The Beach Girls

by John D. MacDonald

  When he finished I figured the time on him, and handed him eight bucks. He hesitated and then took it in his chopped-up shaky hands. He looked grayish under his tan and he stood on the dock sort of bent over a little.

  “Once was enough, hey?” I said.

  He looked at the boat and then he straightened up all the way and said, “Will you need help tomorrow, Captain?”

  I had a half-day charter for the morning and I hadn’t contacted Ron yet. If Rice was asking to be busted down, I was his man.

  “Show up at seven, buddy.”

  He nodded and shuffled off. I figured him for too pooped to eat. He’d fall in the sack fast.

  Rice was one of the sorriest looking things you’d ever want to see when he showed up at seven. You could tell the way he moved he was stiff all over. The charter showed up. Damn nice kids. A little Mexican couple with honeymoon written all over them.

  I moved over to the gas dock and topped off the tanks. Rice handled the hose as if he was a hundred and three. But on the way out, without being told, he broke out the tackle and went to work on the bait. The sun limbered him up, but he wasn’t what you’d call spry.

  It was one of those perfect days. There were good fish and they were spaced right and they jumped and sparkled in the sun. The little bride got a fair sail and handled it pretty well, considering her size. I went back to grab the bill and club it. The little gal put up a yell about releasing it, not hitting it. I decided I could hold it half over the transom while Rice worked the hook out. But when he tugged at the hook that sail gave one final explosion. It wrenched the bill out of my hand and fell back into the water. The bill cracked Rice across the wrist.

  By the time we got in, his wrist was swole up pretty good, but he wanted to scrub the boat down again. He was so eager I kept him around half the afternoon doing maintenance work until his tail was dragging.

  I finally paid him off and said, “I got a charter tomorrow, buddy.”

  “Seven o’clock?”

  “Right.”

  He showed again. I don’t know what he was trying to prove. He was damn near dead on his feet, but he was beginning to be worth almost the dollar an hour I was paying him.

  This charter was full day, three big-talking hardware merchants from Indianapolis. They wanted to use their own fancy equipment, drink all the bourbon they brought aboard, and catch every damn fish in the ocean.

  We hit a gusty, shifty wind out of the northeast, and it built up a good chop. I could see it working on the boys. Their jokes weren’t funny and they worked too hard laughing. At about eleven the fattest one tied into a mako, which is one hell of an athletic shark. Fatty was doing a poor job of handling it. Suddenly one of his pals gave up and began to unload the bourbon. That set the other one off.

  And then fatty got into the spirit of things. He fumbled his way out of the fighting chair, letting the line go slack as he took the rod butt out of the socket. He made a feeble effort to hand the rod to Rice. But before Rice could grab it, the mako hit the end of the slack. Three hundred bucks worth of tackle jumped out of fatty’s slack hand, bounced once on top of the fish box and took off astern.

  When the boys could talk again, they let it be known they’d had it. So I turned back in. When we were in calmer water, fatty gave me the old line. We’re only getting a half a day so we’ll only pay for half a day. I told him the contract was for a full day and he’d pay for a full day.

  “Okay,” he said in a nasty way. “If that’s the way you operate, here’s the way I operate. I want payment for my rod and reel. I handed it to this clown you got working for you and he dropped it over the side. Right, boys?”

  One of them had the decency to say, “Oh, for Chrissake, Chuck! Forget it.”

  “Forget, hell!” fatty yelled. He turned on Rice. “I handed it to you and you dropped it, you damn clown.”

  Rice stared at him a moment. Then his chin came up and his eyes seemed to darken and there wasn’t anything uncertain about his mouth. He put his nose six inches from fatty’s. His voice wasn’t loud, but it had a lot of snap to it. “I’m no clown, you fat farce. Maybe you’d like to follow the rod you threw over.”

  Fatty backed away from him and said, loudly, to me, “You can’t let him talk to me like this!”

  “He’s doing just fine,” I said. I knew I’d collect in full, and I did.

  For a reward I let Rice back her into the slip. I stood at his elbow giving him instructions. He let it get away from him a little and he nudged Dink Western’s Bally-Hey. No harm done. Little smudge on the paint. He did the rest of it nice.

  I paid him off and told him I didn’t have a charter for Friday. That night I went over onto D Dock where the usual bunch were sitting around drinking beer. Orbie was telling what a rough day he’d had with his harem. I chipped a buck into the beer fund and took out a cold can. When I got a chance I told them about Rice, and how I hadn’t been able to make him quit and how it didn’t look as if I was going to. And I told them about the way he chewed the fat guy out.

  Just as I finished Leo Rice came walking out along the dock toward his boat. He wore a sport shirt and slacks and I figured he’d been over on the boulevard to eat.

  He nodded as he went by. When he was twenty feet beyond us I said, “Hey, Rice!”

  He stopped and turned around. “Yes, Captain?”

  “The name is Lew. Come on back and draw yourself a cold can of beer.”

  He hesitated and then came back. “Thanks,” he said. He fished out the can, found the opener tied to the tub handle and opened it. The others were a little quiet and I wondered if I’d moved too fast. Hell, somebody on D Dock should have invited him first. But it was done. I hoped he’d have sense enough to drink his beer and move along. I introduced him to the others. Nobody asked him to sit down.

  Just as he was finishing the can, Dink Western came swaggering out. He knows damn well he isn’t welcome on D Dock. Whenever you take a close look at a bunch of charterboats, you’ll find one slob. Dink was our little burden. He owns and operates the Bally-Hey with an ex-con mate named Dave Harran who is nice enough, but who has been ground down flat by Dink. Dink is all belly and mouth, a brawler, a guy with a mean temper. And lately he’s been playing around with the young wife Captain Jimmy Meirs brought back from Georgia three months ago when old Jimmy went up there to bury his brother. Jimmy and his big black-haired bride Jannifer Jean live in a trailer back of the marina office. When Captain Jimmy is out on charter on his recently renamed Jimmy-Jan, it leaves Jannifer Jean, or, like Joe Rykler calls her, Moonbeam McSwine, alone. Dave Harran lives aboard the Bally-Hey. Dink lives ashore with his brother who is a local cop. Dink gets his business by giving kickbacks on the charter rate and by taking charters the rest of us won’t touch. He runs a dirty boat.

  “What you want here? What’s on your mind?” Orbie asked in that soft way he uses when he smells trouble.

  “Nothing with you, Derr,” Dink Western said. He looked at me. “Captain Jimmy says you thumped into my boat coming in.”

  “If I’d sunk it the basin would look prettier,” I said.

  “He said you had a tourist running it, Lew.”

  “It’s all mine, free and clear, Dink. I’ll let a red squirrel handle it if I feel like it.”

  Dink ignored me and stared at Rice. “You the one bumped me?”

  “Not hard enough to do any damage,” Rice said quietly.

  Dink eased over to him. “I’m the one to decide about damage, pal. Any time you’re within a hundred feet of my boat in any kind of boat, you keep your damn hands off the wheel no matter who tells you what to do. Got that?”

  Dink had his fists on his hips.

  Alice Stebbins said, “Get back where you belong, Dink.”

  “Ease off,” Orbie said.

  “Nobody bashes my boat,” Dink said. He was half loaded, as usual.

  Rice shrugged and turned away. Dink, in a brawler’s practiced motion, grabbed Rice’s arm and spun him back and hit h
im in the mouth. Rice sprawled on the dock. The girls squealed.

  Rice stared for a moment, blood on his chin, and then got up fast. You could tell in ten seconds he didn’t have a chance in the world against Dink, but when a man chooses to fight, you let him have it to himself. I think he got knocked down four times in return for getting in one pretty good lick. He was awful slow getting up onto his hands and knees after the fourth time. The girls were screaming to have it stopped. I was curious as to just how many times he would get up. I had the feeling that so long as he was conscious, he’d keep trying.

  But as he was trying to come up from his hands and knees the fourth time, Dink took one step forward and kicked Rice so hard in the pit of the stomach he lifted him clean off the dock, maybe six inches in the air.

  And then I knew it was time. Orbie had the same yen. We’d both been waiting for the right chance. We got up at the same time.

  Alice knew what was up right away. “Not on the dock!” she yelled. “Not on the dock!”

  As Dink stared at us, Orbie slapped a coin onto the back of his hand and said to me, “Call it right for first.”

  “Tails,” I said.

  “You’re wrong,” Orbie said. He grinned at Dink and hit him a clean shot under the eye without warning, and turned and ran like a rabbit. Dink roared and lumbered after him. As soon as Orbie was on shore he turned and squared off. It was a good quick way to get Dink off the dock.

  It drew a pretty good crowd. All men except for Jannifer Jean, Alice and Judy Engly. Their faces had a raw, hungry look. There was enough to look at.

  It went maybe forty minutes, or twice that long, or half that long. It’s hard to tell, watching a fight like that. They fought under the light thirty feet from the shore end of D Dock, toward charterboat row. Orbie was fast like I expected, but Dink had a right like a sledge. Three times Orbie went down and had to scramble out of range fast when Dink came in to stomp him.

  And then it began to go Orbie’s way. He was giving away thirty pounds or more, but he was in better shape. He hooked Dink in the belly until he got the arms down, and then he shifted to the head. I could tell when he started to try to finish him off, but he couldn’t knock Dink off his feet. He could stagger him, but he couldn’t put him down.

  Finally Dink staggered back until he was leaning against the skinny lamp post, able only to make slow pawing motions with his hands. Orbie was gasping. It was quiet. You could hear the smack of fist on flesh in slow cadence. We stood in a circle in the night, sucking in our wind with each chunk.

  Dink’s knees buckled but he struggled back up. You didn’t hear anybody yelling to stop it. Dink isn’t a popular man.

  When Orbie finally paused, arm weary, I stepped out and said, “You ain’t leaving me so damn much, Orbie.”

  “Take your shot,” he gasped.

  Dink stared at me stupidly. I grabbed his shirt, swung him away from the pole and hit him three times. The last time was while he was on his way down. He landed on his face. I heard the long sigh from the people watching. My hands stung.

  Dink grunted, rolled over and sat up slowly, bloody mouth agape. I sat on my heels beside him and said, “Get up, Dink.”

  “No,” he said in a faraway rumble.

  “This the first time you been down, boy. You got to get up one time anyhow.”

  He shook his massive head. “Stayin’ right here. You kin stomp me, you want to. But I won’t get up.”

  “Git up!” Jannifer Jean yelled.

  He shook his head. Orbie and me, we walked back out onto D Dock, leaving him there with people staring at him, and some of them had begun to laugh. Dink had been due a long time. He got off easy. In the old days down in the Keys somebody would have run a shark hook up through his jaw and used braided cable to tow him across the oyster bars and coral until the hook came loose.

  The group had shrunk. It was down to Joe, Gus, Anne and Amy. We opened new beers and then stepped aboard the Mine to check damage. The whole left side of Orbie’s face had begun to puff out, closing his eye. And on both hands he had dimples where his knuckles had been.

  “You’re a sorry mess,” I told him.

  “I feel just fine, Lew. Just fine. Sorry I didn’t leave you much.”

  “The little I had was right nice, thanks.”

  We went back onto the dock. “Where’d Rice go?” Orbie asked.

  Anne answered. “Christy helped him back to his boat right after you took off. She hasn’t come back yet.”

  “Is a nice fella,” Gus said firmly. And that was the decision. If Rice wanted to join the group, he was in. I hadn’t moved too fast, but Dink had helped me prove it. But I still couldn’t figure Rice out. He didn’t fit any of the slots you put people in.

  Amy said, “I guess Christy has always had a suppressed desire …”

  FOUR

  Christy Yale

  … to be a nurse, when I was a little kid. I remember one Christmas they gave me a toy nurse kit, stethoscope and all. But somehow I never even gave it a try. Now I’m Miss Christine Yale, Girl Friday of the Elihu Beach Chamber of Commerce.

  I was in the forward cabin of Rice’s Ruthless, sitting on the unused bunk looking at Leo Rice in the other bunk, propped up on a pair of pillows, a dark strong highball in his hand.

  “Feel better?” I asked.

  “Ask me when I’ve gotten this drink down. They introduced us but … I’m sorry … I don’t quite …”

  “Christy. Christy Yale.”

  His smile was slow and pleasant. “Christy Yale, Samaritan.”

  “It was a pretty stinky introduction to our little group, Leo.”

  “Who broke it up?”

  “They should have broken it up right away, but they had to wait until he kicked you, darn them.”

  “Oh, he only kicked me. I had the feeling he dropped a cruiser on me.”

  “Orbie and Lew broke it up. They took him ashore. By now they’ve had a chance to beat him half to death. I think they’ve been waiting for a good opening. He’s an impossible man.”

  “Improbable is a better word. I don’t remember ever running into that type before—at least so intimately.”

  “It seemed especially awful, Leo, because—because you’re just not the sort of man that happens to.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You have a sort of manner of importance about you, no matter how you’re dressed. A sort of dignity. I don’t know how to say it. A gentleman, I guess.”

  “You make me sound like a horrible stuffed shirt.”

  “Oh, you’re not!”

  He chuckled and it made him grimace with pain. “How would you know whether I am or not, Christy?”

  “Am I blushing? Leo, who are you? What do you do?”

  “Well …”

  “Understand that questions are not good form around here. But I’m an incurable snoop.”

  “The answer is pretty ordinary, Christy. I’m a corporation executive from Syracuse, New York. I got very run down—for many reasons. So I took a six-month leave of absence.”

  “You didn’t look so run down when you arrived.”

  “I got into the car and drove. You should have seen me. Thirty pounds heavier. Flabby, jittery. I ended up in Jacksonville. I rented an isolated beach cottage and I bought a shovel.”

  “A shovel!”

  “To improve my health and character. Every day I shoveled beach sand from here to there, and the next day I would shovel it all back. More every day. Finally I found myself admiring myself in the mirror, flexing muscles and so on. So I sold the car and bought a boat. I wanted to be a valiant mariner. Calm in the eye of the tempest, steely hand at the helm.”

  I saw the obvious chance to trap him. “Why did you stop here, Leo?”

  “I had the vague idea of going down to the Keys, but I found that boats make me nervous. I keep worrying about going aground, and what the markers mean, and what to do about other water traffic, and what part of the boat is going to suddenly sto
p operating.”

  “So you stopped right here?”

  “To get my wind.”

  “I’m a horrible snoop, Leo. I told you that.”

  There was a sudden wariness about him. “Yes?”

  “You got here last Friday. There was a letter in the box in the office for you on Saturday. From Syracuse, from a law firm I think. Addressed to you, care of Stebbins’ Marina, aboard the Ruthless. So you meant to come here.”

  “I laid out a route,” he said, too casually.

  “Don’t spoil it. I love intrigue,” I said.

  “And what would be my mysterious mission?” he asked lightly but guardedly.

  I put my chin on my fist and scowled at him. “I suppose Sid Stark would be the most logical. He’s in all sorts of tax trouble. Maybe you’re a sort of undercover agent, finding out how much he’s spending on all those parties.”

  “Hmmm. Any other ideas?”

  “Well, you could be working for the syndicate which has been trying to buy this place from Alice and turn it into an expensive and mechanized yachtsman’s paradise. Then all we common people will have to move out.”

  “Miss Yale, you have a lurid imagination.”

  I liked looking at him and talking to him. His hands were good, lean, strong and long-fingered. I have a thing about hands. And it was an ugly-nice face, not improved by the bulging purple bruise on the right cheekbone, the puffed lips and the split on the side of chin, iodined and bandaged by me. On a man that kind of a face is fine. I can tell you what it does to you if you are of the female persuasion and have a Halloween face.

  “You’re married, aren’t you?” I blurted. I have a nasty knack of not knowing what I’m going to say until I hear myself say it. In the past this has created quite a few problems down at the good old C of C.