that one. That Mr. Allen, he looked and acted more like hired crew, like he was lining something up for his boss. Grease under his fingernails. A tattoo on his wrist. A very hard-looking character, very brown and wide and powerful-looking. And smiling all the time. I showed him a lot of listings, and he was so quick to talk price I began to take him serious. He settled on that Jessica III, that was the name the original owner registered her at.”
“A good boat?”
“A fine boat, Mr. McGee. She’s had a lot of use but she was maintained well. Twin 255’s, and they’d been overhauled. A nice compromise between range and speed. Nicely appointed. Built in fifty-six if I remember right. Good hull performance in a rough sea. We took it out. He handled it and liked it. When we came back in, he scared hell out of me. I thought we were going to peel away about fifty feet of dock. But he hit the reverse just right, and I was up in the bow, and he put me right beside a piling as gentle as a little girl’s kiss. And when he checked the boat over, he knew just what to look for. He didn’t need any survey made. And he bought it right. Twenty-four thousand even.”
“Cash?”
Joe True shoved his glass toward the bartender and looked at me and said, “You better tell me again what it is you’re after.”
“I’m just trying to locate him, Joe. As a favor for a mutual friend.”
“I got a little nervous about that deal, and I told Mr. Kimby about being nervous and he checked it out with his lawyer. No matter where Allen got the money, nobody can come back on us.”
“Why did the money make you nervous?”
“He didn’t look or act the kind of a man to have that kind of money. That’s all. But how can you tell? I didn’t ask him where he got it. Maybe he’s some kind of eccentric captain of finance. Maybe he’s thrifty. What he had was five cashier’s checks. They were all from different banks, all from New York banks. Four of them were five thousand each, and one was twenty-five hundred. He made up the difference in hundred dollar bills. The agreement was we’d change the name the way he wanted and handle the paper work for him and do some other little things for him, nothing major, get the dinghy painted, replace an anchor line, that sort of thing. While that was being done our bank said the checks were fine, so I met him at the dock and gave him the papers and he took delivery. That man never stopped smiling. Real pale curly hair burned white by the sun and little bright blue eyes, and smiling every minute. The way he handled the boat, I finally figured he was actually buying it for somebody else, even though it was registered to him. Maybe some kind of a tax deal or something like that. I mean it looked that way because of the way those cashier’s checks were spread around. He was dressed in the best, but the clothes didn’t look just right on him.”
“And you haven’t seen him since?”
“Haven’t seen him or heard from him. I guess he was a satisfied customer.”
“How old would you say he is?”
Joe True frowned. “It’s hard to say. If I had to guess, I’d say about thirty-eight. And in great shape. Very tough and quick. He jumped off that thing like a cat and he had the stern line and the spring line all rigged while I was making the bow line fast.”
I bought Joe his third drink and left him there with his dear friends. Junior Allen was beginning to take shape. And he was beginning to look a little more formidable.
He had left Candle Key in late February with something of value, and had gone to New York and managed to convert it into cash, all of it or some of it, whatever it was. Weeks later he had returned to Miami, bought himself a good hunk of marine hardware and gone back to Candle Key to visit the Atkinson woman. It had required considerable confidence to go back. Or recklessness.
A man with a criminal record shouldn’t flaunt money, particularly in an area where an angry woman might be likely to turn him in. Yet, actually, the boat procedure was pretty good. It gave him a place to live. With papers in order and a craft capable of passing Coast Guard inspection, he wasn’t likely to be asked too many embarrassing questions. People who build a transient life around a forty-foot cruiser are presumed innocent. I’d found the Busted Flush to be a most agreeable headquarters for the basically rebellious. You escape most of the crud, answer fewer questions, and you can leave on the next tide.
But there was one hitch, and perhaps Junior Allen wouldn’t be aware of it. The tax people take a hearty interest in all registered craft over twenty feet. They like to make sure they weren’t purchased with their money. A cash transaction like that one might intrigue some persistent little man up there in Jacksonville, and give him a heady desire to have a chat with Ambrose A. Allen, transient.
But first he would have to find him. I wondered if I would find him first.
I visited the Bayway Hotel. It was a mainland hotel, small, quiet and luxurious in an understated way. The little lobby was like the living room in a private home. A pale clerk listened to my question and drifted off into the shadows and was gone a long time.
He came back and said that A. A. Allen had stayed with them far five days last March and had left no forwarding address. He had given his address when registering as General Delivery, Candle Key. He had been in 301, one of their smallest suites. We smiled at each other. He smothered a yawn with a dainty fist and I walked out of his shadowy coolness into the damp noisy heat of the Miami afternoon.
The next question was multiple choice. I did not want to get too close to Junior Allen too soon. When you stalk game it is nice to know what it eats and where it drinks and where it beds down, and if it has any particularly nasty habits, like circling back and pursuing the pursuer.
I did not know all the questions I wanted to ask, but I knew where to look for answers. Cathy, her sister, Mrs. Atkinson, and perhaps some people out in Kansas. And it might be interesting to locate somebody who had served with Sergeant David Berry in that long ago war. Apparently the Sergeant had found himself a profitable war. It was past four o’clock, and I kept thinking of questions I wanted to ask Cathy, so I headed on back toward my barge. I parked Miss Agnes handy to home, because I would need her that evening to go see Cathy Kerr.
I stripped to swim trunks and did a full hour of topsides work on the Busted Flush, taking out a rotted section of canvas on the port side of the sun deck, replacing it with the nylon I’d had made to order, lacing the brass grommets to the railing and to the little deck cleats, while the sun blasted me and the sweat rolled off. One more section to go and I will have worked my way all around the damned thing, and then I am going to cover the whole sun deck area with that vinyl which is a clever imitation of teak decking. Maybe, after years of effort I will get it to the point where a mere forty hours a week will keep it in trim.
I acquired it in a private poker session in Palm Beach, a continuous thirty hours of intensive effort. At the end of ten hours I had been down to just what I had on the table, about twelve hundred. In a stud hand I stayed with deuces backed, deuce of clubs down, deuce of hearts up. My next three cards were the three, seven and ten of hearts.
There were three of us left in the pot. By then they knew how I played, knew I had to be paired, or have an ace or king in the hole. I was looking at a pair of eights, and the other player had paired on the last card. Fours. Fours checked to the eights and I was in the middle, and bet the pot limit, six hundred. Pair of eights sat there and thought too long. He decided I wasn’t trying to buy one, because it would have been too clumsy and risky in view of my financial status.
He decided I was trying to look as if I was buying one, to get the big play against a flush, anchored by either the ace or king of hearts in the hole. Fortunately neither of those cards had showed up in that hand.
He folded. Pair of fours was actually two pair. He came to the same reluctant conclusion. I pulled the pot in, collapsed my winning hand and tossed it to the dealer, but that hole card somehow caught against my finger and flipped over. The black deuce. And I knew that from then on they would remember that busted flush and they would pay my price for my good hands.
And they did, for twenty more hours, and there were many many good hands, and there was a great weight of old time money in that little group. In the last few hours I loaned the big loser ten thousand against that houseboat, and when it was gone I loaned him ten more, and when that was gone I loaned him the final ten and the craft was mine. When he wanted another ten, with his little Brazilian mistress as security, his friends took him away and quieted him down and the game ended. And I named the houseboat in honor of the hand which had started my streak, and sold the old Prowler on which I had been living in cramped circumstances.
After the manual labor, I treated myself to a tepid tub and a chilly bottle of Dos Equis, that black Mexican beer beyond compare, and dressed for summer night life.
Just at dusk Molly Bea came a-calling, tall glass in hand, tiddly-sweet, pinked with sunburn, bringing along a
