She explained it to me. “I’d tell him to just wander around until he was sure our luggage had been brought in. We had to come aboard separate on this one on account of crew people knowing me. He came to the cabin and I gave him a celebration drink. It would really knock them out, that stuff. Then I’d let Ans in. You could count on four or five hours before you could slap them half awake. We know where the best place is on this boat, from before. It’s on the Promenade Deck about thirty feet forward from where the deck stops. It stops at the doors to the dining room. I guess it is about the middle of the ship. Right there there’s no place above you where people can look over. There isn’t any rail there or side deck on the Lounge I deck, and up on the Sun Deck there’s a lifeboat in the way. It’s the same on either side of the ship. You do it about three in the morning. They aren’t really awake. But they sort of walk, if you hold them on both sides. We sing and ask him if he’s feeling better if there’s people. I go and stand at the nearest stairway and if nobody is coming, I click my tongue, and Ans picks them up like you pick up a sleepy kid, and leans out over the rail and drops them.”
I dictated it back to her. Meyer had figured out the visitors’ pass system perfectly.
I was curious about how so many apparently intelligent men could be gulled so readily.
“Oh, you mean always tell the ones worth a try, and out of those, the ones you can get to take a real interest in you. The marrieds you brush off. Also the ones who know their way around too good. You work to get the name and home address and local address, and if they have to leave right off, that’s no good. Sometimes you can go ten days without finding one worth turning in the name so Mack can get him checked out. And then a lot of times from what he found out he’d say no. Like if the guy was too important and had too much money, it would be no just as quick as if he had no chance of raising the minimum twenty thousand. When you get a go-ahead, then you keep right on with the tease, letting him get close sometimes. We all worked it just the same. You cry a lot. You say you shouldn’t see him at all, that it’s too dangerous. You make him meet you at hideaway places at weird times. Then you confess your ex is a mental case and he’s going to kill you. You tell the guy your ex has found out about him, and you make him move to another place under another name. Then you start putting out, and you butter him up by going kind of crazy and telling him it’s never been like that before. After they start getting it, they’ll believe any damn fool thing you tell them, and do any fool thing you ask. So you fake an attempt on your life, and you say the only way to get away is tickets under a fake name on a cruise ship and bring lots of money, because you have an old friend in Kingston or St. Thomas or somewhere the ship is going who has a remote cottage somewhere and she can fix it so the two of you can stay there under some other name indefinitely. By then, because of the way he worked the postcard bit, any relatives he has and some friends and business partners have been getting cards from him from Spokane or Toledo or Albuquerque or some place like that, and that’s where they start hunting when they don’t hear anything else ever. We always worked it the same exact way, but DeeDee would handle a guy different than Tami or me, and I would use a different approach than Tami. The thing is, as sOon as he thinks he’s going to get to spend sack time with you on a cruise ship, he hasn’t got eyes for anything else. And making him believe you don’t dare be with him in public makes it a lot safer. I’d always bring one suitcase full of Ans’s things aboard with my stuff. How quick you could get him tuned up all the way kind of depended. One ran out on me the day before sailing. They gave me a terrible ride about that, DeeDee and Tami did. I think, all things considered, DeeDee could do the best and fastest job of nailing them down, but if in the beginning you let them think you’re going to be easy to get, you spoil it. Lonely men over forty-five, they all, every one of them, have this fantastic thing about young women, and that’s what you work on.”