The Quick Red Fox
John D. MacDonald
Travis McGee #4 The Quick Red Fox
John D. MacDonald
One
A big noisy wind out of the northeast, full of a February chill, herded the tourists off the afternoon beach, driving them to cover, complaining bitterly. It picked up gray slabs of the Atlantic and smacked them down on the public beach across the highway from Bahia Mar. It rattled loose sand across the windshields of the traffic, came into the cramped acres of docks and boat basin, snapped the burgees and went hoooo in the spiderwebs of rigging and tuna towers. Fort Lauderdale was a dead loss for the tourists that Saturday afternoon. They would have been more comfortable back in Scranton.
I was cozied up in the big lounge of the Busted Flush, my houseboat moored at Slip F-18. My electric heat was turned to high-high. I was stretched out on the big yellow couch and clad in ratty old wool slacks and an old Norm Thompson flannel shirt, faded to a sky blue over the treasured years.
A few days earlier I had junked my old speakers in favor of a pair of AR-3’s, and had bracket-mounted them on the far wall. The Scott tuner was locked into WAEZ in Miami, and the Fisher amplifier was driving the new speakers very handsomely. They were broadcasting that Columbia recording of Bernstein conducting the Shostakovich Fifth, one hell of a big bold heroic piece of music, and I had the gain high enough to do it justice. You could shut your eyes and float on it.
Skeeter was across the room, hunched over her drawing board. She was wearing gray corduroy coveralls, too big for her. All her clothes always seem too big for her. She is thirty, I think, and looks eighteen. She has cobweb blonde hair, constantly adrift, a Raggedy Ann face, and a narrow graceful immature figure. She is not very well organized, but she makes a pretty fair living doing illustrations for children’s books under the pseudonym of Annamara. My friend Meyer found her on the beach a year or so ago. That hairy, ugly, charming fellow can walk down a beach and collect a rare people the way anyone else might pick up a left-handed whelk.
She worked with the top of her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth. She was doing line drawings of a dissolute field mouse named Quimby. She was working at my place because they had repainted her apartment three blocks away, and the smell made her nauseous, and she had a deadline to meet.
Once upon a time, when I had been feeling shattered by the loss of someone very dear to me, we had drifted sideways into a brief affair. We had found we weren’t very good for each other on that kind of basis. We seemed to bring out a talent in each other for chipping away at the weak points. The infighting got a bit bloody, and though we felt obligated to pretend otherwise, it was a relief to both of us to call it off and find our way into a casual and off-handedly affectionate friendship.
At the big parts of the music she would use her drawing pen to help Bernstein conduct, and then go back to mouse work. She had uncovered an unexpected talent for making Navy grog, and I had a mild and pleasant glow from the ones she had fixed me. She had made her own weaker. Quimby demanded her sober attentions.
Into the resonant blare of the music came the frail little overpowered bing-bong of my bell. I have a button board affixed to a dock post, and a chain across the dock end of my small gangplank.
I got up and went and took a look. It was a tall girl out there, a tall girl in a severe dark suit, with a purse that managed to give the same impression as a brief case. She stood erect, pretending there was no wind at all. She looked as if she might be going around enrolling people in a business school. As I peered out at her, she punched the button again. There was no hesitancy about her.
I went out onto the rear deck and up the broad short slant of gangplank to face her across the chain. Her survey of me looked inclusive, and I couldn’t tell if she registered approval or disapproval. I get both kinds. I am extra-big. I have been out in the weather. I look lazy and am. In the words of a Texas chick one time, I look as if I had been there and back.
She had black hair. Male musicians often wear theirs longer. She had vivid dark eyes, heavy black brows, a rather long face, high flat cheekbones and a ski-jump nose. The mouth saved the face from austerity. It was full and broad and nicely modeled. She looked fashionable, competent and humorless.
“Mr. Travis McGee?” she asked. She had a furry contralto.
“Himself.”
“I am Dana Holtzer. I couldn’t reach you by phone.”
“It’s turned off, Miss Holtzer.”
“I would like to talk to you about a very personal matter.”
Sometimes it does happen that way. She had a money look. No jewelry. Earned money. She looked handsomely employed, and she didn’t look as if she was in any kind of a jam. An emissary for somebody who was. Had she come along a couple of months sooner, I could not have cared less. But the kitty was dwindling. I was soon going to have to cast about for some profitable little problem. It is nice when they come walking up and save you the trouble of looking.
But caution is always essential. “Are you sure you’re talking to the right guy?”
“Walter Lowery in San Francisco mentioned your name.”
“What do you know? How is old Walt?”
“All right, I expect.” She frowned. “He said to say he misses playing chess with you.”
So it was all right. Walt and I never played chess in our lives. Not against each other, at least. But that was the identification tag, if he ever sent anybody along. There are the nosy ones, and the troublemakers, and the cuties, and the official investigators. It is good to have a way to weed the doubtful ones out.
“So come in out of the wind,” I said, unhooking the chain, rehooking it after she had eased by me. She was long-waisted, with sturdy shapely calves, moving with the grace many women with that kind of build have. Her back was flat and erect, her carriage good.
I opened the door and ushered her into the blast of music. Skeeter gave her an absent minded glance, a vague smile, and continued her work. I left the music on and took Miss Holtzer on through the lounge and past the galley to the little dining booth. I closed the door from the lounge to the galley corridor. “Coffee? Drink?”
“Nothing, thank you,” she said, sliding into the booth.
I poured a mug of coffee for myself and sat opposite her. “I’m not interested in every little thing that comes along,” I said.
“We’re aware of that, Mr. McGee.”
“You do know how I operate.”
“I think so. At least, I know what Mr. Lowery said about it. If something has been taken from someone, and there is no way to get it back legally, you will make an effort to get it back-for half its value. Is that correct?”
“I have to know the circumstances.”
“Of course. But I would rather have… the other party explain it all to you.”
“So would I. Send him around.”
“It’s a woman. I work for her.”
“Send her around.”
“That’s impossible, Mr. McGee. I have to take you to her.”
“Sorry. If she’s in enough trouble to need me, she’s in enough trouble to come ask me herself, Miss Holtzer.”
“But you don’t understand. Really. She just couldn’t come here. She would have talked to you if I could have gotten you on the phone. I work for… Lysa Dean.”
I knew what she meant That face was too distinctive, even in the darkest sunglasses in town. She wouldn’t want to come on such a private mission with a police escort. And if she came alone, the boobs would recognize her at a hundred paces and come clotting around, pressing in as close as they could, standing and staring at her with that curious fixed, damp, silly smile, America’s accolade to the celebrity. Ten big movies, four fairly messy marriages, one television series fiasco, and a few high-paid guest spots had made her a household face. Liz Taylor, Kim Novak and Doris Day would take the same stomping among the star-dazed common folk. The public is an untrustworthy animal.