I had my first look at Junior Allen. It wasn’t much of a look. He was a shadowy bulk in the cockpit of the boat, a disembodied rumble of a voice. A single bark of laughter.
When I got back to the Busted Flush, Lois was still out. I sat her up. She whined at me, her head heavy, her eyes closed. I got her up and took her over to the beach and walked her until she had no breath for complaining. She trudged along, dutiful as a naughty child. I walked her without mercy, back and forth, until her head was clear, and then we sat on a public bench to give her time to catch her breath.
“I’ve got a ghastly headache,” she said in a humble voice.
“You earned it.”
“I’m sorry, Trav. Really. Seeing him scared me so.”
“Or gave you an excuse?”
“Don’t be hateful.”
“I just don’t like to see you spoil what you’re trying to do.”
“It won’t happen again.”
“Do you mean that?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want it to happen again. But I keep thinking… he could come walking along this beach right now.”
“Not tonight. He’s busy.”
“What!”
I told her how and where I had found him. With a sideburned boy named Pete, and three girls named Deeleen, Patty and Corry.
“From the little I heard, he’s taking all of them or some of them on a cruise to the Bahamas. They think they’re working him. They think they’ve found a very soft touch. They call him Dads.”
“Can’t those poor kids see what he is?”
“Cathy didn’t. You didn’t.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Go see if I can make a date tomorrow afternoon.”
“They might be gone.”
“I think he’ll wait until he gets the new generator installed.”
“But what if he leaves with them in the morning?”
“If that seems too dreadful to you, Lois, you can always get drunk.”
“You don’t have to be so cruel.”
“You disappointed me.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“How’s your head now?”
“A little better, I think. Trav?“
“Yes, honey.”
“Trav, I’m so hungry I could eat this bench.”
When I took a look at the outdoors Sunday morning I knew they weren’t going anywhere. It was a sparkling day. The wind had swung around and it was coming out of the northeast, hard and steady. A wind like that builds too much of a chop out in the Stream for anything the size of Junior Allen’s cruiser. It would be running seven or eight feet out there, and very dirty.
I waited until noon and then drove up to the Citrus Inn. Apartment 2A was in the center section on the second floor, I wore a courting costume, summer version. T shirt, khaki slacks, baseball cap, straw shoes, an eager smile, and a bottle of good bourbon in a brown paper bag. I rapped on the scarred and ornate old wooden door, and rapped again, and a girl-voice yelled in an exasperated tone, “Just a minute!”
The Inch rattled. The door opened an inch and a half, and I saw a tousle of dark hair and a segment of tan face and a cold green unfriendly eye. “Whaddya want?”
“I’m looking for Deeleen.”
“She’s not here.”
“Are you Corry?“
“Who the hell are you?”
“A friend of a friend.”
“Like who?”
“Marianne, works at Charlie Char-Broil.”
“That silty bitch hasn’t got any friends.” Had I done any pleading or begging, she would have slammed the door. So I stood easy, mildly smiling. It’s a relaxed area. There is a code for all the transients. if you are presentable, unhurried, vaguely indifferent, it is a challenge. I was having better luck with this than I expected, up to this point. I wanted it to continue. If you push against hostility and suspicion, you merely increase it. In a few moments I saw a little less animosity
“What’s with this Marianne and you looking for Deeleen? I don’t get it.”
“I don’t want to confuse you, Corry.”
“There’s some facts of life I should know?”
“I used to see Deeleen around there and never got to know her, and then she left and I was wondering about her, if she’d left town, and I asked around and Marianne said maybe she was still here. So this was an empty day, and I had this jug, so I thought I would come see. But if she’s as friendly as you are, I guess it wasn’t much of an idea.”
She examined me for at least twenty silent seconds. “Stick around a minute,” she said, and closed the door. It was ten minutes before she came out. She had stiffened her dark hair somehow until it looked like a Japanese wig. She wore a swim suit and an open cabana coat. The swim suit was a black and white sheath, the black faded and the white slightly grubby. Though flawed by a bulldog jaw and a little too much meat across the hips, she was reasonably presentable. She closed the door and smiled up at me and said, “You’re practically a giant, huh? You got a name?”
“Trav.”
“There’s a kid in the apartment sleeping it off. She was whoopsing half the night from beer. Come on, I’ll show you something.”
I followed her down the short corridor to a back window overlooking the dock. A girl in a very brief bikini lay on a pad on the cabin roof of the Play Pen. I looked down at her over Corry’s shoulder.
She looked up at me quizzically. “I don’t blame you at all to come looking, she’s built so cute, huh?”
“Tasty.”
“But if she’s absolutely the only idea you came up here with, honey, you can save your self the trouble. She’s all set up with the guy owns the boat.”
“It’s a lot of boat. Whose is it?”
“An old guy named Allen. We call him Dads. We’re going to go far and wide on that boat, man. We’re going to the Bahamas on that boat. Would you believe it, he says it’s hard to find people to go cruising with you? Isn’t that a crazy problem. But the way things are, honey, she won’t play. It could screw up the boat ride.” She turned toward me from the window with just the slightest hint of the stylized posture of the model, the small mechanics of display, seeking approval. “So?”
She had invited inspection and I gave it, then said, “You have to know when to change your ideas. You have to stay loose.”
“The thing is,” she said, “I wouldn’t want you should have any terrible disappointment. I mean on account of Dee.”
This was the small smoky game of appraisal and acceptance, offer and counter-offer. She had narrowed it down to that one response necessary to her esteem. So I responded as she wished. “If that was you down there in the sun, Corry, and Dee up here with me, then I could feel disappointed.”
She smirked and beamed and preened, then linked my arm and took me down onto the dock. “Hey!” she said. Deeleen sat up, owlish in huge black glasses. “Where is everybody?” Corry asked as I helped her aboard.
“Dads took off someplace in Pete’s car. Pete went down to see Mitch about if he’s got the motor back on the little boat yet. Patty okay?”
“She’s still sacked out up there.”
