Darker Than Amber (9 page)

When we first holed up there, we had been almost right for each other, both in and out of bed. But the mirrors and the enforced togetherness kept pushing us further and further apart. She thought that all her tragic and humorless tantrums were a sign of emotional depths beyond my ability to comprehend. My gallows humor offended her. She felt any humor, any light touch, any mild clowning was an offensive indication of the trivial mind. Toward the end, the mirrors somehow turned us into a lonely crowd, a platoon of tragic CLArabelles and a squad of smirking McGees, crossing and crisscrossing the multiple mirrored images of each other like a flock of strangers roaming around a bus station. After the bounty on her pretty head ran out, and she paid me off, it was an indication of how enforced intimacy can cool things off to have her, at the airport, give me the same finishing-school handshake and remote glance and fleeting smile she would give an acquaintance whose name she could not quite remember.
I registered my appreciation of Vangie's playmates by deciding to carry the airweight Bodyguard at all times. It goes into the side pocket of the pants, the right-hand pocket. The spring-pop holster is fastened into the pocket. It was made to my order by a talented Cuban. Slide the open hand into the pocket, press just so, and the gun jumps solidly into the hand. It makes no bulge. There is nothing to catch on the fabric. Florida has handgun rules as curious as anywhere else. I own one acre of scrub land in one of the pork-chop counties in north central Florida. Taxes come to $4.11 a year. The obliging sheriff renews my permit every three years. In Florida you can keep a gun iIi your ear, your home or on your boat with no permit. You can carry it on your person or your own land with no permit. In certain areas you can carry it anywhere if it is openly and prominently displayed. But they do not like it tucked out of sight.
I can never tote it around, aware of the meager weight of it against my right thigh, without feeling a little twinge of theatrical jackassery. Carrying a gun, especially a very utilitarian one, has the bully-boy flavor of the ersatz male, the fellow with such a hollow sense of inadequacy he has to holster his sexual ego with a more specific symbol of gonadal prowess. Except for those whose job it is to kill folks, having to use a gun is the end product of stupid procedure. It is a handy way of correcting mistakes, so the only time to carry it is when you head into an area where a lack of information compounds the possibility of the inadvertent mistake.
I put the five-by-seven shots of Vangie under the patterned paper lining the shallow desk drawer. The wallet-sized shots were in the wallet. I had used the sample of her handwriting from her score-keeping chore during a three-way gin game, and had written across the most blatantly invitational of the four poses-"All my love from your Vangie." Green ink. Childlike backhand. Circle instead of a dot over the i in Vangie.
Time to begin. I looked out my side windows at the pool. Five little kids splashing around in the roped-off shallows. I could not hear their shouts. I could not hear the shrillness of one of the red-brown young mothers who stood on the pool apron, shiny with sun oil, bulging her semi-bikini, her face twisted to ugliness as she yelled threats at the kids. The other young mother was supine on a sun pad.
The strange fragments of reality make patterns in your head sometimes. They form a collage that is static for a few moments, giving you the feeling that you are on the edge of some perception that might make all the rest of it a little more meaningful. The elements of this design were Vangie's dry amber eye, the yelping children at play, the barely perceptible weight of the gun, the slack underlip of the morgue attendant, and the adornment of the thickening body of the young vacationing matron in such a brief snugness of fabric that there would almost inevitably be another towhead added to her brood.
Very probably all perceptions are secondhand. The titled lady who had gifted me with the very ex pensive pipe had gifted me with something else also. When she insisted I read the poetry of W. H. Auden, I thought she was out of her mind. When I finally humored her, I found that it was not anything like what I had expected. And now this composite scene brought up from memory one of Auden's irreverent perceptions:
As the poets have mournfully sung, Death takes the innocent young, The rolling-in-money, The screamingly-funny, And those who are very well hung.
I found The Doll House on Sea Crescent Circle in Broward Beach. It was in a rich row of expensive shops. I parked on the circle and walked into the shop. It was cool, hushed, shadowy, smelling of fabrics and scents. Prism spots highlighted the display areas. As I walked in I broke the beam of an electric eye. A bell bonged somewhere. A girl came walking out of the shadows at the rear of the place, through the patterns of light.
She was dark, slender and pretty, and the front of her dark blue maternity smock was unmistakably bulged.
It was not yet noon. "Good morning, sir. May I help you?"
I knew that her quick glance had appraised the clothes I had selected to give the specific impression I sought to convey casual and confident money, the kind that arrives on its own ketch or motor sailer. Boat shoes, khaki slacks, a dark green silk sports shirt, a very small edge of pale yellow ascot showing at the throat, a white denim jacket with wooden buttons, over the arm. I am considerably more plausible as a construction worker or a linebacker, but I have, over the years, developed the talent shared by bit-part actors and con men of giving a reasonable imitation of whoever is supposed to be wearing the garments. What I was wearing required amiable evasions, social pleasantries, and the air of being able to buy that part of town if a group of devoted people in the background recommended it.
I smiled into her eyes and said, "Nice. Very nice. The Doll House complete with doll."
The twinkle took precedence over the attentive politeness. "In the seventh month, that's good for the morale."
"Should you be working? Or are you the owner?"
"I'm hired help. The owner is Miss Gates. And it's good for me to keep working, thank you. This one is the sixth."
"And the little note of pride is well earned. I figured you for a child bride."
"I'll treasure that too. You're improving my day. Are you looking for a gift?"
"No. As a matter of fact I've got a fairly strange problem. And maybe I'm wasting my time, but I have a little extra time."
"You're not alone."
"I've got the problem because I have a terrible memory for names. I tied up down at the city pier over a year ago. I had a friend who lived here then. He's moved away. He rounded up a batch of people and we had drinks aboard, and it turned into a long loud evening. There was one girl in the group I thought I'd like to see again some day. She had a date that night. But... you know how it goes, she found a chance to let me know she'd be happy to have me give her a ring next time through. She gave me a picture of herself. Some kind of publicity shot, I guess. I threw it into a drawer aboard the boat. This morning it took me about a half hour to locate it. Her name is gone completely. I tried to think of some kind of a clue, and all I could remember was overhearing her talk to my date about her favorite place to buy clothes in Broward Beach. The Doll House. So I thought I'd take the outside chance. Maybe you people know her name."
I took out the small picture, one without inscription, and handed it to her, and followed her slowly as she took it over under one of the spotlights. She examined it, gave me a quick glance which could have been a disappointed reappraisal, and said, "She's not a charge customer. But she does come in quite often. Andra... Miss Gates always takes care of her."
"How do I find Miss Gates?"
"She's back in the office, sir. If you will wait a few moments I will get you the information."
The chill was obvious. She had withdrawn and slammed the gates. I stood and stared into the glossy photograph of a girl's face of a plastic mannequin. She stood on a round pedestal that lifted her almost up to eye level with me. She held her arms and hands in a position which looked as if somebody had just snatched her banjo away, and she hadn't had time to react. She wore a brief little shift in a coarse blue weave with a huge brass zipper from throat to hem, a little brass padlock fastening the zipper at the neckline, and, pinned to the bosom, a little spring-tension reel key. the padlock key snugged up against it. An overhead spot shone on her straight, thick, cream-colored Dynel hair.
"Sweetie," I said to her, "your message gets through. May one day a plastic chap unreel your little key and tousle your plastic locks."
I felt fairly confident of the degree of risk I was taking.
Vangie had spoken of her darling little ear, of having a place to live. And if she had a record, and if it was a dangerous and conspiratorial game she was playing, it had to be under a different name. Otherwise the police would have had the local address very quickly.
Little Mother came silently back across the carpeting, handed me the picture and an unlined file card. I had heard a distant clicking of a typewriter. On the card was written Miss Tami Western, 8000 Cove Lane Apartment 7B, Quendon Beach.
"Sorry to take so long, sir. As Miss Western pays cash, Miss Gates had to look through the delivery file. Some things which had to be altered were delivered. It would be three miles or so south of the city line."
"Thank you very much."
"We're glad we could be of service, sir."
I started toward the door and turned back. "None of my business, but there I was improving your day, and all of a sudden I'm Typhoid Mary. Would it help anything if I bought something?"
"I would be happy to wait on you, sir."
"Come out, come out, wherever you are, and tell me, please, why that picture turned you off?"
"I'm sure I don't know what you"
She stopped abruptly, made a wry face. "Maybe you're not having me on after all, Mr. "McGee. Travis McGee."
"Mrs. Wooster. You give the impression of being able to find your way around, Mr. McGee. And if you'd never seen her in your life, that picture should give you some kind of a message. But you spent an evening with her. I don't want to say anything more. I don't want to knock a steady customer."
"I was under the spell of black velvets. From two o'clock on. Half and half, stout and champagne. They came aboard at six. If you've ever tried that magic potion.. She laughed. "Sure have. Everything gets such a lovely glow."
"That's why her name is gone too. And what she does. Some kind of an entertainer, I think. I mean that's the way the picture looks."
"Mr. McGee, you are backing me into a corner. I don't want to make any moral judgments. She has a lovely face and a lovely body. And we can guarantee she's well-dressed. But do one little thing. Take a look at that picture again, and let's just say she doesn't sing and she doesn't dance, and she isn't an actress, nor does she entertain with Aloha and other requests on her musical saw. And let's say she distributes quite a few of those pictures."
I looked at it again. "Mrs. Wooster, you may have saved me from a very awkward little situation."
She lowered her voice. "If there was a chance of my being wrong, one small chance, I would have kept my mouth shut, believe me. But about five months ago she was here one afternoon with a little redheaded girlfriend, and it had been a long and liquid lunch. The girlfriend was DeeDee or BeeBee or something. They were both back in the fitting room, and there was a good customer there too, and the customer said something that apparently annoyed the redhead. I would guess that... the redhead actually has a better background than Miss Western. But, to shock the other woman, the redhead, who'd been sitting waiting for Miss Western to get her suit fitted, she jumped up and... like a circus barker or something, she pretended to be auctioning off the merchandise, patting Miss Western and turning her around and displaying her charms and... saying it would cost for this and for that... a kind of obscenity I never heard before. Miss Western was helpless with laughter. The other customer fled in tears. And... they weren't kidding. It was as if, all of a sudden, they had both changed into something we never saw around here before. They were both hooting with laughter when they left. And when Miss Western came in the next time, Miss Gates asked her not to bring her friend back again ever. She took it all right. You just don't look as if... that is the sort of girl you'd want to look up. Or, excuse me, have to look up."
"Now you're making my day. But what sent the woman out in tears? Bad language?"
"The redhead was making some ugly comparisons. Andra confronted her and apologized and said the redhead would never be permitted inside the shop again. But she never has come back."
"I guess this makes you the only friend I have left in town,' I told her.
She sighed. "You know, it's a shame. I have a perfectly great gal in mind. So she's visiting your sister in Chicago. If I were you... I mean trying to think like a guy, spending just a few days here, you probably belong to something that has some kind of reciprocal deal with the Yacht Club. They've got a pool and tennis courts and so on, and it's relaxed and friendly. What I wouldn't do is go pub-crawling down Sand Alley. That's the strip down at the beaches. It is sort of what they call a little bit wide open. Let's just say there's a lot of different kinds of Tami Westerns, and people have gotten served some pretty strange drinks."
Off to the right of A1A as you head south are the random, unzoned living areas. Barren trailer parks making a huge hot aluminum glitter in the sunshine. Other trailer parks with shade and space and waterfront. Tract houses in clusters that vaguely resemble a game of Monopoly. Improbable groups of high-rise apartments. Curiously architectured conglomerations of condominium apartments.
I found Cove Lane a mile south of the Bimini Plaza, turning off AlA between a shopping plaza and a self-service car wash. Two blocks west it changed from business to residential. Number 8000 took up half of the south block, and was far more attractive than I had any reason to expect. They were garden apartments, single story, in gray weathered cypress trimmed white. Ten numbered units, each containing four apartments A, B, C and D--but so laid out, like the spokes of a wheel, with plantings, high basketweave fencing, access drives of white crushed shell, that each have a look of restful pleasure and the look of being near the sea.