John MacDonald - The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper

“And if that didn’t work?”

“He’d probably turn the problem over to one of the many people aching to do him a favor, no matter what it might be.”

“And you don’t like him.”

He pursed his lips. “... No. I think I like Tom. But I would be uneasy about getting into any kind of business association with him. I’m quite sure I’d make out very well, as have many others, but the inner circle seems to become... a group of faceless men. In any kind of speculation tight security is imperative. They seem to become very... submissive? No. That isn’t accurate. Retiring, discreet, and slightly patronizing toward the rest of the working world. I guess I am not a herd animal, Mr. McGee. Even if it would fatten my purse.”

“So if it wasn’t Pike or one of his admirers, how come I had a visitor, then?”

“My considered opinion is that it beats the hell out of me.”

“Well, if somebody was looking for something they think I have, and wants it badly enough to take a chance of getting caught going in or out of a motel room, the next place to look is in my pockets.”

“If it’s smaller than a bread box.”

“I think I’ll hang around and do a little trolling.”

“Keep in touch.”

“I will indeed.”

I drove back to the Lodge and ate one of the fake-Hawaiian special dinners, then went from the dining room into the cocktail lounge and stood at the bar. Business was very light. Some young couples were sploshing around outside in the big lighted pool. The bar was a half rectangle and I became aware of a girl alone at an end stool, by the wall, under a display of ancient fake Hawaiian weapons. She wore a weight of red-gold wig that dwindled her quite pretty and rather sharp-featured face. She wore a white dress, which seemed in better taste than the wig and the heavy eye makeup. She had a cluster of gold chain bracelets on one arm, smoked a cigarette in a long gold and white holder, and was drinking something wine-red out of a rocks glass, a measured sip at a time, as self-consciously slow and controlled as her drags at the cigarette.

I became aware of her because she wanted me to be aware of her. It was puzzling because I had appraised the motel as no hangout for hookers. Also, though she was apparently dressed and prepared for the part, her technique was spotty and inept. There are the ones who operate on the mark of their choice with the long, wide-eyed, arrogant-insolent-challenging stare, then properly leave it up to him to make the next move. There is the jolly-girl approach, the ones who say to the barkeep in a voice just loud enough to carry to the ears of the mark, “Geez, Charlie, like I always say, if the guy doesn’t show, the hell with him. I’m not going to cry my eyes out, right? Gimme another one of the same, huh.” Then there’s the fake prim, the sly sidelong half-shy inquisitive glance, and the quick turn of the head, like a timid doe. Or the problem approach, troubled frown, gesture to have the mark come over, and then the dreary little set piece: Excuse me, mister, this may sound like a crazy kind of thing, but a girlfriend of mine, she asked me to be here and tell the guy she had a date with she can’t make it, and I was wondering if you’re George Wilson. Or: Would you mind, mister, doing me a crazy kind of favor? I got to wait here to get a phone call, and there’s some nut that was bugging me before and said he was coming back, and if you’d sit next to me, then he won’t give me any problems, okay?

But this one didn’t have any routine to depend on. Her infrequent glance was one of a puzzled uncertainty. I decided that it was another instance of the courage of The Pill bringing the bored young wife out hunting for some action while hubby was up in Atlanta at another damned sales meeting. I wondered how she’d manage if I gave her no help at all.

What she did was get up and head for the women’s room. She had to walk behind me. So she dropped her lighter and it clinked off the tile and slid under my feet. I backed away so I could stoop and pick it up, but my heel came down on her sandaled toes. I recovered in time to keep from coming down with all my weight, but I came down hard enough to make her yelp with anguish. I turned around and she limped around in a little circle, saying, “Oh, dear God!” while I made apologetic sounds. Then we compounded it by both bending at the same instant to pick up the lighter. It was a solid, stinging impact, bone against bone, hard enough to unfocus her eyes and unhinge her knees. I caught her by the arms, moved her gently over, and propped her against the bar.

“Now I will bend over and pick up the lighter.”

“Please do,” she said in a small voice. She grasped the edge of the bar, head bowed, eyes shut.

I wiped the lighter off with the paper napkin from under my drink and placed it in front of her. “Are you all right?”

“I guess so. For a minute there my toes didn’t hurt at all.”

She straightened, picked the lighter off the bar, and made a rather wide circle around me and headed for the women’s room. I motioned the bartender over and said, “Amateur night?”

“New to me, sir. You got each other’s attention anyways.”

“House rules?”

“They say to me, they say, Jake, use your judgment.”

“So what do you say to me?”

“Well... how about bon voyage?”

“How was she doing before I showed, Jake?”

“There were two tried to move in on her, but she laid such a cool on them I cased her for strictly no action, that is, until she began to throw it at you.”

“She’s in the house?”

“I don’t know. I’d guess not, but I don’t know.”

When I heard the tack-tack of her heels on tile returning, I smiled at her and said, “I have liability coverage. Like for broken toes, concussion, lacerations.”

She stopped and looked up at me, head tilted. “I think it was a truck, but I didn’t get the license number. I could settle my claim for some medication, maybe. On the rocks.”

So I followed her and took the bar stool beside her and asked Jake for more of the same for two, and winked at him with the eye farther from her. Ritual of introduction, first names only. Trav and Penny. Ritual handshake. Her hand was very small and slender, fine-boned, long fingers. Faint pattern of freckles across nose and cheekbones. Perfume too musky-heavy for her, too liberally applied. I could detect no evidence of a removed ring on third finger left, no pale line or indentation of flesh.

We made the casual talk that is on one level, while we made speculative, sensual communication on the second level. Humid looks from the lady. Pressure of round knee against the side of my thigh when she turned to talk more directly to me. Parting of lips and the tongue tip moistening. But she was too edgy, somehow, too fumbly with cigarettes and purse and lighter and drink. And her component parts did not add up to a specific identity. Wig, makeup, and perfume were garishly obvious. Dress, manicure, diction were not.

So Trav was in town to see a man interested in putting some money in a little company called Floatation Associates, and Penny was a receptionist-bookkeeper in a doctor’s office. Trav wasn’t married, and Penny had been, four years ago, for a year, and it didn’t take. And it sure had been a rainy summer and fall. Too much humidity. And the big thing about Simon and Garfunkel was the words to the songs, reely . If you read the lyrics right along with the songs while the record was on, you know, the lyrics right on the record case, it could really turn you on, like that thing about Silence especially. Don’t you think, honest now, that when people like the same things and have enjoyed the same things, like before they ever met, Trav, it is sort of as if they had known each other a long time, instead of just meeting? And people don’t have enough chance to just talk. People don’t communicate anymore somehow, and so everybody goes around kind of lonesome and out of touch, sort of.