“Yes, sir. As a matter of fact, we have a number of other real good listings I’d like to show you-”
“Thanks. But I think I’ll run over to the Naples area for a day or so. I’d keep in touch. G’bye.”
I called Chris and told him the check had arrived and that I’d deposited it. He was cool, but polite. I was still a client, if a rather shrunken one. The public stenographer in the hotel addressed an envelope for me and I signed the receipts and mailed them back to him. Next I called Captain Wilder in Marathon. He was out in the Stream, but I left a message with his wife that I’d got tied up on a business deal and would have to cancel the other three days’ fishing.
Coral Blaine was next. She started to tell me of some trouble at the radio station. There’d been an FCC violation of some kind. I cut her off. I was in the saddle now.
“Tell Wingard to take care of it,” I said shortly. “Authorize him to order anything he needs. I’m up to my ears in this real-estate deal. In fact, I’ve canceled the rest of my fishing reservations, and I’m going to spend the balance of the trip looking over the situation down here.”
“Darling, I wish you wouldn’t work so hard.”
“I like to work. So aside from the FCC, everything’s serene there? No more dogs locked in safes?”
She laughed sheepishly. “I am sorry about that. Wasn’t it the silliest thing?”
“It could have been serious as hell. And I’m not so sure it was an accident, either.” The dog thing had been a break we hadn’t counted on, but it was too good to waste.
“Harris, what do you mean? Of course it was an accident.”
“Maybe. But, look-Suppose somebody was trying to cut my throat? Give me a bad name, and make me lose advertisers? A thing like that could ruin me—people going around saying Chapman’s a sonofabitch that’d leave an unlocked safe around where kids can play in it. Suppose she’d actually—I mean, suppose it had been one of the kids? Instead of just a dog—”
“Harris, what on earth are you talking about?”
“Oh, I guess it’s silly,” I said, abruptly changing tone. ”Well, angel, I’m off to Naples to look over some property. I’ll call you later.”
* * *
I arrived in Naples early in the afternoon, and checked in at a motel. After driving round a while I called a few real-estate people on the phone, introduced myself, and made some inquiries. I plugged in the tape recorder, and began erasing the tapes, running them through the machine on “Record” with the volume turned all the way down. It was a slow process, as each took nearly an hour. I finished three of them. Once, I put one of them on “Play Back” for a few minutes just to hear her voice. I sat on the floor with my eyes closed, and I could almost imagine she was there in the room.
Around ten that night I was sitting at the bar in a very dimly lighted cocktail lounge. Among the eight or ten customers at the tables behind me was a dark-haired girl in her late twenties. She was sitting at a table for two, with a man about my size. I watched them from time to tune in the mirror. After a while her escort excused himself and went to the men’s room. I stuck a cigarette in the holder, lit it, and got off the stool as if to go out. Then I saw her, and stopped. I walked over to her table.
“Look, Marian,” I said angrily, “what are you doing here? I know you’re up to something. Why don’t you leave me alone?”
She was too amazed even to speak. People nearby turned and stared.
“Spreading lies behind my back!” I went on, beginning to shout. “Well, you’re wasting your time, Marian. Everybody knows how fair I was. I was more than fair—”
She had recovered now. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked coldly. “I never saw you before in my life.”
The bartender was on his way; and so was her escort, just emerging from the John. I straightened, and looked blankly around, and then at her. “Oh,” I said in confusion. “I—uh—I’m sorry. I thought you were somebody else.”
Her escort wanted to swing on me, but the bartender broke it up. He put his hand on my shoulder in friendly fashion and we walked to the door. “Easy does it, Jack.” Just as the door was closing, I heard him say to someone at the end of the bar. “Mother, dear. You never know. I’d have sworn he was cold sober.”
The next day I drove up to Fort Myers. I spent several hours driving round and talking real estate, mostly over the telephone, and finished erasing the tapes so I could dispose of them. Even if they were ever found, they’d be harmless.
I called Coral Blaine. I told her how much I missed her, and that I’d probably be home a little ahead of schedule. “The minute I clean up that real-estate deal on Monday, I’m going to start back.”
“That’s wonderful, darling.”
“I wonder if I ought to hire detectives to watch her?” I said.
“Watch who?” she asked, puzzled.
“Marian Forsyth!” I said angrily. “Good God, Coral, she can’t fool you that easily, can she? Don’t you know she’s up to something? She’s dreamed up some kind of grudge she thinks she has against me, and there’s no telling what she’ll do. You keep all my papers locked in the safe every minute. And especially my income-tax records—”
“Dear,” she broke in wearily, “I wish we could stop talking about Marian Forsyth. I’m sick of her. I don’t trust her any more than you do, but I don’t see what she could do to you.”
”All right, angel,” I said. “Maybe you’re right. I hope so.”
Late that night I threw the blank tapes and the recorder into the Caloosahatchee River. Thursday afternoon I was back in Miami, at the Clive. I called Justine Laray. She was glad to hear from me; she thought she’d lost me.
Eleven
Chumps of my caliber didn’t come along every day, and she was beginning to get bigger ideas. She didn’t ask for the money in advance this time, and she did a better job of hiding her contempt and being professionally gay in the face of my crudities and oafish bragging about money, sexual prowess, and stomach muscles.
It now appeared that this crummy room-mate had stolen all her clothes.
“I could go back to work in night clubs tomorrow if I had the wardrobe,” she said, lying naked in bed with the highball glass and a cigarette. “But, God, you got no idea, honey, what those gowns cost—”
“Where’s the strain?” I asked. “Hell, at a hundred bucks a jump—”
She was very brave about it. She never told anybody, as a rule, but I was so understanding and, well, sort of nice— There was her little boy, see. Oh, yes, she’d been married. And this lousy bas— Her husband had died, that is, after a long and expensive illness. . . .
The Carthaginian B-girls had probably used more or less the same version during the Punic Wars. “Gee, that’s rough,” I said. “And he doesn’t even know? I mean, all the money you send him at that school, he thinks you’re a big-shot singer? Well, how about that?”
“So if I can just get back on my feet—”
“You just stick with me, Marian,” I said expansively. Maybe we’ll do something about this gown business. Maybe tomorrow, huh, if I can get free for a few minutes from this deal. Say, did I tell you I stood to clean up about eighty thousand? Not bad for a little over a week, huh, baby?”
In the morning I gave her three hundred dollars, slapped her on the rear, and winked. “We got to stab Uncle for a little business expense some way, don’t we, kid?”
Sure, I still had her phone number. And if I got a chance I’d pick her up and we’d go shopping.
* * *
As soon as she left, I checked out of the hotel, had the car brought around and the bags loaded, and drove over to Miami Beach. I left it in a parking lot six or eight blocks away, and walked to the apartment. It was hot and intensely still with the air-conditioner turned off. The minute I opened the front door and stepped into the room where we’d spent so many hours she was all around me, as if the slender elegance, and color, and grace of movement were physical things that could reverberate in an empty room like sound waves and keep on echoing long after the person who had set them in motion was gone.