by Ed McBain
“Who’s the competition?” he called, a wide grin spreading over his face. We walked down to the edge of the lake, the fresh breeze from the water spanking our faces.
“This is Steve,” Lois said. “Steve, Johnny.”
He stuck out a big hand, took mine, and squeezed warmly. There were little blond, curly hairs on his tanned arm. They caught stray beams of sunlight, reflected them like shining, brass threads.
“Glad to know you,” Johnny said, and he grinned a wide, infectious grin, his mouth splitting wide with two rows of gleaming white teeth.
“Same here,” I said.
“Staying long?” he asked in a friendly tone.
“Two weeks.”
“You’ll love it.”
I thought of Mark, and how he’d said those exact words.
“He loves it already,” Lois answered for me.
Johnny’s eyes caught mine and held them for a moment, a shadow of doubt, or fear, lingering in them. Then the smile spread again and he said, “I came to say goodbye, Lois.”
“Well, golly,” she exclaimed, “so soon?”
His eyes dropped swiftly to the halter and then swept up to her face again. “Business,” he explained briefly.
“We sure will miss you,” Lois said.
Johnny grinned bashfully, the blush starting under his tan and working its way across his face. I liked him. He was like a big, overgrown kid bursting with health, and I liked him.
“You should say goodbye to Jean,” Lois said.
“Yes,” Johnny agreed. “There’s something I’d like to tell her.”
“Secrets?” Lois asked.
Johnny smiled. “Secrets.”
“Want to meet my sister?” Lois asked me.
“Thanks, some other time. I’ve got to pick up some food. How do I get to Glen Island?”
“If you don’t mind company,” Lois said, “I’ll go with you. We need a few things for supper.”
“Glad to have you,” I said.
“Can you give me ten minutes?”
“Sure.”
“I just want to change into a swim suit. You don’t mind, do you?”
“I’ll get the boat started,” I said. I turned to Johnny. “Nice meeting you.”
“Sure thing,” Johnny said.
“Come on,” Lois told him. “I’ll walk you part of the way.”
She took his hand and they began walking into the woods to the sleeping tents. She looked back over her shoulder and said, “I’ll be right down, Steve.”
I nodded and went back to my own site. I stopped at the cabin for my wallet, stuck half of it in my trunks Navy-style, the other half flapping over on the outside. When I got down to the outboard, I looked over at Site One. I couldn’t see a hell of a lot because of the trees that lined the inlet. I climbed into the boat and tried the cord several times. She wouldn’t turn over and I began sweating as I crouched over it, pulling on the peg, trying to get the damn thing to start. From back in the woods on the other side of the inlet, I heard Johnny say something. Lois’ voice answered him, and a screen door clattered shut.
I yanked at the peg again, heard the hum of a high-powered engine out on the lake, and the crooked old guy in the speedboat shot into view.
“Hey!” I shouted. “Hey, old man!”
I waved frantically, thinking he hadn’t heard me over the roar of his engine. But he slowed the boat, curved it around in a wide arc, and headed for the dock.
He pulled alongside and I got a good look at him. He had a straggly white moustache under his nose that I hadn’t noticed last night in the dark. The nose itself was bent in the middle like a crude satire on an eagle’s beak. His eyes were two sharp pieces of coal, set deep alongside his nose, underhung with heavy pouches. His hair was white and matted against his forehead, sticking out from a battered yatching cap that was perched on the back of his head. His mouth was a broken piece of glass, twisted and jagged, and his teeth flashed yellow behind it. He was still hunched over the wheel, still looking like a wind-blasted piece of rotting driftwood.
“Trouble?” he asked.
“I can’t get the damn thing started.”
“Got gas?” he asked.
“I think so. Isn’t it supposed to have fuel in it?”
“Think I’ve got an extra gallon,” he said, ignoring my question. “Let you have it for fifty cents.”
“Okay,” I sighed, “just get me started.”
He walked to the stern of the speedboat, lifted a tarpaulin, and pulled out a gallon from the tin cans stacked neatly there. He poured it into the tank and I handed him the fifty cents.
Then, as he leaned over the motor screwing on the gas cap, his eyes squinted up into mine. He jerked his head over his shoulder as if looking for someone, then snapped it back and glued the small black eyes to the gas cap as he spoke to me in a whisper.
“Clear out,” he said. “Get going as fast as you can.”
I misunderstood at first. I thought he was referring to the outboard.
“Sure,” I said. “I hope it turns over this time.”
“Pack up,” he warned, and there was no mistaking him this time. “Pack up and get out. Get out as fast as you can. Understand?”
I blinked at him dumbly, my eyebrows creasing into a frown.
“Why?” I asked. “Why should I?”
“Because they’re going to.…” He stopped abruptly, his head snapping upright, the coals in his face flaming briefly into life. I hadn’t heard a sound, but I followed his eyes across the inlet to where Lois, in a black polka dot suit, walked down to the waterfront.
“That ought to do it,” the old guy said in a loud voice. “Just needed a little gas, that’s all.”
He climbed back into the speedboat, and his eyes flashed their warning again. His twisted mouth was clamped shut.
I stared after him as he gunned away from the dock. I watched the white patch of his hat become smaller and smaller until it was out of sight. Lois sprinkled a little water on me, and I realized, she was standing beside me.
“What’s happened?” she asked, studying my face.
“The motor wouldn’t turn over,” I answered.
“No need to take it so hard,” she kidded.
I put the old man out of my mind and looked her over. The suit was a two-piece job, and the polka dots were all in the right places. They made me dizzy when I looked at them. That wasn’t all that made me dizzy.
“Let’s go,” I said.
“Yes, sir,” she answered, saluting smartly, her chest thrown out, her shoulders back.
She hopped into the boat, and I climbed in, too. I yanked at the cord ferociously and the motor coughed into life. Steering away from the site out to the center of the lake, I curved around the end of the island, saw for the first time the endless expanse of water, the clear, almost painful blue of the sky.
And stabbing across all this were the words that tumbled from a mouth like a broken piece of glass, twisted and jagged.
Pack up. Pack up and get out. Get out as fast as you can. Understand?
I didn’t understand. I tried to read meaning into the warning, but it was just too incongruous. A warning up here was impossible. It was too calm, too serene. The water stretched ahead in a lazy, translucent lethargy, canoes dotting it here and there, sun-tanned legs hanging over their sides. A swimmer passed close to the boat, waved briefly, and squirted a stream of water at Lois.
She giggled, squirmed around on the seat and looked at my face again.
“You look very rugged with all those wrinkles in your brow,” she said.
“Sorry,” I answered.
“Big worries?”
“Little ones.”
“Can I help?”
“Uh-huh.”
“How?”
“Just sit there looking pretty,” I said.
“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Lois said, wrinkling her pretty nose at me.
She was pretty, I decided. Damned pretty. One of the p
rettiest girls I’d ever known. I should have been thinking about her. I should have been watching the way she was doing things to that polka dot swim suit.
But I couldn’t forget the intensity that had flared in the old man’s eyes.
Glen Island had a dock that could accommodate most of the watercraft I’d seen on the lake. A speedboat was tied up in one of the berths, and I swung the outboard in at the berth on its left and tied up there. Lois brought me to the commissary and helped me pick out my meat. When we’d ordered all the stuff we needed, we started back to the boat. She pointed out the post office, and the ranger station.
“Oh, look,” she interrupted. “There’s Mark.” Her eyes lit suddenly, and I followed them down to the dock.
Mark was climbing into the speedboat at the berth next to my outboard. He saw us and waited at the wheel. Behind him, leaning against the post office wall, two girls in swim suits eyed him openly and frankly.
“Hello,” he said, his eyes covering Lois intimately. “How do you like it so far?” he asked me.
“Fine,” I said, “just fine.”
“Everything I said it was, huh?”
“Yep.”
He glanced at Lois again.
“What are you doing all the way out here?” I asked.
“I often come out,” he said. “This time it’s business.”
“What kind?” I asked.
“Two kinds. Jean wants me to pick her up so I can take her in to the mainland.”
“That sounds like pleasure,” I said, and Lois glanced at me, her eyes widening ever so slightly.
“First I have to get rid of these,” he said. He pointed to several cartons on the deck of the speedboat. They were stamped with the word LYE.
“For the johns,” he explained. “I’ve got to put a can of this in each one.”
“What for?” I asked, completely puzzled.
“Disinfectant. No plumbing in the woods, you know.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Well,” Mark said, hitching up his pants. “Back to work.” He started the engine and backed away into the lake, swinging the boat around and slowly moving out into clear water.
“Where to?” I asked Lois as we climbed into the outboard.
She shrugged. “Where to?” she repeated.
“Well, I was thinking of taking a little run around the lake. Sort of get acquainted, you know.”
“Count me out,” she said.
“Doesn’t appeal to you?”
“I’ve seen the lake,” she said.
I started the motor and we moved away from Glen.
“So, where to?” I asked.
“Well, you can take your spin around the lake if you like. Drop me off at Six.”
“Where?”
“Site Six on Little Harbor. I’ve some friends there.”
Strangely, I began to envy Lois’ friends there.
“Six, it is,” I said.
We traveled a little way in silence, Lois’ legs hanging over the side of the boat. Suddenly she began to giggle.
“What’s so funny?”
“What a job!” she said.
“Whose?” I asked.
“Mark’s. Imagine having to put a can of lye in each outhouse!” She laughed loudly this time, and I joined in with her. Her eyes curled when she laughed, and her nose wrinkled up. I liked to watch her laugh. We reached Site Six too soon.
“Here we are,” I said as I pulled closer to the shore.
“Thanks,” Lois said. She put a kiss on her fingers and patted my forehead with them. “You’re an angel.”
“Hey,” I remembered, “how will you get back?”
“I’ll cut through the woods. Don’t worry.”
I thought how nice it would be to meet up with something like her in the woods. I was almost tempted to carry the outboard on my back and follow her overland. She blew another kiss at me and posed prettily on the dock, as I shot out into the lake again.
It spread ahead like a flawless mirror, thirty-two miles of clear water stretching up to Ticonderoga at the northern tip of the lake. The pamphlet I’d seen in the city said the lake was from three-quarters of a mile to four miles wide in spots. One hundred and fifty-five islands dotted the lake, islands with names like Turtle, Uncas, Little Harbor, Big Burnt, islands that looked like green porcupines sitting on the water. It was big and open, and I lost myself in the splendor of it. I lounged in the back of the boat, just letting her roll over the waves, pushing steadily ahead with the wind in my face, until I realized I’d been out for more than a half-hour. I turned the boat and headed back to Little Harbor. The ice I’d bought at the commissary was beginning to melt on the bottom of the boat, even though I’d covered it with a newspaper. When I got back to the inlet, there was a light oil slick covering the water. Mark and his lye cans, I figured.
I carried the ice up to my cooktent, wrapping two towels around it and heaving it to my shoulder. When I opened the icebox door, I saw it wasn’t going to fit. I set it down on the floor and went out to get the meat and groceries from the boat. When I came back, I tried chipping the ice with a sharp rock, but I was getting no place fast. I decided to run over and see if Lois was back yet. Maybe she had an ice pick. At least, that was the excuse I made for myself.
I edged my way over the docks separating Sites One and Two. When I’d passed the trees that hid most of the camp from view, I saw Jean sitting at the table outside the cooktent. The door to the cooktent was closed, and she seemed startled to see me.
“I’m afraid we haven’t met,” I said. “My name’s Steve.”
“I’m Jean,” she said, “Lois’ sister.” She looked at my face and then smiled. “You’re the one who was so fresh this morning,” she said. She was wearing black slacks that were glued to her thighs. A chartreuse sweater gripped her figure tightly, threatening to hug it to death. Cold, I thought. A cold tomato. Well, sisters weren’t always right.
She straddled the bench as if she were riding a horse. The sun did blinding things with her hair. Her eyes, I noticed, weren’t green like her sister’s. They were blue, a blue as clear and as deep as the sky’s. Her nose was Lois’ exactly. Straight, flaring widely at the tip, as if she were sniffing the air like a wild animal. Her lips were fuller than Lois’, looking riper somehow, parted slightly now to reveal even, white teeth.
“My ice won’t fit the icebox,” I said. “I thought I might borrow your ice pick.”
“I don’t think we have one,” she said quickly.
I started for the cooktent. “Mind if I look?”
She jumped up and said, “The floor is wet. I just washed it.”
I dropped my hand from the handle on the door and shook my head. “All that ice is going to melt,” I said.
“I wish I could help, really.” Her eyes were big and blue. “But you’d track up the floor something awful.”
“Well,” I sighed. “I guess that’s that.”
“I feel just as bad as you do,” she said. “I’ve been dying for a cup of coffee ever since I washed the floor.”
She didn’t look like the washer-woman type. She looked anything but. My suggestion, I think, was a natural one.
“Why not come over to my place and I’ll brew us a cup?”
“Oh, I couldn’t,” she said, and her golden lashes blinked over the blue eyes, like little lace curtains fluttering in the wind.
“Come on,” I said. “I promise I’ll be good.”
She fluffed her short hair with her left hand, the way all married women do when someone sounds as if he thinks they’re single. Her wedding band and engagement ring glittered in the sun. The diamond was as big as my nephew’s head. Jean seemed to be considering my proposition, almost as if I’d asked her up to my hotel room instead of over to a lousy cooktent for a cup of coffee.
“Well?” I asked.
“All right,” she said, and she smiled at me, the blue eyes burning up into mine.
We started through the trees and headed for the
rocks between the sites. She stepped over them lithely, the black slacks clinging to her as she stepped from rock to rock. When we reached my cooktent, I glanced back to the other site. All I could see were the trees we’d just walked through, and a small corner of the cooktent. The rest of the cooktent, and the rest of the site, was hidden by the trees.
“Sure you want coffee?” I asked.
“What else have you got?”
“Well, first tell me if you’re sure you want coffee.”
“It all depends on what else there is.” She folded her knees against her breasts, hugged them with her arms.
“Half a pint of Carstairs?” I asked.
“Sounds good.”
I grinned and patted her hand. “I’ll be right back.” I ran up to the cabin and found the bottle easily enough. I brought it back to the table and went into the cooktent for two cups. I poured whiskey until each cup was half full. Then we clinked them together and drank.
She sipped at hers, almost as if it were a coke. When I finished mine, I poured another and drank it quickly. I was on my third one, and still she sipped at hers, looking at me over the rim of the cup, her diamonds sparkling.
I began to feel pretty good by the time the fourth one was inside me.
“You don’t look so cold,” I said.
“No?”
“Nossir. No, ma’m, I mean.”
“Well, who said I was?”
“I dunno,” I said innocently.
A slight smile curled her lips, and I began to feel warm all over. I wasn’t sure it was the whiskey, either.
She glanced at her watch. “I wonder what’s keeping Mark,” she said, a slight frown puckering her eyebrows. “He’s supposed to pick me up.”
“He’s spreading disinfectant,” I said, feeling pretty damned happy by now.
“Disinfectant?”
“In the woods. No plumbing in the woods, you know. Nossir, ma’m.”
“Well, I hope he hurries. Sam will be furious.”
“Sam,” I repeated. “Mr. Jean.”
“Mr. Fowler,” she corrected.
The name rang a bell. “Fowler and Fowler?” I asked.
“Sam and Jean,” she said simply.
I eyed her quizzically. “Really Fowler and Fowler?”