The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything (18 page)

In any plausible use of aesthetic theorizings, she had contours, textures and colorings which made her, as an object at rest or in motion, highly pleasing to sight, touch, taste, and hearing. Through the very process of appraising her as not only an individual, but also an object of aesthetic value, pleasing to him, he was able to achieve an inversion of that logic and assume that he, in kind, was also, to her, an individual as well as an object which pleased her. And this brought him to an objectivity which altered his prior attitude toward his body, changing it from something ludicrous, something so grotesque as to merit concealment, to an object meriting that pride which was a reflection of her pleasure.

He was pleased to be tall, grateful for a muscularity in part inherited and in part developed, perhaps, as a byproduct of many sublimations, distressed at a roll of softness around his middle, particularly after Bonny Lee's soapy, derisive, painful pinch, and was resolved to become as taut as she, knowing it would please her. Though at first the physiological mechanisms of desire had a distressing obviousness, targeting him for saucy jokes, he achieved acceptance of the inevitable and then progressed to a degree of self-satisfaction bordering upon the fatuous.

Yet throughout the whispered soapy games, in spite of his years of inadvertent continence, he could guess she was a rare one, precisely suited to bring him back into the race of men with minimal delay. He sensed that had there been any trace or trick of self-consciousness about her, any contrived modesties or measured reservations, had she in fact struck any other attitude other than that of a happy, exuberant, exhibitionistic, inventive, gamboling, young, coltish creature, he would have tumbled back into awkwardness, irrational shame, dismay and the puritan persuasion that anything so delicious must, of necessity, be evil.

There was a pattern in the love play, little times of promising to stop all this nonsense, and then an instinctive awareness of whose turn it was to become the aggressor, to be repulsed playfully, or with mock solemnity, or with wicked reprisals, and sometimes the sweet and momentary acceptance, abandoned quickly by one or the other before it went on beyond any chance of stopping it.

She sat on the edge of the blue tub and he scoured her hair dry with a big maroon towel and watched it spring back to damp tight ringlets. Suddenly the games were over, with no need to explain it to each other, with only the need to carry her to the bed and, with all the accumulated tensions, quickly, strongly, boisterously, strenuously, joyously take it so quickly over the edge that in her completion she made sounds like a slow, strange laughter while, with an astonishing strength, she held him absolutely motionless.

They listened to the two o'clock news with astonishment and incredulity. After the fifteen minutes ended, there was a special fifteen-minute bulletin on Kirby Winter—the adventures of.

When the final commercial came, she turned off the little transistor radio and placed it on the night stand beside the bed.

"Even crazier than the news, sugar, is it being the two o'clock news. My head is out of joint. All these naps. It should be tomorrow, almost. No more naps, Kirby, because you know what'll happen for sure. Get all rested and want each other again and take more naps and, hell—we keep this up the only way you'll leave is on a stretcher, or float out the window."

"I can't understand how Betsy Alden—"

She sat up and frowned at him. "Say, did your Uncle Omar look a lot older than he was?"

"What?"

"A day is got to have twenny-four hours, sugar. Lemme see. You know I stuck maybe an extra eleven onto this one? Time and a half, like. I bet if I had the same kinda day every day for ten years, I'd all of a sudden be thirty-five insteada thirty. Was he old-lookin'?"

"I guess he was. I guess he looked older than his age."

She lifted a long brown leg and flexed it. "Hefting them people around on the beach and all, I wore myself down. So there's wear and tear, but now there's just a little sore, like the day
after
you do too much."

"Didn't you hear the broadcast?"

"What kind of a smart-ass question is that? Surely I heard it. They've all gone nuttier than ever."

"So they made a positive identification and so then I overpowered two policemen, disarmed them, handcuffed them and lost myself in the crowd. So now I'm armed and considered dangerous."

She giggled at him. "Eliot Ness'll be coming after you, sugar. Anyways, what could those cops say? You know, I'm about to starve, sugar. I got some steaks. How you want yours?"

"Medium."

"You want it medium, but you get it rare, sugar. I'm to be taken care of you, hear?"

He remembered the money, the confusion on the beach, the pipe, the ring and the roses, and asked her what she'd done. She put the steaks on and came back and told him some of it, went and turned them over and came back and told him more, then went and brought in a tray, with the steaks and glasses of milk and a big stack of French bread and a bowl of sweet butter. As they ate she told him all the rest of it.

He went and got the wad of money and the ring out of the borrowed slacks. She watched him silently as he counted the money. He stared at her and said, "Sixty-six hundred and twenty dollars, Bonny Lee!"

She shrugged. "Geezel, sugar, it din seem like stealing it, but I guess it was. Nothing I did seemed real. You know. But you heard what the radio said. Twenny thousand. Hell, they're all adding it all on for the insurance."

"How about the ring?"

"Oh, that. Over near the bathhouses I see a fat ugly bassar with two of his buddies, got a guy backed against a wall looking for some way to run. I din like three against one, so I froze them still and wrapped the belt off one of them round his ankles, tied a necktie on the ankles of another one and gave the littlest one a big push. I guess I only tilted him over an inch. I worked the ring off the pinkie on the fat one, and I went fifty feet off, sorta behind a bush. The little one went ass over teacup into a cactus patch and the fat one went down backwards and the other one went down sideways, and the little guy against the wall took off like he was a deer." She took the ring from him and scratched her empty milk glass with it. "Diamond, all right," she said. "Big sonuvabitch, huh?"

She glanced at him quickly enough to catch his fleeting grimace.

"Don't talk so sweet and pretty, do I?"

Her perception startled him. "I don't mind, Bonny Lee."

She tossed the ring onto the tray. "Maybe you do. Maybe I do, too. But maybe there isn't a gawddamn thing neither of us can do about it, sugar. I got to be a woman entire afore I learned up on being a lady. I had four year of schooling, all told. You want you a tea party lady, you just go get yourself one, hear? Go grab one offa the P.T. and A. You and she can talk up a storm on art and culture and such, Kirby, then you try taking a shower with her and hustling her into the sack and see how things work out, see if you don't have to sign contract papers forever with a guarantee income afore she'll even step down offa her high heels."

"Bonny Lee!"

"Oh, don't look at me so gawddamn pitiful, you sonovabitch! I get along fine and I don't need you nor anybody." She hurled herself face down on the bed and began to sob, making sounds like a small boy punished. He patted her and soothed her and held her.

Finally she got up and went in and bathed her face and came out, grinning somewhat shamefacedly, snuffling from time to time. "All a damn lie," she said, "and you know it. You being schooled makes me feel funny. I want to do better, but what the hell chance have I got? Shees marie, I work six nights a week and that's when they got night schools, even if I could get in. Sorry, sugar. I don't crack up so much. It's on account of this being such a goofed up day, maybe. I'm just a share-cropper girl outa Carolina, cheap, ignorant and fun-lovin'."

"You low rate yourself too much. You're bright and quick."

"So is a she-fox. Let's drop the whole thing."

"You're the same age as a college kid."

"Compared to a college kid, I'm a hunnerd n'ten."

He picked up the wad of money and dropped it beside her. "You took it. So use it, if you mean what you say. Use it until it runs out, then go back to work."

She looked thoughtful for a few moments, then looked sidelong at him. "Say, didn't you hear that broadcast? First things first, Kirby."

The news had been peculiarly distressing. The
Glorianna
had been intercepted down near Dinner Key and had put in there and tied up while the Metro police had made an investigation. On the yacht had been a skeleton crew of three, Mr. Joseph Locordolos, a Spanish national and a developer and speculator in hotel and resort properties, his sister, Mrs. Charla O'Rourke, a Greek national and member of the international set, and Miss Betsy Alden, Mrs. O'Rourke's niece, a nationalized citizen of the United States who had worked in New York and Hollywood as a bit-part actress on television. The yacht was registered in Panama. Mr. Locordolos was very agitated at being halted in such a preemptory fashion. All the papers were in order. He explained that they were taking a short shake-down cruise of several hours to see whether the newly installed radar was working properly. Both he and his sister explained that, while staying at the Hotel Elise, an establishment partially owned by Mr. Locordolos, they had made the acquaintance of Mr. Kirby Winter, nephew of Omar Krepps whom they had known slightly over the years. They said Mr. Winter seemed quite depressed and, because the boat was roomy enough, they had suggested he come along with them to Nassau, and he could then fly back from there. Mr. Winter had said he would think about it, and they had assumed he would not be joining them until the trunk and the crate arrived aboard. They had been unable to contact Mr. Winter to ask him about it, but they assumed it was his intention to go with them to Nassau, perhaps for a longer stay than he had indicated would be possible. Perhaps, as soon as they heard of the huge embezzlement, Mr. Locordolos admitted, they should have contacted the police. Instead, as he explained, he investigated the contents of the two containers and found nothing of any importance in them. He had given up, of course, any idea of permitting Mr. Winter to accompany them, and had merely been waiting until Mr. Winter put in an appearance, at which time he was going to have the containers moved onto the dock at the Biscayne Marina and wash his hands of the whole matter. Though the police had a search warrant, Mr. Locordolos felt that it might not be properly applicable to a vessel of foreign registry, however he volunteered to overlook the legal considerations and asked for a complete search on a voluntary basis. The police impounded the items Mr. Winter had shipped to the yacht, and found nothing else of any pertinence to the Winter case. They had previously impounded the suitcases discovered in Winter's temporary quarters at the Hotel Elise.

During the search of the boat they had an opportunity to interrogate Miss Alden. She was in bed in one of the staterooms. Mr. Locordolos and Mrs. O'Rourke had explained that the young actress had suffered a minor breakdown from overwork and they were taking her on a restful cruise. Miss Alden, in a weak voice, had confirmed all aspects of the explanation given to the police.

In the meanwhile, Winter having been definitely identified as being still in the area as of eleven that morning, all exits from the city were being watched. So many pictures and descriptions had been circulated, it was not believed he could remain long at liberty. It was entirely possible the Farnham woman had already departed for some planned rendezvous with her co-conspirator, and once Winter was picked up, it was entirely possible he would disclose where the Farnham woman could be found. With both of them in custody it seemed possible that recovery of the secreted millions might be undertaken.

Grumby, in yet another public statement, had warned all authorities involved in this complex matter that Kirby Winter, once apprehended, might very possibly attempt to confuse the picture by falsely implicating others. He asserted that despite periodic pleas, Mr. Krepps had never revealed the use that was being made of the twenty-seven millions diverted from Krepps Enterprises to O.K. Devices. He stated under oath that they had never seen a dime of this money, had no idea what had become of it, and assumed that it was properly covered in the Krepps will in that portion which spoke of the bulk of the estate which should be established as the Krepps Foundation. In an accompanying statement, the District Director of Internal Revenue stated that all appropriate income and gains taxes had been paid on the twenty-seven millions prior to their disappearance into the mysterious operations of O.K. Devices. He said that in the absence of any other records, the twenty-seven million could now be considered a part of the estate and taxed as such. If during the interim period additional values had accrued, then doubtless capital gains taxes would be due and payable in the event the assets of O.K. Devices were found and liquidated. However, in view of the unusual aspects of this situation, he was prepared to wait and find out what had happened. If the executives of K.E. were indeed blameless in this situation, as they appeared to be, then possibly some adjustment might be made to avoid punishing them financially for the wrongdoing of another.

Mr. D. LeRoy Wintermore, of Wintermore, Stabile, Schamway and Mertz, made yet another statement, saying that in view of the cluttered situation, he was exercising the option of delaying the assessment of the total estate until one year from the time of death. He hoped that things would be more orderly by then. He said it would delay the establishment of the Foundation, but it might well make the tax computations easier for all concerned. In closing he said that he felt that Kirby Winter had neither the cleverness nor the resolve to engineer such a vast malappropriation of funds, and wondered aloud if the whole thing might have been more logically planned and executed by the Farnham woman.

Winter, meanwhile, was wanted for assault, resisting arrest, theft of police weapons and carrying concealed weapons without a license—all this in addition to the summonses, the subpoenas, and the formal charges of embezzlement, tax evasion, conspiracy and fraud.