“You’re the sexiess woman I know,” he said, and rolled over and kissed her nipples and then made a ravenous slurping sound and bent swiftly to lick her navel. He burst out laughing.
“This’s a massive navel operation,” he said.
“What?” she said, laughing. “What do you mean?”
“This,” he said, and he put his tongue in her navel again and then reached for his coffee mug and held it high, spilling some of the bourbon onto his wrist. “Here is to Jason Trench’s massive navel operation,” he shouted. “Did you ever have a massive navel operation?”
“Never,” she said, and giggled and picked up her own mug. “Listen, do we have to have her staring at us?”
“Who?”
“Ava Gabor there, whatever her name is.”
“Gardner,” Willy said.
“Yeah.”
“We don’t need her.” He moved toward the picture and placed his forefinger on the movie star’s left breast with delicate precision and said to the photograph, “Miss Gardner, have you ever had a massive navel operation? No,” he answered himself. “I didn’t think you did,” and tore the picture from the wall. “There. No more Peepy Toms,” he said, and burst out laughing again. “What it is, it’s like a massive hernia operation,” he said and slapped his naked thigh and drank some more bourbon and said, “Ginny, honey, let’s do it again.”
“Let’s do what again?” she said.
“Let’s go shoot that guy.”
“What guy?”
“Son a bitch who wouldn’t listen to me.”
“Let’s shoot all the sonabitches who won’t listen to you,” Ginny said.
“Well, that’s a whole hell of a lot of people,” Willy said, giggling. “There’s fifty-five of them alone on that ship out there, none of them listening to me. We can’t go shooting everybody don’t want to listen to me, now, can we?”
“Sure, we can, why not? What ship out where?”
“The masshole navel operation,” Willy said, and began laughing again. “Jason’s asshole operation,” he said, and nearly choked. “Oh my God, he’s got fifty-five men out there who’re taking orders from a preggen woman, how about that?”
“What? Who?” Ginny said, and laughed and threw one leg over his thigh and began moving against him rhythmically and without passion, almost as a reflex action.
“Out there,” he said, pointing to where Ava Gardner’s picture had been. “That’s where the ship is. And what Jason’s doing is taking ’em off, you see? Except engineers and such. You see?”
“Sure,” Ginny said.
“What, then?”
“What do you mean?”
“What is it?”
“What is what?”
“What he’s doing?”
“He’s taking them off.”
“Off what?” Willy asked.
“His bellybutton,” Ginny said, and they both burst out laughing.
“The cutter!” Willy said.
“What cutter?”
“The Coast Guard cutter. The Mercury.”
“Oh.”
“That’s right,” Willy said.
“I say three cheers,” Ginny said.
“For what?”
“For Jonas.”
“Jason.”
“That’s right.”
“Why?”
“He brought you here to love me,” Ginny said.
“That’s what he did, that li’l sweetheart,” Willy said, and began giggling into Ginny’s collarbone. “Now, listen.”
“I’m listening.”
“Fifty-five men on that cutter, you hear?”
“I hear.”
“He’s bringing almost all of them here, putting them in the storage locker.”
His eyes had narrowed, his voice had lowered. Ginny squinted her eyes in imitation and moved closer to him.
“But you know what?”
“What?” Ginny said.
“He’s sending twenty-five of us out there!”
“Out where?”
“To the cutter. On the cutter.”
“What for?”
“To run it. To drive it. To, you know, make it go.”
“Can’t the Coast Guard make it go?”
“Sure, honey,” Willy said. “But not where Jason wants it to go.”
“Well, where does Jason want it to go?”
“Ah-ha,” Willy said. “That’s a secret.”
“Oh, you got secrets from me, huh?” she said, and teasingly tweaked his nose and then rolled into his lap and pulled her face back some three inches from his and pursed her lips and kissed him. “Where’s Jason gonna go, huh?” she said. “Where’s he gonna go? Tell me or I’ll kiss you to death.” He giggled and she kissed his eyes and his mouth and his nose again. “Huh? Where?”
Laughing, Willy said, “It’s a secret.”
“Where?” she said. “Huh? Where? Huh? Huh?”
It was possible, of course, that the men moving out toward that ship were not bona fide United States sailors. Yes, that was possible, Cummings thought. If this were a real naval maneuver, then only Navy boats would be in use. That maroon-and-black cabin-cruiser was definitely not a Navy boat, and neither was the white Chris-Craft that had come in from the ship and was now unloading more men at the pier.
Prisoners.
Yes.
That was the accurate word.
Those men coming onto the dock with their hands on their heads were prisoners, and they would be taken to the storage locker to join the others there under lock and key.
Cummings could hear muffled voices, “Move along, let’s keep it moving,” could see brass shining on khaki collars — some of the prisoners were officers, then — could hear a man shouting, “Goody, let’s move half those men out of the houses now,” and then heard the answering “Right, Jase!” and the sound of feet clattering on the wooden dock. The men from the ship were moving toward the storage locker. “How many more are on the cutter?” someone asked, and Cummings could not hear the reply, but he understood now that the ship out there was a Coast Guard vessel, and then he heard a phone ringing in one of the houses on the waterfront. He glanced over his shoulder, trying to locate the house. He thought the ringing sound was coming from the first house on the beach, more voices, the sound of an engine idling, the clattering noise that could come only from weapons, a door opening; he turned his head. A man with a rifle was coming out of the back door of the first house. Before the door closed, Cummings could see that another armed man was still in the house. The first man ran toward the pier, his rifle at port arms, and suddenly another phone was ringing in another house, another door was opening, another lone man with a rifle stepped out and moved swiftly and silently toward the waiting white Chris-Craft at the pier’s end. The door to the storage locker slammed shut, the loud click of the padlock snapped onto the air, another telephone was ringing.
“Enjoying yourself, mister?” a voice said.
Marvin watched as they brought the stranger into the repair shop and threw him headlong across the floor, near where Costigan was sitting beside Samantha. They were behaving differently now, these men. It had begun, he supposed, when they brought Costigan back not more than a half hour ago, his nose bleeding, his left eye squinted shut, his clothes stained with grease. A tenseness had come into the shop with his return. Harry had begun pacing the room with long impatient strides. Clyde, silent and lackadaisical before, had suddenly become alert and edgy. The same knife-edged tautness was apparent in the manner of the men who opened the door now, throwing the stranger in onto the floor. Marvin, watching them, sensing their tenseness, had the feeling that something outside was reaching a climax and that once the climax had passed, his life would be in real danger. He looked at the man on the floor. The right side of his face was bruised and swollen as though he had been hit once, sharply, with something blunt. On the other side of the room Harry held a hurried, whispered conversation with the two men who had brought the man in, and then nodded and said goodbye to them as they walked out. He went over to the man and stood beside him spread-legged, almost straddling him.