“Have you told Claire all this?”
“Of course not.”
“Are you being fair to her?”
“I am going to tell her the whole thing as soon as we are en route, Kat, when she can’t try to do anything about it. She’s got more fight than is good for her. She acts first and thinks later. We’re getting on a ship late tomorrow afternoon at Port Everglades, en route to Lisbon. Tomorrow evening, when she can’t turn the ship around, I’ll tell her. By the time we get to Lisbon she should be settled down. Am I keeping you here too long? There’s one other thing I want to say. I told you all this for two reasons. I guess you can guess the second one.”
She stared at him blankly, then with a growing comprehension and horror. “Oh, no, Dial! They couldn’t do that to...”
“Those people down there are blinded by their own righteousness, Katherine. But they are not going to go out and select a victim on the basis of rumor. Coombs is a fanatic, but I don’t think he’d turn his army loose on anybody without proof which satisfied him. That’s why they’ve been able to get away with these floggings. In the case of Natalie, they had the proof. I checked it with her. I’m saying that you and Jackie Halley should avoid... I don’t know how to say this... the appearance of evil. You shouldn’t, either of you, do anything which could be interpreted the wrong way. I say this with complete seriousness, Kat. Somebody with a lot to gain out of that bay fill is out to smash the committee completely. They want to take the heart out of everybody in any position to publicly oppose the bay fill. That’s the pattern. That’s what the rest of you are up against. Believe me, they’ve taken the heart out of me.”
“I... I remember what that girl said. There were five of them, dressed in black, wearing black hoods. All they said was ‘Repent, repent.’ They were still trying to find out who the men were when she moved away. She was a nurse, wasn’t she?”
“Having an affair with a married doctor. That was the rumor.”
“I have to get back. I’m late now.”
“Do you understand?”
“Of course I do, Di.”
“Natalie has money of her own. She’d have just moved out of my house. She wouldn’t leave, probably because of the man. I’m trying to keep myself from being the outraged father. I don’t want to make moral judgments. I’ve lived in a lot of glass houses. If she’d had more security, maybe she wouldn’t be in this mess now. I didn’t give it to her. Maybe I could have. Maybe I was too lazy, emotionally. Katherine, keep an eye on her. She respects you.”
“I’m fond of her.”
She was late getting back to her desk. When she had a chance she asked McGowan if Jimmy Wing had looked in.
“Not today. I would have seen him. And he’s not good enough for you anyway.”
“It’s not like that, Dennie. Really. It’s not like that at all.”
He winked at her. “Maybe not for you, sweetheart. But I say it is like that for him.”
At quarter of twelve Burton Lesser and Leroy Shannard came in. Swarthy little Doctor Felix Aigan was with them. The three men were laughing at something as they came in. Doc and Leroy were in sports shirts. Burt wore a necktie and a linen jacket, and looked sweaty. This is three-fifths of the opposition, she thought. Ordinary men in a small southern city on a hot day. There is nothing menacing about them, nothing which could be involved in spying on a young girl or threatening her with flogging by hooded men. She felt the smile of welcome on her mouth.
“Gentlemen?” she said briskly.
“Katherine, dear, check Mr. Martin for us, will you?” Burt Lesser asked.
She picked up her inside phone and punched the button for Martin Cable’s secretary. “Helen? Mr. Lesser, Mr. Shannard and Doctor Aigan are here.”
“We’re early, Mrs. Hubble,” Doc Aigan said.
“Send them right on back,” Helen said.
Katherine hung up and smiled and gave them the message. Leroy said, “Got yourself a burn, Miz Katherine.”
“I’ll never learn,” she said ruefully.
Doc Aigan said, “I’ll have my girl drop off a sample of stuff for you to try, honey. Supposed to make what little melanin you got in your skin do a better job for you. A good house puts it out so it ought to be okay. Matter of fact, I’d like a report on how it works for you.”
“Thanks, Doctor. If it works on me, it’ll work for anybody. I can get blistered looking at a colored photograph of a sunset.”
Aigan hurried along on his short legs, his sandals slapping the terrazzo, catching up with Burt Lesser and Leroy. She turned and watched the three of them. Doc was an affable little man. Burt was a neighbor. Leroy Shannard had been Van’s attorney, and he had been very understanding and helpful when he had handled Van’s estate. Van had designed Doc’s home. All three men had been at Van’s funeral.
“Miss?” a voice was saying. “Miss?”
She turned and saw a man standing in front of her desk. “I’m so sorry,” she said.
“All I want is to rent a box like to put something important in, Miss.”
“You’ll want to talk to Mrs. Harper,” she said. “The lady with the white hair behind that counter over there to your right, sir.”
As she watched Mrs. Harper greet the man and give him an application form, she thought, All I want is to rent a box like to hide in for a while. I don’t want to think about the kind of a world where men like Aigan and Shannard and Lesser could know something about what is happening to Dial Sinnat, and approve of it.
When it was time to go to lunch and Jimmy had not yet appeared, she waited five minutes into her short time allowed and then went back across the street, hoping he would show up before she had to return to work.
Fifteen
“I remember you, Mr. Wing,” Ernest Willihan said. “You interviewed me a long time ago when you were still in school, a reporter for a school paper. You reported the interview accurately and still managed to make me sound like an idiot. I predicted a newspaper career for you at that time. What brings you to St. Pete?”
Willihan was a brown and totally bald man in his forties. The tilt of his eyes and the baldness gave him a slight Oriental flavor. They talked in a small untidy office with a single large window overlooking a long concrete wharf owned by Stormer and Willihan — Marine Research and Development. Willihan’s smile was inverted and his eyes were bright with amusement.
“Maybe I ought to do a feature on this setup, Mr. Willihan. What happens to public-school science teachers.”
“You could get some of your material from your boss down there, Ben Killian. We’ve done some work for him. Tank tests on experimental hull designs. His little boat works there has done some fascinating things. It isn’t commercial, of course. If you are interested in us, we wear two hats. We’re an independent testing outfit for small boats, motors and boating devices. That’s the bread and butter. Also, we are developing a few ideas of our own. That’s feast or famine.”
“What kind of ideas?”
“Right now we’re fiddling with a sonar rig for small boats which can be set to give a warning buzz when the bottom shoals to within X feet of what you need to float the boat, thirty to forty feet off your bow. When the bugs are out of it, we hope to license it to somebody who can knock the unit price down below five hundred bucks.”
“Sounds better than teaching.”
“There’s more money. There’s no politics. But I miss the kids. I tell myself someday I’ll go back into it. You hit me on a good day, Mr. Wing. Want a guided tour?”