John MacDonald - The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper

“In the whole family, Dr. Dyckes.”

“And I just sit here and open up like the family Bible, eh? And you take it all in, just like it was the most ordinary thing in the world to listen to a doctor violate the ethics of his profession.”

“I... I thought you were responding to an expression of friendly interest and concern, Doctor, and—”

“Bullshit, McGee. Wanted to see if you handled yourself with any kind of sense at all. You do. Know why I’m talking to you about a patient... and the patient’s family?”

“I guess you want to tell me why.”

He brooded for a long time, eyes half closed. “Trying to find the words for what she did for me. Even when there wasn’t anything left of her but the pain and her eyes, I’d go sit by her bed when things went wrong for me, like when I lost a young one that I’d prayed I wouldn’t lose. Dammit, I was borrowing guts from Helena Trescott. Leaning on her. We talked a lot, up until the time I had to keep her too far under. One night she told me about a man named Travis McGee. She said that you might show up someday and you might ask a lot of questions. ‘Tell him how it was, Bill. Don’t pretty it up. Trust him. Tell him what you know about my girls. I’m going to ask him to help Maureen, I think.’ So, friend, she’s the one who made it easy for you. Not your persuasive charm. Okay?”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“So where were we?”

“The next thing I was going to try to do was to get you to give me your opinion of Dr. Sherman.”

“Too bad about Stew. Good man. Vague spots here and there but generally solid. I mean in the medical knowledge sense. Damned fool about money, like most doctors. We’re the prize pigeons of the modern world. Gold bricks, uranium mines in Uganda, you hold it up and we’ll buy it.”

“I understood he invested in Development Unlimited.”

“Which may be as good as gold. The guys who have gone in swear by Tom Pike. Maybe they’re getting rich. Good luck to them. I turned down my golden opportunity. I was pretty interested there for a while.”

“What put you off it?”

“My brother. He and his wife were down visiting us. He’s a big brain in financial circles in New York. Taught economics at Columbia, then got into securities analysis and real estate investment with a couple of the banks. Then he started a no-load mutual fund a few years ago. A hedge fund. They watch him like eagles up there, trying to figure out which way he’s going to jump next. I was invited to one of those little get-in-on-the-ground-floor dinners Tom puts on from time to time. Stag. Took my brother along. Tom made quite an impressive talk, I thought. Had me about to grab for my checkbook. When we got home, Dewey told me what was wrong with the things Tom said. It boiled down to this. Tom used some wonderful terms, some very tricky ideas, a lot of explanations of tax shelters and so on. But my brother explained that it didn’t hang together. As if he’d memorized things that wouldn’t work in the way he said he was using them. Dewey said it was like a ten-year-old kid explaining Einstein to a roomful of relatives who never got past the tenth grade. The words were so big that, by God, it had to be good and had to be right. Dewey told me to stay out. Any spare change I have, I put in his mutual fund. And little by little he’s going to make me rich. He promises me he will. You know, I hope he was wrong about Tom Pike. Because if Tom is goofing, a lot of men in Fort Courtney are going to get very, very badly hurt. Look, I better go scrub. Nice to talk to you. She was one very special woman, that Mrs. Trescott.”

I tried Hardahee again and struck out. But Janice Holton was home and said sure, I could stop by if I wanted to. I parked in front on the circular drive and went up and rang the doorbell. As I was waiting she came around the side of the house and said, “Oh. It’s you. I’m fixing some stuff around in the back. Want to come around? I don’t want to leave it half done.”

She had newspapers spread on the grass, under a metal chaise, a piece of lawn furniture originally pale blue. The blue paint had been chipped off by hard use. She was giving it a spray coat of flat black DeRusto from a spray can. She wore very brief and very tight fawn-colored stretch shorts, and a faded green blouse with a sun back, and ragged old blue boat shoes. I stood in the shade within comfortable conversation range. She had a deep tan. She moved swiftly and to good effect, limber as a dancer when she bent and turned, and able to sit comfortable as a Hindu, fawn rear propped on the uptilted backs of the boat shoes. She was sweaty with sun and effort, her back glossy, accenting the play of small hard muscles under her hide as she moved.

She turned, tossing her black hair back, and said, “I ran off at the mouth Sunday night. It isn’t like me. I must have been lonely.”

“Funny. I had the feeling I talked too much. Had the feeling I’d bored you, Janice.”

“Excuse me, but I forgot your first name.”

“Travis.”

“Okay, Travis. So we were a couple of refugees or something. And excuse me for something else. Meg got a glimpse of you and thought you looked very interesting. You know, she has been covering for me, but she doesn’t know who I’ve been seeing. She decided it had to be you, so I didn’t say yes and I didn’t say no. She thinks it is awfully sophisticated for you to bring my husband home drunk so we can put him to bed and go out together. Hmmm. Have I missed anything?”

“That brace over there on the left, under the seat.”

“Where? Oh, I see it. Thanks.”

She covered the last blue neatly and precisely and straightened up, cocked her head to the side, shook the paint bomb. The marble rattled around inside. “Just about completely gone. I love to have something be just enough instead of too much or too little. Want a drink or a cold beer or anything? I’ve been promising myself a beer.”

She led me into the cool house and the cheerful kitchen. She tried to thrust a glass upon me, then admitted that she too preferred it right from the bottle. She leaned against the sink, elegant ankles crossed, uptilted the bottle, and drank until her eyes watered.

“Hah!” she said. “Meg probably saw you drive up. She’ll think this is terribly soigné too, a little visit just before lunch. She’s probably lurking about in the shrubbery, panting.”

“As long as I’m nominated, don’t you think I ought to know where we’ve kept all these other assignations?”

“Not assignations. Just to be together. And talk. Talk about everything under the sun. Hold hands like schoolkids. Cry a little sometimes. Hell! Why shouldn’t a man be allowed to cry?”

“They do, from time to time.”

“Not enough. Not nearly enough. Well, we had to meet where there would be absolutely no chance of anyone seeing us together.”

“Pretty good trick.”

“Not terribly difficult, really. We’d arrange a time and both drive to the huge parking lot at the Courtney Plaza and once we had spotted each other, you’d drive out and I would follow you and you would find a place where we could park both cars and then sit together in one of them and not be seen. Out in one of the groves, or on a dark residential street, or out near the airport, someplace he... you thought we’d be safe.”

“How would we arrange the date in the first place?”

“You won’t have to know that.”

“Is that what we were going to do last Saturday? Spend the whole day, or most of it, sitting around in some damned automobile holding hands and crying?”

“Please don’t make cheap fun of it.”

“Sorry.”

“Saturday it might have become something else. Second phase of the affair, or something. Maybe it’s just as well Rick spoiled it. I keep yearning for someplace where we could be really alone, really safe. Someplace with walls around us and a roof over us, and a door that will lock. But not a motel, for God’s sake. I don’t think I could stand a motel. And that would be a risk. You see he... he’s in a position where a lot depends upon people having total confidence in him. It would be more than just... the appearance of infidelity.”