I moved out of the crush and sipped the beer and looked for the controls. When you have a big noisy center-ring act that mixes lions, tigers, bears, sheep, rabbits, weasels, and cobras, you need the men with the whips and kitchen chairs and shiny pistols, or you start losing too many animals, and end up with an empty ring and a legal paper nailed to the door.

A disturbance started at a far corner of the long bar, and two quiet men appeared out of nowhere and moved in before it had a chance to spread. A good pair, swift and professional, and they picked the right one without hesitation. When they took him by me I saw that his mouth was wrenched apart by pain and his eyes were frightened, his face pallid and sweaty. The two men were smiling, joking with him. A painful come-along of some kind, manual or mechanical, is better for business than a half dozen old-fashioned bouncers. They had hit so quickly I knew that the place had to be under observation. So by picking the best spot from which one could watch the whole room, I finally picked out the watch station. A mirrored insert was set high over the bar. From there a man could sit at his ease and watch all of the bar, all of the tables, the small dance floor, the cash registers, the entrance, and the doors to the rest rooms. The two men came back in and took up their position to the right of the main entrance. One of them pressed the switch of an intercom box and spoke into it. I could guess the probable message. "He quieted down nice, Charlie. He"s driving home, and he won"t be back tonight."

So I stood there, in that absolute and lonely privacy that exists only in the middle of a crush of strangers and a deafening din of festive voices and festive rock staring at the hefty fleshy pumping of the tireless blonde, and wondering why I should feel that too many important parts were missing from my equation.

I had been luckier than I deserved, first in finding that lonely, troubled, talkative old woman, secondly in having her relate to me quickly and trustingly, and thirdly in getting my good look at the private hidden life of Lew Arnstead.

A lot of pieces fit beautifully together, but in some way the fit was too good to be true.

I wished Meyer was standing beside me, so I could try it on him. "Frank Baither planned the money-truck job. He used Hutch, Orville, Henry Perris, and Lilo, Perris"s stepdaughter. We saw Henry, Meyer. He was the broad brown guy with the white teeth who arrived late for work at Al Storey"s station that morning. Driving... a blue Rambler. So Henry was in on the Baither killing. It was Lilo Perris (or Hatch) who ran across our bows. Henry set up a little smoke screen. It was too cute because maybe he was too nervous. Grab that envelope and somehow get it to Lilo. Then she went to the Baither place and faked Lew Arnstead into giving her a chance to plant it in Baither"s house. Arnstead is on speed and it has turned him erratic and dangerous. All Mister Norm has to do is trace the envelope, from Henry to Lilo to the Baither house, and bring them in and open them up. Henry and Lew and Lilo. In a hurry, before Lew and Lilo run for it with the money off the truck."

And suddenly I knew Meyer"s reaction. I could almost hear his voice. "If our Sheriff Norman Hyzer knows as much about this county as I think he knows, then he certainly knows that Frank Baither"s little girl friend, before the money-truck operation, was Lilo Perris. He knows a young girl was involved. He might suspect that Henry Perris was in on it, too, and he would check back and find out where Henry was that weekend. He seemed absolutely convinced we were involved. As if he had to believe we were. Why?"

"A blind spot, maybe. Maybe he"s too close to it to see it. Maybe he"s involved in some way. The pieces fit so well, Meyer."

"Do they always?"

"Hardly ever."

"So why do you keep asking these dumb questions?"

Meyer disappeared when big King Sturnevan appeared in front of me, c.o.ke bottle dwarfed by his big malformed fist.

Nine.

MCGEE, You didn"t come across our buddy now yet, huh?"

"How do you know?"

"I"d put my money on you, like I said, but he"d mark you some. You wouldn"t be able to help that. Been asking around. n.o.body"s seen that sucker." King"s civilian garb was a big red sport shirt with white palm trees on it, and a tent-sized pair of wrinkled khaki slacks. He had a small straw hat with a narrow brim perched on the back of his head, and a row of cigars in the sport-shirt pocket.

We had to roar at each other to be heard, and I didn"t want to roar what I wanted to say to him. So ip willingly followed me out into the abrupt silence if the night, and we went and sat in the top-down Buick.

"Would you say that like six months ago Arnstead started to go bad?"

"Maybe that long ago. I wasn"t paying attention."

"Before that, he was okay?"

"He was pretty good. He was maybe as good as Billy Cable, and Cable is one h.e.l.l of a cop, and you can believe it. But... I don"t know. The broads, I guess. A few months back he beat up one of his broads. She filed a complaint and then pulled it. There was something maybe I should have reported. I was in my own car. Six, seven weeks ago. He come the other way, alone in our number four cruiser, on 112 and he had it wound right up to the top. We use Fords with heavy duty suspension and the Cobra 428 mill with a three-point-five-0 rear end, so you got an honest hunner twenny-five, and he come by with that needle laying right on the pin. h.e.l.l, I turned around and went in, thinking maybe somebody had hit the bank. Nothing going on. I ast him, what the h.e.l.l, Lew. You could kill yourself on that kind of road. He told me to shove it. Take fighters now. There have been some greats who went right down the chute when the wrong kind of broad started pecking away at them."

"Ever think he might be on anything, King?"

He took his time, glowered at a long cigar ash, tapped it over the side onto the parking lot asphalt. "Now that you bring it up, pally."

"Suppose I say he is? Definitely."

"Then I say two things. I say you shouldn"t ought to be poking around enough to find out, because it will make Mister Norm a little on the sorea.s.s side. And I say the more I think, the more it fits. Speed, maybe? You take fighters, there isn"t maybe one these days doesn"t go into a main bout without being stepped up with superpill. It"s no good, pal. They go like h.e.l.l and they don"t get tired and they get a little more quick, but they can get hurt bad and not know it and get up and get killed. You spend more than you got, and you sack out for two, three days to get back up to normal. Staying on it is something else. Come to think of it, he hasn"t been sleeping much lately, and he"s dropped weight. What would get him on it?"

"Like the preacher says. Evil companions."

"Pally, we all got a few of those. All it means is you better not try to find Lew. You better stay the h.e.l.l away from him."

"And it means his judgment has gone bad. That"s why he pounded on Meyer. He could have killed him."

"I stepped out at the wrong time."

"Why didn"t Billy Cable stop him?"

"Because Billy and him haven"t been getting along so good, and when you see a man b.i.t.c.hing himself, why stop him? Anyway Billy finally did stop him or Lew would have killed your friend. Then when it was your turn with Mister Norm, Billy took the chance of giving you a look at your friend so Mister Norm would get the picture on Lew loud and clear and soon. Poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"King, the woman who signed the complaint and withdrew it against Arnstead, was her first name Betsy?"

"Jesus Q. Christ! You"re supposed to be a stranger In town, McGee. Betsy Kapp. Mrs. Betsy Kapp. She"s a divorced lady, works hostess in the dining room down at the Live Oak Lodge. Mrs. Teffer"s place. Best food in the county."

Nice to have King confirm Lennie Sibelius"s appraisal of the local cuisine. I went back inside with King, and twenty minutes later drove into the middle of the city. It was a little after nine when I walked into the dining room. There was a family celebration at a long table near the far wall, champagne and toasts by middle-aged males to a freshfaced girl and her blushing husband-to-be. Two quiet couples at small tables, with coffee and dessert by candlelight. Three burly businessmen drawing plot plans on the tablecloth.

As the hostess approached me, menus in the crook of her arm, I knew she had to be Betsy Kapp. She was the lean-bodied blonde who had starred in ten of Lew"s Polaroid shots, the one with the attempt at a s.e.xy leer which didn"t quite come off. She wore a dark blue shift with a little starched white collar, and that mixed look of query and disapproval which told me that it was a little late for dinner.

Before she could turn me away, I said, "My attorney Mr. Sibelius, said that I"d be a fool to eat anywhere else, Mrs. Kapp."

"Oh?" she said. And then "Oh." She turned and looked at the foyer clock. "Well, it is a little late, but if you... didn"t want anything too terribly elaborate..."

"Sirloin, baked potato, tossed salad with oil and vinegar, and coffee?"

"I think that would... Sit wherever you want, while I..."

She took off for the kitchen in a slightly knock-kneed jog and I picked a table by the wall as far from the other four parties as I could get. She came back smiling. "They hadn"t turned the broiler off, thank goodness. But no baked. Home fries?"

"Fine."

"And the steak?"

"Medium rare."

"I can get you a c.o.c.ktail from the bar."

"Plymouth gin, if they have it, on the rocks, straight, with a twist. A double. Booth"s, if they don"t."

She gave the order, came back with my drink, then went to the register and took care of the departing family party and then the businessmen. I watched her move around. She looked a little younger and prettier than in the amateur nude studies, probably because there was a lively animation in her face and because she moved quickly and stood well. Had I not seen the pictures, I would have wondered if the imposing thrust of bosom might not be a pneumatic artifice, a fabricated symbol of the. culture"s obsession with mammary bounty. But I knew they were real, imposingly, awesomely real.

When she brought my salad she said, "I have to be the waitress, too. Another drink?"

She brought the dinner. It was a splendid piece of meat indeed. When I was half finished, the last of the two couples paid and left, and I had the dining room to myself.

Betsy Kapp said, "Would you like your coffee now?"

I waved at the empty chair across from me. "With two cups?"

She hesitated. "Why not? Thank you. I"ve been on my feet since eleven-thirty this morning."

She brought the coffee and sat across from me, leaned to the candle flame to light her cigarette. "It was a real pleasure serving Mr. Sibelius. He"s a very charming man."

And, I thought, he tips very big and tips everybody in sight. I held my hand out. "Travis McGee," I said. She shook hands, pulled her long-fingered hand away quickly.

"I heard that you... you were in some trouble."

"Am in some trouble. Had the very bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I think it"s getting straightened out. I never heard of Mr. Frank Baither until we were picked up for killing him. I guess if the sheriff still thought so, I"d be back inside."

Somebody rattled the foyer door, then apparently gave up and went away.

"I keep wondering about something," she said.

"What is it?"

"Mr. Sibelius didn"t know my name. I"m sure of that. But you did."

I shrugged. "Some people were standing outside talking. I asked if it was too late to eat here, and they said to come in and ask Betsy Kapp. So when you came at me with the menus, it seemed logical to call you Mrs. Kapp. Maybe that was a mistake. Maybe I made a mistake. Miss Kapp?"

She grimaced. "No. It"s Mrs. But I"m not working at it."

"Is this your hometown, Betsy?"

"No. I"m from Winter Haven, originally. But they sent me here to stay with my aunt when I was twelve. She died when I was seventeen and I went back home, but things were terrible there and so I came back here and married the boy I was going with. Then he was killed in a terrible automobile accident, and after I got the insurance settlement I went to Miami and then Atlanta, but I didn"t like it in either place. Then I came back here and married a fellow named Greg Kapp, and we fought like some kind of animals until I couldn"t stand it anymore and divorced him. I don"t know where he went and I don"t care. So here I am, and pretty soon it will be four years I"ve been working here. I get sort of restless, but you know how it is. It"s hard to break loose. I sort of like the work, and you get treated pretty good here. Why should I be telling you my whole life story?"

"Because I"m interested. Good reason?"

"I guess you are. G.o.d knows why you should be. Are you married, Travis McGee?"

"No. Never have been."

"You must have some kind of work that keeps you outdoors and all. You look like you"re in great shape."

"Salvage work, out of Fort Lauderdale."

"Like on a ship?"

"No. I"m an independent contractor. I take whatever comes along. I live alone on a houseboat at a marina."

"Gee, that must be a great way to live. Well, I live alone too, but not on any houseboat. It"s a little cottage that my aunt had, that she left me. The bank had it and rented it until I was twenty-one. Greg was after me all the time to sell it. I"m glad now I didn"t. I moved in after the divorce, when the lease ran out on the people I had renting it."

"I guess you know Cypress City pretty well then."

"Well enough."

"I"d like to be able to ask somebody about it, about the people. Sheriff Hyzer and Frank Baither and so on. But you"ve probably got things to do."

"Because it"s Sat.u.r.day night? Hah! The only thing I"ve got to do is total the tape and count the money and give Frank, the bartender, the cash and checks."

"So? I can wait."

"It doesn"t take me long, really." Her smile, as she stood up, was the distillation of several hundred motion pictures, refined in the loneliness of the bathroom mirror, born of a hunger for romance, for magic, for tremulous, yearning love. This was the meet-cute episode, immortalized by all the Doris Days, unexpected treasure for a thirty-summers blonde with something childish-girlish about her mouth, something that would never tighten into maturity. It would always yearn, always hope, always pretend-and it would always be used.

She took one of Lennie"s twenties and brought me my change and went back to the register. It made a delicate little problem. To tip or not to tip. A tip would put a strain on the relationship she was trying, with concealed nervousness, to establish. So I went over to her and put a five on the counter by the register and said, "Save this for the waitress who was in such a rush to leave, Betsy."

She giggled. "Like turning the other cheek, huh? Helen is a good waitress, but she"s always in a terrible rush to get home to her kids. I"ll see she gets it, and I"ll see you get one of her tables next time."

We walked out together. I asked her suggestion as to where we could go for a drink. She said that first she ought to take her car home. I followed her. She had one of those little pale tan Volkswagens with the fenders slightly chewed up, some trim missing, some rust streaks. I followed her. She drove headlong, yanking it around the corners. She was silhouetted erect in the oncoming lights. We sped through old residential areas where the people sat in their dimly lighted rooms, watching all the frantic imitations of festivity on the small home screens, watching the hosts and the hostesses who were old, dear, and familiar friends. Long ago their parents had old familiar friends named Alexander Rotts and Scattergood Baines and Tugboat Annie. But reading was a lot harder. You had to make up the pictures in your head. Easier to sit and watch the pictures somebody else planned. And it had a comforting sameness, using up that portion of your head which would start fretting and worrying if it wasn"t kept busy.

"Your mission, Mr. Phelps, if you care to accept it, is to discredit the half brother of the dictator of Kataynzia, recover the nine billion in gold, and give it to the leader of the free democratic underground, and disarm the ICBMs now being installed In the Stammerhorn Mountains. If you or any of your LM. Force are killed or captured..."

"Wait one cotton-pickin" minute! Accept it! Accept a dumb-dumb mission like that? Are you some kind of ding-a-ling? We"d never get out of that rotten little country alive."

"Mr. Phelps!"

"Barney won"t try it. Paris won"t try it. And I won"t try it. Go get somebody else. Go get Cinnamon, even. Come back next week, boss, with something that makes sense."

And the screens go dark, from the oil-bound coasts of Maine to the oily sh.o.r.es of Southern California. Chief Ironsides retires to a chicken farm. Marshall Dillon shoots himself in the leg, trying to outdraw the hard case from Tombstone. The hatchet bounces back off the tree and cuts down tall Dan"l Boone. The American living room be comes silent. The people look at each other, puzzled, coming out of the sweet, long, hazy years of automated imagination.

Where"d all the heroes go, Andy?

Maybe, honey, they went where all the others went, a long time ago. Way off someplace. Tarzan and Sir Galahad and Robin Hood. Ben Casey and Cap"n Ahab and The Shadow and Peter Rabbit. Went off and joined them.

But what are we going to do, Andy? What are we going to do?

Maybe... talk some. Think about things.

Talk about what? Think about what? I"m scared, Andy.

But there"s no problem, really, because after the screens go dark and silent, all the tapes of the watchers self-destruct in five seconds.

Little mental games often compromise my attention. She braked so hard and unexpectedly I nearly climbed the back slope of the bug. She swung left into a narrow drive between tall thick hedges. I followed, and she drove into a small carport, cut the lights, got out, grinned, and squinted back into my headlight glare, turned on a carport light and pulled the edge of her hand across her throat. So I turned off my lights and engine and got out. April bugs were shrilling in the hedges, under a murky half moon.

"A lot of the meat is broiled," she said. "They have those exhaust fans and all, but I"m in and out of there enough so when I get home I smell like meat grease. It gets in my hair and my clothes. It won"t take me long to get rid of it, Travis. Come and look at my little nest."

It was to be admired, even though she had enough furniture and lamps and department store art objects for a cottage twice the size. One careless move, and I felt as if I would belt my leg on a table and spill $19.95 worth of pseudo-Mexican ceramics. l had to admire the cat, which was easier. A big male neuter, part alley and part Persian, patterned in gray and black, a wise, tolerant, secure cat who mentioned, politely enough, that he would like to hear the sound of the electric can opener. She opened a can of something that looked horrid, dumped it onto a paper saucer and put it in his corner. He approached it slowly, making electric motor sounds, then hunched into the serious ceremony of eating.

"He can say his name," she said. "Raoul. Raoul?" The cat looked up at her, chop-licking, and said, "Raoul," and bent again to his gluey feast.

"Come see his yard," she said. "Raoul"s personal piece of outdoors."

We went through another door off the kitchen into a fenced gra.s.sy rectangle about twenty feet by thirty. She clicked on the outdoor floods as we went out. They were amber-colored. The grape-stake fence was about eight feet high, affording total privacy. There were flagstones, planting areas, vines against the grape stake, a little recycling electric fountain in the middle, which she turned on. There was some redwood furniture and a sun cot.