The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything

by John D. MacDonald

  Rene stared at him dubiously. “Thumbprint?”

  “They’re number accounts, of course, but there’s no draw against them except on personal application. Six hundred different accounts in nine different countries, all set up the same way.”

  Rene thought for a minute. “So if you dropped dead, what’s the deal to get it out then?”

  “There isn’t any. Any time five years passes with no activity in any account, it’s automatically closed and the net is delivered to whoever I nominated, whichever person or organization in each case. So I’m no good dead to your boss, and there’s nothing she can force out of me that’ll give her access to what she wants.”

  “But she doesn’t know this?”

  “Not yet. And when she finds out, she’s going to have to treat us nicely, me and Miss Farnham and Miss Beaumont, and even Miss Alden.”

  “What if they haven’t been treated so nice already?”

  “Then I’ll reduce Mrs. O’Rourke’s participation, as a sort of penalty for greed and bad manners. You see, my friend, I’m going to end up in pretty good shape—assuming Mrs. O’Rourke is a logical woman.”

  Rene stared at him with a corrugated brow. “So why hassle with her the way you been doing?”

  “Why should I split with anybody? But now that she’s won this round, I might as well cut her in. There’s enough to go around, I’d say, wouldn’t you?”

  Rene grinned like a yawning dog. “One half of one twenty-seventh would do me good for the rest of my life.”

  “I wouldn’t gamble for that much. But whatever I did gamble for, I guess you can see I’d be in a position to pay off, if I should lose.”

  “She say keep tied,” Raoul said. “Deal.”

  “We can keep him tied, Raoul, and still bring him into the game.”

  “Don’t like it,” Raoul said.

  Rene switched to the rough argot, and reminded Raoul of what he had said about Kirby being no cause for worry, and reminded Raoul that they would be playing the stranger only for money, that they would keep a separate record of winnings and losses to determine who would have the little chicken first. Raoul shrugged his acceptance.

  Rene came over and picked Kirby up, chair and all. It was a shocking demonstration of raw power. He set the chair in front of the coffee table. With a flick of the seaman’s knife he severed the line around Kirby’s arms. With more line he deftly lashed Kirby’s left arm to the arm of the chair, put a fairly snug loop around Kirby’s throat and tied that to the back of the chair. Though it was pleasant to be released from the previous cramped position, Kirby realized he had gained less than he thought. His right arm was free, but it would be awkward, obvious and too slow to stick his right hand in the trouser pocket and hope to manipulate the watch in time. And even if he did, he would be almost as helpless in the red world. He had learned enough of the behavior of inanimate objects to know that the rope would become like stiff cables.

  “All you need is one hand loose,” Rene said. He put two hundred dollars in front of Kirby. “You owe me two hundred, pal.”

  “Want it in writing?”

  “I can make you remember it.”

  “I’d rather put it in writing. Have you got a piece of paper? I think I’ve got a pen right here.” With difficulty he put his hand in the side pocket of his borrowed slacks.

  “Hold it!” Rene yelled.

  His fingers touched the watch stem and he pressed and turned. The world was a murky red. They were caught in the cessation of time, staring at him. He took the gold watch out. He placed it on the table and tried to undo the knots binding his left arm, but knew he could not budge them. It was a strange impasse. Even if he could get hold of a knife, he doubted that he could saw his way through the rope. Objects had an obdurate toughness in this subjective space where time stood still. The silver hand moved. The gold hands of the watch were motionless at quarter to six.

  He knew he would have to set himself up for a better opportunity, but did not know how he could manage it. But the watch would have to be in a more convenient and accessible place, yet without any impression of any blur of movement which would make them suspicious. He suddenly had a reasonable idea, and tucked the watch under his thigh, chain out of sight, stem pointing out. He put his right hand back in his pocket and, through the fabric, reached the stem of the watch with his middle finger and pressed it.

  “I thought I had a pen but I guess I don’t,” he said and slowly took his hand out of his pocket and showed them it was empty.

  “We don’t need it in writing. Stay away from pockets,” Rene said.

  “He got nothing on him,” Raoul said.

  “Neither did that guy had a razor in his hat brim, and he cut you up pretty good,” Rene said.

  “Shut up and deal.”

  They agreed on five card stud. Kirby held his own. Raoul lost steadily. He was the eternal optimist, confident the last card would solve all his problems.

  “Your friend is very lucky,” Kirby said to Raoul.

  “Deal.”

  Kirby licked his lips and said, “And he has very quick hands.”

  Raoul tensed. He leaned toward Rene, and spoke the argot with a speed Kirby could not hope to follow. Kirby let his right hand fall casually near the watch. He could hope for some small change, some small opening, but did not know what it might be. At the end of his gunfire warning, Raoul slapped a knife down on the table beside him, not within Kirby’s reach. Kirby had not seen him take it out or open the blade.

  As Rene began protestations of innocence, Kirby thumbed them to murky stillness. He remembered what he had learned from Bonny Lee regarding the behavior of objects in motion. He leaned forward as far as he could. The loop bit painfully into his throat. He could not reach the knife. He took a playing card by one corner and found that by extending it, he could touch the knife. He began to scratch at the knife with the edge of the card, bringing it a millimeter closer each time, pausing to lean back from time to time to take a breath. At last he could grasp it. He released the card and it remained in the air. He took the knife and worried it, point first, blade up, under the double strand that held his left arm to the arm of the chair. When it was in position, he pulled up on it as hard as he could. It made no impression on the strands of line. He brought the watch over and put it in the fingers of his left hand where he could manipulate it as quickly as possible. He pressed, and when the silver hand jumped back to twelve, he turned the stem back immediately. In the instant of reality he heard a loud fragment of one word from Rene and felt a tug at his left arm. Now the knife was two feet above the level of his head. The strands had been sliced and were slightly apart. He peeled them back and freed his left arm. He put the watch in his lap and worked the stiffness out of his left arm. He pushed the loop out and was able to slump in the chair and work it up over his head, not without some further attrition to his bruised nose. He reached up, recaptured the knife and used the same procedure on the line around his legs just above his knees. Before he thumbed the watch stem, he looked at Rene and Raoul. Their glance had swiveled toward him and the first faint indication of astonishment was beginning to change their brute faces.

  He worked it more quickly than before, freezing the knife at eye level this time. He peeled the rope back and got up and paced around the room, feeling the familiar drag of the inertia of his clothing, slipping his shoes off after tiring of the effort of moving them about. There were two heavy masonry pots on either side of the fireplace. Whatever had been growing in them had died and withered to naked sticks. With great effort and by degrees he positioned the two pots in midair, and, after estimates of the forces involved, about seven inches above the heads of the two men.

  It would not do, he realized, to give the impression of having suddenly disappeared, not in front of two witnesses. So he got back into the chair right in their line of vision, before thumbing the watch stem. His discarded shoes clumped to the floor. The card fluttered down. The knife chunked deeply into a cypress beam
overhead. The pots fell, thudded against thick skulls, smashed on the floor. Rene slumped sideways on the couch. Raoul bent slowly forward and bounced his forehead off the coffee table.

  As soon as he ascertained they were both breathing, Kirby, profiting by experience, tied them precisely as he had been tied, finding it easier to operate in the brightness of real time, where materials were not as stubborn. Realizing they might untie each other, he added the refinement of the rope loop about the throat, fastening Raoul to an iron eye in the front of the fireplace, and Rene to a sturdy catch at the base of a window across the room.

  Wilma was still in the oversized robe, face down across the bed, her head hanging over the edge. She snored rhythmically, insistently, beautifully. After ten minutes of proddings, slappings, pinchings, and an attempt to walk her, he knew that all he could hope to achieve was a temporary interruption of the snoring sound. She was a limp, warm, loose-jointed doll, and the most infuriating thing about the whole procedure was that she seemed to be smiling.

  But, with or without her co-operation, he knew he had to get her out of the house. He had already given up more hostages than he could afford. He felt less regard for Wilma, but more responsibility. He pulled the robe off her and tried not to stare at her more than was necessary as he dressed her. Compared with Bonny Lee, as well as the girl on the beach, Wilma seemed to wear extraordinarily practical underthings, opaque and designed for long wear. She kept slipping away, toppling over and picking up the rhythm of the snoring again.

  After a few attempts to brush her wild brown hair, he looked in bureau drawers until he found a bright scarf. He put it around her head and knotted it under her chin. He noticed that someone had stepped on her glasses, bending the frames and powdering both lenses. This place was not safe, but he could not think of a place which might be. In any case, he would need money.

  Rene stirred as Kirby was recovering the money from his pockets. He opened blurred eyes, shook his head, winced.

  “How the hell’d you do that?” he asked weakly.

  “I had help.”

  Rene closed his eyes. “You seem to get it when you need it.”

  Kirby found the rest of the money and the keys to the rental car in Raoul’s pockets. Raoul kept sleeping. Kirby found his pulse. It felt solid and steady. He thumbed Raoul’s eyes open. They were crossed. He wondered if that had any special clinical significance.

  He went in and picked up Wilma and hung her over his left shoulder, his arm around her legs. As he walked back into the living room, he thought he heard a sound outside. He darted his hand into his pocket and made the world red, made it safe for a quick reconnaissance. He eased out from under Wilma’s folded figure and made a quick tour of the area and found nothing amiss. The Sunbeam was in the drive. The keys were in it. He was hidden from the world by all the Wellerlys’ tropical shrubbery. Just as he was about to bring reality back so he could move the car out of the way, he remembered Wilma. He hurried back in. It would have made a strange and awkward fall for a sleeping girl. He fitted his shoulder into her middle and once again brought the un-tinged world back.

  “Mrs. O’Rourke isn’t going to like this at all,” Rene said.

  “My friends sneaked up on you. What could you do?”

  “She’ll think of something we could have done.”

  He took Wilma out and put her on the floor in the back of the rental sedan. He backed the Sunbeam around the sedan, out of the way. He got into the rental car, put on the sunglasses and the baseball hat and drove out. He drove swiftly east to Route 1, a half-mile away, and parked at the first convenient motel.

  There was an old man at the desk. He had a ground floor vacancy.

  “You and the missus, aye?” He peered beyond Kirby. “Whare is she?”

  “Taking a nap in the back. She’s very tired.”

  Kirby signed the register and paid cash for the night. He drove to the unit, parked close, unlocked the door and went back and lifted Wilma out. When he got her into his arms and turned, the old man was standing there. “She sure God is tired, mister. Wouldn’t be sick, would she?”

  “She’s just a heavy sleeper.”

  “I don’t want nothing funny going on. I run a nice place here. Where at’s your luggage, mister?”

  “In the back end.”

  “Now I just want to see you got some luggage.”

  “Let me take her in first.”

  “Better set her down, because you got no luggage, you’re not bringing her into my place.”

  Kirby propped Wilma on the seat. He had to admit that the look of her didn’t inspire confidence. She looked drugged. And was.

  He went to the trunk and unlocked it and, as with his left hand he began to raise it, he twisted himself out of normal time. Forty feet away a man was unloading his car. He had put a row of suitcases on the paved parking surface in preparation for carrying them inside. Kirby went over and took two of the smaller items. He pushed them back to the sedan, shoved them into the trunk. He took the same position as before, lifted the trunk lid the rest of the way.

  “I like for everybody to have luggage,” the old man said in apology.

  “Sure,” Kirby said. He went to pick the girl up again. This time she slipped her arms around his neck.

  “Soooo sleepy,” she mumbled. “Sooo terr’ble sleepy.”

  The old man carried the bags in. Kirby plumped Wilma onto the nearest bed. She began to snore immediately.

  “Sure a sleeper,” the old man said.

  After he was gone, Kirby held the door open and turned the world red and silent and took the small suitcases back. The man stood in an attitude of perplexity, finger pointing, obviously counting the items of luggage. Kirby pressed them against the ground behind him and went back into the room. When he thumbed the stem of the watch, the door swung shut. He took off Wilma’s shoes. He wrote a short note to her. “You are safe here. I’ll come back when I can. Don’t leave the room and don’t phone anyone under any circumstances. Put the chain on the door. I’ll knock five—pause—three, rapidly.”

  He brought the room key with him, and made certain the door was locked. He drove to a public phone booth in a shopping center parking lot, phoned the police number in the front of the book and reported that it sounded as if somebody was trying to break into 210 Sunset Way, at the rear, and the Wellerlys’ were out of the country. When the first question was asked, he hung up.

  He drove south toward Miami. It was quarter of seven. He had the feeling he was wasting too much time. And he felt guilty about the time he spent in the real world. When the world was red, time was stopped, and then, if bad things were happening to Bonny Lee, they stopped too. He could keep time at a standstill by walking the entire way, but he had to measure his own energies on the scale also. The sun was almost down. He could not afford to let the day end, because he could not be certain he would be able to see well enough in the combination of darkness and faint red light.

  In his haste, he made a miscalculation. The woman ahead of him spurted ahead as though to make a red light before it changed, then changed her mind and jammed her brakes on. He piled the rental into the back of her plum-gray Continental, in a scream of rubber and expensive metallic clangor. As he sat dazed, she came yawping out of her car, her face red and ugly with anger. His door had sprung open. Off to the right he saw a cop striding toward the scene.

  He grabbed the watch and stopped all the noise and motion. It took an effort of will to remember that, when the world was red, there was no need for haste. The rear end collision had happened in the center lane of three lanes of southbound traffic. Other cars had stopped all around them. He got out and checked the other cars. The first car in the left lane was a convertible. A conveniently small man sat behind the wheel. He had his fingertips on the wheel, and he was staring over at the accident, at the tall woman, stopped in the middle of a yelp. Kirby climbed in and levered the small man up and out from under the wheel. He shoved him out beyond the car, climbed down, took his
ankles and towed him back to the rental and, with the increasing ease of experience in such matters, worked him into proper position, his fingertips on the steering wheel, his head still looking back over his right shoulder. He knew that maximum confusion would serve his purposes. He put his baseball cap on the small man, and wedged the man’s tweed hat on his own head. As a final touch, he removed the policeman’s service revolver, worked it snugly into the hand of the irate woman, pointed it up into the air, and gave a final solid pressure to the trigger finger. He clambered into the convertible, slid under the wheel, and turned the city back on, looking toward the little group as he did so. The woman fired into the air, hauled her hand down and stared at it. The cop started at the sound of the shot and began pawing his empty holster. The little man snapped his head around, stared with utter disbelief at the crumpled car, the cop, the woman with the gun, leaped out and began to run. The light changed and Kirby drove on, reasonably confident it was a matter that would never be completely straightened out.

  As soon as he realized he was within reasonable walking distance of the Marina, he pulled over to the curb and stopped and then stopped the final slant of sunlight. He shoved his shoes inside his shirt, took the dark glasses off, and headed toward the Marina. Walking among the pink silent people was like walking through a stone orchard. Sometimes, in his haste, he brushed against them. They were rigid, unreal. A man stood lighting a pipe. The flame looked fashioned of pinkish brass. A woman huffed cigarette smoke from her mouth and it was unmoving in the air, like some strange semi-transparent plastic plume.

  He went through the Marina gates and out onto the large central dock. The bay ripples were stilled, molten lead that had set and been oiled and polished and was touched with the red reflections of sunset.

  The Glorianna was there, at the end of the T, not quite as large as he had expected her to be. Eighty feet, perhaps. A bald, mustachioed man stood forward, looking toward the city, stopped in the act of coiling a heavy line. The Glorianna had so much cabin space in ratio to deck space, she looked slightly ungainly, but she seemed to have enough beam and freeboard to be a good sea boat. He went up the gangway and onto the deck. She was pale and trim, spotless, luxurious, comfortable. He could find no one else topsides. All hatches were closed, so he assumed she was air-conditioned. He tried to get in, but in the red world he was insubstantial in relation to the objects in stasis. He was like a mouse trying to open a refrigerator.