Part 17 (1/2)
”Past tense.”
”Dead, isn't he?”
”What makes you think so?”
”Because he isn't hanging around me, Mac. And that's the only thing that would keep him away. And because he was going bad fast. He was popping those pills like candy and they were scrambling his brains. He was seeing things, hearing voices, forgetting what he did last, and no idea of what he'd do next. So I guess somebody had to kill him before he spoiled somebody else's fun and games. Somebody tucked him into a swamp. What kind of games are you trying to play with me, Mac?”
”I've been interested in you since last Thursday night when I came within an inch and a half of killing you.”
”Me? What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?”
”The only reason I can come up with why you ran in front of my car was because there was somebody out there in the night you wanted to have see you. But you cut it too close.”
Three seconds of silence, then the jolly grin again, and a wink. ”I sure did, friend. What happened, my foot slipped coming up that bank, but I thought I could still make it. Then all those headlights were close enough to touch. I felt the breeze from that fender on my bare tail. I didn't mean to put you in the ca.n.a.l though. Sorry. Sure, I wanted somebody to see me. I wanted somebody to see that it was a girl not a man, because they were after Frank Baither.”
”Who?”
”Somebody who wanted to kill him and did. Frank was the first and the only real man I ever did know. Some kid stuff before I met him, but after that n.o.body touched me but Frank, until they jailed him and then sent him up north. He's the one I went on trips with. We were gone four months when I was sixteen one time, and he made thirty thousand dollars and we spent twenty of it.”
”What did he knock over?”
”He and two other guys took a casino in Biloxi for ninety on a three-way split. No, it was a hundred, because I remember he had to give ten to the cop who set it up for Frank because the casino was shorting the cop on the insurance money they were paying. Then we went out to California because there was a payroll thing Frank wanted to look at. He decided he didn't like it, and later some other people tried it and one got killed and the other two ended up in Q.”
”Who came to kill Frank last Thursday?”
”Two men who'd been in on something Frank never told me about. He said their names were Hutchason and Orville. He said they thought he'd given them a short count on a split. The way it happened, I was practically living there from the time he got back because he had a lot to catch up on. He heard something outside and woke me up and got his gun and told me to go on home, sneak as far as the road and go like h.e.l.l. One of them followed me, or both of them. I thought they would think it was Frank and shoot me. So I ran across in front of your car so they'd see me. I went on home. It's only about three and a half miles from here, about. I went back early in the morning and saw the county cars and found out they'd killed him. I just... just didn't think anybody could ever kill Frank. You know, I didn't think you'd have a good enough look at me for long enough to remember me.”
”If the sheriff knew there'd been a girl there with Baither, wouldn't he know it had been you?”
”He might think on it, but Mister Norm doesn't fuss with me much.”
A back country silence, standing in shade. She stood against the big trunk of the tree, one knee flexed, bare foot against, the rough gray bark. She idly scratched the rounded top of her brown thigh, and I could hear in the silence the whisper of her nails against the skin. The animal hunger she had awakened with that odd display of strength had not died away. She caught and held my eye and read it, and built it back again with but a slight arching of her back, softening of her mouth.
”Could be,” she whispered. ”It just could be.”
”Think so?”
”Like part of whatever game we're playing. Saying one thing, holding other things back. We can go someplace, try us out. You'd be thinking I'd say more. I'd be thinking you might say more about what you know, or think you know. That would come after the edge was off. I'm not like this often, Mr. Mac. Could be more than you can take on?”
”I manage to totter around.”
She said, ”I got to go in a minute, see if that d.a.m.n Nulia has got the old lady cleaned up right this time. Last time she got through the room still stank, and I had to whop her old black a.s.s and make her do it over right.”
She grinned, shoved herself away from the tree, and thumped me on the biceps with a small hard brown fist, a considerable blow, and ran to the house, fleet as a young boy.
Seventeen.
SHE WAS in the house over ten minutes. She came out and beckoned to me and headed toward my car. By the time I got to it she had jacked the driver's seat forward and turned the key on. I got in the pa.s.senger seat and put the rubber beach bag on the floor.
”Easier than giving directions,” she said. ”I don't want to drive mine until Henry gets that s.h.i.+mmy out of it. Okay with you?”
”Sure.”
”Pretty bag belong to a nice lady?” She backed out onto the unpaved road, and headed southwest.
”Friendly lady name of Jeanie Dahl.”
”Mmmm. That's where you found out about me and Dori Severiss.”
”And Lew's sideline.”
She was driving more conservatively than I had expected. ”Thought you were getting the scoop from ol' Betsy Kapp, knowing you wasted no time moving in on those giant t.i.tties. Never knew just how much Lew talked to her. Never could figure out how they got together in the first place. He had a funny soft spot for that fool woman. I told him once he ought to sign her onto his little team. Even offered to go convince her, but he told me if I ever went near her, he'd club my head right down between my knees, and I think he meant it.”
I saw the sign indicating we were leaving Cypress County. ”Hyzer asked me to stay in his jurisdiction.”
”Right now, mister, does that mean a h.e.l.l of a lot to you?”
”I wouldn't say that it does.”
”We aren't going to be out of it long, honey. Right turn coming up, before we come out onto the Trail, and it swings back into Cypress County. Car rides nice.”
”Seems to. Where are we going?”
”A place a friend of mine lent me when he went in the Navy. It's real private.”
And it was. It was a fairly new aluminum house trailer of average size, set on a cement-block foundation on a small cypress hammock in marshy gra.s.sland. Limestone fill had been trucked in to make a small causeway between an old logging road and the hammock. A flock of white egrets went dipping and winging away through the cypress and hanging gray moss when she parked by the trailer.
She squatted and reached up and behind a place where a block had been left out for ventilation purposes, and pulled out the keys. She went over and unlocked a small cement-block pumphouse and tripped a switch that started a husky gasoline generator.
”Now we've got air conditioning and, in a little while, ice cubes, Mac, honey.”
”Can I object to Mac?”
”You can ask for anything your evil heart desires, man.”
”Travis or Trav or McGee.”
”So I settle for McGee.”
”You do that.”
She unlocked the trailer and stepped up into it. ”Hey, let's open this thing up until the air conditioning starts doing something.”
We opened the windows. It was tidy inside. It had the compact flavor of a good cabin cruiser, with ample stowage. She checked to make certain there was water in the ice-cube trays. She turned on a little red radio and prowled the dial until she found some heavy rock and turned it up far enough to drown out the sound of the generator and the whine of the refrigerator and the busy whacketythud of the compressor on the air conditioner.
She reached around herself and undid the few inches of zipper that reached from the V back to the base of her spine, and said, ”Can you think of anything special we're waiting on, McGee?” She shrugged it forward off her shoulders, lowered it and stepped out of it and flipped it aside. I noted with a remote objectivity that her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were a slight quarter-tone. lighter than the rest of her, and that the bikini band around her hips was as white as in the photograph.