John MacDonald - The Deep Blue Good-Bye

“It’s after one,” Corry said. “He can get some stuff from Barney, can’t he?”

“Ask to buy some of the big paper cups,” Dee, told me. “And get a six-pack of Coke, huh?”

Barney’s service was slow, and he overcharged me for the cups, Coke and ice. By the time I returned to the Play Pen, the girls had shuffled me and dealt me. Corry informed me of their approval and of the choice that had been made. She did it by rubbing the back of my neck while I fixed her drink.

We moved back under the overhang, out of the direct weight of the sun. With the breeze, it was comfortable. As they began to get a little high, they included me more naturally in their conversation. We talked about the cruise. Pete arrived. He had a dead handshake, like a canvas glove full of hot sand. Corry gave him a key to 2A and he went up to see how Patty was. There was discussion about whether she would go on the cruise. She would have to lie to her folks.

Suddenly Junior Allen swung aboard, leaped, landed lightly. He was immaculate in white sport shirt, white slacks, pale blue yachting cap. I guessed he was nearing forty. I had not been prepared for him to look so powerful and so fit. He was broad, with shoulders so packed and corded with muscle they gave him a slightly simian posture, the impression enhanced by the extra-long weight and heft of brown tattooed arms, and the short legs, slightly bowed. He had a brown, seamed, knotty face, broad, smiling broadly, the smile squinching the small blue eyes. It was a friendly grin. It was a likable grin. it did not change in any way as he looked at me.

“Hello, kids,” he said. His voice was a brassy rumble. He rumpled Dee ’s lifeless hair with a big brown paw. “Who we got aboard, little sweetheart?”

She was transformed. She was elfin, lisping, adoring; his ripe, dumpy little child. “This is Trav, darling. He’s with Corry. Trav, this is Dads Allen. He’s the one owns this boat. Hasn’t it got a cute name?”

“It’s a very cute name,“ I said.

He was quick. He caught my hand in exactly the way I didn’t want him to catch it, and watched my mouth as he ground my knuckle bones.

“Glad you like it,” he said. “Welcome aboard.” He took his keys out and unlocked the hatchway to the cabins. He pulled Dee to her feet slapped her bare rump and said, “Little sweetheart, you go bring up some decent glasses and the vodka.”

Little sweetheart snickered and arched and went below dutifully. Junior Allen sat where she had been, and patted Corry’s bare knee and said, “What’s your line of work, Trav?”

“Whatever I happen to find. A little charter boat work in season. Take boats north and south for the winter folks. Fry cook. Half-ass marine mechanic. You name it.”

After little sweetheart brought his bottle and the glasses, he fixed himself a drink. He beamed at me.

“These kids tell you about the trip? I’m going to take four of ‘em over and show them the islands. Hell, I’ve. got the boat, the time and the money. It’s the least I can do.”

Had I not known the history, I would have readily bought the image he was projecting. Fatuous, expansive idiot, hooked by the tired flesh of little sweetheart, taking her and three of her friends on the romantic tropic tour.

“Passenger list still open?” I asked, smiling back.

That changed his eyes but not his grin. “If Pete and I sleep in the two bunks forward, that leaves the main cabin for the gals. I can sleep six, but they got to be very good close friends.” He roared with laughter. “Sorry we can’t sign you on, buddy.”

“I get to be the fifth wheel,” Corry said bitterly.

“How so, girl?”

She stared coldly at him. “What’s so complicated, Dads. You and Dee, Pete and Patty. And good old Corry. Hell, sign him on. I’ll need somebody to talk to. Maybe you’ll need somebody to run your boat.”

“I never need any help with a boat,” he said, smiling. “Or anything else, little sweetheart.”

“I’m Corry. She’s little sweetheart, Dads.” He patted her knee again and beamed at her. “You’ll have fun. Don’t you worry about it a minute.”

“Always bitching about something,” Dee said. “Always.”

Pete and Patty came aboard. And within minutes I knew what Junior Allen was after. At first glance Patty was unattractive, an impression derived from the gawkiness and the glasses. They kidded her coarsely about getting sick, and she responded by clowning. The clowning was her defense. Her breasts were high and immature and sharp against the fabric of her blouse. Her legs were long and pale and lovely. There was a colt grace about her, a loveliness of gray eyes behind the heavy lenses, a ripe warm sensitivity of mouth.

She was Lois, years ago, and in a different social strata. She was wasted on the lout dullness of sideburned Pete. She was fresh and fragile and vulnerable. She was the obvious victim, and once he had the quartet where they could not escape him, it would require no great effort to turn the other three into accomplices. They were coarsened already. They would help Junior Allen teach their funny clown-girl the facts of life, help him take her down into a nightmare where, finally, her clowning would do her no good at all.

We drank. His young pals called him Dads and patronized him. He grinned and grinned. Deeleen teased him. Corry kidded him. Pete ignored him. Junior Allen grinned and grinned and grinned. But some instinct made him wary of me. I would look toward him and see those little blue eyes studying me over that wide smile. He was a big old tom watching benignly as the mice cavorted. He didn’t want another cat at the party. There wasn’t enough for two.

But I did find out what I wanted to know. Pete said, in answer to a question by Patty, that they would leave as soon as Junior Allen had some work done on the boat. They would move their gear aboard and go down to Miami where the work was to be done, and cross over to Bimini from there. The cruise would last a week or ten days. Dads was paying all expenses. Dads was a live one. Patty would tell her people she was visiting a friend, a girl who lived in Jacksonville. Dads said they’d probably be leaving Tuesday or Wednesday. Don’t bring along a lot of stuff. We’ll be roughing it, kids.

We ate Barney’s fish sandwiches. We switched to beer. In the late afternoon the group split up. Pete took Patty home. Dads and Dee stayed aboard. I went up to the apartment with Corry. They were dingy rooms, small, high-ceilinged, too many layers of paint on the walls, the rugs dusty, the cheap furniture stained and scarred, the utilities primitive. She had spent the last hour back in the sun. She was dazed with sun and beer. She opened us two fresh beers and then went off to take a shower. She gave me a book to look at. It was a thick portfolio of eight-by-ten glamor shots of her, girlie shots, nude and semi-nude studies, with tricky lighting effects.

She had been a couple of years younger, I suspected, when they had been taken. Some were quite attractive, some were remarkably tasteless, and the balance were perfectly standard-the tawny back-lighted bulge of breasts and buttocks, and the standardized glowing wet-mouthed smile of enticement. She said the photographer friend had sold quite a lot of them to magazines. I could believe her.

The figure was standard adequate and so was the photographic technique. After I had finished the book and long after the shower had stopped, I heard her calling me in a small voice. I went to the bedroom. She had pulled the yellow shades down, making a dim golden light in the shabby room. She lay naked on the bed with a black towel across her loins. “Hello there, darling,” she said. She wore the same smile as in the photographs, but drowsier.

“Hello yourself.”