“Tourist,” he whispered. And he grinned.
She drove in a few minutes later. He went out and carried half the stuff back in.
“Buy them out, baby?”
“It isn’t as much as it looks like. It won’t last long. Here’s the bottles.”
The ice was ready. He made himself a drink, and leaned against the sink and watched her putting the groceries away. She looked serious and intent and important.
“A new side to your character, baby,” he said.
She straightened up and looked around. “It’s a nice kitchen, Harry.”
“It ought to be a nice kitchen. It ought to have a gold stove yet. It ought to have a floor show. Make with a floor show.”
She gave him a sidelong look, and broke into a husky fragment of a chorus routine, ending with grind and bump. He put his glass down and clapped his hands solemnly three times.
“I’m out of practice,” she said. She looked at him and then at her arms and said, “We ought to get some tan.”
“You get some tan. This sunshine routine doesn’t grab me.”
“You’d look more like the other people around here.”
“You wouldn’t be trying to tell me my business.”
“Don’t get like that, Harry.”
“Stick to cooking, Sal.”
“Okay. Okay.”
He left the kitchen and went to the phone again. He dialed zero. When the operator answered he hung up. He went to the bedroom and got the slip of paper from the top of the bureau and went back to the phone. He dialed the number.
“Sandwind Motel.”
“Have you got a Robert Watson registered?”
“Yes sir, we have.”
“I want to talk to him.”
“I think he’s on the beach right now.”
“Can’t you get him?”
“It might take some time. Why don’t you give me your name and number and I can have him call you back.”
“Okay. Tell him to call 9-3931.” He hung up. He went out to the kitchen and made a fresh drink. Sal wouldn’t look at him.
“For Christ sake don’t sulk.”
“Well, it’s just that …”
“When Ace gets here keep your mouth shut. Don’t talk. Get out of the way and leave us alone.”
“Sure, Harry.”
“You got the stuff put away?”
“Yes.”
He slapped the seat of her wrinkled skirt. “Go get the happy sunshine, kid. Go brown yourself.”
It was fifteen minutes before the phone rang.
The familiar voice said, “Hello?”
“Don’t talk. That must be a hell of a big beach, Ace. I got a place. You check out of there and come on over here. Make it after dark. It’s a house on a street called Huntington Drive. Eight hundred and three. There’s posts by the driveway and a sign on the posts says Mather.”
“You know I haven’t got a car.”
He paused a moment and said, “Okay. I see what you mean. Where is that damn place?”
“On Flamingo Key. You get on the main road on the key and turn left. You’ll see it on the right.”
“When does it get dark here?”
“A little after seven.”
“Okay. I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty. Gray Buick. That’ll be better than some damn nosy cab driver.”
“Did … did it go all right?”
“Silk and cream. No heat. We’ll talk later.”
Sally came out of the bedroom in the skimpy pale blue sunsuit she had bought in Georgia. She carried a blanket, a small brown bottle of sun lotion and a TV fan magazine.
“Okay?” she said.
“You’re not what I’d call bundled up, kid.”
He watched through the glass jalousies as she walked down to the dock, spread the blanket out, sat on it and began to carefully anoint her white legs and arms and shoulders and midriff. She stretched out in the glare of the afternoon sun, quiet as a corpse. The fish jumped. Wind ruffled the bay water. Harry made another drink. He felt restless. He tried to take a nap. He gave up and went down onto the dock. He took the aqua shirt off and sat near her in the sunshine. Maybe she was right about getting a tan. His skin was dead white. His ribs showed. There was a small mat of black hair on his chest. He sat hugging his knees. His shoulder blades stuck out in an angular way. There were two deep dimples on the back of his left shoulder, the scars of bullet wounds.
She lay on her back with her eyes shut. Her legs had turned pink. He looked at her legs and remembered something from one summer during an almost forgotten childhood. He reached out and pressed a finger against the top of her thigh. When he took it away the white spot faded slowly.
“You got enough. Get in the house.”
“But Harry, I …”
His voice became very soft. “You’re having a big day, kid. Homemaking and sulking and arguing. You want we should have a little trouble with you?”
She got up without another word and went up to the house. He stayed there another fifteen minutes. He folded the blanket and took it up to the house with him.
She had changed to a blouse and skirt. “I’m glad you told me when to quit,” she said humbly. “I feel kind of prickly all over.”
“I tell you everything you do.”
“Sure, Harry.”
“Then we don’t have any trouble at all. There isn’t going to be any room for any more trouble than the trouble I came for.”
She lowered her voice. “Is it going to be rough?”
“Silk and cream, if it’s done right. And it’s going to be done right. I’m going to see that it’s done right. The Ace and Ronnie are top talent. When it’s done we split right away. Where they scatter is their problem. I know what direction we go in.”
“Where do we go?”
“You know how I feel about questions.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m going to be able to use you. I figured it all out. When it’s time I’ll tell you what you have to do. It will be easy to do.”
“Can I ask just one question? Just one?”
“All right. One.”
“Harry … is anybody going to get killed?”
He buttoned his aqua shirt slowly. “I hope not, honey. I hope nobody gets killed. I hope nobody gets that excited.”
CHAPTER TWO
Ben Piersall was late getting to the Flamingo Country Club and knew he would only have time for nine holes before dusk. He had phoned the club when he knew he would be late, and left word for the other members of the regular Monday foursome to tee off without him. He changed in the locker room, unfolded the caddy cart and walked out to the first tee, his cleats noisy on the duck boards, then silent on the grass.
He was a tall man, big in the shoulders, with a blunt, tanned, good-humored face, quiet gray eyes, brown hair that had begun to get a little bit thin on top. He had a successful law practice in Flamingo and he worked hard at it. He was a son of one of the town founders, and estate work made up a large percentage of his practice.
He saw that once again he would have to play alone. It seemed to be happening too often lately. He was losing the edge of his game. He snapped on his glove, teed up the ball, and took a few practice swings to loosen up. The club course was a flat course. The fairways were sunbaked. They would become increasingly hard and brown until the rains came in July. The first hole was three hundred and thirty-five yards, a par four with a well-trapped green and a narrow fairway.
His drive started low and began to climb. As it began to fall it developed a little tail and took a long long roll on the hard fairway. It rolled a bit beyond the three hundred marker. He had been the best man on the golf team when he had been in college. After school he had played in a few amateur tournaments, and had done well enough to toy with the idea of going on the regular tournament circuit. When he was able to play regularly he could still give Barney, the club pro, a good match. In his hottest round he had come within one stroke of the course record.
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br /> He knew his own weakness, and was amused by it. A lot of the frustrations of the day could be cleared away by really lacing into one, really pounding one. He could lower his score by holding back on the last few ounces of effort. But it was more satisfying to play it wide open. And there was a juvenile pride in knowing he could outdrive anyone in the club, including Barney, when he really got hold of one. Like that June day when, with a tail wind, and a fairway like concrete, he had overdriven the four hundred and ten yard twelfth hole. Fritz, in mock awe, had proclaimed that he intended to have a bronze marker placed where that incredible drive had come to rest.
Ben knew his big husky body needed regular exercise. He knew that he needed the complete relaxation that came after the shower and the drive home. It was more pleasure to play with the others, but better to play alone than not to play at all.
He dropped the iron shot five feet from the pin and canned the putt for his birdie. Playing alone there was no need to mark a card. He was a minus one thus far, and anticipated finishing the nine somewhere around par plus two or three.
When he walked onto the fourth tee, still one under, he saw a caddy cart about a hundred and seventy yards out, on the right side of the fairway. There was a bright red bag on the cart. He saw no player. He teed up and drove, getting a bit too much under the ball, wasting distance with too much altitude.
When he had walked about a hundred yards, the woman came out of the brush, club in hand. He recognized Lenora Parks. She took a new ball from the red bag and tossed it out and waited for him.
“You all alone, Ben?” she called as he came toward her.
“The assassins took off without me.”
“Let’s play along together then. That dang slice. I think I could have found it, but something rustled in there. I kept thinking of snakes. Maybe you can smell out that dang slice.”
“Let’s see.”
She took a number three wood from her bag, waggled it, squinted at the green and swung. The ball, crisply hit, streaked up the center of the fairway and then faded right.
“See?”
“Sure. You’ve changed your stance, Lennie. It’s too open. You’re trying to steer the ball. Close the stance and just hit it. Don’t think about a slice or think about trying to compensate for it by aiming left. It just makes it worse.”
“Old Doctor Piersall’s home remedy.”
“It will work.”
They walked up to his ball and she waited while he played a four iron all the way to the edge of the green.
“Wow!” she said. “You haven’t lost your sock, old Ben. Remember how we used to play all the time?”
“Sure I remember.”
They played along together. His advice worked. She was delighted. Lenora Parks was one of the better women golfers in the club. She was a dainty blonde woman with a figure still as good as it had been at eighteen, when they had gone together for over a year, back when she had been Lennie Keffler, before she married Dil Parks. It made him feel guilty and uncomfortable to play with her. Joan was quite aware of the past romance with Lennie. Joan had a cold eye for Lennie. And that was Lennie’s fault, as Joan was not a particularly jealous wife. He and Joan kept running into Lennie and Dil at too many big parties. And Lennie, after the second drink, seemed to take a very proprietary attitude toward Ben Piersall. Ben suspected Lennie did that on purpose, knowing that it would cause Joan to give Ben a bad time. There was mockery in her eyes when she did it. He had long since guessed that it was a form of revenge. Theirs had been quite a turbulent affair, and he was the one who had ended it. He was careful not to stand alone with Lennie at any of the parties.
Dil Parks was about ninety-five per cent slob. Lennie had married him on the rebound from Ben. Lennie had made little bits of trouble here and there between her husband and herself. There were those in Flamingo who excused her on the grounds that a steady diet of Dil would drive anybody into the wrong bed. The other faction had a higher regard for marriage, Dil or no Dil. There had never been any actual proof of her inconstancy. The closest thing to proof was the garbled stories which came back from New Orleans the time three couples had gone over to Mardi Gras. But some of that could be blamed on inadequate reservations, three couples going when there were only reservations for two. Other comment was mostly locker room talk.
It made him feel uncomfortable to be with her, and he hoped that Joan wouldn’t hear about it. He did not see how he could have gotten out of it gracefully. When he walked behind her and saw her trim hips under the pleated skirt, and saw her blonde hair bobbing as she walked, it seemed that she was exactly the same as the girl of eighteen summers—sixteen years years ago. He remembered her mannerisms well enough to know that she was striking poses for him, displaying herself for him, trying in small delicate ways to arouse desire. But he knew that he would have none of that. Nor would he make any attempt even to find out if it was still available. He thought instead of the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, the faint lines bracketing her mouth—and the grotesque and entirely unforgettable scene she had made at the time they had broken up.
But she was an attractive woman, and he knew that under the fragility, the blonde demureness, she was a most earthy woman. And he knew that he was making at least one concession to that by showing off. Like a boy chinning himself on a limb. He relished the little squeal she made when he hit a tremendous towering six iron shot that nearly holed out for an eagle.
“Remember the day we played sixty-three holes of golf, Ben?”
“The day before that dance?”
“I was so dang tired I thought I was going to go to sleep dancing with you.”
“You slept all the way home.”
She tilted her head and grinned at him. “Not all the way home.”
“Your putt.”
“Poor old Ben. You get so stuffy and flustered. We’re all grown up now, aren’t we? Don’t you think we are?”
“I guess so.”
“That was all kid stuff.”
“Watch yourself. This green is faster than the others.”
She sat on her heels and lined the putt up. She stepped up to the ball, stroked it delicately. It ran twelve feet, hit the back of the cup and dropped.
“Nice putt!”
“I always used to play better when I played with you. I always used to do everything better.”
“Drop the needle, Lennie.”
“Needle? Gosh sakes, I wouldn’t needle old Ben.”
But there had been enough needle so that his drive on the ninth put him ’way over in the rough behind some cabbage palms. He could see the green through a two-foot gap between the palm trunks. He tried a two iron and nearly decapitated himself when the ball came back off a palm trunk like a bullet. It put him far enough back and gave him a better lie. So he gambled on getting enough of a slice with a number four wood. It sliced all right and left him in the deepest trap on the course. He didn’t get enough sand and left himself with a thirty-foot putt. He holed out for the six, which put him one over par for the nine.
“Ben, I want to talk to you.”
“What about?”
“Go take your shower first. I’ll be on the porch. This will be a business conversation.”
“Those belong in the office.”
“Don’t be so stuffy. Do you know you’re getting terribly stuffy lately? You’re afraid it will get back to Joan. You can tell her it was business, and tell her just what business it was, if lawyers’ wives get in on lawyers’ secrets.”
Again he couldn’t get out of it gracefully. When he came out onto the porch Lennie sat in one of the big chairs in the dusk. She had her drink in her hand and there was one for him on the round table between the two chairs. But for them, the porch was empty.
“Scotch old-fashioned? Is that right?”
“That’s a habit that hasn’t changed, Lennie. What’s on your mind?”
“It’s something I don’t like, Ben. It’s about Dil’s uncle.”
“Doctor
Tomlin is Dil’s great uncle, actually.”
“Oh, I know that. But Dil is his closest living relative.”
“They don’t get along.”
“That isn’t our fault,” she said hotly. “My God, I’ve tried. Your father used to handle Paul Tomlin’s legal business. Do you handle it now?”
“I guess I would if he had any.”
“Is there a will?”
“There may be. I don’t know. I didn’t handle it. Even if I did, I couldn’t tell you what was in it.”
“That isn’t what was on my mind. I know better than that. It’s something else.”
She was leaning toward him. The fading light was odd against her face, slanting, showing bone structure. “Ben, you know how he is. He’s nearly eighty. He’s been quite mad for years.”
“Eccentric.”
“You use that word because he’s rich. If he was poor you’d say mad and he would have been put away.”
“He’s not that bad.”
“You don’t know how bad he is. Have you heard about that couple?”
“They’re relatives, aren’t they?”
“They claim to be. Fiftieth cousins or something. Dil never heard of them. Dil and I have been over all that genealogy stuff his mother was so interested in before she died. We can’t trace them accurately. There are people named Preston in the family. These people claim their name is Preston. We didn’t know anything about it until he’d taken them in. I can’t understand his taking anybody into that … that damn fortress with him. But he did. He’s senile, Ben. God only knows what they’re telling him, what they’re getting out of him.”
“I heard some relatives had moved in with him. I thought it was strange at the time.”
“It is strange. And Dil is so dang wishy-washy. He doesn’t want to do anything. I was going to come and see you in the office. Maybe this is better, to run into you here.”
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