Caper

by Lawrence Sanders

  During the time we spent in Jacksonville, I found a drugstore that was open and bought hair bleach, dye, and some other things. We changed Donohue to a straw-colored blond, a process that took more than six hours. His eyebrows were lightened with white mustache wax and he donned a pair of mirrored sunglasses.

  The next day, at St. Augustine, Jack bought maroon slacks, white socks, leather strap sandals, and a short-sleeved sport shirt in a wild tropical print. He wore the tails loose, over his belt, not only to look like every other tourist on his way to Disney World, but also to conceal the revolver carried at the small of his back.

  We knew there had been no photos taken of Bea Flanders; the best they’d have would be a police artist’s sketch or a retouched photo of Jannie Shean. So I stuck with the curly red wig, heavy makeup, falsies under a tight sweater, and floppy slacks with wide cuffs above high-heeled shoes.

  Also, for additional camouflage, we bought a cheap camera which Jack wore suspended from his neck on a leather strap. And I put away my Gucci shoulder bag, and carried a straw tote bag that had “Florida” and a palm tree woven on the side. The only things we lacked were three messy-faced kids, screeching and blowing bubblegum.

  We spent the next night at Daytona Beach, and realized Christmas had come and gone. We went out separately the next morning and bought each other gifts. I gave Jack an electric shaver and he bought me a string bikini (too small) and a blue velour beach coverup (too large). But we kissed, and it wasn’t the worst day-after-Christmas I’ve ever spent.

  We cut over to Orlando, traded in the ancient Dodge, and bought a two-year-old Oldsmobile Cutlass. In all these trades and buys, Jack had to use his identification. We had no doubt that our trail would be picked up eventually. All we hoped to accomplish was to confuse our pursuers long enough for us to get to Miami. There we could hole up in a safe place and figure our next move. We were still carrying more than five thousand in cash, plus the big, valuable pieces from the Brandenberg heist. It was, we figured, enough to get us through with maybe another switch of cars before we arrived in southern Florida.

  Got back onto Route 95 again and headed south past Cocoa, Palm Bay, Vero Beach. We stayed the night in West Palm Beach, dined well on broiled dolphin, and went to a disco late in the evening. We didn’t dance; just watched. Then we went back to our motel and made love.

  It wasn’t the first time we had had sex since Dick Fleming’s death, but the intensity hadn’t diminished. We coupled like survivors, like the plague was abroad in the land and we had to prove we were alive. Between paroxysms I questioned Jack about his family, his youth, what he had done, how he had lived. Never again did I want to mourn a stranger.

  But reticence had become such an ingrained part of him that I couldn’t break through. And even when he did reveal something—an event, an incident, a triumph, a failure—I never knew whether or not to believe him. He had told me to doubt everything he said, and he had taught me too well.

  He did say this …

  “I used to go to the track all the time. In the grandstand, you know, or standing at the rail. And I’d turn and look up at the clubhouse, and I’d see these men and women. No different from me and you. I mean, in my head I knew they were no different. They ate and shit. They were going to die. But to me, they were different. The way they dressed. Moved. Watching the race through binoculars worth more than I owned. Laughing and drinking their champagne from those swell glasses. Class. I mean, they had class.”

  “Bullshit,” I said. “They had money.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe,” he said. “But with some of them it was more than that. I mean, you can look at a good colt and see the breeding. The build, the way it carries its head, the way it steps out. You just know. Good blood there. Good breeding. Well fed and cared for, of course. That’s where the money comes in. But also, a thoroughbred could be hauling an ice wagon, thin as a pencil, bones sticking out, sores, and you’d still spot it. If you knew what to look for. It’s class, Jannie: the greatest thing in the world. And the people in that clubhouse had it.”

  “An accident of birth.”

  “Sure,” he said. “I agree. Not something they did. Something they were born to, just like that frisky colt bouncing along and tossing his beautiful head. But that’s what I wanted. To be. To have. All my life. When I was in the bucks, I bought the right clothes and went to the right places. I learned how to act. The small fork for the salad—right? But the headwaiter always knew, and I knew he knew. Slip him enough and you’d get a good table and good service. You’d think you were in, until you saw how he treated the class people. Maybe they didn’t even tip him dime one, but he kissed their ass. They were something special, you see. And no matter how much I paid him, he knew I was just a redneck in drag, with punk between my toes and calluses if you looked close enough.”

  “Just shut up and lie back,” I said fiercely. “Let me pleasure you.”

  “All right,” he said faintly.

  After a while, just before he fell asleep, he murmured, “I’ll never make it.”

  “Sure you will. We’ll be in Miami tomorrow.”

  “No,” he said drowsily, “not that.”

  Jack drove the Cutlass on the final leg south toward Miami. For some reason I couldn’t fathom, the closer we came to journey’s end, the slower he seemed to move. He cut over to Federal Highway 1, and we got caught in heavy seasonal traffic. We were stopped at traffic lights every mile or so, instead of buzzing along on Route 95 where signs warned of going too slow.

  Also, when we halted for breakfast and lunch, he dawdled over his food. I asked him why he was stalling. He just shook his head and wouldn’t answer. I wondered if he feared what awaited us in Miami. I wondered if he was plotting to ditch me and take off with the Brandenberg gems. I even wondered if he was planning to kill me.

  You see, in my new role of veteran criminal, I had learned mistrust. I carried a loaded pistol in my totebag and slept with it under the pillow. The same gun I had bought from Uncle Sam ages and ages ago.

  We were driving through Boca Raton when Donohue said:

  “Listen, babe, maybe it would be smart not to go right into Miami. They’re sure to be looking for us there. So why don’t we stay outside the city and only drive in to do our business—arrange for the plane and new ID and all. But we won’t actually stop in Miami. Just drive in and out. Cut the risk.”

  I thought about that a moment. It made sense.

  “Where do you want to stay, Jack?” I asked him.

  “Maybe Pompano Beach,” he said. “I know the area. It’s like forty-five minutes, maybe an hour from Miami, depending on the traffic. We’ll take a place right on the beach.”

  “Sounds good,” I said. “We can get some sun, do some swimming.”

  “Uh, I can’t rightly swim,” he said. “Not more’n a few strokes in a mud crick. But I like the beach. Especially at night. I really go for the beach at night. Wait’ll you see the moon come right up out of the water. It’s so pretty. Just like a picture postcard!”

  We turned left onto Atlantic Boulevard and drove toward the ocean. The bridge was up over the Intracoastal Waterway, and we waited about ten minutes in a long line of cars while a beautiful white yacht went by.

  “Four people on that boat,” I said, “and they’re holding up about a hundred cars.”

  “So? They own a yacht; they’re entitled. This place we’re going to is called Rip’s. I stayed there a couple times when I was playing the local tracks. I mean, it’s right on the beach. Step out the door and you’re in the water. Rip’s gets a lot of horseplayers and a swinging crowd. Guys boffing their secretaries—like that.”

  “Swell,” I said. “We’ll fit right in.”

  “That’s what I figured,” he said seriously. “We’ll try to get an efficiency. That’s got a refrigerator and a little stove. So we can cook in if we like. Mostly we’ll eat out, but we can have breakfast in and keep sandwich stuff handy.”

  He wasn’t exaggerating abo
ut Rip’s being close to the water. It wasn’t more than fifty feet to the high-tide mark, a two-story structure of cinder blocks with a Spanish-type tile roof, all painted a dazzling white. It was built in a U-shape, with a small swimming pool and grassed lounging area between the arms of the U. I thought that was crazy: a swimming pool so close to the Atlantic. But I learned later that most beachfront motels had pools, and they got a bigger play than the ocean.

  I went into the office with Jack to register. He signed the card “Mr. and Mrs. Sam Morrison.” Residence: New York City. The clerk looked down at it, then looked up.

  “Hey,” he said. “Mr. Morrison? There was a guy here just the other day asking for you.”

  Donohue played it perfectly.

  “Oh?” he said coolly. “When was that?”

  “Let’s see … not yesterday, but the day before.”

  “A short heavyset man? A real sharp dresser? Wears a vest, hat, bowtie?”

  “Yeah,” the clerk said. “That’s the man. Said he’s a friend of yours. Wondered if you’d checked in yet.”

  “I’ll give him a call,” Jack said. “I told him we’d be here, but we got tied up a couple of days with car trouble.”

  We rented an efficiency, a ground-floor corner apartment. We could look out a big picture window, and there was sand, sea and, if we could have seen it, Spain.

  “Is this smart?” I asked Donohue. “Staying here? If Rossi has been around?”

  “Sure it’s smart,” he said. “He’s already checked the place out, so he probably won’t be coming back. It’s safer than a place he hasn’t been yet.”

  That made sense, logically. But I had been doing some heavy, heavy thinking. Part of the changes I was going through. I was evolving a new philosophy, and logic didn’t have much to do with it. Well … maybe not a philosophy, but an awareness of how things were, and how things worked.

  It seemed to me I had come into a world totally different from the one I had known before. That had been a world that, despite occasional misadventure, was based on reason. Bills arrived and were paid. Traffic lights worked and most streets and avenues were one-way. I paid my rent, bought gas, had sex, wrote novels, traveled, read books, went to the theater—all with the expectation of waking the next morning and finding the world, my world, relatively unchanged. It was a stable existence. There was order, a meaningful arrangement of events.

  I thought, in my ignorance and innocence, that all life was like that. It was the way society was organized.

  But now I found myself in a netherworld where irrationality reigned. It wasn’t only that I had become a creature of chance and accident, although they were certainly present. It was that my world had become fragmented, without system or sequence. There was no clarity or coherence. I couldn’t find meaning.

  Perhaps we would succeed in leaving the country with the Brandenberg jewels. Perhaps not. Perhaps I would marry, or at least form a lasting relationship with Jack Donohue. Perhaps not. Perhaps he would desert me or kill me. It was possible.

  Anything was possible. And, I discovered, an existence without order, in which anything might happen, is difficult to live. Nerves tingle with rootlessness. The brain is in a constant churn, attempting to compute permutations and combinations. One unconsciously shortens one’s frame of reference. The pleasure of the moment becomes more important than the happiness of the future. The future itself becomes a never-never land. The past is pushed into fog. Only the present has meaning.

  That’s how we lived for almost two weeks—in the blessed present. We woke each morning about 8:00, had either a small breakfast in our room or walked down to Atlantic Boulevard for pancakes or eggs in a restaurant. Then we bought local and New York newspapers at the Oceanside Shopping Center and walked back to Rip’s.

  There was nothing in any of the papers concerning us or the Brandenberg robbery. Nothing on TV. More recent crimes had been committed. There were wars, floods, plane crashes, famines. The north was gripped in a cold wave that sent thousands of tourists and vacationers flocking south.

  At about 10:00, we went out to the beach or sat at the motel pool. Jack usually stayed in the shade of a beach umbrella, wearing Bermuda shorts and a short-sleeved polo shirt. I broiled myself in direct sunlight, wearing my too-small string bikini, a scarf tied around my hair so I didn’t have to sweat in that damned wig.

  I doused myself in oil (Jack obligingly layered my back), and I grew a marvelous tan, the best I’ve ever had. We rarely ate lunch, but usually had a few gin-and-tonics in the afternoon. We met a few people, tourists staying for a few days, and talked lazily of this and that.

  Then, when the sun had lost its strength, we went into our little efficiency apartment and napped, or made love, or both. In the evening, we showered, dressed, and went out for dinner, a different place every day. Later we might stop at a bar or disco for a few nightcaps. Then home to bed, usually before midnight.

  It was a totally mindless existence. I felt that, under that hot sun, my brain was turning to mush—and I loved it. Occasionally, during our first few days at Rip’s, I’d ask Jack when he was going into Miami to make arrangements. “Soon,” he’d say. “Soon.” After a while I stopped asking. It didn’t seem important. The money hadn’t run out yet.

  I think that, in a way, we were both catching our breath at Rip’s. I was toasting my body brown and swimming in the high surf. Jack was lying slumped in blued shadow, as torpid as a lizard on a rock. He wanted to go to the local horse and dog tracks, but didn’t. I wanted to go shopping, but didn’t. We simply existed, and woke each morning secretly pleased at our good fortune in being alive for another day.

  But one morning we awoke and, while Donohue was checking his wallet, realized our cash reserve was shrinking. Hardly at the panic level, but low enough to require replenishing. When money is going out freely, and nothing is coming in, the bankroll dwindles at a ferocious rate.

  So Donohue decided to drive into Miami the next day. We discussed timing, procedures, and contingency plans. It was agreed that he would go alone, leaving the bulk of the Brandenberg loot in our apartment at Rip’s. But he would take one big necklace of startling beauty and value, just as a sample to show an interested fence, if he was able to locate one. Also, we would cut up one of the heavy chokers, prizing out the individual stones. These he would attempt to peddle wherever he could, for ready cash.

  “I’ll be back by 7:00 in the evening at the latest,” he said. “Remember, that’s the cut-off time. If I’m not back by then, or haven’t called, it means I’ve been nobbled. Then you grab what’s left of the ice and take off.”

  “Take off?” I said. “How? Where to?”

  “Cab. Bus. Plane. Train. Walking. Do what you have to do. Just get out of here. Fast. Because if Rossi grabs me, I’m going to talk. Eventually. You know that, don’t you?”

  I leaned forward to kiss him.

  “I know,” I said, nodding. “But you said your luck’s running hot. You’ll come back.”

  “Sure I will, babe,” he said, pouring on one of those high-powered grins. “I’m too mean to die; you know that.”

  I looked at him critically. His bleached hair was now combed straight back from his forehead. His eyebrows were lightened, and he had grown a wispy mustache that we had attempted to dye with indifferent results. But I doubted if anyone would recognize him from a reported description.

  I had an odd thought: that with his lightened hair and eyebrows, he resembled Dick Fleming. They could have been brothers.

  We spent that evening cutting up the choker and prying out the diamonds. Then we went to bed early. Our sex that night was like our first time together when he had been fierce, hard, filled with desperate energy. He was a one-way lover again, taking what he wanted. He wore me out. Almost.

  The next morning he left most of the remaining cash with me, wrapped the big necklace and loose stones in handkerchiefs and slid them into his inside jacket pockets. He carried a revolver in his belt and concealed an auto
matic pistol under the front seat of the car.

  It was time for him to go. He paused a moment, frowning.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “Listen,” he said, “I may call you and tell you to bring the rest of the jewels to a certain place. You know?”

  “Sure.”

  “But I might be under a gun when I make that call. If I call you ‘Jan’ or ‘Jannie,’ you’ll know it’s okay and you can bring the stuff. But if I call you ‘Bea,’ you’ll know someone’s forcing me to make the call. Got that?”

  I nodded dumbly.

  Then he kissed me.

  “See you around,” he said.

  “Stop in any time,” I said.

  He smiled and was gone.

  I went out to the beach and spread my towel, as far away from other sunbathers as I could get. I had brought along a quart thermos of chilled white wine, and I sipped that all afternoon and thought of nothing. Two men spoke to me, but I didn’t answer. After a while they moved away to easier pickings.

  It was a smoky day, the sun in and out of clouds shaped like dragons. I lay there and felt myself, felt my skin burning and tight. I wanted to be naked. I wanted that sun inside me, searing and consuming.

  I went back to the motel about 3:00 and took a hot shower to take the sting away. Then I put on a loose shift and did more typing. I had persuaded Donohue to let me buy a portable, promising to type only during the day. Now I continued converting the handwritten legal pads to typed manuscript pages.

  It was a mechanical job: no thinking required. If I wondered why I was doing it, what importance Project X could possibly have other than representing a horrible danger if the cops ever got hold of it, I suppose I thought of it as the last slender link with my past, with a world lost and gone, evidence of a corner turned.

  The truth, I now believe, was that I didn’t want to die in an alley, as Hymie Gore had, or to be blown away on a dusty backwoods road, like Dick Fleming, without leaving this account of what had happened to me and how it happened. Project X was really my last will and testament.