are accounted for. If somebody visiting happens to lose his card while aboard, if it blows over or something, no sweat. He just says he lost it. They let him off, take his off the count. The system leaves everything tidy. But they sail with one extra. If they had to sail without getting the correct count, there'd be a determined search for a stowaway. They sail with an extra passenger they know nothing about, and in transit, the arithmetic is adjusted back to the proper number. The accomplice cannot come aboard as a passenger, of course. It would distress them to run a short count. It would imply somebody fell overboard.'
We turned and watched the Veronica D. moving away from the dock. 'I could have slipped him both cards,' Meyer said, 'and you would still be aboard.'
That night, up on the sun deck aboard the Flush, I told him all of it. All except the Griff part. And I told him the things I thought I might try. And he came up with a few impressive refinements.
Saturday morning, after I had rather unwillingly agreed to a more direct participation on his part, I made the ticket arrangements for us. A flight early Monday morning from Miami to Nassau on Bahamas Airways. And two tickets back to Port Everglades from Nassau on the Monica D., Stateroom Number 6 for me, an outside room on the Lounge Deck. And, for Meyer, the most remote thing I could find, according to the chart of the ship, an inside room on B Deck. There were only ten staterooms on B Deck, and those were clustered in the stern section. He got Number 21, a cubicle with a bed and pullman upper, a shower and a toilet.
We then went to see an old friend of mine named Jake Karlo. No one knows his age. He is about the size of a full-grown cricket. His standard gait is a jog trot. He has kept up with the changing times. When I first knew him he had a tiny office in a ratty old building in one of the oldest parts of downtown Miami. He booked third-class talent into fourth-class saloons-beefy strippers, loud young unfunny comedians and loud old unfunny comedians, off-key sopranos for weddings, and off-key baritones for funerals, musicians who would take years to make it, and musicians who had made it too long ago, butterfingered jugglers, trained dogs and shabby chorus lines. But he could make you believe each act was the greatest.
Now he has an office layout of such size, elegance and persuasion it is sometimes called Goodson-Todman South. He owns substantial percentages of several successful clubs, a piece of a theater chain, a big interest in a television production company, and a hundred percent of both an equipment rental firm and a big commercial color lab. With the steady growth of the Miami area as a moving-picture and television center, Jake has maneuvered himself into a position where he can supply all the necessary production equipment, furnish all necessary technicians, build and rent sets, supply people for bit parts and for use as extras, costume them, and process the film for final editing.
Several years ago several con artists moved in on him, set him up beautifully, bled off his working capital, then moved in closer to bail him out in return for control. Somebody recommended me. I had to get Jake to imitate total defeat, and when their guard dropped and they began congratulating each other, we worked our own con game on them. Jake has not forgotten.
He came running across his half acre of carpeting. I introduced him to Meyer. Jake leaned back on his heels and stared up at me, like a man admiring a tall building. 'Mr. Meyer,' he said, 'how this monster saved my life, believe me! Thieves from the Coast in black neckties, they knew everything. They knew how to peel poor old Jake Karlo like a banana. So what problems could they have with a type like this McGee? Such a big rugged honest one, like they would cast him in westerns, and actors those people eat for breakfast. When they left, maybe it was by Greyhound bus. All we let them keep was the cufflinks and the black neckties, heh? This McGee, he never comes to see an old man just for friendship. Always some favor. What is it now? Jake Karlo's right arm? All you do is ask, it's yours.'
'Meyer,' I said, 'you will never believe it, but this active young man has twenty-one grandchildren.'
'Twenty-three. Keep track, at least. But not one with the name. Every one we had was a girl yet. Six of them. Who gets the name? My brother's boy. Such a genius! Seven jobs I try him in. Even emptying wastebaskets, he could find some way to cost me a thousand dollars an hour. Come on. Sit, gentlemen. I told them out there, no calls, no interruptions.'
I told him what I wanted, and he spread out the four photographs of Vangie, the five by sevens. He sat behind his giant desk and looked at them with pursed lips.
'You look,' he said, 'you say lovely. Oval face, delicacy, some oriental blood. Absolutely great eyes. Then more and more you keep seeing animal. Like a warning there. Watch out. How about the size, the build?'
'About five seven. Hundred and twenty to twenty-five. But the kind of body that looks riper than the weight. Physical condition of a dancer.'
He nodded. 'Sure. One kid I've got, she's five foot and doesn't go a hundred pounds. Not really so much upstairs or downstairs, but what gives it that look, the waist is practically nothing. You've got with her a fourteen-inch difference from waist to hips, nineteen to thirty-three. She's doing a fishbowl at the Shoreliner, and the bar business, it's making everybody rich, just when the smart money figured the fishbowl bit was dead forever.'
Seeing the puzzlement on Meyer's face, I said, 'A nude girl dances very slowly, making sort of swimming motions, in a little brightly lighted room directly under the bar. Mirrors reflect the image of her, only about four inches tall, into fishbowls full of water spaced along the bar. It's an effective illusion. Jake, have you got anybody who might fit the bill?'
'How close does she have to work? What'll the lighting be?'
'Daylight, but a long way off. Say a hundred feet.'
'So the face is important, but what has got to be right is posture, the way she moves, the way she walks.' He pressed the lever on his intercom and said, 'Liz, bring me in the specialty book, the one the cover is green on.
In a few moments the secretary came in and put a thick album bound in green leather in front of her diminutive boss. He flipped the pages rapidly. The photographs were eight-by-ten glossies, in clear acetate sleeves, with the pertinent information about each one on the facing page.
He stopped at one, studied it, held Vangie's picture beside it, looked from one to the other and said, 'Just right.' He spun the book around and we stared at it and saw a smiling, clear-faced, brown-eyed Nordic blonde.
'Is this a rib?' I asked him.
He stood up, leaned across the desk, pointed the features out one by one, with an air of great patience. 'Shape of the face. High cheekbones. Same type mouth. Same type eyes once Kretoffski gets through with her. How many wigs we own? Maybe two thousand? So relax. Read the stats.'
Miss Merrimay Lane. Twenty-three, Five seven. One twenty-three. Specialty dancer: Interpretive, comedy, acrobatic, tap, chorus, exotic.
'A dancer is best,' Jake said. 'Body control. This chick was working on the Beach, then they closed out for the season May fifteen. Let's hope she stayed put.' He gave his secretary the phone number.
After a few minutes, at the sound of a little musical bong, Jake lifted the phone and in a slower and deeper voice said, 'Merrimay, sweetheart! Would you be free for a little daytime one-shot?' He listened, winked at me, and said, 'Darling girl, don't you know by now that Uncle Jake will squeeze the client for the final peso? No, dear. Not dancing. No audition required. So wrap something around it, precious girl, and put it in a cab and hustle it on down here to my office. Twenty minutes? You are such a delight, I mean it, dear.' He hung up and spoke into the box, telling his secretary to get Kretoffski to report to him in thirty minutes.
He looked at me and said, 'Boychick, an arm you can have. A leg you can have. But one of my people getting hurt? That's out.'
'Did you have to say that, Jake?'
'For the record only.'
'She starts work in Lauderdale at eight o'clock Tuesday morning. But I want to take her up there for a briefing tomorrow. There's an off chance she might have to go with me up to Broward Beach sometime on Tuesday or Wednesday. But that will be it. How does five hundred sound, plus expenses?'
'In January, February, it isn't such great arithmetic. In June it is a lover's kiss.'
Merrimay Lane was announced and made an extravagant entrance. She came sweeping in wearing an orange strapless sunback dress, white gloves, purse and shoes, gigantic false lashes, a cloud of spicy perfume, a funny little hat in orange-colored straw balanced atop blonde tresses. She covered space with the effortless ease of the dancer, made glad cries at Jake, kissed his cheek, whirled and looked with pert expectancy at us.
'The giant there, darling girl, that is Mr. Travis McGee, a very personal dear friend who I would trust with all six of my lovely daughters; if you start thinking anything is strange about what he wants done, you shouldn't worry. And his associate, Mr. Meyer. What I can say is this beautiful young girl is one of the hardest reliable workers you want to meet, strictly pro, and no temper tantrums, and she learns routines like lightning. And what it is he wants you to do, sweetheart, I think afterward you keep your mouth shut. I have people waiting to see me on the next floor down, so the talking you can do here. Feel free. Take your time. When Kretoffski comes, Liz will send him right in.
'Maybe if she could hold him until we cover the part he doesn't have to know?'
'On the way out, I will tell her that.'
