Max Collins - Carnal Hours

“No slight was intended. We’ve been busy. A crime has been committed.”

De Marigny’s wide lips pressed together sullenly. Then he said, “I demand to view the body!”

“No,” Lindop said, softly but flatly. “I would suggest you go home, Count. And make yourself available, should we have any questions.”

“What sort of questions?”

“I can’t say any more.”

“Why in hell not?”

“I’m afraid my hands are tied.” A pained expression crossed Lindop’s hound-dog countenance. ‘The Governor is calling in two police detectives from Miami, who should be here shortly to lead the investigation.”

What was that all about? Why call Miami cops in on a murder in a British colony? That “Governor” Lindop was referring to was none other than the Duke of Windsor, England’s ex-King himself. That was the phone call that had interrupted us upstairs….

As I was thinking this through, two splendid-looking Bahamian officers came down the curving stairway with a stretcher bearing the bedsheet-covered body of Sir Harry Oakes. Other officers held open the door while they carted him out to a waiting ambulance.

De Marigny watched this, frowning, nose twitching like a rabbit’s, and followed them out, as if to press once more for the right to view the body.

I stood on the porch and watched the Count pull his gleaming Lincoln across the rain-soaked lawn to avoid the parked cars blocking the drive. He even passed the ambulance, on his way out the gate.

“You may go,” Lindop said, tapping my shoulder. “Those officers over there will drive you. Where will you be?”

“At the British Colonial.”

“Fine. We’ll contact you there, later today, for a more formal statement.”

Then he shut the door.

What the hell. It seemed like a good time to leave Westbourne, anyway. After all, Sir Harry wasn’t home.

By noon the overcast sky had transformed itself into something pure and blue, with a bright but not blazing sun, a reprieve that sent sunbathers scurrying in surprise to the white beach of the British Colonial. During the early morning hours, minions of the hotel had obviously cleared the branches and debris from the sand; the beach was pristine again, shimmering in the sun. The emerald sea rippled peacefully. It was as if the storm had never happened.

Davy Jones’ Locker, the hotel cafe overlooking the beach, was stone-walled, low-ceilinged, slate-floored. A black bartender in a colorful shirt mixed drinks before a mural of Davy himself, fast asleep while nubile mermaids and a school of quizzical comic fish gave him the once-over.

I got myself a hamburger with rare, sweetly marinated meat, a side of conch fritters and an orange rum punch the smiling barman called a Bahama Mama. Then out on the patio, I found a round wooden table under a beach umbrella and ate my lunch and watched the pretty girls on the beach. Occasionally one would even venture into the water.

“You must be in heaven, Heller,” a high-pitched, sultry voice said.

I recognized it at once-she had a faint, very sexy, unmistakable lisp-but turned just the same, to confirm this happy news.

Her smile was playful. “Nassau’s brimming over with pretty girls…all these lonely RAF wives. You must be going to town.”

“Helen! What the hell are you doing in Nassau?”

She swept off her sunglasses so we could have a better look at each other. A petite, shapely woman of forty who looked easily a decade younger, she owed some of it to great genes, and some of it to a great face lift.

She wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, tied with an orange scarf under her chin, and a white robe over an orange-and-white floral bathing suit. Her skin was almost white; strands of her dark blond hair, pinned up under the hat, tickled a graceful neck. She wasn’t wearing makeup, but her features didn’t need any: pert nose, full lips, apple cheeks, long-lashed eyes that were a green-blue shade even the Bahamas could envy.

“I’m just hanging around, after finishing a gig,” she said. “How about you?”

“Same. Sit! Have you had lunch?”

“No. Go get me some. Conch salad.”

“I’ll do that.”

I did. I was pleased to see Helen Beck, who was better known to the general public by her stage name: Sally Rand. We went way back, to the Chicago World’s Fair, where I worked pick-pocket security, and where she made a name for herself (not to mention kept the fair afloat financially) doing a graceful nude ballet behind huge fluffy ostrich feathers. Or, at times, an equally oversize bouncing bubble. Sally-or Helen, as she preferred me to call her-was versatile.

I brought her the salad and a Bahama Mama. She ate the salad heartily-raw chopped conch marinated in lime juice and spices with some chopped crunchy vegetables tossed in for good measure-but merely sipped at her rum punch.

“How’s Turk?” I asked.

She grimaced; now she took a belt of the punch.

Turk was her husband, a rodeo rider she’d met when she put together a revue called Sally Rand’s Nude Ranch ; they’d been married since ‘41, but it had been a rocky ride. Last time I’d seen her, about four months ago in Chicago, they’d been separated.

“I gave him another chance, and he blew it big-time. Son of a bitch hit me, Heller!”

“We can’t have that.”

“Well, I can’t. I filed on the fucker.” Her expression was as hard as her language. “Sure, I feel sorry for him…I mean, he goes overseas to serve his country, can’t take it, cracks up, gets sent home on a Section Eight…I’d like to stand by him, but the guy’s nuts!”

“Sure.”

She looked at me and her expression melted; she leaned over and touched my hand. “I’m sorry, Heller…I forgot you went through the same damn thing.”

“No problem, Helen.”

She pulled back and her expression was troubled now. “He’s drinking too much. I had to throw him out. Why didn’t we get married, Heller? You and me?”

“I ask myself that, from time to time.”

“How often?”

I shrugged. “I just did.”

That made her smile; that wide smile of hers was a honey.

We chatted for a good hour. Not that we had much catching up to do; a few months ago in Chicago, we’d done our reminiscing about our summer together, back in ‘34. Some of that reminiscing had been between the sheets, but Helen and I weren’t lovers, anymore. Not really.

But we’d always be friends.

“I’m surprised to find you working Nassau in the off-season, Helen,” I said. “The wartime nightlife here is a little limited right now, or so I understand….”

She shrugged; she’d finished her lunch and was smoking a cigarette. “It was a Red Cross fund-raising drive benefit. You know how patriotic I am.”

And she was. She was an FDR fan, as well as a self-styled intellectual who leaned a bit left, and had attracted non-nude attention when she spoke out for the republican forces in the Spanish Civil War; she’d also got publicity out of lecturing at colleges. In between getting arrested for public indecency, of course.

“Sounds like you’re getting respectable in…”

“If you say ‘old age,’ Heller, I’ll conk you with a conch shell.”

“…these troubled times.”

Her smile turned crinkly. “I am respectable. Saturday night, at the Prince George. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor were ringside.”

“Pretty posh audience at that.”

She lifted her chin, blew out smoke elegantly. “Not only am I respectable, but my perfectly round balloons…”

“You’ve always had perfectly round balloons.”

“Shut up, Heller. The perfectly round balloons I dance behind, which are manufactured to my personal specifications by a company that I own, are now being used by the U.S. government for target practice.”