Jack drove the Cutlass on the final leg south toward Miami. For some reason, I couldn’t fathom, the closer we came to journey’s end, the slower he seemed to move. He cut over to Federal Highway #1, and we got caught in heavy seasonal traffic. We were stopped at traffic lights every mile or so, instead of buzzing along on Route 95 where signs warned of going too
Also, when we halted for breakfast and lunch, he dawdled over his food. I asked him why he was stalling. He just shook his head and wouldn’t answer. I wondered if he feared what awaited us in Miami. I wondered if he was plotting to ditch me and take off with the Brandenberg gems. I even wondered if he was planning to kill me.
You see, in my new role as veteran criminal, I had learned mistrust. I carried a loaded pistol in my tote bag and slept with it under the pillow. The same gun I had bought from Uncle Sam ages and ages ago.
We were driving through Boca Raton when Donohue said: ‘Listen, babe, maybe it would be smart not to go right
I thought about that a moment. It made sense.
‘Where do you want to stay, Jack?’ I asked him.
‘Maybe Pompano Beach,’ he said. ‘I know the area. It’s like forty-five minutes, maybe an hour from Miami, depending on the traffic. We’ll take a place right on the beach.’
‘Sounds good,’ I said. ‘We can get some sun, do some swimming.’
‘Uh, I can’t rightly swim,’ he said. ‘Not more’n a few strokes in a mud crick. But I like the beach. Especially at night. I really go for the beach at night. Wait’ll you see the moon come right up out of the water. It’s so pretty. Just like a picture postcard.’
We turned left onto Atlantic Boulevard and drove toward the ocean. The bridge was up over the Intracoastal Waterway, and we waited about ten minutes in a long line of cars while a beautiful white yacht went by.
‘Four people on that boat,’ I said, ‘and they’re holding up about a hundred cars.’
‘So? They own a yacht; they’re entitled. This place we’re going to is called Rip’s. I stayed there a couple of times when I was playing the local tracks. I mean, it’s right
‘Swell,’ I said. ‘We’ll fit right in.’
‘That’s what I figured,’ he said seriously. ‘We’ll try to get an efficiency. That’s got a refrigerator and a little stove. So we can cook in if we like. Mostly we’ll eat out, but we can have breakfast in and keep sandwich stuff handy.’
He wasn’t exaggerating about Rip’s being close to the water. It wasn’t more than fifty feet to the high-tide mark, a two-story structure of cinder blocks with a Spanish-type tile roof, all painted a dazzling white. It was built in a U-shape, with a small swimming pool and grassed lounging area between the arms of the U. I thought that was crazy: a swimming pool so close to the Atlantic. But I learned later that most beachfront motels had pools, and they got a bigger play than the ocean.
I went into the office with Jack to register. He signed the card ‘Mr and Mrs Sam Morrison.’ Residence: New York City. The clerk looked down at it, then looked up.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Mr Morrison? There was a guy here just the other day asking for you.’
Donohue played it perfectly.
‘Oh?’ he said coolly. ‘When was that?’
‘Let’s see … not yesterday, but the day before.’
‘A short, heavyset man? A real sharp dresser? Wears a vest, hat, bowtie?’
‘Yeah,’ the clerk said. ‘That’s the man. Said he’s a friend of yours. Wondered if you’d checked in yet.’
‘I’ll give him a call,’ Jack said. ‘I told him we’d be here, but we got tied up a couple of days with car trouble.’
We rented an efficiency, a ground-floor corner apartment. We could look out a big picture window, and there was sand, sea, and, if we could have seen it, Spain.
‘Is this smart?’ I asked Donohue. ‘Staying here? If Rossi has been around?’
‘Sure it’s smart,’ he said. ‘He’s already checked the place out, so he probably won’t be coming back. It’s safer than a place he hasn’t been yet.’ That made sense, logically. But I had been doing some heavy, heavy thinking. Part of the changes I was going through. I was evolving a new philosophy, and logic didn’t have much to do with it. Well … maybe not a philosophy, but an awareness of how things were, and how things worked.
It seemed to me I had come into a world totally different from the one I had known before. That had been a world that, despite occasional misadventure, was based on reason. Bills arrived and were paid. Traffic lights worked and most streets and avenues were one-way. I paid my rent, bought gas, had sex, wrote novels, traveled, read books, went to the theater — all with the expectation of waking the next morning and finding the world,
I thought, in my ignorance and innocence, that all life was like that. It was the way society was organized.
But now I found myself in a netherworld where irrationality reigned. It wasn’t only that I had become a creature of chance and accident, although they were certainly present. It was that my world had become fragmented, without system or sequence. There was no clarity or coherence. I couldn’t find meaning.
Perhaps we would succeed in leaving the country with the Brandenberg jewels. Perhaps not. Perhaps I would marry, or at least form a lasting relationship with Jack Donohue. Perhaps not. Perhaps he would desert me or kill me. It was possible.
Anything was possible. And, I discovered, an existence without order, in which anything might happen, is difficult to live. Nerves tingle with rootlessness. The brain is in a constant churn, attempting to compute permutations and combinations. One unconsciously shortens one’s frame of reference. The pleasure of the moment becomes more important than the happiness of the future. The future itself becomes a never-never land. The past is pushed into fog. Only the present has meaning.
That’s how we lived for almost two weeks — in the blessed present. We woke each morning about 8:00, had either a small breakfast in our room or walked down to Atlantic
Boulevard for pancakes or eggs in a restaurant. Then we bought local and New York newspapers at the Oceanside Shopping Center and walked back to Rip’s.
There was nothing in any of the papers concerning us or the Brandenberg robbery. Nothing on TV. More recent crimes had been committed. There were wars, floods, plane crashes, famines. The north was gripped in a cold wave that sent thousands of tourists and vacationers flocking south.
At about 10:00, we went out to the beach or sat at the motel pool. Jack usually stayed in the shade of a beach umbrella, wearing Bermuda shorts and a short-sleeved polo shirt. I broiled myself in direct sunlight, wearing my too-small string bikini, a scarf tied around my hair so I didn’t have to sweat in that damned wig.
I doused myself in oil (Jack obligingly layered my back), and I grew a marvelous tan, the best I’ve ever had. We rarely ate lunch, but usually had a few gin-and-tonics in the afternoon. We met a few people, tourists staying for a few days, and talked lazily of this and that.
Then, when the sun had lost its strength, we went into our little efficiency apartment and napped, or made love, or both. In the evening we showered, dressed, and went out for dinner, a different place every day. Later we might stop at a bar or disco for a few nightcaps. Then home to bed, usually before midnight.
It was a totally mindless existence. I felt that, under that hot sun, my brain was turning to mush — and I loved it. Occasionally, during our first few days at Rip’s, I’d ask Jack when he was going into Miami to make arrangements. ‘Soon,’ he’d say. ‘Soon.’ After a while I stopped asking, it didn’t seem important. The money hadn’t run out yet.
I think that, in a way, we were both catching our breath at Rip’s. I was toasting my body brown and swimming in the high surf. Jack was lying slumped in blued shadow, as torpid as a lizard on a rock. He wanted to go to the local horse and dog tracks, but didn’t. I wanted to go shopping, but didn’t. We simply existed, and woke each morning secretly pleased at our good fortune in being alive for another day.
But one morning we awoke and, while Donohue was checking his wallet, realized our cash reserve was shrinking.
