The Quick Red Fox Part 12

THE TRAILER park was called Desert Gate. I had to go down through town and out the far side to get to it. It was a little after ten o'clock when I got there. Some orderly soul had set it up with the requirement that all trailers be parked in herringbone array on either side of a broad strip of asphalt going nowhere. The entrance was an aluminum arch, tall and skinny, with a pink floodlight on it.

The trailers were large, all snugged down off their wheels, with little patios and screened porches added. About half of them were dark. Patricia had lived-and died in front of-the sixth one on the left. It was lighted. I parked and went to the porch door. As I raised a hand to bang on the aluminum frame, a big woman appeared, silhouetted in the inner doorway.

"Whatya want?"

"I want to talk to Martha Whippler."

"Who are you?"

"The name is McGee. I was a friend of Patties."

"Look, why don't you go away? The kid has had a hard day. She's p.o.o.ped. Okay?"

"It's all right, Bobby," a frail voice said. "Let him in."

As I went in, the big woman stood back out of the way. When I saw her in the light I realized she was younger than I had thought. She wore jeans and a blue work s.h.i.+rt, sleeves rolled high over brown heavy forearms. Her hair was brown and cropped short and she wore no makeup.

The interior was all pale plywood paneling, vinyl tile, gla.s.s curtains, plastic upholstery, stainless steel. A slight girl lay on a day bed, propped up on pillows, long coppery hair tousled around her sad wan face. Her eyes were red. Her lipstick was smeared. She had a drink in her hand. She wore a very frilly nylon robe. Though she was a lot slimmer, I knew her at once.

"Whippy!" I said, and then felt like a d.a.m.n fool for not having figured it out.

It startled her. She stared at me with disapproval. "I don't know you. I don't remember you from anyplace. People call me Martha now. Pat wouldn't let them call me by my old name." There was something quite solemn and childlike about her. And vulnerable.

"I'm sorry. I'll call you Martha."

"What's your name?"

"Travis McGee."

"I never heard Pat say your name."

"I didn't know her well, Martha. I know a few other people you might know. Vance. Ca.s.s. Carl. Nancy Abbott. Harvey. Richie. Sonny."

She sipped her drink, frowning at me over the rim of the gla.s.s. "Sonny is dead. I heard that. I heard that he burned up, and it didn't mean a thing to me."

"Nancy saw him burn."

She looked incredulous. "How could that happen?"

"She was traveling with him then."

She shook her head in slow wonder. "Her traveling with him. Oh boy. Who could imagine that. Me, sure. But her? Gee, it doesn't seem possible, believe you me."

"Martha, I want to talk to you alone."

"I bet you do," the big girl behind me said.

"Mr. McGee, this is my friend Bobby Blessing. Bobby, whyn't you go away a while, okay?"

Bobby studied me. It is the traditional look they reserve for the authentic male, a challenging contempt, a bully-boy antagonism. There seem to be more of them around these days. Or perhaps they are merely bolder. The word is butch. Having not the p.e.n.i.s nor the beard, they d.a.m.n well try to have everything else.

One of the secondary s.e.x characteristics they seem to be able to acquire is the b.a.l.l.sy manner, the taut-shouldered swagger, the roostery go-to-h.e.l.l att.i.tude. They have a menacing habit of running in packs lately. And the unwary chap who tries to make off with one of their brides can get himself a stomping that stevedores would admire.

These are a subculture, long extant, but recently emerged from hiding. In their new boldness they do a frightening job of recruiting, having their major successes among the vulnerable platoons of those meek girls who, like Martha Whippler, are abused by men, by the Catton-kind of man, used, abused, sickened, shared, frightened and... at last, driven into the camp of the butch.

"I'll be where I can hear you call me," Bobby said without taking her stony stare from my face. She went out, rolling her shoulders, hitching at her jeans.

I moved closer to Martha, and sat in a skeletal plastic chair half facing her. She looked down into her half of a drink and said, "You named the people that were there that time."

"And left one out?"

"That movie actress," she whispered.

"Have you told people about her being there?"

"Oh, nothing like that ever happened to me before. I couldn't tell anybody about it. I mean I could talk to Pat about it sometimes. You know. I used to have nightmares. She took me back home with her from there. I knew... I always knew she would rather it was Nancy."

She looked wistful. She had a cheap, empty, pretty little face, eyebrows plucked to fine lines, mouth made larger with lipstick.

"Did you ever get to see the pictures?" I asked her.

Even the most vapid ones have an urchin shrewdness about them, the wariness of the consistently defensive posture.

"What pictures?"

"The ones Vance had taken."

"For hours and hours today they kept asking me questions, questions. How do I know you just aren't another smart guy?"

"I can't prove I'm not." I hesitated. She was suggestible. I wanted the right approach, without fuss. Grief made an additional vulnerabil ity. Kindly ol' McGee seemed the best bet. I shook my head sadly. "I'm just a fellow who thinks Patricia got a very bad deal from Vance M'Gruder, very bad indeed."

Tears welled. She snuffled into her fist. "Oh G.o.d. Oh G.o.d yes. That b.a.s.t.a.r.d. That total b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"

"Some of us have never understood why Pat didn't fight it a little harder."

"Gee, you don't know what she had stacked against her. That rotten Vance had been planning it a long time. He got some kind of morality report on her from the London police from way before they were married, I guess to show that she knew she shouldn't get married. And then he had the tape recorder things of her and Nancy at their house, and her and me at their house, and the pictures he hired that man to get, following them around. It must have cost an awful lot, the whole thing, but as Pat said, it was a h.e.l.l of a lot cheaper than California divorce. She couldn't get a lawyer to agree to fight it. I mean, after all, there wasn't any question about the way she was."

"Did you get to see those pictures, Martha?"

"Oh sure. The funny thing, they made it look like n.o.body else was around at all. I don't know how that man got those pictures so close, Pat with me and with Nancy and with Lysa Dean, just one with Lysa Dean, one where you couldn't tell it was Lysa Dean unless you knew."

"So by the time you saw those pictures, you and Pat were together?"

"Yes. The rotten thing he did, we went up to the city to see some friends of hers, and we came back to Carmel, he was gone and the locks were changed, and our personal stuff was piled in a carport, and there was a man there to keep anybody from breaking in or anything. The way it was, she was still trying to get over being in love with Nancy and maybe she never did. I guess maybe she never did get over it. But I did try to make her happy, I really did."

"Why would somebody want to kill her, Martha?"

She sobbed again, and blew her nose. "I don't know! I just don't know. That's what they kept asking me. Gee, we lived real quiet here, over a year now, and for a long time we've been working the same s.h.i.+ft at the Four Treys, me as a drink waitress and her on a change booth. Just a few friends. She hadn't got interested in any other girl or anything, and n.o.body was after me like that. There was just one thing."

"What do you mean?"

She frowned and shook her head. "I don't know. It started weeks ago. Before that, whenever she'd think of Vance she'd go into a terrible rage, and sometimes she'd cry. Weeks ago she got a letter from somebody. She didn't let me see it and I can't find it so I guess she destroyed it. She was kind of... far away for a few days after she got it and she wouldn't tell me anything. Then one day when I was out, she made long-distance phone calls. She really ran up a terrible bill. Forty dollars and something. And later she made a few more calls. Then she got very pleased about something. She'd be grinning and humming around and I'd ask her why she felt so good and she'd say never mind. Sometimes she would grab me and dance me around and she'd tell me everything was going to be just fine, and we were going to be rich. It didn't matter so much to me. I mean we were doing all right here. We didn't have to be rich. I don't know if it had anything to do with her being murdered last night."

"Where were you when it happened?"

"I heard it! My G.o.d, I was in bed half asleep. I was sort of worrying about her. I've got a virus and I was off work. She was supposed to be finished at eleven and home by quarter past, but it was a little after midnight when I heard the car motor. I could tell it was ours, it's such a noisy little car. I'd left one light on for her. I wondered what she'd bring me. She'd bring me a little present if I was sick. Some kind of joke sort of. The car stopped out there and I heard the car door, and then just outside that screen door, she yelled 'What are you...' Just those words. There was a kind of a terrible crunching sound. And a falling sound. And steps running. I turned on the lights and put my robe on and ran out and she was just outside the door on the ground, and her head..."

I waited several minutes while she slowly and painfully pulled herself back together. "She was so alive," Martha moaned.

"But several weeks ago she stopped being mad at Vance?"

"Yes. But I don't know what it means."

"After she was locked out of the house, she did have a chance to talk to her husband?"

"Oh, several times. She begged and pleaded."

"But it didn't do any good."

"He wouldn't even let her have her car. He said she was lucky to keep the clothes she'd bought. Finally he gave her five hundred dollars so she could afford to go away. I had about seventy-five dollars. We came here on a bus and got jobs. He was nasty to her."

"Martha, does the name Ives mean anything to you? D. C. Ives?"

She looked blank. "No."

"Santa Rosita?"

She tilted her empty little head. "That's strange!"

"What do you mean?"

"Just a couple of days ago she was singing that old song. Santa Lucia. But she was saying Rosita instead of Lucia, and I said she had it wrong and she laughed and said she knew she did. Why did you ask about that? I don't understand."

"Maybe it doesn't mean anything."

"But if it has anything to do with who killed her..."

"Did she have any kind of appointment coming up?"

"Appointment? Oh, I'd forgotten. Just the other day she said she might have to take a little trip. Alone. Just for a day or two. It made me jealous. She teased me and let me get real jealous, and then she said it was a kind of a business trip, and she'd tell me all about it later."

"Where was she going to go?"

"Phoenix. Gee, we don't know a soul in Phoenix."

"How soon was she going?"

"I don't know. It sounded as if she meant real soon."

I couldn't shake loose anything else of interest. She was worn out. But she was still alert enough to ask again who I was and what I wanted. I had to answer a question with a question.

"What are you going to do now, Martha?"

"I haven't thought about it."

"It's your chance to get out of... this kind of situation."

Her little mouth firmed up. "I don't know what you think you mean by that. Listen, Pat got me out of a lousy situation. I don't want anything like that again ever. What do you know about anything?"

"Don't get sore."

"Why shouldn't I? Jesus Christ! Anything you people don't understand, it has to be lousy. Pat always said that. The world doesn't have to be your way. We never asked anybody to approve or disapprove. It's our own business. Who did we hurt?"

"You?"

"Me! That's some joke. That really is. Honest to G.o.d, when I remember the way it used to have to be, when I thought that was the only thing there was, boy, it makes my stomach turn right over. I've got friends who want to take care of me."

"I bet you have."

She stared at me, narrowed her eyes, threw her head back and yelled, "Bobby! Bobby!"

I left without any particular haste, but without delay either. Even so, they were between me and my car. Bobby had a friend, equally sizable. In the angle of the light the friend looked like the young Joe DiMaggio, but with a black dutch bob, and wearing desert rat khakis. Joe carried a putter. The gold head and chrome shaft glittered.

They separated and moved in from either side.

"Don't make any stupid mistakes," I said, coming to a halt.

Joe had managed to train herself down to a good imitation of a baritone. "You ba.s.sars got to get a lesson not to come around here bothering the brides."

"What have you got here?" I asked. "A colony?"

"Smart a.s.s," Bobby said as they moved in. They generally do very well against the undoctrinated male. There is a chivalrous reluctance to hit a woman. Martha had come to the trailer doorway to watch the sport. I had learned a painful lesson long ago when reluctance had slowed reaction time, and I had spent the next several days walking around like an eighty-eight-year-old man. It is the type of mistake you are not likely to make twice in one lifetime. And these two were more dangerous than male thugs because their aberrations fired their hatred of the authentic male. They might not know when to stop hitting.

The light was tricky and the putter made me nervous. If I tried sweet reason, she was going to try to sink it into my skull. So I moved with no regard for chivalry I feinted toward Bobby, and lunged at Joe. I got a hand on the putter shaft before she could build up any momentum with it.

I wrested it out of her hand, reversed it, sidestepped her, and laid the limber end of it across the seat of those khakis. It made a little whirring in the air, and a mighty crack on impact. Joe leaped high and, probably much to her own disgust, gave a high girlish scream of anguish. I turned in time to see Bobby hurl a rock at my head. It tickled the hair on the crown of my head, and the fright lent considerable enthusiasm to my pursuit. Bobby turned in flight. I welted her three hearty times across tight denim, and she joined her yelps to those of her buddy. Joe grappled with me, trying to trip me. She was sobbing in frustration, and she smelled like a mule skinner. I spun her away, and whacked her another beauty. She screamed and gave up and started running toward the trailer.

Bobby made the mistake of running right along beside her, about five feet away from her. I sped into the gap with forehand and backhand. Martha Whippler had come to the doorway to watch them brutalize me. They nearly trampled her in their haste to get out of range. They sounded as if they were trying to yodel. I laughed, hurled the putter well out of the colony, and drove away from there.

Back in the muted silence of the big room at the Apache, Dana slept on. Remembering that the Apache food service would be closed, I had stopped at an implausible delicatessen in town. I turned more lights on. I unsacked my purchases, pried the top off the beef stew with noodles. It was still steaming. I carried it over and sat on the floor beside the bed and wafted it back and forth in front of her face. Her nose twitched, twitched again. Suddenly her eyes opened wide. She focused on me. She gave a great start.

"Hey!" she said. "Hey now!" She gave a great creaking, stretching, shuddering yawn and then reached for the container. She hitched herself up, arranged the pillows, tucked the sheet around her, under her arms, and lifted a huge plastic forkful into the greedy waiting mouth. "Oh!" she said. "Oh my G.o.d, Trav, nothing has ever tasted like this."

I moved a small table close to her elbow, brought over the garlic dills, the hot tea and the strawberry cheesecake. I sat on the foot of the bed, admiring her. When the edge of hunger began to be eased, she began to be uncomfortable.

"Did you eat?" she asked.

"Like a wolf."