The Surfside Caper

by Louis Trimble

  I threw my cigaret in the ashtray and got up. I was yelling louder. I couldn’t slow down. The pressures of the last hours were opening my seams. Her dull disbelief finished the job.

  “If you hadn’t lied to Milo about me—and God knows about what else—he might not be dead now. He and I might have been able to get together instead of fighting. I might have been able to protect him. But no, you had to make up your own rules for a game too tough for you. Now go back outside and see the points the opposition just scored.”

  She began to cry. A woman’s defense, I thought. The old softening process. But the crying kept on, a slow, steady, dull draining of herself. It was like Ingrid’s crying, I realized. It was not the kind of crying she could turn on or off.

  She got up suddenly. She took the brandy bottle and her tears through my bedroom. I heard the bathroom door close. I found my own bottle and poured rye on top of Annette’s brandy.

  I sat down. I was waiting for her to unwind all the way. I was hoping that she’d have something to tell me then.

  The bathroom door opened. Annette came into the living room. She walked with the exaggerated care she had displayed earlier. She went to the divan and sat down. She set the brandy bottle on the floor. There was barely enough liquor in it to cover the bottom.

  She said, “I’m drunk.” Her voice had the beginnings of a slur now. Her head came up. Her eyes were red-rimmed but she had washed the tear stains from her face.

  “If I drink enough I won’t remember,” she said.

  I said, “Remember what, Milo?”

  She said, “You know, you just don’t remember. Then it’s good. And you aren’t nervous any more.”

  Her words took on a keening sound, a despairing cry begging for comfort, for understanding. “But don’t tell him, please.”

  She came off the divan and took two unsteady steps forward. She went down on her knees and put her hands out, one on each of my thighs, at the sides.

  I said, “Tell who?”

  She didn’t hear me. She whispered, “Try to understand. He tries, you know, but he can’t. The first time was horrible. He was so terribly hurt. I tried not to. I swear I tried. For him. You believe that, don’t you? You have to believe it.”

  I thought, “My God, she’s talking about Nils. She’s talking about a dead man as if he was alive. As if he was somewhere waiting. As if she was afraid he would find out that she’d got drunk.”

  Her fingers began to knead my thighs. I put my hands on her upper arms and tried to pull her up. She sagged away from my grip. She slid down to a sitting position, her legs curled under her. She rocked back and forth.

  She began talking again. She said, “He found out, you know. I told him. I had to tell him. I didn’t want to but I had to. And I thought I wouldn’t have to drink like this once he knew. But it didn’t help.”

  She rolled to her knees and crawled across the room to the divan. She picked up the brandy bottle and worked out the cork. She emptied the bottle and dropped it. She stared at the wet cloth clinging to her skin. She said, “Dirty, drunken bitch.”

  She got to her feet. I got up too. Not to stop her. Who was I to judge the extent of her need to purge herself this way?

  She didn’t fall. She stood without swaying. She bent down and caught the hem of her evening gown. She gave a quick tug. It came up and over her head with a tearing sound. She threw it behind the divan. She pawed at bare flesh above the top of her brassiere. She lifted her arms and hung them around my neck. They were smooth, but thin, hard-muscled, with no soft flesh. All her body was that way. Hard, intense.

  I thought I was in for a drunken pass. But I was wrong. I might have been a post, a tree trunk. I was just something to lean on.

  Then I was something else.

  She jerked with her arms and lifted herself from the floor. She threw her legs around my waist. She hung her weight on me and swung back and forth like a pendulum.

  Her breath gusted on my ear. “Darling. Darling.”

  I got my hands under her armpits and tried to pull her loose. I stopped trying to be gentle. I sank my fingers into her flesh and jerked. My hands slid off her skin, leaving harsh red marks. My fingers caught the strap of her brassiere. The catch broke. The cloth came away in my hand.

  “Now, darling! Now!”

  I reached again. I got the grip I wanted. I peeled her off me with a violence that brought a gusty, sensual whimper out of her. She landed on her feet. Her breasts were small and hard and excited. They lifted and dropped with quick, tense breathing.

  I wiped my hands on my trousers to get the sweat and the touch of her off me.

  She wasn’t through. She grabbed for me. Her fingers hooked on my belt. I put my hands on her shoulders and pushed her away. She went to the floor on her knees.

  Her head went up and back, arching the line of her throat. Her eyes came open. She whispered, “I’m sorry, my dear. Forgive me. I couldn’t help it. I can’t you know. I really can’t.”

  I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Her voice rose in a wail, “Punish me. Punish me but don’t hate me.”

  She came scrabbling across the floor, naked except for a garter belt and hose and evening slippers. She clawed at my legs, her face lifted, pleading for me to recognize some inner hunger and to satisfy it for her.

  I stepped back. She lost her balance and fell forward. Her forehead cracked against the vinyl flooring. She rolled onto her back and lay with her hard slim legs thrust straight out. Her eyes were closed. She was out cold.

  I covered her with a blanket from the bedroom. I went to the living room and used the phone. I called for Tibbetts.

  The operator said, “Mr. Tibbetts is off duty.”

  I said, “I don’t care. Get him on the phone.”

  She got him. He answered the first ring. His growl was wide awake. I said, “This is Cottage Eleven. You’re wanted here on the double.”

  Flynn?”

  I said, “I’m calling for Mrs. Lofgren.”

  His end of the line closed abruptly. I hung up. I sat in the easy chair and lit a cigarette. I bent over to stub it out as I heard him coming up the walk. I saw the gun on the floor as I leaned toward the ashstand. I scooped it up and got out of the chair. I made tracks for the bedroom.

  The chimes tinkled. I lifted the mattress off the bed and pushed the gun between it and the box springs. I made a swipe at smoothing the spread where I had rumpled it. I turned and went to let Tibbetts in.

  7

  HE WAS wearing his dark suit and a look of impatience. He was wide awake, not showing any signs of having been asleep.

  I said, “She’s in the kitchen.”

  He walked past me. I shut the door and followed. He slowed down as he went by the empty brandy bottle. Then he went on to the kitchen.

  I stopped in the doorway and watched him. He walked slowly to Annette. He knelt down and drew the blanket down from her neck. He put it back with a quick motion. He straightened up and faced me, his fists balled up.

  He said in a thick voice, “Damn you, Flynn!”

  I said, “Why damn me? I didn’t hold her nose and pour a fifth of brandy down her throat. I wasn’t even around until she had most of it inside her.”

  He wasn’t listening closely. He was too busy hating me. He pulled his lips back from his teeth. He wasn’t trying to smile.

  I said, “Does she get this way often enough so the help knows she’s a lush?”

  He charged me. I was tired of being mauled, flipped over walls, pushed around. I had been splicing my temper since afternoon. I was tired of doing that too.

  He swung his fist at me. I caught it in my hand and kicked him in the kneecap. I let loose of his fist so he could use his hand to hold his knee. His face was sick white. But he wasn’t hating me any longer. He was beyond that.

  I said, “Behave yourself or I’ll kick more than your knee.”

  He limped away from me, to where Annette lay. He bent laboriou
sly and pulled the blanket from her body. He said. “Where are her clothes?”

  I said, “She threw her dress behind the divan. Her brassiere’s over there on the floor.”

  He picked up the brassiere. He limped into the living room. He came back with her evening gown in his hand. He laid both pieces of cloth on her body and folded the blanket over them. He acted mechanically, as if he had done this more than once before.

  He said, “How much did she drink?”

  I said, “How would I know? She showed up here with that bottle half full. She drank that in less than a half-hour. She acted as if she had the other half in her when she came. What difference does it make how much she soaked in? It was enough to knock her out.”

  He said, “She’s allergic to alcohol. Sometimes she passes out harder than other times. If I know how much she took, I know what to do for her.”

  “What do you do, go around counting her drinks?”

  He wasn’t interested in my needling him. He wasn’t interested in me at all right now. He said, “I can tell by the way she acts. What she says. What she … wants to do.”

  I said, “She was fine until she poured the second half of that fifth inside her. Then she got the idea I was someone else.”

  His shoulders jerked. He said in a dull tone, “Did she mention … him?”

  I said, “Not by name. But that was the idea she had.”

  He took a long time trying to get the next sentence out. “After that, after she pulled off her dress, did she—”

  I said, “She pulled off her dress because she spilled brandy on it.” His expression was hurting me. I lied a little. “The brassiere came off by accident.” I lied harder. “And whatever you think she might have wanted to do, she didn’t.”

  He bent down and got her into his arms. He straightened up, holding her as if she might be made of balsa wood, light and fragile.

  He said grudgingly, “I could use some help getting her to bed. I need somebody to hold a flashlight. We’ll have to go through the woods.”

  He sounded almost normal, like one man discussing a problem with another man. But I knew it wouldn’t last. He would hate me harder than ever once this was over.

  Hate me a lot harder. Because I had seen what a man like Tibbetts wouldn’t want anyone to see. He was in love with Annette. A sick, doglike love.

  I got a flashlight. We started out. It was a long swing through the woods. We crossed Dolphin’s path and entered the forest. We followed a long tongue of timber that went around the edge of the golf course and worked its way back to touch the rear of the main building just short of the outside door to Annette’s apartment.

  We hiked a good mile and a half. I was wet with moisture, dirty from clinging leaves and redwood needles. And I was puffing from carrying no more load than a flashlight. Tibbetts wasn’t even breathing hard. Yet he carried Annette all the way in his arms, holding her with the same gentle care he had used at my cottage.

  We stopped short of her door. The service alley ran in here from the south. It was dark and quiet. Only the faintest noises from the bar and lounge filtered into the blackness.

  Tibbetts said, “My passkey’s in my left pocket.”

  I found the key and unlocked her door. I stood aside while he carried her into the living room of her apartment. I shut the door and found the light switch.

  He carried her on into the bedroom and laid her gently on the bed. He straightened up and walked to the bath. He came back with a bottle of milky liquid and a glass.

  I watched him pour some of the liquid into the glass. He said, “Hold her head, will you.”

  I held her head up. He squeezed open her mouth and dribbled some of the liquid down her throat. He set the glass down and stroked her throat muscles, helping her swallow.

  He repeated the process until half a glassful of liquid was inside her.

  He said, “I can take it from here.”

  I didn’t take the hint. I stayed by the bed. I said, “What gives with Annette? Why the boozing? How long has it been going on?”

  He had his back to me. He kept it that way. He said “Some other time, Flynn. I’m busy right now.”

  I said, “I’m busy too. I’ve got a problem to solve. And I think she’s part of it. So is the display she put on tonight.”

  Her eyelids fluttered. Tibbetts said viciously, “Get out of here, Flynn. I don’t want her to know anyone but me saw her like this.”

  I said, “I’ll get out after you give me a few answers. Not before.”

  He was wiping sweat from Annette’s forehead with a clean handkerchief. He didn’t answer me for a good two minutes. Then he said, “It was this way when I came here.”

  “When was that?”

  “Just after Lofgren died,” Tibbetts said. “I worked for her father in his hotel in San Francisco. She asked me to come, to help out. I did.”

  I wondered how long he had been in love with her. How long he had known he didn’t have a chance. I said, “Was she that way before she married Nils?”

  A long pause answered my question. His “yes” was superfluous.

  I said, “When did it start? What’s behind it?”

  “What the hell difference does it make?” he demanded. “Your job is Dolphin.”

  I said, “It might make a lot of difference. She could have known Dolphin before she married Nils. The problem she has now could have started a long time before she ever heard of Nils Lofgren or the Surfside Lodge.”

  I wasn’t just fishing blind. I was putting together the little things; the way she had acted in her office earlier; the way she had acted and talked in my cottage; some of what Milo Craybaugh had said; the way she had gone riding with Dolphin.”

  He said, “Everybody in San Francisco heard of Dolphin.”

  I said, “Not everybody knew him.”

  Tibbetts stopped wiping her forehead. She wasn’t showing much change, just an occasional flutter of the eyelids. He straightened up and faced me.

  He said, “You can ask all the questions you want later, Flynn. Leave us alone for now.” He was pleading with me. It was tearing him apart but he was making himself do it. And he wasn’t even hating me. I wasn’t that important to him at the moment.

  I said, “All right. Bring her around and rehearse your stories so they’ll tally. Because I’m going to ask you both a lot of questions.”

  “I don’t give a damn what you do,” he said. “Just do it someplace else now.”

  I started for the door. I stopped. I said, “One more thing. What gives between Annette and Milo Craybaugh.”

  He turned his back to me again. His voice was so low I almost missed the words. He said, “They’re going to be married soon.”

  • • •

  I walked down the service alley to the main road. I stopped under the colonnaded drive-in lobby and had a cigaret.

  I thought about what Tibbetts had told me. And what he had revealed without words. And I thought what a beautiful motive he had for getting rid of Milo Craybaugh.

  I began to see a pattern forming out of chaos. But I didn’t have time right now to work it over. I had a more urgent job.

  I had to get Milo home.

  I rejected the idea of using my Porsche. It wasn’t built for hauling corpses. And I needed something less conspicuous.

  I thought of renting a car from the Surfside desk. But that would only get me remembered. I thought of clouting a car. Only I had never tried that. I wasn’t sure I knew how.

  Then the obvious solution struck me. Unless Milo had walked here from Rio Pollo, his own car must be in the parking area. And it should be easy to spot. I was fairly certain his business sign would be painted on the door.

  I walked back to the cottage, exploring as I went. I found Milo still resting quietly on my lanai. I didn’t like what I had to do next, but I made myself do it. I prowled his pockets until I found his car keys.

  I liked the next job even less. I set my teeth and picked Milo up. I carried him along the
edge of the woods that held the twelve cottages. Near Cottage One the timber blended with the trees hiding the parking area. I laid Milo down behind a big-boled redwood that stood less than twenty feet from the end of the driveway.

  I hiked to the entrance of the parking area. Just inside, splitting the wide driveway into entrance and exit lanes was a small lighted hut. An old man in a green-and-gold Surfside uniform occupied the hut. He was reading a paperbound book. I walked his way. He didn’t even glance up. He had a finger on a line of print and he was following it like a hungry GI in a redlight district.

  I walked past the hut. The old man paid no attention. I kept walking, swinging to my left, toward a line of cars in the area reserved for casual visitors. The guest cars were kept under a long, roofed shed. I ignored those.

  I found Milo’s car as easily as I had hoped. It was a new gray stationwagon with his sign in red on the door panels.

  I climbed in and tried the keys I had taken from Milo. The second one fit. I started the motor. It sounded like a threshing machine in the quiet. I waited until the temperature gauge started to move. Then I put the lever in reverse and backed around. I moved to drive and started forward. I eased up to the hut. I could feel sweat beginning to start under my arms. It was cold as it trickled down over my rib cage. I split my vision, trying to watch the road and the hut at the same time. I went by very slowly.

  The old man’s finger was almost to the bottom of the page he was reading. He wasn’t about to look up. His mouth was hanging open with excitement as he followed his story.

  I thought I had it made when the tail end of the wagon drew even with the hut. The guard fooled me. He still didn’t look up. But he shouted, “Night, Mr. Craybaugh,” and went on reading.

  I picked up speed and got out of there. I turned left instead of right. I stopped in darkness at the end of the road. I felt the wagon idling and went after Milo.

  He lay under the tree like a man taking a nap after a hard day’s fishing or hunting. I envied him. He was untouched now by worries of cold wars or hot wars or of handling the Surfside’s problems.

  I envied him until I touched him. His flesh was clammy and beginning to harden. He didn’t have anything to worry about. He didn’t have anything to look forward to either.