Maybe she wanted me to help her get rid of an unwanted lover. I shrugged. It was no use speculating.
I looked at my wrist watch. The time was ten minutes past eleven. I would have time to take a bus out to East Beach, book the cabin and get back before Nina returned.
I went out there. The man in charge of the cabins was Bill Holden: a large muscular hunk of meat who was a life-saver as well as the cabin attendant.
The cabins at East Beach were the luxury kind. You could sleep there if you wanted to. They stood in a long row, facing the sea, and I could see at this hour most of them were occupied.
Holden knew me, and when he saw me, he grinned.
‘Hello, Mr. Barber, glad to see you again.’
‘Thanks.’ I shook hands with him. ‘I want to hire a cabin. The last one on the left. I’ll need it tonight at nine. Can you fix it?’
‘We shut at eight, Mr. Barber,’ he said. ‘There won’t be anyone here, but you can have it. I’ve got no all-night customers this week so I’m not staying on. Okay?’
‘That’s all right. Leave the key under the mat. I’ll settle with you tomorrow.’
‘Anything you say, Mr. Barber.’
I looked along the crowded beach. The sand was covered with near naked bodies.
‘Looks as if you’re doing all right,’ I said.
‘I survive, although the season’s not what it should be. The all-night let is a flop. If it doesn’t pick up soon, I’m going to drop the idea. No point hanging around here after eight if I’ve got no customers. Are you doing all right, Mr. Barber?’
‘I’m not grumbling. Well, I’ll be along tonight. See you in the morning.’
On my way back home, I puzzled my brains to know what to tell Nina. I had to give her a reason why I would be out this night. Finally, I decided to tell her I was working for Ed Marshall, doing night work, counting cars in the A.A.A. traffic check up.
When I did tell her, I felt a bit of a heel to see how pleased she was.
‘I might as well pick up fifty a week,’ I said, ‘as sit around here doing nothing.’
At half past eight that evening, I left the bungalow and went around to the garage. We owned an ancient Packard that was pretty well on its last legs. As I coaxed the engine to start, I told myself if this job paid off, the first thing I’d do would be to buy a new car.
I reached East Beach at three minutes to nine o’clock. It was deserted. I found the key of the cabin under the mat and I unlocked the door.
There was a lounging room, a bedroom, a shower room and a kitchenette. The cabin was air conditioned. It had a TV and radio set, a telephone and a bar. There was even a bottle of whisky and charge water on one of the shelves behind the bar. It was all very lush and plush.
I turned the air-conditioner off and opened the windows and the door. I sat on the veranda in one of the cane lounging chairs.
It was lonely and quiet. The only sound came from the gentle movement of the sea. I was pretty tense, wondering what this woman wanted me to do, wondering too how much she was willing to pay for what she wanted done.
I waited for twenty-five minutes. Then just as I was beginning to think she wasn’t coming, she materialised out of the darkness. I didn’t see her arrive. I was sitting there, just about to light a third cigarette, when I saw a movement. I looked up, and there she was: standing quite close to me.
‘Good evening, Mr. Barber,’ she said, and before I could move, she sat down in a lounging chair close to mine.
I could see little of her. She had a silk scarf over her head that partially concealed her face. She was wearing a dark red summer dress. Around her right wrist was a heavy gold bracelet.
‘I know quite a lot about you,’ she said. ‘A man who will turn down a ten thousand dollar bribe and refuse to work with gangsters must have a nerve. I’m looking for a man with nerve.’
I didn’t say anything.
She lit a cigarette. I was aware she was staring at me. She was sitting in the shadows. I would have liked to have been able to see the expression in her eyes.
‘You take risks, don’t you, Mr. Barber?’
‘Do I?’
‘When you took my money, you risked going to jail for at least six years.’
‘I was drunk.’
‘Are you willing to take a risk?’
‘It depends on the money,’ I said. ‘I want money. I don’t make any bones about it. I want it, I need it, and I’m willing to earn it, but it has to be money, not chick feed.’
‘If you’ll do what I want you to do, I will pay you fifty thousand dollars.’
It was like taking a hard punch under the heart.
‘Fifty thousand. Did you say
‘Yes. It’s a lot of money, isn’t it? I’ll pay you that if you will do what I want you to do.’
