Hope we’ll see you again.”
I went out to the terrace and made myself a weak drink. I could hear Gerry and George yammering at each other. I could hear the music but not the lyrics. Fury and accusation. A pretty girl in dark braids and a uniform came onto the terrace and gathered up the debris of the cocktail snacks, gave me a shy glance and cat-footed away.
Finally George came out. He looked sour. He grunted at me, poured bourbon over one cube and downed it before the ice had a chance to chill it. He banged the glass down. “Trav, Gerry has a headache. She said to apologize. Jesus, what an evening!”
“Apologize to her for me. Tell her I didn’t stop to think that could be your daughter when I spoke so rough. I was still angry. And about hitting that kid, he gave me no choice.”
He stared at me with evident agony. “Just what were they doing, McGee?”
“I didn’t actually see them doing anything. He had her blouse unbuttoned and her bra unhooked, but she had her shorts on.”
“She doesn’t even start college until fall. Goddamn that ape! Let’s get out of here, Trav.” We went out and got into the Lincoln. He drove swiftly through a long maze of curving roads and then slowed as we passed a house as conspicuous as his. I caught a glimpse of the Triumph. He speeded up. “Gerry said that’s where she’d go. It’s her closest girlfriend.”
He didn’t speak again until we were on 77 heading south. “It’s a hell of a thing for something like that to happen, the first time you’re in my home.”
“Worse for you than for me.”
“How the hell am I supposed to keep an eye on her? That’s Gerry’s job and she’s goofing it. She says she can’t control her. She says Angie won’t listen to her. I’m a busy man, goddamn it. I’ve got to send the kid away, but where? Where can you send them in August, for God’s sake? There’s no relatives to park her with. Did you hear what she said to me?” He banged the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. “What do you think, McGee? Do you think that ape is actually screwing my little girl?”
“I think you’re driving too damned fast, George. And I don’t think he is. Yet.”
“Sorry. Why don’t you think he is?”
“Because if he was, he would have had her off someplace where he could, without interruption. And from the look of her, that was the next step, George.”
He slowed down a little more. “You know, that makes sense. Sure. He’s probably trying to talk her into it. He’s been hanging around for about a month. Trav, that’s the second good turn you’ve done me tonight.”
“And she doesn’t care too much for the boy.”
“How do you know?”
“When she ran out, he hadn’t moved a muscle. She couldn’t know but that I’d killed him.”
“That’s right! I’m feeling better by the minute. McGee, you must have a very nice punch.”
“He’s very easy to hit. And you’re going too fast again.”
We came into Brownsville. He took a confusing number of turns and put the car in a small Iot on a back street. We walked half a block through the sultry night to the shabby entrance of a small private club, a men’s club, with a comfortable bar and a good smell of broiled steak, and a cardroom with some intent poker players under the hooded green light.
We stood at the bar and he said, “A key for my friend, Clarence.”
The bartender opened a drawer and took out a brass key and put it in front of me. “This is Mr. Travis McGee, Clarence. Trav, that key is good for life. Life memberships one dollar. Give Clarence the dollar.” I handed it over. ‘’Cash on the line here for everything. No fees, no assessments, no committees. And a good steam room.“
We picked up our drinks and I followed George over to a corner table. “We can eat right here when we’re ready,” he said. He frowned. “I just don’t know what the hell to do about that girl.”
“Didn’t Gidge and Tommy work out fine?” It startled him.
“Yes. Sure.”
“Don’t worry about her. She’s a very lush looking kid, George. And probably as healthy as she looks. Probably if you knew everything about Gidge and Tommy at the same age, your hair would turn white.”
“By God, if you were twenty years older, McGee, I’d hire you to watchdog her for what’s left of the summer.”
“You wouldn’t be able to trust me.”
“Anyway, whatever you came to see me about, consider it done. I owe you that much.”
“I want information.”
“It’s yours.”
“How much did Dave Berry steal overseas, how did he steal it and how did he smuggle it back into the States?”
It twisted him into another dimension so suddenly it was like yanking him inside out. His face turned a pasty yellow. His eyes darted back and forth as though looking for a place to hide. He opened his mouth three times to speak and closed it each time. Then he said, spacing the words, “Are you a Treasury Department investigator?”
“No!”
“What are you?”
“I just try to get along, this way and that. You can understand that.”
“I knew a Sergeant David Berry once.”
“Is that the way you want it?”
“That’s the way it has to be.”
“What are you scared of, George?”
“Scared?‘’
“You can’t be scared of Berry. He’s been dead two years.”
It startled him, but not enough. “Dead? I didn’t know that. Did they let him loose before he died?”
“No.”
“There’s no secret of the fact I had to testify for him. I hadn’t gotten out yet. I had to go to the presidio where they tried him. I said I’d served with him for two years and that he was a good competent noncom. I said I’d seen him lose his temper a lot of times, but he’d never hurt anybody before. He’d been drinking. A jackass lieutenant with brand-new gold bars, never been out of the States, didn’t like the way Dave saluted him. He made Dave stand on a street corner and practice. After about five minutes of that, Dave just hit him. And then kept picking him up and hitting him again. And then he took off. If only he’d hit him once, or if he hadn’t run… But I guess you know all about it.”
“Why should I? I want to know how much, and how he got it and how he brought it back.”
“I wouldn’t know a thing about that, friend. Not a single stinking thing.”
“Because you made it the same way and brought it back the same way George?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, believe me.”
“Because you can’t be sure there isn’t something official about this. Is that it?”
“McGee, I have had a lot of people asking a lot of questions for a long time, and they all get told the same thing. It was a good try, McGee. Let’s eat.” His morale came back fast.
It was midnight when we left the back-street club. He had a cocky, wary friendliness. As he unlocked the door of the Lincoln and swung it open, I chopped him under the ear with the edge of my hand, caught him and tumbled him in. And felt a gagging self-disgust. He was a semi-ridiculous banty rooster of a man, vain, cocky, running as hard as he could to stay in the same place, but he had a dignity of existence which I had violated.
A bird, a horse, a dog, a man, a girl, or a cat, you knock them about and diminish yourself because all you do is prove yourself equally vulnerable. All his anxieties lay there locked in his sleeping skull, his system adjusting itself to sudden shock, keeping him alive. He had pulled at the breast, done homework, dreamed of knighthood, written poems to a girl. One day they would tumble him in and cash his insurance. In the meanwhile it did all human dignity a disservice for him to be used as a puppet by a stranger.
He stirred once on the orderly trip back, and I found the right place on his neck for the thumb, and settled him back. Assured I was unobserved, I carried him into my chill nest, pulled the draperies, readied him for proof.
I stripped him, bound him, gagged him and settled him into the bottom ofthe shower stall. It was a hair piece.
