The Lime Pit (24 page)

"You're going to get yourself killed," she
said with awful certainty, as if it were something she had known all
along but never before admitted to herself. "I love you and
you're going to get yourself killed." She dropped both arms to
her sides and gaped at me in disbelief. "Why?"

I slipped the jacket back on and emptied a box of
shells into my coat pocket. "I don't know why," I said.

"Surely you can do better than that?" she
said, coloring. "I don't understand. You could turn it over to
the police. Why don't you turn it over to the police?"

"Because they'd botch it."

"While you, Harry Stoner, the man they can't
keep down ..." Her voice died. "I love you. Doesn't that
mean anything to you?"

"It means everything to me."

"Then why ..." She scoured her eyes with
her palms. "I won't take it," she said flatly. "I've
already lost one man to senseless violence. I won't take two."

"You're not making this any easier for me,"
I said angrily. "I'm doing it because I have to do it. Because I
can't just turn my back and pretend that I don't care why a deranged
teenager with a soft heart was murdered. Look--three people are dead.
One of them at my hands. And if I hadn't been damn lucky last night,
it could have been four or five." Suddenly I was very angry. I
gripped her by the wrists and glared into her face. "How do you
think I felt last night, tossing you in the goddamn bushes and
watching that shotgun shell burst behind me and wondering if you were
being torn apart by it? Do you think I'd let anyone do that to me? Do
you? Do you think I'd let anyone try to kill me or someone I love? Do
you?"

"You're hurting me!" she squealed.

I dropped her wrists. "Are you coming?"

She didn't look up at me
as she swept out the door.

***

We drove in silence over to North Clifton, Jo sitting
sternly by the window. Her face rapt and cheerless. Twice I started
to apologize, but held back. She didn't want to be disabused and I
didn't want to explain it.

It took me ten minutes to get to Cornell. I turned
left and drove up that maple-shaded street, full of picturesque
houses and calm, tree-filtered sunlight, and pulled into the driveway
by the hedge of rosebushes. The air was thick with late afternoon sun
and heavy with that dead, ghost-filled silence that had weighed on me
five days before, when I'd first driven up Cornell to donate half an
hour's time to a crusty old man who'd lost his little girl and didn't
know where to find her.

We walked up to the porch, where the swing and the
lawn chairs huddled mournfully in the shade, and down that crabbed
hallway to Hugo's flat.

I knocked once at the door and it opened under the
weight of my hand. The old man must have had another key on him. Or
left one with his friend George.

He was sleeping in the chair with the yellow throw.
The T.V. was talking to him idly from the flecked metal stand. His
face looked pallid and ill.

"Hugo?" I said.

He opened his watery blue eyes and smiled at me.
"Hello, Harry."

"Hugo, why didn't you stay in Dayton like I
asked you to?"

"Couldn't stand it no more. Too damn loud and
busy." He grimaced suddenly and rubbed his temple. "Man, my
head hurts."

"You're not playing around Hugo? You're not
pulling a trick, are you?"

He smiled through the pain. "No, Harry. No trick
this time. I think this time, the trick's going to be on me. I
shouldn't have exerted myself like I done. Went and gave myself
another stroke."

Jo walked to the telephone on the octagonal table.
"I'm calling an ambulance," she said hoarsely.

"Getting loose of that damn Ralph is what done
it to me. You know I had to pay one of his snot-nosed kids three
bucks to get himself lost for a couple of hours? Ralph's such a
milquetoast he got all excited just like I figured he would--and went
off looking for Kevin. Then it was just a matter of getting my bag
packed and hiking down to the terminal." Hugo laughed
remorsefully. "But I went and lost that damn bag in the depot
and made myself sick on the ride sitting in the sun." He closed
his eyes and sat back in the chair. "I told you I wasn't going
to survive this thing. And I was right."

"If you'd have stayed there, damn it, you'd be
O.K."

He opened his eyes and looked over at me. "Did
you find her, Harry? Did you find my little girl? Don't lie to me,
now, son. It don't make no difference any more. I ain't going to
survive this in one piece no matter how you slice it. And I got to
know. I got to know while it still makes sense to me. In a few hours,
I'm going to be a stalk of celery. I know. It happened like this
before. And then the truth won't move me one way or another."

Jo touched his hand and he smiled at her. "Don't
get yourself worked up, honey. It may sound strange, but I ain't
scared of this anymore. It just don't matter to me. I been to Dayton.
I seen what being old is like. Didn't fancy it a bit. Knew I
wouldn't. Always been a loner, 'cept for George and Cindy Ann."
He swallowed hard. "She's dead, ain't she, Harry? My Cindy Ann?"

I smiled at him and said, "Hell no! She's not
dead. If you'd have just stayed in Dayton awhile longer, I would have
come up there and told you all about it."

He perked up a bit. "She ain't dead?"

I shook my head. "But you were right about the
Jellicoes. They were using her as a prostitute in Newport. It's a
long story, but I found out through one of the Jellicoes' other girls
that Cindy wanted to quit and run. This friend worked with her in
Newport. And helped her get away."

"Where'd she go?"

"The girl says Denver."

A twinge of pain made him grimace. "Boy, I hope
you're telling me the truth. Sure enough, she ain't dead?"

"Yep."

"I don't see why she had to run away like that.
I'd have protected her from them damn bastards myself."

"I guess she didn't want to see you get hurt,"
I said softly.

"Could be," he said, thinking it through.
"She was always one to think of others before she thought of
herself. You going to be able to find her?"

"I'll find her all right," I said
cheerfully.

He chuckled and said, "I believe you will.
You'll tell her when you find her that I loved her, won't you,
Harry?"

I didn't say anything.

"Here's the ambulance," Jo called from the
window.

A minute later, two uniformed attendants knocked on
the door. They wheeled a gurney into the room and Hugo said, "Aw
hell, I don't need that." He started to get up and sat back,
stunned, in the chair. "Well, maybe, I'd better," he said
sheepishly.

I helped him out of the chair and over to the
stretcher. He was a bag of sticks beneath that cardigan and those
loose khaki slacks.

They strapped him on and, suddenly, Hugo looked
terribly frightened. "You weren't lying to me, were you, Harry?"

"No, Hugo."

He sighed. "Goddamn, ridiculous way to die,
ain't it? Being carried out to it like a cord of kindling. So long,
Harry," he said, holding up a hand.

I held it for a few seconds and he smiled that
sickly, broken-toothed smile. "Let go of my hand, now," he
said softly. "Never was crazy about being touched by another
man."

"I'll come visit you tomorrow, Hugo."

"Sure you will," he said.

The attendants took him out the door.

Jo started after them. "I'm going to ride down
there with him."

She paused at the door. "I don't suppose it'll
do any good to say be careful. Or to try to convince you not to do
... whatever it is you're going to do?"

I shook my head.

She started to cry. "Then I don't know what to
say."

They were wheeling Hugo
into the ambulance. Jo squeezed my hand once and whispered, "Goodbye,
Harry." Then walked quickly out the door. I watched her from the
bay as she climbed in beside Hugo and, in a minute, both of them were
gone.

***

I circled among the narrow, San Franciscan streets of
Mt. Adams until night fell, then dropped down St. Martin's to
Paradrome and up to Ida, where I parked beneath an arching willow
some three houses down from Tray Leach's home. I'd bought five
styrofoam cups full of coffee at a little grocery on St. Regis, and,
as I sat there watching the western sky go purple and then deep blue,
I flipped the plastic lid off one of them. It was bad, bitter coffee.
But I was feeling numb and disoriented after Cornell Street and I had
to keep alert all night long, if I was going to bring this thing off.
I had a few bennies in a prescription bottle in my slacks. If worse
came to worse, I'd pop them, although I didn't want to have to do
that. On speed you think too much of the first thing that comes into
your head. I pried the lid off another cup of coffee and sat back in
the car seat and tried, unsuccessfully, not to think about Jo or
about Hugo Cratz.

Around ten, a yellow Dodge van pulled up in front of
Leach's house. It was dark beneath the willows, too dark, at first,
to make out the man behind the wheel. I slipped the .38 out of the
holster and pulled the hammer back. If anyone got out of that van
without a kid on his arm, I was prepared to go charging across the
street. I could see the blinds rustle in one of Tray's front windows
and then one red door opened and a porch light clicked on. Leach came
out on the stoop in a Japanese kimono and sandals and waved to
whoever was driving the truck. The driver's door opened and rangy
Lance Jellicoe stepped out into the street. He looked around
nervously, then held his hand back up to the truck door. A much
smaller hand grasped his, and Lance pulled a beautiful little boy
into his arms. He smiled broadly at the kid and patted him on the
rump. The kid grinned back and Lance lowered him to the ground. The
little boy was about twelve, dressed in a T-shirt and short pants.
His blonde hair was cut straight across the forehead, like the little
Dutch boy's, and he had a vain, pretty, slightly prepossessed
face-Tray's face, but thirty years younger. The boy ran around
the rear of the van and up to Tray's door. Tray said something to him
and he laughed. Leach took his hand, waved with the other to
Jellicoe, and guided the boy into his house. The porch light went
off, the red door closed, Jellicoe hopped back in the van and drove
off. I ducked down beneath the window as he passed me and watched him
through the rearview mirror until the truck lights disappeared down
the Ida Street hillside.

I sat back up in the car seat and stared at Leach's
house. It made me sick to think what was going on in there. Sick and
sad and philosophical about means and ends. A bad joke that made me
laugh.

I checked my watch. It was a quarter past ten. O.K.,
Harry, I said to myself. Only six or seven more hours and Jellicoe or
his wife would be driving back up the street and out would come
Junior and the chase would be on in earnest. I sipped some coffee and
settled back and waited.
 
 

24

THERE WASN'T much to do for the next six hours.

I sat in the car and stared at the houses along Ida
Street and listened to the faint music drifting down the hillside
from Celestial. For about half an hour I watched through an attic
window a young couple court and spark. She was blonde, in her early
twenties, dressed in a peasant skirt and loose white blouse. He was
young and fresh-faced, and he already carried himself like a
businessman-bowed and brisk and rather officious-looking. They made
an odd couple, and they courted politely over a china tea set before
lighting candles and settling down on a divan. I don't know what
happened after that. I didn't care.

It was love night on the Hill. Hot July weather. The
air was sticky and rank with the too-sweet smell of honeysuckle. And
I was alone in a car, waiting for Tracy Leach to finish with his boy
lover. While Hugo Cratz was slipping quietly off into death in a
hospital bed, dreaming of a girl he had loved. And Jo was dreaming in
her Beeker Street apartment of her dead Marine husband and of one
Harry Stoner. A detective. Who sat, dreamlessly, in his car, watching
the tall yellow street lamps, curved at the tops like feeding
giraffes, and the pacific unpeopled street dusted by the tawny lights
and rife with the smell of the honeysuckle that flourished along the
viaduct. One by one the houses along Ida went dark. The night sounds
stopped. And, with them, the occasional laughter of men and women at
play. Around three, the music stopped tumbling down the hillside from
Celestial. The air grew still and cooler by a decade of degrees. And
all that stirred were the branches of the willow tree above my car.

I swallowed tepid coffee and smoked and sang a few
songs to myself and waited for the yellow Dodge truck, which didn't
come until the night sky had turned violet in the east. At five the
keen white beams of the headlights flashed from the north end of the
street. They disappeared momentarily as the truck rounded Seasongood
Pavillion, then flashed back on as the Dodge entered the stretch of
Ida where the park dies away in a grove of pine and the houses start
up on the west side, while on the east, where I was parked, the
ground rises in a hillock of dense shrubbery and low-hanging willows.
In a few seconds I could hear the sound of the engine and then I
could see the truck itself, lazying up the asphalt. The headlights
gleamed off the chrome of the cars parked around me. I ducked down
again among the styrofoam cups.