by Ted Thackrey
It seemed like as good a time and place as any.
I hooked the knotted shoelaces between my jaws, turned myself to face south, where the Palos Verdes peninsula warmed red tile roofs in the first dim glimmerings of cloud-filtered sunlight. And began to stroke.
The first few minutes were fine. Mountain living and marathon poker sessions are not a bad mix, and a combination of Oriental mental discipline and t’ai chi serves well enough to keep the physical engine in condition. But this leaves little time for such pleasures as ocean swimming, and I found myself falling back into the slow rhythms with an enjoyment alloyed only by the unhandy leather bundles on either side of my face. They exerted a considerable drag in the water and prevented perfect coordination of breathing and stroke in the Australian crawl. Besides, I was beginning to feel the first warning twinges of an ache in the jaws.
All right, then: Drop the damn things.
The idea was attractive and I managed to beguile several minutes with it, turning the thought over and over in the showcase of the mind and admiring its simple, attractive brilliance. But it was out of the question. Shoes and shirt would be the minimum required wardrobe if I was to make my way inland afoot from wherever I finally came ashore. And that was beginning to look more and more like the only way I was going to find out what I needed to know about recent events, short of calling Best Licks and requesting emergency reinforcements—which would be a last resort of purest gasp extreme.
I broke my stroke and treaded water for a moment to take a bearing.
The view offered a little encouragement. The old hotel was the tallest building along that part of the coastline and I had entered the ocean a few blocks south of that, so the starting point would be . . . oh, how about the flagpole there on the Strand . . . and now I was opposite . . . what?
The castle.
Someone, in the dear dead days before beachfront building codes, had built a three-story pseudo-Moorish monstrosity complete with turrets and enclosed spiral stairways. The structure was subsequently painted pink and cut up into apartments by an owner who thought “Castle by the Sea” was a name worth immortalizing on a bronze plaque bolted to the stucco of the main entryway. The turrets were easy enough to pick out from the sea, and I tried to remember whether they were five blocks or six from the building with the flagpole.
Never mind. Progress was being made. I turned my face toward the peninsula again and resumed the crawl stroke, forcing the mind to concentrate on the arm and leg motions until a steady beat was established.
The sun finally dried up the clouds and blew them away about the time I came abreast of the old power plant.
I turned to look at it and floated on my back for a while instead of treading water.
Morning was well advanced now.
I had been away from the beach for too long to be able to judge time by the position of the sun in the sky, but the total disappearance of cloud cover seemed to argue for something like ten o’clock, and I was getting messages from the midsection on the general subject of coffee.
Strong coffee.
And lots of it.
Maybe even with just a hint of chicory . . .
I took three deep breaths, started to roll over on my stomach to resume the crawl stroke, and decided not to. Coffee wasn’t the only thing I needed; an hour or so of rest on a sandy, sun-kissed morning beach was right in there among the ideals with God and Mother. I took a couple more deep ones and forced myself through the first slow motions of a backstroke.
It got the work done, put me back in motion and drove away the momentary megrims of fatigue.
But the warning was still there in the momentary hesitations that kept the motion from becoming altogether regular and mechanical. I set my mind to work watching a mental clock against the necessity of changing stroke in order to rest one set of muscles while letting another assume the main burden of propulsion.
And in the end, it was more than a warning. I was back to sidestroke, moving slowly but steadily past a line of brand-new apartments defaced by decorator colors when the first cramp struck. Just a little one, enough to bunch the muscles of the right leg into a tight ball and force it up toward my groin. But too much to ignore.
Time was when I could work such spasms out of existence and keep the oxygen flowing; Master Masuda would doubtless have been able to suggest an exercise to cure the condition, or a mental discipline to relegate it to nothingness.
But that time was long ago, and Yoichi Masuda was not at the beach today. As soon as the cramp eased enough to let me extend the leg, I turned on my back and began to stroke—arms only; let the thighs and calves do their own thing—toward shore.
Not a trace of cloud left in the sky now.
Sun almost directly above.
Take it easy. Go with the flow, bro. All the time in the world and nothing to do but enjoy it. Just a little farther and we got it made. In the shade.
I rolled over again when I felt the first lift of a breaking wave, and let it move under me, waited through the next one, too, and then risked a small flutter of coordinated arm and leg work to catch the third.
Just a guess.
But right. I surged over the crest, ducked my head, and let the back hump a little . . . and surfed in on the kind of perfect rolling power you could wait a lifetime to find. All the way to the tuck-under just before touchdown on the sand, the somersault that leaves the bodysurfer at rest in a relaxed posture with water receding and nary a trace of sand burn.
The long, sweet ride.
After that, I stopped thinking for a few minutes to give the body a chance to concentrate its energies on the major problems of mere physical existence.
None of them were small. The arms weighed five hundred pounds apiece, and the cramps that had been held at bay by the adrenal energy of the final effort descended on both legs with a vengeance. I stretched out full-length at the high-water mark, extending everything to its limit and compelling the muscles individually to relax. They finally obeyed. Unwillingly.
The sun was bright and the morning was turning out to have too many hours in it.
My eyelids were closed, and the brightness registered on the brain as a kind of hum. Monotonous. Lulling.
Sleep.
Let it happen; nothing could be important enough to make me move from this position, with the sun and the waves and the sand.
Sleep.
Nice place to live. Nice day for it. Nice warm sand. Nice sun. Nice water. Nice sea smells. Nice quiet part of the beach to . . . wait for Gideon’s angels.
Suddenly I was sitting bolt upright, arms lifted in ichi-defense posture, legs coiling beneath me, ready to roll or spring.
So, all right, then. Enough already! I let the legs continue their motion until they were under me, and then stood, the last trace of epinephrine tingling into the extremities. The shoes were still dangling on either side of my head, and it took real effort to get the tied laces out of my mouth. The jaws seemed to have locked.
But I did it and took the bundle in my hand and dug the wadded shirt out and shook it free as I walked up the sands, navigating toward a spot near the seawall that seemed to be favored by the morning beach crowd.
I found a space and sat down and went to work on the knot in the shoelaces.
Nobody looked in my direction.
I was invisible.
Just another ragged facet of a beach scene that will absorb almost anything or anyone, so long as the amenities are observed. No dogs. No drinking.
And no public sex until the sun goes down.
By the time the shoes were dry enough to wear without socks, I was ready to walk.
At least as far as a phone booth. The angel’s penknife had disappeared sometime during the morning swim, but the loose change seemed to have stayed in the deep pocket of the jeans, and I decided to use two dimes of it to see if I could get lucky just one more time.
The sign on the pay phone was a real surprise.
It told me I had backstroke
d, side stroked, crawled, and floated all the way down the coast from South Bay City, past Hermosa Beach, to the northern edge of Redondo. Not bad for an aging beach boy who hadn’t been in the ocean for a few years. But the momentary euphoria disappeared when I tried to remember the number I wanted.
Nope.
No way. And no phone book, either. I rechecked the sum of the coins in my pocket, measured the price against the chance of finding a booth with an intact phone book anywhere on the beach. And spent twenty cents on a call to directory assistance. The nice lady there told me the number of the Plush Seashell was in my book and didn’t believe me when I said somebody seemed to have stolen the one in my booth and finally, quite reluctantly, punched the button that allowed a recorded voice to croak out the number twice before cutting off.
I sighed, dropped another dime and two nickels into the slot. Punched in the combination. And got an answer on the first ring.
The front desk receptionist had never heard of Suleiman.
But she was bright-voiced and willing to help when I explained that he had been a guest there a couple of weeks ago and might have left a forwarding address—or perhaps a message for someone. She said she’d check.
And she must have done that, because the next voice I heard was masculine. It didn’t bother with preliminaries.
“Are you,” it inquired, “by any chance the King of Diamonds?”
A SERMON
(CONTINUED)
And, perhaps most important of all, does it enjoin you to exercise care and mercy in relations with all your fellow beings . . . or restrict such concern to the enlightened few?
TWENTY-EIGHT
Some days I’m a little slow. If Suleiman had moved out of the Plush Seashell, he wouldn’t have been likely to leave an address or message that Gideon’s errand boys could read. So, there would have to be some kind of fail-safe mechanism, and a test question about the only one-eyed king in a deck of cards sounded just about right.
Especially in that suit.
“I’m the King of Diamonds,” I said. “Do you have a message for me?”
“Perhaps.”
The male voice still hadn’t identified itself, and I had a sense of something happening at the other end of the line—of a door being locked or a security system being engaged—before it spoke again.
“Perhaps I do,” it repeated. “But who would it be from?”
More games, and I couldn’t help wondering if all the precautions were strictly necessary. Either Suleiman was really spooked or he’d been reading too many books about the CIA. But the answer was obvious enough; if I was the King of Diamonds, then Suleiman was certainly . . .
“The Ace of Spades,” I said.
The voice ha-humphed, but I sensed a certain relaxation. He was at least ready to believe me now.
“I have a message,” he said. “And I am anxious to deliver it. But—I’m sorry—it can’t be done over the phone. There is one more test.”
“And of course, it has to be in person.”
“Face to face.”
My feet hurt and other parts of me ached and I was tired. The Plush Seashell was at least four miles away and I didn’t have cab fare, even if there’d been any real live taxicabs in that part of the world.
“I don’t suppose you make house calls?”
This time it was his turn to hesitate, and I think he wanted to say no.
“That’s . . . not strictly in accord with my instructions. No.”
“But you’ll do it.”
He would. But he didn’t like it.
“You’re in the vicinity?”
“Redondo. Not too far from the beach. North of the pier.”
“Uh . . . all right.” We waited again while he ran the area through his mind. “A coffee shop called the Sabot, up on Coast Highway. You know the place?”
I knew it. But there was a problem. “This call cleaned out the treasury,” I said. “And the way I look, any waitress worth hiring would want money in front, even for a cuppa.”
That got me another snort.
“Not to worry,” he said. “There’s a bus stop in front. Sit on the bench. A red Caddy will put up there. Just once. Half an hour from now.”
He hung up without waiting for an answer.
The walk was longer than I remembered. Lacking a wrist-watch, I tried to estimate minutes by counting in cadence as I walked. But it was more trouble than it was worth. Either I would make it or I wouldn’t.
But the afternoon seemed farther advanced than I wanted it to be by the time I reached the bus stop, and I couldn’t help wondering whether I was too late. And getting paranoid.
The appointment could be a trap. Stage dressing, to get me in the wrong place at the right time.
The Caddy, when and if it appeared, could turn out to be full of angels, grateful for the effort I’d made to keep my appointment with them and anxious to show me what I’d missed by leaving the party before the arrival of my personal bucket of seawater.
I stirred restlessly and stood up, ready to take another hike.
“Hey!”
A boat-sized automobile slid suddenly into the curb space reserved for bus traffic, and a blond youngster behind the wheel hit the armrest button that rolled down the window on my side. If I’d been waiting for a red Cadillac, this was one. No doubt about it. And the first glance told me it couldn’t—absolutely could not—belong to any of the poor souls deluded into doing chores for Gideon. It was a classic—the breast-grilled 1958 convertible, fully restored or preserved and painted a deep candy-apple crimson.
A thing of beauty and a joy forever.
“Hey, yourself,” I said. “If you stole the wheels, forget it. Too conspicuous. If you didn’t, congratulations.”
But he was in no mood for car talk.
“If you’re the King of Diamonds,” he said, “prove it!”
Suleiman wasn’t taking any chances.
And neither was the kid who sat waiting for my next move with the car still in gear, the doors locked, and his finger on the window button.
I glanced up and down the street.
No one was paying us the slightest attention, and I’m not usually shy. But this wasn’t something I liked to do in public.
“Here’s looking at you, kid,” I said, and popped the prosthesis that subs for my right eye out into my hand.
He looked at it for a moment and then looked away. Hurriedly.
“Jee . . . sus,” he said.
“Nope,” I said. “Wrong dude. Don’t think he ever tried anything like this. Too weird. Just us Kings of Diamonds.”
“Get in.”
The electrically operated lock snapped into the open position. I got in and slammed the door. And he drove us away from there.
“In all honesty,” he said as we started the long curve that turns Coast Highway eastward to avoid the ragged instability of Palos Verdes, “I hadn’t give much thought to what your friend Suleiman said. I mean, it’s sort of hard to picture anyone taking out his eye until you actually see him do it.”
“A small accomplishment. But useful.”
“Uh . . . yeah.”
He glanced at me curiously but glanced away again at once when he saw what I was doing. I don’t like to go around in public with just one eyeball showing. Call it a hang-up.
“Maybe you’d better fill me in,” I said. “Suleiman’s been getting around a little more than I have for the past few days, and something tells me I need to catch up.”
“Well, to begin with,” he said, keeping his eyes straight ahead, “my name’s Greg Winchell, and I’m the night manager at the Seashell.”
I nodded at the side of his head. “They call me Preacher,”
I said.
“So, Suleiman told me—just before he handed me a thousand-dollar bill.”
I nodded again and made a note to tell Suleiman I liked his style. In a world of fading values, one thousand dollars, cash money, still buys a certain amount of attention.
“And promised me another one,” Greg Winchell went on, “if I brought the right person to see him in the place where he moved.”
More style. The man had class he hadn’t even used yet.
I relaxed my center, reaching out and trying to examine the boy’s wa. But it was no use. We were both too uptight.
“And to make sure I was the right person,” I said, picking up the explanation, “he set up that little list of questions and answers that we went through on the phone.”
“Not to mention the business with the eye.”
“That, too.”
We swung off Coast Highway to the left and drove in among a cluster of buildings loosely associated with the little town’s only airport, winding through narrow streets to what appeared to be a motel.
“Hot-pillow joint,” Winchell said matter-of-factly. “The room’s costing him an arm and a leg, but it was the best I could think of as a place where he wouldn’t be . . . uh . . . disturbed.”
I could see how that might be.
But I didn’t move to get out of the Caddy, and he stopped, looking a question over his shoulder, with the driver’s door open and his own feet on the ground.
“Think my friend’s really up there?” I inquired.
Paranoia runs deep.
And dies hard.
“Well sir,” the youngster said with a quiet assurance that finally let me see past the eyes to the wa-essence, “I guess that is a thing you’ll have to decide for yourself. Best I can do, standing out here, is to tell you I’m an honest hotel clerk.” He grinned. “When you buy me,” he said, “I stay bought.”
Greg Winchell said he’d phoned from his office to warn Suleiman that he’d heard from someone claiming to be me and might bring him over if he could pass the glass-eyeball test. So, the motel room door was ajar and a deep voice I recognized told us to make ourselves at home.
But the Ace of Spades was taking no chances.
We walked in to find him neatly posed behind a couch, bed pillows arranged to act as extra armor, covering us with what looked like a Belgian-made .38 automatic on a .45 chassis. The double-handed grip was perfectly steady.