The Lime Pit Read Online Free

the
myth of one Cindy Ann X. Who, judging from the dogeared photograph
that Cratz had shown me before I went a-hunting, was probably fell
and feeble-minded. Blonde-haired, buck-toothed, sixteen-year-old
girlchild with a thin, pale, avaricious face. Who was probably five
states away by now on the back of a motorcycle, hanging on for dear
life to the belt of whichever rambler she had spotted at Reflections
or the Dome and taken a liking to. Probably.
    But all I was thinking about that late July
afternoon, as I trudged through the maple trees up to the two-story
brownstone apartment house that Cratz had designated with trembling
hand--as if he were pointing to Gehenna and the altar of Baal--was
that old man's apartment and the old man smells of ripe, unimpeded
decay. There were nights when my own rooms smelled of the same death
that Hugo was trying to lie his way out of. And, after hearing his
story and seeing the way he lived, I just didn't have it in me to
tell him it was a hopeless cause.
    So I trudged across the street and up the concrete
pathway of 1309 and into the blue-tiled lobby with its brass
mailboxes set in stippled yellow plaster and ran my finger across the
name slots until I came to Jellicoe. Number Four. I walked up to the
second landing and, either from force of habit or simply from the
sheer contrast with Cratz's place, noted the swirl of detergent on
the freshly mopped floors, the woodlight sheen of the balustrade, and
the framed print of a sailing ship hung in the hall. It was a nice,
expensive little apartment house and Laurie B. Jellicoe when she
answered the door--seemed a nice, smart-looking young woman.
    "Yes?" she said in a breathy, little girl
voice. "Can I help you?"
    I took a good look at her and balked. Tall, about
twenty-five, dressed tastefully out of Cardin, with a blonde, bland
Farrah Fawcett face and a great mane of ash-blonde hair, Laurie
Jellicoe looked like the last person on earth who would have
befriended a gamine like Cindy Ann.
    "Well?" she said.
    "Well-" I said. "You're a nice-looking
girl." She nodded almost imperceptibly. "I guess that's not
news."
    "What is it you want?" she said with an
edge in her voice. "If you're selling anything-"
    "No, I'm not selling. I'm working for Hugo
Cratz. I'm a private detective."
    Laurie Jellicoe's eyes widened and her arm slithered
down the door like a snake gliding down a tree trunk. "I don't
believe it!" she barked with laughter. "He hired a private
detective?"
    I reddened a little.
    "Hey, Lance," Laurie called over her
shoulder to someone sitting in the living room. "Old man Cratz
hired a private cop. Can you believe that!"
    There was a terrific creak, like the sound of a tank
shifting onto its tracks, and then a pound, pound, pound that shook
the floorboards. The door flew open and Lance, all ten feet of him in
a T-shirt with a "have a good day" face on it, blue jeans,
cowboy boots that curled at their tips like a witch's toes, blocked
the light. Laurie Jellicoe patted him proprietarily on the butt and
said, "Easy there, baby," in a low jocund voice.
    Lance was a sandy-haired giant, a long-nosed,
square-jawed, big-chinned Texas boy. Men his size don't come along
all that often; and I realized as I stood in his shadow that I had
seen him once before in the University Plaza at the corner of Vine
and McMillan, striding across the arcade toward the Nautilus Health
Club. I was buying cigarettes at Walgreen's at the time, and ol'
Lance had practically emptied the rear of the store in his wake.
Shopgirls and lady customers had plastered themselves against the
window to watch him pass. "What a hunk!" one of the
shopgirls said to a girlfriend, who whistled soft agreement.
    In the flesh, Lance was a mean-looking hunk, with one
of those vain, stupid, pretty-boy faces that get very tough and very
shrewd around the eyes.
    "You say you're working for that tired piece of
shit?" he said in a low Southern baritone. "What kind of
man would earn his living like that?