by Day Keene
I called into the bathroom that she was very pretty.
“Thank you,” she called back. “Just get paid off, mate?”
“This morning.”
“You mean yesterday morning.”
“That’s right.”
“Long trip?”
“Three years.”
“No ports?”
“None as nice as this one.”
It was a thirsty business, waiting. I remember wishing I’d brought a bottle with me. Then Corliss came out of the bathroom, wearing a clinging white silk negligee. Her loveliness was a flame reaching out and burning me.
I got to my feet and leaned against the wall by the bed to keep the cottage from capsizing. The floor was beginning to heave. Corliss floated always just out of my reach.
“How much money do you have, sailor?” she asked me.
Drunk as I was, I played it cagey. I was still going home to Hibbing. I was still going to buy a farm. I pulled a handful of the crap-game money from my pocket. “Plenty, baby,” I told her.
I flopped down on the bed and patted it. “Come on, baby,” I said. “Remember I’ve been at sea three years.”
Corliss smiled at me, amused. “Let’s have a drink first,” she suggested.
She reached on a shelf for a bottle. As she lifted her arm, her robe gaped. My breathing almost choked me. I had to have her. I meant to. I’d never seen anyone so lovely.
She wasn’t more than twenty-three or twenty-four. Her hair was the color of honey. Her eyes and quarter-inch lashes were brown. She didn’t weigh a hundred pounds stripped, but her hips and breasts were exquisitely molded.
She floated toward me with the bottle in one hand and a water glass in the other. I reached out and caught my fingers in the neck of the white negligee.
She filled the glass three-fourths full of rum. “Here. Drink this first.”
I sipped the rum, pulling her toward me. She put the bottle on the deck, patted my hand, and sat on the bed beside me, smiling. “I’m awfully sorry, but you’re in for a sad awakening, mate.”
I reversed my hand. The skin on her stomach was soft and silky.
She took my hand away. “Don’t. What you need is some sleep.”
I finished the rum in the glass. “And then?”
“And then,” she said, “we’ll see. What’s your name, mate?”
I told her. “Swen. But everyone calls me Swede.”
She laughed, and it sounded like the tinkling of glass bangles in the doorway of a Chinese shop. “I wonder why.”
Her robe had gaped open again. When she laughed I could see her muscles ripple. I put my hand on her leg this time. She liked it. I could tell. The muscles in her leg twitched spasmodically. Then she pushed my hand away. Her eyes filled with tears.
“What’s the idea?” I asked her.
She said, “I wish I were what you think I am. But it so happens that I’m not. So — sorry, Swede. All you get is a cottage and some shut-eye. I have to have love with mine.”
I pushed her back on the bed and pressed my face against hers. “Don’t give me that.”
Corliss clung to me, quivering, demanding. But only for a moment. Then all her fire was gone. Even her flesh felt different. I’d hooked one finger in her bra and ripped it. Her breasts were cold white marble.
“Don’t,” she said sharply. “Don’t.”
I laughed and kissed her again. Then, moaning, she picked the rum bottle from the deck and smashed it over my head and both of us were standing in the middle of the room, rum mixed with blood on my face, the little blonde panting:
“I warned you.”
She had blood on her, too. My blood. My knees were rubber. I was out on a stormy sea in the dead eye of a calm with the start of a nasty roll making. One eye was blinded with blood. I clung to the rail of the bridge to keep from going over.
Then Corliss was on the bridge with me, pressing herself against me, holding me up.
“Oh, God,” she whimpered, “I’m sorry.”
Then a big green wave had swept over the bridge and carried me down and down into the cool black depths.
I sat on the bed feeling cheated. I’d made a fool of myself for nothing. The little blonde had been clever. She’d clipped me for my entire roll and hadn’t bothered to try to earn her money. As if any dame was worth fifteen thousand dollars.
Boy. Would Ginty laugh. “Back for a job, eh?” he’d roar, his fat beer belly bobbling. “I thought you were quitting the sea, Swede. I thought you were going back to Minnesota and buy a farm and get married and settle down.”
Then he’d give me some goddamn guano run. Or maybe a nitrate freighter. Just to teach me a lesson.
The more I thought, the madder I got. It had taken me three years to save twelve thousand dollars. Now the little blonde had my dough. And all I’d got out of it was a night’s lodging. In a single bed. Alone.
The little brunette had known her. They should know her last name at the bar. Also where I could find Corliss. I wanted my money back. I meant to have it. If I had to wreck the joint.
There was a handful of silver on the dresser. I dressed and put it in my pocket. Then I crossed the drive to the bar, the big purple neon parrot watching me.
The bar part of the restaurant was small but expensive-looking, with big white leather booths against the wall. The fat barman looked vaguely familiar.
I laid a silver dollar on the bar. “Bacardi. Light. A double.”
He served me without comment. I drank it in two gulps and pushed the glass across the wood.
“Let’s go again.”
I fumbled for more change. The barman shook his head. “Don’t bother with the chicken feed. You don’t remember me, do you, mate?”
I admitted, “No. I can’t say I do.”
“I put you to bed,” he told me. “After you insulted Miss Mason this morning.” He filled my glass and set the bottle beside it. “Go ahead. Drown yourself. Your credit’s good. You even got enough in the safe to bury you.”
I asked what he meant by that.
He rested his weight on his palms. “You may or may not remember it, mate, but when you make an ass of yourself this morning and Miss Mason is forced to conk you with a bottle, you are carrying almost fifteen thousand dollars. Fourteen thousand, eight hundred and seventy-five, to be exact. And Miss Mason puts it in the safe so some two-year-old kid don’t roll you.”
It wasn’t the setup I’d expected. I felt the back of my ears get hot. “Corliss is Miss Mason?”
The fat barman nodded, keeping his voice down for the benefit of the other patrons. “That’s right. She picks you out of a clip joint yesterday morning. Because she can see you’re headed for trouble and due to wind up dead broke. She tries to save your dough for you. And how do you repay her? You insult her. That’s how.” His bulk quivered with indignation. “If it had been me, I’d have thrown you out on the beach and kept the dough. But Miss Mason is a lady. And when she comes back from San Diego she’ll give you all your money, minus the rent on the cabin and what you swill at the bar.”
I felt even more of a fool. “Miss Mason lives at the Purple Parrot?”
The barman hooted. “Lives here? She owns it, sailor. Lock, stock, and all the barrels in the basement.”
I looked out the window at the landscaped grounds. The Purple Parrot Court was new. It had twenty units with a private beach. With the bar and restaurant, it was worth possibly two hundred thousand dollars.
The back of my neck got as red as my ears. I had no quarrel with Corliss. She had a quarrel with me. She’d picked me out of a clip joint. She’d saved my money for me. She was a lady, not a tart. And I’d repaid her by trying to force her.
I looked up as two guys walked in the door. There was only one thing they could be. They had the build, the walk, the smell. They glanced around the bar, then stood one on each side of my stool.
“What’s the idea?” I asked them.
The older of the pair pushed his Stetson b
ack on his head. “The name is Cooper, son,” he told me. “Sheriff Cooper. And it would seem you answer the description of a man we’ve been looking for all day. Blonde. Six feet two. Two hundred pounds. A seaman. A first mate of Scandinavian ancestry. What’s your name, fellow?”
I told him. “Nelson.”
“Occupation?”
“Seaman.”
“Rating?”
“Mate.”
He wasn’t a bad joe, for a cop. “You hit a man last night?” he asked.
I said, “I was in a fight. As I recall, some pimp tried to kill me.”
The barman’s fat face colored. He said, “Please, Sheriff. We try to run a respectable place here. Would you mind talking to Nelson outside? There are ladies and children dining.”
There was a murmur of approval from the tourists in the booths along the wall. The old joe looked at me. I got off the stool. I’d caused Miss Mason enough trouble. “Sure. Why not?” I said. I led the way out the door. “Yeah. I hit the guy. As I recall, he came at me with a sap.”
The wind had freshened and the night was filled with salt spray and the sound of the sea. On the drive in front of the bar, I asked, “So what’s the charge?”
The young cop was nasty about it. “Manslaughter, if he dies.”
“I hit him that hard?”
“You did.”
“Who signed the complaint?”
“His girl,” Cooper’s deputy said.
I remembered her vaguely. A top-heavy brunette in a faded green dress. With a harsh voice. Shrilling, “Kill the big Swede, Tony!”
I lighted a cigarette, cupping the match against the wind. “So?”
“So what?” Sheriff Cooper asked me.
“What happens now?”
“We talk to the judge,” he told me.
Chapter Three
The J.P.’s name was Farrell. Cooper had to dig him out of a poker game in the back room of the Elk’s Club. He held the hearing in the Sheriff’s office at the Palm Grove brig. It wasn’t much of a hearing.
“How you plead, sailor?” he asked me.
I said, “Self-defense. The guy come at me with a sap. I hit him.”
“During a crap game?”
“That’s right.”
Farrell spat tobacco juice over his shoulder. Out an open window. Up against the bole of a palm tree. “How about witnesses, sailor? Who saw him swing this sap?”
I said, “Two avocado ranchers, some construction stiffs back from Guam. Maybe the barman. Although he wasn’t in the game.”
“You know their names or where Sheriff Cooper can contact them?”
I shook my head. “Not me. The barman’s name was Jerry. But I haven’t the least idea who the other fellows were. They were just guys I met in a bar.”
The J.P. looked at Cooper. “Nelson give you any trouble, Sheriff?”
“Not a bit,” Cooper admitted.
Farrell looked back at me. “I’m sorry, Nelson,” he said. The little guy sounded as if he meant it. “We’ve had trouble with Tony before. But the law gives me no leeway. I’ll have to bind you over for trial. Your bail will be five hundred dollars.”
I asked Sheriff Cooper if I could call the Purple Parrot. He said I could. The fat barman answered the phone.
“The Purple Parrot Bar and Court. Wally speaking.”
I asked if Miss Mason had come back from San Diego.
“No. She has not,” he told me.
I said, “Well, look. When she does—”
“Yeah?”
“Tell her I’m sorry about last night. And ask her to do me one last favor.”
“What?” Wally asked me flatly.
“Ask her to deduct my bill and send someone over to the Palm Grove brig with my money. I’m being held on five hundred dollars’ bail.”
“For what?”
“For hitting a guy too hard.”
He said, “I’ll tell her,” and hung up.
The deputy’s name was Harris. He led me back to a cell and locked me in with two cases of empty Coke bottles, a confiscated four-bit slot machine, some leaky plumbing, and an assortment of curious cockroaches.
For some reason, Harris didn’t like me. He smiled nasty at me through the bars. “Let’s hope you’re not with us long, Nelson. Say, not more than two or three months. Then let’s hope that Tony dies.”
I asked, “What’s eating on you? You getting a cut of the game? Or was he managing your wife?”
His face got red. He started to unlock the door. Then he changed his mind and strode off down the hall.
The blanket on the cot looked crumby to me. I upended one of the Coke cases and sat with my back against the wall. My headache was gone. I felt fine. It could just be that Corliss would show in person with my money. I hoped so. I wanted to thank her for what she’d done, apologize.
I stopped kidding myself. I’d apologize, of course. I’d thank her for what she’d done for me. But what I really wanted was to see her. As I remembered her, she was lovely.
Still, considering the way I’d acted, she’d probably send one of the help.
The smell of the sea was gone now. All I could smell was dust and disinfectant and the cigar Sheriff Cooper was smoking.
I hoped I was satisfied. I was back on course again, in a cell. The cells I’d sat in. In Mexico, India, China. For brawling, wenching, getting drunk. It was time I settled down, made something of my life. I meant to. When I got out of this mess I’d head straight back for Hibbing. Without taking a single drink. I’d buy a farm. A good one. I’d marry one of the local girls and raise a family.
I lighted a cigarette, thinking. I’d been thirty-three on my last birthday. I wasn’t a kid any more. The rolling-stone gag was fact. I’d done a lot of things. And I still didn’t amount to a damn. I’d hunted diamonds in Africa. I’d used a machine gun for pay. I had my master’s papers in steam for a vessel of any tonnage. And where was I? In a cell in a hick-town brig. Lucky I had a dime. The little blonde was one dame in a thousand. If it hadn’t been for her, I’d be lying in some gutter, broke.
There were two four-bit pieces in my silver. I dropped one in the slot machine and pulled the lever. Two plums and a lemon came up. That for you, sailor. Phooey.
I sat back on the Coke case, thinking of Corliss.
“I wish I were what you think I am,” she’d told me. With tears in her eyes. “But I have to have love with mine.”
Love? I had plenty of love.
She’d wanted me plenty bad, too. Her flesh had crawled under my fingers. I began to sweat, remembering. Wanting what I’d seen. So she owned a tourist court. So what?
I got up and paced the cell, two steps forward, two back, while my mind and imagination squirreled across the steel mesh.
“I have to have love with mine.”
To keep from blowing my top, I dropped the other four-bit piece in the machine and yanked the lever. Hard. Three bars came up. One right after the other. Snicking into place without any hesitation. Win, place, and show, across the board. Then the trap door of the jackpot tripped and the machine spat half dollars all over the floor in a tinkling of silver; forty or fifty dollars’ worth of that beautiful stuff.
An omen?
Out in the office, Sheriff Cooper laughed. “There’s a sailor for you.”
Harris said, “God damn,” and strode back down the hall. His face pressed to the bars, he scowled. “Hey. You can’t do that. It’s illegal.”
“So’s adultery,” I pointed out. “But they tell me it happens all the time.”
I was still picking up half dollars when a car, traveling fast, stopped short in front of the substation. A moment later high heels clicked across cement. I knew who it was before she spoke.
“I bet your pardon,” the little blonde said to Sheriff Cooper, “but might I please see Mr. Nelson? I’ve brought the money for his bail.”
I gave Harris the handful of half dollars I’d gathered. “For your trouble, boy.”
He cursed me
under his breath. With the bars between us.
Corliss’ heels continued to make music, tip-tapping down the hall. She was even lovelier than I remembered. She was wearing yellow now. A sports dress. She was bare-legged, with yellow sandals to match her dress. And a white gardenia in her hair, over a smile for me.
“Hello there, you,” she said.
“Hello yourself,” I said. “It seems I can’t get out of your sight without getting in trouble, eh?”
“So it would seem,” she laughed. “I got here as soon as I could. Ninety most of the way. I started as soon as Wally told me.”
She put her hands through the bars. I held them while Cooper unlocked the door. Then we walked back to the office together, to sign the bail-bond papers, my hand barely touching her elbow. Corliss didn’t have to tell me. I knew. She was as glad to see me as I was to see her. Sometimes it happens like that. She wanted me as badly as I wanted her. Even if I was a big drunken Swede who’d caused her a lot of trouble. Who knew? Maybe she was the dream.
The paper work over, Sheriff Cooper walked out to the car with us. It was a pale green Caddy with the top down. Corliss handed me the keys.
“You drive.”
I helped her in. Then I walked around to the other side and slid in back of the wheel.
Cooper leaned on the door of the car, still friendly. “Don’t do anything foolish, son,” he advised me. “I mean like trying to ship out before your trial.”
I promised him I wouldn’t.
He grinned. “Like Farrell said, we’ve had lots of trouble with Tony. And even if he should die, the worst you’ll probably get is probation. Meanwhile, I’ll sniff around and see if I can’t locate the two ranchers you say witnessed the fight.”
Corliss leaned across me to talk to him, her breasts boring into my arm. “You do that, Sheriff Cooper. Please.”
Harris gave me a dirty look.
I turned the motor over and drove north on U.S. 101. “How come?” I asked Corliss.
“How come what?” she asked.
“You came yourself,” I said.
She glanced sideways at me. “It could be I wanted to.” Her fingers tiptoed down my arm to my hand, leaving little patches of heat behind them the size of her fingertips. “Would you rather I’d sent Wally?”
