Dress Her in Indigo Read Free

therapy. She had broad pale lips, lovely eyes, a tidy muscularity in the way she moved. She told us happily, in a little more than a trace of German accent, that Mr. Bowie had moved the toes on his right foot.
    He flushed. Part irritation. Part Aw shucks, it was nothin', guys.
    He looked at the door she closed behind her and said, "Und soon, Herr Bowie, ve vill haff you running races, nein?" He asked us to sit. He said to Meyer, "Did you tell Mr. McGee what we discussed?"
    "Some of the background, Harl. Not what you want done."
    He turned the chair slightly to face me more directly. "Mr. McGee, I know damned little about what my daughter, Bix, felt and thought and believed. I've had a lot of time to think. And a lot of the thinking has been painful. Appraisal of myself as a father-very, very poor. I know that when she was a toddler we were close. She adored me. That was the good part of it. Our only chick. Liz had had a bad time. Couldn't have more. You know, Bix never went through any ugly period at all. Beautiful baby, lovely little girl, handsome teenager. No acne, no braces, no gawky period. Liz and I were too aware of her being an only child, I guess. And awed by how damned pretty she was, and upset at all the admiration she got. So we were too harsh with her. Two against one. United front. She had to strain like hell to get our approval, and we were too chinchy about giving it out. We made her obedient and docile and sweet, and we probably made her unsure of herself. But how can you tell? How many chances do you get to raise a child? I was very, very busy. So I wasn't paying attention, not to Bix as a person. She was an object. Beautiful child.
    "Then when Liz... got sick, Bix came down. She stayed with her mother right through it. And it wasn't pretty. Bix was a rock. I took her for granted. I took her strength for granted. God only knows how badly it tore her up. She never let me know. Without Liz I was a zombie. I went through the motions. It should have been the two of us then. Father and daughter. But each of us Page 5

    was alone in a private way. I had my own hell. I don't know where she was spending her time.
    She was just... around."
    He gave me a despairing look, and made an empty gesture with his hands. "I'm dithering. I'm not saying it. Look. I don't even know how she lived when she was here with me in Miami. I'd find her in the house with friends. Pretty oddball-looking kids. I'd go through and they'd stare at me as if I came from Mars; as if my house were a bus station and I were some strange type in transit. Empty eyes, loud music. She went to Mexico in early January this year. Seven months later she was dead. I want to know... what it was like. I want to know-Oh God help me-I just want to know if she was having a good time." His voice broke and he put his hand across his eyes.
    Meyer said, "Harl had an agency do a little investigating. But the reports are facts without any flavor. He'd follow the back trail himself, if he could. He tried to think of somebody who could get away, somebody without a regular job or a family and he thought of me. When we talked about it, I said you were the man for the job. He wants us both to go. All expenses. Take our time and do it right and come back and tell him how it was for her."
    "And find out," Bowie said, "what kind of people she was running around with-find out if they could have played... some kind of cruel game." I questioned him, and he explained. After he had had word of his daughter's fatal accident, he had received a letter that had been written and mailed at least a week before she had died, but had been sent to the house that had been sold and had taken a long time in transit. He took it out of the drawer and handed it to me.
    Ordinary mail. Sent from Oaxaca in July, with a date stamp so blurred it could have been the 23rd or the 28th. Cheap envelope, cheap paper. Blue ballpoint. It was small untidy writing, half script, half printed, with no clue to the