In a harsh half-whisper she said, “What I’ve been mixed up in, it’s a lot better all around if you weren’t parked under that bridge. And if they find me again, maybe that isn’t such a bad thing either. Awake in there I was thinking there’s no way you can stop being what you are. There’s no way to hide from what you know. And having anybody like me makes it tougher. Before I came creeping in here in the dark, I was getting screwy ideas, like paying off the world by going to work at a leper place if they still have them anymore these days. Miracle drugs, they probably got them all over and it’s too late.”
I went to her and put my hand on her shoulder and turned her around. She kept her eyes downcast. “We like you even if you don’t do dishes, Vangie. And we’d like to help you if we knew more about it.”
For a little while I thought she would talk. She sighed and turned away. “Oh, hell, Travis, it isn’t so much finking out as keeping you guys from knowing how lousy I really am.”
She braced up and assayed a crooked smile and said, “A year from now I’ll have forgotten the whole thing. I’ve had good practice forgetting stuff. Say, you think I ought to pay a little call on Meyer?”
“I think it would work out just about the same way.”
“So do I. Anyway, I think I can sleep now.” With a swift and sisterly kiss on my cheek, she left the lounge. I turned the light out and settled down again, the weapon back under the pillow where it belonged. I’d felt no slightest itch of desire for her, and knew why. It had been a white lie. I was a prude, in my own fashion. I had been emotionally involved a few times with women with enough of a record of promiscuity to make me vaguely uneasy. It is difficult to put much value on something the lady has distributed all too generously. I have the feeling there is some mysterious quota, which varies with each woman. And whether she gives herself or sells herself, once she reaches her own number, once X pairs of hungry hands have been clamped tightly upon her rounded undersides, she suffers a sea change wherein her juices alter from honey to acid, her eyes change to glass, her heart becomes a stone, and her mouth a windy cave from whence, with each moisturous gasping, comes a tiny stink of death.
I could not want her on any terms. But I could like her. And wish her well.
The next day, after beginning it with considerable good cheer, Vangie became more subdued and restless as we chugged north up the length of Biscayne Bay.
When she came up in mid afternoon to sit beside me at the topside controls, I asked her if she had decided what she’d do.
“Get off this thing after dark, Trav. God, just one clown has to see me and happen to mention to the wrong party that he saw Vangie. Then they start looking. I don’t know if I could sit still for it again. I think I used up any guts I had, and if they get me, I’d scream myself crazy. The smart thing to do is use the two hundred for a long bus ride, and go back to blonde, then work waitress or something until I find the right contacts so I can go back on the track. That’s what I should do.”
“But?”
“So there’s something fishy about this salvage business, Trav. About you and this boat, and about that gun bit last night. And when you hauled me out of the ocean, you had no idea of calling the cops, and you kept your mouth shut. I don’t know what you are. I know you’re not cheap muscle. You could be legit, even. But you know your way around, and you seem cool and smart and foxy.”
Meyer appeared and said, “Private discussion?”
“No, honey. Stick around. I’m about to proposition your buddy here. In my whole life I never saved a dime. In the last two years I’ve stashed maybe thirty-two thousand in cash. It’s what you could call dirty money maybe, but nobody can say I didn’t earn every dime of it, and it’s a very little bit of a cut of the whole take. I hid it in a pretty good place. I’ll tell you this much. I was partnered with a fellow named Griff. He’s as tough and quick and solid as you want to find. Right now he believes I’m gone for keeps. He knows I’ve been squirreling it away, but he doesn’t know where or how much. I know for sure that by now he’s probably cleaned out my place, my clothes and furs and jewelry and luggage and color TV and my darling little car, and he’ll be cashing that stuff in as fast as he can. And I think he’ll have just about torn my apartment to bits trying to find the money. But it’s in a good place, really, and if my luck is any good, he hasn’t found it. With that money I could really make a run for it, with a lot better chance of staying in the clear. But if Griff hasn’t found it, he’ll be keeping an eye on my place for somebody to come after it, because how could he know I hadn’t told somebody? Anyway, I think I can get a guy to help me just enough so I can get in and out, a bartender I think I can trust, a fellow who’s had the hots for me real bad for a long time. Anyway, at least I ought to be able to get close enough to find out if it’s too risky for me to try.”