This latter wasn’t really dye, she said, and if I didn’t use too much of it there wouldn’t be any noticeable artificial effect, but rather like that of brown hair bleached down a few shades by the sun. I went into the bathroom, combed in a light application of it, and started practicing the signature. When my wrist was tired, I loaded the recorder with the first roll of tape, and turned it on. Her voice issued from the loudspeaker, and when I closed my eyes she seemed to be there in the room. I forced myself to concentrate.
When my brain was numb from memorizing, I went back to the signature again. I found I didn’t have as much talent for forgery as I did for mimicry, but after several hundred attempts I could see definite improvement. I kept at it. After a while I tried breaking it down into individual letters and writing each one hundreds of times to correct my errors. Around seven I walked over three or four blocks to a restaurant for dinner, and came back and worked until midnight. When I turned out the light, she was all around me in the darkness.
The next day was Sunday. I worked from seven a.m. till midnight with only brief periods out for food, attacking the job with intense concentration to keep her out of my mind. I was closing in on him. Whole sections of those five hours of recorded data were stamped into my mind intact. I could see him now, and feel him, and there was no longer even any need to practice his speech. The signature was improving. I went on writing it, hour after hour, and listening to the tapes. It was harder than I had ever worked at anything in my life. When I went to bed I was dizzy with fatigue.
She had left me five hundred dollars in cash. On Monday morning I went over to Miami and picked up a rental car, one with a trailer hitch. I drove out US 1 to a sporting goods place that rented boats and motors. Using my right name and my California driver’s license, plus the local address on Dover Way, I rented a complete outfit—sixteen-foot fiberglass boat, twenty-five-horse Johnson outboard, and a trailer with a winch. I put up a deposit against the week’s rental, bought a spinning rod and some lures, asked the man about bonefishing flats in the Keys, and headed south on the highway.
In a little over an hour I was on Key Largo. I checked my highway map, noted the speedometer reading, and turned off US 1 into the dead-end road going towards the upper end of the Key, watching for launching sites. I found one, made a notation of the mileage, and went on. In a little over a mile there was another, and I noted the speedometer reading at this one also. I needed at least two I could find fast and in the dark, so I’d have an alternate in case the first one was being used or someone was camped near it. There was nobody in sight at either of them now. I practiced maneuvering the car with the trailer behind it. It was awkward at first, but after about fifteen minutes I became fairly adept.
I backed down to the water once more, put on the fishing clothes I’d brought, and launched the boat. There was a moderate south-east breeze, but the water over the flats inside the line of the reefs was smooth. It took about fifteen minutes to run out over the reefs to the edge of the Stream. The boat handled nicely in the moderate sea and ground-swell off-shore, and would do all right provided the weather was no worse than it was now. I ran back, winched the boat on to the trailer, and drove back to Miami Beach.
There was a driveway along the side of the apartment and a garage in the rear. I backed into it, uncoupled the trailer and locked it in the garage, and left the car in the drive. When I let myself in the front of the apartment, there was a card from her in the letter-box.
It had been mailed Sunday afternoon in Nassau, and said she was flying to New York Monday night. It was printed in block letters, and was unsigned. “I miss you,” she said. I wondered if she did. For a moment she was all around me in the apartment, the remembered gesture of a hand, the swing of a silken ankle, and the smooth dark head it was a joy forever to watch.
I showered, and shaved, using a safety razor to get around the mustache. The latter was beginning to show, and surprisingly it made me look a little older, which was fine. I went to work, practicing the signature. I could forge it well enough now to fool myself at times, but I had to learn to do it faster and more naturally. The next morning I drove over to Miami to a salvage store and bought a second-hand tarpaulin, about eight by eight. On the way back I stopped at a building supply place and bought four concrete blocks, saying I wanted them to patch a wall. At a dime store I picked up a roll of wire and a cheap pair of pliers. I put everything in the trunk, and locked it. I went back to the apartment and worked with furious concentration until midnight.
When I awoke in the morning and realized what day it was, there was a fluttery, sick feeling in my stomach. This was the thirteenth. He was supposed to be here tonight. I was scared. It was easy to say something was fool-proof—but was it, ever? A million things could go wrong. I tried to work some more, but had trouble concentrating. I didn’t need any more preparation, anyway; I either had it pat now, or I never would. The only thing it took from here on was nerve. I wasn’t at all sure I had that.
The morning passed with no word from her. Maybe he wasn’t coming. I began to hope something had happened so he couldn’t get away. Then at five-thirty in the afternoon the phone rang. It was a call from Mrs. Forbes, in New York, the operator said. Would I accept the charge? I said yes. She came on the line.
“Jerry? Listen, dear, I’m calling from a phone-booth because I didn’t want this call on my hotel bill. He’s on his way.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Yes. I just talked to a friend at home. He left late yesterday afternoon, intending to stay in Mobile last night. He should be there between midnight and two a.m. I’m leaving right away, and I’ll be in Miami shortly before nine. Don’t come to the airport.”
“Right,” I said.
“Is everything all right there?”
”Yes. Except that I wish you were here.”
“I will be, very shortly. Good-bye, dear.”
The afternoon was interminable; I paced the living room, chain-smoking cigarettes while I thought of a Cadillac and a DC-7 converging on Miami in a sort of cataclysmic and irrevocable vector. I wanted her here worse than I’d ever wanted anything, and I hoped he’d never arrive. He was a fast and reckless driver; maybe he’d have a wreck and kill himself. I went out and tried to eat dinner, and didn’t know afterwards whether I had or not.
It was nine-thirty when I heard a car pull into the driveway. I opened the front door. She was coming up the walk with the cab driver behind her carrying the small overnight case. The rest of her luggage would still be in New York, in her hotel room. A very smart-looking hat was slanted across the side of her head, and she wore gloves and carried a light coat on her arm.
She smiled, brushed my lips lightly with hers, and started to fumble at her bag. I gave the driver some money. I didn’t know how much, but it appeared to satisfy him. He turned and went down the walk. Then we were inside, and I pushed the door shut with my shoulder, and put down the bag.
She broke it up, finally, and gasped. “Jerry! After all—”
“Let me look at you,” I said. I held her at arm’s length. I’d smeared her lipstick quite badly and tilted the hat a little out of position, but there was no doubt of it. She was the smartest-looking and the loveliest woman on earth.