“Yeah,” Yarnell challenged, “where you gonna sleep? My worthless nephew already occupies the couch, and the Thin Guy has dibs on the closet.”
“Forget about it, you won’t even know I’m there,” Beaumont continued. “All I need is a good-sized nightlight when I retire for the evening. TV works fine that way as long as the volume isn’t up too loud, but I’d probably best tell you now I’ve got a bad habit of waking up the next day and the darn screen is still talking. And, I’ll admit up front that sometimes I walk in my sleep, but what, you only got three, four rooms so I can’t go too far.”
A long silence ensued.
Waves lapped against the ship.
A lone night bird cried out before settling on a communications antenna overhead.
Beaumont finished tying his loop.
“This is blackmail,” said Yarnell.
“Attaboy,” replied Beaumont. “Now all you got to do is let me lower you down to that veranda a couple decks below us, then you go in the unlocked outside door, get the jewels, any cash laying around, and then come right back up. Ten minutes, we’re done.”
“I thought you said five minutes.”
“I did, but I’m allowing five extra minutes in case you’re slower than me and have to search around for the jewels.”
“Why don’t you go then?”
Beaumont patted his belly. “Cuz I’m heavier than you, and you wouldn’t be able to pull me up. Now put your foot in the loop and hold onto the rope. Believe me, in the end, Patricia will thank you for this.”
Yarnell slowly swung one leg over the rail and then the other leg. As he stepped into the loop and grabbed the rope, he came face to face with his partner. “Patricia had better not ever hear about this.”
Beaumont immediately kicked Yarnell’s shoe tip toehold loose from the deck and lowered away on the rope. “Don’t look down,” he hissed.
Swinging on the far end of a rope, feeling much like the pendulum on a grandfather clock, Yarnell realized he still had the souvenir glass in his hand as he dangled multiple stories above the ocean. Naturally, he looked down.
Sea foam churned at the fantail of the ship. If he fell, those giant propellers down there would chop him into shark sushi. He closed his eyes, therefore taking several seconds later for his feet to tell his brain that they were now resting on solid wood.
Opening his right eye to a bare slit, he found himself standing on the top edge of a veranda rail outside one of the more expensive cabin suites. If it hadn’t been for his iron grip on the rope holding him up, his knees would have buckled, dropping him perilously close to becoming the main character in a man overboard situation with no reporting witnesses. In which case, Patricia would have always wondered where he’d disappeared to on the High Seas.
He allowed himself two minutes of deep-breathing exercises before gaining the courage to step out of the loop and testing the veranda’s outside door handle. It moved easily. He put his ear to the glass pane. Snoring. The occupants were safely asleep.
Carefully opening the door, Yarnell slid through the entry and shut it behind him. In the closed compartment, the ship’s conditioned air moved the light fragrance of oranges past his nose. The damn smell seemed to be everywhere, there was no getting away from it. Moving farther into the room, he tried to stay focused on the job.
Soft moonlight through the veranda glass produced enough illumination for him to distinguish large objects in the cabin; a king-sized bed, large-screen television, table along one wall, and built-in chest of drawers. In the bed, two long lumps lay under the sheets, heavy breathing from one lump, snoring from the other.
The snorer rolled over and quit snoring.
Yarnell dropped down out of sight and started duckwalking for cover. Not a good time to be caught in the open.
He listened.
Still no snoring.
Hoping it was only sleep apnea and that the snorer would soon regain his regular deepbreathing pattern, Yarnell opted to seek temporary refuge under the table along the wall. He drew his long legs in behind him and scooted back as far as he could until he bumped into . . .
What the hell was a potted plant doing under the suite table? On impulse, he reached over and parted the white flowered branches. A long white face stared back at him.
“Wha—”
“Shhh,” whispered the white face.
“You’re supposed to be at the flat watering Patricia’s dwarf tree so it don’t die,” Yarnell whispered back.
“It’s okay,” replied the Thin Guy, “I brought it with me.” He pointed at the pot.
“But how—”
“I phonied up a Department of Agriculture form.”
“But the—”
“Yeah, I told the guard at the departure gangplank that my floral delivery van was double parked, so I’d hurry right back.”
“But why’d you—”
“Your worthless nephew.”
“What’s my nephew got to do with—”
“He was throwing loud parties in your absence. The noise aggravated the neighbors, so cops kept coming to the door.”
“No, no, no cops at my door.”
“Your nephew’s not old enough to drink legally, so his friends threw all their beer cans into my bedroom. Some were still half full.”
“Bedroom? You mean my closet. You don’t have a bedroom.”
“And I got fired.”
“How do you get fired from a mortuary?”
“Anyway, I missed you and Beaumont, so here I am.”
“Here you are? You’re sitting under a table in someone else’s cabin suite.”
“Yeah, I lifted the woman’s cabin key and now I’m stealing their jewelry.”
Yarnell opened his mouth to say more, but the king-sized bed took this moment to give off a squeak.
Quickly, he jammed his hand over the Thin Guy’s mouth.
Somebody was getting out of bed.
Yarnell turned his feet sideways to become smaller.
A pair of skinny white legs shuffled past the table. The bathroom door opened and a light came on. The door closed.
“We got to get out of here,” whispered Yarnell.
“Okay, I already got the jewels in my pocket.”
Yarnell bolted for the cabin door in a slow motion bent-knee run, turned the handle, and stepped out into the corridor. The Thin Guy was right behind him. Gently, so as to make the softest clicking noise possible, Yarnell released the door handle and let it latch before breathing a sigh of relief.
“Now what?” asked the Thin Guy.
“Now you go back to wherever you’ve been hiding on the ship and I don’t want to see you again until we get home. Then you fence the jewelry and move out of my closet.” Yarnell paused to see if he’d covered all the bases. “And, you might have to make a small loan to Beaumont.”
“Why?”
“Cuz he’s trying to steal the same jewels and I don’t want him living with me.”
“Uh-oh.”
Yarnell turned.
“No uh-oh, just make the loan.”
The Thin Guy raised his empty hands chest high.
It took Yarnell a moment. “Where’s the tree?”
“I left it under the table.”
“Go back in and get it.”
“Can’t, I left the cabin key inside on top of the chest of drawers.”
For once in his life, Yarnell considered using an act of violence, an action contrary to his nature. When he had finished muttering to himself and kicking the air three or four times, he finally calmed down enough to put a smile on his face and loop one arm around the Thin Guy’s neck as if they were the best of buddies.
The Thin Guy tried to shrink back, but the grip was too tight.
“Did I ever tell you,” began Yarnell, “the story about Valentinus?”
“Who’s he?” inquired the Thin Guy.
“You probably know him as Saint Valentine,” replied Yarnell.
“Oh, the little cupid
guy with the bow and arrow.”
“No,” said Yarnell, “I was thinking about the martyr who was killed by the Romans.”
“The Romans killed Saint Valentine?”
“Actually, the Romans killed all three guys named Valentinus. The Italians were pretty thorough in them days. We don’t know which guy Valentine’s Day was actually named after.”
“Man, that’s brutal.”
“Yes it is. So now I’m gonna tell you what you’re gonna do.”
“Sure.”
“First, you’re gonna go up to the top aft deck. You’re gonna find Beaumont standing there looking over the side. He’s got a rope tied to the top rail. Next, you’re gonna put your foot in the rope loop and he’s gonna lower you back down to the cabin you just burgled. Then you’re gonna go inside, retrieve Patricia’s jasmine tree, exit the cabin, beat me home, and be gone from my flat before we get there. Capisci?”
“Is that last word Italian like the old Romans used to talk?”
“I think you’re starting to get the message,” said Yarnell.
The Thin Guy swallowed hard.
“Sure, I can do all that stuff you said. No problem. Upstairs, find Beaumont, down the rope, get the tree.”
Yarnell slowly released his tight hold from around the Thin Guy’s neck and nudged the man forward toward the stairs. If this all worked out without repercussions, he’d be surprised. All he wanted was his closet and his quiet life back. Was that too much to ask?
By the time he quit talking to himself, he was alone in the corridor. What was it he was gonna do? Oh yeah, find Patricia and renew his romantic anniversary cruise for their last night onboard. Of course they’d need to pack tonight and be the first ones off the ship early tomorrow morning before a hue and cry was raised over the missing jewelry. With any luck, Patricia would never get wind of Beaumont’s caper. Or was it the Thin Guy’s? Anyway, there’d soon be room in the coat closet again.
Now, all he had to figure out was what to do with that damn souvenir glass he still had clutched in one hand.
Copyright © 2010 R. T. Lawton
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FICTION
CATCHPHRASE
NEIL SCHOFIELD
Frank put his arms around Donna’s throat in a pretend choke hold and said, “Get out of that.” Over her head, he grinned at her in the mirror.
Donna said, “Do you mind? Very much not? Doing that?” She was trying to apply lipstick and her mouth was distorted so that the words came out all twisted. “And especially not using that thing of his.” She was blonde, and pretty when she wasn’t doing that with her lips.
“What thing?”
“That thing that Georgie says all the time. Get out of that one. Or Get out of this one. Every time he thinks he’s scored some big, like debating point he says that. It’s like his—”
“His catchphrase.”
“Why do they call it that? Do you know?”
Frank shrugged. “Beats me,” he said. He moved restlessly around the room. This was always the worst time for him, after they had had the sex, when there wasn’t much to say, and he wished quite simply that she would go home.
“He’s really getting me down,” she said. “I think he’s suspicious.”
“Suspicious.”
“Of me. I think he thinks I’m up to something.”
Frank grinned. “Well, he’s right about that. You are up to something. Up to here.”
“Don’t joke about it. He’s really after me at the moment. Like, when I go back to the house today, he’ll be checking the sales tickets to see where I bought what and what time. He’s that snoopy.”
“Go along with it. And if he ever comes out with it, deny, deny, deny. That’s the only thing to do. He can’t prove a thing.”
“Easy for you to say,” she said. “You don’t have to live with him. Sometimes, I have this urge . . .”
“Urge to do what?”
“To tell him. Flat out. About you and me.”
Frank felt the hair rise on the back of his neck.
“Jesus,” he said, “you do that, he’ll do both of us.”
“I know,” she said. “Oh, Frank, what are we going to do?”
“Carry on carrying on,” he said. “Business as usual.”
“But I want you. I want us to be together.”
“So do I,” he said, wondering whether it was wholly a lie, or just partly. “So do I, kid. But that’s the way things are.”
“If he wasn’t there, we could be . . .”
“Yes, but he is there,” Frank said.
“He might not always be there, Frank. Something might happen, mightn’t it? I mean, on a job? Something could go wrong, couldn’t it?”
Frank stared at her.
“You mean, I could make something go wrong?”
She shrugged.
“You always say it’s a risky business. You never know what people are going to do. Something could happen. Something could happen on this job up north tomorrow. And anyway, if something did happen to Georgie, you’d move up. Those People like you, you said so yourself.”
That much was true. Those People did like him because he was efficient and neat, never caused a fuss. Even Georgie had said so. “Nice job on the Ukrainian, Frank,” he would say. “They’re pleased. Very pleased.” And that was all you got.
But you took your money as a second string, which was pretty good even so, and went on being a second string. He went into the bathroom and stripped off his shirt.
“Because honestly, Frank,” she was saying now, “I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this.”
He stared at himself as he shaved. There was always a moment like this, he thought. And if he were wise, this would be the moment to end it, before it got too dangerous.
“Frank? I really don’t know if I can go on. I have this urge to tell him. All the time. And let him do whatever he wants to. And if I left him, what could he do?”
He could kill you, Frank thought, he could kill you with that big .45 of his. Kill you deader than anything. He checked himself in the mirror. Still good looking. Even better, still alive.
Back in the bedroom he put on a clean shirt and knotted the yellow tie he liked to wear with it.
She came towards him.
“I want us to be together, Frank,” she said. “I want to take care of you.” She stroked his cheek. “Look at the state of you. You’ve got blood all over that tie.”
He looked in the mirror. He had nicked himself shaving, and the tie had a large smear of blood right there on the knot. He stripped it off.
“I could have that cleaned for you,” she said, “put it in with Georgie’s things.”
“You think Georgie doesn’t know how many ties he’s got?” he said, and threw it into the linen basket. He was irritated now. That was a good tie. He looked good in it. He looked at his watch.
“Okay,” she said, “I get the point. Let me use the bathroom and I’m out of here.”
While she was in the bathroom, he chose another tie, but it wasn’t the yellow one and it didn’t feel right.
After she had gone, he sat down and cleaned his guns. He laid them out on the table, the Glock 19 and the FN Browning that he especially liked. He spent the afternoon quite happily, cleaning and oiling and finally loading. He wondered whether taking both of them was really necessary. Georgie would be sure to twit him about it. Georgie figured that if it couldn’t be done with a .45, it wasn’t worth doing. But that was Georgie.
Tomorrow they were going to see the—what was their name?—the Galapagos twins up there in the North. No, not Galapagos, that was turtles, but something close. Greek anyway, and with a Greek tendency to do foolish, reckless things. So it was a comfort to have the two, they might come up with some ill-considered Greek foolery.
He watched some television and made himself a meal. He didn’t think about the job tomorrow. That would go well or it wouldn’t. The
re was no point in worrying about it.
The following morning, he was showered, shaved, and dressed by nine o’clock. He looked out at the weather. There were a few snowflakes in the air, but nothing substantial, nothing that settled. Not enough for Georgie to decide to do it another day. He stood drinking a final cup of coffee and watching the snow and thinking about Donna. It was maybe the time to end it now. He knew he had to do it. She was just dippy enough to do something stupid if she got into a fight with Georgie. He liked his job. He didn’t want to lose it or have Georgie after him. The whole thing had been stupid anyway from the start.
He had never thought about Georgie’s private life, never wondered if he had one, never imagined him being married. Then one night, he’d come across them in a bar, Georgie and this good-looking woman on his arm. Georgie had appeared as embarrassed as Georgie ever allowed himself to look, had barely taken the time to introduce Frank as a colleague from the office. A colleague from the office. Some office. But the girl he introduced as Donna, his wife, had looked at Frank consideringly, and had looked back at him when they left him there at the bar, drinking whiskey.
The next day, he was getting his car out of the car park beneath the block, and there she was in front of the main door, quite by chance, how strange the ways of the city. She had looked at him and shrugged with a lopsided rueful smile, and that had been the start of it. He didn’t know why, perhaps she liked the danger, or perhaps she liked the thought of what he did for a living, take your pick.
He had finished his coffee by the time the auto-porter sounded.
Georgie said, “You coming down or what?” He sounded sour, as if he had been expecting Frank to stand about down there in the freezing cold, with getting on for three pounds of artillery in his pockets, four if you counted the ammunition. Frank put on his overcoat and left.
Georgie’s Lexus was double-parked in front of the building, forcing bad-tempered traffic to weave around him. Frank climbed in and Georgie started immediately, giving him no time to shut the door, which ended up nearly cutting Frank’s leg off at the knee. A taxi behind them just about stood on its head to avoid rear-ending them. There was an anguished chorus of car horns, which Georgie ignored as he always did.
Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine 03/01/11 Page 12