those guys.'
'Fourteen acts.'
She lifted her shoulders slightly. 'I wouldn't want that kind of an ending, not ever again.'
'Let me put it this way, Del. I keep things clean. If you try a rough line of work, you take too big a fall if it goes sour. Almost every con operation is a partnership thing. Sure, I could use you. It might be a good time to move along. It would be a good time of year to go up and work the Jersey shore. But what if these people down here found out somehow you got away? Somebody would come after you. I might be crossing a street with you when they run you down Why should I take a chance like that? And the law isn't going to believe you took the jump. If they are unraveling it, you could be near the top of their list, and there is a large fall for helping a murderer escape.'
'I never killed anybody! I couldn't!'
'You just lured them into the situation, so Ans could do it. Fourteen times. They wouldn't electrocute you. Not a pretty young woman. They almost never do. But they'd hang consecutive sentences on you so that the way you'd finally leave would be out the back gate in a box. And I could get five or ten for harboring a fugitive. Kiddy, I'm walking around free as a bird because I don't take bad risks.'
She turned completely to face me, fastened her short fingers around my wrist and went to work on me with those green eyes. It was not an unwavering stare. She moved it around, up and down and across, pausing at my eyes each time. She put an old fuzzy edge on the clear silver of her voice.
'Since I was sixteen I've been sizing guys up. The way I am, dear, I got to belong to somebody. Ans was weak, and that was why it wasn't ever the greatest. McGee, you threw all this at me fast. I know you're strong. And I know we react good to each other. There's that feeling you can't miss. So the only choice I've got, dear, is you. I've got to trust you. I've got to let you take charge and get me out of this mess. That's the way things are between us, and maybe it comes out better luck than we could guess. What I can be, when I have somebody, is absolutely level all the way. I'll help you any way you want help, and food, clothes and a roof is all I'll need. And I swear to God that if anybody finds me, I'll convince them you didn't know a thing about anything. I can be a help. I can do the college-girl bit or the housewife bit or the model bit, or be a young widow or whatever. And the day you say go, I'll go. No strings, no tears. So take a chance, huh?'
But I couldn't get fourteen men out of my mind, men who'd been snookered by the business with the eyes, the dear little voice, men who'd sucked at that plump little mouth, been enclosed between the long warm clasp of those thighs, men who'd marveled at the luck that had brought them in their middle years the heats and devotions of such a spectacular young girl, and had gone cruising with her and hadn't lived past the first night aboard, to have their reservation taken over by an aging Mr. Body.
'Maybe,' I said. 'I'll think about it. Maybe I can come up with an idea which will give me some insurance. It's after four now. When can you shake loose from him?'
She forgot the question for a moment. She shook her head. 'It's so spooky, thinking about it. My God, him handing me over to Griff just like I've been handing those marks over to him. Everything you say fits, dear. We gals should have been able to figure it out. If it ever started to go sour, we three would be the first to go. You know, I'm going to miss those kids. We had a lot of laughs.'
'What time?'
'Oh, figuring his track record this trip I'd say he'll fold before eleven o'clock. Maybe even before ten.'
'Stateroom Six,' I said. I rapped my knuckles on the table. Two quick knocks, a pause, two quick ones again. 'Knock like that.'
It was interesting to me in a clinical way that in the distance from our table to the street door she managed to sway a tautly fabricked hip against me three separate and insistent times, though she'd had no trouble with sway or balance on the way in. With an instant practicality, she'd changed masters. Now it was merely a case of firmly cementing the new relationship in the only way she knew how.
Back aboard at four-thirty, I checked our mail drop and the slip said, 'At home.'
I went aft and found my way down to his cabin. He opened the door to my knock. 'Welcome to steerage,' he said. He pointed to the dressing table. I saw the doll. I went over and picked it up. He had carved a rather good cement block. It dangled on the silvery wire an inch below the ankles.
The doll was naked. Any other doll would have been bare, or unclad. But the Japanese artisan who had made this one, even knowing it would be sewed and glued into a kimono, had given a total and humorless attention to detail, making of it a statue rather than a doll. Even the navel was a typically Asiatic little stub, with incised curlicue.
'Couldn't do a damn thing with the hair,' he explained.
'I had to cut it all off, soak it in hot water, get it straight, glue it back on--I went ashore for the glue--and shape it with my nail scissors.'
'It's a beautiful job, Meyer. Absolutely beautiful.'
'After I gave her more eyebrows with a little black ink, it turned into a better resemblance.'
'It's going to give our boy one hell of a turn.'
'How did you make out?'
He sat on the bunk. I straddled the straight metal chair that faced the dressing table. He was a splendid listener with expressions of great wonderment, surprise, awe, concern, appreciation-and little gasps and grunts and murmurs in all the right places. 'So I stood under the portico and watched her stilt along to Bay Street, knowing she was giving it a little extra something, adding one extra little circular fillip that made everything else work that much harder to keep up. The resplendent officer atop his little box under his umbrella blew the birds out of the trees with his whistle, and stopped every vehicle in the downtown area to let her cross East Street, and a chap in a sun helmet ran full into an old lady with her arms full of packages. He was looking back over his shoulder at the time.'
'My God, Travis, what a fantastic gamble!'
'Just the first contact. That was the gamble. From then on I played it the way she was calling it. I had to sense how much she'd swallow and just what things would give it a ring of truth. When it wasn't working just right, I'd move the walnut shells around again. She's what the Limey locals would call a nasty little bit of work. Nastier than our Vangie. She kids herself more than Vangie did. She's perfectly willing to believe Terry'll dump her because she could be talked into dumping him. With a little persuasion, she would have set up a double on this trip. Let Terry drop their pigeon over the side, then hand Terry to Griff on a platter for the same treatment.'
'This business of keeping her aboard, and finding a way to take her away with you. I fell off at one of those curves.'
'The instructions I'm going to give you right now will give you enough clue so you can climb back on.'
He listened with a total attention, and when I was through, he repeated the whole sequence flawlessly. He was a joy to work with.
'But can you make her do it?' he asked.
'The choice is going to look just fine to her.'
We saw her at dinner. A gala night. She came in late, sat alone at a table for two. She wore a dark blue sleeveless bodice in some glittering metallic thread, a lighter blue cummerbund, a white ankle-length skirt that draped handsomely to her walk. I saw her searching for me after she had ordered. We were fifty feet away. Her gaze swept across me, stopped, came back. She held the glance for a moment, and without expression, gave a single almost imperceptible nod. A little later I looked over and saw a thick-bodied tourist leaning on her table, bending over, talking to her. The dining room lights made a gleaming pattern on his sweaty bald head. She paid not the slightest attention to him. He was swaying slightly, in drunken persuasion. Finally she looked up at him as if suddenly noticing him. She motioned him closer. She put her hand on the nape of his neck, pulled him down, whispered into his ear. She whispered for perhaps ten seconds. He sprang back from her. She watched him calmly. He backed into a waiter, then he turned and went back to his table. He passed quite close to us. His color looked bad, his mouth hung open. His eyes had that glassiness of someone who had been given a quick little glimpse of hell and turned into a believer.
He sat and pushed the food around his plate and then went out.
When next I looked over, she was gone. She rapped on the inner door at precisely ten-thirty. She came in very quickly, dropped a little blue airlines bag and a big white purse onto my bed, then snugged herself into my arms, her arms locked around my waist, tightly. She was shivering, and I guessed it was half faked, half real. She kept herself pulled very firmly against me, and she whispered, 'Darling, darling, darling. I'm safe now.'
I gently unwound her and stepped away. 'You shouldn't have packed anything.'
'But I know that. I didn't! Don't be cross with your Delly. I am yours now, dear. What I did was make some lightning purchases, inexpensive stuff, just the essentials, dear, and that little bag to hold what I couldn't get into this purse. It's new too. He knows all my clothes. He's like that. He's going to find everything there, my purse and identification things and my money, what I had left. All he'll be able to find missing is my yellow checked jama shift, and he would have noticed that was laid out to sleep in. It's in the blue bag, dear. He'll see I didn't even take the darling dress I bought out of the store wrappings, and he'll know I was upset. I even left my dear little heart watch
