“Love Is a Many Splendored Thing.” William Holden and Jennifer Jones. I remembered her going into the shallows of that bay in Hong Kong in that white swim suit. But I couldn’t keep my mind on her. Every time Dads got in range of me, he kicked. In time to the music. Then he kicked me in the head. It faded that distant television set right out, right down to a little white dot and then that was gone too…
… The little set came back to life. There was vibration. Marine rumble. Sound of the wake. Boat idling along. And a thin and hopeless little female voice nearby saying, “Oh, don’t. Oh, don’t any more. Oh, please don’t any more please.”
I was folded into a corner of the stern of the cockpit. I had to puzzle that voice out. Slowly. Dear little Patty. But she wasn’t supposed to be around. I’d written her out of the script. And Junior went, “Ho, ho, ho.” Like a jolly Santa. “You are a cute little ole button,” he said. “You’re a tasty bit.”
I picked one eye and pumped it open. Right eye. It was like jacking up a truck. In the night radiance, Junior Allen was ho-ho-hoing Miss Patricia Devlan. He was crouched at her like a bear, and he had her butted back against the transom, both her thin wrists held behind her in one hand, and his other hand up under her skirt, lifting her onto tiptoe. They were close enough to fall on me.
Suddenly he turned and stared forward and grunsed, released her,and went up toward the wheel. A course correction, reset the automatic pilot, came back to the fun. But I did not want anyone ho-ho-hoing Miss Devlan. She was hunched over; sobbing. I came up with blinding speed-like one of those trick clothes drying racks being unfolded by a sleepy drunk. I was forty feet tall and one inch wide, with a head fashioned of stale gas. As Junior roared, I stooped one dead arm out and around the girl’s waist, pulled her toward me and rocked right over backward with her, over the rail and down into the black bay water, tucking in all elbows and knees, feeling the wrench of the water, waiting to see how a prop would feel chopping meat.
We popped up in the turbulence, and I saw the running lights receding at a comforting pace. I looked around at shore lights, orienting myself. We were about one mile south of the kick in the head, in a place where the bay was wide, but the channel was fairly narrow. She tilted her pale child-face back, her hair pasted seal black to her head; and made a waffling sound of total hysteria.
The boat stopped bubbling along and roared into a turn. I clopped Miss Devlan across the chops and shoved her in the best direction and yelled, “Swim, baby!” She came out of it. She swam very well indeed. She pulled ahead of me. I felt as if I were swimming with four broken arms. And with each breath I could convince myself he was still kicking me in the stomach. We had a good angle of escape. We had to go fifty feet to get past the submerged spoil banks from the channel dredging. He had to come back about a hundred and fifiy yards. I was hoping I could sucker him into jamming it aground. But heard him throttle down sharply, then roar the engines again as he put it into reverse to sit dead in the water.
“Keep going,” I yelled at her. “Angle a little left.”
The spotlight hit us. She stopped swimming. I took two big strokes and reached her and bore her under. Pistols make a silly spatting sound over open water. And slugs hitting near you make a strange sound. Tzzeee-unk. Tzzeee-unk. I tried to kick us along and she got the idea. The underwater breast stroke felt as if it pulled my ribs free of my breastbone. I lost her. I grabbed some air and went down again and kept churning along. I peered up and saw no radiance, and came up and looked back. He was in a big curve, and he straightened out and went ramming south toward Lauderdale.
“Patty?” I yelled.
“H-here I am,” she said, about ten feet behind me. She was standing in waist-deep water. I went to her and felt the lumpy edges of an oyster bar underfoot.
“He… He… He was going to…”
“But he didn’t.”
“He… He… He was going to…”
“He’s gone. Pull yourself together.”
I put an arm around her. She leaned her face against my chest and said, “Haw! Oh God. Haw!”
“Come on, baby.”
“I’m… I’m all right. He took my glasses off and threw them overboard. He said I’d never need them again. I c-can’t hardly see without them.”
“He’s gone, Patty And he’s got his little chum with him, and they deserve each other. Get yourself collected, and then we’ll swim to shore.”
Behind her, two hundred yards away; was the bright shore, loud with neon in the night. It made pink and green and blue highlights on her hair. I let her go. Her blouse was pasted to her peach-sized breasts. Except for the breasts, she looked about twelve. With them, she looked fourteen.
“How did you get into the act?” I asked her.
“I phoned your mother and told her the damn lool thing you were planning to do.”
“That was you? I… I went out my bedroom window. I didn’t want to… miss the fun.”
“He’s a real fun fellow, old Dads is.”
“Don’t, please. He said I was the one he was really after. I went to the boat and everything was… so strange. You were lying there so still and bloody I thought you were dead. He told me to go below and wake Dee up. I tried, and I couldn’t. I wanted to go home then. He said we were going to have a nice cruise, not to worry. He said you’d tried to rob him. He said he was going to turn you over to the police. He said you were just knocked out. He said that before he turned you in, he wanted to get your accomplice too. He told me to stay aboard and watch you, and give a yell if you woke up. He said he’d be hiding close by. I didn’t like it, but I stayed there like he said. I was thinking about Pete and that girl, and I just didn’t care what I did. Then a woman came. A tall pretty woman. She stood on the dock and she said in a loud voice, ‘What have you people done to him? What have you done to Travis McGee?’ She couldn’t see you from there.”
“Dear God! She was waiting for me in my car. She should have run when she knew something had gone wrong.”
“He came out of nowhere and swooped her right up and jumped aboard with her. She started to scream and then she saw you and stopped. He let go of her and she just stood there, staring at you. While she wasn’t moving… he… he hit her. With his fist. It was such a terrible blow it made me sick to my stomach. She fell like a rag doll and he picked her up and put her in a bunk. I got off. But he caught me and brought me back. He threw the lines off and started up. When he got out of that little canal he went real fast out to the main channel and real fast for a little while south down the channel, then he slowed it down and fixed it to steer itself and came back and threw my glasses away and started… doing things to me. I guess… I could have jumped overboard. But I couldn’t think of anything… and then you…”
“Come on! Can you make it now? Come on, girl!”
We swam side by side. It all seemed so damned slow. I headed for the brightest clustering of lights. We ended up in the shells and shallows at the base of a five-foot sea wall. I got the top of it and wormed my way over it, reached down and got her wrists and yanked her up. She stumbled and fell into the damp night grass at the base of a coconut palm. I picked her up and herded her along with me, our rubber shoes squelching, breaths wheezing, strides unsteady.
I had to get to a phone. My face felt like a multiple fracture. I steered us around a rock garden before we fell into it. It was a motel complex, and for reasons which defy the imagination it was named The Bearpath. They were doing a nice little summer business. The dance instructors were BossaNovaing a clutch of tourists, all of whom looked as if they did each other’s hair for a living. Bidding was vicious in the cardroom. We came churning in, dripping and battered and winded.
Dapper little fellows came running toward us, wringing their hands, making shrill little cries of consternation.
“Phone!” I demanded.
“But you can’t come in here like this…”
I grabbed the nearest handful of silk blazer and lifted it onto its tippy toes, and he pointed a rigid arm at a salmon phone on a baby blue counter. When I asked the switchboard girl to get me the County Sheriff ’s office, she asked in voice wet with acid and post-nasal drip if I was a guest of the hotel. I told her that if she delayed the call one more second, I would start throwing their guests through their window walls, as a gesture of impatience. Patty stood docile beside me, chin down, shoulders rounded, and her little rump tucked humbly under.
I got a deputy who was so bright and so quick it helped me pull myself together. I was aware of all the silence
