I went back out and got in behind the wheel and said, “Dana, I can’t help how this sounds, believe me. It’s a high-school routine all the way. You can go in and ask him.” I told her what I’d learned, and said, “Suppose I take it and you drive back down to Utica and stay there and come on back out in the morning.”
She hesitated for four seconds and then said, “if you’d just do something about that horrible snoring, see a doctor, anything, then we wouldn’t have to go through this all the time!”
“Myra, I freely admit I do breathe a little heavy.”
“A little heavy! When you get going, the neighbors run out into the night screaming ‘Lion, Lion’.”
“Only when I get over onto my back, dear.”
“Then you have a back on both sides. Anyway, dear, I’ll sleep so well in this mountain air, I don’t think you’ll bother me tonight. But do try to hold it down to a dull roar.”
“You act as if I enjoyed it.”
“Because, my pet, you sound as if you were enjoying it.”
A car came in and I was afraid we would lose the room if we waited the game out, so I went in and signed us in as T. McGee and wife. The two three-quarter beds seemed to crowd the room. We did a lot of polite walking around each other, getting organized. An electric wall heater kept the room reasonably comfortable. With one quick trip to the ice machine, and with a considerable magic, she materialized a squat broad silver cup, the right amount of gin on ice, the two drops of bitters.
“The celebrity treatment?” I said ungraciously.
“I wouldn’t want to get out of practice.”
“Well… thanks. It’s fine.”
“You are so welcome, Travis.”
We decided it would be best to leave her right there while I took the first little prod at Carl Abelle. The Mohawk Lodge was seven or eight miles out Indian Lake Road, over some impressively hilly highway. The grounds were aglare with floodlights against snow. The establishment was garishly new, pale varnished pine, A-frames, Swiss-kwaint gables. The sign advertised three tows, eight downhill runs, instruction, beginners’ slope, Icelandic bathhouse, prime steaks, cocktails. The whole place was noisy, bursting at the seams, with much coming and going and giggling and hooting.
I worked my way into what seemed to be the main lounge. An ox could have been roasted on a spit in the fieldstone fireplace. The ceiling was low, beams huge. There were a lot of overstuffed couches and chairs, and deep rugs underfoot. There seemed to be a great number of young people sprawled on the floor. I saw several legs in casts, arms in slings. Sweating waiters brought drinks from a corner bar, stepping over and around the people, grimly ignoring the shouts for service. A big stereo juke made loud Beatle-music, and some snow bunnies were energetically trying to revive the Twist, wearing their indoor-fireside-snuggle-pants rather than their outdoor togs.
I angled toward a waiter and stuffed a bill in his shirt pocket. It bought me four seconds of attention. “Carl Abelle,” I asked.
He pointed with his head, and said, “Red jacket.”
Abelle was leaning against a paneled wall. He wore a red blazer with an Olympic pocket patch, silver buttons, a white silk ascot. He stood with his head bowed, a dainty little snow bunny in each arm. One of them was talking directly into his ear. She writhed and she worked her face in the curious manner of many women telling a dirty joke. I held off until she had made her point. Silvery glissandos from the girls. A hohoho from Abelle. I moved in and the three of them looked up at me with the polite glaze the ingroupers give the outsider. I wasn’t wearing the garments.
The girls looked very young, and the out-of-doors had given them both a lovely healthy flush. But their eyes looked wise and old. Carl looked magnificent. The bronzed blond hero, white of tooth, clear of eye. But somehow it all looked like makeup. And in spite of the tailoring, he seemed to be getting a little thick around the middle.
“Abelle?”
“Yesss?”
“I bring you a message from friends.”
“Zo?”
“From Cass. From Vance and Patty. From Lee and Sonny and Whippy and Nancy and the whole gang.”
“I know zose people?”
“Yes, you know zose people.” I didn’t say any more. I let him hang there. He added them up. He wasn’t very good at it. His face got sulky and wary.
“Oho,” he said. “Would you mean Miss Abbott? And the M’Gruders?”
“And the Cornell boys too.”
“Giff them all my best regards, ya?”
“That wasn’t exactly the message, Carl.”
“Zo?”
“If we could take a two-minute walk.”
He hugged the bunnies, whispered to them, sent them off toward the fireplace with an identical little stroke at each upholstered little behind.
“Now we can talk here, Mister…?”
“It’s something in the car I want to show you.”
“Bring it in.”
“I’m sorry. I have to follow Miss Dean’s instructions.”
He gained a little confidence. “Zo, you work for her. A very lovely little lady, ya?”
“She sends her very special regards.”
He puffed up very nicely. But then he remembered the names I had given him. He was riot intellectualizing anything. He merely had the animal’s awareness of something not quite right. “What could that dear woman send me you could not bring in?”
I winked at him most solemnly. “Herself.”
He puffed up and he glowed. “Of courze!” He nudged me. “I understand.”
“She isn’t exactly waiting out in the car, you mderstand. She’s at a private lodge down by the lake. She heard you were here. She said it was a very pleasant surprise. She’s staying with old friends. Incognito.”
“She sent you to bring me there?”
“On impulse. You understand.”
“Oh, of courze!”
“Shall we go?”
He nibbled at his mouth, an Airedale frown between the hero brows. “I must come back later. Social obligations here. But yes, it would be rude not to come at once.”
We went out to the rental car. His red blazer was handsome in the floodlights, between the snow banks. He strutted. There was a Teutonic wrinkle across the back of his neck. Maybe it had grown there in response to the faked accent. I had two inches in height, and he had at least fifteen pounds in weight. I couldn’t risk taking any sporting chance with him. He might know how.
I hurried past him and opened the car door for him. He accepted it with regal satisfaction. As he started to bend to duck into the car, I screwed my feet firmly into the packed snow, pivoted very smartly, and with the best right hook I have, made a very good attempt to drive that middle silver button of the jacket right through to his backbone.
These little melodramas always make me feel like a jackass. But you must do them briskly. A sudden, merciless, ugly violence is the great leveler. Men revert to childhood. The night is full of spooks and ghosties, and they are reminded of death. A man whipped in a fair fight retains stubborn remnants of pride and honor. A man rendered helpless without warning is much more suggestible. With a great gassy belch, he doubled. With hands clasped together, I chopped down against the back of his neck off to one side, just below the mastoid bone. As he crumpled, I body-blocked him into the car, kicked his dangling legs inside and slammed the door. I imagine it took about three and a half seconds.
I got behind the wheel. He was edged partially under the dash. His relaxation was total. I could hear him snore. A few hundred yards down the highway I pulled over, hauled him onto the seat, removed his white silk scarf and tied his wrists together with it. I tied them together in crossed position, under his husky thighs. He toppled over against the door and moaned. Pathos in silver buttons.