April Evil (7 page)

“How about her driving me back in? I got grease on my pants off that damn motorcycle last time.”

“Damn it, Mooney, why do you always have an objection?”

Mooney knew Parks was showing off for the friend who sat in his office. Also, it had only been a token objection. To stay in key. He felt better about the whole day. He hoped the cleaning woman wouldn’t be out there this time.

“Okay, okay,” he muttered and turned away. Clara, the
stenographer-bookkeeper, winked at him and he winked back. He rolled the three-wheeled motor scooter out of the corner of the garage and adjusted the tow clamps on the back bumper of the green demonstrator. He drove the short block over to Bay Avenue and turned toward the causeway and Flamingo Key. As he drove toward the Parks home he thought it was typical of Dil Parks to own a home more pretentious than he could properly afford.

It was a house that faced the Gulf. It was in a restricted housing development on the north end of the key. To enter the development you drove through a gate which bore stern warnings about trespassing. The area was called Seascape Estates. On the very tip of the key, on the bay side, was the Seascape Yacht Club, with membership limited to the property owners within the Estates. The Parks home was three hundred yards from the Yacht Club. It was a post and beam house of cypress stained elephant gray, with touches of bright coral, wide areas of glass. The drive was of round brown pebbles rolled into asphalt. A high cypress wind fence, stained the same color as the house, provided privacy from the neighboring houses. Mooney parked the car in the circular drive, unhooked the scooter, went to the door and rang the bell. He could hear the muted double chime within the house. He rang again, but no one came. He felt a combination of irritation, anticipation and nervousness. His hands were damp.

After a few moments he walked slowly around the house. He was a man with a jerky, swaggering, belligerent walk. His face would have been nondescript except for its high order of mobility. It was a mobility thoroughly under control. He could control his expression, his tone of voice, his diction, to match his quick and instinctive appraisal of both background and character of any prospect. His was the instinctive timing of the born actor. There was, in effect, no real Mooney, no basic core of character or self-appraisal. Mooney was what the situation demanded of him, and nothing beyond that.

He stopped when he came to the rear corner of the house. In contrast to the grass in front of the house, the rear area was of
raked sand. Dil’s dainty little blonde wife lay in the sunlight on a maroon blanket. Her face was turned away from him. She lay face down, and above the low continual grumbling and hissing of the waves, he could hear faint music from the portable radio a foot from her blonde head. Beside her, on the blanket, was the discarded sun suit, dark glasses, a bottle of lotion, an open book, face down. She lay nude there, toes pointed, heels a foot apart. She was warmly tanned, her tan deep except for a line across her back and her bare hips. They were tanned also, but it was a more delicate honeyed color. A low stone wall protected her from the direct view of anyone who walked down the beach. The wind fences on the side boundaries of the property protected her in those two directions.

Mooney tore a leaf from a lush plant that grew close to the house and rolled it slowly between thumb and finger, his eyes on the woman’s body, noting with experienced approval the delicacy of her waist, the round firmness of the small thighs, the emphasis of the crease down her back between the shoulder blades, a crease which, as it neared the small of her back, shallowed to show the small knuckles of the vertebrae and ended at a small downy hollow before the soft rising tilt of her buttocks. This woman had baffled Mooney for over three months. His sure instincts told him she was a tramp. He had sensed her restlessness. But her weapon was a species of amused scorn.

He had donned many of his faces for her, carefully chosen one manner after another, and had awakened only wry hidden laughter. It had rubbed his ego raw. Women had always been easy, particularly this kind of woman. He could not understand continual failure. Failure created self-doubt. Looking at her there he had the first dim understanding of what drove men to rape.

Gulls tipped and cried above waves flecked brown with floating weed. Far out a white cruiser trolled. He tore another leaf from the bush, rolled it between his fingers, snapped the bruised ball of green away and smelled his fingertips. The smell was sharp, acid-sweet.

“Cough, cough,” he said, just loudly enough for her to hear him.

She started violently, heels snapping together, head lifting to stare at him with sundazed eyes, sunslack face, one arm across her breasts. “Oh … Mooney.”

“I come bearing vehicle.”

“Don’t just stand there.”

“It’s such a pleasure.”

“Elderly schoolboy. This would make a nice little anecdote for Dil.”

“Tell him. Let me watch you tell him. For laughs.”

“At least turn your dang back, Mooney. Do that much.”

“Sure.” He turned around. He looked at the glass and thought of something. He moved a bit to the side to where he could see her reflection darkly in the glass. She pulled her shorts on above her knees, then lay back, her weight on her feet and the backs of her shoulders as she pulled them up over her hips. She rolled over and knelt, bending over, to hammock her breasts into the halter top. She fastened it in back and stood up and said, “Okay, Mooney.” Her voice was derisive and weary.

He turned around. “Sure and I have before me a long hot ride which a cold beer would give me the strength to stand all the better.”

“That phony Irish accent makes me want to fwow up.”

“Tender and gentle, aren’t you? Like a pricker bush.”

She picked up book, glasses and lotion. “Fold the blanket, Mooney, and bring it and the radio in the house. Make sure you shake the sand off the blanket. I’ll give you a beer for services rendered.”

“On second thought, beer is fattening.”

“All right. Bourbon.”

“With just a splash of branch water, Lennie.”

“Mrs. Parks, Mooney, Mr. and Mrs. Parks.”

He wore a black scowl as he followed instructions. He went into the kitchen and put the blanket and radio down. He turned the radio off. She put water on top of the ice and bourbon in
two tall glasses and handed him one.

“For God’s sake don’t try to clink glasses, Mooney. This isn’t a class reunion.”

“That’s a bad mood you’re in.”

“I’m aware of it. I have troubles.”

He sipped his drink. “Take me. I never have troubles. I travel light. No room in my pack for troubles. Or for houses or possessions or fat problems. When I get bored, I roll along to some other place.”

“Are you getting bored here?”

“The season is over. Your husband, forgive me, rubs me the wrong way.”

“You’re not alone.”

“But off I go. And I never see him again.”

“I think I envy you.”

“Maybe, Lennie, there’s somebody you could be visiting. Pack a small bag. Come on along. We’ll do some loafing at Myrtle Beach and then you can come back here all … refreshed.”

“You’re a cold bastard, Mooney.”

“Do you mean I don’t pant and sigh and promise undying love and devotion? Then you’re right. I don’t. I make a flat offer.”

As he finished his drink he became aware that she was looking at him strangely, her head tilted a little bit to the side, her forehead slightly wrinkled.

“What’s up?”

“You’re cold, Mooney, and you’re shrewd. Maybe you could give me an idea or two on my problem. It might mean some money for you. Maybe a lot of money.”

“They call me honest Mooney.”

“It would be honest, practically.”

“Anything where I get a lot of money isn’t going to be honest.”

“It could be, you know.”

“Dishonesty is risk. I don’t take risks.”

“No risks.”

“So then pour another drink. I’ll listen. What is your problem?”

She looked at him and seemed to be making up her mind about something. “Does Dil expect you right back?”

“That I can check. Where’s the phone?”

“Through there, on the right.”

He went in and dialed the agency. When Clara answered he thickened his voice and added a touch of cracker. She told him Mr. Parks had left for the day. He told Lennie that.

“Maybe he’s coming back here.”

“No. He told me to tell you he’d get a ride to the Shermans’ party later on. That’s why he had me bring the car out. So you can get there.”

She nodded. “Then you’ve got a little time?”

“All the time we need.”

“I’m all sticky from that lotion. I want to feel clean. You make another drink, Mooney. Make me one too and bring it on in.”

He made the drinks. Just as he finished he heard the dull roar of the shower. He carried the two drinks down a hallway. The bathroom door was ajar.

“Where do you want your drink?” he yelled.

“Bring it in.”

He took a deep breath and pushed the door open. It was a transparent glass shower stall. The hot water had steamed the glass. He could not see her clearly.

“Give me a sip.”

She opened the glass door and put her head out. He held the glass to her lips. His hands were shaking. She smiled at him. “Ever scrub a back?”

“On special occasions.”

“This is special, Mooney.”

He was dubious. He felt that this was another form of torture. He suspected that she would change quickly and start laughing at him again. He told himself not to hope. He was dubious for some time. He even had faint misgivings when he carried her, dripping wet in his arms, her head nestled into the
hollow of his throat, into the next room. But then the last faint doubt was gone, very thoroughly and completely erased from his mind. She had all the talent he had anticipated and more. After a long time he began to hear the surf again, and the thin harsh gull cries, and the sputtering sound of a light low-flying plane. He went to his clothes and got cigarettes on request and brought them back to the bed. At the next request he put on his shorts and shoes and went to the bathroom and got the two drinks. They needed more ice. He added more bourbon when he added ice. He took them back to the bedroom. She had put on a skirt and she was hooking her bra. Her hair was tangled and her face had the soft look of satiety. She sat on the dressing table bench and began brushing her hair as he finished dressing.

She began to talk about her problem. He listened carefully to all of it.

“I heard about the money. Those things get exaggerated, Lennie.”

“Darling, this is true. It really is. But no lawyer will touch it. Uncle Paul’s contacts are too good. He’s too respected. They won’t admit he’s insane.”

“And this Preston pair—they’re cutting you out.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I’m no lawyer.”

“I know that. But you’re shrewd, darling. You know people. You know how to handle people. I’ve thought of all kinds of wild things. Now I need ideas. I want you to have some ideas.”

“What kind of an old joker is he?”

“Tall. Cold eyes. Very dignified. A culture bug. Music and books and paintings and so on. Keeps his distance. No friends. He doesn’t like Dil at all. I don’t know whether he likes me.” She leaned toward the mirror to make up her mouth.

Mooney sat on the edge of the bed, glass in one hand, cigarette in the other, watching her. “As I get it, people think he’s pretty crazy. But they like him. Like a town monument to something or other. The thing is to have him act more crazy.”

“Like what?”

“It would have to be faked.”

“How do you mean?”

“If he did something really off-beat, something the whole town talked about, then one of the lawyers would take it.”

“I’m positive they would. One was nearly willing. I could sense it. But not quite. Ben Piersall is the one I really want to handle it, but he wanted no part of it.”

“But even Piersall would reconsider if, for example, the old doc started hearing voices, or coming to town without his pants.”

“Of course, but …”

“We have to think of how to make him do something irrational, something he won’t be able to explain.”

Her face in the mirror nodded at him. “I see what you’re thinking, darling. I think maybe it’s pretty bright.”

“It wouldn’t have to be anything too startling. It could be a lot of little things. If I could hear him talk, I could imitate his voice. You could brief me on what he calls people. Hell, I could call up Flamingo Builders Supply and order fifty gallons of polka dot paint. Or I could use his voice and put a wild ad in the paper, put it in over the phone. He’ll deny it. People will say he just didn’t remember doing it. Hell, Lennie, in a week or two I can have the whole town saying he’s really flipped. Where do I stand?”

“Would you do it?” She turned around on the bench.

“Where do I fit? What comes to me?”

“I don’t know. I’d have to see if it works. I’d have to see what we get out of it.”

“You said there’d be no risk. There’s risk in this.”

“Not very much.”

“Enough to be paid for.”

“I can’t pay you any money. Not until afterward. I can’t pay you anything.”

“Not anything at all?”

Her eyes turned sly. She sat facing him. She arched her back a tiny bit, lowered her head, looked at him through her lashes. “I could be a sort of … sort of promissory note.”

“You certainly show promise.”

“Is that all, Mooney? Hey, go away. Not now, darling. There isn’t time.”

“Then when?”

“When do you start?”

“After you make a chance for me to hear the old coot talk.”

“Tomorrow is Wednesday. Let me see. Pick me up here at ten in the morning. We’ll go out there. I’ll think of something. He’s never refused to see me. He’s just … cool toward me. Can you get away?”

“I’ll get away.”

“After we see him, we can talk about us.”

“Just talk?”

“About us and a place where we can meet and plan this thing. A quiet private place. You can think about that, about such a place, and you can think of ways we can make Uncle Paul look weird. I’ll try to think of some too. Where do you live, Mooney?”