He listened for a short time and said, “The status of your career could not mean less to me, Watts. Please don’t bother me again.”
As he returned the phone to the cradle I could hear the frantic tiny buzzing of Crane’s agitated voice.
Frowning, Stebber said, “Strange that Waxwell should be so eager to bully my phone number out of Watts. He says he gave him the number but not the code-as if he expected congratulations. I would think, if your guess is right, I’d be the last person he’d…”
Changing the pitch and resonance of my voice, I said, “Ol‘ Boo make that lawyer boy itchy.”
It astounded and delighted him out of all proportion to the accomplishment. Patience and a good tape recorder can make a respectable mimic out of anyone.
“Maybe some day we could find a project to our mutual advantage,” he said.
“I can think of one right now. Decoy Waxwell up here and keep him here for one full day and I send you ten percent of all we recover.”
“No thanks. I don’t think the man is entirely sane. And he goes by hunch. I wouldn’t risk it. Decoy him with a woman, McGee. The McCall girl could keep him occupied long enough.”
“Let’s say she’s squeamish, Stebber. Loan me Debra for the same cut. Ten percent.”
“I wouldn’t consider it for one…” He stopped suddenly. His shy glance was more obscene than any wink or leer could have been. “If you could have her back in three days. And… if you could leave Miss McCall here with me. As a guarantee of good faith.”
“How bulky would the money be?”
“New hundreds in Federal Reserve wrappers. Thirteen packets, one hundred bills thick. Perhaps not quite enough to fill a fair-sized shoebox. You didn’t answer my question about Miss… Chookie.”
“Given a choice, given time to think, I imagine she’d pick Boo Waxwell.”
“Why give her a choice, dear boy? You’d find Debra charming company. And I can assure you few men make the impact on her you’ve already made. And when you get Miss Chookie McCall back, you’d find her quite anxious to be agreeable, and not at all contentious. Truly effective disciplines, McGee, leave the loveliness untouched and the soul just an interestingly bit queasy and apprehensive. It’s a superimposed useful anxiety.”
“Speaking for Miss McCall, no thanks.”
“Some day, perhaps,” he said and went and called the girls. They came walking slowly back into the big room, and I saw Chook wearing an odd expression, Debra looking secretively amused.
They both walked us out to the elevator, all charm and assurance, convincing us we were lovely people who had stopped in for a lovely drink. As the elevator door closed, my final look at them showed their gracious smiles, the smiles of an elegant couple, tastefully appointed, mannerly. And virulent as coral snakes.
Choak stayed lost in her silence and did not explode until we were a half mile away. “Girl talk! Girl talk! Do you know what that skinny bitch was doing? She was trying to… to recruit me. Like a gawdam Marine poster. See the world. Learn a trade. Retire in your prime.”
“Recruit you as what?”
“She didn’t say right out. She inspected me like a side of meat and said I was prime. Too bad I was wasting myself in such hard work for so little money. Damn it, I make good money. Men, she said, the right kind of men, could get so expensively intrigued with a big, dark fierce-looking girl like me. And that man, Trav. He made me feel weak and silly and young, and he made me feel anxious to make him like me. At first. But at the end there, I was thinking how nice it would be to squash him like a bug. They scare me, Trav. In a way I don’t think I’ve been scared since I was a kid, when my grandmother got me so worked up about white slavers, if I saw two men standing on a street corner, I’d cross the street so they couldn’t jab me with a needle and sell me to the Arabs. Trav, if we have to have anything to do with those people, something really awful might happen. My God, Trav, you should see the clothes she’s got. Furs and originals and nine drawers of undies and a shoe rack, I swear to God, with a hundred pair of shoes at least. And all the time she was kind of laughing at me inside, as if I was a dumb oaf of a girl, a nudnik. What happened, Travis?”
“In short form, he confirms the hunch Waxwell killed her. She was carrying her share and his of Arthur’s money. She was to put his end in a Nassau bank account. A hundred and thirty thousand dollars. I think he already had taken a fat slice of the rest of it. Everybody else had been paid off. But he writes her off and the money off. He wants no part of it. He says. Maybe I believe him. I don’t know. He might send somebody down. We have to play it that way.”
“A hundred and thirty thousand!” she exclaimed.
“Less what old Boo has blown. Rough guess, eighty-five or ninety left.”
“But that’s good, isn’t it? Isn’t that better than anything you expected?”
“Putting my hands on any part of it, Chook, is going to be better than I expected. And I haven’t done that yet.”
Twelve
IT WAS after nine at night when I parked at the marina and we went aboard the Busted Flush. No light showed. I had the irrational hunch that something had gone wrong. Maybe I had been exposed to too much calculated deviousness for one day. But as I flicked the lounge lights on, there was Arthur slouched on the big yellow couch. He had a tall glass in his hand, dark enough for iced coffee. He gave us a big crooked glassy grin, hoisted the glass in such an enthusiastic salute of welcome that a dollop of it leapt out and splashed his shirt.
“Warra sharra numun!” he said.
Chook stood over him, fists on her hips. “Oh boy! You’ve done it real good, huh?”
“Shawara dummen-huzzer,” he said, in pleased explanation.
She took the glass out of his hand, sniffed it, set it aside. She turned to me. “As you remember, it doesn’t take much. The poor silly. It was such a strain to be shut up here all this time.” She took his wrist, braced herself. “Upsy-daisy, darling.”
She got him up but with a wide loving grin, he enfolded her in big arms and, utterly slack, bore her over and down with a mighty thud of their combined weights. Chook worked free and stood up, rubbing a bruised haunch. Arthur, still smiling, cheek resting on his forearm, emitted a low buzzing snore.
“At least,” she said. “It’s not what I’m used to. A happy drunk.”
Between us we stood him up, draped him soddenly over my shoulder. I dumped him into the big bed.
“Thanks, Trav. I’ll manage from here,” she said, and began to unbutton his shirt, looking up from the task to give me a slightly rueful smile. “Rich warm memories of Frankie Durkin,” she said. “But there the trick was to keep from getting a split mouth or a fat eye before he folded.”
Up on the sundeck I heard the sound of the shower, and a little while later she came climbing up into the night warmth in her robe, bringing two beers.
“Rockaby baby,” she said. “Tomorrow he’ll be a disaster area.” She sat beside me. “And what now, Captain?”
“Confusion. I was thinking that, at the right distance, in the right garments, you might pass as Vivian Watts, tennis player. And if Viv left a message for old Boo to join her in assignation at some far place, it might intrigue him. But it won’t fit together. The odds are she despises Waxwell and he knows it. Then it struck me that she could properly blame Waxwell for her husband’s downhill slide. And she might leap at the chance to give him a bruise if there was a chance of a piece of money to square all overdue accounts and have enough left over to move along to a place where Crane Watts could start all over again. That means sounding her out. Quietly and soon. But with something specific. That’s as far as I’ve gotten.”