She shook her head slowly, frowning. “When he found out for sure about the hustling, it racked him up. He cried and cried. When he got better we tried to make it the square way, him pumping gas but he got an allergy and his hands swelled so bad he couldn’t work, and I went back to hustling, and it didn’t bother him so much, and finally it didn’t bother him at all.”
She frowned at me and said, “He’s weak, kind of. He’s scared. He could do that to Tami from being scared. It must be killing him inside to think I’ve got to be killed too. That’s why he’s so mean and jumpy and drinking and all.…” The tiny childish voice trailed off. In the quiet of the empty lounge she sat with head lowered, hat brim concealing her face. Her hand, resting inert next to the ashtray, was small, plump, with short fingers and a thick palm, the nails nibbled so close to the quick her fingertips looked deformed. She wore a narrow gold wedding ring set with small diamond chips, and a little gold wristwatch shaped like a heart, the strap fashioned of thin black fabric cords. It had shifted from its customary position and I could see where the light tan of the wrist surrounded the pattern of a heart in the white untanned skin.
The wrist of a woman and the small tidy forearm always seem to me to have some tender and touching quality, a vulnerable articulation unchanged from the time she was ten or twelve, perhaps the only part of her that her flowering leaves unchanged.
The shaded light was on the paneled wall above us, the glow of it yellow-orange. She turned her head toward me, looked up from under the white straw brim, green eyes in shadow.
“He knows I didn’t want to get into this. But what he had done, you see, he had listened to too much about it, and they told him that we knew so much it wouldn’t be healthy not to get into it. I guess it isn’t so healthy now. Not for anybody. I bet he knows what he can expect too. It could be making him drink so much. He’s always been too proud of his body to drink so much. If they’re closing the store, how long will Ans and Frankie Loyal last?”
“She didn’t mention Frankie.”
“He works with DeeDee. Worked with DeeDee. He’s more like Ans, sort of. Jittery, kind of nervous about the whole deal. Griff is different. He’s closer to Mack and Nogs. Griff is more like helping run the thing, and he worked with Mack and Nogs before, and I think he gets cut in on all three teams too. There’s one thing about Griff, he isn’t nervous about a thing. A person to him is a bug, and if it is where your foot comes down, that’s the way it crumbles. At least, if he gets me, he will make it just as easy for me as he can. I know that. He’s always liked me. He’s hinted a couple of times we could change the teams around.”
“What kind of a name is Nogs?”
“I don’t know his real first name. It’s some kind of a joke about eggnogs and a Christmas party years and years ago. Nogs Berga is his whole name. I heard Mack say Nogs has a lot of things going for him, a lot of them straight things, like monkey jungles and ’gator farms and frontier towns, and Mack runs our operation for him, getting the credit reports on the guys we line up, and saying what boat to get the tickets on, and fixing it so the postcards get mailed from faraway places from those guys so it won’t be a lot of guys disappearing from around this area, which could make a lot of heat after a while. What am I going to do? What do you think I should do?”
“Can you handle yourself so Ans won’t suspect you know?”
She gave me a quick glance, with an ugly twist to her fatty little mouth. “There’s been plenty I haven’t wanted him to suspect, friend.”
“But if he does and thumps it out of you, it could put me in the bag, Del.”
She shrugged. “I’d tell him I was in a place where a radio was on Miami news, and I heard about Tami and DeeDee and figured it out from the funny way he’s acting. Anyway, if you don’t want to, why take the boat? You found me. You did the favor. I don’t even know your name. Fly back.”
“The name is Travis McGee, and I am in Stateroom Six on the Lounge Deck, and I can give you one idea of what you could do. Will he drink enough to pass out?”
“That’s the way it’s been going this trip, and he’s getting a good start while we’re talking.”
“Leave him a note. Say you heard the Miami news and figured it out. So you’ve decided to go over the rail. That would cover you in case Griff has orders to meet the ship and take over right away.”
“So then what?”
“So then I give a good piece of money to the room steward, and he’ll know a way to fix it so you don’t have to disembark with the others. We’ll give him a reason he can appreciate. Like a husband waiting outside the customs shed with a gun. Ans Terry isn’t going to show anybody that note, not with what you say in it. There’ll be a short count on the passengers getting off. Short by two, you and me. But the steward can use a piece of his piece of money to keep anybody from getting agitated. Ans will take your stuff off through customs, and I have an acquaintance on board who’ll take my gear off. Then when the whole turmoil is over and everybody gone, we walk off.”
She took her hat off and laid it aside, patted her hair, stared into her new drink with narrowed eyes, and rattled her fingernails on the black tabletop.
“Sure. He’ll show them the note. I didn’t get off. So they’ll believe it. They’ll believe I took a jump. It gives me a chance to run.”
“I can give you a start. A couple of hundred bucks.”
With eyes still narrow she said, “Why?”
“Favor to Vangie. I promise a favor, I like to go all the way with it.”
“She never said anything about knowing anybody named McGee in Lauderdale.”
I got the inscribed photograph from the wallet. She studied it. “Like that, huh? Where’d she know you from?”
“Way back.”
She handed the photograph back. “What do you do for bread?”
“I call it salesmanship. But sometimes the mark doesn’t mind letting his friends and family know how stupid he was, and then they call it extortion or conspiracy to defraud.”
“You got a nice tricky way of figuring things out. I guess you’d make out pretty good in con work, looking more like you race boats or build roads or used to play ball or something. Is there any reason you have to stay in Lauderdale?”
“Why?”
“Maybe you could think up something that would use me for bait. God knows I’ve had enough practice putting on an act for those guys.”
“Fourteen acts.”
She lifted her shoulders slightly. “I wouldn’t want that kind of an ending, not ever again.”
“Let me put it this way, Del. I keep things clean. If you try a rough line of work, you take too big a fall if it goes sour. Almost every con operation is a partnership thing. Sure, I could use you. It might be a good time to move along. It would be a good time of year to go up and work the Jersey shore. But what if these people down here found out somehow you got away? Somebody would come after you. I might be crossing a street with you when they run you down. Why should I take a chance like that? And the law isn’t going to believe you took the jump. If they are unraveling it, you could be near the top of their list, and there is a large fall for helping a murderer escape.”
“I never killed anybody! I couldn’t!”
“You just lured them into the situation, so Ans could do it. Fourteen times. They wouldn’t electrocute you. Not a pretty young woman. They almost never do. But they’d hang consecutive sentences on you so that the way you’d finally leave would be out the back gate in a box. And I could get five or ten for harboring a fugitive. Kiddy, I’m walking around free as a bird because I don’t take bad risks.”
She turned completely to face me, fastened her short fingers around my wrist and went to work on me with those green eyes. It was not an unwavering stare. She moved it around, up and down and across, pausing at my eyes each time. She put an old fuzzy edge on the clear silver of her voice.
“Since I was sixteen I’ve been sizing guys up. The way I am, dear, I got to belong to somebo
dy. Ans was weak, and that was why it wasn’t ever the greatest. McGee, you threw all this at me fast. I know you’re strong. And I know we react good to each other. There’s that feeling you can’t miss. So the only choice I’ve got, dear, is you. I’ve got to trust you. I’ve got to let you take charge and get me out of this mess. That’s the way things are between us, and maybe it comes out better luck than we could guess. What I can be, when I have somebody, is absolutely level all the way. I’ll help you any way you want help, and food, clothes and a roof is all I’ll need. And I swear to God that if anybody finds me, I’ll convince them you didn’t know a thing about anything. I can be a help. I can do the college girl bit or the housewife bit or the model bit, or be a young widow or whatever. And the day you say go, I’ll go. No strings, no tears. So take a chance, huh?”
But I couldn’t get fourteen men out of my mind, men who’d been snookered by the business with the eyes, the dear little voice, men who’d sucked at that plump little mouth, been enclosed between the long warm clasp of thighs, men who’d marveled at the luck that had brought them in their middle years the heats and devotions of such a spectacular young girl, and had gone cruising with her and hadn’t lived past the first night aboard, to have their reservation taken over by an aging Mr. Body.
“Maybe,” I said. “I’ll think about it. Maybe I can come up with an idea which will give me some insurance. It’s after four now. When can you shake loose from him?”
She forgot the question for a moment. She shook her head. “It’s so spooky, thinking about it. My God, him handing me over to Griff just like I’ve been handing those marks over to him. Everything you say fits, dear. We gals should have been able to figure it out. If it ever started to go sour, we three would be the first to go. You know, I’m going to miss those kids. We had a lot of laughs.”
“What time?”
“Oh, figuring his track record this trip I’d say he’ll fold before eleven o’clock. Maybe even before ten.”
“Stateroom Six,” I said. I rapped my knuckles on the table. Two quick knocks, a pause, two quick ones again.
“Knock like that.”
It was interesting to me in a clinical way that in the distance from our table to the street door she managed to sway a tautly fabricked hip against me three separate and insistent times, though she’d had no trouble with sway or balance on the way in. With an instant practicality, she’d changed masters. Now it was merely a case of firmly cementing the new relationship in the only way she knew how.
Twelve
Back aboard at four-thirty, I checked our mail drop and the slip said, “At home.”
I went aft and found my way down to his cabin. He opened the door to my knock. “Welcome to steerage,” he said. He pointed to the dressing table. I saw the doll. I went over and picked it up. He had carved a rather good cement block. It dangled on the silvery wire an inch below the ankles.
The doll was naked. Any other doll would have been bare, or unclad. But the Japanese artisan who had made this one, even knowing it would be sewed and glued into a kimono, had given a total and humorless attention to detail, making of it a statue rather than a doll. Even the navel was a typically Asiatic little stub, with incised curlicue.
“Couldn’t do a damn thing with the hair,” he explained. “I had to cut it all off, soak it in hot water, get it straight, glue it back on—I went ashore for the glue—and shape it with my nail scissors.”
“It’s a beautiful job, Meyer. Absolutely beautiful.”
“After I gave her more eyebrows with a little black ink, it turned into a better resemblance.”
“It’s going to give our boy one hell of a turn.”
“How did you make out?”
He sat on the bunk. I straddled the straight metal chair that faced the dressing table. He was a splendid listener—with expressions of great wonderment, surprise, awe, concern, appreciation—and little gasps and grunts and murmurs in all the right places.
“So I stood under the portico and watched her stilt along to Bay Street, knowing she was giving it a little extra something, adding one extra little circular fillip that made everything else work that much harder to keep up. The resplendent officer atop his little box under his umbrella blew the birds out of the trees with his whistle, and stopped every vehicle in the downtown area to let her cross East Street, and a chap in a sun helmet ran full into an old lady with her arms full of packages. He was looking back over his shoulder at the time.”
“My God, Travis, what a fantastic gamble!”
“Just the first contact. That was the gamble. From then on I played it the way she was calling it. I had to sense how much she’d swallow and just what things would give it a ring of truth. When it wasn’t working just right, I’d move the walnut shells around again. She’s what the Limey locals would call a nasty little bit of work. Nastier than our Vangie. She kids herself more than Vangie did. She’s perfectly willing to believe Terry’ll dump her because she could be talked into dumping him. With a little persuasion, she would have set up a double on this trip. Let Terry drop their pigeon over the side, then hand Terry to Griff on a platter for the same treatment.”
“This business of keeping her aboard, and finding a way to take her away with you. I fell off at one of those curves.”
“The instructions I’m going to give you right now will give you enough clue so you can climb back on.”
He listened with a total attention, and when I was through, he repeated the whole sequence flawlessly. He was a joy to work with.
“But can you make her do it?” he asked.
“The choice is going to look just fine to her.”
We saw her at dinner. A gala night. She came in late, sat alone at a table for two. She wore a dark blue sleeveless bodice in some glittering metallic thread, a lighter blue cummerbund, a white ankle-length skirt that draped handsomely to her walk. I saw her searching for me after she had ordered. We were fifty feet away. Her gaze swept across me, stopped, came back. She held the glance for a moment, and without expression, gave a single almost imperceptible nod.
A little later I looked over and saw a thick-bodied tourist leaning on her table, bending over, talking to her. The dining room lights made a gleaming pattern on his sweaty bald head. She paid not the slightest attention to him. He was swaying slightly, in drunken persuasion. Finally she looked up at him as if suddenly noticing him. She motioned him closer. She put her hand on the nape of his neck, pulled him down, whispered into his ear. She whispered for perhaps ten seconds. He sprang back from her. She watched him calmly. He backed into a waiter, then he turned and went back to his table. He passed quite close to us. His color looked bad, his mouth hung open. His eyes had that glassiness of someone who has been given a quick little glimpse of hell and turned into a believer.
He sat and pushed the food around his plate and then went out.
When next I looked over, she was gone.
She rapped on the inner door at precisely ten-thirty. She came in very quickly, dropped a little blue airlines bag and a big white purse onto my bed, then snugged herself into my arms, her arms locked around my waist, tightly. She was shivering, and I guessed it was half faked, half real. She kept herself pulled very firmly against me, and she whispered, “Darling, darling, darling. I’m safe now.”
I gently unwound her and stepped away. “You shouldn’t have packed anything.”
“But I know that. I didn’t! Don’t be cross with your Delly. I am yours now, dear. What I did was make some lightning purchases, inexpensive stuff, just the essentials, dear, and that little bag to hold what I couldn’t get into this purse. It’s new too. He knows all my clothes. He’s like that. He’s going to find everything there, my purse and identification things and my money, what I had left. All he’ll be able to find missing is my yellow checked jama shift, and he would have noticed that was laid out to sleep in. It’s in the blue bag, dear. He’ll see I didn’t even take the darling dress I bought out of the store wrappings, and he’ll
know I was upset. I even left my dear little heart watch on the night stand. I made the bed look as if I tried to sleep. I left the note pinned to the pillow. I wrote it like you said, dear, about hearing on the radio about DeeDee and Tami and realizing why he was acting so strange. You have to lock the door with the key, so I had to leave it unlocked. So I folded the note and pinned it that way and wrote his name in big letters. And I said that I just couldn’t live with my conscience any more, after what we’d done. Oh, he’ll have no doubt! So here I am, all for you, without a dime, and just this outfit that I wouldn’t be caught dead in, usually. I bought it so I wouldn’t look like me at all. See? Short little green walking skirt, and this kind of dumb Fauntleroy blouse and flats and little-girl stockings. Let me show you the full effect.” She hurried to her new purse and took out a comb and seated herself in front of the mirror. She unpinned her hair, let it fall long, and, biting her lip, combed the pale thick weight of it. She fashioned it into a high ponytail, fixing it so most of the weight of it fell forward across the front of her right shoulder. With pink lipstick she widened her mouth. She put on a new pair of sunglasses, dainty frames and a pixie tilt, then stood up and faced me, smiling for inspection.
“This is the way I walk off this Eyetalian sheep.”
“The walk will give you away.”
She trudged over to the door and back, toeing out, slouching, swinging her arms too freely. “Will it?”
“Okay. You’re eighteen. A backward eighteen.”
She took the glasses off, planted herself, looked up at me with her head cocked. “You’ve decided yes. I can tell.”
“On one condition.”
“Anything!”
I put the sheaf of ship’s stationery and my pen on the glass of the dressing table. “Sit here and write what I tell you to write.”
When she had seated herself and picked up the pen, I told her to date it yesterday. “To the Police Department, Broward Beach, Florida. Dear sirs …”
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