Poor guy calls up all steamed up, right on time, and she isn’t even home. Fine thing. So he thinks maybe her clock is wrong and she ran out for a paper or a loaf of bread or something. Five minutes later I tried again, and she answered, and I rattled her eager, frustrated, infuriated, helpless little eardrum and this time heard her cry over and above the racket, “Goddamn it to hell!”
So on the off chance, the guy would call the office, so I phoned at once before she would decide I might, and a subdued voice said, “Three one two one. ”Is Mary Smith there, please? Extension sixty-six.“
“Miss Smith is not in today, sir.”
“Well… if she should come in or phone in, would you tell her that Mr. McGee has been trying to reach her, and he’ll phone her at home again at three o’clock.”
“Is there a number where she can reach you, sir?”
“No. I don’t expect to be here much longer, thanks.”
She would know I had the right number, as I had reached her before. I had the bell on my phone switched off. I could make outgoing calls, however. So I tried her at twelve thirty. She hung up on the second rasp. At one her line was busy when I tried it. I had been hoping for that. It would be a help. A few minutes later it wasn’t busy. She caught it on the first ring. “Hello?” Raaaasp. Cry of pure despair. Clunk as she hung up.
Snoopy the dog wears a guilty and evil grin from time to time. I couldn’t work one up.
Meyer and I were in the lounge going over final details when I suddenly realized it was exactly three. I had no time to prepare him for the Electric Alibi. I heard a distinct sob before she hung up.
He stared at me as I came back to the chair. “Sometimes you worry me, Travis. It’s something about the way your mind works.”
“I often find it depressing.” I stood up again. “Hell, we’re all set. I’m going to drive up and see Janine and Connie. I’ll stay over, and drive down to Sunnydale early Monday. You get there about noon and get a motel room somewhere, and go to the hotel I told you about for lunch. I’ll show up with our pigeon. I think that sometime about maybe five or six o’clock Miss Mary Smith will show up and beat on the doors. I think I’ve described her well enough. Keep an eye out for her and intercept her and tell her you think I’m on the Alabama Tiger’s cruiser and point the way.”
“Consolation prize?”
“Who for?”
He gave up and sighed and left. I phoned To-Co Groves and Connie’s cry of pleasure at my coming was convincing enough. I buttoned up,, switched the Sentry on, and put my gear in the car. Then I walked to the Tiger’s permanent floating housepariy. Even with the boat closed up, the Afro-Cuban beat was loud. When I opened the door to the big main cabin area the sound nearly drove me backward. The big Ampex system was blasting, and the regulars were all around the perimeter because Junebug had herself a new challenger. She is a rubbery brown solid chunk of twenty-something-year-old girl, a sturdy mix of Irish, Gypsy and Cherokee. She wore a pink fuzzy bikini, and she was a go-going dervish, black short hair snapping, face and eyes a blur, body flexing and pumping to the beat, which Styles was sharpening with a blur of hands on the battered old bongos. The challenger was one of the king-sized beach bunnies, one of the big young straight-haired blondes about nineteen who look so much alike lately they should wear numbers on the side like stock cars. The money was in three piles on the deck by the Tiger’s big bare feet. The big bunny was beginning to lag and flounder, miss the beat and catch up. Her mouth hung open. Her hip action in her zebra bikini was getting ratchety. The Tiger sat in a high glaze, swaying on the stool, smiling to himself, glass in hand. Muggsie Odell gave me her big smile, and I pointed at my watch and raised an eyebrow. She checked her watch, then flashed me seven sets of ten fingers plus four. Except for being so sweaty her body looked oiled, the Junebug looked absolutely fresh after seventy-four minutes of it. Maybe the challengers, can go all day long to the beat they’re used to, but they don’t realize the additional demand on stamina of the Afro-Cuban tempo. One of them is reputed to have lasted over two hours before hitting the deck, but the Junebug wasn’t even close to her own limit.
I crooked a finger at Muggsie. She nodded and followed me out and closed the hatch against the noise. We sat on the wide transom and Muggsie said, “She’s good for five more minutes, if that. I just as soon not be in there. They’re waiting for her to fall down, and she’s a stubborn kid and she’ll keep going until she does drop. I just don’t like to see them fall down like dead.”
“A favor?”
“Depends. Probably yes, McGee.”
“I’m going away for a couple of days. A very very nice little package is going to come right here looking for me. I’m having her steered here. The name is Mary Smith.”
“No kidding!”
“Tell her I was here with the group but I went away and you think I said I was going to come back, so it would be best for her to wait. Meanwhile, has Hero been around?”
I was interrupted by a yell from the group. The door burst open and somebody stopped the tape. The Junebug came out, yelling Ya HAA, Ya HAAA, and jumping into the air with every third stride. Through the open door I could see the bunny face-down on the deck trying to push herself up, with people reaching to help her. Junebug gave a great leap to the dock, spun the valve on the dock hose and held the nozzle aimed right at the crown of her head. After it had streamed down her face and across her smile and pasted her dark hair flat, she stuck the nozzle under the bildni top for a few moments and then under the elastic of the bikini bottoms and, with an ecstatic smile, worked it slowly all the way around to the back and around the other side of that muscular body to the front again.
“Anybody else?” she yelled. “Any new pigeon, step up and put your bread on the decki The old Junebug is ready.”
“I’d watch her fall,” Muggsie said grimly. “I’d watch her fall and hope for a couple of good bounces. What’s this with Hero? What are you asking about Hero?”
“Has he been around?”
“Who can stop him? You know Hero. Every hour, cruising in and seeing if there’s any new stuff he hasn’t seen before. With him it’s a dedication. Are you saying aim Hero at this Mary Smith? What’s the matter? You hate the girl?”
“Let’s say they deserve each other. As soon as he starts trying to snow her, Muggsie, you go back to her and say you just heard that I came here in a bad mood and there was girl who wanted to cheer me up and we went off together, so maybe there’s no point in waiting.”
“Why don’t I just chunk her on the head and help Hero carry her back to his pad?”
“Because at is entirely possible she’ll chunk him on the head and take him back to hers.”
“Oh. One of those. Anyway, Hero certainly is a handsome guy, and he certainly has enough charm for a whole charm school, and he certainly has given an awful lot of lady tourists a vacation they’ll never forget. I was saying just the other day I could really go for that guy, if only he just wasn’t a real rotten person through and through.”
“You mean if you didn’t know him.”
“That’s what I must mean. Wherever you’re going, have fun, Trav. I’ll unite the happy couple and get her off your hands for good.”
As I left I walked by Junebug on the dock, toweling herself dry. “Hey you, McGee,” she said, with the big white mocking grin. “Hey, you never tole me when we’re gonna start to go steady. How about it?”
I looked at all that brown rubbery, arrogant vitality. “I told you, Junebug, the very next time I get a death wish, I’ll look you up.”
“Some coward!”
“You can believe it.”
“Aww. Poor fella. I wouldn’t kill you. Just cripple you up pretty good, hah?”
“I think your trouble is that you’re too shy. You lack self-confidence. Get out and meet people.” When I was a long way away I could still hear Junebug cawing with laughter.