“You’re Steve, aren’t you?” Shayne said. “Have you seen Vince?”
“He’s around,” the boy said. He freed one hand to pick up a martini glass and drink. “Maybe you think you’ve seen dirty movies. Well, there’s a scene here somewhere, you never saw anything like it. All I have to do is get this organized. You wouldn’t be willing to give me a hand, would you?”
“After I talk to Vince.”
He tried a door. It led down to a small compact galley.
“My advice is,” the boy said, looking up, “wait till morning. There hasn’t been a peep out of them for hours. Listen, all I have to do is find the damn end. Any damn end. Get it back on the reel. It’ll make your eyes pop. I mean some of the things they do are impossible.”
“Vince won’t mind if I wake him up,” Shayne said, trying another door. This one was locked.
“Yeah, but can you? After Vince puts himself away, forget it. What I was thinking, if I had somebody to help I could string the film around the room and take out the twists, find the end that way.” He held up a section and looked through it. “Take a look at this. Of course you don’t get any detail, but this babe has one of the biggest and sexiest cans-”
Shayne took a strip of celluloid out of his wallet and forced it between the door and the jamb. Realizing what he was doing, the boy threw down the film and came over.
“You’d better have some reason!” he said.
Shayne looked around. “Sit down.”
“Oh,” Steve said, retreating. “Well.”
As the celluloid strip slipped between the bolt and the socket, Shayne stepped up the pressure. Slowly the bolt came back. In a moment the door sprang open.
This was the master cabin. It was furnished like a motel room, with an ordinary double bed and wall-to-wall carpet. The bed was in a state of extreme disorder, the bedclothes in a heap. No one was sleeping in it. On the bedside table were glasses and two bottles of Scotch, one still unopened and the other nearly empty, an untouched plate of cold baked beans, overflowing ashtrays. One light was on, over a dressing table next to an open window. A girl was studying her reflection in the triple mirror. She wore a lowcut bra and a half-slip. The bra hook was open. A cigarette dangled from her mouth.
She looked over her shoulder at Shayne. She had long untidy hair, over her forehead and down almost to her bare shoulders. Her eyes, in a pale face, were very large, with artificial lashes and green lids.
“Come in,” she said without surprise. “I was trying to decide if I’m getting too fat. The minute I decide I’m the teeniest bit overweight I’ll go on a diet, like that.” She snapped her fingers. “I don’t kid around.”
Steve had come into the doorway to look around. “Where’s Vince, Betty? This guy wanted to see him and I said it’d be OK. We don’t want to interrupt or anything.”
“Interrupt what?” she said bitterly.
Shayne glanced into the narrow bathroom and opened the sliding doors of the closet. Vince didn’t seem to be hiding in closets tonight.
“Somebody hook me up,” Betty said. “It keeps moving around.”
Shayne came back and hooked the bra.
“Thank you,” she said nicely, her eyes on her own reflection. “I’m full, but you couldn’t call me fat. God, I worry every time I wake up. I have to go straight to a mirror and find out.” She took the cigarette out of her mouth and smiled at herself. “No, I’m still cute. I’ve got good bone structure.” She added somberly, “And right now, what a headache.”
Her mood changed abruptly. “You know what I have to put up with Vince, Steve. You tell him.”
Steve blew out his breath. “Not again, Betty. You’ve got to start looking at the bright side. Nobody likes a chick who keeps spilling over all the time.”
“Are you referring to me?” she said icily. “I make it a point to never show my feelings, even when I’m crying on the inside.”
“Oh, brother,” Steve said, and went back to his own problem.
Betty swung around with a dramatic gesture which almost carried her off the backless bench.
“All they think about is their own kicks.” She smiled at Shayne and held out an empty glass. “Will you freshen up my drink? And look in the John for an aspirin. Then we’ll talk.”
Shayne made her a new drink, finishing the first bottle and opening the second. He found a tin of aspirin in the medicine cabinet. She shook a half dozen tablets into her palm. He picked out two and put them back.
“Most of these jerks,” she said admiringly, “I could swallow the whole bottle and they’d figure it was up to me.”
Shayne took a long drink of Scotch from the bottle and sat on the foot of the unmade bed. “What’s your idea about what happened to Vince?”
She giggled. “Do you realize I feel much better? I’m like that. I sort of press a button and count three and I’m normal again. Vince-he disappears on me all the time.” She looked puzzled. “What time is it?”
“About ten-thirty.”
She nodded. “He’s out rambling. Rambling and looking and trying to hustle some poor chick out of a couple of bucks. How good a friend of his are you?”
“I can take him or leave him.”
“He owe you some money?”
Shayne grinned. “Betty, you’re a mind reader.”
“Oh, that doesn’t make me such a wonderful guesser,” she said modestly. “He owes all over town. I’ve made him some loans myself. I’m a receptionist, I drag down pretty good money. When he starts paying off you know who’s going to be first in line, yours truly. And I’m supposed to tell people that’s going to be soon.”
“I hear he’s been making it with his boss’s wife. Why does he need money?”
“She doesn’t have too much you can cash in on.”
Shayne drank from the bottle again. “How long’s he been gone?”
“I didn’t even know he was! My trouble is, I get disgusted and I drink too fast and forget to eat anything. Things don’t look so screwed-up after a couple of drinks. And all of a sudden I’m out like a light.” She drank off her Scotch and held out the glass, confident that he would get up and fill it for her. “Sometimes I wake up somewhere else and I don’t know how I got there. What a feeling! I know I ought to eat, but ugh. We adjourned in here with those two nice bottles of Johnny Walker, compliments of Mr. and Mrs. Al Naples. Still wrapped up in tissue paper, like presents. What I wanted to do was go to bed, but Vince has been a flop in that department lately. So we opened the Scotch.”
Shayne handed her a new drink. “He’s on junk, isn’t he?”
She nodded slowly. “The person I’m in love with. I’m not like some people. I don’t jump in the hay with anybody. Before Vince moved up to H that was the one thing I didn’t like about him, the way he would do it with anybody. I don’t include Mrs. Naples. He has to make a living, I grant him that. But I was brought up different and I’m not about to change.”
Her mind skipped. “For instance, the minute you walked in I knew you’d be gentle. Those shoulders of yours. You look tough, but you’re not, are you? I like the way you get me drinks without making a big deal out of it. You don’t know how tired I get of these boys. I’m ready for somebody more mature.”
Her eyes misted over. “We’d be great! I know just the things I’d like to do with you.”
She was beginning to move about excitedly and she was breathing more quickly. She slid forward so her knees touched his.
“But I’m not going to do them!” she said, her eyes shining with excitement. “So never mind asking me. Because I love Vince! I don’t believe in cheating on the guy you love, with all his faults. But how I’d like to!”
He took hold of her knee to hold it still. Her flesh was cool and smooth under his hand, and she moved her leg between his so his hand slid along it. Using both hands, he closed her knees firmly.
“Betty, you and Vince came in here and locked the door. You made yourself a drink. What did he do?”
“What do you think he did?” Little lines of tension gathered around her eyes. “Why do they have to do it? Do you know? Shoot themselves full of that crap and pull out of the human race? I get a kind of-you know”-she seemed embarrassed-“sexy feeling when he puts in the needle, and what good does it do me? I know he’s going to be nodding in thirty seconds. What could I do but get stinking?”