Part 12 (1/2)
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?”