The Quick Red Fox by John D. MacDonald Page A

lose the room if wewaited the game out, so I went in and signed us in as T. McGee and wife. The two three-quarter beds seemed to crowd the room. We did a lot of polite walking around each other, getting organized. An electric wall heater kept the room reasonably comfortable. With one quick trip to the ice machine, and with a considerable magic, she materialized a squat broad silver cup, the right amount of gin on ice, the two drops of bitters.
    “The celebrity treatment?” I said ungraciously.
    “I wouldn’t want to get out of practice.”
    “Well … thanks. It’s fine.”
    “You are so welcome, Travis.”
    We decided it would be best to leave her right there while I took the first little prod at Carl Abelle. The Mohawk Lodge was seven or eight miles out Indian Lake Road, over some impressively hilly highway. The grounds were aglare with floodlights against snow. The establishment was garishly new, pale varnished pine, A-frames, Swiss-kwaint gables. The sign advertised three tows, eight downhill runs, instruction, beginners’ slope, Icelandic bathhouse, prime steaks, cocktails. The whole place was noisy, bursting at the seams, with much coming and going and giggling and hooting.
    I worked my way into what seemed to be the main lounge. An ox could have been roasted on a spit in the fieldstone fireplace. The ceiling was low, beams huge. There were a lot of overstuffed couches and chairs, and deep rugs underfoot. There seemed to be a great number of young people sprawled on the floor. I saw several legs in casts, arms in slings. Sweating waiters brought drinks from a corner bar, stepping over and around thepeople, grimly ignoring the shouts for service. A big stereo juke made loud Beatle-music, and some snow bunnies were energetically trying to revive the Twist, wearing their indoor-fireside-snuggle-pants rather than their outdoor togs.
    I angled toward a waiter and stuffed a bill in his shirt pocket. It bought me four seconds of attention. “Carl Abelle,” I asked.
    He pointed with his head, and said, “Red jacket.”
    Abelle was leaning against a paneled wall. He wore a red blazer with an Olympic pocket patch, silver buttons, a white silk ascot. He stood with his head bowed, a dainty little snow bunny in each arm. One of them was talking directly into his ear. She writhed and she worked her face in the curious manner of many women telling a dirty joke. I held off until she had made her point. Silvery glissandos from the girls. A hohoho from Abelle. I moved in and the three of them looked up at me with the polite glaze the ingroupers give the outsider. I wasn’t wearing the garments.
    The girls looked very young, and the out-of-doors had given them both a lovely healthy flush. But their eyes looked wise and old. Carl looked magnificent. The bronzed blond hero, white of tooth, clear of eye. But somehow it all looked like makeup. And in spite of the tailoring, he seemed to be getting a little thick around the middle.
    “Abelle?”
    “Yesss?”
    “I bring you a message from friends.”
    “Zo?”
    “From Cass. From Vance and Patty. From Lee and Sonny and Whippy and Nancy and the whole gang.”
    “I know zose people?”
    “Yes, you know zose people.” I didn’t say any more. I let him hang there. He added them up. He wasn’t very good at it. His face got sulky and wary.
    “Oho,” he said. “Would you mean Miss Abbott? And the M’Gruders?”
    “And the Cornell boys too.”
    “Giff them all my best regards, ya?”
    “That wasn’t exactly the message, Carl.”
    “Zo?”
    “If we could take a two-minute walk.”
    He hugged the bunnies, whispered to them, sent them off toward the fireplace with an identical little stroke at each upholstered little behind.
    “Now we can talk here, Mister …?”
    “It’s something in the car I want to show you.”
    “Bring it in.”
    “I’m sorry. I have to follow Miss Dean’s instructions.”
    He gained a little confidence. “Zo, you work for her. A very lovely