Home is the Sailor (7 page)

As the front wheels went over the edge the pan dropped down on the rock with a scream of tortured metal, teetering the car and springing the left rear door. The door swung forward like a flat pile driver, hitting me in the back as I jumped, slamming me down on the rock at the very lip of the cliff, my legs dangling in space, the big car beside me grinding desperately for life. On the edge of nothing.

There was a screaming in my ears. Hands clawed at me. I realized it was Corliss, tugging me back to safety as the Buick fell end over end, its headlights sweeping the sky as it plunged three hundred feet into jagged rock and white water, carrying Jerry Wolkowysk with it.

I lay on the lip of the cliff, exhausted, fighting for breath. Corliss lay a few feet away. In her struggle to keep me from going over the cliff, the low neckline of her dress had slipped down over one shoulder, half exposing her breast. As I watched her she wriggled across the rock toward me. Corliss pulled the dress still farther down on her shoulder, and her upper lip curled away from her teeth. She looked the way she had in the cabin right after I’d killed Wolkowysk.

She hooked the fingers of my hand in her bodice. “Take it off, Swede,” she pleaded. “Help me. Please.”

Her dress ripped easily and then she was wriggling out of what was left of the cloth. I felt her eager fingers fumbling at my shirt, my tie. Then her searching mouth found mine as we both lay in the moonlight, her body a fever, a fire, burning wherever her flesh touched me.

Corliss cupped the back of my head in her hands. “They won’t ever find him, will they, Swede?”

I kissed her eyes. “I hope not.”

She pressed herself against me. “They can’t. Not now. It wouldn’t be fair.” Her hands caressed my shoulders, my back. “I’m safe with you, aren’t I, Swede?”

I kissed her hair, her cheeks, her lips. “Of course.”

“You love me?”

I lifted my head to look at her. “I do.”

Corliss’ eyes burned into mine. “I love you, Swede. Say you love me.”

“I love you.”

She bit my chest. “Then
prove
it,” she screamed at me.
“Prove
it.”

I did, the hard rock ripping our flesh. We were mad. We had reason to be. We were Adam and Eve dressed in fog, escaping from fear into each other’s arms. And to hell with the fiery angel with the flaming sword. It was brutal. Elemental. Good. There was no right. There was no wrong. There was only Corliss and Swede.

When at last I rolled on my elbow and lay breathless, looking at her, Corliss lay still on her back in the moonlight, her hair a golden pillow, fog eddying over her like a transparent blanket. Her upper lip covered her teeth again. Her half-closed eyes were sullen. The future Mrs. Nelson, I thought, and I wished she had some clothes on.

The wind off the sea was suddenly cold. I could taste salt on my lips. The pound of the waves where the Buick was dying was like the booming of a great drum.

My breath caught in my chest. It was a funny feeling. I tried to brush it aside. I couldn’t. It was ridiculous, but I had a feeling that this time, I was the one who had been forced.

Neither Corliss nor I spoke on our way back to the Purple Parrot. I ran the green Cadillac into the carport of her cottage. We sat in the dark, still silent. Then Corliss came into my arms.

“I love you, Swede,” she said.

“I love you, Corliss,” I told her.

She kissed me without heat. “And this won’t change the other? We’ll be married today?”

I said, “This afternoon.”

“Where?”

“In Los Angeles or San Diego. Whichever you prefer.”

Corliss thought a moment. “I think I’d like to be married in L.A.”

I said, “Los Angeles is fine with me.”

She took her keys from her bag and opened the door of the car.

“You’ll be all right?” I asked her.

“I — think so,” she said.

She turned and kissed me again. With more heat this time. “Thank you, Swede,” she said simply. Then, holding her coat together to cover her torn dress, she unlocked the door of her cottage and closed it softly behind her.

I waited until I saw a light. Then I walked next door to Number 3. Sometime toward dawn I slept. But not for long. At seven o’clock there was a loud flurry of talking and laughing and slamming of cottage and car doors in the carport next to my cottage as some cheerful character from Iowa got off to an early start for Tucson.

“Yup. Gonna make four hunnerd an’ twenty-two miles t’day,” he cackled.

I wished I could have slept. There was a sour taste in my mouth. I wanted a cup of coffee. There was a light in the kitchen of the restaurant, but none in the bar or dining room.

To kill time, I showered and shaved. While I was shaving there was a thud on the door, like the single tap of a knuckle. My nerves still weren’t any too steady. I damn near cut myself. I laid down the razor and looked out the window again. It seemed a morning paper was included in the eight dollars’ rent per cabin. The nondescript man in blue dungarees and gray sweater was distributing the Los Angeles Times.

I propped my paper behind the faucets and glanced at the front page while I finished shaving. Two of the headlines were new. One of the better-known dewy-eyed movie glamour girls had announced her intention of going to the altar, and presumably to bed, with her fifth husband. A new tax increase had been approved. The rich guy I’d read about the first night of my binge was still on the front page. It was quite a yarn. It seemed he had been the thirty-five-year-old screwball son of a respected and very wealthy old-line Chicago family, with a penchant for getting into messes. His last escapade had been to marry a youthful red-haired South Chicago stripper named — but not called — Sophia Palanka and take her on a grand tour of Europe. The happy bridal pair had cabled from London and Paris, then from Bucharest. And that had been the last that had ever been heard from Phillip E. Palmer III.

In the three intervening years there had been considerable diplomatic exchange about the matter. From time to time, goaded by the playboy’s family, the State Department had attempted to make another Vogeler case of his mysterious disappearance. And from time to time the indignant Rumanian authorities had protested they knew anything whatsoever about Phillip E. Palmer III and his slightly tarnished bride.

There the matter had rested until some duck hunters had found a body in a slough near Gary, Indiana, and the body had been identified as that of the missing playboy who was supposed to have disappeared back of the Iron Curtain.

He had been dead a long time — quite possibly for three years. Further checking revealed that shortly before his reported departure for Europe he had cashed in stocks and bonds for a total of a quarter of a million dollars, which same money had disappeared with him.

Now the F.B.I. was inclined to believe he had been murdered shortly after his marriage to Sophia Palanka and the man with whom the red-haired stripper had sailed for Europe had been one Lippy Saltz, a small-time Chicago gambler who bore a superficial resemblance to Palmer. At least enough for passport purposes. The names on the passports had read, of course, Mr. and Mrs. Phillip E. Palmer III.

The red-haired stripper had disappeared as completely as Palmer. The F.B.I., however, had traced Lippy Saltz as far west as Las Vegas and, according to the lead of the reporter who handled the story, Lippy’s apprehension and arrest were expected momentarily.

I washed the lather from my face and looked out the front window again. There was a light in the dining room.

I put on my coat and cap and crossed the drive feeling sorry for Lippy Saltz. I knew how the guy must feel. I’d be looking in the papers, too. From now on. A guy named Jerry Wolkowysk was dead. I’d killed him. The wreckage of his car was certain to be discovered. His body might or might not be found. I wiped sudden sweat from the leather band of my cap. Corliss and I might get away with it. We might not. There were so many little things a man didn’t think of at the time. Little things that bobbed up to sink him.

The bar was still closed but the restaurant part was open for business. A heavy-set older woman, wearing a white nylon uniform with a big purple parrot embroidered on one shoulder, was drawing fresh coffee from an urn. Mamie was drinking orange juice at a table by the window.

I drew out a chair and sat across from her. “Hi.”

“Hi yourself,” she said.

I ordered wheat cakes and eggs and ham. “And my coffee right now, if you please.”

“Yes, sir,” the waitress said.

I drank my coffee looking at Mamie. I didn’t know Meek. I’d only seen him twice, both times at a distance. But unless he had hidden charms, the brunette had fallen on her head when she had married him. With her looks and body, she could have been a lot more choosy.

“Feel better now, sailor?” she asked me.

I asked what she meant by that.

Instead of answering me she said, “I wish I was a man.” She finished her toast and wiped her fingers on her napkin. “A man can do so many things. He can go to sea. He can be a soldier. He can fly.” Her smile turned wry. “He can crawl in and out of beds. He can get drunk and into messes. Then all he has to do is sober up and take a bath and no one thinks less of him.”

“But a woman can’t, huh?”

“No.”

“Why can’t she?”

Mamie lighted a cigarette. “Because she’s supposed to be good. She can’t be half bad like a man can. With a woman it’s all or nothing.”

I grinned over my cup at her. “What’s the idea so early in the morning, kid? You get out on the wrong side of the bed or something?”

She blew smoke at me. “Maybe even the wrong bed. How would you like to do me a favor, Nelson?”

I said that depended on the favor.

She reached across the table and gripped my wrist. With surprising strength for a woman. “When you finish your breakfast, shove off.”

“Why should I?”

“I told you that the first day you made port. I think you’re in danger here.”

“What sort of danger?”

She shook her head slowly. “I can’t tell you that. I don’t know. But I can tell from my husband’s snide remarks that—”

She stopped it there as the swinging doors into the kitchen opened. Meek didn’t look any better close up than he did at a distance. He wasn’t as old as I’d judged him to be. He was a man in his middle or late thirties. His hair was beginning to recede. But from the lines stamped in his thin face, I’d say he hadn’t thrown anything over his shoulder or poured anything down the drain. He looked at us, clearing his throat.

“Number Fourteen is checking out, Mamie,” he said finally.

The brunette opened her mouth to say something, took her hand off my wrist instead, and walked out the door he was holding open for her.

The door swung shut behind them. I looked at my wrist. Mamie’s nails had dug into the flesh. The heavy-set waitress brought my breakfast. The food looked good, but my appetite was gone. I was nervous again, jumpy.

It was the second time Mamie had warned me to shove off. Why? It could be she was jealous. Some women are that way. There couldn’t be any other reason for her to say what she had. She
couldn’t
know about Jerry Wolkowysk. No one knew that. No one but myself and Corliss.

I pushed my food around the plate, then forced myself to eat. Mamie
had
to be jealous. That was all it could be. She was as pretty as Corliss. Her body was just as lovely. But Corliss had everything that any woman could want while all she had was a job and Meek.

Sweat beaded on my face. Still, Mamie hadn’t been out on the cliff. That I knew. All she could possibly know about me and Corliss was that Corliss had brought me to the court to keep me out of trouble; that I had got fresh and Corliss had slugged me with a bottle; that Corliss had brought my money to the Palm Grove brig and we might have parked for an hour or so on our way back to the Purple Parrot. And, possibly, that we had taken an early morning ride together.

I pulled the morning paper Mamie had been reading to my side of the table and ordered another cup of coffee.

“How long has Mrs. Meek managed the court?” I asked the waitress.

“I think almost two years,” she told me.

For want of something better to do, I read the Palmer story again. When you got down into the bulk of it, while the F.B.I. might have traced Lippy Saltz as far west as Las Vegas, his imminent apprehension was the reporter’s own idea. The F.B.I. wasn’t talking. There was only one direct quote. That was a statement by a Chicago agent to the effect that one small mistake on Sophia Palanka’s part had given them what pertinent information they had.

One small mistake. That was all it took.

I wondered if I’d made any. I thought of two and really began to sweat.

I’d wiped the wheel of Wolkowysk’s car. Then I’d released the hand brake and used my left hand to steer the car to the lip of the cliff. If the car was found and murder was suspected, my fingerprints were on the brake button release and the left half of the wheel. More, the bloody white pile rug on which Wolkowysk had died was still in the back of Corliss’ car.

I patted my face with my napkin.

“Hot in the sun, isn’t it?” the waitress said pleasantly.

“Yeah. Hot,” I agreed.

I couldn’t do anything about the fingerprints except hope the rocks and waves would grind the Buick to pieces before it was found. The rug was something else. I had to destroy the rug and buy one to replace it as soon as I possibly could.

I dropped two bills on the table to cover the check and tip and walked out and leaned against Wally the barman’s beaten-up Ford.

The wind sweeping across the highway was cool on my face. It felt good. I stood looking at Corliss’ carport, wondering how I could get the rug out of the back. I didn’t see how I could, at least without someone seeing me. I’d have to dispose of the rug on our way to L.A. to be married. But how? How did a man go about getting rid of a bloody three-by-four loop pile rug?

The little things.

I crossed the highway to the beach and walked down it for a quarter of a mile. Maybe I hadn’t been smart in telling Ginty I was washed up with the sea and the line. It took brains to operate a farm. Maybe I wasn’t smart enough to make a living on shore.