piers where Indians had until recently come to trade. The sun had lowered behind the redbark gumbo trees and the western sky was the color of raw meat. As he got out of the car Gordon Blue looked hard at the trees and at the long shadows they cast on the river surface. A flock of white herons was winging toward the fiery sunset and the deeper reaches of the Devil’s Garden. It had showered earlier and the grass was still wet and frogs rang in the high reeds. Blue breathed deeply the ripe redolence of vegetation and pungent muck and he rued that he’d never spent much time outdoors. Then he was steered inside the dark fishhouse whose windows were covered with burlap and he was made to sit at a small table that was the only furnishing in the room. The table held an oil lamp and James White lit it.
White did the talking. He reminded Blue that not long ago he had mentioned in passing to Mister Bellamy that the Ashleys were about to expand their whiskey distribution to places where they didnt have the legal protection they enjoyed along the southeast coast. Mister Bellamy, White said, was very interested in knowing where these new distribution points would be.
Gordon Blue said he didnt know. He’d now and then overheard the Ashleys discussing the possible expansion of their business, but he had no idea which places they had in mind as new drops. They did not share such information with him.
Bo Stokes let a heavy sigh and took off his jacket and hung it carefully over the back of a straight chair. James White told Blue that Mister Bellamy had been disappointed by his having sided with the Ashleys in their claim to the automatic rifles. White suggested this would be a good opportunity for Blue to prove to Mister Bellamy that he was truly on
Stokes lit a cigarette and expelled a stream of smoke at the oil lamps. Alton David stood leaning against the wall, idly picking at his crooked brown teeth with a matchstick and looking on without expression.
Gordon Blue’s throat was tight, his mouth spitless. He’d never even pretended to be physically brave. His bladder was in distress.
Mustering all the sincerity possible to him he said he’d like to help Mister Bellamy, he truly would, but he really did not know much about the particulars of the Ashleys’ business. If he knew where the Ashleys intended to sell their whiskey he’d say so. And why not? He didnt owe them anything except his legal counsel. It wasnt like they’d ever done anything personal for him.
James White studied Blue’s eyes closely as if he would read the truth there. Then moved away from the table and gestured to Davis. Davis came to Gordon Blue and locked an arm under his chin and pulled his head back and held it fast. Blue could hardly draw breath. His attempt to plead with them emerged as a strangled groan.
Stokes took a deep drag off the cigarette and then blew on its tip to produce a red glow. “You let me know, now,” he said as he loomed over Gordon Blue’s terrified upturned face, “just as soon as you start remembering.”
She never knew when he’d show up. She might come home from her typist job at the Seward Land Title Company and find him waiting on her stoop, smoking a cigarette and reading the sports items in the newspaper in the light of the late afternoon, his skimmer tilted back on his head. He’d look up with a smile full of devilment and she’d laugh and rush through the front gate of the apartment-house yard and into his arms and he’d fondle her bottom as they kissed and men driving past would toot their horns or whistled at them and grin. Five minutes later they’d be in her second-floor apartment, entwined naked on her bed. Or she might be reading a magazine after super and listening to her phonograph when there would come a soft tapping at her door and she’d open it to find him leaning against the hall wall with his ankles crossed and his thumbs hooked over his belt buckle and a toothpick waggling between his grinning teeth. Sometimes, after not hearing from him for two or three weeks, she’d be startled awake in the middle of the night by his hand clamped on her mouth and his other hand stripping her of her pajama bottoms and she’d feel his hard cock against her and his warm breath at her ear whispering fiercely, “I’m Captain Dick the Pirate and I’m gone fuck you till you faint.” Her heart would jump and her breath leave in a rush and she’d seize his erection and hasten him into her. Later she’d feign pique and slap at his chest and tell him he was awful for scaring her like that. She’d every time say she was going to change the lock on her door and he’d laugh and say the doorlock hadnt been invented he couldnt tease open.
Roy Matthews came to see her only when Old Joe sent Hanford Mobley off with a crew on some assignment that would keep him away for days—picking up beach unloadings or making deliveries to middlemen in the deeper Glades. Joe Ashley never put him on a crew under Hanford Mobley’s charge. Old Joe wanted no confrontation between them that might jeopardize a delivery or a pickup, and so he had begun using Roy for most of his one-man jobs—collecting delinquent payments for deliveries, meeting secretly with law officers on the Ashley payroll to give them their monthly bribe, making drops of bush lightning to some of their smaller clients from Fort Pierce to Miami. Sometimes he would not see her for weeks, sometimes he’d be with her for two or three nights running.
Hanford Mobley was with her every Sunday, as well as whenever the Ashley gang came to Miami with their girls to make a high time of it. He had but recently declared his love for her and had begun to hint about marriage at some time in the nebulous future when he would be rich and carefree and could afford to give her the best of everything and take her everywhere. She liked Hannie, liked his devotion to her, his boyish enthusiasm for sex. Liked above all his outsized phallus, which, as she’d measured it from base to slit with a seamstress’ tape, stood at very nearly nine inches in its enpurpled readiest state. It was her bad luck that the boy owned no discipline whatever. Within seconds of entering her he would be pumping wildly and ejaculating like a firehouse.
Roy Matthews was the dark side of the moon. He never spoke of love and she knew he never would. She had tried to make him jealous by speaking in awe of Hanford’s huge member but he had affected to be unimpressed and came back at her with the ancient male bromide, “It aint the size of the tool, it’s the knowin how to use it.” And he did know how to use it, Roy did, she had to give him that. He knew how to use every tool God gave man for pleasing a woman—cock, fingers, mouth, words. For all his jokes about Dick the Pirate, he very nearly
Roy required no supplication. His mouth was a wicked thing and he loved to use it on her. He’d suck her breast tips to hard puckers. He’d roll the hood of her clitoris under his tongue. He’d lap expertly at the little pearl within until she’d shriek her pleasure. Her neighbor had more than once pounded on the wall and made threat to call the cops. Roy thought she should get another tattoo, a snake tail curling out of her public patch. “Could call it your snake in the grass,” he said. Like somebody else I could name, she’d thought, but kept it to herself.
On those occasions when the Ashley bunch would come to Miami for a good time at the Elser Pier and at whichever hotel they were staying, she would of course be with Hanford. Roy came with a different girl every time, and every one of them a looker. She would tell herself that she wasnt jealous, she wasnt, yet she’d be all the more suggestive in the way she’d press against him as they danced. Hanford Mobley of course loved it when she was so ardent. He’d sometimes question her with a grin about what had gotten into her and she’d kiss him and then whisper, “That’s for me to know and you to enjoy,” which was good enough for Hanford. As she’d insinuate herself against him on the dancefloor or tickle his ear with her tongue or grope him under the table, she’d now and then glance Roy’s way to see his reaction. Sometimes he would be smiling at her antics—but usually he was too absorbed in his girl of the moment to even take notice.
“We’ve been told John Ashley himself is the one going to make the drop,” the pockmarked one said, the one calling himself Baxter. “It’s a fishcamp, a one-man drop, but it’s their first time there and they aint bought any police protection there, not yet anyway, and so maybe he’ll have a backup. It’s not likely there’ll be more than two of them if there’s that many.” The man’s smile was a brown ruin of skewed teeth.
The big blond called himself Williams. He rarely spoke but his eyes were quick and didnt seem to miss much.
The waitress came to the booth and asked if anybody cared for more coffee and they all shook their heads. They were in the Cove Cafe in West Palm Beach. Bob Baker had agreed to meet them here after one of them called him on the telephone and said they had information about John Ashley he might be interested to know.
