The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything

by John D. MacDonald

  “So what the hell you doing, Kirk? Gawd!”

  “Please wake up, Bonny Lee.”

  She squinted toward the porch. “Dawn!” she said despairingly. “Sonuvabitch!”

  “I would have let you sleep, but I need your help.”

  She looked at him with venomous suspicion. “I tell you, sugar, it better be important.”

  “It is.”

  She shuddered again. She turned and blundered toward the bathroom. He heard the shower begin. He went over and examined her clothing. Lime slacks, a white blouse with a yellow figure, a little yellow jacket, white sandals, two blue-green wisps of nylon. He put her clothing on a chair just outside the bathroom door. The shower stopped. The door opened wide enough for her wet brown arm. “Fetch m’purse, sugar!” she called. He put it into her hand. He checked Bernie’s wardrobe, laid out a gray sports shirt and dark blue slacks.

  In a little while she stuck her head out, started to say something, saw her clothing, smiled at him and took her clothes into the bathroom. The protocol was slightly confusing. Apparently one could move about as unselfconsciously naked as a tenpin until morning ablutions began, at which time modesty set in.

  She came striding out, brushed and lipsticked, giving a little hitch at the waistband of the lime slacks, tossing her jacket and purse on a chair, smiling at him. “Once you’re up I guess it isn’t too terrible. I been told I’m a little hard to wake up.”

  “You bounced out of bed the first time I whispered your name.”

  “You’re next in there. I’ll neaten up some. What you staring at?”

  He realized his expression was probably rather strange. Looking at her, he had been reminded of something a teammate had said about Mickey Mantle. “The more he takes off, the bigger he looks.”

  Clothes changed Bonny Lee. She looked taller and thinner. It did not seem plausible that all of that well-remembered abundance of breast and hip, all the fecundities, the armsful and handsful of sweet sighing weight could have disappeared into such a compacted trimness, into the tailored litheness of a clothed and pretty stranger.

  Her smile disappeared and her brown eyes widened. “Oh, Gawd, you never seen me in clothes afore!” She blushed violently, deepening her tan to redness and making her face look moist. “I wanna fall right smack through the floor, sugar.”

  “It’s all right. We understand how it happened.”

  “Sure enough, but I’m thinking on how it would sound to somebody. Shees marie, how the hell would you explain it?”

  “We don’t have to try.”

  “You rushing me out of here on account of somebody coming?”

  “No.”

  “Just who is this friend of Bernie’s that’s a friend of yours?”

  “She’s an actress.”

  “Oh, great!”

  “Uh—Bernie’s in love with her, I think.”

  “Anything in a skirt, Bernie’s in love with it. Take your shower.”

  When he came back out in the gray shirt—too snug across the shoulders—and the blue slacks—too high above the shoes—rubbing a jaw made raw by the only razor blade he could find, he smelled coffee. She’d made the bed. She moved slowly toward him, her jaw belligerent, her fists on her hips, her brown eyes narrowed. The waiter’s colorful uniform was behind her, on the foot of the bed.

  “You wearin’ Bernie’s stuff, Kirk. You maybe been a waiter at the Elise? Just what the hell is going on?”

  “Bonny Lee, I just can’t explain right now—”

  “Right now is when you do, mister, or it’s going to be like you was wrapped in bob wire and spun like a top toy.”

  He made two forlorn beginnings, then said, “My name is really Kirby Winter.”

  She tilted her head. “You say it like it meant something.”

  “I thought it might.”

  “Kirby Winter? Sounds like I know of you somehow. You talk nice. School educated. Some kind of actor?”

  “I’m—sort of in the news. Starting yesterday.”

  “I don’t pay much attention to—” She stopped abruptly and put her hand to her throat. She peered at him, shocked and incredulous. “Sugar, you him! Twenny-seven million bucks! You the one stole and hid all that money!”

  “I didn’t steal it. I haven’t got it.”

  She shook her head wonderingly. “You kin to that Kroops.”

  “Krepps. Uncle Omar.”

  She moved back to the bed and sat down limply and stared up at him. “You and some little old school-teacher-lookin’ gal tooken it, and like the whole world looking for you all over hell and gone, and you cozied up in bed here with Bonny Lee Beaumont, herself.”

  “I didn’t take a dime.”

  She studied him for a few moments. “Kirk, sugar. I mean Kirby. I surely know you didn’t. I know the rough kind and I know the sly kind, and once in ever’ long while, the sweet kind, which you are and which there’s not enough of, and I wouldn’t say you tooken it at all, so why don’t you go turn yourself in and say how it came about?”

  “I can’t. There’s so many reasons, there isn’t time to tell you, but I just can’t. I just hope—you’ll be willing to help me, even though you know who I am.”

  “Even though? Don’t you make me cross now, sugar. On this here big crazy old bed you learned me who you are, and what you want of me, I will do. But let’s put a cigarette and coffee with it,” she said and got up.

  They took the coffee out onto the breakfast porch. There was a sun-glare on the bay. “You said you’ve got a little car?”

  “Down in the alley. A little old yalla Sunbeam thing.”

  “Do you know where the Biscayne Marina is?”

  “Sure thing. I knew a boy kept his boat there one time.”

  “I’d like you to drive me there, Bonny Lee.”

  “Then what?”

  “Just leave me off there.”

  “That’s all? Not much favor to that, Kirby.”

  “A lot of people know my face. A lot of people are looking. It could turn into a mess.”

  “You running away by boat?”

  “I—I expect so.”

  “Can’t put the top up on the car on account it doesn’t have a top any more. You could kind of scrunch down, I expect. Let me see what I can find.” She went into the apartment. He heard her opening and closing drawers. Music began to play. She came back out with a wide-brimmed planter’s hat and a pair of dark sunglasses. “Should be news any time now. Here, you try these.”

  The hat was a little small, but he could pull it down far enough.

  She nodded. “You look like anybody and ever’body. Camera a-hangin’ round your neck, you’d be invisible any place in Florida entire. No need of scrunching.”

  “Aren’t you going to ask if taking me there is going to implicate you in anything?”

  “Implicate? That mean messed up in? I love a somebody, Kirby, I do like he asks me.”

  He took the glasses and hat off and stared at her. “Love?”

  “You weren’t listening in the bed, sugar?”

  “Well, yes, I was, but I thought it—was sort of a manner of speaking.”

  “Hell yes it was, and I’m speaking it again. You got something against it?”

  “No. I just mean that—well, I mean you seem to accept the fact I’ll go off in a boat—and you don’t know if we’ll see each other again, and you don’t seem to—well, to really care very much—and I thought—”

  “You know, you could be, like they say, over-educated.”

  She wiped her lipstick onto the paper napkin, came smiling around the table and bent over him, put her hand on the nape of his neck and began to kiss him with considerable skill and energy. He groped for her and turned her and brought her into his lap. Within minutes they were trembling and gasping and giddy. She pushed his hands away from her and sat bolt upright, her hands on his shoulders, head tilted, smiling. Her eyes looked drowsy.

  “I love you good, Kirby. And love is a pretty thing. See how fast a
ll worked up we gettin’? That’s the good of it, sugar. Going to bed is happy and it’s fun. It’s the way you get the good of it with none of the bad. It’s like everybody has forgot that’s all it is and all it was ever meant to be. People got to mess it up, it seems. Cryin’, moanin’, clingin’ onto one another, all jealous and selfish and hateful. We love each other on account of we give each other a lot of happy fun, and if it comes round again, we’ll take some more, and if it doesn’t, we got this much already anyhow. But no vows and pledges and crap like that, hear? That’s what people do because they got the funny idea it’s the right thing to do. And before they know it, the fun part is gone, gotten itself strangled on the fine print, like it was a deed to some land. I live free and simple, Kirby, and I look on myself in the mirror and say hello to a friend I like. The day I stop liking her, I change my ways. So this is who loves you, and that’s what the word means, and I got friends would die for me and me for them. What I say, you run onto a hell of a girl.”

  “I did,” he said. “I did indeed.”

  “Any man using me,” she said intently, “he gets a kick turns him soprano. I’m eager, but I’m no gawddamn free lunch counter for any bassar prowling for kicks, hear?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Don’t ever get to be. Hey! That’s the news starting.”

  They went inside and sat on a couch. After the national news, Kirby was the first item on the local news.

  “State, Federal and local authorities have joined in the hunt for mystery man Kirby Winter and his accomplice, Wilma Farnham. Last night Arturo Vara, room service waiter at a Miami Beach hotel, swore out an assault warrant against Winter. As the police reconstruct it, Winter, hemmed in by reporters in the corridor outside his hotel room yesterday, broke into an adjoining room, placed a call for room service, then, when Vara arrived, slugged him, donned his uniform and made his way through the reporters to the elevators and escaped from the hotel. He has not yet been apprehended.”

  Bonny Lee turned and stared at Kirby and raised one eyebrow in question. He nodded, guiltily.

  “Dr. Roger Farnham, Associate Professor at Florida Eastern, elder brother of Wilma Farnham, disclosed that after a brief unfruitful interview with the press yesterday, Miss Farnham left the apartment where she lived alone, taking a few personal possessions, and has not been seen since. Police have established that Miss Farnham and Winter held clandestine meetings at a Miami hotel during his infrequent returns to this area from various foreign countries.

  “The question which is on everyone’s lips is what could have happened to the missing twenty-seven million dollars turned over to O.K. Devices by Krepps Enterprises at the direct order of Omar Krepps, international financier, who died suddenly last week. It is believed that Winter and the Farnham woman carefully planned the huge embezzlement over a period of time, including the destruction of the files and records and, according to police theory, including plans to leave the country, plans they may have consummated last night.

  “In addition to the assault charge, Winter and the Farnham woman face embezzlement charges lodged by Krepps Enterprises. At midnight last night K.E. posted a reward of ten thousand dollars for any information leading to the apprehension of either or both of the fugitives. They are also bringing civil suit against both Winter and the Farnham woman. Both the tax and immigration authorities are anxious to serve summonses on both Winter and the woman.

  “Winter is described as being six feet, one-half inch tall, weight about one-ninety, sandy hair, dark blue eyes, age thirty-two, small crescent scar on left cheekbone, clean-shaven, polite, soft-spoken, highly intelligent, disarming.”

  Bonny Lee went over and turned off the radio. She came back to him, shaking her head. “You now a celebrity, man.” She touched his cheek. “Where’d you get the scar?”

  “A little girl hit me with a rock when I was about six years old.” He grasped her hand, touched the scar he had seen. “How about this one?”

  “I swang back-handed at a little old buck-tooth boy pinched me when I was about eleven.”

  “You need ten thousand dollars?”

  “Hope to God I never do need it so bad, sugar. Can you think of anything at all they don’t want you for?”

  “Armed robbery.”

  “Keep trying. Maybe you’ll get lucky. Sugar, I better get you onto that boat before anybody tracks you right to here.”

  “Or before I get too scared to walk out the door.”

  He put on the hat and the glasses and checked his pockets. He went and got the gold watch off the shelf near the phone. Thanks for everything, Uncle Omar, he thought.

  “How far to that Marina?”

  “Ten minutes, about.”

  Before they went out, he kissed her. They held each other tightly for a few moments. She looked up at him. “Fun?”

  “More than I can say.”

  “I could get a little weepy over you, Kirby. Let’s go.”

  The Sunbeam roadster was, he guessed, about three years old, dinged, dirty and beginning to rust out. But the engine roared immediately, and she yanked it around a corner like a toy on the end of a string. He clapped his hat back on just in time. It was almost nine o’clock. She drove with her brown hands high on the wheel, chin up, eyes slitted, cigarette in the corner of her mouth. She shifted up and shifted down, and danced in and out of the lines of morning traffic with what at first seemed like terrifying abandon, but he soon recognized as such skill that he felt entirely safe in the noisy little yellow car.

  She cut through to the waterfront, turned north and went three blocks, and when she began to downshift he saw the big Marina sign and all the pleasure craft at the wide docks. Suddenly she gunned it and went on by, and he saw the prowl cars at the curb and saw the uniformed men on the dock. She turned the next corner, braked, and tucked the little car into a parking slot.

  “That door there is shut and locked,” she said.

  “I don’t know what the hell to do!”

  “Just sit tight and let Bonny Lee find out for sure. What’s the boat?”

  “The Glorianna.”

  She found a newspaper under the seat and handed it to him. “Hide behind this, sugar. Be right on back.”

  She was gone for a full fifteen unbearable minutes. Then she piled into the car and drove away away from there. She headed west, found a shopping center, parked amid the other cars.

  “It took me a time, Kirby, to single me out a cute cop and get him a-coming over to me to show off how big he is. That Glorianna, she took off twenty minutes ago and those cops got there ten minutes too late. Now as near as I can tell, what happened is they found out a lot of your stuff was moved out of some cruddy hotel, and it took time to track it down, and they found it got took to that Marina and put aboard the Glorianna. So they figure you’re on it and they got you nailed good, because they got the Coast Guard looking already and they’ll pick it up any time. It’s a big old son of a gun the man there said. You know, they got the idea that twenty-seven million got put aboard, and they’re all standing around so sweaty they can’t hardly stand it. It wouldn’t hurt me a bit to know what did get moved onto it, sugar.”

  “Personal junk. Total cash value, maybe two hundred tops. There’s even a pair of ice skates.”

  Her eyes looked startled. “Shees marie. Ice skates!”

  “I’ve got no place to turn, Bonny Lee.”

  “I should truly like to hear from the beginning. Should we go back to Bernie’s?”

  “I’d rather not go back there.”

  “All we need is a place to talk, for now. And the last place they’d look I’d say is a public beach. Okay?”

  “Okay, Bonny Lee.”

  The noise of the little car eliminated any chance of conversation. She drove over to the beach and headed north. By ten o’clock they were on a cement bench in a small open pavilion, looking out across a wide beach toward the curl and thud of the blue Atlantic waves. Though it was a Tuesday morning in April, there were hundreds
of people on the beach. He was beginning to feel depressed and helpless.

  “You load it all onto me, sugar, and then you get a new opinion.”

  He told her. He droned a leaden parade of facts, without color or hope. And in the telling of them, he disheartened himself even more. He took it from the first legal conference after the funeral right up to the morning phone call from Joseph.

  He stared woodenly at her. “Think I should go try to explain?”

  “Who the hell would believe you? Gawddammit, Kirby, they’d start looking for the needle marks in your arm.”

  “Do you believe it?”

  “I’m this girl loves you. Remember? I do. But it is sure God an effort. Not loving you. That’s right easy. Believing all this stuff comes hard. Charla. What the hell kind of name is that? Sugar, after those three broads, you sure got a change when I hopped into bed.”

  “What should I do?”

  “You ever get a cake with a hacksaw in it?”

  “I was afraid you’d say something like that.”

  “If both them girls were on that boat, the Coast Guard got them by now for sure. And that Charla and Joseph are maybe jammed up as bad as you.”

  “I doubt it.”

  He took Uncle Omar’s gold watch out of his pocket. He fiddled with it, absently. He wound it, pulled the stem out, set it to correspond with his wrist watch. It had an hour hand, a minute hand and a sweep second hand. It had a fourth hand motionless at twelve o’clock, silver instead of the gold of the other hands. He wondered what it was for. He pushed the stem in again, and suddenly discovered that by pushing it in and turning it, he could turn the silver hand back to a new position.

  In the instant he did so, the world turned silent and his vision clouded. His first thought was that he was having a heart attack. There was such an utter silence he could hear the murmurous sound of his own blood in his ears. Any speculation as to what might have happened was drowned in a total, primitive, unreasoned terror. To known hazards, the human animal can react with fear bleached with reason. The unknown drops him back into the cave nights, into the sabered terror, awash in adrenaline, the sphincter precarious, muscles knotted for the sideways leap, the head-down whimpering run.