“I’ve got a better idea,” said Harry, pointing down channel. It was the Charisma looking as high as a church steaming toward us.
“Now here,” said Harry, “comes a cat with all the threads in the world.”
“Burger?”
“Who else?”
Charisma steered into a berth at the Yacht Haven. Her lines were no sooner fast than her speedboat was over the side and racing toward us with both Burgers giving every indication of being overjoyed to see us.
“Great,” said Burger when introduced to the problem. “All the duds you want. Come aboard now and we’ll fit you out.”
Charisma, with her paneled staterooms, air conditioning, TV, billiard table, Monel-lined galley, deepfreeze, etc., was something else. Wall to wall carpeting six inches thick. Hi-Fi. Shostakovich. Rolling Stones. Harry in a Nehru jacket, goes well with his beard. Myself in turtleneck and white sharkskin, double breasted. Closetsful. If Burger wears a different outfit every day of the week, it will take him a month to go through this collection. Miss Wong in gold lamé. Incredible. Charity in buttercup yellow evening slacks. Burger to rent a car and pick us up that evening.
Poor Grogan, who could not possibly have worn anybody else’s clothes, looked shabby by comparison in his old white linen suit. Charity was kind to him. Said, “Grogan, you’re a dream.”
His face went red and then white and his right eye nearly jumped out of its socket. Took her hand and kissed it. Looked like those old engravings of General Tom Thumb. Made one think. Charity had been through so much in so short a time. Grogan had probably been through so little in so long a time.
We used the yacht’s shower. Steaming water. Bath salts. Emerged smelling, said Harry, like the great whore of Babylon. Burger, already on his fourth martini, put his hand on Miss Wong’s bottom. She waited for him to remove it and when he did not, I saw her long sharp fingernail bite his skin. He snatched his hand away and sucked the wound.
“What’s the matter, Ham?” says Mrs. B. “Hurt yourself?”
“Damn ice pick. Time somebody invented a safe ice pick.”
“Poor love. Want a Band-Aid?”
“It’s quite all right, thank you.”
“Now Candia,” Grogan was explaining to Charity, “was formerly Megalokastron or Herakleion, the capital of Crete. Actually it occupies the site of the ancient city of Heracleum, the seaport of Cnossus. It was taken by the Turks in 1669 after a stubborn defense by the Venetians who lost thirty thousand men…”
“You’re looking very good these days, Mrs. B.,” said Harry.
She blushed. Gazed at him with swimming eyes.
Harry said to me, “Come over here a minute. Want to show you the view.”
We go out on deck. The sun is setting over Paradise Island. Dark girls with beautiful limbs are tooling up Bay Street. Hondas. Lambrettas. Baby Austins. An E-type Jag. A native sloop beats against the tide. The bones of another hard and fast on the coral. Water sloshing in and out between her broken ribs. Name still visible. Unsinkable.
“I want you to get up on that roof tonight, Clay, and look over the air-conditioning system.”
“Suppose I’m spotted?”
“Pretend you’re drunk. Looking for your girl friend.”
“On the roof?”
“Why not? Crazy American. Yankee go home.”
“They’ll remember me.”
“Nonsense. All white men look alike.”
The Chris-Craft is nearby. Three occupants glowering. Harry waves gaily. Their eyes pop. Cannot figure what the hell we are doing on Charisma in fancy clothes. Harry raises his middle finger.
“Time everything,” says Harry. “Exactly how long it takes you to get up there. Plate covering entrance pipe. How fastened? What size screwdriver necessary? If electric drill necessary where is nearest outlet? How long extension cord? Three prong or two?”
I hear Grogan. “‘If Candlemas is fair and clear./ There’ll be twa winters in the year.’ The prophecy of Simeon. A light to lighten the Gentiles.”
“… Confucius forbade ambition which of course produced a stagnant civilization,” I heard Miss Wong say. “But the doctrine of Tao contains neither supersitition nor religion but a system of rationalism. A sort of vast intangible impersonal first principle…”
“I can’t do it,” I said.
“What do you mean you can’t do it, Clay?”
“I haven’t got a watch.”
“Shit.” He thought a minute. “I’ll get you Burger’s. He’s probably got a dozen. Now find out from Grogan where the tanks are stored. Go ashore and have a look at them. See what they weigh. How hard it will be to get them up to the roof. Also you’ll need a repairman’s outfit. One-piece overalls. Steal it.”
“Steal?”
“Of course.”
“Now?”
“Why not?”
“I ought to thank Mr. Burger for the shower and the clothes.”
“Don’t bother.”
No one observed my departure.
Heard Miss Wong say, “… it is summed up in the Five Classics. I Ching. Shu Ching. Shi Ching. Li Chi and the Ch’un ch’iu.”
Heard Grogan say, … “Cittanova is thirty-one miles northeast of Reggio. It arose from the ruins of Casalnuovo, which was destroyed by an earthquake in 1783.”
Heard Mrs. B. say, “Oh Harry.”
Heard Charity say, “Never yet boffed a black.”
Grogan met me at the gangway.
“Harry wants…” I began.
“I know. Come with me.”
Followed him ashore. Little legs twinkling. Into shop with all kinds of skin diving equipment. Rubber masks. Fins. Scuba.
“My tanks,” said Grogan.
“Of course, sir.”
Four tanks tagged, “Personal property of Captain Horace Plum.”
“Who is Horace Plum?”
“Me,” said Grogan.
Heft the tanks. Not too bad. Pick up all four. Quite a load but can probably make it.
“Between now and tomorrow I will stencil them Acme Air-Conditioning Repair. Remember that name if anyone asks you.”
“All right,” I said.
“As you can see the tanks feed through stainless steel tubing into this central regulator valve. A button here controls the regulator. To release the gas you simply depress the regulator button. I have examined an air-conditioning unit similar to the one we will be working on and found that it requires a 5/8 nozzle. The nozzle is attached to the tanks by this bit of string. When you are ready to go to work simply break the string, screw the nozzle into the pipe fitting of the system, and the regulator valve into the nozzle. Then depress the button. With seventy-two pounds of pressure it will take approximately five and three-quarter minutes to exhaust the tanks. I then estimate another one and one half minutes for the gas to reach the area we are interested in. In other words a total of seven and a quarter minutes, at which time it will be necessary for us to don the masks. Split second timing is very important.”
“I know.”
“Since the gas is colorless and odorless, we will have no way of judging its presence. If you are off in your timing or we are off in ours, we will curl up our toes like the rest of them. By a lucky stroke, however, I have managed to locate a Carrier dealer here on the island who is installing a model in an apartment house similar to that which is already in service in the casino. Tomorrow we will go over to inspect it and that will give you the opportunity to familiarize yourself with the design. It is all quite straight-forward really. Just a matter of removing the plug and inserting the nozzle. Any questions?”
“I guess not.”
“Now since the tanks will be your responsibility, you had better decide where you want to put them until the time comes.”
“I’ve been thinking about that. Harry said we could hide them in the bushes near the casino and I could pick them up when I am ready to do the job. The trouble with that is somebody might just stumble across them and decide they woul
d make a nice souvenir. I mean it isn’t likely, but it could just happen.”
“I agree.”
“So I think I’d better keep them on the boat. That way I will know where they are all the time.”
“Splendid. Of course it will be quite a load to carry but then you are after all a rather vast young man.” There was more than a touch of envy in the way he said it. I did feel enormous beside him. Anybody would have. It seemed unfair. All that youth and size while he had neither.
“Well then I guess I’ll carry the tanks down to the raft now,” I said.
“I’ll give you a hand.”
They were made of heavy steel. I carried three and he took one. Even so it was a load for him. He was sweating in that shabby white linen suit with the old-fashioned cuffed pants. His face, under the Frank Buck hat, looked pale and no bigger than a dime.
When we had deposited the tanks in the raft, we sat down on the pier to rest. He was sucking air. He said, “Are you nervous, Clay?”
“About what?”
“Our little venture.”
I thought about it.
“Not especially,” I said. “Are you?”
He took off his hat and mopped his brow. “Very.”
“But you’ve done this sort of thing before.”
“Not really. There’s been a bit of funny business with artifacts here and there and maybe even a few other bits and pieces of things like rolling drunks or picking pockets when I was really hard up for the next meal. But it was all penny-ante, no more relation to this than stealing apples off a fruit stand.”
“Then why are you doing it?”
“The obvious reasons. A sort of last chance, you might say.”
At what? Being six feet tall and twenty-one? Driving a Porsche and wearing tapered shirts and wide-wale corduroys? He was making me uncomfortable.
“But I worry about it,” he said. “I suppose we all do.”
“Not Harry.”
Grogan mopped his brow again. “Perhaps even Harry.”
“Well, even if he did, he wouldn’t let on,” I said, thinking that’s the way it ought to be.
“That’s true. He wouldn’t let on. Since the war he hasn’t really let on to much of anything.”
“I didn’t know he was in the war.”
“Didn’t you? That’s odd. He was a considerable hero, you know. Probably the best fighter pilot in Korea. Twelve MIGs. Strange that you wouldn’t know about it.”
“Well, he and my father haven’t gotten along very well in recent years.”
“Harry can be a devil in his own way,” said Grogan. “I mean he makes it all sound like so much fun.”
“What?”
“Oh everything. Being poor, being in jail. But I’ve been poor and I’ve been in jail and I can tell you it’s no fun.” I waited for him to go on but he seemed to be wrapped in his own thoughts.
“Well, I’d better get these tanks out to the boat,” I said.
“Do you want help?”
“With all this weight in the raft I think I’d be better off alone.”
“Just as you say.”
His tic was jumping. He could see I was trying to get rid of him. I got down into the raft and shoved off. Put my back into it. Rowed hard, but kept thinking about what he had said. I mean about everything with Harry being a joke. That’s what it was all right. Boffing. Boats. Capers. Always something new and jazzy around the bend. And if there was nothing around that bend, you tried the next one. But as poor little Grogan had said, for him it was really the last bend. It gave me a sense of responsibility and a feeling that it would be better if we had never gotten started. Maybe in the end we wouldn’t have to go through with it.
But I knew we would.
CHAPTER 19
BURGER SENT HIS LAUNCH FOR US AND WE climbed aboard in our party clothes. Burger was wearing a bright red evening jacket and black tie. Mrs. B. wore a white knit sheath that fit very close. Nothing underneath. Charity wore a ribbon in her straight blond hair and looked like an undernourished Alice in Wonderland.
We bombed across the still water that was lit by shafts of moonlight and passed beneath an old stone bridge and up a narrow channel. I saw that Harry was wearing Burger’s thin gold watch and that he kept checking it every so often. Grogan clung to his solar topee and did not look around. He gave me the feeling of a man walking through a graveyard. We rounded another bend and then we could see cars and the casino itself—a flat-roofed building lit up like a Christmas tree. I looked for the air-conditioning unit and there it was—a darker lump on the dark roof.
The launch slid up to the dock. The place was well lit. Too well. People milling around. Cars in the parking lot. All that activity scared me. It would be like holding up a supermarket in broad daylight. Crazy. But if the exposure worried Harry, he didn’t show it. He muttered in my ear, “Get up on that roof, Clay.”
“Now?”
“Of course now. Meet us inside when you’re finished.”
“But Harry…”
“Get cracking.”
The rest of them started across to the casino. Ham Burger being very affable. Miss Wong on one side, Charity on the other. I dropped back. Watched them vanish among a knot of people in evening clothes. My heart beating very hard. Sweaty palms. Like that minute or so before the coach sends you in. Crowds roaring. Everybody you know watching. Yet the worst you can do in the big game is fumble. If you drop this ball God knows what will happen. Why did I ever get involved in the first place? Why not just walk off now and forget the whole thing? Go back across that bridge and get on the first plane for Miami. No money for one thing. And for another it would be gutless. You don’t want to let Harry see you that way. He did shoot down twelve planes after all. On the roof then. You can go along with it for now and when it comes to the real thing you can always back away. Famous last words.
Stroll casually toward the back of the building. Staggered a little, pretending to be drunk. Guard in the parking lot. Black man leaning against the fender of a Rolls. Who keeps a Rolls on an island twelve miles long? The guard looked at me briefly, but I pretended to be going toward a car. His eyes slid away. Why should he pay any particular attention to me?
There were a couple of hundred cars in the lot and it was easy to get lost among them. When I was well out of sight I cut in again toward the rear of the building. Nobody around and nice and dark back there. A stairway leading to the roof. All very convenient. I felt a little more relaxed now. Like when you are actually off the bench and in the game. You stop worrying then.
I bent over as if to tie a shoelace and looked around. Nobody. Slithered right up the stairs hugging the wall. Told myself that was the wrong way to do it. Don’t skulk. Look casual. Young man out for a stroll. Nice view from the roof. And it was a nice view. The lights of Nassau. Cars winking like glow worms along Bay Street. Sheet of moonlight on the harbor. White finger of the lighthouse poking at the sky. Jezebel, black and lonely, swinging to her anchor. Charisma lit up like a Christmas tree. Enough stalling now. You may want to look like you are out here for a stroll, but you had better get it over with. Damn! Forgot all about timing the stairs. Have to do it all over again. Anybody watching is sure to get suspicious now. Can’t be helped. Skipped back down the stairs. Looked at Burger’s watch. 9:22. Back up the steps. Casual. Little evening stroll. One minute, ten seconds. Remember!
Flat roof with a low stone wall. Some kind of gravel surface. Noisy as hell. Like walking on dry snow. Damn! Damn! Everybody and his mother hear me now. Can’t be helped. Carry on. Fortunately the air conditioner makes a hell of a racket. Big mother. Rumbles like a jet plane. Ten seconds to cross roof. Not so bad. Crouch low and you get a lot of protection from the wall. Right up to the unit now. Big box the size of a small garage with hot air thumping. Penlite flash clipped to inside pocket. Flick it on. Cover plate just as Grogan said. Big screws. Need hefty screwdriver. What if they’re frozen! Hammer and chisel? Well if you’re supposed to be a repairman you can c
arry a bag of tools, idiot. But how can you time it without actually doing it? Shit.
I bent closer with the little flash. At least the screws are not painted over. And from the scratch marks around them and the slightly chewed slots, somebody has been in there. Fresh metal not yet rusted over. Must have been serviced fairly recently. All you can do now. Split then before someone shows. I flicked off the light and skedaddled for the stairs. Down and into the bushes. Stood there a minute to cool off. Trickles of sweat down the back of my neck.
Breathing heavily. Feel half strangled. Burger’s jacket too small. A breeze from the sea, but the air is warm and humid. Stroll leisurely toward the parking lot. More cars arriving. Up a curving drive toward the main door.
“Hey,” said a black man in uniform. “You!”
My heart jumped.
“What?”
“How old are you, boy?”
“Old? What do you mean how old?”
“Just what I say, son. I got to know your age before you come in the casino. You twenty-one or over you more than welcome. You less why you just run on about your business.”
Something none of us thought of.
“Well, I am twenty-one.”
Now he’ll ask for identification. Driver’s license or what have you. And I haven’t got a damn thing.
To my surprise he just said, “You sure about that?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“All right then. You pass.”
Nutty. I mean what was the point of asking in the first place?
Harry had said the guards were a joke and now I believed him.
I went through the double door into a room about half the size of a football field. Bright lights. Shiny clothes. Spinning wheels. Click of dice. Too many teeth. Tits galore. Crazy hair. Harry off to one side, inspecting the cashier’s cage, looking as out of place in Burger’s clothes as a gorilla in a dinner jacket. Grogan sad and funny and professorial in white linen. Miss Wong serene and detached and incredibly beautiful at one of the roulette tables with eager males eight deep around her.
Harry saw me and beckoned. He looked charged up, eyes sparkling. I could see that he really dug the place. Drew me to one side.
Harry & the Bikini Bandits Page 8