One Fearful Yellow Eye (14 page)

"So Doctor Geis asked you to keep checking?"

"To keep an eye on them. I would have thought that Gretchen's mother, Mrs. Ottlo, could have done it just as well and saved him the fees. But I guess Mrs. Ottlo wasn't getting along so good with her daughter. She'd pick times to visit when Gretchen was working and the kids would be
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there. She'd bring food and presents. It could have been that the Doc was afraid Mrs. Ottlo would be too proud to let him know if Gretchen and the kids were having a hard time. After about five or six months he asked me to set something up with Susan. I handled it myself.

Fifteen years old. Hell of a good kid. Smart. I gave her a phone number she could call day or night in case of any trouble where she needed help. She agreed to keep it from her mother. But she wanted to know who had this big interest in her family. I found out she had the idea she was adopted. Kids get that idea. Mama had gotten slopped a few times and said just enough so Susan thought the annuity was probably from her real parents. So I didn't say yes and I didn't say no. I left it the way I found it. Once it was set up that way, the Doc was able to cut down the expense of our checking them out so often. But I think it was the next January or February, two years ago minus a few weeks, he phoned me and said he'd heard through Mrs. Ottlo that Gretchen's husband had been released on parole and had rejoined the family, and he wanted to know what effect that would have on Susan. So I had a friend pull the file on Saul Gorba and give me a nice long look at it."

Smith had a good memory for details. Gorba had served over four and half years of a six year sentence in Wisconsin. Gretchen had lined up a job for him in a body and fender shop through the shop foreman who was a friend and regular customer at the restaurant where she was working. Through a reciprocal arrangement on parole supervision, a duplicate file was sent along to the Cook County authorities, and that was the one Smith had examined. Gorba had been just past thirty when he had been tried, convicted, and sentenced. He and Gretchen had been living as common-law man and wife in Milwaukee. She claimed that during the two years they had been together, she had thought he was a salesman. They rented a small frame house in a quiet lower-middle-class area. She thought he sold novelties and specialty items and office supplies. He had a small hand press in the basement and he told her it was for sample letterheads. He had a large supply of the different colors of safety paper used for bank checks, and he had a perforator, cutting board, several styles of check-writers, several typewriters.

His business trips lasted a week or two, and he would take a week off between each trip. His trips took him into Iowa; Minnesota, and Illinois. His procedure was to acquire legitimate checks made out for commercial payroll purposes, or for payment on small accounts. One source was through mail -order, where he would, using a false name and a post office box, send in an overpayment by money order and get a company check back representing his refund.

Once he had acquired, for example, a check from the XYZ Company in Madison, Wisconsin, he would take it home and, in his basement shop, make a dozen acceptable duplicates of it, in size, paper stock, imprint, check-writer patterns, typing, carefully traced signatures, and even to the careful duplication in India ink of the magnetic ink symbols used by the automated sorting equipment in the banks. With the dozen checks made out in varying and plausible amounts, usually in odd dollars and cents between one hundred and two hundred dollars, he would hit Madison with them, using a falsified driver's license as identification, and cashed them without great difficulty as payroll in a dozen different places, clearing up to two thousand dollars. He was neat, personable, and careful to make significant alterations in his appearance for each job.

Shortly before he was arrested, he had told Gretchen that he was getting a chance at a better territory soon, and they would probably be moving to eastern Ohio.

An alert supermarket manager in Racine thought the check he had just cashed did not look quite right somehow. He compared it with another payroll check from the same company and discovered that the check paper was a slightly different shade of green, and that the check-writer numerals were larger. He ran out and caught Gorba as he was getting into his car. After he
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grabbed Gorba, the next thirty seconds cost the manager over three weeks in the hospital. An off-duty cop was trundling a wire basket of weekend groceries out to his car, and it took him a long and painful time to subdue the suspect.

Smith said, "A loner. A real weirdo. They confiscated twenty-eight grand he had squirreled away in hidey-holes in that basement. Previous arrests and convictions were not in any kind of pattern like you expect. Assault with a deadly weapon. Conspiracy to defraud. Impersonating an officer.

Attempted rape. In and out of four colleges. An IQ like practically a genius. Emotionally unstable, they said. She had the youngest by him after they put him away. Tommy."

"He doesn't sound like the kind who'd be attracted to Gretchen."

''Why not? Those jumpy ones, sometimes what suits them best is some big dumb happy broad.

No demands. No arguments. And also you have to figure it made a nice cover for him for those two years, the wife and family, quiet neighborhood, just another salesman. Anyway, I had to report to the Doc on how it was going to work out, and it didn't look so great to me. But it was the longest stretch he'd pulled, and it settled him down, apparently. His record on the inside was good. The parole officer said his attitude was good. Gretchen was clamhappy to have him back, and at the suggestion of the parole officer, they made it legal. The foreman was satisfied with him. He kept to himself but he did his work at the shop. Gretchen kept on with the waitress work. With more pay coming in, they got an apartment in the same building but down on the second floor, with one more bedroom, three instead of two. I wouldn't say the relationship with the kids was real close, but it was workable. And I guess Mrs. Ottlo, the kids' grandma, approved, maybe because it was legal. I guess she started getting along better with her daughter, because she took to going there Sunday afternoons when everybody was home, having dinner with them."

"And now she has no idea where they went. No forwarding address."

He stared at me. "You kidding?"

"They moved out last August, apparently."

Frowning, he counted slowly on his fingers, lips moving. "He was going to be on parole in sixteen months, so it would run out last August, about. Maybe the brightest ones are the biggest damned fools. Maybe he kept his head down until he had his clean bill, then headed for someplace where he could go back into business for himself. Want me to try to trace them for you?"

"What are the rates?"

"Very funny! Expenses only, and on my own time, as you damn well know. And no written reports."

"Just checking," I said.

"Nothing has changed, and never will." He took his glasses off and wiped them on a paper napkin. I wondered what hold they had on him. He apparently thought I knew about it.

"See what you can do," I said. "I'm in 944 at the Drake. Meanwhile, I'd like some specific information out of your records on Susan and her brothers and sisters."

He returned in less than half an hour, sat across from me, and said, "Had to wait until the file girl went for her coffee break. Want to write this down? Susan Kemrner will be eighteen on January fourth. Gretchen had one kid by Kemmer. Freddy. He's fifteen. She had a common-law setup out in California with somebody named Budrow. She had two by him. Julian is twelve and Freda is ten. The last one, Tommy, was by Gorba, and the kid is six now. The annuity is with Great Lakes Casualty Mutual. Their Chicago office is in the National Republic Bank Building on South La Salle."

"What happened to Budrow?"

"Just took off, I guess."

"Can you get on this right away, Smith?"

"All I can tell you is I'll do the best I can. It shouldn't be hard. I'll see what I can turn up at the places they worked, and see what happened with the kids' school records, and see where the annuity checks are going. Saul Gorba is maybe foxy enough to slip out of sight if he was by himself. A whole family is something else. I could get shot with luck and hit it the first try and know by tonight. Or it could take a week of leg work."

"Find out if they left owing."

He looked slightly contemptuous. "The first thing I would do is check the Credit Bureau. There could be a tracer request and the new address already."

It took me four dimes to track down Martin Hollinder Trumbill the Fourth. In a brassy bass rumble he said he was too damned busy getting ready for a trip to see anybody about anything. I pulled a gentle con on him by saying that if he could see me, then maybe I wouldn't have to spoil his trip. After we went around and around on that for several minutes, he asked me to meet him at twelve-thirty at the bar of the Norway Club atop the Lakeway Tower.

I was five minutes late and he was ten minutes late. He didn't come in from outside. He came in from some nearby area where the club members evidently worked out. His hair was damp and he had the glow of sauna and sunlamp. He was fifty, bronzed, about five nine, with most of his hair, a ruggedly handsome face, a body like a bull ape, as broad and thick through the shoulder as any NFL tackle. Arrogant little simian eyes stared out at me from under great grizzled black tangles of eyebrow. Tufts of black hair grew out of nostrils and ears, and his big hands had a heavy pelt on the backs and on the backs of the fingers down to the middle. knuckle. A shetland sport jacket, perfectly tailored to his broad, long-armed, bandy-legged build, softened somewhat the brute impact of him. But I wondered what he was trying to prove by making his barber leave the nostril and ear hair alone.

An attendant had pointed me out to him as the man who was waiting for him. A drink appeared on the bar and he took it and walked away toward the view windows. A powder snow was falling, and the wind whipped it against the curved glass. I followed him as he expected I would.

"In thirty seconds make me believe you could spoil anything for me, or I'll have you thrown out." He spoke without turning to look at me.

I said, "Golly, sir, gee whiz, now you've got me so terrified I can't hardly think straight."

He pivoted and stared at me. "What the hell is this?"

I smiled upon him. "I guess I don't like jackasses. I guess I don't like rich jackasses. I guess I don't like rich, rude, double-gaited jackasses. Now would you like to try again? You got off on the wrong foot, Gadgey."

I didn't realize he could get those eyebrows so high. "Who the hell do you think you are!"

"T. for Travis McGee. I know. You'll buy the ground I'm standing on and have me torn down. I am an old buddy of the Widow Geis. Doctor Fort shoved the first legal team into the fray and Miss Heidi got very well. Am I getting past that hair in your ears? I wouldn't want you to leave town without answering a question. Are you a miserable enough bastard to have found a way to gouge Heidi's winnings back out of her poor old dad's hide?"

"Gouge? Gouge?"

"There's no estate left."

"I know."

"Now how would you know Gadgey?"

"Her brother Roger was wringing his hands about it. He's a goddam stuffed shirt and... What gives you the right to ask me questions anyway?"

"Because I am helping the Widow Geis find out where all the money went."

"All the money? For God's sake, McGee, sure Heidi took a pretty good cut. I've still got eleven million in tax-exempt municipals, if you can comprehend what I'm talking about."

"You're talking about at least three hundred and thirty thousand a year you don't even have to report on the good old ten-forty. Cut the shit, Trumbill. If it was a hundred and ten million, you still couldn't impress me. You can afford to buy me a drink in your own club, can't you? A double Plymouth gin on ice, plain. I'll wait right here while you go make the arrangements."

I watched him head for the bar and I wondered how far he could be pushed. He did not lumber.

He had a springy and youthful stride. As he approached bearing my drink, I heard him chuckling. He handed it to me, bowed, and said, "Golly, sir, gee whiz, now you've got me so terrified I can't think straight."

"Thank you for the drink, Mr. Trumbill."

"My pleasure, Mr. McGee," he said. "Let's sit in the lounge and get acquainted. There's no particular reason why I give a goddam about your opinion about anything, but there's one thing that needs correcting."

I followed him to two wingback chairs with a small table between them, angled to look out at the scenery and provide privacy for conversation. "You have met Heidi?" he asked.

"Yes."

"The ice queen. The snow maiden. But when you look at her, everything points the other way.

When I married her three years ago, I thought I had the optimum solution. McGee, I am not a locker-room sex hero. I just happened to be born with a hell of a lot of sexual drive and capacity. Sleeping around is a damned bore. Everything about her looks as if she was made for it. Fantastic body. Healthy as a field hand. The way she walks, the timbre of her voice, the shape of her hands, it's all provocative and invitational. I. thought to myself, hell, Gadge, there's the answer. She was twenty-two and I was forty-eight. She'd be thirty-five when I was sixtyone, and she'd be getting ready to slow down a little when I damn well had to. But finding out she was a twenty-two-year-old virgin should have told me something. Let me tell you, I worked like a slave on that damned girl. The harder I tried, the nastier she thought it was. Finally I could practically see her flesh crawl when I touched her. The only response I ever got was a goddam martyred sigh: Sexual frustration is a hell of a sorry condition; McGee. So I went out to get what I couldn't get from her. I think I was a little out of my mind. I grabbed onto anything warm and breathing that came within reach. And a couple of times when I was pig-drunk it happened to be her willowy little art-class boyfriends who wanted a way to get a hand in the till. When I gave no big gifts of money, they went whimpering to her about her gross, horrible brute of a husband. Now I give her this. She knows she's frigid, and she knows that her condition had a lot to do with the situations I got into after I gave up with her. So she wasn't going to try for a big settlement and big alimony. But her darling daddy egged her on and got her some hot legal talent, and they gave me a pretty fair bruise. It could have been even big ger if she'd really wanted to take it all into court, but they still had enough pressure to extract a generous agreement. Those months were the only time I ever went the AC-DC route, and it isn't going to happen again because I'm never going to get into that kind of desperate mood again. So drop back on the double-gaited. I like girls. Always have. Always will. And I prefer girl-girls with all the girl-girl equipment to the girl-boys with the long locks and the squeaky voices: I don't know why I should give a goddam about your opinion..."