“Anything else?”
“The rest was just personal.”
“I can’t stop you from flying over.”
“I know. I haven’t made up my mind for sure, sir. I think I’ll see if there’s anything on the news tomorrow morning and then decide. I talked to Mr. Wing about it. He’s being very nice about it. He said to tell you he hopes everything works out okay about Leila.”
“Bud Wing gave me a good report on you, Jonathan.”
After a silence Jonathan Dye said, “I guess the nice thing to do would be to act pleased or something. But I’m not in the mood for it. I never could get it across to you I’ve been doing any kind of work I could get since I was fourteen years old. I’ve done easier work than this, and I’ve done harder work than this. And nobody has ever given me any bad reports on how I do. I like Mr. Wing. But he gets an hour of work for every hour of pay. Sir, I guess we could leave it this way. If there’s nothing new tomorrow morning, you’ll know I’m going over there, and when I know where I’ll be, I’ll wire you.”
“Fine. And — good luck.”
After a few moments he began looking up Billy Alwerd’s home phone number.
Chapter Five
Cristen Harkinson crawled forward in the little Dutchman, feeling the sailboat right itself as the boy, Oliver, pulled the last of the mainsail down out of the push of the wind off Biscayne Bay. He had managed it, as always, at precisely the right moment, so that the momentum carried them through the slot and into the protected private boat basin south of Crissy’s house, just around the point on which the house had been built, where the basin was sheltered from winds out of any northerly quarter.
With the last of its momentum, it glided at an angle toward the dock. She stood, reached, caught the sun-warm planking, fended the boat to a stop near a mooring cleat, pulled the dock line down and made it fast to the bow ring. Oliver pulled the stern in and made it fast. He had another half hour of work, hosing her down, stowing the gear, buttoning the sailboat up, then mooring her across the angle of the dock where she would ride without rubbing.
Crissy climped up onto the dock and turned and looked down at the nineteen-year-old boy. He had begun his work, keeping his solemn face turned away from her. With each motion he made, the big muscles bunched and slid under the hide of his broad back. The hair on his long brown legs was sunbleached to a powder white, making a strange halo against the orange light of the evening sun.
Standing there, Crissy had a sense of how they would look from the proper dramatic angle. The elegant figure of the tall woman on the dock, hair tousled, salty, bleached several shades of blonde white by all the sailing. Pale blue bikini. Black-hued wraparound sun glasses. Ratsey bag, red and white, swinging from a crooked finger. The body, youthful and taut enough for the bikini, sunned to a gold tinged now with the bronze red of the day on the water, contrasting with the leather brown of the pale-eyed, white-toothed, sailboat boy.
She stood well, remembering the lessons. Grass green, thinking the lessons would aim you right at the cover of Harper’s Bazaar, but you ended up doing your turns and pirouettes in those schlock outfits, pirated designs, in front of the buyers who’d stroke the fabric and call you Crissy-baby, and ordered in hundred dozen lots for little chains nobody ever heard of. At a hundred yards, old buddies, the figure is still twenty years old. But put a hard-focus closeup on the face in the cruel sunlight and it will read thirty, which is just as much a triumph because that is still a half dozen and better years off the truth.
“Oliver?”
“M’am?”
He still did not look up at her standing there above him on the dock. “Now don’t you go running off, hear? I owe you for the last two days, so you come to the house when you’re through here.”
“Yes m’am.”
She went slowly and lazily up the long curve of the stone stairway — wide shallow steps hewn out of coquina rock and set into the slope of the lawn. Halfway up she made a mental wager with herself, turned her head quickly and caught him motionless, hunkered there, sail cover in hand, staring at her. He looked down quickly. Smiling to herself she climbed the last step and crossed the patio to the roofed terrace, walked to the far end of it, rolled the glass door back and went into her bedroom. It was a few minutes before six. She opened the panel in the wall of the lounge portion of the bedroom and turned the television set on. Local news at six on Saturday night.
She opened the door to the bedroom wing corridor and bawled, “Francisca! Francisca, damn it!”
In moments her little Cuban housemaid came scurrying in, eyes wide in mock alarm.
“Damn it, you had to see us come in!”
“I’m not watch. Honest to Jesus, Miss Creesy.”
Local news had begun. “Hold it a minute,” Crissy said. She moved over to the television set.
After a report of a drowning and a bloody automobile accident on the Tamiami Trail and an averted strike, he said, “As yet the large-scale air and sea search in the Bahamas for the missing yacht, the Mu—”
Crissy clicked it off and said, “Did they come and fix that damned pump?”
“Si! Yes. What was in it?” The girl frowned, wrinkling most of her delicate face. She held forefingers a few inches apart. “Una lagartija. Eh?”
“A what?”
“How is it a snake, but has feets?”
“A lizard. You mean a lizard got into the pump?”
Francisca’s smile was full of joy. “Damn well told.” She wore a bright red skirt, white blouse, gold sandals.
“Got a guest, have you?”
“Some friend only I think.”
Crissy stripped off the two bikini halfs, balled them, tossed them to the girl. “Now for once in your life get your mind off your friend and see if you can do three things right. I’m only going to tell you once.”
Francisca gave her deft imitation of nervous, humble fright. We’re trapped in this act of ours, Crissy thought, the cruel mistress and the terrorized servant. But an act makes it easier. You know where you are.
“First, go get that green ice bucket, fill it halfway with ice and bring it here and put it on the bar over there. Next, hang around the terrace until the sailboat boy comes after his money, and then bring him here — not through the place, but by way of the terrace. Third thing, I’ll be going out to eat. So go do as you please until you bring me my coffee tomorrow morning.”
Her cowed repetition of the orders was marred by the little knowledgeable gleam in her chocolate eyes.
As she hurried out, Crissy stared after her, thinking: Better you don’t laugh, you sexy little spook. Don’t tell your friend any funnies about Mees Creesy and the sailboat muchacho. Don’t smirk a smirk, sweetie, because everything has to add up just so, just exactly so, in a game where you don’t dare take a single chance.
She went into her gold and white bath and took a very quick shower. Her body radiated the sun-heat of the sailing day, prickling to the spray of the water. She toweled her cropped hair with muscular energy, brushed it semi-dry, painted her mouth, touched her body with perfume, pulled on a Lilly Pulitzer shift, a coarse, heavy weave in a vertical pattern of wide orange and white stripes, lined with silk. It was short, almost to mid-thigh. At the shoe rack she hesitated, decided to stay barefoot.
She turned on the overhead light in her largest closet, went to the back of it, opened the hinged panel and, biting at her lower lip, dialed the combination on the barrel safe. She opened the cash box, took out two twenties for the boy for the two days of sailing lessons, then took an additional amount to replenish her household and walk-around money. The amount left was dangerously thin. She did not want to count it nor to guess how much might be there.