Джон Макдональд - The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything

“I want to tell you—”

“So things can get ordered out for you, a little at a time, if you go at it direct, and I took something else off you tonight, that waiter you slugged.”

“What?”

“By now he’s told the police he’s taking back the complaint on you, and even if he hasn’t, you got this paper I brang you, sweetheart.”

He looked at the paper in the flame of a match. On it was written, “The man hitting me taking my cloths, he was short fat bald maybe sixty year. I say it Mr. Winter so my name is on newspaper, for important.” It was signed by the waiter and by two witnesses.

“How did you get this?”

“I was at Lizbeth’s place and getting restless, so when I heard about the fire I thought maybe those two boys wouldn’t be waiting at my place any more, so I went to see and they were gone. And I wanted my own clothes on account of in the top half of Lizbeth’s there’s room enough for me and a set of drums. I got into some of my own clothes and took money from under the mattress and went to the Elise. That waiter and I had a little talk. Somewhere while I was talking he got the idea he better settle small and get out, or somebody might float him away on the tide. So he took five hundred, and his signature is a little bit wiggly, but it’s good enough I think. It was just a little favor, lover. If I could get to talk personal to them two hungry cops, I bet you I could fix that up too.”

“I’m beginning to think you could.”

“Anyhow, when we got back to that little pink house with those muscly fellas of Lizbeth’s, I knew you’d got hold of that golden watch and used it good, and taken that Wilma girl away with you, so I stopped being so fretful about you, but I sure wish you’d taken my car so we’d have one less trouble. Sugar, you better tell me all of what happened, every dang bit of it, and you better be real complete, because I have it in my mind you went off with Wilma and here it is after midnight. There’s time in there to burn a boat and do too much else too.”

They were turned, facing each other in the small car. He held her hands and told her all that had happened. When he came to the situation with Joseph and Charla, the way he had left them when he had carried Betsy off the boat, her fingers dug into his hands. When he told her about how he had changed his mind and gotten back to them barely in time, her grip softened.

“Hold me some,” she said in a low voice. He held her.

“How much difference would it have made if I didn’t get back?”

“Maybe none, to us,” she whispered. “We could make us up some reasons why it was a thing to do. But it would have been a dirty thing.”

“I sense that. But why?”

“Why a dirty thing? Because they’d be bugs with you stomping them. And people aren’t bugs. Not even those people. Anyways, if you’d used it to kill folks, I couldn’t ever use it again to do something happy, like packing ice in around that ol’ scrawny girl up there.”

She bounced back away from him and said, “Sweetie, you got a tendency to treat that watch too solemn. Afore you know it, we’ll be bowing down to that darn thing, and then it will be the watch in charge instead of us. I say if there isn’t fun in something, the hell with it.”

“You think I should use it more — frivolously?”

“It would be good for you.”

“What should I have done to Charla then? What would you have done?”

“Hmmm. I’d want to scare that mean ol’ gal and unfancy her a little.”

“Like, for example, stripping her and stuffing her into a truck full of sailors?”

She kissed him quickly. “If you can even think up something like that, honey, it means you’re coming along just fine. Just fine.”

“That’s what I did.”

“What!”

“And the truck drove slowly away.”

She whooped, yelped, bounced, pounded his chest with her fist and laughed until she cried. And he got almost as much reaction from Joseph’s untidy fate.

Suddenly she sobered, and her eyes narrowed. She leaned toward him in the faint glow of street light. “Speaking of you a-takin’ the clothes off that fat little blonde woman, just how good did you get along with that Wilma girl and that Betsy?”

“I told you Wilma is in that motel in Hallandale. And I left Betsy at the Birdline.”

“Gals stashed all over town, huh?”

“It’s either feast or famine.”

“I’m all the feast you need, Yankee. I’m a banquet all day long, so when we go check on those gals, we both go. Wilma first, I guess. We have to make sure they stay put before they go wandering around messing things up.”

“And then what?”

“I was thinking about that,” she said quietly.

“We can run. You and me. A long, long way.”

“And leave a mess like this? The law would never give up.”

“What else is there to do?”

“That old uncle of yours left you in a real good mess. And I keep thinking maybe he had a reason. And maybe the reason is in that letter he left.”

“But I can’t get that for a year.”

“Maybe he left you a way to get it a lot sooner.”

Suddenly he realized what she meant. “Of course!”

“And he could have meant for you to get hold of it sooner than a year, Kirby.”

He pulled her close and said, “You’re a very bright girl, Bonny Lee Beaumont.”

Unreckoned minutes later she began to make languid efforts to untangle herself. “First,” she said regretfully, “let’s go check on all your other women.”

On Wednesday morning, young Mr. Vitts, of Wintermore, Stabile, Schamway and Mertz received the anonymous, puzzling phone call. It preyed on his mind as the morning wore on. He knew it had to be nonsense, yet he knew he would not feel easy until he had assured himself that the packet entrusted to him was exactly where he had placed it, exactly where it belonged. At eleven, canceling his other appointments, he went to the bank. He signed the vault card, went with the attendant and operated his half of the double lock and took the japanned metal box to a private cubicle.

He opened the lid and saw the labeled packet Mr. Wintermore had entrusted to him, and felt like a fool at having wasted time coming to the bank to stare at it, just because some crackpot had told him it was gone.

And suddenly it was gone.

He shut his eyes tightly and opened them again and looked into the box. The packet was gone. He put a trembling hand into the box and fingered the emptiness. He slumped onto the small bench and closed his eyes. He knew he was overworked. A man who could not trust the evidence of his own senses had no business accepting fiduciary responsibilities. He knew he would have to go at once to Mr. Wintermore and confess that the Krepps packet had disappeared, and he had no idea where it had gone. He would ask for some leave, and consider himself fortunate if he was not forced to resign.

When he stood up, he moved like a very old man. The packet was back in the lock box. Had it been a cobra, he could not have recoiled more swiftly. It took him a few moments to acquire the courage to touch it, then lift it out of the lock box. At first it seemed to him to be of slightly different weight and dimension than he remembered, and it looked as if it had been resealed, but then logic came to his rescue. No one could possibly have touched it. He’d had a mild hallucination based on nervous tension and overwork. There was no need to tell Mr. Wintermore about it. Everything was entirely in order. He would try to get a little more rest in the future, a little more exercise and sunshine. He returned the box to the vault and walked back to his office, consciously breathing more deeply than was his custom.