Джон Макдональд - The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything

Kirby stared at him blankly. As the waiter shrugged and started to turn away, Kirby said, “Sabbith?”

“Slow thinker, huh. Come on with me.”

Kirby followed him along the side of the big room, through a door, down a corridor and past a noisy kitchen to other doors. He knocked on one of them. “Yes?” a high clear voice called.

“It’s Raymond. I got with me maybe the guy you wannit.”

“Let him in, love. And thank you so much.”

Raymond opened the door and let him in. It was a small, incredibly cluttered room, harshly and unpleasantly lighted. Pooty-Tat sat on a ratty couch eating a steak sandwich, sharing the couch with a precarious pile of clothes, cartons, magazines, empty Coke bottles, paper editions, phonograph records and other debris. She wore a blue denim smock.

“Do sit down,” she said. The dressing table bench was the only place available. She had a high voice, a rather chilly and precise English accent, with that special clarity of tone English girls often have.

“Actually, love, I hardly expected such a festive look. But the little scar is just where she said it would be, so you must be the one. Do take off that insane hat, Mr. Winter.”

“Is she all right?”

“You do ask that rather nicely. Concern, anxiety. As far as I know, she is perfectly all right.”

“Where is she?”

“In due time, Mr. Winter. I have been wondering about you. We are all terribly fond of Bonny Lee. A limited background of course, but marvelous instincts. Sometimes her instincts fail her, though, and she does become involved with some horrid sod. Then we do what we can, you see.”

“I would like to know where—”

“Are you quite certain you are good for her, Mr. Winter? You do seem to have involved her in some sort of stickiness. And you’re even more of a fugitive than she at the moment. I can’t pretend to know much about it, but haven’t you made off with rather a lot of money? Don’t look so alarmed, love. I trust her completely, and she trusts me. I wouldn’t turn you in.”

“I didn’t mean to get her into any trouble or danger.”

“You certainly seem harmless enough. You have quite an earnest look. You see, I was just getting up when she rang me up, and I had to scurry over to the Beach and pick her up. She’d cadged a dime to phone me, and she was in a drugstore, absolutely sopping wet, terribly busy fending off a randy little clerk. But she would not take time to change. She was frantic with worry about you. I couldn’t even drive fast enough to suit her. We went to the health school and picked up three of my friends. I have this ridiculous letch for horribly muscular men. They’re invariably dumb as oxen and sexually not very enterprising, but sometimes they are useful if one anticipates a brawl. So then we went scooting to Hallandale, with Bonny Lee on the edge of the seat using rather bad language, but the place was crawling with police officers. We parked a block away and I sent my brightest oaf to go find out what was up. No sign of you, he said, or of some girl Bonny Lee was asking about. Just two rather bitter and surly fellows, low types apparently, being led into a police vehicle. So then we took my fellows back to their muscle flexing. Bonny Lee was wondering what she should do about her poor little abandoned car. She had stopped fretting about you. In fact she seemed awfully amused about something, but wouldn’t give me a clue. I took her to that horrid nest amongst those squadrons of tireless old ladies, but quite suddenly she scrooched down and hissed at me to go right on by. It seems two unsavory types were parked on her street, the two she had apparently eluded by plunging into a canal. She was all for our gathering up my friends once more and returning to give them a bashing about, but I must say I had begun to have quite enough of this darting about, and I became a bit cross, so I took her back to my place where at last she had a chance to get out of that dank clothing and rinse the salt out of her hair.”

“Is she there now?”

“You are an impatient fellow. She was going to come to work until we heard over the radio that the police wanted a chat with her. She had a perfectly reasonable impulse to turn herself in and explain, but the more she thought about how she would explain things, the less she wanted to try. And she thought that if they did happen to hold her for questioning, you might hear about it and do some utterly idiotic thing like dashing to her rescue. She seemed to assume you would be searching for her, and when I expressed small reasonable doubt, she became quite ugly about it. She was afraid you might go to her place, and there was no way to warn you. We made arrangements about how I might contact you and identify you should you come here.”

There was a muffled roar, a concerted shout. Miss O’Shaugnessy tilted her head. “Dear Perry. She always gets that same response to that part of her act. The child is incredibly flexible.”

“I’m anxious to see Bonny Lee.”

“Of course you are, and I would have sent you dashing to my place if you’d arrived earlier. But it is after eleven, you know. And I had a dear friend arriving at my place at eleven to nap and wait for me, an absolute bronzed giant of an airlines pilot, with the most astonishing external voluntary muscle structure I’ve ever seen. The deltoideus, triceps brachia, latissimus dorsi and trapezius are like great marvelous wads of brown weathered stone. The poor lamb has just enough awareness to push all his little buttons and levers to get his aircraft from here to there and back, and he crinkles charmingly when he smiles, but it would be too confusing to him to find Bonny Lee at my place. He wouldn’t know how to react, and it would upset him. So it was arranged that she would leave before eleven. She has my little car and she is wearing some of my clothing, and she will be at Bernie Sabbith’s apartment at midnight. She hopes you will meet her there, but in the event you don’t, she’d planned to enlist the help of Bernie and his friends in whatever gruesome difficulties you two seem to have gotten into. Actually, I think all Bernie can contribute to any situation is additional confusion, but perhaps some use can be made of that. So, you see, you have time to spare. And you’ve been watching every morsel of this sandwich, you know.”

She went to the kitchen. A few minutes after she returned, a sandwich and coffee was brought to her little dressing room.

“Does — uh — Bonny Lee do the same sort of act you do, Miss O’Shaugnessy?”

“My name is Lizbeth, love. Lizbeth Perkins, actually. You are a rather stuffy fellow, aren’t you? What if she did exactly the same routines? Would it make her unworthy of you?”

“I just wondered,” he said, miserably.

“Have no fear, love. The degree one is required to strip is in inverse ratio to one’s other talents. Your darling has a lovely voice, and she’s getting better all the time with those bongos. And she moves about well. I suspect the pictures outside upset you? Bonny Lee was upset too, and if you look closely, you’ll see that though Perry and I are as nature made us, some clever wretch with an airbrush removed Bonny Lee’s little frivolous bandeau. But she wasn’t agitated about the exposure, love. She was jealous of her category — entertainer rather than stripper. You men are such dismal creatures, really, beset with Edwardian scruples. I can’t sing a note, and as a child I trained for ballet, but whoever heard of a prima ballerina measuring forty-one, twenty-five, thirty-seven? What those slack-jawed idiots out there fail to realize is how many hundreds and hundreds of sweaty hours of brute labor it has taken for me to develop the skill to flex all the muscles of my body, singly or in any desired sequence. It’s not what one could call a skill of any historic significance, Mr. Winter, but it pleases the fools, supports me well, and keeps me in a condition of astonishing health. Is it somehow more reprehensible than being able to bash a small ball a long distance with a club? Dear me, I do hope Bonny Lee hasn’t become emotionally involved with a dingy little moralist.”