Dr. Quotabusta fared no better ashore. The specialist he’d seen had been cooperative, but not very helpful. There was no way of being sure if the malady was some new strain of VD or not.
That’s how things stood when we sailed away from Trinidad. We’d picked up a strong current, and Yenta told me that the Captain had given Chief Engineer Gorilla orders to maintain full speed ahead. The cruise-leg from Trinidad to Rio de Janeiro, our next port-of-call, was scheduled to take four and a half days. By riding the current, keeping the speed up, and hugging the coastline of South America, Maldemerde was hoping to cut a day off that sailing time. If he succeeded, the Lascivia would put into Rio almost on schedule and we’d make up the time we’d lost between New York and Trinidad.
Two days later, in the afternoon, the passengers on deck got their first look at the jungle shores of South America. It was a post card view, and I admired it along with everybody else. Still, I didn’t have to see the tropics to know we were there.
The weather told me that. It was extremely hot and muggy, with little trace of a sea breeze. All those on deck, myself included, wore the briefest possible bathing attire.
“The Captain would like you to come to his cabin, Mr. Victor.” Chief Purser Yenta materialized at my elbow.
“What’s up?”
“Mrs. Stanford asked him to send for you.”
“What for?”
“The Captain’s performing the divorce ceremony for the Stanfords. They need a witness. Mrs. Stanford specifically requested you.”
“Why me?”
Yenta didn’t know. But I picked up some signals when I got to Maldemerde’s cabin that gave an idea why Binny Stanford had asked for me. The bikini-clad divorcée-to-be looked at me with hayrolls shining from each of her blue eyes. Evidently the MENSA siren thought I was smart enough to decipher the message.
I was. But Ogden Stanford wasn’t so dumb that he missed it, either. Divorce or no divorce, he didn’t like it one little bit.
“Are we all ready?” Captain Maldemerde inquired. Click-click
“Yes.” Binny scratched at the triangle of her bikini bottoms and shot me a hot-eyed look.
“I guess so.” Ogden Stanford scratched his groin moodily.
“Dearly Beloved, we are gathered together. . . .” the Captain began in a sonorous voice.
“Do we really need all that?” Ogden Stanford interrupted, still scratching.
“It’s part of the ceremony,” Maldemerde told him. Click-click.
“Of the divorce ceremony?” Binny rubbed her shapely thighs together vigorously.
“Well, of course, I’ve adapted it from the marriage ritual. Actually, I’ve never performed a divorce before. But if you want me to change it—-” Click-click.
“The hell with it!” Ogden Stanford dug his nails in his crotch. “Let’s get on with it.”
“Very well.” Click-click. The Captain took a deep breath and started over again. “Dearly Beloved. . . .”
Scratching away, Binny Stanford filleted my swim trunks from my torso with her eyes. Evidently she liked what she found. She sighed deeply and her luscious Las Vegas bosom swelled like twin balloons on the verge of escaping their bikini mooring.
“. . . by the authority invested in me as Master of this Vessel,” the Captain droned on, “to free this man and this woman from the bonds of holy matrimony. . . .”
Yenta sniffled. “I always cry at weddings,” he corifided to me.
“This is a divorce,” I reminded him, whispering.
“That’s not quite as sad,” he admitted, “but it still makes me cry.”
“. . . If there be any person present with knowledge why these two should not be unjoined in holy wedlock, let him speak now, or forever hold his peace. . . .”
“I have knowledge,” Ogden Stanford muttered, scratching vigorously.
Binny’s elbow connected with his ribs, an order to be quiet.
He shut up.
“. . . Do you, Binny, promise to no longer love, honor and obey this man, Ogden, to no longer have him, and to no longer hold him until death do you dirt?”
“I do.”
“Do you, Binny, absolve this man, Ogden, from being your lawful wedded husband?”
“I do.” She scratched.
“And do you, Ogden, promise to no longer cherish this woman, Binny, and to renounce her as your lawful wedded wife?”
“I guess so,” Ogden whined. He scratched.
“Remove the ring from her finger,” the Captain instructed.
While Ogden was doing that, the Captain signaled Yenta to turn on the record player. The strains of “Oh Promise Me” filled the small cabin. Yenta sobbed audibly.
“What God has put asunder, let no man join together . . .” the Captain intoned.
Mister Jewish, who had been quietly standing in the background up this point, came forward now and placed a beer bottle under Ogden Stanford’s heel. The ceremony, I realized, was multidenominational.
“. . . by the power invested in me as Captain of the Lascivia, I now pronounce you Bachelor and Spinster,” Maldemerde concluded with a sentimental vocal flourish. Click-click.
Ogden Stanford brought his heel down on the beer bottle and smashed it.
“Shalom!” Mister Iewish exclaimed.
“Kiss the former bride goodbye.” Maldemerde beamed more informally.
Scratching their groins furiously, the couple kissed. Then Maldemerde grabbed Binny and kissed her, squeezing one breast with a pudgy hand like a grapefruit freak turned loose in a citrus grove. Mister Jewish and Chief Purser Yenta bussed her more conventionally. And then it was my turn.
Binny’s lower torso arched like a catcher’s mitt forming a pocket as she received me. With only the skimpy bikini top between my bare chest and her lavish breasts, I felt the full heat of her erect nipples and the pliant softness of the flesh surrounding them. Her mouth was a warm cupboard with the door invitingly ajar and snacks of spicy tongue on which to nibble. I forgot the others were watching us and gave myself up to the sensations which promised even greater thrills to come.
But when the long kiss was finally over, Binny couldn’t wait to scratch her crotch again, and that brought me back to reality. What ever it was that was going around, she had it. And if it was venereal, as Quotabusta suspected, tempting as the MENSA siren was, I didn’t want to catch it.
“Your cabin, or mine?” she whispered in a voice too low for the others to hear.
I was saved from having to answer by the loud, clear, unmistakable sound of a pistol shot ringing out. Startled, we all looked at each other. There was the crack of a second shot.
Somebody meant business!
CHAPTER EIGHT
Mister Jewish was the first to react. He left the Captain’s cabin quickly and headed down the deck in the direction from which the shots had come. Chief Purser Yenta and I tied for second place behind him. A third shot brought the three of us to a halt outside the swinging doors to the card salon.
We entered cautiously, alert to the possibility of any more bullets flying around. At the rear, the bartender was crouched behind the bar, his nose resting on it, his eyes popping, the rest of him hidden. Two men were standing flat against opposite walls, facing each other and trembling, out of the immediate action. A third man was scampering back and forth, holding up a card table defensively, as if trying to shield himself with it. The fourth man, the one with the revolver, was trying to draw a bead on him.
Captain Maldemerde slithered in behind us, making sure the two officers and myself were between him and the man with the gun. Click-click. Yenta, comprehending the cowardly maneuver, looked at me and raised a contemptuous eyebrow. Like myself, he had recognized the four men and formed a rough opinion of the situation.