began erasing the tapes, running them through the machine on “Record” with the volume turned all the way down. It was a slow process, as each took nearly an hour. I finished three of them. Once, I put one of them on “Play Back” for a few minutes just to hear her voice. I sat on the floor with my eyes closed, and I could almost imagine she was there in the room.
Around ten that night I was sitting at the bar in a very dimly lighted cocktail lounge. Among the eight or ten customers at the tables behind me was a dark-haired girl in her late twenties. She was sitting at a table for two, with a man about my size. I watched them from time to tune in the mirror. After a while her escort excused himself and went to the men’s room. I stuck a cigarette in the holder, lit it, and got off the stool as if to go out. Then I saw her, and stopped. I walked over to her table.
“Look, Marian,” I said angrily, “what are you doing here? I know you’re up to something. Why don’t you leave me alone?”
She was too amazed even to speak. People nearby turned and stared.
“Spreading lies behind my back!” I went on, beginning to shout. “Well, you’re wasting your time, Marian. Everybody knows how fair I was. I was more than fair—”
She had recovered now. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked coldly. “I never saw you before in my life.”
The bartender was on his way; and so was her escort, just emerging from the John. I straightened, and looked blankly around, and then at her. “Oh,” I said in confusion. “I—uh—I’m sorry. I thought you were somebody else.”
Her escort wanted to swing on me, but the bartender broke it up. He put his hand on my shoulder in friendly fashion and we walked to the door. “Easy does it, Jack.” Just as the door was closing, I heard him say to someone at the end of the bar. “Mother, dear. You never know. I’d have sworn he was cold sober.”
The next day I drove up to Fort Myers. I spent several hours driving round and talking real estate, mostly over the telephone, and finished erasing the tapes so I could dispose of them. Even if they were ever found, they’d be harmless.
I called Coral Blaine. I told her how much I missed her, and that I’d probably be home a little ahead of schedule. “The minute I clean up that real-estate deal on Monday, I’m going to start back.”
“That’s wonderful, darling.”
“I wonder if I ought to hire detectives to watch her?” I said.
“Watch who?” she asked, puzzled.
“Marian Forsyth!” I said angrily. “Good God, Coral, she can’t fool you that easily, can she? Don’t you know she’s up to something? She’s dreamed up some kind of grudge she thinks she has against me, and there’s no telling what she’ll do. You keep all my papers locked in the safe every minute. And especially my income-tax records —”
“Dear,” she broke in wearily, “I wish we could stop talking about Marian Forsyth. I’m sick of her. I don’t trust her any more than you do, but I don’t see what she could do to you.”
”All right, angel,” I said. “Maybe you’re right. I hope so.”
Late that night I threw the blank tapes and the recorder into the Caloosahatchee River. Thursday afternoon I was back in Miami, at the Clive. I called Justine Laray. She was glad to hear from me; she thought she’d lost me.
Eleven
Chumps of my caliber didn’t come along every day, and she was beginning to get bigger ideas. She didn’t ask for the money in advance this time, and she did a better job of hiding her contempt and being professionally gay in the face of my crudities and oafish bragging about money, sexual prowess, and stomach muscles.
It now appeared that this crummy room-mate had stolen
“I could go back to work in night clubs tomorrow if I had the wardrobe,” she said, lying naked in bed with the highball glass and a cigarette. “But, God, you got no idea, honey, what those gowns cost—”
“Where’s the strain?” I asked. “Hell, at a hundred bucks a jump—”
She was very brave about it. She never told anybody, as a rule, but I was so understanding and, well, sort of nice— There was her little boy, see. Oh, yes, she’d been married. And this lousy bas— Her husband had died, that is, after a long and expensive illness. . . .
The Carthaginian B-girls had probably used more or less the same version during the Punic Wars. “Gee, that’s rough,” I said. “And he doesn’t even know? I mean, all the money you send him at that school, he thinks you’re a big-shot singer? Well, how about that?”
“So if I can just get back on my feet—”
“You just stick with me, Marian,” I said expansively. Maybe we’ll do something about this gown business. Maybe tomorrow, huh, if I can get free for a few minutes from this deal. Say, did I tell you I stood to clean up about eighty thousand? Not bad for a little over a week, huh, baby?”
In the morning I gave her three hundred dollars, slapped her on the rear, and winked. “We got to stab Uncle for a little business expense some way, don’t we, kid?”
Sure, I still had her phone number. And if I got a chance I’d pick her up and we’d go shopping.
* * *
As soon as she left, I checked out of the hotel, had the car brought around and the bags loaded, and drove over to Miami Beach. I left it in a parking lot six or eight blocks away, and walked to the apartment. It was hot and intensely still with the air-conditioner turned off. The minute I opened the front door and stepped into the room where we’d spent so many hours she was all around me, as if the slender elegance, and color, and grace of movement were physical things that could reverberate in an empty room like sound waves and keep on echoing long after the person who had set them in motion was gone.
I tried not to look at the water-stained spot on the rug.
I changed into flannels and a sports shirt, left off the glasses and the hat, put my own wallet in my pocket, walked back to Collins Avenue, and took a cab to Miami. At another car-rental agency I rented a pick-up truck, using my own name and driver’s license, and took off for the Keys. On the way out of town I watched closely for that roadside curio place where I’d stopped before so I’d have its exact location fixed in my mind.
I had a large-scale map, and a pretty good idea of where I’d find the type of place I was looking for, but it was a long way down the small Keys and interminable bridges of the Overseas Highway. On Sugarloaf Key, some hundred and thirty miles from Miami, there was a back-country road that took off through the mangroves and salt ponds and ran along an outer line of small keys parallel with the highway. It was a wild area with practically no houses and plenty of places a car could be hidden.
Shortly after two p.m. I found just the spot I wanted, and checked the mileage back to the nearest bus stop on the highway. I started back. Just before three, I stopped at a roadside place on Big Pine Key and called the bank. Marian had said that on an amount that large they’d rush collection, but I had to be absolutely sure. I got hold of Dakin. He asked me to hold on, and checked.
“Yes, sir. Both your deposits have been collected. The second one came through this morning.”
“Thank you very much,” I said.
All I had to do was write a check Monday morning for a hundred and seventy thousand dollars. We were ready for the last act.
* * *
It was after dark when I got back to Miami Beach. I put the pick-up truck in the garage at the apartment, changed back into Chapman’s suit and the glasses and hat, and went over and picked up the Cadillac. I drove to Hollywood and checked in at the Antilles Motel. It was one of those I’d spotted before, an older type built when land was cheaper, with carport spaces between the units. It sat back off the street on US 1 not too far from the center of town.
The woman in the office was a spry and chatty type of about fifty. I signed the registry card, and told her I’d
