The Lime Pit Read Free

tough detective for slow, stubborn George. But the harder
I tried, the more I felt as if my mail-order diploma were
showing--the one with the machine guns on it. And after a moment or
so, I realized that it wasn't only George who was making me feel like
a boob. Something wasn't right. Whatever that something was, George
considered it criminal, a pathetic by-product of Cratz's old age. And
Cratz thought it was embarrassing and just too damn sad.
    And then it came to me with a certainty that made me
shiver in the hot July air. I shivered and then I blushed for Hugo,
for George, and for myself. A chorus of cicadas started a shrill
round in the nearby rosebushes, and I remembered the wasps outside my
office window. That's what they were trying to tell you, Harry, I
thought and laughed to myself. The cicadas grew shriller. The
sunlight on the lawn glowed as whitely as a fluorescent bulb. I
squinted and searched the yard for some evidence--some sunlit toy or
sign of kinship. A yellowhammer drummed on a distant maple tree. Then
the cicadas died down. A cloud passed across the lawn. And, in the
hush, I asked myself what are you going to do now?
    Cindy Ann . Whatever it was, it wasn't Cratz. She
wasn't his daughter, his granddaughter, his wife. She wasn't any
relation at all. She was just a girl, probably poor-white from lower
Vine, who had seen old Hugo as a stepping stone on the way out of
tarboard shacks, poverty, and the old age that comes on almost
overnight. She'd probably bilked the old man out of a few dollars or
a few Social Security checks. And then went on her merry way. And
Hugo, Hugo Cratz, the man I was working for, who had loved the little
gold-digger with that shameless, impotent infatuation that age has
for youth ... Hugo Cratz was just a very sentimental, very lonely,
and very dirty old man.
    "It's not a bad place," Hugo said as he
reseated himself on the lawn chair. Frail as he was and wet-eyed, he
looked like a fuzzy-haired, wizened child. "My son's got a nicer
one up in Dayton. Nice boy, Ralph. He'll send me the money. I mean if
it ends up costing me a few dollars to find her." Cratz surveyed
the lawn and said again, "It's not a bad place. Schwartz bought
it for his kids seven, eight years ago, when old man Carroll died. He
divided it up good. Split the downstairs into eight measly
apartments. Then jacked up the rent so's I had to take the job of
handyman just to stay on. It was a helluva lot of work for me alone.
'Course with Cindy Ann around there wasn't much to it. She'd take
care of the lawn and I'd look after the garbage and repairs."
Hugo's eyes began to tear and his thin collapsed mouth trembled. "It
was real nice," he said.
    "She's no kin of yours, is she, Mr. Cratz?"
I said softly. "No blood relative?"
    Cratz ducked his head, and I caught sight of George
fidgeting uncomfortably on the stoop.
    "What if she isn't?" Cratz said defiantly.
"Does a person have to be kin for you to care about 'em, to want
to make sure they're all right?"
    "What if she doesn't want to be taken care of?"
    "What're you saying?" Cratz said slowly.
Anger dried his blue eyes and gave his thin face a sharp, predatory
vigor.
    "All I'm saying is what the police have probably
already told you. If Cindy Ann left you of her own free will, there's
absolutely nothing you can do about it. You can't hire someone to
make her come back to you, Mr. Cratz, as much as you might want to."
    Cratz made a shrill little noise in the back of his
throat--a stifled scream. Then he grabbed me savagely by the arm.
"C'mon," he said, pulling me out of the chair toward the
apartment door. "C'mon in here. And you--" he pointed at
George, "get on home. Goddamn loudmouth," he said under his
breath.
    George started to say something in his own defense,
but Hugo cut him off with a chop of his left hand. "Can it,
George. I blame myself. I shoulda known better than to leave you out
here with this one." He plucked me by the sleeve. "And
don't you say nothing neither. This