Brett Halliday: So Lush, So Deadly

Raphael Petrocelli, at the wheel of Nefertiti III, a forty-four-foot fiberglass motor yacht, did his best to ignore the noises coming up from below. It was apparently quite a party. Dotty De Rham, the owner’s wife, was high as a kite on gin. She referred to what she drank as martinis, but Petrocelli-captain, navigator, odd-job man-had carried enough of those drinks to know that they had only two ingredients, ice cubes and Beefeater.

You couldn’t call her subdued at the best of times, but after a dozen so-called martinis she was as unpredictable as a drop of fat on a hot skillet. Anything she took it into her head to do she did. Petrocelli himself was sipping a weak gin and tonic in self-defense. He knew very well that this was not a good idea. It was against his principles to drink with a fifty-thousand-dollar boat in his charge. But after all. He had a straight southerly heading, the night was clear with a three-quarter moon, and the Atlantic was as still as it ever gets. What could happen?

Mrs. De Rham had a hoarse, somewhat masculine laugh, and every time it came up through the floorboards it roughened the skin at the back of Petrocelli’s neck, and he had to have another drink to ground the charge. The fact of the matter was, she was a damned unsettling woman. He knew he had to watch his step or he could get in the wrong kind of trouble. For a couple of hours that afternoon, for example, she had sunbathed on the forward deck under the wheelhouse window, wearing a nothing bikini, two little wisps of cloth that concealed very little. Petrocelli was used to that and it didn’t bother him. But after a while, when she was lying face down, she reached around and untied the top so the string line wouldn’t spoil her tan. It was amazing what a difference the little string made. Now, instead of wearing a bathing suit-it might be skimpy, but that was what women wore nowadays-she was half naked.

It was lucky for everybody that they were in deep water, with no rocks or shoals within miles, because Petrocelli had a hard time keeping his mind where it belonged. She didn’t stay flat on her stomach the whole time, but kept raising up to reach for her drink or to get Paul Brady to light her a cigarette. Brady-he was a funny one. Petrocelli hadn’t been able to make him out. He was supposed to be married, but he hadn’t brought his wife along. He was about the same age as Henry De Rham, the owner-Mrs. De Rham was older-but was he the husband’s friend or the wife’s? Petrocelli hadn’t been able to figure that one out. He had long hair, he was plump and indolent, and he made a point of saying things he thought were clever, in an offhand way. A little flitty, Petrocelli thought, not that it was any of his business.

Brady had done most of the talking that afternoon. Mrs. De Rham was quiet, her eyes half closed. At one point she interrupted him and had him oil her. Now if Petrocelli had been doing that oiling he would have had a hard time knowing at what point to stop. Her skin was as smooth as sour cream. He would have loved to get his hands on it. But from the way Brady acted he might have been waxing a car. He kept on talking. Petrocelli, who couldn’t quite hear the words, had the feeling he was trying to sell her something. Petrocelli understood that she was the one with the money in the family, though as far as the boat went De Rham was the owner of record and he signed the checks.

The sky clouded over, ending the sun-bathing, and Mrs. De Rham did a peculiar thing, or Petrocelli thought it was peculiar at the time. Still lying on her stomach with the string untied, she reached out more or less blindly and put her hand on Brady’s can. His ass, not to get too fancy about it. She left it lying there for a minute, then gave him a kind of good-natured pat and came to her feet, clutching the bikini to her breast.

That put her on a level with Petrocelli. They looked at each other for a long moment through the thermopane glass. She had a lazy smile on her mouth, which changed to a laugh as she looked in at him. She went below. What was he supposed to think about that laugh? That she had suddenly realized he wasn’t part of the furniture, or what?

The wives were one of the hazards of his job, if you could call sex a hazard. He had been captaining pleasure boats for fifteen years, and during that time he had probably banged about thirty percent of the wives, a.333 average, not bad in any league. Of course, to be honest, it wasn’t happening as often now as it did when he was getting started, a slim, well-muscled kid who took a nice tan. He was now thirty-five, and you don’t get much exercise on a boat. He had a waistline problem. He fingered the fold of fat around his middle and sat up straighter.

Still, he was making out as well as ever with the drinkers, and Mrs. De Rham was definitely one of those. He had to be careful about the first move. It was his livelihood, after all. The kind of look she had given him through the window was not enough. These women knew how to clobber you. They had a grapevine. It you grabbed the wrong one, or the right one at the wrong time, they could drive you out of the business. The way it generally worked, the wife showed up at the marina by herself and said she felt like going out for a little sail. They wouldn’t be gone long before she broke out the ice cubes. Nobody likes to drink alone. Even after a couple of drinks he would wait till she committed herself. And later, when the husband was around, it was back to “yes ma’am,” “no ma’am,” “what do you want me to do now ma’am?” They liked that part of it best, Petrocelli sometimes thought.

De Rham, in the salon, was playing his electric guitar. Not bad, either, for a non-pro.

Petrocelli reached for the bottle on the floor and added gin to his drink. One idea had suggested another, and he was remembering his last employer, a skinny redhead. She hadn’t looked too exciting in shore clothes but in the sack she had behaved like a broken high-tension wire in a thunderstorm. Mrs. De Rham was fleshier but she had that same quality. She was walking around with an explosion inside her, and if you happened to be the one who touched it off, you’d remember it the rest of your life.

Since leaving New York the weather had been pleasant, and they would reach Miami early the following afternoon. Brady was leaving them there. The De Rhams were flying on down to Brazil for the carnival, or whatever it was called, but they would have a couple of days before the plane left. They had reserved a berth in an Indian Creek marina, and Petrocelli was now reasonably certain that Mrs. De Rham would show up around two o’clock the day after they arrived. If it didn’t happen by then, it probably wouldn’t happen at all. The city heat would be mentioned, “Wouldn’t it be cooler out on the water?” “Yes ma’am.” Perhaps she would break out one of the deck mats to do some work on her tan. And would the captain please fetch some Beefeater and ice, and apply the suntan oil to the places she couldn’t reach herself? “Certainly ma’am.” “Where did she want it, exactly? Here?” “Yes, indeed. Now a little lower!” “Lower?” “Still lower!”

The breaking of glass brought his mind back to the present. For some time now, he realized, he hadn’t heard Mrs. De Rham’s mocking laugh, and De Rham had stopped playing the guitar. Petrocelli listened carefully. They were snapping and hissing at each other. He had expected something like this ever since Mrs. De Rham had given Brady that pat on the hind end. For some reason it always seemed to happen the last night out, when everybody realized that there was no longer unlimited time ahead. Another glass broke, if it was only a glass.