“Why not?”
“We’re not allowed to talk about the people we knew before we were converted, and there’s no one in the colony called O’Gorman. When I’m looking after Mother Pureza I often read the book the Master keeps with our other-world names in it. There’s no O’Gorman in it. I have a very good memory.”
“Can you remember Sister Blessing’s name?”
“Naturally. Mary Alice Featherstone and she lived in Chicago.”
Quinn asked her about some of the others but none of the names she mentioned meant any more to him than Mary Alice Featherstone did.
In the light of the rising moon he watched Karma walk back toward the Tower. Her step was brisk and buoyant as if she had forgotten all about wanting to die and was concentrating instead on the sins she intended to commit when her chance came.
Quinn drove to San Felice, checked in at a motel on the waterfront and went to sleep to the intermittent croaking of a foghorn and the sound of surf crashing against the breakwater.
Ten
By nine o’clock in the morning the sun had burned off most of the fog. The sea, calm at low tide, was streaked with colors, sky-blue on the horizon, brown where the kelp beds lay, and a kind of gray-green in the harbor itself. The air was warm and windless. Two children, who looked barely old enough to walk, sat patiently in their tiny sailing pram waiting for a breeze.
Quinn crossed the sandy beach and headed for the breakwater. Tom Jurgensen’s office was padlocked but Jurgensen himself was sitting on the concrete wall talking to a gray-haired man wearing a yachting cap and topsiders and an immaculate white duck suit. After a time the gray-haired man turned away with an angry gesture and walked down the ramp to the mooring slips.
Jurgensen approached Quinn, unsmiling. “Are you back, or haven’t you left?”
“I’m back.”
“You didn’t give me much chance to raise the money. I said a week or two, not a day or two.”
“This is a social call,” Quinn said. “By the way, who’s your friend in the sailor suit?” “Some joker from Newport Beach. He wouldn’t know a starboard tack from a carpet tack but he’s got a seventy-five-foot yawl and he thinks he’s Admiral of the fleet and Lord of the four winds... How broke are you, Quinn?”
“I told you yesterday. Flat and stony.”
“Want a job for a few days?”
“Such as?”
“The Admiral’s looking for a bodyguard,” Jurgensen said. “Or, more strictly, a boat guard. His wife’s divorcing him and he got the bright idea of cleaning everything out of his safe deposit boxes and taking it aboard the Briny Belle before his wife could get a court order restraining him from disposing of community property. He’s afraid she’ll find out where he is and try to take possession of the Briny and everything on it.”
“I don’t know anything about boats.”
“You don’t have to. The Briny’s not going anywhere until the next six-foot tide can ease her past the sand bar. That will be in four or five days. Your job would be to stay on board and keep predatory blondes off the gangplank.”
“What’s the pay?”
“The old boy’s pretty desperate,” Jurgensen said. “I think maybe you could nick him for seventy-five dollars a day, and that’s not seaweed.”
“What’s the Admiral’s name?”
“Alban Connelly. He married some Hollywood starlet, which doesn’t mean much, since every female in Hollywood under thirty is a starlet.” Jurgensen paused to light a cigarette. “Think of it, loafing all day in the sun, playing gin rummy over a few beers. Sound good?”
“Neat,” Quinn said. “Especially if the Admiral’s luck isn’t too good.”
“With ten million dollars, who needs luck? You want me to go and tell him about you, give you a little build-up?”
“I could use the money.”
“Fine. I’ll skip down to the Briny and talk to him. I suppose you can start work any time?”
“Why not?” Quinn said, thinking, I have nothing else to do: O’Gorman’s in hell, Sister Blessing’s in isolation, Alberta Haywood’s in jail. None of them is going to run away. “Do you know many of the commercial fishermen around here?”
“I know all of them by sight, most of them by name.”
“What about a man called Aguila?”
“Frank Aguila, sure. He owns the Ruthie K. You can see her from here if you stand on the sea wall.” Jurgensen pointed beyond the last row of mooring slips. “She’s an old Monterey-type fishing boat, anchored just off the port bow of the black-masted sloop. See it?”
“I think so.”
“Why the interest in Aguila?”
“He married Ruth Haywood six years ago. I just wondered how they were getting along.”
“They’re getting along fine,” Jurgensen said. “She’s a hardworking little woman, often comes down to the harbor to spruce up the boat and help Frank mend his nets. The Aguilas don’t socialize much, but they’re pleasant, unassuming people... Come along, you can wait in my office while I go out to the Briny Belle to see Connelly.”
Jurgensen unlocked his office and went inside. “There’s the typewriter, you can write yourself a couple of references to make Connelly feel he’s getting a bargain. And you don’t have to bother with details. By ten o’clock Connelly will be too cockeyed to read anyway.”
When Jurgensen had gone Quinn looked up Frank Aguila’s number in the telephone directory and dialed. A woman who identified herself as the baby-sitter said that Mr. and Mrs. Aguila were down in San Pedro for a couple of days attending a union meeting.
When Quinn reached the Briny Belle a young man in overalls was painting out the name on her bow while Connelly leaned over the rail urging him to hurry.
Quinn said, “Mr. Connelly?”
“Quinn?”
“Yes.” “You’re lace.”
“I had Co check out of my motel and make arrangements for my car.”
“Well, don’t just stand there,” Connelly said. “You’re nor about Co be piped aboard if that’s what you’re waiting for.”
Quinn walked up the gangplank, already convinced that the job wasn’t going to be as pleasant as Jurgensen had let on.
“Sit down, Quinn,” Connelly said. “What’s-his-name, that jackass who sell boats—did he tell you my predicament?”
“Yes.”
“Women don’t know anything more about a boat than its name, so I’m having the Briny’s name changed. Pretty clever, no?”
“Fiendishly.”
Connelly leaned back on his heels and scratched the side of his large red nose. “So you’re one of those sarcastic bastards that likes to make funnies, eh?”
“I’m one of those.”
“Well, I make the funnies around here, Quinn, and don’t you forget it. I make a funny, everybody laughs, see?”
“You can buy it cheaper in a can.”
“I don’t think I’m going to like you,” Connelly said thoughtfully. “But for four or five days I’ll go through the motions if you will.”
“That sounds fair.”
“I’m a fair man, very fair. That’s what that little blonde tramp, Elsie, doesn’t understand. If she hadn’t grabbed for it, I’d have thrown it to her. If she hadn’t gone around bleating about her career, I’d have bought her a career like some other guy’d buy her a bag of peanuts... What’s-his-name said you play cards.”
“Yes.”
“For money?”
“I have been known to play for money,” Quinn said carefully.
“O.K., let’s go below and get started.”