Go to the Widow-Maker (88 page)

Ron had also briefed her on the “self-made-man” “diamond-in-the rough” guy that was Sam Finer, who was putting up, who
had
put up, $10,000 to buy the
Naiad
and start the company, and who was very likely to put up $10,000 more, or so Bonham had said. Even so she was not prepared for the crude, loud, totally selfish, hard-eyed, sly-faced tough-nut of a little guy who deliberately squeezed her hand too hard when he shook hands with her and grinned hello. She couldn’t believe it. She had hoped that at least here, with the Finers, there would be somebody nice to be along with, if they had to go on this damned trip. Ron could seem to collect more creeps, oddballs, and generally unpleasant people around him than anybody she had ever met, or maybe it was just that this sort of life, of diving and sailing and all that junk, abounded with those types. In much the same way that Orloffski had looked around the hotel to see if there was one man there he couldn’t whip, Sam Finer now looked all around the hotel to see if there might be one man there who might be richer than himself. He obviously found none. And this seemed to please him. After all, most clients of the Crount were artists or in the entertainment world in some form and while they all made good livings they were none of them millionaire financiers. Sam Finer, on the other hand, made no bones about his wealth. Sitting himself down very positively he ordered himself a double martini, and offered to buy drinks for everybody seated out on the long and fairly well-filled veranda. His wife Lucky noted took only a Campari-soda.

He was not, Sam Finer said, after ordering his second double martini, going to eat, to hell with lunch he was going right down to the boat yard to see the ship, he had retained the limousine and chauffeur for that purpose, and when he had tossed off the second double, he got up to go. Ron went with him. So did Jim Grointon. So did Ben. That left Lucky with Irma and Cathie Finer. The three of them spent the afternoon at the pool.

Almost immediately the three of them hit it off. Cathie Finer, once she was away from her husband, became kind, interested, full of fun, and charming. After their “boat-widows’” lunch together with a bottle of good Bordeaux and then three coupes of champagne each at the poolside, it did not take her long to unburden herself of her troubles to the other two, who were both so much the smart, wise and outspoken “imported-New-Yorkers” like herself. It was all simple enough. Her husband Sam had started stepping out on her with other women soon after they had met Grant, Ron, and that stepmother or foster mother of his with Bonham and Orloffski in Grand Bank Island. She did not know if he had already been doing it before. But she herself had only caught him and become aware of it after they returned to New York from Grand Bank. She herself had married him in all good faith, and had been true to him—at least until she had found out for sure he was stepping out, she added with a sour smile—and while they perhaps had not loved each other like Clark Gable and Carole Lombard had, she had felt they had a serious and honorable marriage. But apparently they had not. As she talked about it that other look, which Lucky could only describe to herself as like a snail drawing in its horns and pulling back into its shell when it is scared and needs protection, came back over her sensitive and pretty face. But after a fourth coupe of champagne it passed on, went gradually away like a slow cloud moving along over someone’s particular plot of land on a bright day. She didn’t know what they were really going to do now, and she didn’t much care, she said bitterly. Then she laughed. Yes, she remembered Lucky. Once that she had seen her. Grant, Ron, had spoken a lot about her in Grand Bank, a lot. Once she had seen her, she remembered her very well from the old days, the old New York days. Well at least Lucky was one of them who had made out, one who had married and had it actually work. She was glad, Cathie Finer said, and it was good to know.

“Yes, Lucky has,” Irma put in quickly, “and it is a good thing to know. I guess Ben and I have too. But then Ben and I hardly ever knew anybody else—except that he ran off and left me for a year about six months after we were married. But now we’re back together and happy. I’ve been lucky. And Lucky’s been lucky too.” Her fine sensitive face showed all the sensitivity and sympathy of which she was capable, and even her thin dark little body in its swimsuit seemed to lean forward on its own to express its and its owner’s understanding.

Lucky had no choice but to follow Irma’s lead. “Yes, I’ve finally made it,” she said, and then looked at Irm. “I never really thought I would, I guess.”

“I guess none of us did,” Cathie said sourly. “Not after all those years of wear on the old New York mart. Well, let’s talk about something else more pleasant, hey? So you and Ben are going along with all of us on this trip too, Irma?”

Irma nodded. Lucky stopped listening. She had been struck by something Cathie Chandler had said, and this had been about meeting Grant, Ron, on Grand Bank
with
his foster-mother. She searched back through her memory, and while she could not actually remember in fact that he had ever told her this, she was sure he had because whenever she thought of him in Grand Bank she thought of Carol Abernathy being there too. But he had never told her that Hunt Abernathy had not been along. He had never said Hunt
was
along, but he had never admitted Hunt was not along either. Lucky had always assumed in her mental picture of his Grand Bank trip that Hunt Abernathy had been there too. So he had lied to her again, indirectly anyway. Oh, how could he have screwed that dirty old woman all those years? There had to be something very sick about him to do a thing like that. A large dark cloud seemed to hang all over her.

When the other two girls got up to go and change, she tuned back in. “I just don’t know, Irma,” Cathie Chandler—Cathie
Finer
—was saying. “He’s really awfully wealthy, out there in Wisconsin. He’s a crude, loud man; but that didn’t seem to make much difference when we had our marriage going. Oh, sometimes I
hate
him!” she said viciously. “He’s a very violent man, too, you know. Sometimes. Sometimes when he’s really drunk.”

Lucky decided instantly, intuitively, she preferred to not have heard any of that speech. She did not know why. “Well, girls!” she cried gaily, “off to the showers. The fucking boy scouts” (Irma’s now generic term for all of the sailors) “will be coming home soon!”

It did not take very long for Sam Finer’s violence to erupt. It did not take long for his wealth to show itself either. When the men returned from their afternoon with the schooner
Naiad
and had showered and joined the women downstairs in the bar for drinks, everything was on Sam Finer. Drinks on Sam for everybody in the whole damn bar; nobody was allowed to pay for one single cocktail before dinner. Dinner was on Finer too, not for the entire clientele of course, but for everybody in their group, which now again included Bonham and Orloffski whom he had brought back with him, and of course the now-ever-present Jim—who smiled his slow evilly attractive ‘devil’s’ smile at Lucky and gave her one solemn wink behind Finer’s back. Not only that, Sam Finer announced in his loud duck’s voice to all and sundry, he had definitely decided after today to put another whole $10,000 into Bonham’s corporation and the schooner. The money would be coming along as soon as he got around to it. There was no doubt he meant it. René obviously didn’t like Sam Finer at all, and Lucky didn’t either. On the other hand, it was clear that Grant, that Ron, was no longer going to be the ‘big spender’ and the payer for everybody’s dinners and drinks. Sam Finer was taking over Grant’s, Ron’s, role unto himself; and Lucky didn’t mind at all. It was about time somebody did. And it was not, when the next day came around, just to stop there, either. For the next two days Sam and his wife and the entire group (minus Bonham and Orloffski, of course, who had to work on the ship) went out spearfishing with Jim Grointon in his catamaran, and Sam Finer paid for everything. Everything, and everybody, everybody’s boat fees, and even including the sandwiches and beer they took along from the hotel. He had flown down his Scott Hydro-Pak aqualung with its three sets of tanks, and he used this while the others free-dove. He was volubly impressed by Grant’s, by Ron’s, progress, but he had never done much free-diving himself, and he didn’t much like it, and besides he did not believe in being sporting to fish since fish were not sports themselves, and anyway Jim had a compressor to refill his tanks. It was on the evening of the third day that the violence erupted.

Lucky never did find out what the initial cause of it all was. Neither did anybody else that she talked to. She had already talked to Grant, to Ron, about the Finers and about her intuition that they were not at all in love like he had said.— “Well, I don’t know anything about that,” he said defensively, “and I certainly didn’t notice it. I’m not saying you’re not right. All I know is that when I first met them in Grand Bank they were as much in love as we—” and then he stopped. He had obviously meant to say “as we are.” Then, as the pause went on, he plainly thought of saying “as we were.” But he clearly didn’t want to say that either. And finally he left the sentence as it was. It was correct enough grammatically: “as much in love as we.” But it had not been his original intention, and the drop at sentence’s end had not been emphatic. Still he carried it off very well, she thought.—“That’s all I know,” he finished, not lamely at all. She had gone on then to tell him about the conversation they, she and Irma, had had with Cathie at the pool. She did not tell him her intuition that he, Grant, Ron, had screwed Cathie Chandler at some time or other himself. “So I guess it’s all because he started cheating on her,” she summed up finally.— “Well, at least that’s something you can’t accuse me of,” he had come back with, “by God.”— “Can’t I?” she said. “Oh, but I can.”— “Listen, if you’re going to start that again!” he said. “I explained all . . .” It was one of their more typical evenings alone before bed.

In any case, Sam Finer had not gone out with them on the catamaran on that third day’s diving since his arrival and had gone in town to the schooner, though he had insisted that Cathie go along on the catamaran and had informed them all— and informed Jim—that even though he wasn’t going they were all his guests and he was paying anyway. He had returned that evening about six-thirty with Al Bonham, but not with Orloffski, both of them looking a good bit the worse for wear, René said later. They had obviously been touring the bars in town.—And why not to a couple of whorehouses too? Lucky thought to herself when she heard it later; there was, from what she already knew about Bonham, no reason to think not.

Perhaps it was only, and just simply, the drink. And not any guilt. None of them had been in the bar—where they were all supposed to meet him for cocktails—and perhaps if one or two of them had been it might never have happened. She and Grant, Ron, were still upstairs just finishing changing to come down. So were the Spicehandlers. Cathie, who was upstairs too, apparently had heard his voice as he and Bonham had come through the gate and along the drive and up the steep stairs, and recognizing the sound of trouble in it had come running down. But she was either too late, or too inconsequential. He and Bonham had ordered a drink at the end of the bar, and after knocking back half of his first one Finer had ordered a second. The bar was already crowded with cocktail hour drinkers, guests in the hotel and customers from town, and when Sam the barman had not served his drink immediately, Sam Finer had hurled, slid, his low-slung heavy still-half-filled glass down the long bar like one of those pucks in those mechanical ten-cent bowling machines, sending bottles and stemmed martini glasses flying and smashing among the startled and convivially drinking cocktail customers. “I ordered a goddamned drink down here! And when I order a goddamned drink down here I expect to be goddamned served down here! And fast!” Bonham had had hold of him by this time, but this did not erase or dry the stains and drippings from the shirtfronts and dresses down the long length of the bar. René kept two big Jamaican bouncers around the place, although they had almost never been needed in the history of the hotel, and as usual now when they were needed neither was around. René had got there as quickly as he could. “You bet-tair get your frien’ out of ’ere fast, Al!” he said. He was furious. “I call ze cops ozzerwise.”— “Whatta you think I’m tryin to do?” Bonham had said, still holding onto the struggling and cursing Finer who was trying desperately to get back at the bar and the barman where he felt he had been so roundly insulted. Finally Bonham had got him out onto the veranda and to the steep set of steps, where René’s Jamaican ‘doorman’ in his Haitian general’s uniform came running up to them to help Bonham get Sam Finer down them. Finally the two of them had got him down the steps onto the driveway, but there he had broken away from them. By this time just about everybody in the hotel had heard the racket and come running, among them Ron and Ben who had recognized Finer’s voice and hoped to help, Lucky and Irma coming right behind them. The Jamaican doorman was a big man, almost as big as Bonham if not as big around, but he was startled and off his pace because he had never had to handle anything like this. Attacking the doorman at the Grand Hotel Crount was as unheard of as someone attacking the doorman at Sardi’s or Pavilion, but that was just what Sam Finer was doing. After breaking away from the two of them, he stood breathing a second or two, then rushed straight for the big doorman who had moved to stand like a guardian in front of his stairs, Finer trying to get back up the stairs and punching at him with all his power, and there was a lot of power in his stocky broadshouldered body. The first time the doorman just pushed him back away, taking a couple of hard punches to the head while doing it. Finer came in again, and this time the doorman started punching back, although it was plain he wasn’t much of a real fighter and did not appear to be particularly enjoying himself. He still looked as if he couldn’t believe what was happening as he wiped some blood off a cut on his cheek.

In all Finer came at him four or five times, cursing and yelling almost incoherently all the time and actually appearing to be enjoying himself hugely. And all the time Bonham was standing back behind him saying, “Sam, Sam. You don’t know what you’re doing. This is the
Crount.
For God’s sake, stop it. This is
the Crount!
This isn’t the docks. Stop it.” Up on the veranda all the bar customers had crowded to the railing to watch, even those with still-wet shirtfronts and damaged dresses. Nobody had ever seen anything like it at the Grand Hotel Crount. When Ron, who was standing right beside her, tried to push his way through to get down the steps to help stop it, Lucky grabbed his arm, but she needn’t have. He was stopped by a famous New York columnist who was staying at the Crount, and who had been a good friend of his in New York for many years. “You know those people?” Lucky heard him say in a low voice.