That Old Gang Of Mine

by Leslie Thomas

  'Oh, we'd like that, wouldn't we now class?' enthused Gabby.

  'Oh sure, great.' 'Yes please, sir.' 'Oh boy, I can't wait,'

  103

  echoed the gang, all nodding and returning the policeman's smile. 'Can we see how your gun works?' asked Molly, always the one to ask the additional question. 'I'd like to see that'

  'I promise,' said the decent cop. 'I won't promise to shoot anybody but I promise to show you. Maybe next week. I'm on this patrol next week as well.'

  'Tuesday,' said Ossie decisively. He wanted to get rid of the man.

  'Right, Tuesday then,' beamed the officer. 'Same time, same place. Gee, I'll enjoy that too. Look after yourselves.'

  He waved and sauntered on towards the crashing green ocean. The gang remained silent, watching him go. He suddenly turned and saw their expressions. 'Just carry on,' he called back. 'Don't let me disturb the lesson. I'm just a cop.'

  'Everybody wave,' ordered Ossie quietly. The gang all waved towards the friendly cop and he waved back before continuing his walk to the beach.

  seven

  Gabby and Ossie were walking by the sea at night. The wind and the day had gone, drifting in close company across the flat land towards the Gulf of Mexico, leaving the Miami night in its customary condition, warm and blue, with the firm promise of a later moon.

  The girl and the man walked a yard apart over the sand. Neither was wearing shoes. They had hardly spoken for five minutes. They progressed thoughtfully as if each were alone.

  'Listen,' he said eventually but without looking towards her. 'If you want to quit and go back to St Pete's I'm certain everyone will understand. I would.'

  'You trying to ditch me?' She stared down as if she had lost something in the shingle.

  104

  'No, not at all, Gabby. It's just been such a bomb.'

  'We'll think of something. Next time it will work. I know it.'

  He glanced at her and the beginnings of a grin touched his face. She continued walking, ploughing her feet into the sand, her face and her breasts pushed forward like an intrepid explorer in an unknown place. She did not return his look. They were walking towards an horizon of waiting stars. Across the sky, among the stars, a plane moved like a small spark.

  'Do you think I'm beautiful?' Gabby suddenly asked. She still did not look at him and they continued their walking.

  'Yes,' he said simply. 'Excessively.'

  'I think you're beautiful too,' she said. 'I go for men with untidy grey hair.'

  'Maybe when we do a successful robbery I'll get it cut,' he said.

  They returned to their silent journey. For several minutes neither acknowledged that the other was even there. It was Gabby who spoke again. 'Where are we headed?' she asked, looking behind her and suddenly realizing how far they had travelled along the beach. The sand faded far behind them and the white stripes of the sea showed clearly for a great distance.

  'Don't ask me,' he said. 'We just started walking.'

  They stopped, Ossie turning back and looking into the distance. The lights of Miami Beach were heavily along the shore. She extended her hand to him. He had been waiting for it. Their faces turned and their eyes met frankly for the first time.

  'The boy's not going to like this,' said Ossie. 'Bruce is crazy about you.'

  'I was never very enthusiastic about youth,' Gabby replied. 'Not even my own. I can't wait to be thirty. But maybe we won't tell him. Okay?'

  'Okay,' he agreed. 'We won't tell' For a moment neither seemed to know what was expected of them next. There was no awkwardness about it; they simply stood there, facing each other, a gap still between his rough blue shirt and her breasts, their hands still held. He grinned. 'What happens now?' he said.

  105

  'You're not so old you can't remember,' she said. 'How old are you anyway?'

  'Going on,' he said. 'Beyond that I'm not prepared to comment.'

  'You're beautiful,' she repeated softly. I don't know why I didn't see it before.'

  'You've been too busy being a gang leader,' he smiled. He had been a tired man for a long time. Suddenly he felt a freshness come from her and pass into him.

  She said: 'I love your tired face. I love the weary blue eyes and the lines on your forehead and the ...'

  'Maybe I can get a word in,' he said. 'You are the most stunning girl in America, well in Florida ... okay, let's settle for Ocean Drive.'

  'Thanks. Do you feel like kissing me?'

  'I'd forgotten,' he said. 'I thought that was old fashioned.'

  They leaned towards each other curiously, like experimenting children, and they kissed without fuss. Then he moved a pace across the sand and put his hard arms quietly about her waist and eased her body to him. The breasts pushed softly against his shirt, as though begging attention. Gabby's arms travelled up around his dark neck and she pressed her face to his. He felt himself stir in his gut and his groin. It had been a long time.

  'You look older than you are,' she whispered against the rough sides of his hair.

  T got old suddenly,' he said. 'Overnight.'

  'When you were a soldier?'

  'Yes. That makes you old.'

  'Are you going to kiss me properly.'

  'I was going to but we got to talking.'

  'Do it now.'

  'Sure, I'll try and remember how it goes.'

  He kissed her fully as she had asked. She began tugging at him, pulling him to the sand. He eased her down gently. Where they lay there was the bole of a felled palm tree. She was exploring his face, touching her fingers over its contours. 'I love your skin,' she said.

  'Try not to poke my eye out,' he said gently. They were al-

  106

  most lying against the trunk of the fallen palm. 'This could be a giant's leg,' he suggested, touching it with his arm. 'He's been washed up from the ocean and he's stretched out here but nobody notices him because he's too big.'

  'Like Gulliver,' she said. 'Do you like telling stories?'

  'Well it's been a secret ambition of mine, you know, a story-teller. I'd be great in one of those Eastern market places. But up to now I haven't had much scope. You've got to have someone to tell the stories to. It's no good telling yourself because you've always heard the goddamn things.'

  Gabby stretched herself along his whole body. His shirt was only fastened with one button. It came away as she tried to undo it. The shirt's going rotten,' he said. 'It's the air down here.'

  'I'll buy a new one,' she promised. 'A button I mean.'

  She lay her young cheek against his rough chest and he felt her plentiful hair cascading around his neck and across his shoulder. 'Once upon a time,' he began, 'there was a giant who carelessly lost a leg on Miami Beach. And along came two people and found that leg ...'

  Gabby began to ease his trousers from his hips.

  'What's this, they thought when they saw the leg.* His voice was controlled with difficulty because she was rubbing his stomach with her fingers and then she began to slide them down. They felt slim and luxurious on the enclosed parts of his body, but he continued with his story, closing his eyes. 'When they realized it was a giant's leg, they right away set out to find a giant with only one left leg, left leg ... leg left

  Now she had stripped him. He could feel the sand against his back and his buttocks. He still remained with his eyes closed. He could feel her taking off her clothes. She kneeled up, away from him, but now sitting astride his loins. His hands searched and went at once to her naked breasts. The touch went like a shock through him. The first finger and thumb of each hand carefully squeezed the nipples. He opened his eyes and saw what she was like. 'Jesus Christ,' he breathed. 'What a beautiful sight.'

  His hands stroked her shoulders, went below her armpits

  107

  and ran down her hip bones. They made a hollow on each side and he rested his hands there. 'What happened next?' she asked. 'In the story?'

  'Sorry, I got distracted,' he said. His eyes were held on hers no
w. Her hands were laid flat against his chest. 'You're sitting on my penis,' he mentioned.

  'I wondered what it was,' she said throatily. She slowly descended across his body and lay on top of him, their toes meeting, their knees side by side, their thighs against each other. She put her hand down to him and brought him into her. In no time the tiredness had gone from his face. He was smiling and so was she. They lay together for some minutes, the sea and the traffic on Ocean Drive sounded.

  'I ran away from St Pete's because of an older guy,' she said thoughtfully.

  'You said,' he said. 'You mentioned it.'

  'Sure. He was married and a big executive and that stuff. He still says he's quitting everything and coming down here to get me. He sends me letters.'

  'That's thoughtful. If he gets down here will you go?'

  'I don't know,' she shrugged. 'I guess I will.'

  'Oh. We're keeping this from Bruce, okay?'

  'Yes, we'll keep it a secret. It's more fun like that.'

  They fell more silent than the immediate night. Then he said, *What are we going to do with the old folks - the gang?'

  She smiled in the dimness. 'Kidnapping,' she said slowly. 'I've a feeling maybe we should try kidnapping.'

  Miami Beach's Hotel De Luxe Mon Desir sits with ponderous magnificence on a narrow neck of sand and land between the ocean and the narrow waters of the Intra-Coastal Waterway. From its fine and enormous main swimming pool a jetty runs over the sundeck and extends for a hundred feet into the sunny Atlantic.

  At ten o'clock in the morning Gabby with Ossie and Bruce on either flank lounged on sun-beds beside the pool, along with a scattering of other early sunbathers, and casually watched the double glass doors issuing from the hotel. At

  108

  five minutes past ten they opened and through them came an elderly man in a wheeled chair but wearing a bathing costume. He was propelled by a tall, claylike figure in the uniform of a chauffeur. The pair were Mr Cyril M. Hoffner, a millionaire from the Mid-West, and Landers, his personal servant and bodyguard.

  The trio watched carefully as Landers pushed his employer towards the sundeck and then ran the wheeled carriage up a wooden ramp and on to the jetty. At a strong but measured stride the servant pushed the old man towards the open ocean. Bruce raised himself on his elbow. The others eased themselves up so they could see also.

  At the end of the jetty Landers halted and then, after the briefest pause, he tightened his grasp on the vehicle, lifted, and emptied the old man into the sea.

  Gabby, Bruce and Ossie observed this with amazement. A woman reeking of coconut oil sun lotion, who had watched the same performance, saw their consternation and laughed. 'He does that every day,' she said. I thought he was trying to drown the old guy too. But he's just going for his swim. He's some character.'

  'Certainly seems to be,' acknowledged Gabby. The woman leaned back on her sun-bed and began to anoint herself with a further libation of oil. She pulled her large sunglasses over her face. The trio watched the ocean and saw Cyril M. Hoffner swimming through the easy waves to a point on the sundeck where Landers had taken the chair. The big servant knelt and eased the old man from the water with no trouble. He wrapped him in a bath robe and sedately turned and wheeled him back towards the hotel.

  The Sweetheart Bar in the Hotel De Luxe Mon Desir is casually lit, the bartenders are discreet and watchful; it is a place of illicit couplings of various sorts and where they mix a famous Vodka Collins. The bar is in the shape of a heart.

  The Hotel De Luxe Mon Desir itself is one of the largest and most ornate on Miami Beach with fifteen hundred bedrooms, shops, hair and beauty salons, three swimming pools, a life-

  109

  saver, a golf professional, a gourmet restaurant, and a dwindling clientele. It was built in the late nineteen forties when Miami suddenly burgeoned after the war. It sought to remain obtrusively select by refusing to display its name.

  It was the vacation haunt of the very wealthy who felt at home among its golden chandeliers, heavily draped curtains and pseudo-Louis furniture. Many came down from the wintry north in their private cruisers, voyaging from New York City, or even further north, in ease along the Intra-Coastal Waterway, travelling into the gradual sunshine, waiting politely for the many cantilever bridges to be opened to allow them to pass, and eventually tying up only a hundred yards from the main door of the Hotel De Luxe Mon Desir. For many of the visitors the most hazardous and uncomfortable part of the entire journey was traversing the six lanes of the highway that divides the hotel from the waterway. Special staff were on duty to escort the elderly or the nervous to the door of the hotel.

  Cyril M. Hoffner was an annual migratory visitor. He was the man whose youthful brainchild had been the Hoffner Widespread Manure Distributor, a device which had given many of America's farmers cause for gratitude and had, of course, made Mr Hoffner one of the richest men in the Mid-West. Every year he would travel in January to New York to visit his sixth wife and then board his fine cruiser Marilyn Monroe VII (Mr Hoffner tended to get through a lot of cruisers and lots of wives) for his pilgrimage to Miami Beach and the De Luxe Mon Desir. Although Mr Hoffner had taken to travelling about in a wheeled chair, there was nothing crippling him, but he was seventy-three and had become obsessively lazy.

  Ossie, Gabby and Bruce stood at the Sweetheart Bar and observed Mr Cyril M. Hoffner as Landers propelled him across the great ornate lobby of the hotel in the early evening. He was on his way for his daily perusal of the Dow Jones tape. It had not given him cause for anxiety for years but he liked to think he was still in contact with the market. He was a man of sullen temper on occasion, although in his offguard moments he had been heard to sing to himself snatches of

  110

  traditional western songs. His words to the propelling Landers usually came singly. 'Forward.' 'Stop.' 'Back,' as if the servant was a human gear box, and Landers never spoke at all unless it could not be avoided. Bruce observed the massive, brooding man, six foot three from his boots to his scowl, with shoulders spread wide like the wings of a Boeing.

  'Who's going to look after the ape?' asked Bruce quietly as they sat at the Sweetheart Bar.

  'I thought maybe you could handle him,' smiled Ossie. 'Tough kid like you.'

  T never went to war,' said Bruce. 'You did.'

  'He'll be easier to handle than a war,' replied Ossie.

  'It'll be over quicker too,' said Gabby enigmatically.

  Hoffner and Landers had gone from their view into the Dow Jones corner. They knew he would be back in less than two minutes. On cue the invalid chair with the great pushing servant reappeared around one of the hotel's famous bogus classical columns.

  'Shit,' muttered Loose Bruce hiding behind his glass. 'That guy gets bigger with every step. Maybe Ari the Greek can handle him. At least Ari can run."

  'Once we've got the boss, the rest will be no trouble,' said Gabby quietly. The two bartenders were down at the pointed end of the bar, out of hearing. 'We just need the hostage,' she continued. 'That's what hi-jacking is all about. Power through persuasion.'

  'There's three crew on the boat,' said Ossie. 'Brothers.'

  'It gets better,' grumbled Bruce. 'AH the time it gets better.' Gabby and Ossie continued drinking and watching Mr Hoffner being trundled across the lobby.

  'The beauty of it is,' whispered Gabby, 'we won't need to hustle him or carry him to his boat. We can just wheel him there.'

  'It will need to be about this time of the evening,' said Ossie looking at his watch. 'Seven. When he's going to look at the stock market report. We can count on him doing that. And there'll be just enough daylight to get the boat away from the dock, down the waterway and out into the sea before it's dark.'

  Ill

  Bruce looked apprehensive. 'Can you handle a boat like that, Ossie?' he asked. 'I couldn't. Anyway I get to feeling sick.'

  'I thought you might,' mentioned Gabby.

  "The crew will handle the boat,' said Ossie. 'W
e just press them.'

  The map showed the eastern tail of the Florida coastline, curling down from Boca Raton to Palm Beach and finally into the long dotted tail of islands terminating at the humid old city of Key West. Ossie was taking the briefing. The members of the Ocean Drive Delinquent Society sat attentively. Molly Mandy leaned forward and pointed to Boca Raton. 'My sister-in-law lives at Boca,' she announced, smiling around as if it were an attainment.

  'And it's real nice there at Boca,' said Katy. 'M-M-My cousin gets there every season.'

  'No,' put in Ossie firmly. 'No ladies, Molly's sister-in-law has not met Katy's cousin. Can we take that as understood? Please ladies, we're trying to plan a hi-jacking, not play happy families.'

  'Sorry,' muttered Katy. 'We just like a little social chitchat.'

  'Where would we be without it?' agreed Molly.

  'Later, later,' said Ossie.

  'Yes, please ladies, cut it out,' said Gabby.

  'You didn't know your great aunt at Boca,' said Molly, determined to get the final throw.

  'No, okay. You must tell me some other year, grandma. Right. Ossie, get back to it before they start again.'

  'On Wednesday 16 February, at 7.05 p.m. we will abduct Mr Cyril M. Hoffner, one of America's wealthiest men, from the lobby of the Hotel De Luxe Mon Desir, Miami Beach. Mr Hoffner spends most of his time in a wheeled chair pushed by a man called Landers who looks as though he might be a buddy of Tarzan. However, we will eliminate Mr Landers. I'll give you the details later. Mr Hoffner will be persuaded at gunpoint to keep quiet until he is taken across the street,

  112

  still in the wheeled chair of course, to his cruiser, Marilyn Monroe VII, which is moored directly across from the hotel. Right?'

  'Right,' they all echoed. Their faces were beginning to shine.

  'Steps will have been taken to make sure the boat is ready for sea as soon as we get the old guy aboard. We will get away as soon as possible, within two or three minutes. Landers, incidentally, will be taking the trip with us, so there's no reason for anybody at the De Luxe Mon Desir to suspect anything's wrong.'