Elmo said, “You just write pretty words about Grassy Bay for us, and let me know if Jennings happens to come up with any good ideas. The money will keep coming.”
“But weren’t you talking about one little odd job for him, Elmo?”
“Hell, yes! I damn near forgot. You won’t get much sleep tonight, Jimmy boy. You got to go pack that big blonde of Buckie’s and stick her on an airplane. Here’s a hundred dollars for a ticket.”
“Where to?”
“She can pick her own direction, long as it’s a nice long flight.”
“Does Flake know about it?”
“He will in the morning, and when Leroy finishes talking to him, Buck will go down on bended knee and thank us for giving him a second chance. If she’s long gone, he’ll be easier to handle.”
“Does the girl know she’s going?”
“Leroy’s going down there right now with you and have a little talk with her. Leroy’s good at this kind of thing. I’ll be down in a while, but I expect you’ll be gone by then, so goodnight, Jimmy.”
• • •
As they walked down toward the pool, Leroy said, “All you do is back me up if I have to bring you into it. Two work better than one on these things. She’s just a kid.”
Charity was fixing herself a drink when they found her. Flake was still in the same position, mouth open, arm dangling.
Leroy smiled at the girl and said, firmly, “You come out here for a while. We want to talk to you.”
She came along willingly. Leroy took her to the far end of the pool and had her sit in a redwood chair. He pulled two other chairs close, facing her, and motioned to Jimmy to sit down with them.
“I want to ask you some questions, Miss Prindergast.”
“I never give interviews except at the studio, sweetie.”
“Where’s your home?”
“Wherever I happen to be, sweetie.”
Leroy Shannard made a sudden skillful motion. His hard palm cracked her face around to one side. Her drink fell and shattered. She was motionless for one stunned moment, then squealed with rage and lunged at him. Leroy shoved her back into the chair. When she tried again, he slapped her again.
“Settle down or I’ll really have to hurt you. You’re not among friends.”
There were welts on her face and her eyes were streaming. “You … you dirty bastard!” she said.
“Exactly. Precisely. Now answer the questions without any cute talk. Where are you from?”
She hesitated. When he raised his hand she said, quickly, “Dayton, Ohio.”
“That’s better, dear. You met Flake in Fort Lauderdale. You went there for spring fun and games with the rest of the kids. Why didn’t you go back home?”
“I was going to flunk out anyway.”
“Buck Flake was stupid to bring you back here. Do you realize that?”
“I don’t know what you mean. He offered me a job.”
“You know what I mean. He’s a married man.”
“He’s a lot of fun.”
“The fun is over.”
“You better ask him about that, sweetie.”
“Buck has a lot of friends. He’s tied up with a lot of people in various business ways. Those people want to take good care of Buck, whether he wants it or not. So nobody is asking him anything, Charity. In fact, nobody is asking you anything. We’re telling you exactly what choice you have. Mr. Wing will take you home and wait while you pack and drive you to an airport, buy you a ticket and put you on a flight. If you want to be stubborn, I can have a sheriff’s deputy and a jail matron here within fifteen minutes. They’ll take you in and book you for theft.”
“Of what?”
“Anything plausible. My wallet, maybe.” He smiled. “Or it could be disorderly conduct, public intoxication, soliciting.”
“Whatever you do, Buck would get me right out.”
“Probably, if none of us could talk him out of it. But it’s a funny thing about that matron at the county jail. Every time a pretty girl is booked, the matron looks her over and seems to find lice or the evidence of lice in her pretty hair. So, in the interest of hygiene, she orders the pretty tresses shaved off, before she puts the girl in one of her nice clean cells. Sometimes it takes four holding and one shaving to get the job done. But it gets done, Miss Prindergast.”
She raised her hand slowly to her heavy silver hair. She stared at Jimmy Wing. “Could … could that happen?”
“It usually does.”
“You’re both trying to scare me.”
“If you want to take the gamble, Charity,” Leroy said, “go right ahead. It wouldn’t be permanent damage anyway. Hair always grows back.”
She snuffled, bit her lip and looked at the pool. “Can I even say goodbye to Buck?”
“You might say it too loud and wake him up, dear,” Leroy said. “You have your purse. You better leave right from here.”
“But I didn’t want to leave. This is a fun place.” She sighed. “They’re all fun places. Hey! How about my pay?”
“What’s due you?”
“Let me see. It would be about eighty dollars.”
Leroy took out an alligator wallet, separated eighty dollars and handed her the money. “I’ll get it from Mr. Flake.” He stood up and said, “It wouldn’t be wise to write or phone Mr. Flake, or to turn around and come back.”
“I said he was fun. I didn’t say he was a thing.” She stood up. “Well, Jimmy Wing, let’s go. I just didn’t realize Buckie had such sweetie friends.”
She was a tall girl to walk with. She had nothing to say. She sat in the car, subdued, as far from him as she could get. She did not speak all the way to Palm Highlands, except to direct him to the display house where she was living. It was several doors beyond the sales office. He stopped in the drive and said, “I’ll wait here.”
“Hell, come on in and help me say goodbye to it.”
He followed her in. She turned on the lights in every room as she went through it. All the furniture was new. She had managed to strew clothing in every room, fill every ashtray, dirty every glass. She turned the built-in music system on at high volume, hauled two blue suitcases out of a closet, fixed herself a drink and told him to help himself.
“He belted me a couple of good ones,” she said. “Look at the damn marks!”
“It surprised me.”
“I know. Your mouth hung open. But it didn’t surprise you as much as it did me. Go gather up clothes, dear. Start in the living room. Dump them in this suitcase.”
In less than twenty minutes she was ready to leave. As she went around, taking a last look, she said, “It makes you feel like dirty, being hustled out of town. It makes me feel cheap. All clear, I guess. Help me get the lights. Key on the table, I guess. Should I leave him a note? Hell, no. What would I say? Four pieces of luggage and one sweater. Where are we going, dear? Which airport?”
“It depends on where you want to go, I guess.”
“I’d like to look at what they have, and pick one out.”
“Dayton?”
“Sweetie, if that’s the only one they have, you can bring me back here for the new hairdo. I wore that place out.” As she reached for the last light switch, she gave him an urchin grin, a bawdy wink.
“Shouldn’t we do some phoning first, Charity?”
“That would be planning ahead, Jimmy. Makes for a dreary case of the dulls. Let’s just roll the dice.”
He carried the two big bags out and put them in the wagon. She brought the smaller ones. As he backed out of the driveway she said, “Maybe I kept you from phoning the little woman, eh?”
“No little woman. There is one, but she isn’t taking calls.”
“Separated?”
“That’s a good enough word. Where do you want to fly to?”
“Let’s see what they got first. Where’s the nearest place with the biggest choice?”
“Tampa. But we can stop at Sarasota and see what they’ve got.”
; “Wing, sweetie, you’re ugly in a kinda nice classy way. I usually don’t like sandy men. They look as if they’d go fat and pink and start snorting.”
“Thanks so much.”
She carefully folded her white cardigan and placed it on his right thigh. She hitched around until she could lie on her side, using the cardigan as a pillow. The seat was as far back as it would go. The bottom curve of the steering wheel was within an inch of her forehead.
“Mind?” she said.
“Not at all.”
“I’m a big girl. I need a lot of room. Wake me at the ticket counter.” She breathed deeply a few times, and was asleep sooner than he would have believed possible. He was very conscious of the solid weight of her head against his thigh. When he slowed for a stop sign, there was a scent of her in the car, gin, and a soapy fresh smell of her hair and a faint fragrance of perfume.
It was a little after four when he stopped in front of the Sarasota-Bradenton Airport Terminal. She had stirred slightly in her sleep a few times. His leg was tired and numb from having held it in the same position so long. She sat up, rubbed her eyes with her fists, shook her glossy hair back, and then looked at him and said, “Oho! You again! Are you following me?”
“Want to wait while I check?”
“No. I’ll go in too. You can check while I use the biffy.” She got out and limped around in a little circle, stamping her foot. “Pins and needles,” she said. She took the smallest suitcase out of the wagon and carried it in with her.
She came out in fifteen minutes, hair brushed, mouth fixed, looking incomparably fresh and rested. She came tocking toward him on her high heels, a big, gaudy, smiling young girl. She stood eye to eye with him, making him feel dwindled.
“Four hour and fifteen minute wait,” he said.
“Where does it go?”
“It’s Eastern, and it hops here and there and ends up in Idlewild in the later afternoon. There’s room on it.”
“On to Tampa, Wingy sweetie.”
“After some coffee.”
“Sure. But I could drive and you could sleep, you know. Show me a map. I’m damn fine about maps, man. I’m sober and I’ve got dandy reactions and I love to drive right into the dawn.”
After slight hesitation, he skipped the coffee. He moved into the rear seat. She gave him her sweater for a pillow. He sat up until he saw that she handled a car with precision and competence. He stretched out. Moments later she was leaning in, shaking him. It was gray dawn. He sat up. They were in a parking area at Tampa International.
She handed him the parking tag. “Come on, sweetie. Wake up with the sun. I got lost once, but we still made pretty good time. You need a motor job. Let’s leave the bags here until we know which lucky airline gets them. How do you lock this thing? How do you feel?”
“Wretched.”
“You look worse than that. Come on. Get the blood moving. You didn’t stir a muscle when I bought gas. You owe me five sixty, sweetie.”
He stood beside the car and stretched, then locked it and followed her into the terminal. Every man within a hundred feet, sitting and standing, straightened up and stared at her. She went from counter to counter, airline to airline, standing at each long enough to read the dispatch board.
“Now the coffee,” she said, and he followed her to the coffee shop. They sat at the counter. She ordered a large orange juice, cereal, hot cakes with sausage and a pot of coffee. He ordered juice and coffee.
“If you’d eat, you wouldn’t get so tired, Wingy. This is like a new day. Fortify yourself. Now let me get straight. I name the place, you buy the ticket.”
“Up to a hundred dollars.”
She glared at him. “The hell with that! If I’m run off, I want the first-class treatment. You can get it back from all those dear old pals of Buckie’s. How much have you got on you?”
He checked, his fingers slow and fumbling. With the money Elmo had given him yesterday morning, he had two hundred and fifty-six dollars.
“Of which five sixty is mine anyhow,” she said. “No airlines credit card?”
“Not on my salary.”
“Well, give me two-forty of it, and if it’s more, I’ll have to chip in.”
“Damn decent of you. Where are you going?”
“Las Vegas. There’s a couple of ways to get there. Any objection?”
“Nothing I can think of. Except the cost.”
She had been eating with a considerable fervor. She finished and said, “Stand guard over my coffee. Give with the money. I’ll get the ticket.”
“Go see if you can get on a flight and then we’ll go buy the ticket.”
“Such trust,” she said. She was back in ten minutes. She handed him a small package. “All for you, sweetie.” He looked into the bag. It was a plastic kit containing comb, toothbrush, toothpaste, razor and shaving cream. “You don’t owe me,” she said. “It will improve your outlook.” She patted his shoulder. “Run along and burnish.”
When he came back to the counter she saluted him. “In a sense, you look human, Wingy.”
“In a sense, I feel better. I was shaving and thinking about you. You’re better organized than you look. Maybe Las Vegas makes some sense too.”
“There was a spooky little bartender in Lauderdale. His brothers are all wedged into a thing out there, the Sahara, and they’d made a niche for him and he was on his way, wanting me to come along and share driving, saying I could make out, because there’s so many ways out there. So he’s there and he’d make some motions around and about but I could drop anyplace and land dancing, so it isn’t a sweat. About my little airplane, dear, let’s go buy it. But it isn’t until three-oh-five, a jet thing, and the best I could do, except sprawling around Chicago for half my life.”
“I’m supposed to be a working man.”
“But you are working, aren’t you? I didn’t get the idea this was a pleasure trip.”
They bought her ticket and checked the luggage through, except for the smallest suitcase. The sun was up and there was an early-morning fragrance, and a promise of heat and rain.
She stood in the terminal and looked at him with a great earnestness and said, “I really and truly, honest and truly, will get onto that thing and be gone, sweetie. I’ve got the ticket and the urge. So you can paddle back to Palmville and say you stoned me out of town. Okay?”
“All right, Charity. Sure.”
She looked at the terminal clock. “But I am not going to stand around here like some kind of a nut for nine hours, rebuffing the chatty types. I saw nearby motels. You can drop me, and I’ll leave a call and taxi back. One thing I can always do is sleep.”
He drove her to a cluster of competing motels and she picked the one she liked. She strode in and registered and came out with a key, and he drove her back to a unit at the end of the court beyond a ludicrously small swimming pool. “She promised no maids clashing and bellowing around, and a taxi hooting for me at two-fifteen.”
He carried the small suitcase in. The room was small, shadowy and chilly, with one bed and a giant television set and a faint institutional odor of antiseptic.
He put the suitcase on the luggage rack. She moved close to him and looked at him with a strange expression. “Well?” she asked.
“I was wondering …”
“Yes?”
“I guess it’s none of my business. And you seem a lot more competent at twenty than I was. But that’s a very hard town, Charity. I know you don’t want anybody being protective. But there’s a guy I know out there, works on the paper for Greenspun, I could give you a note to him you could hold onto and use if you have to, if things get rough for you somehow.”
She shook her head slowly, her expression wry. “Here I stand, itching for the pass. Oh boy, did I ever have one for you! I was going to give it the swivel and a lot of back. I was going to give you one to make the pair I was given look like pattycake pattycake. So you don’t pick up a single clue. Instead you keep on being a very nice sweetie guy
.”
“Do you want the note or don’t you?”
“Now he’s bugged. Yes, I want the note, don’t I. Pretty please.”
There was stationery in a drawer. He sat and addressed the note, and wrote, “This will introduce Miss Charity Prinderg …”
“Hold it!” she said. She was standing behind him, a hand on his shoulder. She reached over and crumpled the note and said, “This is a bigger departure than most, so I need a new name. For more reasons than you could guess. You give me one, sweetie.”
“Is the Charity part okay?”
“It’s even a character trait. Let’s keep it.”
He thought for a few moments. “How about Charity Holmes?”
“Mmm. As in Sherlock, eh? If it doesn’t sound too much like a housing project for the aged. Charity Holmes. It swings a little. Charity begins at home. You know, I like it. I like it a lot.” She kissed his ear. “I’m christened. On with the note. I’m ticketed as Prindergast. When I walk off the ramp I turn into Miss Holmes.”
He wrote the note and gave it to her. She read it over, nodded, and put it in her purse. When he stood up, she put her arms around his waist and leaned back slightly and looked up at him. She had stepped out of her shoes, stepped down to a height where she seemed younger, smaller, more manageable.
“Poor old Wingy,” she said. “The hard types using him for a handy man. Let’s take ourselves a little lovin’, just for luck.”
“I just … thanks but I … I mean I really …”
She looked at him in a puzzled way. “You pledged, or something? Sick? Queer? Or you don’t like great big girls? Sweetie, I may give it away, but I don’t throw it around. There just aren’t that many I need.”
It was his intention to give her a friendly smile, a kiss, a perfectly polite and orderly and face-saving refusal of favors offered. But to his utter disbelief and consternation, the mild words clotted in his throat, he felt his face twisting into a sob, and the tears began to run out of his eyes. Through the distorting prism of tears he saw the sudden warm concern on her face. He tried desperately to laugh at himself, but it came out as a huge coughing sob. She led him over to the bed. He sat on the edge of the bed, slumped with his face in his hands. She knelt on the floor beside him, pressed against his leg, one hand on his knee, the other gentle at the nape of his neck. She made small tender sounds of comfort.
A Flash of Green Page 30
