I dropped him at his office, and headed south. On the way through Miami I stopped at a florist and wired two dozen yellow roses to Coral Blaine at her home address. They were her favorite flower.
He sometimes sent all the girls in the office inexpensive gifts when he was away on vacation, and I had an idea now. I could accomplish two things at once. On the way out of town, going south towards the Keys, I began watching for one of those roadside curio places that sold concrete flamingos. I finally located one, and pulled off.
It was the usual tourist-stopper seen along the highways all over south Florida, cluttered with four-foot clam shells from the Great Barrier Reef, cypress knees, alligator skins, coconut monkey heads, boxed fruit, and postcards. It was run by a cold-eyed man with a Georgia accent and a brow-beaten woman I took to be his wife. I poked disdainfully around in the junk for a while and finally settled on the gift boxes of exotic jellies, GUAVA, SEA GRAPE, TANGERINE MARMALADE—WE PACK AND SHIP.
“How much off for four?” I asked.
His bleak eyes shifted from me to the seven thousand dollars’ worth of car out front, and back again. “Same price, mister, one or a hundred.”
“I can see you’re a born merchandiser,” I said. I opened the briefcase, dug out the list Marian had given me, and wrote down the names and home addresses of the four girls: Bill McEwen at the paper, and Mrs. English, Jean Sessions, and Barbara Cullen at the office.
“One box to each address,” I said. I paid him, and added, “Give me a receipt. I’ve been stung on these deals before.”
He gave me one. I carefully stowed it in my wallet, and went out. The concrete flamingos were lined up along the fence at the right of the building. “What the devil are those things?” I asked. “I’ve been seeing them all along the road.”
“Ornamental flamingos,” he replied.
“What are they made of?” I asked. “And what good are they?”
“Plaster,” he said. “Concrete. These ones are concrete. You stick ’em up on lawns, or in the shrubbery. The ones with bases you set in paddlin’ pools.”
I shook my head. “God, the things you people sell to tourists.” He watched coldly as I got back in the car and drove off.
Nine
I arrived at Marathon and checked into the motel with almost an hour to spare before I was supposed to call Coral Blaine. I was practically out on my feet. After a shower and a harsh rubdown, I set up the tape recorder, put on the No. 5 roll, which was devoted almost altogether to her, and listened with the volume turned down. I found I didn’t need it any more. My mind ran ahead of the tape. There were tens of thousands of things I didn’t know about her and about Chapman, but everything on those five hours of tape was stamped into my brain.
I called her at exactly nine, and again it was easy. She’d got the roses; that helped. She was going to somebody’s house to play bridge. Two of the names she mentioned were familiar, so I made some appropriate comment. I was excited about tomorrow’s fishing, and I was getting burned up with Chris Lundgren. If he didn’t stop throwing Marian Forsyth’s advice at me I was going to switch my account to Merrill Lynch or somebody. Any time I needed that woman’s advice about anything—
She sniffed, and agreed with me. It was just too bad about poor Marian, but she guessed when women reached that age they got sort of—well, you know, frustrated and embittered.
“She’s in New York, you know. She called Bill McEwen today—”
“What’d she call her for?” I demanded suspiciously. “Bill, I mean.”
She gave her an ad to run in the paper. She’s selling her house. Bill said she told her she’d be back here Saturday.”
”Yeah. And I suppose she’d be talking about me behind my back to everybody in town. After I offered her six months’ pay, when she blew up and quit.”
“Well, I certainly wouldn’t worry about her talking about somebody—”
We exchanged the usual I-love-you’s and the I-miss-you’s, and hung up. It was beautiful, I thought. And I was becoming about as fond of the catty little witch as Marian was.
I called Captain Wilder of the Blue Water III, and told him I was in town and would be on the dock at eight a.m. He told me how to get there. I left a call for seven, took off my clothes, and fell into bed. The moment the light was out, I thought of Marian, and was so lonely for her I ached. I didn’t even have a photograph. Then twenty-four hours of tension uncoiled inside me like a breaking spring, and I dropped into blackness. . . .
She was running ahead of me along a sidewalk supported by giant cables in catenary curves, with only emptiness and fog beneath us. She was drawing away, and she ran into the fog and I lost her, and there was nothing but the sound of her footsteps dying away. I awoke and was tangled in the sheet and the phone was ringing.
It all came back, and for a moment I was sick with terror. Then it was gone. I’d expected it, of course; at the precise moment of waking you’re defenseless. It was nothing, and would wear off in a few days. I picked up the phone. It was seven o’clock.
Captain Wilder was a chubby and jovial man with an unending supply of chatter and dirty stories, and his mate was a Cuban boy with limited English. To both I was merely another faceless possessor of traveler’s checks, to be fished successfully and made happy. I wore the dark glasses, of course, and a long-vizored fishing cap. I used Chapman’s few words of Spanish on the Cuban boy, and talked a little about fishing at Acapulco.
There was no enjoyment in it. I kept thinking of his body lying down there somewhere crushed under the tons of water. We didn’t catch anything to speak of, which was good. I wouldn’t have to fight off the photographers. I explained we’d have to cut the first day short because I had an important business call to make, and we were back at the dock at three.
That was two p.m., New Orleans time. I called from the motel.
“Chris? Chapman. How are you making out with that Warwick?”
“Oh, hello, Mr. Chapman,” he replied. “The fishing all right?”
“Lousy,” I said shortly. “But about that oil stock—?”
“Hmmm. Let’s see. We unloaded six thousand shares of it yesterday, at two seven-eighths. It went to three-quarters, and we disposed of two more at that price. It sold off to five-eighths at closing, and has been hanging there and at a half all day. So we still have two thousand.”
“Right,” I said briskly. “Just let it ride until we can get three-quarters.” I made a rough calculation. “Now, look. My cash position must be around thirty thousand at the moment, or a little better? That right?”
“Ye-es—I think so. I haven’t got the exact figures, but it should be in the neighborhood of thirty-four thousand.”
“Fine. Now here’s what I want you to do. I came in from fishing early so I’d catch you in time, since tomorrow’s Saturday. Send me a check for twenty-five thousand, airmail Special Delivery, care the Clive Hotel, Miami. That’s C-l-i-v-e, Clive. Get it off this afternoon, without fail. I’ve run into something here that’s beginning to look terrific, if I can get it at my price, and I think I can. But I’m going to need some cash to hit ’em with, either for an option or as earnest money when I make the offer.”
“Real estate?” he asked. I could sense disapproval. The securities men and the land dealers shared a deep mutual distrust of each other’s “investments”. Then I realized it ran deeper than that; he didn’t have a great deal of faith in my judgment. I’d got where I was in the stock market by riding on Marian Forsyth’s back, and now that I’d ditched her there was no telling what would happen. That was fine. What I was doing was right in character. “Excuse me,” he went on. “None of my business, of course. I didn’t mean to pry.”