Джон Макдональд: Pale Gray for Guilt

“Now what?”

“We lose it. That’s all. The grace period is about gone. Janine is taking it hard. It’s a lot of money and work and time down the drain, and nothing to show for it. I... I wish I’d come to you sooner, Trav, before it got to be too late. Maybe you could have figured out some kind of a salvage operation. Your kind of salvage. Squeeze them like they’ve squoze me.” He gave me a strange, puzzled, thoughtful look. “You know, I keep thinking about how I might kill somebody. Hazzard, Santo, LaFrance. Somebody. Anybody. I never thought that way in my life before. I’m not like that.”

He grimaced, whirled, kicked the big metal trash basket full of used paper towels. “Aaaah... Tush!” he yelled, and went blundering out.

I collected Puss and Barni. It was after six thirty when we got back to The Busted Flush . Mick had gotten his phone call, made his deal, and set up a Monday morning flight to Spain via New York. And so, though my mood was somewhat soured, there was song and sport, sunburn and music, beach time and nap time, old and new jokes, girls in the galley, new tapes on the music machine, lipstick and sand and the sometime kiss, and the long heavy look through curl of lashes.

Meyer trooped in and out from time to time with little groups of Meyer’s Irregulars and Partisans. We had a slight overflow from the permanent floating houseparty aboard the Alabama Tiger’s big cruiser.

Though it looked as it always looks — so informal you don’t know who is tied up with whom — there is a protocol. There is a very real in-group unwritten list of things you do and things you don’t do, things you say and things you don’t say. And if you are the kind of person who can’t case the scene and know by instinct what the rules have to be, then the blinds are closed, shades drawn, and the freeze is on. But sometimes, as in the case of one midday visitor on Sunday, someone is so obtuse the action has to be a little more direct.

This one was named Buster or Buddy or Sonny, one of those names, a big loud thirtyish jollyboy type, office-soft, overconfident, far from home on a business trip and out beagling for a broad, confident that he was twice the man any of these beach-bum types could be, ready for a nice little roll and scuffle that he could describe to the other JC’s back in God’s Country, and hide from li’l ol’ Peggy staying back home there with the kids.

So he came up onto the sun deck and sprawled out next to Barni and told her she was cute as any bug in the wide world, and if she would just let him spread a little more of this here suntan juice on that cute little ol’ back and this here cute little ol’ tummy, why she’d be making him the happiest paper salesman in the southeast territory.

She sat up and frowned into his dumb, happy, smirking face, and as Mick started to get up to heave Buster-Buddy-Sonny over the rail she waved him back. “Music down and out,” she said. Puss went to the speakers and turned the volume off.

In the silence Barni said, with a brutal clarity, “Puss? Marilee? Come here, dears. Come take a look at this one.”

They came and sat close to her on her sun pad, all of them staring at Buster-Buddy-Sonny. “The type I was telling you about,” Barni said. “One of the charmers that make life hell for a stewardess.”

“Now, don’t you badmouth me, you purty thing,” he said, grinning.

Puss said, scowling, “I see. Of course. All that fatty look around the middle. And that big voice and those dim, nasty little eyes.”

“You funning me, you gals?” he asked, his smile fading a little.

Marilee tilted her head. “Mmmm. The kind you don’t dare turn your back on when you’re on duty. A real snatch-ass Charlie.”

“They have this crazy dream, I guess,” Barni said, “about how you’re going to fall for all that meaty charm and go back to their hotel or motel and climb right into the sack. Can you imagine?”

Puss shuddered delicately. “My God, darlings, suppose we were call girls or something and we had to sleep with one of those.”

“Ekk!” said Marilee.

Buster-Buddy-Sonny stood up and the three lovelies looked blandly up at him.

“Coffee, tea or milk?” asked Barni.

“You lousy little bitch!” said he.

Puss laughed. “See? Just like you said, dear. Typical reaction. Look at how red his face is! Let me guess. He’ll be bald in five years.”

“Four,” said Marilee firmly.

“He needs glasses already and won’t wear them,” said Barni.

“He’s going to grow an enormous belly,” Puss said.

“And fall over dead of a massive coronary occlusion when he’s forty-five.”

“And when he falls over, it will bust his cigar and spill his bourbon.”

“And some sorry wretched woman is married to him.”

Barni shook her head. “No girl who ever spent any time as a stewardess would ever marry one of those. Look at that mouth on it! Imagine having to actually kiss something like that and pretend you were enjoying it!”

“And look at the dirty fingernails, will you!”

When Buster-Buddy-Sonny reappeared in view, he was eighty feet up the dock, walking briskly and not swinging his arms at all.

“You girls need your mouths washed out with gin,” Mick said. “That was naughty.”

“A little friendly castration never hurt anybody,” said Marilee.

“Besides,” said Puss, “we didn’t touch on his really filthy habit. Given half a chance, do you know what that dreary bastard might do?”

Marilee, with a dirty chuckle, leaned close to Puss and whispered to her. Puss shook her head and said, “Congratulations, sweetie. You must be leading a full life. But I meant something much worse than that.”

“Like what?” Barni asked, puzzled.

“If you were ever stupid enough to let him get just a little bit past first base, that utter spook would stare right into your eyes and he would kind of gulp and look like a kicked dog and his voice would quiver and he’d say, ‘Darlin’, I love you.’ ”

“He would! He would indeed!” cried Marilee. “The lowest of the low. He’s the perfect type for it. A real rat-fink coward.”

Meyer came out of a long and somber contemplation, hunched like a hirsute Buddha, reached a slow ape arm and picked up his queen’s bishop and plonked it down in what at first glance seemed like an idiotic place, right next to my center pawn. A round little lady who was one of his retinue that week beamed, clapped her hands and rattled off a long comment in German.

“She says you give up now,” said Meyer.

“Never!” said I. I studied and studied and studied. Finally I put a knuckle against my king and tipped the poor fellow over and said, “Beach-walking, anyone?”

But before Puss and I went over, I tried once again to reach Tush Bannon at his Boatel by phone. Once again there was no answer. I felt irritation and depression. And, perhaps, the first little needles of alarm.

I awakened at six thirty Monday morning thinking about Tush and his problem. If I hadn’t awakened with that idea in mind, I could have gone back to sleep. But it snapped my eyelids up and held them there. And big as the bed was, the custom job that had been aboard the Flush when I won her in Palm Beach, Puss Killian had left me in precarious balance on the edge. She was curled, her back to me, and there was a solid and immovable feel to the warm and shapely rear that pressed against the side of my hip. She was deeply recharging all her redheaded batteries, in the deep, slow intake and humming exhalation of sleep of the heaviest and best kind.

So I gave up and got up and showered and came back, and tried to quietly get into a white sports shirt and khaki slacks. But in the muted light as I shoved my arm through the short sleeve I knocked a nightcap glass off the shelf and it smashed on the deck.