They stood beside the long black car, almost touching but not looking at each other, like strangers at a funeral.
She said, “It’s a very ugly car, don’t you agree? Such a lot of bulk and horsepower merely to take someone like me from the house to the club to the market and back to the house. My husband gave it to me on my last birthday. Did you see the license plate?”
“Not well enough to remember.”
“It’s U R 52. Neville did it as a joke so I couldn’t lie about my age. He didn’t mean to be cruel, he adored me, he would never have been deliberately cruel. He simply considered it funny.”
“Next year when you’re fifty-three the laugh will be on him. Hang on to the car for ten or fifteen years and you can have yourself a real chuckle.”
“No,” she said sharply. “I’m going to get rid of it as soon as they give me permission.”
“They?”
“The lawyers who are handling my husband’s estate. Of course, if something happened to the car they’d have to give me permission, wouldn’t they?”
“Happened like what?”
“I don’t know exactly, but there are lots of stories in the newspapers about people having paint sprayed all over their cars or their windows damaged or their tires slashed.”
“If that’s what you want,” Grady said, “maybe I can arrange it for you. I’ve got some rough pals.”
“Do you? Have rough pals, I mean.”
“I know a lot of crummy people.”
She glanced up at him with an anxious little smile. “You mustn’t take it seriously, what I said about something happening to the car. It was pretty crazy. I can’t understand why I suddenly had such a wild idea. I’m not a violent person.”
“You don’t look it.”
“Honestly I’m not.”
“I believe you, I believe you.”
“Why do you say it twice like that? It makes it sound as if you don’t really believe me.” She crossed her arms over her breasts as if for protection. Her skin was very white, and the veins so close to the surface they looked like routes of rivers on a map. “How can you think I’m a violent person?”
“Oh, come on now, Mrs. Shaw,” Grady said. “You’re having a bad day. Go home and pour yourself a drink.”
“I can’t drink alone.”
“Then take a couple of aspirins. Or don’t you do that alone either?”
She lowered her head as if it had suddenly become too heavy for her neck to support. “That wasn’t a kind thing to say. You may be right about yourself, Grady. Perhaps if someone were drowning, you’d just walk away.”
“Now wait a minute. What’s the matter with you, anyway?”
“I’m drowning,” she said. “You’re not a very good lifeguard if you can’t tell when people are drowning.”
Little Frederic Quinn was hiding behind a eucalyptus tree in the middle of the parking lot. So far the conversation had been dumb and the action nil, so he decided to liven things up by revealing his presence.
He stepped out from his cover. The burnt-match Deco work had been scrubbed off his face but most of the Mercurochrome remained, leaving his hair streaked pink and his skin interestingly diseased-looking.
“Hey, Grady, how’re you doing?”
“Beat it, you little bastard,” Grady said.
“Using foul language in front of a lady, that’s a misdemeanor.”
“What is it when a kid is hacked to pieces and thrown off the wharf to feed the sharks?”
“Why are you so torqued up? Lost the old macho magic? Wait till I tell the kids, ha ha.”
“You didn’t hear me, Quinn. I said beat it.”
“All right.”
“Now.”
“All right. I’m going, I’m going. I’m on my way. I’m— Help! Police! May Day! May Day!”
Admiral Cooper Young was returning to the club to pick up the handbag Cordelia had left in the snack bar. It was such a pleasant day he’d rolled one window down, though his wife, Iris, would be sure to notice the dust on the dashboard and complain about it. As he passed the parking lot he heard the May Day call.
“I do believe I hear someone crying for help.”
“Then shut the window,” Juliet said.
“Just because a person is crying for help,” Cordelia added reasonably, “is no reason why you should listen. You’re not in the Navy anymore. Besides, we have to hurry. There’s a one-hundred-dollar-bill in my handbag.”
The Admiral’s grip on the steering wheel tightened perceptibly. “Now where did you get a one-hundred-dollar bill, Cordelia?”
“Mrs. Young. Your wife.”
“Why did she give it to you?”
“Bribery.”
“She gave me one, too,” Juliet said, “though I wouldn’t call it bribery exactly, Cordelia.”
“I would. It was. Her instructions were to stay away from the house until the club closed because she was going to take a backgammon lesson.”
The May Day calls had ceased.
“I didn’t know your mother played backgammon,” the Admiral said.
“She doesn’t,” Cordelia said. “Yet. She’s taking a course.”
“I see.”
The Admiral did indeed see. There’d been other courses, dozens, but none of them seemed to satisfy his poor Iris. She’d been cheated and she was unable to think of any way to cheat back.
The crisis in the parking lot was altered by the sudden appearance of Mr. Tolliver, headmaster of the school Frederic more or less attended. Having learned during lunch hour that the surf was up, Mr. Tolliver shrewdly connected this information with the large number of absentees that morning. As a result he was patrolling the beach areas, armed with a pair of well-used binoculars and an officer’s swagger stick left over from his Canadian army days.
Frederic Quinn was his first trophy. The boy was given a swat on the behind with the swagger stick and the promise of two hundred demerits. He was then locked in what the students called the cop cage, the rear of the school station wagon separated from the driver’s seat by heavy canvas webbing.
Frederic proved a docile prisoner. He was tired, for one thing, and consequently, running short of ideas. For another, the new batch of demerits put him one hundred and fifteen ahead of Bingo Firenze for the current school championship. This was not a paltry achievement, in view of Bingo’s superior age and connections with the Mafia, and Frederic leaned back smiling in anticipation of a hero’s welcome.
Mr. Tolliver peered at his trophy through the canvas webbing. “Well, Quinn, what have you got to say for yourself?”
“Mea culpa.”
“So you are admitting your guilt.”
“Nolo contendere,” Frederic said. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I’ve already been punished.”
“That’s what you think, kiddo.”
The hundred-dollar bill was still in Cordelia’s handbag, much to her disappointment. She didn’t need the money as much as she needed the attention she would have gotten if the bill had been missing. She thought of all the excitement, cops arriving at the club with sirens wailing, Henderson rounding up the employees for questioning, newsmen, photographers, maybe even an ambulance if she could have managed to faint...
“Oh hell, it’s right where I left it.”
Cordelia climbed into the back seat of the Rolls-Royce for the second time that day while her father said his second courteous farewells to Mr. Henderson and Ellen. He also wished them a Happy Thanksgiving, adding a little joke about turkeys which Ellen didn’t understand and Henderson didn’t hear.
“Thanksgiving is more than a month away,” Henderson said as the Rolls moved majestically into the street. “Was he being sarcastic, do you suppose? If he was, I should have countered with something about Pearl Harbor. ‘Happy Pearl Harbor to you, Admiral.’ That’s what I should have said... Speaking of turkeys, which I hadn’t planned on doing and don’t want to, you’d better have the catering manager come to the office to discuss the Thanksgiving menu. Thanksgiving. My God, I’m still recuperating from Labor Day and the Fourth of July. Will I make it to Christmas? Will I, Ellen?”