Bright Orange for the Shroud (20 page)

“Never indeed. Excuse me.” She swayed off, closed a heavy door softly behind her. And for the first time the room came into focus. Probably thirty by fifty. Twelve-foot ceiling. Window wall with a spectacular view of the bay, terrace beyond it with a low wall, chunky redwood furniture. An almost transparent
drapery had been pulled across to reduce the afternoon glare, and there was a heavier drapery racked at the side of it. Giant fireplace faced with coquina rock. Deep-blue carpeting. Low furniture, in leather and pale wood. Bookcases. Wall shelves, built in, with a collection of blue Danish glassware, and another, glassed in, with a collection of the little clay figures of Pre-Columbian Latin America. The cooled air was in slight movement, scented very faintly with pine.

It was a very still room, a place where you could listen to the beating of your heart. And it seemed to lack identity, as though it might be a room where executives waited to be called into the board meeting beyond the dark and heavy door.

After long minutes the door opened and Calvin Stebber came smiling into the room, Debra two paces behind him and, in her flat white sandals with gold thongs, maybe an inch taller. He marched up to me and stared up at me, smiling, and I could feel the impact of his superb projection of warmth, interest, kindliness, importance. You could be this man’s lifelong friend after ten minutes, and marvel that he found you interesting enough to spend a piece of his busy life on you. It was the basic working tool of the top grade confidence man.

“Well now, Mr. McGee, I do respect Debra’s instinct, and I must say that she was correct. You have not the faintest odor of the law. You do not look irrational, and you do not look a fool. So do sit down, young man, and we will have our little chat. Sit there, please, where you won’t get the glare in your eyes.”

He wore a dark green blazer, grey flannel trousers, a yellow ascot. He looked ruddy and fit, chubby and wholesome as he smiled across at me.

“And,” he said, “our little telltale in the foyer has advised us you are not carrying some lethal hunk of metal. Cigar, Mr. McGee?”

“No thank you, Mr. Stebber.”

“Please, Debra,” he said. She went to a table, took a fat foil-wrapped cigar from a humidor, peeled it, and, frowning in pretty concentration, clipped the ends carefully with a little gold gadget. She lit a kitchen match, waited until the flame was right, then lit the cigar, revolving it slowly, getting a perfect light. She took it to him, her every move theatrically elegant, and this time all elegance was directed at him, and without irony, more as if it was her obligation to herself and to him to be as consciously lovely as she could manage to be. A gift for Calvin.

“Thank you, dear. Before we begin, Harris phoned up here about your companion, Mr. McGee, and I suggested he bring her up.”

“It might be a pretty good trick.”

“Harris can be very persuasive.” A buzzer sounded. “There they are. Do let her in, dear. And tell Harris to bring the car around at five.”

I did not get a look Harris, but Chook told me later that he was so much beef in a grey chauffeur’s uniform, he would make me look shrunken and puny. She said he had plucked her out of the car the way she would lift a kitten out of a shoebox. I realized later that the long wait when I had phoned upstairs was to give Debra time to alert Harris on another phone, possibly a house line to the service area.

Chook came into the room, thin-lipped with fury, rubbing her upper arm. “Trav, what the hell is going on!” she demanded.
“That big clown lamed me. And
you
, fat little man, I suppose you’re the chief thief.”

Stebber scurried over to her, great concern on his face. He took her hand in both of his and said, “My dear child, the last thing I wanted was to have Harris hurt you or anger you or frighten you, really. I merely thought it rude to have you waiting down there in the car in the hot sun. But seeing what a striking creature you are, my dear, it’s doubly a pleasure to have you here. Come over and sit with me here on the couch. There! Now what is your name?”

“But I … Look, I only … Well … Barbara Jean McCall.” It was a measure of his charm that I had never known her name until that moment. She made no attempt to pull her hand away. She looked bedazzled. I glanced at Debra and she gave me a wise, measured wink. “Chookie, people call me. Chook sometimes. I … I’m a professional dancer.”

“Chookie, my dear, with all that grace and vitality and presence, I can’t imagine you being anything else. I bet you’re
very
good!” He released her hand, gave her an approving little pat on the arm, turned and looked up over his shoulder at Debra, leaning against the back of the couch and said, “Debra, dear, say hello to Chookie McCall, and then you might fix us all a drink.”

“Hello, dear. I’m tremendous with daiquiris if anyone cares.”

“Well … sure. Thanks,” Chook said. I nodded agreement.

“Four coming up swiftly,” Debra said, and Chook did not take her eyes off the willowy grace of Debra until a door swung shut behind her.

“Spectacular creature, isn’t she,” Stebber said. “And, in her
own way, quite natural and unspoiled. Now let’s get to it, Mr. McGee. You used a name over the phone. A password. And you show a certain amount of resource and ingenuity. But, of course, we have a problem. We don’t know each other. Or trust each other. What is your occupation?”

“Semi-retired. Sometimes I help a friend solve a little problem. It isn’t anything you need an office for. Or a license.”

“And this handsome young woman is helping you help a friend?”

“Something like that. But when a friend gets caught in a big con, it isn’t easy. Old grifters like you keep the action safe and almost on the level. Maybe you even pay taxes on the take. And you train your ropers and shills and let them take the risks. I suppose you’re so used to living nice, Stebber, you don’t want to risk taking any kind of a fall. How badly do you want to avoid a fuss? When I know that I know how much pressure I’ve got.” I kept it very casual.

He stared at me for long alert seconds. “Certainly not bunko,” he said. “Wrong type, completely. Could you have been with it?”

“Not with it. Close to it a few times. Helping friends.”

Chook said irritably, “What’s going
on
?”

Debra reappeared, bringing four golden-pale daiquiris on a teak and pewter tray. I said, “Cal Stebber’s in the bait business, honey. He gets the hungry ones, and they get hauled aboard and gutted.”

Debra made a face at me as I took my drink from the tray. “What a dreadful way to say it. Really! You must have made some very bad investments, Mr. McGee.”

“Debra, dear,” Stebber said. “Have we given up waiting for our cues?” It was said with loving patience, and with an almost
genuine warmth. But the girl’s color changed, the tray dipped, the glasses slid an inch before she regained control. She made an almost inaudible murmur of apology. Discipline was rigid on this team.

After one imitation sip, I put my drink aside. Debra sat graceful and subdued on the arm of the couch. Stalemate. I decided I’d better gamble on my knowledge of the type. Perhaps, twenty years ago, he could have taken chances. Now his life would seem shorter to him. If I had no information he wanted, I wouldn’t have gotten into the apartment. Now he was regretting even that. And I could say with almost total certainty that my chance of prying any of Arthur’s money out of this one was zero. I had to give him some confidence. And I thought I might have the name that would do it.

“Know The Moaner, Cal?” I asked him.

He looked startled. “My God, I haven’t thought of Benny in years. Is he still alive?”

“Yes. Retired. Lives with his son-in-law in Nashville. Phone is under the name of T. D. Notta. You could say hello.”

“He knows you?”

“It isn’t a real warm friendship.”

He excused himself and left the room. Chook said, “
Somebody
could give me a scorecard.”

“When the Moaner was young and spry, back, they say, in Stanley Steamer days, he got his start in Philadelphia, diving into the front end of slow-moving cars. He’d bounce off and roll away and moan like to break your heart. His partner wore a cop suit and came running up and spilled the fake blood on the Moaner when he bent over him to take a look at him. He worked up from there. Fake masterpieces, they say. And he worked the ships. Ran bucket shops, telephone swindles. All
the longtime grifters know each other.” Debra made a sound of amusement. Her morale was returning. But when I tried to pump her, she was both silent and amused.

When Stebber returned he had shed large hunks of his public personality. “The old bastard sounds pretty shaky, McGee. He doesn’t like you. One of the last scores he made, a little one, you got it back before he could get out of range.”

“For a friend.”

“He says you don’t holler cop. He says … Debra, dear, why don’t you take Miss McCall to your room and make girltalk?”

When Chook looked at me in query I nodded approval.

They left.

As the door closed, Stebber said, “Benny says you can get cute. And he says it isn’t a good idea to send anybody after you. He said you made two good boys as sorry as could be. He said don’t try to figure you for a mark in any direction. And you’re pretty much a loner. But if you say you’ll deal, you’ll deal.”

“So you want to know what I’ve got and what I want.”

“I know Wilma didn’t send you. She’s not damn fool enough to think of making a deal to come back in. And she would have given you the phone code. It’s a simple number switch, based on what day of the week it is. Seven digits in the phone number. Seven days in the week. When she asks the caller to repeat the number, you just add one to whatever digit represents that day. You would have said seven one three–one eight seven eight.”

“And having told me, to show how much you trust me, you’ll change the code as soon as you can.”

“You hurt me, my boy.”

“The secretarial type who fed Arthur the knockout at the Piccadilly Pub. Could have been Debra, I suppose.”

“You have a good eye. Few men could see how severe and plain she can make herself look. And how is poor Arthur?”

“Insolvent.”

“It had to be him, of course. Wilma’s most recent venture. Your Miss McCall. She has a special interest in Arthur?”

“You could put it that way.”

He awarded me a sad, sweet, knowing man-of-the-world smile. “Odd, isn’t it, how those very vital and alive ones are attracted to such shadowy, indistinct men. Poor Arthur. Not much sport there. Like shooting a bird in a cage.”

“You must have felt sorry for him, Stebber. Or you would have taken his last dime.”

“Wilma had her way. No pity, no mercy. He was just another symbol of what she has to keep killing, over and over.”

“That’s one of the shticks of the half-educated, this bite-sized psychiatry, Stebber. You do it pretty well.”

Ruddiness deepened and then faded. It was nice to mark him a little in an area where he least expected it. “But we aren’t progressing, McGee. We want information from each other. And the magic word is Wilma.”

“For a top operator in the big con, which you seem to pretend to be, Stebber, you put together a damned shaky team. Crane Watts and Boone Waxwell are weak links.”

“I know. Also Rike Jefferson, the executor. Weakness and unpredictability. But it was a … sentimental flaw. I couldn’t take the time to set it up more soundly. Harry couldn’t spare the time. Mr. Gisik. An old associate. A valued friend. He died six weeks ago in New Orleans after heart surgery, God rest his
soul. As this venture was … reasonably legal, I took the risk of operating with weak people. But they were paid what they were worth. Your being here is, I suppose, one of the penalties of a clumsy operation. But let me assure you, Travis McGee, clumsiness stops out there beyond the main gate.”

“I think there’s another penalty too.”

“Yes?”

“I think Wilma is dead.”

It hit him very solidly. He reverted to that mask face which can be acquired only in prison or in the military. It shows nothing, asks nothing. He stood up slowly, paced to the window and back. “I’ve thought so too,” he said. “Without quite admitting it. Let me put it this way. She was with me for fifteen years. And it is not an emotional loss. It’s the end of … an effective professional relationship.”

“Fifteen
years
!”

“She was nineteen when we found her. I had a steady partner at the time. Muscle. I went in for more active gaffs at that time. Southern California. She was in a place that catered to movie money. In little frocks and jumpers and pinafores. Alice in Wonderland haircut, face scrubbed, talking in a thin little lisp, doll in the crook of her arm, bubblegum in her little jaw, she could pass for eleven or twelve. There’s a steady demand at good rates for that sort of thing. But they couldn’t control her. She kept going on the gouge on her own. Greedy and reckless and merciless. We took her off their hands. She responded to discipline when she found we weren’t at all squeamish about it. We improved her diction and cleaned up her vocabulary. We put her in full make-up, high fashion clothes, and worked the class lounges and hotels. She had a good natural eye for a mark. After the fun and games, the gaff was to hit the mark in broad
daylight on his grounds—home or office—the three of us, Wilma as a scared, bawling fourteen-year-old saying she truly loved the scared clown, my muscle as her murderously inclined father, me as an officer of the juvenile court, with her faked birth certificate in hand. The way out we’d finally give him was for him to spring for two or more years in a private institution for her, with the fee adjusted to how we had checked him out before the visit. You want to see real horror, you should have seen their faces when we laid the gaff on them. When we were home free, my God how she would laugh! A laugh to chill the blood. She learned fast. She was a quick study. She read a lot, remembered a lot. And lied a lot about herself. I think she even believed most of it.”

He sat in silence on the couch, almost unaware of me. He was a dumpy, tired little thief dressed for a costume party.

“I gave up the rough lines. She became a partner. She’d cruise on her own, rope them, bring them back within range, set them up, clean them out, divorce them. Had she been more merciful I think she would have been a poisoner. Mercilessness can be a flaw. And believing your own lies. And she had another flaw too. She could never get any sexual satisfaction from the marks. After the scores she’d almost invariably find some brute stud, usually ignorant, rough, dirty and potentially dangerous. But she always kept the whip hand, drove them hard, walked out when she was ready.” He sighed, stirred, pumped himself back up to full con artist scale, aimed personality at me like a two-mile flashlight.