“Come on, Harold,” he said. “We’d better be getting home.”
Spellman looked at Richard Gordon wildly. “He sneered at a stork,” he said. “He stepped away from a stork. A stork that wheels in circling flight——”
“Come on, Harold,” said the big young man.
Spellman put out his hand to Richard Gordon. “No offence,” he said. “You’re a good writer. Keep right on with it. Remember I’m always happy. Don’t let them confuse you. See you soon.”
With the large young man’s arm over his shoulder the two of them moved out through the crowd to the door. Spellman looked back and winked at Richard Gordon.
“Nice fella,” the proprietor said. He tapped his head. “Very well educate. Studies too much I guess. Likes to break glasses. He don’t mean no harm. Pay for everything he break.”
“Does he come in here much?”
“In the evening. What he say he was? A swan?”
“A stork.”
“Other night was a horse. With wings. Like a horse on a white horse bottle only with pair a wings. Nice fella all right. Plenty money. Gets a funny ideas. Family keep him down here now with his manager. He told me he like your books, Mr. Gordon. What you have to drink? On the house.”
“A whiskey,” said Richard Gordon. He saw the sheriff coming toward him. The sheriff was an extremely tall, rather cadaverous and very friendly man. Richard Gordon had seen him that afternoon at the Bradleys’ party and talked with him about the bank robbery.
“Say,” said the sheriff, “if you’re not doing anything come along with me a little later. The coast guard’s towing in Harry Morgan’s boat. A tanker signalled it up off Matacumbe. They’ve got the whole outfit.”
“My God,” said Richard Gordon. “They’ve got them all?”
“They’re all dead except one man, the message said.”
“You don’t know who it is?”
“No, they didn’t say. God knows what happened.”
“Have they got the money?”
“Nobody knows. But it must be aboard if they didn’t get to Cuba with it.”
“When will they be in?”
“Oh, it will be two or three hours yet.”
“Where will they bring the boat?”
“Into the Navy Yard, I suppose. Where the coast guard ties up.”
“Where’ll I see you to go down there?”
“I’ll drop in here for you.”
“Here or down at Freddy’s. I can’t stick it here much longer.”
“It’s pretty tough in at Freddy’s tonight. It’s full of those Vets from up on the Keys. They always raise the devil.”
“I’ll go down there and look at it,” Richard Gordon said. “I’m feeling kind of low.”
“Well, keep out of trouble,” the sheriff said. “I’ll pick you up there in a couple of hours. Want a lift down there?”
“Thanks.”
They went out through the crowd and Richard Gordon got in beside the sheriff in his car.
“What do you suppose happened in Morgan’s boat?” he asked.
“God knows,” the sheriff said. “It sounds pretty grizzly.”
“Didn’t they have any other information?”
“Not a thing,” said the sheriff. “Now look at that, will you?”
They were opposite the brightly lighted open front of Freddy’s place and it was jammed to the sidewalk. Men in dungarees, some bareheaded, others in caps, old service hats and in cardboard helmets, crowded the bar three deep, and the loud-speaking nickle-in-the-slot phonograph was playing “Isle of Capri.” As they pulled up a man came hurtling out of the open door, another man on top of him. They fell and rolled on the sidewalk, and the man on top, holding the other’s hair in both hands, banged his head up and down on the cement, making a sickening noise. No one at the bar was paying any attention.
The sheriff got out of the car and grabbed the man on top by the shoulder.
“Cut it out,” he said. “Get up there.”
The man straightened up and looked at the sheriff. “For Christ sake, can’t you mind your own business?”
The other man, blood in his hair, blood oozing from one ear, and more of it trickling down his freckled face, squared off at the sheriff.
“Leave my buddy alone,” he said thickly. “What’s the matter? Don’t you think I can take it?”
“You can take it, Joey,” the man who had been hammering him said. “Listen,” to the sheriff, “could you let me take a buck?”
“No,” said the sheriff.
“Go to hell then.” He turned to Richard Gordon.
“What about it, pal?”
“I’ll buy you a drink,” said Gordon.
“Come on,” said the Vet, and took hold of Gordon’s arm.
“I’ll be by later,” the sheriff said.
“Good. I’ll be waiting for you.”
As they edged in toward the end of the bar, the red-headed, freckle-faced man with the bloody ear and face, gripped Gordon by the arm.
“My old buddy,” he said.
“He’s all right,” the other Vet said. “He can take it.”
“I can take it, see?” the bloody-faced one said. “That’s where I got it on them.”
“But you can’t hand it out,” some one said. “Cut out the shoving.”
“Let us in,” the bloody-faced one said. “Let in me and my old buddy.” He whispered into Richard Gordon’s ear, “I don’t have to hand it out. I can take it, see?”
“Listen,” the other Vet said as they finally reached the beer-wet bar, “You ought to have seen him at noon at the commissary at Camp Five. I had him down and I was hitting him on the head with a bottle. Just like playing on a drum. I bet I hit him fifty times.”
“More,” said the bloody-faced one.
“It didn’t make no impression on him.”
“I can take it,” said the other. He whispered in Richard Gordon’s ear, “It’s a secret.”
Richard Gordon handed over two of the three beers the white-jacketed, big-bellied nigger bartender drew and pushed toward him.
“What’s a secret?” he asked.
“Me,” said the bloody-faced one. “My secret.”
“He’s got a secret,” the other Vet said. “He isn’t lying.”
“Want to hear it?” the bloody-faced one said in Richard Gordon’s ear.
Gordon nodded.
“It don’t hurt.”
The other nodded. “Tell him the worst of it.”
The red-headed one put his bloody lips almost to Gordon’s ear.
“Sometimes it feels good,” he said. “How do you feel about that?”
At Gordon’s elbow was a tall, thin man with a scar that ran from one corner of his eye down over his chin. He looked down at the red-headed one and grinned.
“First it was an art,” he said. “Then it became a pleasure. If things made me sick you’d make me sick, Red.”
“You make sick easy,” the first Vet said. “What outfit were you in?”
“It wouldn’t mean anything to you, punch drunk,” the tall man said.
“Have a drink?” Richard Gordon asked the tall man.
“Thanks,” the other said. “I’m drinking.”
“Don’t forget us,” said one of the two men Gordon had come in with.
“Three more beers,” said Richard Gordon, and the Negro drew them and pushed them over. There was not elbow room to lift them in the crowd and Gordon was pressed against the tall man.
“You off a ship?” asked the tall man.
“No, staying here. You down from the Keys?”
“We came in tonight from Tortugas,” the tall man said. “We raised enough hell so they couldn’t keep us there.”
“He’s a red,” the first Vet said.
“So would you be if you had any brains,” the tall man said. “They sent a bunch of us there to get rid of us but we raised too much hell for them.” He grinned at Richard Gordon.
“Nail that guy,” somebody yelled, and Richard Gordon saw a fist hit a face that showed close to him. The man who was hit was pulled away from the bar by two others. In the clear, one man hit him again, hard, in the face, and the other hit him in the body. He went down on the cement floor and covered his head with his arms and one of the men kicked him in the small of the back. All this time he had not made a sound. One of the men jerked him to his feet and pushed him up against the wall.
“Cool the son-of-a-bitch,” he said, and as the man sprawled, white-faced against the wall, the second man set himself, knees slightly bent, and then swung up at him with a right fist that came from down near the cement floor and landed on the side of the white-faced man’s jaw. He fell forward on his knees and then rolled slowly over, his head in a little pool of blood. The two men left him there and came back to the bar.
“Boy, you can hit,” said one.
“That son-of-a-bitch comes in to town and puts all his pay in the postal savings and then hangs around here picking up drinks off the bar,” the other said. “That’s the second time I cooled him.”
“You cooled him this time.”
“When I hit him just then I felt his jaw go just like a bag of marbles,” the other said happily. The man lay against the wall and nobody paid any attention to him.
“Listen, if you landed on me like that it wouldn’t make no impression,” the red-headed Vet said.
“Shut up, slappy,” said the cooler. “You’ve got the old rale.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“You punchies make me sick,” the cooler said. “Why should I bust my hands on you?”
“That’s just what you’d do, bust your hands,” the red-headed one said. “Listen,
