"This business of keeping her aboard, and finding a way to take her away with you. I fell off at one of those curves."
"The instructions I'm going to give you right now will give you enough clue so you can climb back on."
He listened with a total attention, and when I was through, he repeated the whole sequence flawlessly. He was a joy to work with.
"But can you make her do it?" he asked.
"The choice is going to look just fine to her."
We saw her at dinner. A gala night. She came in late, sat alone at a table for two. She wore a dark blue sleeveless bodice in some glittering metallic thread, a lighter blue cummerbund, a white ankle-length skirt that draped handsomely to her walk. I saw her searching for me after she had ordered. We were fifty feet away. Her gaze swept across me, stopped, came back. She held the glance for a moment, and without expression, gave a single almost imperceptible nod. A little later I looked over and saw a thick-bodied tourist leaning on her table, bending over, talking to her. The dining room lights made a gleaming pattern on his sweaty bald head. She paid not the slightest attention to him. He was swaying slightly, in drunken persuasion. Finally she looked up at him as if suddenly noticing him. She motioned him closer. She put her hand on the nape of his neck, pulled him down, whispered into his ear. She whispered for perhaps ten seconds. He sprang back from her. She watched him calmly. He backed into a waiter, then he turned and went back to his table. He passed quite close to us. His color looked bad, his mouth hung open. His eyes had that glassiness of someone who had been given a quick little glimpse of hell and turned into a believer.
He sat and pushed the food around his plate and then went out.
When next I looked over, she was gone. She rapped on the inner door at precisely ten-thirty. She came in very quickly, dropped a little blue airlines bag and a big white purse onto my bed, then snugged herself into my arms, her arms locked around my waist, tightly. She was shivering, and I guessed it was half faked, half real. She kept herself pulled very firmly against me, and she whispered, "Darling, darling, darling. I'm safe now."
I gently unwound her and stepped away. "You shouldn't have packed anything."
"But I know that. I didn't! Don't be cross with your Delly. I am yours now, dear. What I did was make some lightning purchases, inexpensive stuff, just the essentials, dear, and that little bag to hold what I couldn't get into this purse. It's new too. He knows all my clothes. He's like that. He's going to find everything there, my purse and identification things and my money, what I had left. All he'll be able to find missing is my yellow checked jama shift, and he would have noticed that was laid out to sleep in. It's in the blue bag, dear. He'll see I didn't even take the darling dress I bought out of the store wrappings, and he'll know I was upset. I even left my dear little heart watch on the night stand. I made the bed look as if I tried to sleep. I left the note pinned to the pillow. I wrote it like you said, dear, about hearing on the radio about DeeDee and Tami and realizing why he was acting so strange. You have to lock the door with the key, so I had to leave it unlocked. So I folded the note and pinned it that way and wrote his name in big letters. And I said that I just couldn't live with my conscience any more, after what we'd done. Oh, he'll have no doubt! So here I am, all for you, without a dime, and just this outfit that I wouldn't be caught dead in, usually. I bought it so I wouldn't look like me at all. See? Short little green walking skirt, and this kind of dumb Fauntlery blouse and flats and little-girl stockings. Let me show you the full effect."
She hurried to her new purse and took out a comb and seated herself in front of the mirror. She unpinned her hair, let it fall long, and, biting her lip, combed the pale thick weight of it. She fashioned it into a high ponytail, fixing it so most of the weight of it fell forward across the front of her right shoulder. With pink lipstick she widened her mouth. She put on a new pair of sunglasses, dainty frames and a pixie tilt, then stood up and faced me, smiling for inspection.
"This is the way I walk off this Eyetalian sheep."
"The walk will give you away."
She trudged over to the door and back, toeing out, slouching, swinging her arms too freely. "Will it?"
"Okay. You're eighteen. A backward eighteen."
She took the glasses off, planted herself, looked up at me with her head cocked. "You've decided yes. I can tell."
"On one condition."
"Anything!"
I put the sheaf of ship's stationery and my pen on the glass of the dressing table. "Sit here and write what I tell you to write."
When she had seated herself and picked up the pen, I told her to date it yesterday. "To the Police Department, Broward Beach, Florida. Dear sirs..
"Hey! What are you"
"Write it. You can tear it up if you want to, if you don't understand why it has to be done. You can tear it up, and then you can get out of this stateroom."
She hunched over the paper like a schoolgirl and wrote.
I dictated. "I have decided to take my own life by jumping into the sea before this ship gets to Florida. I am going to give this letter to someone to mail to you."
"Just a little slower, please."
"I would rather kill myself... than wait and have them kill me the way they did Evangeline Bellemer. Period. I think that everybody connected with this should pay for their crimes. Period. That is why I... am making a full confession... at this time. I will tell you where... you can find them all... and what we have been doing.. for the last two years."
I waited. She finished the final words and turned and stared at me. "You sure do want a hell of a lot of insurance."
"Use your head, woman. Insurance for you too. They'll break Ans Terry down in five minutes and he'll verify you jumped overboard. The cops will pick up everybody who was in on it, and there'll be nobody left to come after you if they ever did get any clue. Nobody will be looking for you, nobody from either side."
"I... I guess you're right. But I just hate to put it down on paper. Couldn't we do it later? You could trust me to write it all out after we're safe, dear."
"When you've written the whole thing out and signed it and I have it in my hand, addressed and stamped and sealed, then we'll talk about how much I trust you, Del."
"Jesus, you're hard, aren't you?"
"And free as a bird, and planning to stay that way. If you don't like it, go take your chances with Terry and Griff."
She spun back and snatched the pen up. "All right, all right, damn you! What next?"
"Miss Bellemer was living at... Eight Thousand Cove Lane, Apartment Seven B, Quendon Beach... under the name of Tami Western. Period. What's Griff's name?"
"Walter Griffin."
"Walter Griffin lives at the same address in Apartment Seven C. He very probably arranged to have her killed by being struck by a car, when ordered to do so by... what's Mack's name?"
"Webster Macklin."