Bitter looked at him. For a moment, Canidy thought there would be no reply, but then Bitter said, “I know what happened on the boat, Dick.”
“What boat?” Canidy asked, confused, and then he understood. 640h.
“You sonofabitch, that was a filthy thing to do,” Bitter said angrily.
“What were you doing, watching?” Canidy asked. Bitter didn’t THS LAST REHOES III reply, but it was clearly written on his face that he had indeed been watching.
“You fucking voyeur, you!” Canidy said, amused.
Bitter had the most infuriating urge to smile.
“She’s my cousin’s wife, goddamn it!” he said.
“I didn’t rape her,” Canidy said.
“She’s my cousin’s wife,” Bitter repeated.
“That’s his problem, Eddie Canidy said. “Not yours.”
“You have the morals of an alley cat,” Bitter said.
Canidy smiled at him. “Now we both understand that, what next?”
“You bastard!” Bitter said, but now he was smiling.
“What the hell did you do?” Canidy asked. “Follow us to the boat?”
“I went down to the river to think,” Bitter said. “And saw the light.”
“A gentleman would not have looked,” Canidy said piously.
“Oh, you sonofabitch!” Bitter said. “Jesus Christ, you’re impossible.”
“Go in the bathroom, Saint Edwin, and get a wad of toilet paper.”
“Do what?”
“To moisten the paper tape,” Canidy said. “To seal the boxes. Then we can go cash our checks and get a couple of drinks to celebrate our freedom.”
“We shouldn’t show up there with liquor on our breath Bitter said.
“We’re not in the Navy anymore, Ed,” Canidy said.
When they went back to the CAMCO offices in Rockefeller Center at half past two, a civilian, well dressed, well spoken, was waiting for them. His briefcase held their contracts and some other forms. There was, for instance, the question of what to do about their pay. CAMCO was willing to pay them in American money, or gold, in China, or to deposit their checks monthly to any bank of : their choice in the United States. If they had no bank, CAMCO would arrange with the Riggs National Bank in Washington for accounts. He would su gest, he said, that they take part, say $150 or $200, for their pay in China, and have the balance credited to their bank.
When they had filled out the necessary forms, he gave them their railroad tickets. They were to share a compartment on the 20th Century Limited to Chicago, departing Grand Central Station at 5:30 that night, and then were to have roomettes on the Super Chief out of Chicago. He also handed them passports. Canidy realized he hadn’t even thought about a passport. He had never been out of the United States before. But somebody had thought of that detail, someone with influence to get their photographs from the Navy and have them affixed to passports they had not applied for.
“When you get to San Francisco,” the man told them, “take a taxi to the Mark Hopkins Hotel and use the house phone to call Mr. Harry C. Claiborne. If there is some sort of delay, and you can’t make it to the Mark Hopkins by ten o’clock, go directly to Pier 17. You have passage aboard the Jan Suvit, of the Java-Pacific Line. It sails at midnight of the day you get to Frisco.”
The Super Chief put them in San Francisco at four in the afternoon four days later. As they made their way through the station toward the taxi stand, Canidy caught Bitter’s arm.
“You know what’s going to happen if we go to the Mark Hopkins Bitter didn’t understand the question.
“No, what?”
“You heard what that guy said. The ship sails at midnight. If we go to the hotel now, you know what’s going to happen. Someone is going to sit on us, before they lead us by the hand to the taxi that’ll take us to the pier.”
“What are you driving at?”
“I don’t know if I’m up to six or eight hours of sitting around a hotel room, letting my very active imagination run away with me.” imagination about what?” Bitter asked.
“Getting killed over there, Eddie. You haven’t worried about that?”
“Sure, I have,” Bitter confessed.