“The hell with them. You keep it like it is.”
“Do you really want me to?”
“Yes,” he said. “That’s the way I like it.”
“You don’t think I look too old?”
“You look better than any of them.”
“I’ll fix it up then. I can make it blonder if you like it.”
“What have the girls got to say about what you do?” Harry said. “They got no business to bother you.”
“You know how they are. You know young girls are that way. Listen, if you make a good trip, we’ll go to New Orleans, should we?”
“Miami.”
“Well, Miami anyway. And we’ll leave them here.”
“I got some trip to make first.”
“You aren’t worried, are you?”
“No.”
“You know I lay awake almost four hours just thinking about you.”
“You’re some old woman.”
“I can think about you any time and get excited.”
“Well, we got to fill this gas now,” Harry told her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
At ten o’clock in the morning in Freddy’s place Harry was standing in against the bar with four or five others, and two customs men had just left. They had asked him about the boat and he had said he did not know anything about it.
“Where were you last night?” one of them asked.
“Here and at home.”
“How late were you here?”
“Until the place shut.”
“Anybody see you here?”
“Plenty of people,” Freddy said.
“What’s the matter?” Harry asked them. “Do you think I’d steal my own boat? What would I do with it?”
“I just asked you where you were,” the Customs House officer said. “Don’t get plugged.”
“I’m not plugged,” Harry said. “I was plugged back when they seized the boat without any proof she carried liquor.”
“There was an affidavit sworn to,” the customs man said. “It wasn’t my affidavit. You know the man that made it.”
“All right,” said Harry. “Only don’t say I’m plugged at you asking me. I’d rather you had her tied up. Then I got a chance to get her back. What chance I got if she’s stolen?”
“None, I guess,” said the customs man.
“Well, go peddle your papers,” Harry said.
“Don’t get snotty,” said the customs man, “or I’ll see you get something to be snotty about.”
“After fifteen years,” said Harry.
“You haven’t been snotty fifteen years.”
“No, and I haven’t been in jail either.”
“Well, don’t be snotty or you will be.”
“Take it easy,” Harry said. Just then this goofy Cuban that drives a taxi came in with a fellow from the plane and Big Rodger says to him,
“Hayzooz, they tell me you had a baby.”
“Yes, sir,” says Hayzooz very proudly.
“When did you get married?” Rodger asked him.
“Lasta month. Montha for last. You come the wedding?”
“No,” said Rodger. “I didn’t come the wedding.”
“You missa something,” said Hayzooz. “You missa damn fine wedding. Whas a matta you no come?”
“You didn’t ask me.”
“Oh, yes,” said Hayzooz. “I forget. I didn’t ask you. . . . You get what you want?” he asked the stranger.
“Yes. I think so. Is that the best price you have on Bacardi?”
“Yes, sir,” Freddy told him. “That’s the real carta del oro.”
“Listen Hayzooz, what makes you think that’s your baby?” Rodger asks him. “That’s not your baby.”
“What you mean not my baby? What you mean? By God, I no let you talk like that! What you mean not my baby? You buy the cow you no get the calf? That’s my baby. My God, yes. My baby. Belong to me. Yes, sir!”
He goes out with the stranger and the bottle of Bacardi and the laugh is on Rodger all right. That Hayzooz is a character all right. Him and that other Cuban, Sweetwater.
Just then in comes Bee-lips the lawyer, and he says to Harry, “The customs just went out to take your boat.”
Harry looked at him and you could see the murder come in his face. Bee-lips went on in this same tone without any expression in it. “Somebody saw it in the mangroves from the top of one of those high WPA trucks and called up from where they’re building the camp out at Boca Chica to the Customs House. I just saw Herman Frederichs. He told me.”
Harry didn’t say anything, but you could see the killing go out of his face and his eyes came open natural again. Then he said to Bee-lips, “You hear everything, don’t you?”
“I thought you’d like to know,” Bee-lips said in that same expressionless voice.
“It’s none of my concern,” Harry said. “They ought to take better care of a boat than that.”
The two of them stood there at the bar and neither one said anything until Big Rodger and the two or three others had drifted out. Then they went in the back.
“You’re poison,” Harry said. “Everything you touch is poison.”
“Is it my fault a truck could see it? You picked the place. You hid your own boat.”
“Shut up,” Harry said. “Did they ever have high trucks like that before? That’s the last chance I had to make any honest money. That’s the last chance I got to go in a boat where there’s any money.”
“I let you know as soon as it happened.”
“You’re like a buzzard.”
“Cut it out,” Bee-lips said. “They want to go late this afternoon now.”
“The hell they do.”
“They’re getting nervous about something.”
“What time do they want to go?”
“Five o’clock.”
“I’ll get a boat. I’ll carry them to hell.”
“That isn’t a bad idea.”
“Don’t mouthe that now. Keep your mouth off my business.”
“Listen, you big murdering slob,” said Bee-lips, “I try to help you out and get you in on something——”
“And all you do is poison me. Shut up. You’re poison to anybody that ever touched you.”
“Cut it out, you bully.”
“Take it easy,” Harry said. “I got to think. All I’ve done is think one thing out and I got it thought out and now I got to think out something else.”
“Why don’t you let me help you?”
“You come here at twelve o’clock and bring that money to put up for the boat.”
As they came out Albert came up to the place and went up to Harry.
“I’m sorry, Albert, I can’t use you,” Harry said. He had thought it out that far already.
“I’d go cheap,” Albert said.
“I’m sorry,” Harry said. “I got no need for you now.”
“You won’t get a good man for what I’ll go for,” Albert said.
“I’m going by myself.”
“You don’t want to make a trip like that alone,” Albert said.
“Shut up,” said Harry. “What do you know about it? Do they teach you my business on the relief?”
“Go to hell,” said Albert.
“Maybe I will,” said Harry. Anybody looking at him could tell he was thinking plenty fast and he did not want to be bothered.
“I’d like to go,” Albert said.
“I can’t use you,” Harry said. “Let me alone, will you?”
Albert went out and Harry stood there at the bar looking at the nickel machine, the two dime machines and the quarter machine and at the picture of Custer’s Last Stand on the wall as though he’d never seen them.
“That was a good one Hayzooz told Big Rodger about the baby, wasn’t it?” Freddy said to him, putting some coffee glasses in the bucket of soapy water.
“Give me a package of Chesterfields,” Harry said to him. He held the package under the flap of his arm and opened it at one corner, took a cigarette out and put it in his mouth, then dropped the package in his pocket and lit the cigarette.
“What shape’s your boat in, Freddy?” he asked.
“I just had her on the ways,” Freddy said. “She’s in good shape.”
“Do you want to charter her?”
“What for?”
“For a trip across.”
“Not unless they put up the value of her.”
“What’s she worth?”
“Twelve hundred dollars.”
“I’ll charter her,” Harry said. “Will you trust me on her?”
“No,” Freddy told him.
“I’ll put up the house as security.”
“I don’t want your house. I want twelve hundred bucks up.”
“All right,” Harry said.
“Bring arount the money,” Freddy told him.
“When Bee-lips comes in, tell him to wait for me,” Harry said and went out.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Out at the house Marie and the girls were having lunch.
“Hello Daddy,” said the oldest girl. “Here’s Daddy.”
“What have you got to eat?” Harry asked.
“We’ve got a steak,” Marie said.
“Somebody said they stole your boat, Daddy.”
“They found her,” Harry said.
Marie looked at him.
“Who found her?” she asked.
“The Customs.”
“Oh, Harry,” she said, full of pity.
“Isn’t it better they found her, Daddy?” asked the second one of the girls.
“Don’t talk while you’re eating,” Harry told her. “Where’s my dinner? What you waiting for?”
“I’m bringing it.”
“I’m in a hurry,” Harry said. “You girls eat up and get out. I got to talk to your mother.”
“Can we have some money to go to the show this aft, Daddy?”
“Why don’t you go swimming. That’s free.”
“Oh, Daddy, it’s too cold to go swimming, and we want to go to the show.”
“All right,” said Harry. “All right.”
When the girls were out of the room he said to Marie, “Cut it up, will you?”
“Sure, Honey.”
She cut the meat as for a small boy.
“Thanks,” Harry said. “I’m a hell of a goddamn nuisance, ain’t I? Those girls aren’t much, are they?”
“No, Hon.”
“Funny we couldn’t get no boys.”
“That’s because you’re such a man. That way it always comes out girls.”
“I ain’t no hell of a man,” Harry said. “But listen, I’m going on a hell of a trip.”
“Tell me about the boat.”
“They saw it from a truck. A high truck.”
“Shucks.”
“Worse than that. Shit.”
“Aw, Harry, don’t talk like that in the house.”
“You talk worse than that in bed sometimes.”
“That’s different. I don’t like to hear shit at my own table.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Aw, Honey, you feel bad,” Marie said.
“No,” said Harry. “I’m just thinking.”
“Well, you think it out. I got confidence in you.”
“I got confidence. That’s the only thing I have got.”
“Do you want to tell
