“Yes, that is an ugly idea. And if the fall had killed her outright, then when Ellis died of his problem, the foundation would have gotten the money.”
“But she hung on. And suddenly Peter realizes that if Ellis should die before Aomola, he will still be in clover. Or even better off than before. He can finance another chance at moviemaking, possibly. But, Travis, it is one long long shot, isn’t it, to try to connect Peter Kesner with something that happened so long ago near Citrus City?”
“Very long.”
“I didn’t call you up to talk about that!”
“What did you have in mind?”
“Do you want five hundred guesses?”
“I give up.”
“That’s sort of what I had in mind.”
“Once I get onto the Alley it is only eighty-four miles. But aren’t you a working woman on weekends?”
“All I have to do from now on is take one of my famous walks through the bar area and the dining room between seven and nine, check a couple of empty rooms at random, and take the totals off the register tapes. A grand total of-call it forty minutes. And as soon as I hang up I am going to have a nice nap, and then I am going to put little dabs of scent here and there. Park at the far right end of the lot and take the path down past that fountain with the stone benches, and you’ll come out right behind my place, and the rear door will be unlocked. Welcome, darling.”
And she hung up before I could change the plan in any way.
I stayed in her place with her Sunday night, in the queen-size bed under the fan, with a yellow towel over the lampshade and with pretty good surf thudding onto the beach in a steady rhythm all night long.
We knew a lot more about each other, the things that quickened and the things that delayed. She was joyfully diligently sensuous. She just purely enjoyed the living hell out of it. She was a kid, and bed was the big candy store, and she had the keys to every cabinet.
At one point, resting, she said, “Look, do you mind about me and Ellis?”
“In what way?”
“Him being so much older. I’m younger than his son. Did I tell you that already?”
“I think so. So what?”
“You take a younger woman who moves in with a well-to-do old man, it looks as if she’s going where the money is. I don’t give a damn what most people think, but I want you to know that it wasn’t like that. It really wasn’t. Two years before he got sick we went down to a meeting in New York when there was an industry-wide convention. He always picked me when there was work he wanted done just right. By then’I was almost over a rotten affair with the man I had wanted to marry until I learned he had a boyfriend on the side. Ellis landed a huge consultant contract at the convention, and we had wine in his suite-I lived across the hall-and he managed to hustle me into bed somehow. I told him I had to quit. I wasn’t going to be a sleep-in secretary to anybody. He said if I had to quit, I had to quit. Okay. The next day I quit, and he said the fair thing to do was to stay on until he could find somebody just as competent. Later he said that inasmuch as I was quitting anyway, and as long as we had been to bed together once, it would be stupid not to continue while he looked for a new girl. I felt a little bit crawly about him being so old. But it turned out to be all right. Then on account of the chemotherapy and the radiation, he all of a sudden couldn’t. He was sorry and I was sorry, but, as I told,you before, I had a moral and emotional commitment to him. He was mean, but he never cheated me. He never lied to me. And he was always pleased when I looked nice, so it was fun to dress up for him. And because I never did really quit the job when I said I would, I felt I owed him. And I had to believe it was a kind of love that kept me with him. Hey! Are you asleep?”
“No. Heard every word. Understand the whole thing.”
“And now what do you think you are doing?”
“In the immortal words of Burt Reynolds, something has come up.”
“Which, all things considered, love, is very very flattering.”
“I know.”
By twenty minutes after dawn I was on my way back across the peninsula, yawning and singing, beating time with the heel of my hand on the steering wheel. “Roll me over, in the clover… With ‘is ’ead tooked underneath ‘is arm, ’e ‘aunts the bluiddy tower… Never let a sailor put his hand above your kneeeee…” And other tender love songs and ballads of the years gone by.
When I awakened in my own bed at noon, I put a call through to Ted Blaylock. Mits answered in a small uncertain voice. He had lost consciousness Saturday evening and had been rushed to Broward Memorial. His condition was not good. She had just come from there. She was going back in the late afternoon.
“What is it?”
“Kidneys. That’s what he’s been afraid of. You saw how kind of yellowish he looked.”
“I noticed, yes. Can I get to see him?”
“He wants to see you. He told me how to get you by phone, but I didn’t even try on account of I don’t want to do anything to tire him out. Anyway, I don’t think they’ll let you in. I told them I’m his wife.”
“Does he have something to tell me?”
“I think so.”
“Get him to tell you, then. I don’t want to tire him. You can tell me. You got a ride in?”
“One of the guys is taking me and waiting.”
“What room is he in?”
“Why?”
“So I’ll know where to wait for you when you come out.”
“I can only be with him like five minutes. I guess if you want to come meet me, five o’clock would be okay. Across from the main entrance.”
I got there at four thirty. I looked around the area and I found a big silver and black Harley Davidson parked in the shade, a thin brown Indian-looking fellow standing by it, smoking, leaning against a tree.
“You bring Mits in?” I asked him.
“You McGee?”
“Right.”
“She told me you’d be around. I’m Cal. I’m her cousin. She’s really nuts about that Blaylock. You the one messed up Knucks and Mike?”
“They kept pushing me.”
“They’re like that. Be a long time before they do any more pushing. You tore up Knucks’s shoulder pretty good. And Mike is in the hospital, this one right here, for observation on account of something might be busted inside. He can’t keep food down. A lot of people are glad they got wiped out. They get too much kicks out of beating on people.”
“I have the idea those two are dumb enough and ugly enough to take another try at me when they feel up to it, but not with the bare hands.”
He nodded. “Sure. That would be the way they go. But they been given the word you’re under the protection of the Fantasies.”
I looked at his rear mudguard and saw the emblem. “That’s nice. I really appreciate it. That pair doesn’t fill me with terror, but I don’t like having to look around behind me all the time. Why the favor?”
“You did the Fantasies a favor, okay? Knucks had been told about groping Mits. He was told not to do it. It was like some kind of a joke to him. Mits is my first cousin, so she’s in like an affiliate. Fantasy Foxes, under our protection. Like the Oasis is under our protection because Blaylock has been a true friend to the club. So some people were going to get around to Knucks and maybe break his hand or something. But you worked him over. So if you want, you can wear the pin. There’s one for associates, without the red circle around it.”
The keen dark eyes stared at me, and I knew I was on very delicate and dangerous ground. Ridicule is unforgivable. But I had the feeling I’d been transported back to one of the schoolyards of my youth, where if you belonged to the right group, the big kids wouldn’t beat you up and take your lunch money.