Travis McGee 19 - Free Fall in Crimson by John D. MacDonald

Author:John D. MacDonald
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-03-20T05:00:00+00:00

Twelve

SATURDAY I visited my neighborhood travel agency, put the houseboat in shape to leave it for a time, had a long phone talk with Annie Renzetti and another with Lysa Dean. Sunday morning in Miami I boarded the L-1011 nonstop to Los Angeles, sitting up there in first with the politicians, the airline deadheads, and the rich rucksacky dopers. There is more legroom, the drinks are free, and the food is better. Also, somebody else was paying. I had the double seat to myself.

I was aware of the flight attendant giving me sidelong speculative glances as she roved the aisles. She was a pouter-pigeon blonde with a long hollowcheeked face which looked as if it had been designed for a more elegant body.

Finally when she brought me a drink she said, “Excuse me, Mr. McGee, but I feel almost certain I know you from somewhere.”

“Maybe from another trip?”

She looked dubious. She frowned and held a finger against her chin. They like to identify and classify all their first-class passengers. Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor… She couldn’t figure the stretch denim slacks, knit shirt, white sailcloth jacket with the big pockets and snaps, boat shoes.

When I did not volunteer more information, she went on to the next drinker, probably convinced that I was just another doper, running Jamaican hash to the Coast. I sipped and looked down through scattered cloud cover and saw the west coast of Florida slip back under us, six miles down. We’d had our life-jacket demonstration. I’ve never been able to imagine a planeload of average passengers getting those things out from under the seats and trying to get into them while the airplane is settling down toward the sea with, as Tom Wolfe commented, about the same glide angle as a set of car keys.

Had drinks, ate a mighty tough little steak for lunch, got into LA before lunch their time, found my reserved Hertz waiting, studied the simplified Hertz map and found my way through traffic to Coldwater Canyon Drive, found the proper turnoff on the second try, and stopped outside the pink wall, with the front of the little Fiesta two feet from the big iron gate.

An Oriental looked inquiringly at me through the bars of the gate. “McGee,” I called out.

“You Messer McGee, hah?”

“Messer McGee, pal. Miss Dean expects me.”

“I know, I know,” he said and swung the gates wide, showing a lot of gold in his Korean smile. “Drive by,” he said. “Park anyplace. Miss Dean in the pool, hah?”

The plantings were more luxuriant than I remembered. They’d had a few years to grow. Her big pink wall was due for repainting. I remembered Dana telling me that a Mexican architect had done the house for Lysa and her third husband, in a style that could be called Cuernavaca Aztec. I walked around to the poolside. It was quiet and green in here behind the wall, and the city out there was brassy, smelly gold, vibrating in sun, heat, and traffic, already into midsummer on only the twentysixth of April.

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