Strictly For Cash (20 page)

Instead of keeping to the road I moved through the palmetto thicket, heading back the way I had come, but not paying much attention to where I was going. After a while I realized I had been walking for some time and I was still not within sight of the casino.

I paused to look around me. Over to my right I could see the blue, almost motionless ocean through the trees. To my left was a forest of mangroves. I had no idea now if I were walking away from the casino or towards it, and knowing I should get back there, I got worried. This stretch of beach was as lonely and as deserted as a pauper's funeral, and I was in two minds to turn back and make a fresh start when I heard a girl singing. She was singing
Temptation a song that had
always given me a creepy sensation whenever I'd heard it.

She wasn't tearing into it as most singers do, but singing it in an absent-minded kind of way, as if her mind were only half concentrating on the song.

I moved forward cautiously, wanting to catch a glimpse of her before she saw me. From the sound of her voice she'd be around the next clump of mangroves.

My shoes made no sound in the soft sand. I got behind a shrub and peered over it.

She was sitting on a camp-stool, an artist's easel in front of her, and she was painting in water-colours. I couldn't see the painting, for she was facing me, and I wouldn't have bothered much if I could have seen it. I looked at her: she was the only picture I wanted to look at.

She wore a blue, and white bolero jacket that left her midriff bare, a pair of white shorts, and blue plastic and cork sandals. She was bare-headed, and her thick, short hair looked like burnished copper in the strong sunlight. She was as different from the blonde curie as a Ming vase is from a vase you win at a shooting-gallery, and lovely without being sensational. Her eyes were big and blue and serious; her mouth, with just the right amount of lipstick, wide and generous, and her figure neat, compact and curved where it should be curved.

I stood looking at her. The Scotch was still giving me a false sense of security. I seemed to have stepped out of the darkness into the sunlight, and to have turned my back on something that was as unreal as a bad dream. Just to look at this girl, singing to herself, unaware of me, made Della and Reisner, and the immediate horrible future, go out of my mind the way dirty water leaves a sink when you pull out the plug.

III

I stood for maybe a minute, listening to her song, and watching her sun-browned hand and the paint-brush at work, wondering who she was and how she came to be in such an out-ofthe-way place. Then suddenly she must have felt me watching her, for she looked up and saw me. She gave a little start and dropped her brush.

I came out from behind the shrub.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you. I heard you singing and wondered who it was."

Not a very brilliant approach, but it was, at the moment, the best I could do. For the first time since I had left the cabin my voice didn't sound like the croak of a frog.

She bent to pick up the brush.

"I've missed my way, and I think I'm lost," I went on. "I'm trying to find the casino."

"Oh." The explanation seemed to reassure her. "It's easy to do that. I suppose you came through the mangroves."

"That's right." I moved to one side so I could see her painting. The sea, sand and palms and the blue of the sky made a vivid and attractive picture. "That's good," I said. "It's absolutely lifelike."

That seemed to amuse her, for she laughed.

"It's supposed to be."

"Maybe, but a lot of people couldn't do it."

I fumbled in my hip pocket for a packet of cigarettes, flicked out two and offered them.

"No, thank you. I don't smoke."

I lit up.

"Just how far away am I from the casino?"

"About three miles. You're walking away from it."

She began to clean the brush that had dropped into the sand.

"You mean I'm off the casino's beach?"

"Yes; you're on my beach."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to trespass."

"I didn't mean it that way," she said, smiling. "It's all right. Are you staying at the casino?"

It flashed into my mind that I didn't want her to know me as Johnny Ricca, gambler and gangster. It didn't matter to me that the blonde, Georgia Harris Brown, should think so, but this girl was different.

"I have a beach cabin close by. I'm collecting background material for display work."

"What was that again?"

I dropped on the sand, away from her, watching to see if she disapproved, but her expression didn't change.

"I work for Keston's in Miami. It's a big store. You may have heard of it," she explained. "I provide sketches and colour schemes for window dressing and special displays."

"Sounds interesting."

"Oh, it is." Her face lit up. "Last year I went to the West Indies and did a series of paintings. We turned one of the departments into a West Indian village. It was a terrific success."

"Must be a nice job," I said. "I hope you don't mind me holding up your work. I'll get along if you do."

She shook her head.

"It's all right. I've just finished." She began putting away her brushes. "I've been working since ten. I guess I've earned some lunch."

"A little late for lunch, isn't it?"

"Not when you live alone."

She studied the painting, and I watched her. I decided she was the prettiest and nicest girl I'd ever met.

"I think that'll do," she said, and stood up. "The easiest way back to the casino is for you to walk along the beach."

"I'm Johnny Farrar," I said, not moving. "I suppose I couldn't carry your stuff back for you? There seems a lot of it."

"Sounds as if you're inviting yourself to lunch," she said, smiling. "I'm Virginia Laverick.

If you haven't anything better to do . . ."

I jumped to my feet.

"I haven't a thing. I guess I'm sick of my own company, and meeting you . . ."

I picked up the easel and her other stuff when she had packed it, and went with her across the hot sand.

"I can't ask you in," she said suddenly, "I live alone."

"That's okay," I said, only too glad to be walking at her side. "But I'm harmless, or maybe you don't think so."

She laughed. "Big men usually are," she said.

After a short walk we came to a bungalow, screened by flowering shrubs, with a greenpainted roof and gay flowers in the window-boxes and a wide verandah on which were lounging chairs, a radio set and a refectory table.

"Sit down," she said, waving to one of the chairs. "Make yourself at home. I'll get you a drink - Scotch?"

"Fine," I said.

"I won't be a minute."

But she was a lot longer than that, and I was pacing up and down the verandah, my nerves on the jump again, by the time she reappeared. I saw why she had been so long. She had changed out of the sun-suit which she had probably decided wasn't suitable to be wearing when entertaining a strange man in an empty bungalow, and she was now in a white linen dress, shoes and stockings. I gave her full marks for good sense.

She carried a tray on which were bottles, glasses and plates of sandwiches. She set down the tray on the table, smiling at me.

"Go ahead and fix yourself a drink," she said. "If you feel like eating, there's plenty."

I poured myself a big slug of Scotch, splashed ice water in it, while she flopped into an armchair and started on the sandwiches.

"You look as if you've been in a fight," she said.

"Yeah, I know." I felt my nose, embarrassed. It was still a little sore and swollen. "I got into an argument with a guy. It looks worse than it feels." I took a mouthful of Scotch. It hit the spot all right.

She was drinking orange juice, and I was aware she watched me just a little uneasily.

"It's nice of you to take pity on me," I said. "I was feeling pretty low. You know how it is. I've been around on my own, and got sick of my own company."

"I thought there were lots of attractive girls staying at the casino."

"Maybe there are, but they don't happen to be my style."

She smiled.

"What is your style?"

I never believe in pulling punches, in or out of the ring. I let her have it.

"Well, you are, I guess," I said, and added hastily, "and don't think that's your cue to yell for help. You asked me, and I've told you, and another thing while we're on the subject, I'm not the type who makes a girl yell for help."

She looked steadily at me.

"I didn't think you were or I wouldn't have asked you here."

That took care of that. Anyway,
it cleared the air. She started talking about her work. Fro
m what she told me it seemed to be well paid, and she seemed to do more or less what she liked, and go where she liked.

I was happy enough to sit there in the sunshine and listen. The Scotch was taking care of my nerves, and she was taking care of my thoughts. For the first time since that car crash I relaxed.

After a while she said, "But I'm talking too much about myself. What do you do?"

I was expecting that one, and had the answer ready.

"Insurance," I said. "I'm a leg man for the Pittsburgh General Insurance,"

"Do you like it?"

"It's all right. Like you, I get around."

"It must pay well if you can stay at the casino."

I had to get that straightened out at once.

"I promised myself I'd live like a millionaire for a couple of days, and I've saved for years to pull it off. Well, this is it, but I'll be moving into the town on Tuesday."

"Do you like being a millionaire?"

"There's nothing like it."

"That's the last thing I'd want to be."

   "Well, I guess I've never had enough money," I said, surprised at her emphatic tone. "It's my greatest ambition to get my hands on a roll and spend it. The casino is a kind of dress rehearsal."

"You mean really big money?" She was looking at me with interest.

"You bet I mean big money."

"Well, how will you get it?"

That stopped me. I suddenly realized I was talking too much.

"I haven't an idea. It's all a pipe-dream, of course. Maybe someone will die and leave me a fortune." I didn't get the joke over, and I noticed she looked curiously at me.

I was floundering around to change the subject when she remembered they were giving a recording of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony on the radio.

"Toscanini is conducting," she said. "Could you bear it?"

"Go ahead."

I had never heard Beethoven's Fifth Symphony; for that matter I had never heard any symphony, and I had only the vaguest idea what it was all about. But when the music came pouring out into the sunlit silence, its richness and its surging onrush had me gripping my chair. And when it was finally over, Virginia leaned forward and shut off the radio and looked at me enquiringly.

"Well?"

"I've never heard anything like that before," I said. "I've steered clear of that kind of music. I thought it was only for highbrows."

"Does that mean you liked it?"

"I don't know about that. It did something to me, if that's anything. All that sound, the movement, the way that fella built it up - well, I guess it was something."

"Like some more?"

"Is there any?"

"I have records inside. The Ninth's even better. The choral'll make your hair stand on end."

"Then I'd like to hear it."

She stood up.

"Come and help me load up. I've one of these record-changing gadgets."

I followed her into the big lounge: a comfortable, well-furnished room, full of books and water-colours I guessed were hers.

Against the wall was a massive radiogram, and by it a cabinet full of records.

"Is this place yours?" I asked, looking round.

"Oh, yes, but I don't come here often. I don't get the chance. When I'm not here I rent it to a girl friend who writes novels. She's in New York right now, but she'll be back in a couple of weeks."

"And where will you be?"

"Anywhere. I might be in China, for all I know."

That was a disturbing thought.

"But you're here for a couple of weeks?"

"Possibly three."

She loaded the record holder, putting on Beethoven's Ninth and the Eroica.

She was right about the choral in the Ninth. It did make my hair stand on end. When the Eroica came to an end she loaded the record holder with a symphony by Mendelssohn and another by Schubert, saying she wanted me to hear the differences in their technique.

It was getting on for seven o'clock by the time we were through playing records, and that still gave me five more hours before midnight.

"You wouldn't care to go some place for dinner?" I asked. "Nowhere very grand. I don't want to go back and change. But maybe you've a date, or something."

I waited for her to turn me down, but she didn't.

"Have you been to Raul's yet?"

"No. Where's that?"

"Oh, it's part of your education to go to Raul's. It's on the water-front. Let's go. It's fun."

We went to Raul's in her Lincoln convertible. It was a small Greek restaurant full of lighted fish tanks set in the walls, plush seats and gilt-framed mirrors.

Raul himself, a fat, cheerful Greek, waited on us. He said he knew just what we'd like. He didn't consult us, and started us with bean soup, then turtle steaks and young asparagus shoots and baked guava duff to follow.