I borrowed a pair of binoculars and kept the Queen William under surveillance. About twenty minutes after the pilot arrived, Captain Grabass boarded the small motor boat that had brought him. It was five agonizing minutes later before the putt-putt that had delivered our pilot headed upriver for the midtown docks with me aboard!
I jumped to the pier before the small craft was moored. I raced down the wooden planking to the street beyond. There wasn’t a cab in sight.
Fortunately, Captain Grabass was facing the same problem. He was about a block up the avenue desperately trying to flag down taxis that ignored him because they already had passengers. When he spotted me, he started up a crosstown street at a trot.
There was no choice. It was mid-afternoon and taxis rarely cruised the dock area at this time. I took off after Grabass like I was trying for the four-minute mile.
For a man who looked as unathletic as he did, Captain Grabass was surprisingly swift. It was all I could do to maintain the distance between us. Hard as I pushed myself, I was unable to narrow it.
Then, at the corner of Fifty-second Street and Eighth Avenue, the Captain spotted a cab discharging a passenger and jumped into it. I looked around frantically. There wasn’t another empty in sight.
The taxi with Grabass in it headed east on Fifty-second Street. I trotted after it on foot as fast as I could. Luck was with me. Midtown traffic held the hack up at Broadway. I hadn’t gained on Grabass, but his half-block lead hadn’t been lengthened either.
Then the light changed and the cab shot across both Broadway and Seventh Avenue, and headed down the relatively clear block toward the Avenue of the Americas. Running, I spotted an empty taxi with its “Off Duty” light lit. I rapped on the window and yelled at the driver. “Ten bucks if you’ll take me to Park Avenue!”
He rolled the window down a bare inch. “Make it twenty,” he said calmly. He knew a desperate man when he saw one.
I nodded vigorous agreement and he opened the door. I jumped in, flung the money at him, and begged hirn to hurry. His attitude was infuriatingly calm and laconic, but his driving, by contrast, was fast and professional. He slid the hack in and out of traffic, gaining a car-length here, and another there.
At the corner of Madison Avenue I spotted the cab with Grabass in it about five cars in front of us. Like us, it was waiting for the light to change. When it changed, we both sped toward Park Avenue.
There were only two cars between us when the red light at Park Avenue stopped traffic again. Grabass was about a quarter block from the corner. The entrance to the bank was right around the corner on Park.
Grabass got out of his cab. I left mine on the run. He rounded the corner. A couple of seconds later I turned it.
Too late! He was already at the entrance to the bank! I watched as he led with his shoulder to go through the swinging doors.
He bounced off them! He stood there looking bewildered. The doors were locked!
Of course! I glanced at my watch. Three-ten. The bank was closed for the day!
We stared at each other. I laughed. I couldn’t help it.
“You find this amusing, Mr. Victor?”
“How come you know who I am?” I wondered.
“You have been known to me from the moment you left Baron Duvivier’s yacht in Nassau.”
“Oh. . . . What now?” I wanted to know.
Captain Grabass didn’t reply.
Gold-embossed letters on the door to the bank, however, provided an answer of sorts. They spelled out the business hours. The bank would open at nine in the morning.
The Captain had followed my gaze. “It might be very profitable for you to oversleep, dear boy,” he suggested.
“How profitable?”
He mentioned a figure. It was so far below what Duvivier would pay me for getting to the safe-deposit box first that my integrity wasn’t even called into question. I shook my head.
“In that case—-” Captain Grabass pulled a freshly pressed white Italian silk handkerchief from his pocket and unfolded it. He waved it at me coyly.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“Truce, Lovey, truce. We can’t stand here glaring at each other until nine o’clock tomorrow morning, so I’m suggesting a truce. What do you say, Honeybun?”
“Fine with me.” I started down the sidewalk. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Oh no!” He scurried on tiptoe to catch up with me. “I couldn’t possibly let you out of my sight, Stevie baby.”
“Why not?”
“Bank personnel are notoriously underpaid. I wouldn’t want you tempting some poor young teller to let you in five or ten minutes early.”
“How would I even know how to reach anybody Working in that bank?”
“Baron Duvivier just might have the contacts, Sugarpie. I simply can’t afford to take that chance. Sorry.”
“Well what then? What kind of truce do you mean? If you don’t trust me, and I don’t trust you, I guess we are stuck here until morning.”
“No we’re not. As long as we stay together, Stevie, we don’t have to stay here.”
“Well then, where do we go?”
“There’s a lovely hotel not far from here. We could take a room-—-” He fluttered long eyelashes at me.
“Sorry. Not my thing.”
“How do you know until you try, Sweetie?”
“I don’t. But if I ever do get around to trying, it will be with somebody a lot younger and more appealing than you,” I told Grabass frankly.
“Hostile!” He wagged a well-manicured finger in my face. “Very hostile! Where would you suggest we go then?” Grabass threw the question back at me.
“I could use a drink.”
“Excellent!” He clapped his hands. “I know just the place. The Gay Barnacle down near South Street. It’s a darling spot. And the habitués are so chic!”
“I’d rather go to the Three Lions. It’s closer.”
“That pub in the Hotel Tudor? Where all the straights hang out? But Sweetie, Yd be so uncomfortable there.”
“Ditto for me at your gay bar.” I thought a minute. “Let’s compromise,” I suggested. “You know the San Marino in the Village?”
Captain Grabass knew it all right. And he agreed that it was the perfect compromise. The San Marino is one of those rare places that’s sexually integrated. Straights and gay people mingle there in a permissive atmosphere that keeps everybody at their ease.
So the San Marino is where Grabass and I went. We stood at the bar and lingered over a few drinks until it was time for dinner. Then we went into the Marino’s restaurant section and took our time over a lavish Italian meal. After which it was back to the bar for a few more drinks.
It was around eleven p.m. by now, and the place had filled up. A gay young man I knew slightly spotted me and came over to say hello. His sharp eyes sized up Grabass shrewdly and he leaned over to speak directly into my ear so the Captain wouldn’t hear.
“Been cruising the docks, Steve?” he asked.
“It’s platonic,” I assured him.
“Still uptight, hey?”
“Afraid so.”
“Too bad. You’re maybe breaking a lot of hearts. Still, like they say, to each his own.”
“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend, Stevie?” Grabass was licking his lips with all the subtlety of an aroused bulldog on the scent of a bitch in heat.