“You shot him,” she said. But she had turned to Luke Daly then. “I saw you. You came in and—”
“Sister,” Luke Daly said, with his eyes gleaming, “we’ll cook something up. Get into the coupe and scram out of here. Mike, take off the cap and the shield and no one will spot you. I’ll give you five minutes before I call the precinct.”
Half pulling Mickey Gavegan out across the porch, he said something else — that maybe they could clear the other business up. The holdup three years ago. And if they did, if the commission believed what Luke Daly and the girl would have to tell them about what Bohannon had admitted back there, that he didn’t have anything to do with that holdup at all, that he hadn’t known anything more about it than a baby—
“Maybe,” Luke Daly said, shoving him into the car, “maybe you’re not too dumb to make a pretty good cop.”
He bounced back up the stairs. Mickey Gavegan stared after him and then got the coupe in gear. Driving off through the rain, he thought of unbelievable things.
Gavegan the cop — and the girl—
He drove on faster, once touching the cap beside him. There was a curious lightness in him, a prickling like bubbles in all his veins. Say he made the list — say, one day, he got in touch with her again. He remembered her fingers on his arm. Would they ever be there again?
Maybe they would, he thought. Just once — that was all he wanted. For even now, sure in his mind, was the knowledge that he would never let them go.
William O’Farrell
The Girl on the Beach
A powerful and impressive story, especially in the characterization and the telling... and you will meet one of the most repulsive females ever delineated on the printed page
The car was a two-tone convertible, red and white, with dolphin-like fins and lots of gingerbread. Garish, John Carter thought — too gaudy even for Florida’s winter season which, this being December, would not start for another month. The car was Marla’s choice, not his. A native Floridian, he did not feel the need of celebrating his escape from dreary cold by indulging extravagantly in color. The sun was enough for him — the golden sun, the warm, gray beach with its curious interlacings of violet shade, and the quick run across the sand to plunge into azure water. Once it had been like that — once upon a time...
Once upon a time, he thought, there was this here lucky prince that had it made. He had enough money, inherited, to get along on, he had an attractive wife and a good strong body, and his reflexes were normal and his mind was okay, too. Then one night he tripped over an empty orange crate, and wham!...
It was nine thirty in the morning and he and Marla were driving east along the Beach Road straight into the sun. He opened the glove compartment, got out a pair of dark glasses, and put them on.
“Want me to put the top up?” Marla asked.
“Why bother? We’re almost there.”
Sitting on his left hip, as he was, and with his eyes shielded by the glasses, it was easy to study Marla without her knowledge. Except for her variable hair, she was a pleas-ant-looking girl, quiet in voice and appearance, and quite predictable. Twenty-eight years old — three years younger than himself — with high cheekbones and large gray eyes that should have been serene but, at the moment, were nothing of the kind. Worried about her marketing, John thought, and the new slip covers or drapes or something, and an appointment with her hairdresser, and how she could possibly get everything done before it would be time to come back for him at the beach. Momentous affairs, all these, particularly the appointment with the hairdresser. He wondered what was going on behind his wife’s tanned and beautifully molded forehead, what color and style she was considering for her hair this time.
In ten months he had seen it change from its natural, and lovely, tawny color, to a hennaed cinnamon, then to dark red. Now it was blonde, so fair that it was almost white. He meditated, but not too deeply, on the apparently mysterious changeableness of women which, in truth, is not mysterious at all but motivated by an innate and universal dissatisfaction with themselves. Then he saw that they were approaching the Circle Bar (hot dogs, hamburgers, soft drinks, and beer) and he dismissed the subject from his mind.
The Circle Bar was on the right, at the junction of the Beach Road and a narrower road of hard-packed shell. The roadstand blocked all vision of the latter until they were actually on it, and Marla had swerved right without cutting down her speed.
“Some day,” John said, “this circus van is going to wind up so much junk.”
“Sorry. I keep telling myself to be careful at that corner. Then I get to thinking about something else...”
Marla drove the twenty yards which was the total length of the shell road and stopped before a sign that read NO DOGS ALLOWED ON BEACH. Beyond the sign was another stretch of twenty yards, this one of sloping sand, and beyond that the water of the Gulf. The beach was bounded on the left by a stony projecting finger known as the Point of Rocks. It had no boundary on the right for several miles. A few heads floated like coconuts in the water, and a few people were lying on the sand. A man walked by, holding in two muscular black poodles on a double leash. A dog of unspecified breed, unleashed, raced round and round them, barking. So much for signs, John thought. Marla got out, walked around the car, and opened the door at his side.
“You go ahead. I’ll bring the chair,” she said.
“I can carry it.”
“Probably, but there’s no reason why you should.”
John got out. First he pivoted on the seat until he had managed to worm his legs through the open door. Then, with the help of his rubber-tipped cane, he heaved himself upright. Fire smoldered in his hip. He looked away while Marla wrestled with the deck chair. He stumped forward when he heard the car door slam.
Marla passed him on the sand. By the time he reached his accustomed spot she had set up the chair. He let himself down gently, but the canvas chair was low and getting seated was always hazardous. He panted a little when finally he managed it.
“Got your book? Okay,” Marla said. “Now what else will you need? Cigarettes? Coca Cola? Beer?”
“I don’t need a thing.”
“Nice day. Maybe I’ll have a swim when I come back.”
“The ocean’ll be here. And so will I.”
“Yes. Yes, I suppose that’s true. See you.” She walked back to the car. He took a paper-backed book from his pocket. One paragraph was all he could read. Then he snapped the book shut and put it away.
Two young women strolled by. They were pretty and had nice figures. He watched them, but without any twinge of desire. Gloomily, rather, because he knew that for them — and for their millions of sisters — he was no longer an object of interested speculation. He was washed up, through, a cripple. His mouth, which would have been a good mouth had it not been thinned by bitterness, opened and closed as he drew a sharp, unsatisfying breath. The air was clean, having the ozonic, healthy odor of weak chlorine; nevertheless he felt stifled.
“Hi,” a young voice said from just beside him.
It was Luella, last name unknown, who lived, vaguely, “down the beach.” With an aunt, John had gathered, whom he had never seen. Luella was eleven. Her scrawny body was more amply covered by a bathing suit designed for a girl a couple of years older and much plumper than herself. Two braids of neutral-colored hair hung down her back, and she had a sharply featured little face, brown eyes too knowing for her age, and grimy knees.