The time grew near. The ship’s group of six musicians stood on one of the lower weather decks, playing sentimental Italian songs of sorrow and parting. People threw paper streamers. People ashore behind the wire waved and waved and waved. There was a call for visitors to leave. And another. And a final call. And we watched the jam as they surrendered their blue cards, putting them into the outstretched hand of the crew member. He would count them in batches, sing out the count, drop them into a slot in a wooden box as his companion kept score. Meyer went ashore. I leaned on the rail a dozen feet from the gangplank. The two crewmen conferred. The dock crew was beginning to cast off the first lines. One crew member hurried off.
Over the increased tempo of the music the bull horn blared, “Please. Your attenzione! One guest is steel aboard the sheep. Please, that guest weel go ashore immediately.”
So I surrendered my blue card and went ashore, and the crew member was slightly disapproving of me. They pulled the gangplank away as Soon as I stepped off it. I found Meyer behind the wire, grinning. He pulled me away from the people and said, very simple, once you figure it out. It makes you wonder what took you so long.”
“If you try to make me guess, old buddy… “Two visitors go aboard. He takes both cards. He waits for the maximum traffic density of the people leaving, those times when the card collector accumulates a stack and counts them during the next lull. They count cards, not heads. So the two cards, aligned to look like one, get popped into his outstretched hand. All cards issued are accounted for. If somebody visiting happens to lose his card while aboard, if it blows over or something, no sweat. He just says he lost it. They let him off, take his off the count. The system leaves everything tidy. But they sail with one extra. If they had to sail without getting the correct count, there’d be a determined search for a stowaway. They sail with an extra passenger they know nothing about, and in transit, the arithmetic is adjusted back to the proper number. The accomplice cannot come aboard as a passenger, of course. It would distress them to run a short count. It would imply somebody fell overboard.”
We turned and watched the Veronica D. moving away from the dock. “I could have slipped him both cards,” Meyer said, “and you would still be aboard.”
That night, up on the sun deck aboard the Flush, I told him all of it. All except the Griff part. And I told him the things I thought I might try. And he came up with a few impressive refinements.
Saturday morning, after I had rather unwillingly agreed to a more direct participation on his part, I made the ticket arrangements for us. A flight early Monday morning from Miami to Nassau on Bahamas Airways. And two tickets back to Port Everglades from Nassau on the Monica D., Stateroom Number 6 for me, an outside room on the Lounge Deck. And, for Meyer, the most remote thing I could find, according to the chart of the ship, an inside room on B Deck. There were only ten staterooms on B Deck, and those were clustered in the stern section. He got Number 21, a cubicle with a bed and pullman upper, a shower and a toilet.
We then went to see an old friend of mine named Jake Karlo. No one knows his age. He is about the size of a full-grown cricket. His standard gait is a jog trot. He has kept up with the changing times. When I first knew him he had a tiny office in a ratty old building in one of the oldest parts of downtown Miami. He booked third-class talent into fourth-class saloons-beefy strippers, loud young unfunny comedians and loud old unfunny comedians, off-key sopranos for weddings, and off-key baritones for funerals, musicians who would take years to make it, and musicians who had made it too long ago, butterfingered jugglers, trained dogs and shabby chorus lines. But he could make you believe each act was the greatest.