The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything

Chapter Ten

Kirby Winter and Bonny Lee Beaumont made love, took naps in the red world, showered together with a playfulness, with small mischiefs and burlesques, bawdy comedies over soap and shared towels — a playtime so alien to his own estimates of himself that he felt as if he had become another person. He had strode in lonesome severity past all the fiestas, thinking them flavored with evil and depravity to be righteously condemned. But suddenly he had been invited in, where all the warmth and the music was, and had found himself caught up — not in depravity, not in decadence, not in wickedness — but in a holiday flavor of a curious innocence, a wholesome and forthright and friendly pursuit of quite evident pleasures.

In any plausible use of aesthetic theorizings, she had contours, textures and colorings which made her, as an object at rest or in motion, highly pleasing to sight, touch, taste, and hearing. Through the very process of appraising her as not only an individual, but also an object of aesthetic value, pleasing to him, he was able to achieve an inversion of that logic and assume that he, in kind, was also, to her, an individual as well as an object which pleased her. And this brought him to an objectivity which altered his prior attitude toward his body, changing it from something ludicrous, something so grotesque as to merit concealment, to an object meriting that pride which was a reflection of her pleasure.

He was pleased to be tall, grateful for a muscularity in part inherited and in part developed, perhaps, as a byproduct of many sublimations, distressed at a roll of softness around his middle, particularly after Bonny Lee’s soapy, derisive, painful pinch, and was resolved to become as taut as she, knowing it would please her. Though at first the physiological mechanisms of desire had a distressing obviousness, targeting him for saucy jokes, he achieved acceptance of the inevitable and then progressed to a degree of self-satisfaction bordering upon the fatuous.

Yet throughout the whispered soapy games, in spite of his years of inadvertent continence, he could guess she was a rare one, precisely suited to bring him back into the race of men with minimal delay. He sensed that had there been any trace or trick of self-consciousness about her, any contrived modesties or measured reservations, had she in fact struck any other attitude other than that of a happy, exuberant, exhibitionistic, inventive, gamboling, young, coltish creature, he would have tumbled back into ackwardness, irrational shame, dismay and the puritan persuasion that anything so delicious must, of necessity, be evil.

There was a pattern in the love play, little times of promising to stop all this nonsense, and then an instinctive awareness of whose turn it was to become the aggressor, to be repulsed playfully, or with mock solemnity, or with wicked reprisals, and sometimes the sweet and momentary acceptance, abandoned quickly by one or the other before it went on beyond any chance of stopping it.

She sat on the edge of the blue tub and he scoured her hair dry with a big maroon towel and watched it spring back to damp tight ringlets. Suddenly the games were over, with no need to explain it to each other, with only the need to carry her to the bed and, with all the accumulated tensions, quickly, strongly, boisterously, strenuously, joyously take it so quickly over the edge that in her completion she made sounds like a slow, strange laughter while, with an astonishing strength, she held him absolutely motionless.

They listened to the two o’clock news with astonishment and incredulity. After the fifteen minutes ended, there was a special fifteen-minute bulletin on Kirby Winter — the adventures of.

When the final commercial came, she turned off the little transistor radio and placed it on the night stand beside the bed.

“Even crazier than the news, sugar, is it being the two o’clock news. My head is out of joint. All these naps. It should be tomorrow, almost. No more naps, Kirby, because you know what’ll happen for sure. Get all rested and want each other again and take more naps and — hell, we keep this up the only way you’ll leave is on a stretcher, or float out the window.”

“I can’t understand how Betsy Alden—”

She sat up and frowned at him. “Say, did your Uncle Omar look a lot older than he was?”

“What?”

“A day is got to have twenny-four hours, sugar. Lemme see. You know I stuck maybe an extra eleven onto this one? Time and a half, like. I bet if I had the same kinda day every day for ten years, I’d all of a sudden be thirty-five insteada thirty. Was he old-lookin’?”

“I guess he was. I guess he looked older than his age.”

She lifted a long brown leg and flexed it. “Hefting them people around on the beach and all, I wore myself down. So there’s wear and tear, but now there’s just a little sore, like the day after you do too much.”

“Didn’t you hear the broadcast?”

“What kind of a smart-ass question is that? Surely I heard it. They’ve all gone nuttier than ever.”

“So they made a positive identification and so then I overpowered two policemen, disarmed them, handcuffed them and lost myself in the crowd. So now I’m armed and considered dangerous.”

She giggled at him. “Eliot Ness’ll be coming after you, sugar. Anyways, what could those cops say? You know, I’m about to starve, sugar. I got some steaks. How you want yours?”

“Medium.”

“You want it medium, but you get it rare, sugar. I’m to be taken care of you, hear?”

He remembered the money, the confusion on the beach, the pipe, the ring and the roses, and asked her what she’d done. She put the steaks on and came back and told him some of it, went and turned them over and came back and told him more, then went and brought in a tray, with the steaks and glasses of milk and a big stack of French bread and a bowl of sweet butter. As they ate she told him all the rest of it.

He went and got the wad of money and the ring out of the borrowed slacks. She watched him silently as he counted the money. He stared at her and said, “Sixty-six hundred and twenty dollars, Bonny Lee!”

She shrugged. “Geezel, sugar, it din seem like stealing it, but I guess it was. Nothing I did seemed real. You know. But you heard what the radio said. Twenny thousand. Hell, they’re all adding it all on for the insurance.”

“How about the ring?”

“Oh, that. Over near the bathhouses I see a fat ugly bassar with two of his buddies, got a guy backed against a wall looking for some way to run. I din like three against one, so I froze them still and wrapped the belt off one of them round his ankles, tied a necktie on the ankles of another one and gave the littlest one a big push. I guess I only tilted him over an inch. I worked the ring off the pinkie on the fat one, and I went fifty feet off, sorta behind a bush. The little one went ass over teacup into a cactus patch and the fat one went down backwards and the other one went down sideways, and the little guy against the wall took off like he was a deer.” She took the ring from him and scratched her empty milk glass with it. “Diamond, all right,” she said. “Big sonuvabitch, huh?”

She glanced at him quickly enough to catch his fleeting grimace.

“Don’t talk so sweet and pretty, do I?”

Her perception startled him. “I don’t mind, Bonny Lee.”

She tossed the ring onto the tray. “Maybe you do. Maybe I do, too. But maybe there isn’t a gawddamn thing neither of us can do about it, sugar. I got to be a woman entire afore I learned up on being a lady. I had four year of schooling, all told. You want you a tea party lady, you just go get yourself one, hear? Go grab one offa the P.T. and A. You and she can talk up a storm on art and culture and such, Kirby, then you try taking a shower with her and hustling her into the sack and see how things work out, see if you don’t have to sign contract papers forever with a guarantee income afore she’ll even step down offa her high heels.”

“Bonny Lee!”

“Oh, don’t look at me so gawddamn pitiful, you sonovabitch! I get along fine and I don’t need you nor anybody.” She hurled herself face down on the bed and began to sob, making sounds like a small boy punished. He patted her and soothed her and held her.

Finally she got up and went in and bathed her face and came out, grinning somewhat shamefacedly, snuffling from time to time. “All a damn lie,” she said, “and you know it. You being schooled makes me feel funny. I want to do better, but what the hell chance have I got? Shees marie, I work six nights a week and that’s when they got night schools, even if I could get in. Sorry, sugar. I don’t crack up so much. It’s on account of this being such a goofed up day, maybe. I’m just a share-cropper girl outa Carolina, cheap, ignorant and fun-lovin’.”

“You low rate yourself too much. You’re bright and quick.”

“So is a she-fox. Let’s drop the whole thing.”

“You’re the same age as a college kid.”

“Compared to a college kid, I’m a hunnerd n’ten.”

He picked up the wad of money and dropped it beside her. “You took it. So use it, if you mean what you say. Use it until it runs out, then go back to work.”

She looked thoughtful for a few moments, then looked sidelong at him. “Say, didn’t you hear that broadcast? First things first, Kirby.”

The news had been peculiarly distressing. The Glorianna had been intercepted down near Dinner Key and had put in there and tied up while the Metro police had made an investigation. On the yacht had been a skeleton crew of three, Mr. Joseph Locordolos, a Spanish national and a developer and speculator in hotel and resort properties, his sister, Mrs. Charla O’Rourke, a Greek national and member of the international set, and Miss Betsy Alden, Mrs. O’Rourke’s niece, a nationalized citizen of the United States who had worked in New York and Hollywood as a bit-part actress on television. The yacht was registered in Panama. Mr. Locordolos was very agitated at being halted in such a pre-emptory fashion. All the papers were in order. He explained that they were taking a short shake-down cruise of several hours to see whether the newly installed radar was working properly. Both he and his sister explained that, while staying at the Hotel Elise, an establishment partially owned by Mr. Locordolos, they had made the acquaintance of Mr. Kirby Winter, nephew of Omar Krepps whom they had known slightly over the years. They said Mr. Winter seemed quite depressed and, because the boat was roomy enough, they had suggested he come along with them to Nassau, and he could then fly back from there. Mr. Winter had said he would think about it, and they had assumed he would not be joining them until the trunk and the crate arrived aboard. They had been unable to contact Mr. Winter to ask him about it, but they assumed it was his intention to go with them to Nassau, perhaps for a longer stay than he had indicated would be possible. Perhaps, as soon as they heard of the huge embezzlement, Mr. Locordolos admitted, they should have contacted the police. Instead, as he explained, he investigated the contents of the two containers and found nothing of any importance in them. He had given up, of course, any idea of permitting Mr. Winter to accompany them, and had merely been waiting until Mr. Winter put in an appearance, at which time he was going to have the containers moved onto the dock at the Biscayne Marina and wash his hands of the whole matter. Though the police had a search warrant, Mr. Locordolos felt that it might not be properly applicable to a vessel of foreign registry, however he volunteered to overlook the legal considerations and asked for a complete search on a voluntary basis. The police impounded the items Mr. Winter had shipped to the yacht, and found nothing else of any pertinence to the Winter case. They had previously impounded the suitcases discovered in Winter’s temporary quarters at the Hotel Elise.

During the search of the boat they had an opportunity to interrogate Miss Alden. She was in bed in one of the staterooms. Mr. Locordolos and Mrs. O’Rourke had explained that the young actress had suffered a minor breakdown from overwork and they were taking her on a restful cruise. Miss Alden, in a weak voice, had confirmed all aspects of the explanation given to the police.

In the meanwhile, Winter having been definitely identified as being still in the area as of eleven that morning, all exits from the city were being watched. So many pictures and descriptions had been circulated, it was not believed he could remain long at liberty. It was entirely possible the Farnham woman had already departed for some planned rendezvous with her co-conspirator, and once Winter was picked up, it was entirely possible he would disclose where the Farnham woman could be found. With both of them in custody it seemed possible that recovery of the secreted millions might be undertaken.

Grumby, in yet another public statement, had warned all authorities involved in this complex matter that Kirby Winter, once apprehended, might very possibly attempt to confuse the picture by falsely implicating others. He asserted that despite periodic pleas, Mr. Krepps had never revealed the use that was being made of the twenty-seven millions diverted from Krepps Enterprises to O.K. Devices. He stated under oath that they had never seen a dime of this money, had no idea what had become of it, and assumed that it was properly covered in the Krepps will in that portion which spoke of the bulk of the estate which should be established as the Krepps Foundation. In an accompanying statement, the District Director of Internal Revenue stated that all appropriate income and gains taxes had been paid on the twenty-seven millions prior to their disappearance into the mysterious operations of O.K. Devices. He said that in the absence of any other records, the twenty-seven million could now be considered a part of the estate and taxed as such. If during the interim period additional values had accrued, then doubtless capital gains taxes would be due and payable in the event the assets of O.K. Devices were found and liquidated. However, in view of the unusual aspects of this situation, he was prepared to wait and find out what had happened. If the executives of K.E. were indeed blameless in this situation, as they appeared to be, then possibly some adjustment might be made to avoid punishing them financially for the wrongdoing of another.

Mr. D. LeRoy Wintermore, of Wintermore, Stabile, Schamway and Mertz, made yet another statement, saying that in view of the cluttered situation, he was exercising the option of delaying the assessment of the total estate until one year from the time of death. He hoped that things would be more orderly by then. He said it would delay the establishment of the Foundation, but it might well make the tax computations easier for all concerned. In closing he said that he felt that Kirby Winter had neither the cleverness nor the resolve to engineer such a vast malappropriation of funds, and wondered aloud if the whole thing might have been more logically planned and executed by the Farnham woman.

Winter, meanwhile, was wanted for assault, resisting arrest, theft of police weapons and carrying concealed weapons without a license — all this in addition to the summonses, the subpoenas, and the formal charges of embezzlement, tax evasion, conspiracy and fraud.

The morning disturbance on the beach was neatly accounted for. It seems that a large rowdy band of teen-agers had run amuck on and near the public beach, yanking the beach costumes off women, snatching the keys from parked cars, racing through the stores and grabbing money, and playing other cruel and grotesque tricks upon the innocent. County officials believed them to be under the influence of some sort of narcotic which had turned them into a large pack of reckless animals, and said it was possible they might be part of the spring college group down from Jacksonville, Daytona or Lauderdale, or even on their way back to school from the Bahamas.

“I am a large, rowdy band of teen-agers,” Bonny Lee said happily.

“They have a description of one of the gang. You heard him. Several people reported her. A short-haired, deeply-tanned blonde in pale blue underwear.”

“Aqua.”

“The same one Tanny and Harry saw, you know.”

“Uh-huh. I know.”

“I replaced her with an item in black panties and a white bra.”

“Stacked?”

“Best I could find on short notice.”

“Blonde?”

“Natural.”

“Beautiful?”

“Completely.”

“You tryna be a bassar?”

“Except she had an unfortunate profile. An almost perfectly straight line from the edge of her upper teeth right down to the base of her throat.”

“That’s better. Enjoy the undressing bit?”

“I was too nervous to notice.”

“That’s good too, sugar. That’s right sweet of you.”

“I’m damned worried about Wilma.”

“Who? Oh, the one looks like a priss. From what he said on the phone, that Joseph guy, they were bringing her to the boat. So was she hid someplace aboard?”

“I don’t think so. Charla told me they had a crew of five. The news account said there was a crew of three. So I think it’s a safe bet two were sent after Wilma and didn’t get back in time. Joseph got some news flash about the cops checking on my things that were moved out of the hotel, and he got nervous and took off. Maybe they got to the dock with Wilma in time to see the boat chugging away.”

“Or maybe they came and saw the cops like we did.”

“So what would they do?”

She shrugged. “That’s an easy one, isn’t it? She was in a safe place, until Betsy told Joseph about it. So they can’t walk the streets, and I suppose a crew would live on a boat, so why not take her on back where they got her and stay there with her until Joseph gets in touch, huh?”

“It’s logical, I guess. But it might be a long wait, you know. If they didn’t buy what he said all the way, they’ll be watching him.”

“You said there’s no phone there. Where is it?”

“Ah — two-ten Sunset Way, Hallandale.”

“We could find it, you know.”

“But the big straw hat and the glasses didn’t work so well, Bonny Lee. That cop wasn’t fooled.”

“Because you flinched. Remember? You tried to ask him what was going on, he’d never looked twice, believe me. You be okay, sugar, just head up and ready to spit in their damn eye. I’ll get me some clothes on.”

It was a quiet street of small ugly stucco houses on the sizable plots of pre-war Florida, their ugliness softened by the tropic plantings which had grown up in almost vulgar profusion. Professor Wellerly’s house, tinted a faded pink, was more obscured than the others on the street. It was a hot, sleepy afternoon. A power mower made an angry snorting sound several houses away. Birds were yelping, raiding a fresh store of berries on the tall bushes lining Wellerly’s driveway.

A laundry truck passed them. Bonny Lee slowed and, when the truck was out of sight, she turned into the weedy shell driveway of a boarded-up house.

She turned toward him. She had changed to a black and white checked shirt, a white crisp skirt. “Sugar, I don’t wanna be no nuisance woman, but how about you show up right here? I mean so I’ll know nothing is messed up.”

He nodded, gave himself the full hour just in case. It seemed odd to him that it was easier to get used to the redness than to the silence. The abrupt silence was so absolute it was like being enclosed in a padded vault. He slapped his thigh just to assure himself he had not lost the power to hear. He took off his shoes and walked back three houses to the Wellerly house. After he got beyond the screen of plantings he saw the blinds were closed. When he went around the corner of the house a mockingbird startled him. It hung there motionless at the same height as his face. He circled it and saw the back bumper of a car parked behind the house. He realized Bonny Lee’s guess might be absolutely correct. He looked at the car. It was a newish cheap dark sedan, and might logically be a rental car. There was a dark blue baseball cap on the front seat.

He circled the house and found it was completely closed up. He tried several ways to gain entrance and was stymied by the leaden inertia of all objects in the red world. Remembering what Bonny Lee had told him of the odd behavior of objects, he picked polished stones out of a big planting pot. They were the size of plums and lifting them was like pulling them up through heavy glue. He released nine of them in midair, properly positioned, five in front of the back door, four in front of a back window. He then gave each of them a lusty push toward target, aiming them at latches and hinges and frames and locks. They stopped the moment pressure was taken off them. He remembered his promise and hurried back to the car where she sat, looking up at him with the unchanged expression of concern he had seen on her face in the instant of departure.

He clicked back to normal time, and heard a distant thudding, crashing, splintering, tinkling of glass.

“What in the world are you—”

“Back in a minute,” he said and turned her off along with the rest of the discovered universe.

He hurried back and hid behind the car and turned the world on, then thought better and turned it off immediately. The shattered door hung from one hinge. The window was completely gone. He went into the kitchen and discovered that the stones had gone through the door and window and across the kitchen and into the dish cabinets and cupboards, and he suddenly felt ill to think of what could have happened had Wilma been standing there. A new lesson learned.

They were in the living room. Two beefy young men were stopped in the middle of a card game. The room lights were on. Apparently, back in the normal world it was hot in the room. They were shiny with sweat. The big one with light hair had his shirt off and a hand towel draped around his neck. He had intricate faded tattooing on his forearms and biceps. The other was shorter and wider, and burned dark by the sea. Both of them had long sideburns, coarse, thickened features, that impenetrable look which is a combination of slyness and animal hungers and a taste for brutality.

The dark one held a card poised. Both of them were looking toward the kitchen with startled expressions. Wilma Farnham stood by a book-lined wall near the small coquina rock fireplace, books from floor to ceiling. Her brown hair, in an unkempt cascade of wispy strings, made her small face look smaller. Her glasses were crooked, her blouse half out of her skirt, her mouth oddly slack with surprise as she too stared beyond him toward the kitchen. The drink in her hand was tilted and, as she stood off balance, a dollop of it was stopped halfway to the floor.

He went to work. It was difficult work, but in its special way, enjoyable. Within fifteen subjective minutes he had the tattooed one and the dark one neatly arranged. He had found it easier to work on them when they were suspended horizontally in the air a yard above the figured rug, but it had taken every ounce of his strength to bend them, straighten them, hoist them into that position. He’d wrapped their wrists and ankles with heavy twine which, in the red world, reacted like thick copper wire. He’d stuffed their mouths with toweling and tied it in place. Finally he had sheathed them in bedsheets, wrapping it like foil, then wound them from ankle to shoulder in clothesline. Bending it around them was like wrapping them in copper tubing. He had to grasp the rope at some distance from them in order to get that leverage which made the task easier.

He hurried back to the car. Bonny Lee looked startled when he reappeared.

“What’s this little delay, hah?”

“Sorry. Look, I got to get back there in a hurry, but you can come in there now. Through the back door. Bring the car in and turn it around, facing out.”

“Okay.”

He twisted the stem and walked back through the deadness of the silence. Wilma had used the several seconds to move closer to the two mummies, and again she was spilling as she stared at them. Kirby felt mild regret at missing the chance of seeing them fall simultaneously, side by side. At first he was going to appear, carelessly, thoughtlessly, in front of her. Just in time, he went back to the doorway off to one side and slightly behind her. He stepped into normal time and normal space and said, “Wilma!”

Suspended liquid fell onto her bare instep. She swung around, took one uncertain step and peered at him. She pushed her glasses into place and said, “Loanbeehole, Sir Lanschlot, as I live and bree!”

“Are you drunk!”

She tottered toward him, smirking. “Za skunk, cutie bug. Bessa my life in selfless devotion a duty, ’n you know what I get? Pleece looking for me. An that Bessy girl asking me things I don’t know’nything about. Ol’ Omar’s stone cold dead, ’ny got no job, ’na hole thing’s giving my dear brother a nervous stomach, ’n you, you silly man, I popo — propozizhun you, firse timin my lousy wretched choked-up life I gotnuff guts. ’N whattayou do?” She put her nose inches from his chin and looked up at him cross-eyed. He could hear the Sunbeam snoring into the drive. “Whattayou do? Run! An then—” She backed off slightly. “An then here I am, poor incent girl at the mercy of those two sailors an all they want to do is play cards. Course I’m drunk, fren! Firse time.” She burped herself slightly off balance, recovered, beamed at him and said, “I like it!” She turned vaguely and stared at the shrouded figures. They were both making small helpless spasms and smothered grunting sounds. “What happened alluva secon to Rene and Raoul?” she asked plaintively.

Bonny Lee came in and stared at Wilma. Wilma swung around again and held Bonny Lee in an inquisitive squint, pushing her glasses back against the bridge of her nose. “Who you, pretty fren?” Wilma asked.

“Wow!” Bonny Lee said. “I figured in your picture you looked like a school teacher. Excuse me all to hell.”

Wilma peered at Bonny Lee, pulled herself together with precarious effort and said, attempting precision, “Ektually, my dear, I yam more the cerebral type.”

Bonny Lee sighed. “You want to talk to her, I guess, don’t you, sugar?”

“If possible.”

“Who’s in the packages?”

“Rene and Raoul, seafaring men.”

“They look like they’d keep. See what you can do about some coffee, Kirby.” Bonny Lee gave a hitch at her skirt and marched toward Wilma. It was as though she had rolled up her sleeves and spit on her hand. She marched Wilma, wailing protests, sputtering with indignation, into the bedroom wing.

All Kirby was able to find was some instant coffee of an unfamiliar brand. But it looked dark and smelled strong, and the label said nothing about how it would improve sleep. In the other end of the small house were the distant sounds of conflict, yelpings and the roar of water. He went in and checked Rene and Raoul. They were still until he checked their bonds, and then they began thumping and grunting again. He could hardly blame them. It must be very uncomfortable in there, he thought. The sheets were getting wet with sweat and beginning to cling. It was very muggy inside the house.

He filled a big pottery mug with strong steaming coffee and took it into the bedroom. The bathroom door was ajar. Wilma’s clothes and Bonny Lee’s clothes were on the bed. He put the mug on a table and walked back out. Bonny Lee seemed to be winning. All he had heard was the rushing roar of the shower mingled with a heartbroken whimpering. He fixed the knots more securely and went over and studied the bookshelves. Professor Wellerly apparently acquired books in every field of human knowledge, providing the title was dull enough and the binding sedate. He gathered up the spilled cards, shuffled them and dealt random poker hands. The gold watch would considerably simplify poker. He evolved various methods and decided the most useful one would be to freeze the scene in the instant the dealer was reaching to pick up the deck which had just been cut. Take the cards and arrange for three or four strong hands, and give the others nothing so they would fold. Give yourself the best hand, by a narrow margin. Like four little threes against three pat hands, a flush, a full house — aces up, and a high straight. Put the sorted deck back under the reaching hand, sit back and wait for the action.

“Kirby, sugar!” Bonny Lee called. He went in. Bonny Lee was dressed again. Wilma sat huddled on the edge of the bed wearing a man’s summer robe that was like a tent on her. Her hair was darkened and flattened and she looked sullen and drowned. She stared down at the floor.

“Sip the nice coffee, sweetie,” Bonny Lee ordered.

“No thank you,” Wilma said in a precise but muted voice. “I think I might be going to be ill.”

“Sip the pretty coffee, sweetie, or we strip again and I trot you in and wedge you under that cold water and I take that big brush and I scrub off all the hide you’ve got left.”

Wilma hunched slightly and humbly sipped her coffee.

“You know, she’s not really so bad, except how she don’t even try, for God’s sake. She’s got a real cute figger.”

“Figure.”

“Figure,” she said carefully. “Hell, I’m sorry, Bonny Lee.”

“I’m not. Not at all. You keep it up. Anyhow, she has got a real cute — figure, sorta like boyish, but not enough so anybody’s going to get confused. But geezel, them wire glasses and that ratty hairdo and them Salvation Army clothes—”

“I have no urge to be cheap and obvious,” Wilma said.

“Stay snotty and I’ll stomp your spectacles, sweetie. You’re not obvious for sure. All the men in the world are in a big candy store, and you’re out there in the dark knocking on the window with a sponge. You ever hear a whistle in your life? Ever get pinched?”

“Thank you, no.”

“Do you some good, sis. Makes you stick out on top and swing on the bottom. I’d put bright green contacts on you, give you a Cleopatra beehive, put you in something too tight to sit down in, and four inch heels, and learn you to be walken slow, with your shoulders back and your belly in and your butt stuck out, dangle earrings and musky perfume. Not my style, but in gear like that, sis, you’d make strong men cry.”

“Cleopatra beehive?” Wilma asked shyly.

“Not exactly beehive. The Egypt bit, like Liz.”

“Liz?”

“Oh for God’s sake,” Bonny Lee said. “You talk to her.”

“Betsy brought you my note?”

“Yes, Kirby.”

“And you talked to her?”

“All night, just about. She kept trying to make me remember things about your uncle. She thinks there’s something special hidden. I don’t have it. I don’t even know what it is. Your uncle was a very unusual man. He was so smart, Kirby, he didn’t need any special kind of thing. His great mind was enough. I did just as he told me to do, and no matter what they do to me, I’ll never, never—”

“I understand your loyalty, Wilma. Out of that loyalty could you be denying the existence of something you know exists somewhere?”

“I swear I’m not, Kirby. I swear it. She told me where you were. Why would you hide in the apartment of a cheap person like that, Kirby?”

“As I don’t know the man, I’m not ready to pass judgment.”

“Would that be how you met this trashy girl? Who is this girl, Kirby?”

“Bonny Lee is a good fr — excuse me. Bonny Lee is a girl I am in love with.”

“Oh dear,” Wilma said.

Bonny Lee winked at Kirby. “Y’almost flunked out, friend.”

“That was a lie, wasn’t it?” Wilma asked in an almost inaudible tone. “When you told me you were frightened of women. You were saving my face, weren’t you? How you must have laughed after you got away from me!”

“I told you the truth. I ran in pure panic, Wilma.”

“But right now you seem — different. You don’t seem scared of anything in the world — anything.”

“I’m scared of a lot of things.”

“But he’s gettin’ right brassy around the broads lately,” Bonny Lee said and giggled at Kirby’s look of annoyance. “I hear tell he undressed one right on a public beach. Din’ even know her name.”

Wilma looked horrified. “Kirby! Are you well?”

“I’m perfectly all right,” he said angrily.

“Didn’t she struggle?”

“Poor dear little thang couldn’ move a muscle,” Bonny Lee said.

“Please, Bonny Lee! Please.”

“Sure, sugar. I’ll be good.”

“Wilma, have you been keeping track of the news reports?”

“I think I heard it all, but parts of it I can’t remember very clearly. About that yacht and your things being on it, and about you escaping from those policemen this morning, and taking their guns. It just — didn’t sound like you.”

“When did Betsy leave here?”

“Very early. She said she was going to go race a bluff. That doesn’t sound quite right. Run a bluff? Yes, that was it. But the expression is unfamiliar.”

“I guess you must realize her bluff didn’t work.”

“I don’t understand what happened. I guess it was almost three hours later when those sailors got here. They rang the bell properly, so I assumed it was Roger or you or even Betsy coming back. They forced their way in. They seemed quite — cordial in a rather unpleasant way. When I started to be severe with them, Rene, he’s the big one, but I didn’t know his name then, smiled and took my wrist and turned it slowly until I was finally down on my knees with my face against the carpet. It was absolute agony. My arm still feels odd, you know. Then I knew I had better go along quietly. I couldn’t understand who they were. I was afraid they were some thieves who had hurt Roger and made him tell where they could find me, and then they were going to force me to reveal the location of that money, that absurd money that’s all gone. But I gathered they were taking me to a yacht, the yacht they worked on, and that Betsy was there waiting for me. They made me sit on the floor in front with my head back under the dash. It was very hot and dirty and uncomfortable. Then suddenly something was very wrong. They became cross with me and with each other, and they argued about what to do and then they came back here. From what they said, I gathered the boat had left without them. They were most surly and rather apprehensive until at last we heard the news about the yacht. But they said Betsy had been taken ill. She seemed a very tense and excitable person, but I did not guess she was close to having a breakdown.”

“Sis,” Bonny Lee said, “you kill me. You really do. Those bassars grabbed that Betsy girl and took her onto that boat and hurt her until she said where they could find you and find Kirby here, and made Kirby promise to come on account of being maybe able to help Betsy and to keep them from doing you like they done her. This thing you don’t know what it is, they want it bad.”

Wilma stared solemnly at Bonny Lee. “Hurt her?”

“Sweetie, of a Saturday night in the wrong part of New Orleans, you can get you crippled for a lifetime for a cruddy seven bucks, so why should this make you bug your eyes? Where you been livin’?”

“This is terrible!” Wilma said. “Your uncle would have agreed, Kirby. We must find out what it is they want and see that they get it, or prove to them no such thing exists.”

Bonny Lee gave a laugh of derision. “We know what they want, and they don’t get it.”

“What is it?” Wilma demanded.

“Bonny Lee!” Kirby said warningly.

“No sweat, sugar. Even if I wanted to tell her, she just isn’t ready yet and I can lay odds she never will be. What’ll we do now?”

“Get her out of here.”

“But where? Oh. My place. Hells bells. At least it’s the one address those people don’t know already.”

Wilma stared at Kirby, her unpainted lips parted. “Did you — overpower those two sailors, Kirby?”

“Watch it, Winter,” Bonny Lee said. She turned to Wilma. “Sweetie, you don’t drink so good.”

Wilma flushed. “It seems that I just — I just stopped giving a damn about anything. Life had become too confusing to be endurable.”

“Surprise hell out of you, sis, how much more complicated life can get for a drunky broad. Get out of here, Kirby, and I’ll find some damn thing to put on her.”

“I have clothes.”

“I know, sweetie. And glasses. And your picture in the papers.”

Kirby got up and walked out of the bedroom. As he took the first step into the living room, the side of his head blew up. As the floor came toward him, he seemed able to observe the phenomenon with a remote, clinical interest. It was the way they blew up a cliff. First you saw the flash and then the dust and the rumble and tumble of boulders. He heard a remote screaming of women as he fell into velvet.