indigo

by John D. MacDonald

  “You’re snarling, McGee. So it is either the effects of the altitude, or postcoital depression. Or nervousness at round two coming up.”

  “Or frustration. I want to know where Rocko is. I want to know who was up on that mountain with Bix. I want to find Jerry Nesta. I want to talk to Minda McLeen. I want to talk to Mrs. Vitrier. I can scratch Carl Sessions. Thin blond guitarists shouldn’t live in cardboard boxes and use dirty needles. And I want to bounce the rest of Brucey’s story out of him.”

  “And you should be busy prettying yourself up for Lady Rebecca.”

  “I keep thinking of all the other people who would have been so happy to come to Mexico with me. You’re getting so nervous about my date, I better make a phone call. Don’t move.”

  I walked down and put the call through from our cottage.

  “Darling McGee person!” she said, breathy and husky. “God, I feel so overall delicious! I’m humming and tingling and I hardly touch the floor when I walk. I ache for you so terribly, I feel hollow. Hurry, hurry, hurry! Please!”

  “Becky, I’m afraid there has to be a change of plans.”

  “You monster! I can’t endure it!”

  “A chance has come up to move ahead a little, to get some more questions asked and answered. And I realize it was unfair of me to try to get you to tell me things told you in confidence by a friend. That was the wrong way to go about it. I won’t pester you that way any more.”

  After a pause she said, “You are precisely what I need, you know. The young, young men would come to me at a dead run. Maybe that’s what cloys. Having such total control over them. One gets so accustomed to getting exactly what one wants, right on schedule. Darling, I bow to your sense of responsibility. I shall wait here very, very patiently, if I must. And when you are finished with your chores, come to me no matter what hour it is.”

  “If it’s possible at all.”

  “What are you trying to do to me? Could it be that I was just a bit too mischievous last night? Darling, you were a challenge, you know. What is that silly thing they shout when great trees fall? Timber! Then they stand aside, smiling. Suppose I make a solemn vow not to be aggressive, and even teach you some special ways to absolutely destroy me? Fair is fair. Now will you promise to come here?”

  “If I knew exactly what was going to happen, I’d promise. But I don’t know how long it will take me to do the things I have to do.”

  “Could another woman be involved in all this work, dear?”

  “It might turn out that way.”

  “If it does, kindly do not bother to come here. Is that quite clear?”

  “From the tone of voice, Becky, abundantly.”

  “You’re trying to spoil things. I’m not accustomed to that.”

  “All change is beneficial, honey. Take care.”

  I heard her start to say something as I hung up. I felt slightly weak in the knees. Say you are driving through on a green light and out of the corner of your eye you see a crazy running the red, about to hit you broadside. So you step on it hard and your car jumps ahead far enough so there is just a little clink as he ticks the rear bumper on his way past. So you drive three blocks and park carefully and get out. And the knees feel strange.

  So we drove down into the center of the city. The military band was playing marches on the ornate stand in the center of the plaza, and people were walking slowly around and around the perimeter walkways. The traffic sounds, roar of conversations on the veranda, motor scooters, and vendors hawking everything salable overpowered the band, reducing it to an occasional cymbal-clash, an oompah now and then.

  It was so crowded we had to take a table at the far end, near the jewelry-store corner. By the time we’d put a drink order in, and I was about to bounce my Bundy-plan off Meyer’s more temperate outlook, the Backspin redhead came out of nowhere and plumped down at Meyer’s left and glowered across the square table at me.

  “You put on a great rap, you sneaky bastard!”

  “Well now! All fresh and clean and pretty as a picture. See, Meyer? Her eyes focus and her neck is clean. Carrying a little too much weight, but trim her down and she could cut it at anybody’s convention.”

  “Mark was making a joke. That’s all. I want to tell you I didn’t appreciate the floor show you put on.”

  I smiled at her. “What were we supposed to do, honey? Sit there and let three heads think that the laughing was a great put-on? Should I have plucked that scarecrow stud out of the chair and booted his scrawny tail out into the traffic? Should we have ignored you and spoiled your fun? Should we have gotten up and walked away? Name it.”

  “We had some Mardil caps with a Coke was all.”

  “All for Jeanie?”

  “That’s something else again.”

  “Yes indeed. She is long gone. It looks like barbs to me. What’s she using to come back? Speed? Is she popping it or eating it?”

  “She is not long gone. She’ll be okay.”

  “Get her when she’s leveled off, kid, halfway between, give her a little kiss, and say goodby.”

  “You know so damned much, don’t you?”

  “I tried to sweat the whole thing out once upon a time with a very dandy little girl named Mary Catherine. She went onto reds and blues. Tuinal. They used to hate to see her coming, because the ward nurses hate the barbiturate addicts worse than the drunks or the ones on horse. Took her up to North Carolina to a cabin to get her once and for all clean. I’d go in for groceries and come back and find her gone away on some kind of high. Sneaked back and watched through a window. Draining gas out of the lantern, heating it and sniffing it. Lovely sweet faraway smile. Busted in. Tears, promises. Never again. Then she took off. Couldn’t find her. Pretended to look. Pretended I had the broken heart. But you know, Red, that look on her face had killed it. I was the most relieved lover in contemporary history. I have no idea what Jeanie is to you.”

  “My best friend. My roommate at school.”

  “Take my word. She’ll never make it back. Not from where she is.”

  “So what if she doesn’t? It’s her life, isn’t it?”

  “If you want to call it living.”

  “Hah! That big act of yours, mister. It so happens I found out you’re nothing but some kind of rotten private fuzz, both of you. Private pigs for the establishment, down here to make trouble for people. That’s some kind of living, isn’t it?”

  Meyer hitched around and leaned toward her. “Listen to me, my dear. And believe me. We came here as an act of friendship to find out how a lovely girl died. Just that. Nothing more. It seems like such a waste. Your friend Jeanie seems like a tragic waste to me. And to you too, I think. You are being very defensive and impertinent because you are very troubled. I think more has happened than you can handle. If I can help you, privately, personally, no strings attached, if I can help you in any way, just tell me what you need.”

  She shook her head. “Oh, for chrissake. You kill me. Honest to God, me need help from you!” And she began to laugh. Very merry. Very young and jolly. He had ho. Meyer sat looking at her. Very patient. No change in the concerned, benign expression. And the laughter took on a thinner edge, a shrillness that suddenly broke into a sob. She slumped, face in her hands, crying quietly. I opened my mouth to speak. Meyer gave me a warning look, a quick lift of the hand. She was straining for control, trying to smother the crying, trying not to be conspicuous.

  “What do you need?” he asked.

  She reached blindly, head bowed, chin against her chest. She grasped his bulky forearm with both hands. “Can you … can you get us out of here? Jeanie and me. Please.… Tickets. I can … pay you back.”

  “Where to, dear?”

  “Oklahoma City.”

  “Where are your people?”

  “In Europe with my youngest brother, traveling.”

  “How soon do you want to get out of here?”

  “Now! Tomorrow!”

  He borrowed a blank sheet from my pocket notebook
, and put it and his pen in front of her. “Write your names and addresses.”

  She hunched over the paper, snuffling. She gave it to Meyer. He said he’d be back in a few minutes.

  She wiped her eyes with a paper napkin and sat up and sighed deeply and made a wry mouth. “He isn’t kidding?” she asked in a small voice.

  “No. Not Meyer.”

  “I have run into so many lousy rotten people.”

  “Who briefed you on me?”

  “Oh, there was a man around like an hour ago, maybe even two hours. Sort of handsome and elegant and faggotty. He was speaking real good Mexican to one of the waiters and he came over to the table with the waiter and the waiter pointed me out. So he asked me to come back to his table for a minute. So what the hell, why not?”

  “Brown-gray hair, good tan, bangs, gold mesh ring.”

  “Yes, that’s him. He lives here. He described you and, boy, did I ever remember you! He said he found out there was some kind of scene and wanted to know what went on. I asked why, and he said that a girl had died accidentally, the Bowie girl, and I knew about that, of course. Everybody who was here knew about that. And he said you were an investigator trying to turn it into a murder or something so you could make more money off her parents, and you were trying to make trouble for innocent people who live here. So I told him that what happened had nothing to do with anything like that. He wanted to know who else you talked to, and I said you had talked to the big fellow named Mike, with the Jesus beard, the one who paints, and the black girl named Della who’s living with him, but I didn’t know what you talked about to them. And that was all.”

  Meyer returned and gave her a pat on the back of her hand and said, “You can pick up two air tickets at the travel desk in the lobby after eleven tomorrow morning, dear. For your protection more than mine, I’m arranging it so that they can’t be turned in for cash.”

  She nodded. “I think that’s the best way. I … I won’t believe it until I’ve got the tickets in my hand.”

  “You leave here at two tomorrow afternoon. You’ll have three hours in Mexico City, so you better stay in the airport.”

  She tried, almost successfully, to smile. “Is there anybody you want killed?… Sorry. I guess that isn’t very funny.”

  “You might be able to help us with one little problem. We’re looking for three people Bix Bowie traveled with. There were five all together, but the Sessions boy died. We’d like to find Minda McLeen and Walter Rockland, known as Rocko, and Jerry Nesta.”

  “Those last two, Rocko and Jerry, if anybody wants to kill those two, I’ll help. They are rotten human beings, especially Rocko. Look, I’m not going into any details about it. A bunch of us went back to that camper with those two, for like a fun party for one evening. So that Rocko gave me something that ran me up the walls. It ended up a girlfriend of mine named Gillian and me, we were there for I think it was three days. It taught me why the blond and the little dark one split and lived in that crummy hotel room. Mostly that lousy Rocko had me. He is strong as a bull. I mean I knew that if I went there I might end up getting balled, and that it would be taking that risk, right? Look, there are things you say you won’t do. You know. Stopping points. But when people keep hurting you and hurting you, then it’s easier to do any sick thing than keep getting hurt. It was all rotten. The kids who should have gotten us away from those two didn’t do a damn thing. They just left us there. Jerry wasn’t so bad. Gillian had the idea he’d be all right if he’d get away from Rocko. Jerry has this fantastic black beard. It’s the biggest, blackest beard I ever saw. All that shows are his eyes and a little bit of cheekbone and the end of his nose. I saw her in the market two or three days ago and she said they’d been out to Mitla and she saw Jerry walking along with a kind of ugly little Mexican woman walking behind him, so she made Ricky stop the car and she went back, but he was very strange. He didn’t want to talk to her at all. He’s living out there someplace, but he wouldn’t say where. I haven’t any idea where Rocko went, and I couldn’t care less. I heard that the dark one—Minda?—yes, Minda. She’s supposed to be up in Mexico City and her father is here waiting for her to come back. So that’s all I know.”

  She got up and smiled good-by and said she couldn’t say thank you or she’d start crying again. But she bent over and kissed Meyer in a very quick, shy, small-girl way. And fled.

  “How did you know she’d grab at it?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t. But sometimes you can smell despair. Besides, all generosity is selfish. It made me feel good all over.”

  Quickly I told him about Bruce Bundy’s quest. It was logical, Meyer agreed, that Bundy would have a good contact among the waiter staff, because it would be useful to know what was going on at all times.

  “But,” asked Meyer, “what is he so damned jumpy about?”

  “That is what we now go to find out.”

  He looked doleful. “A minute ago I felt good all over.”

  Nine

  So I left the car at the end of the block and once again, this time by night, we walked along Calle las Artes, to the narrow front of number eighty-one.

  Hundreds of years of dedicated and diligent theft have made Mexican homes very hard to crack. They grill everything you can reach. They put that busted glass into the tops of their patio walls. And they listen for thieves all the time without knowing they are listening. Thievery is a recognized, though not highly respected, profession. Artists use a limber length of bamboo with a hook at the end to snag the tourists’ trousers and pull them through the bars of the bedroom window.

  There was a light upstairs, and the patio area, seen through the entrance corridor, was lighted. We stood in the shadowed darkness across the narrow street, and I said in a low tone, “I do not think we can talk our way through the gate. He won’t buy a drunk act. He won’t be bluffed, and he won’t be hustled. And it would take a trampoline or a Tarzan act to pop in there uninvited.”

  “I’m still afraid you’ll think of something, Travis.”

  I was afraid I wouldn’t. And then luck took a hand. If you sit still, you don’t give that lady much of a chance to operate—for or against you. But if you move around, she can get into the act oftener. She sent the tired old clattering cab down the street to pull up in front of Bruce’s house. When the back door opened the dome light went on. Bruce got out. David Saunders was in the back seat. Bruce went a few steps and looked back and then came back to the cab. He leaned in. The rough idle of the motor made it impossible to hear what he was saying. But his expression, seen through smeared glass, was animated, amused, coaxing. He made little shrugs and hand gestures. And at last David hitched himself along the seat. Bruce reached in and lifted a large suitcase out, put it down, paid the driver. The cab drove away. They moved toward the gate, Bruce carrying the suitcase. They talked outside the gate in low tones. Bruce unlocked the gate and swung it open. He began to lead David through the gate, with a quieting, comforting arm across David’s back in such a way that it reminded me of that classic, The Specialty of the House, when the plump customer is being taken into the restaurant kitchens.

  So I was on my toes with good knee action, angling across, hoping Meyer was reasonably close behind me. When Bundy spun, hearing the sudden unexpected sound, I was coming through the gate full out, shoulder already dipped, and a tenth of a second from impact.

  Karate, judo, boxing, jiujitsu, wrestling—not one of the formal schools of unarmed combat prepares a man for the special problem of suddenly catching a sack of bricks that has fallen out of a third story window. It was a driving, rolling block coming in from the blind side, and the impact was impressive. It took us both ten yards down that tiled corridor, right to the end of it where it opened up onto the patio. We picked up a small table en route, along with some decorative crockery that had been on it. I rolled up onto my feet, my back toward him, and spun and was bemused and disconcerted to see him bounce up in a springy way and land in the dangerous balance of the expert, hand
s low and slightly forward. I did not want him to start that business of Hah! and Huh! The table was on the corridor floor between us, the three remaining legs aimed toward me. So I punted it at him, getting a lot of leg into it, and getting a nice lift on it. He got his hands up in time, and as the table fell away, I was right there to pop him with a short overhand right, slightly off target, and correct the error when he came back off the wall. He had been obliging enough to wear a leather thong as a belt for his vermilion stretch slacks, and I yanked it loose, rolled him onto his face and took two fast turns around the wrists and two fast hitches that would hold long enough for me to go solve Meyer’s problem, even if Bruce woke up right now, which didn’t seem plausible.

  I came upon the Mexican woman standing crouched in terror, wringing her hands. I smiled broadly and told her that it was a game Americans play. Don’t worry, señora. We are all very happy.

  Meyer was between the gate and the entrance to the central corridor. He was clumping around in a small circle, taking quick steps to the side now and again to catch his balance. He was shaking his big head and muttering to himself. David Saunders sat spraddled like a chunky little kid. He was swaying from side to side, cradling something against the lower part of his big chest and making a small thin keening sound. He looked like he was rocking a little dolly, and he couldn’t carry a tune in a basket.

  I got the gate shut and latched. I caught Meyer as he came around his circle. He stopped and shook his head violently and knuckled his eyes.

  “Violence is vulgar,” he said. “It offends me.”

  “You won, didn’t you?”

  “By giving him a frightful blow on the fist with my forehead. The expression is, ‘I ducked into it.’ ”

  I helped Saunders up and walked him past Bundy into the bright area of the walled court and eased him into a white iron armchair. I pulled the hand away from his chest. It was beginning to puff. Broken hands are unpredictable. There are ten thousand nerve bundles, and if the break doesn’t involve them, you don’t feel a thing until later on. But if the broken bone or bones grind into the right nerves, it is an agony that prevents you from thinking about anything else in the world, and keeps you right on the twilight edge of a faint.