The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything (3 page)

And the worst time of all, perhaps, was when, emboldened by brandy, hand in hand with a sweet laughing little darling of a girl, they had run like the wind from the big house in Nassau down toward the beach cabana in the moonlight. And halfway there the wire clothesline had caught him just under the chin.

But for each opportunity denied him by the fates, there had been twice that number he had run away from, in sweaty terror. He sneered at himself and sipped the champagne. You are a clown and a coward, Kirby Winter—a lousy, neurotic, mixed-up coward, and yet you go around making women believe you're a gay dog. Gahr, indeed.

Charla came into the room. She planted herself in the corner of the couch near him before he could begin to stand up. She was barefoot. She wore short pink shorts and a candy-striped halter and a pink ribbon in her hair. He realized that if he focused beyond her instead of right at her, she looked about fifteen. Startlingly precocious perhaps, but no more than fifteen. Only the direct gaze detected the webbed flesh under her eyes, the lines bracketing the mouth, the slight sag of tissue under her chin.

"Again, dear," she said, holding her empty glass toward him. He filled it and his own and put the bottle back on the ice. "That shirt is really handsome."

"Thank you. It's very nice. The other things are nice too. But I really can't accept—"

She made a face at him. "So grim and stuffy all of a sudden? Are you cross when you wake up? I am. That's why I left you alone, Kirby dear."

"No. Not cross, I guess. It's just—"

"Pressing wasn't enough for your suit. It'll be back this afternoon. With your tie and socks and so on, dear. Really, I threw your shirt away. I hope it didn't have some sort of sentimental value. It was actually shabby. Please tell me you
do
feel better. I mean, when one makes a special effort to—"

"I feel a lot better, Charla."

She pulled her knees onto the couch and sat crosswise, wrinkling her eyes at him as she sipped her drink. She was long-waisted, he saw. The weight of hips and breasts made her waist look smaller than it was. Her glossy legs were short and rather heavy, but seemed exactly suitable for her.

"Mad with me?" she asked.

"Should I be?"

"Oh, because I teased you a little. Do you remember?"

"Yes."

"Such a cruel thing a woman can do, isn't it?"

"I guess so."

"I may tease some more, you know."

He shifted uneasily. "I guess you might."

"But some time I might not be teasing at all." She stared at him, her eyes wide and innocent. "Poor little man. How will you be able to tell when the time comes when I don't tease?"

He cast about for a change of subject. "That girl."

"Oh, yes. She disturbed you. My niece. Now she calls herself Betsy Alden. I was very cross with her, Kirby. I still am."

"She made quite a fuss."

Charla shrugged. "I seem to have done some horrible, damaging thing to her career. I didn't realize. I wanted her to come here to see me. After all, I am her only aunt. She wouldn't come. She had some silly idea of her play-acting being more important. So—I remembered an old friend and called him up. He called a good friend of his. Suddenly they didn't need her. Is this so terrible?"

"Only if she can't find another job."

"She says she'll have trouble. She cursed me. She was very noisy and vulgar. Once upon a time she was a very sweet child. It's hard to believe."

"Did she leave?"

"Oh, no! She has to stay here. Because she will now have to beg me to undo the terrible damage she thinks I've done. After she becomes sweet enough to me, then I shall phone my friend again, and then she will be in demand again for those idiotic television things. It's what she seems to want, poor child."

"At first she thought I worked for you. And then she got another idea about me, and that wasn't right either."

Charla's smile was curiously unpleasant. "She mentioned that. I admit it is not accurate. But it could have been, so easily, don't you think?"

"I guess so."

"You seem so solemn today, Kirby. Even, forgive me, a little bit stuffy. You talked so much on Friday night, and were so charming and hurt."

"I must have been a nuisance. I want to thank you for—giving me a chance to sleep it off. And I really must be going."

"Oh, not until Joseph comes and we tell you our idea."

"Idea?"

"Come, dear. We know you have no specific plans. You told us that."

"Did I? I'll have to find something—"

"Maybe you've found it, Kirby. You have certain attributes Joseph and I could use, you know. You make a good impression, dear. You look very decent and earnest and reliable and trustworthy. Many people look like that, but it is a false front. You are what you seem to be, dear."

"I beg your pardon?"

"And you have such a great capacity for loyalty. I'm certain your Uncle Omar was pleased with you, and made wonderful use of you. He trained you. And really good people are so hard to find these days. And you're at home in so many countries. We have little problems you could help us with."

"What sort of problems?"

She shrugged. "Here's one at random. We have one nice little ship. The
Princess Markopoulo
, Panamanian registry. We think the captain and the agent are conspiring against us. The profits are so tiny. You could go aboard as my special representative and find out what is wrong. There are always problems. And we don't want to give up the way we live and handle them ourselves. It would be too dull. You would be busy. It would be amusing. And we would pay you well. Between assignments you could be with us. We would pay you twice what your Uncle Omar paid you."

"Do you know what he paid me?"

"You told us, dear. And you've saved a veritable fortune! Eight thousand dollars. Dear Kirby, that would last me perhaps one month. And you will have to find work."

"I must have done a lot of talking."

"You told us your inheritance from your dear dead uncle. A pocket watch and a letter."

"And I don't even get the letter until a year from now," he said, and divided the small amount of champagne left.

She hitched closer to him, touched her glass against his, looked into his eyes. "So why not have the amusing life? It is good fortune for all of us we met the other night. We are very good friends, no? Here is what we shall do, Kirby Winter. You settle what must be settled here. By then the
Glorianna
will be here. And we shall have a cruise."

"The
Glorianna
?"

"My dear toy yacht, dearest. Holland built. Lovely staterooms and a crew of five. We always have charming guests aboard. Much fun, much wine, maybe a little love. My crew is bringing her down from Bermuda now. The best food in the world, my dear. We insist on that. Spend a month as our guest and then we shall decide your future. Why do you look so troubled?"

He shrugged. "Superstitious, maybe. Things like this just don't fall into my lap, Charla."

She put her empty glass aside and moved closer to him. She took his hand and lifted it to her lips. It made him feel curiously girlish and awkward. She looked at him with a sweet gravity. "You do make me like you—too much, perhaps. We should have met another time. When there were no jobs to offer, when you were not troubled and disappointed. When we could both be honest."

"What do you mean?"

"I meant nothing. A woman's chatter." There was a knock at the door and she asked him to let in Joseph. With great enthusiasm Charla told Joseph that Kirby had agreed to come cruising on the
Glorianna
and then he would take the job they had decided to offer him. Kirby found himself shaking Joseph's hand and being effusively congratulated. Things seemed to be moving too fast. He tried to find the right opening to tell Joseph it was not that definite, and suddenly realized he was being instructed to move out of his own hotel and move here, to the Hotel Elise.

"But I—but I—"

Joseph put a fatherly hand on Kirby's shoulder. Charla was on Kirby's other side. She slid her arm around his waist, hugged herself close to him. In the arctic reaches of his mind, walls of ice toppled into the sea.

"Nonsense, my boy," Joseph said. "The hotel is not full. I happen to own a certain percentage of it. When you return with your luggage you will be all registered. Because I am busy on small matters, Charla is often lonesome. We would be grateful, both of us. You will be doing us a favor."

"Well, I guess I could—"

"Splendid!" they cried simultaneously, and Charla gave him a heartier little hug, full of rounded dizzying pleasures. Her glowing face was upturned toward his, her eyes full of warm promise. Joseph had taken a gold cigarette case from his pocket. It slipped from his hand. Both men stooped simultaneously and cracked skulls. Kirby straightened up, off balance, half-blinded by the white burst of shock and pain. He swung his arm up to catch his balance and caught Charla smartly under the point of the chin with his elbow. Her teeth made a chopping sound and her eyes glazed and she wobbled momentarily.

She looked at him fearfully and made a curious gesture and spoke in a foreign language. It sounded like an incantation, and in the middle of it he thought he heard her say, "Omar Krepps".

"Shut up!" Joseph said to her in a deadly tone. He was holding a palm against his brow.

"I'm sorry," Kirby said miserably. "I just seem to—"

"It was an accident," Charla said. "Are you hurt, dear Kirby?"

"I—I'd better be on my way, I guess."

Chapter Three

As Kirby opened the rear door of the cab to get in, a girl eeled by him and took the cab.

"Hey!" he said indignantly.

Betsy Alden glowered at him. "Just shut up and get in, stupid!"

He hesitated, got in beside her and said, "But what are—"

"Driver! Go north on Collins, please. I'll tell you where."

"But I want to go—"

"Will you shut up!"

They rode a dozen blocks in silence. He looked at her rigid profile, thinking she would be quite a pretty girl if she wasn't always mad. The taxi was caught by a light. "Right here," she said and quickly handed the money to the driver and got out. When Kirby caught up with her, she was walking south, carefully examining the oncoming traffic.

"Will you kindly tell me—"

"In here, I guess," she said, caught at his arm and swung him along with her into a narrow walkway leading to the side entrance of one of the smaller beach hotels. Once in the lobby she looked around like a questing cat, then headed for a short flight of stairs to the mezzanine. He followed her up the stairs. She wore a green skirt and a white blouse. She had changed to a smaller purse. Her toffee hair was more orderly. Following her up the stairs he realized she was singularly expressive. Even in the flex of lean haunches under the swing of the skirt she seemed to project both stealth and indignation.

"Sit over there," she said, indicating a fake Victorian couch upholstered in shiny plastic under a fake Utrillo upon an imitation driftwood wall. He sat on the couch. She stood by the railing, looking down into the lobby for what seemed to be a long time, then shrugged and came slowly over and sat beside him.

"I'll tell you one thing and you remember it, Winter," she said. "No matter how careful you are, it might not be enough." She gave him a very direct green stare.

"Are you all right?"

"How are you reacting to my dear Aunt Charla? How's your pulse?"

"Miss Alden, I have the feeling we aren't communicating."

"When she wants to really set the hook, she can make any Gabor look like Apple Annie. There's fine steam coming off you, Winter."

"She's an unusual woman."

"And she takes no chances. She had to have me here on standby. Just in case you'd rather settle for something younger, taller and not quite so meaty. But I told her a long time ago I'm through playing her games. She can take care of her own pigeons without any help from me. I got off her merry-go-round when I was twenty years old. And I was a very old twenty. Charla would be all right—she might even be fun—if she weren't so damned greedy."

"What is that about a pigeon?"

"What else do you think you are? Do you think she's smitten by your charm?"

"She got smitten a few times."

"What?"

"Miss Alden. Just for laughs. What are we talking about?"

She frowned at him. A strand of the tan-gold hair fell across her forehead and she pushed it back. "I checked the newspapers. Omar Krepps was your uncle. That's what we're talking about."

"I don't understand."

"When I was fifteen years old she yanked me out of school in Switzerland and began lugging me around the world with her. She and Joseph are operators, Winter. Canadian gold, African oil, Indian opium, Brazilian girls—you name it, and they've bought it and sold it. They aren't the biggest and they aren't the shrewdest, but they keep getting richer, and it's never fast enough to suit them. They are in and out of cartel and syndicate operations with other chums of the same ilk, and their happiest little game is trying to cheat each other. I was only fifteen, but I soon learned that in their circles, the name Omar Krepps terrified them. Almost a superstitious terror. Too many times Krepps would suddenly appear, skim the cream off a deal and leave with the money. I believe they and some of their friends tried to have him killed, but it never worked."

"Kill Uncle Omar?"

"Shut up and listen. And believe. That fat little old man seemed able to be nine places at once. One time he skinned them good, intercepted cash on its way to a number account in Zurich somehow, and just took it, and they could do nothing about it because they'd in effect stolen it first—Joseph and Charla and some of their thieving pals. At that time Charla was wearing a ring that opened up. A poison ring, I guess, with an emerald. She opened it idly one day and there was a little wad of paper in it. She unfolded it. It said, 'Thanks, O. Krepps.' When she came out of her faint she had the wildest case of hysterics you ever saw, and she had to go into a hospital for a week. You see, the ring hadn't been off her finger since before the money was taken."