I told her about the Busted Flush and how I had acquired it. It is one of my more polished routines. I don’t expect people to roll on the floor, but I generally get a little more amusement than I got from her. Her laugh was polite and came in the right places.
Over coffee and cigarettes, the little note book came out.
“I had a chance to spend quite a bit of time on the phone, Travis. Carl Abelle is at the Mohawk Lodge. He operates their ski school on some sort of franchise arrangement, and runs the ski shop. It would be impossible to stay there. They are booked completely. If you want to go there first, we are reserved out of Miami to Kennedy, arriving at two-fifteen tomorrow. There is a feeder flight which will get us to the Utica-Rome airport at four-ten. It is about a sixty-mile drive from there to Speculator up Route 8, and the roads are clear.”
“What do you mean, if I want to go there first?”
“Let me tell you about the others. The M’Gruders are divorced. I couldn’t locate her. He has remarried, just a short time ago. They’ve gone cruising down the Pacific Coast to Acapulco, and it is possible they may be on their way back by now. I think I will be able to get a line on his ex-wife.
“But, having a little extra time, I thought I would see what I could find out about Nancy Abbott. Your notes said her father might be an architect. I checked standard reference sources and found a West Coast architect, Alexander Armitage Abbott in San Francisco.
“I have a friend in San Francisco, one of Bill’s old friends actually, who knows everyone. The architect has a daughter named Nancy, age 24, with matching physical description, so it must be the same one. She has had one annulled marriage. She is a problem drinker. She has been in so many messes, the family has sort of washed their hands of her. He said he would make a couple of calls and phone me back. He did, and said she is in Florida, at some sort of voluntary alcoholic retreat down at Bastion Key. It’s called Hope Island. Do you know about it?”
“I took them a customer once. I took her back there three times, but it didn’t stick. The same guy may still run it.”
“A Mr. Burley? I looked it up.”
“That’s the one. He gave it a good try with my friend. But she borrowed a car, finally, and drove it into a cypress swamp at about a hundred miles an hour.”
“I wondered if… as long as she’s so nearby…”
“Right. We’ll go down there tomorrow. Cancel us out on the flight north, and don’t set it up again until after we’ve seen her.”
“You have a car?”
“In a manner of speaking. After you left yesterday I was wondering what you think of all this.”
“I thought I made that clear.”
“I mean what do you think of it as a woman.”
“Is that pertinent?”
“Perhaps. It might help me in talking to the Abbott girl.”
She thought for a moment. It was a long strong face, flat planes in the cheeks, very dark and vivid and lovely eyes, a prominent and forceful nose, broad firm mouth.
“I would say this, I guess. Lee isn’t a suggestible child, you know. She’s had four marriages. And other relationships, some of them not particularly wholesome. But she’s always been pretty cautious. She is very frankly and happily promiscuous, but the situation in those pictures I would say is not her natural style.
“She was lulled into it somehow, and damned uncomfortable about it later on, and still is. I wouldn’t know how those other females reacted to it. But I don’t think it is accurate to think of Lee as just another woman getting involved in something messy.”
“What do you mean?”
“She is a property, Trav. She has few personal rights and privileges. She’s just worth too much money to too many people. They can’t afford a blemish on her. I’ve gotten used to thinking that way about her. So when I look at those pictures, I see them in terms of risk. Like watching a clown juggle priceless glassware. Those men were aware of it, of course. The unattainable goddess suddenly right there within reach, tired and drunk and sweaty and willing. They talk, you know. It spreads like ripples. It has had a lot of time. Little hints and rumors are coming back home to roost. She’s scared of that, too. She’ll be all right until one picture doesn’t pay off. Then there could be some reluctance. Why take a chance?”
“How will this picture do, this Winds of Chance?”
“Very well, I think. It’s the kind of part she always does well. Coffee?”
“Thanks.”
After she poured it she hesitated by the table, empty pot in hand. “You didn’t say anything about how you’d like me to dress, Trav. I thought… I imagine women have stayed here with you. I’d be less conspicuous if I… stayed with resort clothes.”
“You do fine. Use your own judgment.”
Five
ON THE way down to Bastion Key Dana was delighted with my stately and ancient pickup truck. It is painted a hideous electric blue and called Miss Agnes by all who know her. It is one of the largest of the old Rolls breed, and some owner of long ago, perhaps after bashing her up, did a backyard job of converting her into a pickup truck. She is high and solid. It takes a long time to move her up through the gears, but when you have a chance to get her up to eighty, she will settle into it all day long in a rushing ghastly silence. She eats gas, but holds a little over forty gallons at a time.
I liked Dana’s delight. It reminded me of the way she reacted to Skeeter’s mouse. I knew I had to watch it, or I would be trapped into the hopeless project of trying to find ways to delight her, to bring out that little spark so deeply buried.
At Bastion Key you turn right off the highway beyond the town and follow a shell road out to a little short causeway that leads over to Hope Island. It is not a luxurious retreat. Stan Burley is the Schweitzer of the gin bottle. The buildings are surplus barracks he barged in long ago. He and all of his small staff are reformed drunks. If he has room, he takes you, at whatever you can afford to pay. He has some theories. They work for him. If you took a seven-foot chimp and shaved every hair off and painted him pink, you’d have a recognizable version of Stan Burley. His graduates who stay dry send contributions regularly.
Before I could turn the motor off, Burley was striding toward us from his little screened office. It was warm and bright, eleven o’clock on Tuesday morning. The Florida bays were blue.
“Ho, McGee,” he said, hand outstretched toward me, looking with a keen expectation at Dana, doubtless thinking her a new guest.
I introduced them and said quickly, “We’ve come down to talk to one of your people, Stan. If possible. Nancy Abbott.”
The welcoming light went out of his face. He gnawed his lip. “Miss Holtzer, you go wait in my office a minute, and Jenny will give you a nice glass of iced tea.” She nodded and walked away. Burley led me over to a wooden bench in the shade.
“What’s it about, Trav?”
“She was involved in something a year and a half ago. I want to ask her some questions about it. Is she all right?”
He shrugged. “She’s dry, if that means very much. Has been since October. I shouldn’t tell you a damned thing about that one. But you worked so hard with me that time with Marianne. God help us, we fought hard, but we lost that one, boy. I’ll have to tell you, it’s on my conscience having her here, this Nancy. It isn’t the place for her, but no place is, not any more. Did her father send you?”
“No.”
“A retired policewoman delivered the child here in October. Sick drunk and down to ninety pounds. The D.T.‘s and the spasms. Pitiful. I got a thousand then, and I get a thousand a month from a San Francisco bank. I write the bank a condition report once a month. After we began to bring her out of it, she puzzled me. I had a doctor friend look her over. Drunk is only part of it. But the thousand a month takes care of a lot of other ones. I’m an evil old man, Trav.”