“Gin, if you’ve got it. Just on ice, and forget the vermouth.”
Shayne broke out the ice cubes, dropped two in a glass and filled the glass with gin.
“You don’t happen to have Beefeater?” Petrocelli said.
“Hell, no. Do you want Gilbey’s, or don’t you?”
Petrocelli put out his hand for the glass. Most of the gin was gone by the time Shayne had taken the top off a flask of brandy and filled it.
“That’s better,” Petrocelli said, breathing out. “I liked the sound that sap made against that jerk’s head. What a surprise! I mean, the fox is O.K., but she’s definitely not the big thing in my life. And he didn’t say one word. Just walked up and tapped me on the shoulder and pow!”
Shayne had left the dashboard lights on. He saw an apparently easy-going, self-satisfied man in his mid-thirties, less good looking than he once had been. There was a thickening around his jowls. The fight had sobered him, but the new gin seemed to be spreading rapidly.
“Is it true that you made a pass at Mrs. De Rham?” Shayne said.
Petrocelli had just taken a mouthful of cold gin. He sputtered some of it up.
“Is that what they’re telling people?”
“Words to that effect. Isn’t it true?”
“It’s the pure exact opposite of true!” Petrocelli said emphatically. “It’s an absolute goddamn lie. If that’s the rap they’re trying to hang on me, I better start using the old apple. You skipped the bit about being careful what I say because you can use it against me. Everybody’s supposed to get that. And I’d like some more Gilbey’s if you don’t mind. I spilled part of it.”
“As soon as we clear up a few points.”
“Such as who are you working for?”
“I had a call tonight from Mrs. De Rham’s attorney in New York City. She told him her captain got out of line while she was taking a sunbath and they had to fire him. Now he’s drinking too much and making threats.”
“What crap!”
“I haven’t checked with Mrs. De Rham yet. I went to the boat tonight and saw a man named Brady. She was asleep.”
“She was passed out, you mean. The cocktail hour on that boat goes around the clock.”
“What’s your side of the story, Petrocelli?”
“I wasn’t even fired, if it comes to that.” He touched the side of his jaw and winced. “I keep finding new places that hurt. That cat could hit. Come on, Shayne, if you want me to cooperate, dole me out some more anesthetic.”
Shayne reached for the bottle and filled his glass. “If you weren’t fired I take it you quit?”
“I didn’t exactly quit either. You know what she wants you to do, Shayne. She wants you to run me out of town. That’s going to be the easiest job you ever had. Tell me what flight you want me to be on and I’ll be on it. I’ve already got the ticket. I think the tall guy in the bar was trying to tell me something, don’t you? If I get a little more warning next time I think I can take him, but I don’t know about him and his friends both. He’s off that big diesel yacht, the Rosebud, with a crew of five. And Sandy. With that hole in the front of her mouth, I mean where’s the incentive? She’s going to look like a zombie until she gets fixed.”
“Are you ready to tell me what happened?”
“In a minute, in a minute. Do me a favor? If Mrs. De Rham says I made any kind of a move, if she claims I took the initiative in any way, knock her teeth down her throat, will you, Shayne? You seem to be good at it. You know the story in the Bible? Joseph and what’s his-name’s wife? I’m telling it to you the way it was. Listen, if you want a word of advice from a veteran, wear a jock when you talk to her. Do I make any sense?”
“All this happened with her husband aboard? That’s hard to believe.”
“I didn’t believe it myself, Shayne. She took those sun-baths of hers on the forward deck, right in front of the wheelhouse, in a two-piece bathing suit the size of a couple of special delivery stamps. Sometimes she even untied the top, so except for one little strip across her can she was bare all the way down. And I was supposed to be keeping an eye on the compass needle.”
“Who else was along, just her husband and Brady?”
“That’s all. I don’t want you to think I’m bragging or anything, but it was one of those situations. Brady you saw. De Rham’s a nice enough guy, but he’s not exactly Marlon Brando, you know? One of those quirky beards. A peace-loving character, and she walked all over him. I never could figure where Brady fitted in, I mean the three of them. Nowadays you can’t tell the boys from the girls by the clothes they wear and which one has the hair down to the shoulders, but whether they had anything offbeat going I couldn’t tell you. All I know is, there was juice in the air.”
He drank. “And when I say juice-Shayne, on a damp day you could see sparks in the air. The amount of liquor they consumed! I don’t mind taking a drink myself, I’ve got no scruples against it. But that’s on dry land. I don’t touch a drop on the water. It’s one of those things I never do.”
“Never?”
“Never,” Petrocelli said firmly. “It’s like a religion, booze and power boats don’t mix And you know it’s a constant temptation when everybody else is totally stoned. Whatever she tells you about what happened that last night, nine-tenths of it has got to be the gin talking. Bear that in mind. She was up in her private space capsule, going around and around.”
“Now tell me what did happen.”
Petrocelli seemed confused suddenly, as though he himself had trouble remembering.
“I ducked my responsibility, in a way. When I hit the sack that night I would have given you a hundred to one there was going to be trouble. I don’t mean minor trouble. That woman was just too much. She had me on the canvas in ten seconds of the first round. It was no contest.”
Shayne let him pause to get organized.
“They were doing some yelling,” Petrocelli said. “She wrote a will cutting De Rham off, and she had me come down and sign it. He had a long scratch on his face and she’d busted his guitar. That won’t mean anything to you, but he loved that guitar. You could tell by the way he held it. I heard glasses being thrown or dropped. They had some kind of fire, I don’t know what, but next morning there was this big burned place on the coffee table. They were all ready to get their fingers in everybody else’s eyes. Brady was trying to keep out of it but it was taking a lot out of him. I did have a drink at that. She gave me one after I witnessed her signature. And then she said, and I quote, ‘Stay on call, in case neither of these two bums can get it up.’ Or that was the idea of it, I don’t recall the exact words. And she gave me a French kiss and a feel, with Brady and De Rham looking at us. Man, was I embarrassed! I skinned out of there so fast. I even locked my door from the inside because whatever was going to happen I didn’t want to be in the middle of it.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s as far as I can take it, of my own knowledge. Not to beat around the bush or anything, but I thought somebody was going to get killed! It was that kind of climate. But what could I do? Nobody was listening to me. Next morning we were off Palm Beach. The course we’d laid out would take us in through Lake Worth to finish up on the Intracoastal Waterway. They wanted to see Lauderdale and so on. So of course after all the drinking they were all three of them sacked in and I was the only one awake. They didn’t see Delray Beach, they didn’t see Boca Raton, they didn’t see Pompano. At about eleven Brady struggled up on deck, with a couple of poached eggs for eyes. Mr. and Mrs. were back at it in the master stateroom, hammer and tongs. I had a sort of headache myself from all the tension. What I was looking forward to was finding the Sunrise Shores, number one, and a nice uncomplicated bar, number two. I’d just about made up my mind that I and the De Rhams had had it. I might have been able to promote myself a piece if I stuck around, but she was too ticky for my taste. I’ll take advantage of something if it falls in my lap, it goes with being a captain, but I like to keep a sense of proportion.”