Charles Williams-All The Way 1958(1)

One
I was talking sailfish with some man from Ohio when I noticed
her. I’d just lit a cigarette and had turned to drop the lighter
back in the pocket of the terry-cloth robe beside me. She was
off to the right and a little behind us, sitting cross-legged on a
large beach towel with her face lowered slightly over the book
spread open between her knees. At the moment she
registered merely as a pair of nice legs and a sleek dark head,
but after I’d looked away something about her began to
bother me.
“I thought I’d go nuts,” the Ohio man was saying. “This
damn sail must have trailed us a hundred yards. He’d come
up behind the bait and follow it like a kitten after a ball of
yarn—”
“They’ll do that sometimes,” I said. “Did the skipper try
slowing down, and speeding up?”
“Sure. Tried everything. But we never could coax a strike
out of him. Finally went down.”
I frowned, thinking of the girl, and turned to shoot another
glance at her. Somehow she seemed vaguely familiar, but that
still wasn’t it exactly. What the devil was it? Then I began to
catch on. The pose was phony. She wasn’t reading that book;
she was listening.

To us? That didn’t make sense. What woman would waste
her time eavesdropping on a pair of filberts second-guessing a
sailfish? But there it was. There were a few sunbathers
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sprawled around in the vicinity, but ours was the only
conversation near enough to be heard. Maybe I was mistaken
—No. There was no doubt of it. The little frown of
concentration on her face wasn’t directed at the book at all,
but towards a spot just to the left of it, towards us. And her
eyes didn’t move when she turned a page.
Well, maybe she was a screwball, or a fisherman herself.
But she didn’t appear to fit either category—if they were two
categories. I tried to tag her, and the only thing I could come
up with was clothes-horse, which was a little on the bizarre
side in view of the fact she was about seventy per cent naked
at the time. I wondered how a woman could look smart,
patrician, and faintly elegant while wearing a bathing suit,
and decided it must be the chignon and the beautifully
tapered hands.
Or the sun, I thought, or the two Martinis. Knock it off. I
shrugged, and went back to the conversation. “You going out
again tomorrow?” I asked the Ohio man.
It was a still and muggy afternoon in early November. The
place was Key West, and we were lying on the narrow strip of
sand in front of the private beach club to which I’d been given
a guest card by the motel where I was staying.
“No,” he said. “My wife wants to go over to Havana. We’re
taking the plane in the morning. How about you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I was hoping to find somebody to
split a charter with.”
“I know what you mean,” he replied. “It’s a shame to have
to charter the whole boat when you’re alone. Damned
expensive, and they fish two lines or four just as easy as one.”
I glanced round at the girl, and a slight movement of her
face told me I’d almost caught her looking at me. I was
conscious again of the impression I’d seen her before. But
where? I’d been so many places the past two weeks they were
hard to sort out. It couldn’t have been here. This was only the
third day I’d been in Key West, and the other two I’d spent out
in the Stream, fishing. Miami Beach? Chicago? Las Vegas?
Maybe if I saw her with her clothes on, it would help. I tried
a tailored suit, and one of the new sheath things, and then
some hand-knitted jersey, but got no make. Slacks? She
wouldn’t be caught dead in them, I decided; women who
could wear slacks never did.
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The Ohio man looked at his watch and stood up, brushing
sand from his thick-set body. “I’ve got to get back and start
packing. Take it easy, pal.”
He departed. The girl went on staring at the pages of her
book. Far out, a westbound tanker hugged the edge of the
reef to avoid the current of the Stream. I’d better start
packing myself, I thought, and get out of Key West. I had to
come up with something pretty soon; in another week or ten
days I’d be broke. Sooner, if I spent any more on fishing trips.
I wondered about the girl again. Propping myself on an
elbow, I glanced round at her. “What’s the world record for
dolphin?”
I expected a blank stare, of course, or one right out of the
deep freeze, but instead she said calmly, without even looking
up, “Hmmm. Just a moment.” She leafed back through the
book and ran her finger down a column. “Seventy-five and a
half pounds. It was taken off East Africa.”
It caught me completely off-balance. She glanced up finally.
Her eyes were a very dark blue, almost violet, in a thin but
fine-boned face. They regarded me with urbane coolness, but
then amusement got the upper hand. “All right. I was
listening.”
I sat up and slid over by her. Picking up the book, I glanced
at the jacket. It was a volume on salt-water fishing. “I
wouldn’t have said you were a fisherman.”
She reached for the packet of cigarettes at her side. When I
held the lighter, she smiled at me over the flame. “I’m not, as
a matter of fact. If you’d asked me for the world’s record
Striped Limbo, I’d still have tried to look it up.”
“Then why the book?” I asked.“Your boy friend a
fisherman?”
She shook her head. “No, it’s not that. I just wanted to try
it.”
“Why?” I asked. She still didn’t look like an outdoor type.
“A man I used to work for. He talked so much about marlin
and sailfish I decided if I ever had a chance I’d see what the
attraction was. Maybe you could tell me something about the
boats.”
“Sure,” I said. “The charter fleet ties up over in Garrison
Bight. Along Roosevelt Boulevard, I think it is. Most of them
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charge sixty a day, but a few are higher. The only one I’ve
fished with is Captain Holt, of the Blue Runner. He’s good,
and so is his Mate; they’ll put you into fish if anybody will. He
charges sixty-five.”
“They’re rather expensive, aren’t they?”
“Nothing’s ever cheap about boats,” I said. “And don’t
forget you’re hiring two men all day, plus gasoline, tackle,
bait, and so on. Plus a lot of skill you can get only with
experience. Are you alone?”
While I was speaking I noticed the same intent expression
on her face I’d seen before. It puzzled me. “Oh,” she said
abruptly, as if she’d been thinking of something else. “I—yes,
I’m alone.”
“Well, look,” I said, “if you want to go out tomorrow, why
don’t we team up? It’s a lot less expensive—thirty-two dollars
fifty apiece.”
She appeared to think about it. “We-ell—”
”Come on, I’ll buy you a drink,” I told her. “We can talk it
over.”
She smiled. “All right.” I helped her up, and gathered up her
towel and my robe. She was a little over average height, I
noted, and very slender. Too slender, I thought, to attract
much attention among all the stacked and sun-gilded flesh
lying around on Florida beaches, but she was smart-looking
and exquisitely feminine and she moved nicely. She appeared
to be around thirty.
The bar was located on a screened porch at one end of the
dining-room. It was empty at the moment except for the
white-jacketed barman and two men arguing about the
Detroit Lions. We sat down at one of the small tables along
the screened wall facing the beach. The barman came over.
She ordered a Scotch on the rocks, and I asked for a Martini.
A big fan in the corner blew humid air across us.
“My name’s George Hamilton,” I said.
She dropped the book on a chair beside her. “Forsyth.
Marian Forsyth. How do you do, Mr. Hamilton?”
“Have you been here long?”
“Just two days,” she replied.
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“You know, I keep thinking I’ve seen you somewhere
before.”
Again I was conscious of the urbane amusement in the eyes.
“Really? I thought we had by-passed that one.”
“No,” I said. “It’s on the level. There is something familiar
about you. Where are you staying?”
“The Hibiscus Motel, just up the street.”
“Then we’re neighbors. I’m there too.”
“That might have been where you saw me. In the lobby,
perhaps.”
“I suppose so,” I said. “But I don’t see why I’d be so hazy
about it. You’re quite striking, you know. I mean, the Black
Irish coloring, and the classic line of that hair-do. It sings.”
She propped her elbows on the table, with her chin on her
laced fingers, and smiled. “And what other personality
problems do you have, Mr. Hamilton, besides shyness?”
I grinned. “I’m sorry. Seriously, though, if any Charles or
Antoine ever tries to tout off that chignon, shoot him.”
“That seems a little drastic, doesn’t it? But—if you insist.”
Then she added, “Incidentally, I’m not Irish. I’m Scottish. My
maiden name was Forbes.”
I was reaching for cigarettes in the pocket of the robe,
which was on the chair beside me. When I glanced up at her,
there was nothing in her face but that same cool good humor.
“Oh?” I said. Then I remarked, “I didn’t know you were
married.” She wore no ring.
“I’m divorced,” she said. “Where are you from, Mr.
Hamilton?”
The barman brought over the drinks. “Texas,” I told her.
She took a sip of the Scotch and looked at me thoughtfully.
“I’d never have known it. You don’t sound a bit like a Texan.”
“I’m not a professional,” I said. “It’s a fallacy, anyway. All
Texans don’t go around saying ‘Howdy, pardner.’”
“Yes, I know. I’m from Louisiana, myself. But I do have a
pretty fair ear for accents. You’ve lost yours entirely.”
“I never really had one,” I said. “But while we’re on this
Professor ‘Iggins kick, you can spot it if you listen closely. I
still boot one occasionally. Thanksgiving, for instance. And
afternoon. That over-stressed first syllable is pure Texan.”
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She nodded. “And Southern. You must have a good ear
yourself.”
I shrugged. “I had a little speech training. At one time I was
going to be an actor.”
She regarded me with interest. “But you’re not in show
business?”
“No,” I said. “Advertising. But how about the fishing? Do
you want to try it?”
“Oh, yes. Very much. But I’m not sure yet I can make it
tomorrow. Could I let you know tonight?”
“Sure,” I said. “Why don’t we have dinner together?”
She smiled. “I’m afraid I couldn’t, tonight. But thanks,
anyway. Suppose I call you around ten or eleven. Will you be
in then?”
I said yes. She asked several more questions about fishing,
refused the offer of another drink, and left to go back to the
motel. I swam for a while, wondering about her. I couldn’t
place her at all. Was she really interested in fishing, or was
she just a girl away from home looking for a little fun? If the
latter, I thought, she had a very cool approach to it. I
wondered if she had money. A bathing suit revealed a lot of
interesting statistical data, but it didn’t say a damn thing
when it came to financial status.
I was lying in bed around eleven reading The Hidden
Persuaders when the phone rang. “Well, I can go,” she said
eagerly.
“That’s great. Here’s hoping you land a sail.”
“I just hope we can still get a boat. Do you think they’ll all
be taken?”
“No,” I said. “It’s the off-season. And I’ve already talked to
Holt; he’s open tomorrow. I’ll call now and confirm.”
“I hate to keep bothering you with questions,” she
apologized, “but what shall I take? What time do we leave,
and how long are we out?”
“What room are you in?” I asked. “If you’re dressed, I could
come over—”
The brush was polite, but firm. She was about to go to bed.
She repeated the questions.
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“Hat, or fishing cap,” I said. “Long sleeves, dark glasses,
tan lotion. That sun is murder. We’ll leave the dock at eight,
and come in around four-thirty or five. They furnish the
tackle; all we have to bring is our lunch. There’s a restaurant
on Roosevelt that’ll be open. I don’t have a car, but I’ll call a
cab—”
“I have one,” she interrupted. “I’ll meet you in the parking
area behind the motel at seven-thirty. Will that be all right?”
“Fine,” I said.
“Just one other thing,” she asked. “Could you tell me what
the outriggers are for?”
I wondered why she wanted to go into that in the middle of
the night over the phone, but shrugged. She seemed to have
an insatiable curiosity about the mechanics of big-game
fishing.
“They serve several purposes,” I told her. “The line is run
out from your rod tip and trolled from the end of the
outrigger, clipped in a gizmo like a big clothes-pin. Takes the
load off your arms, for one thing. And it’s springy on the end,
so it gives the bait a good action. But the big reason, of
course, is the automatic dropback when a sail-fish strikes. I
suppose the book told you that a billfish of any kind always
stuns his bait before he takes it in his mouth. So when he raps
it with that bill, it snaps the line off the outrigger; that
releases about twenty feet of slack, and the bait stops dead in
the water. Just as if it had been alive and he’d killed it.”
”I see,” she said thoughtfully. “Well, thank you very much,
Mr. Hamilton. I’m looking forward to it, and I’ll see you in the
morning.”
After she’d hung up I lay there thinking about her, studying
the whole thing a little warily. She didn’t ring true, somehow.
Then I dismissed the worry. Hell, she couldn’t possibly know
me, and I was three thousand miles from Las Vegas. The
prospect of another fishing trip was irresistible, anyway, and
she might turn out to be a very interesting deal. I don’t get
you at all, Mrs. Forsyth, but you’re beginning to intrigue me.
We’ll see what we can find out tomorrow.
It wasn’t much—at least, not to begin with. And then when I
finally did figure out what she was doing, she puzzled me
even more.
All The Way — 8
* * *
It was a beautiful day. When I awoke it was a little after seven
and already full daylight inside the room. I crossed to the
window and parted the slats of the closed Venetian blind. The
sky was clear, and fronds of the coconut palms in the
courtyard between the two wings of the motel stirred gently
in a light breeze that appeared to be from the south or southeast.
The Stream would be in lovely shape. I was eager to be
under way. When I’d shaved and showered, and emerged from
the room with the beach bag containing glasses, fishing cap,
tan lotion, and cigarettes, she was just coming out of No. 17,
diagonally across from me. She had on a conical straw hat,
blue Bermuda shorts, and a simple blouse with long sleeves,
and was carrying a big purse. She waved and smiled. “Good
morning, Mr. Hamilton.”
I learned nothing from the car. As the great American status
symbol it was useless, because it wasn’t hers; it was a rental
she’d picked up at the airport in Miami. She was wearing a
watch, however, that had cost at least five hundred. She
didn’t have much to say while we were eating breakfast, and
afterwards, while we were running out to the Stream with the
engines hooked up, talking was difficult because of their
noise. We sat forward under the canopy to avoid the tatters of
spray flung backward as the Blue Runner knifed into the light
ground-swell at top cruising speed.
“Is it always this noisy?” she asked, having to raise her
voice.
I shook my head. “Just while we’re running out. When we
start fishing, we troll on one engine, throttled down. Hardly
any noise at all.”
“Oh,” she said, as if relieved.
The boat was a thirty-five-foot sports fisherman with topside
controls and big outriggers capable of bouncing a marlin bait.
Holt kept her in superb condition so her white topsides
sparkled in the sun. He and his Mate were both taciturn types
whose sole interest in life was fishing. They were good, too.
I’d enjoyed fishing with them.
It was a few minutes before nine and Key West was down on
the horizon when we crossed the edge of the Stream shortly
to the south and east of Sand Key light. It was beautiful,
running dark as indigo in a ragged line beyond the reefs with
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just enough breeze to ripple the light ground-swell rolling up
from the south-east. The Blue Runner slowed, and Sam the
Mate came down from topside. He swung out the outriggers,
nodded for Mrs. Forsyth to take the port chair, and put out
her line, baited with balao. She watched as he clipped it to
the outrigger halyard and ran it out to the end. He fitted the
butt of the rod into the gimbal in her chair.
She took it and looked round at me. “Now what do I do?”
Normally I detest people who want to talk when I’m fishing,
but this was different. I was curious about her, and becoming
more so all the time. “Just watch your bait,” I said. “You see
it? A little to your right, and about seventy-five feet back?”
She looked. It skipped across the surface momentarily, and
slid under again, fluttering. “Yes. I can see it now.”
“Keep your eye on it,” I said. “Watch it every minute-”
She nodded. “That’s so I’ll know when I get a bite?”
I restrained an impulse to wince. “Strike,” I said. “These
fish out here don’t nibble; they hit. But that’s not the reason
for watching it. You’ll know when you get a strike, whether
you see it or not. Sam or the Skipper will tell you, for one
thing. Sam’ll be standing up in back of the chair, and the
Skipper’s topside, so they can both see down into the water
better than we can because our angle’s too flat and there’s
more defraction. They’ll always see the fish before you will,
and they’ll generally know what it is by the time it hits. But if
you don’t see it, you’re losing half the fun of this type of
fishing. The strike is the big thrill. It’s like dry-fly fishing, on a
magnified scale.”
I glanced at her. She was wearing dark glasses now, so I
couldn’t see her eyes, but I had that feeling I’d had the other
times that she was hanging onto every word with rapt
attention. Sam handed me the other rod. I threw the reel on
free spool and thumbed it lightly while he ran the line up the
outrigger. For the time I forgot her, watching my own bait
with the old eager anticipation while we trolled quietly. The
sun was hot. Flying fish skittered out of the blue side of a
swell. A tanker in ballast went past to seaward, rocking us in
its wake. Water boiled under my bait, and there was a slight
click as the line snapped off the outrigger.
“Mackerel,” Holt said laconically.
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I lowered the rod tip till the slack was gone, and then raised
it, setting the hook. It was a small one, not over three pounds.
“Good marlin bait,” Sam said, as he grasped the leader and
dropped it in the box. I glanced at Mrs. Forsyth. She was
lighting a cigarette. The fish appeared to bore her. Well, it
wasn’t much of a fish.
An hour went by. I landed a barracuda of about fifteen
pounds, and then a bonito that came in badly slashed by
barracuda. She had no action at all, but she didn’t appear to
mind. She seemed to be lost in thought. We went on trolling. I
watched my bait.
“Bird,” Sam said behind us.
“I see him,” Holt replied. The beat of the engine picked up,
and we swung in a sharp turn.
Mrs. Forsyth glanced round at me. “We aren’t going to
chase birds, are we?”
“Man-o”-war,” I said. “A frigate bird.” I stood up and looked
forward, and spotted him. He was about a half-mile ahead, off
the starboard bow. She stuck her rod in the holder on the rail
and came over to look too.
“When you see one hovering like that,” I told her, “he’s
usually following a fish—”
“Why?” she asked.
“Table scraps,” I explained. “When the fish locates a school
of bait and starts to feed, he drives them to the surface. That
gives the bird a chance at ’em.”
She nodded. “I see.”
Captain Holt was starting forward. “Probably dolphin,” he
said. “I see some dunnage.”
“How about taking it on the port side?” I asked.
“Sure.”
”Get set,” I told Mrs. Forsyth. She sat down in the chair and
I fitted the rod into the gimbal for her. “There’s a big plank up
ahead, and we’re going to pass it on your side. If he hits,
lower your rod and reel in till the slack’s gone, and then strike
once by raising the tip—”
“How do they know it’s a dolphin?” she asked, watching me
with that intent expression on her face.
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“They don’t actually,” I said. “It’s just an educated guess.
Dolphin like to he under anything floating on the surface.”
We came abeam of the plank, and then it began to drop
astern. I stood up to watch. Her bait fluttered past it, started
to draw away.
“Here he comes!” Holt said tersely.
It was one of those moments that’d still give you a thrill if
you fished for a hundred years. I saw the blue bolt of flame
under the surface, and then he came clear, quartering and
behind the bait, a bull of eighteen or twenty pounds flashing
green and gold and blue in the sunlight, and took the bait
going down. Her line snapped off the outrigger. I hoped he
wouldn’t take mine too. Sometimes they will—take both baits
in one blinding strike so fast you think you’ve hooked two
separate dolphin all at the same instant.
He didn’t. He took only hers, set the hook himself when she
forgot to hit him, leaped, made one fast, slashing run, leaped
three more times, and was gone. She reeled in. Sam looked at
the leader. “Kink,” he said.
“What did I do wrong?” she asked, casually taking
cigarettes from the breast pocket of her blouse.
“Nothing,” I said.
“But he got away.”
I was beginning to get it now, though it made no sense at
all. The whole thing had bored her profoundly and she didn’t
mind in the slightest that she’d lost the fish, but she wanted
me to explain why.
I explained. “When he was jumping, he threw a kink in the
leader. Wire’ll always break if it kinks. It happens to
everybody.”
“Oh,” she said thoughtfully.
She wasn’t interested in fishing, and never had been. She
was listening to my voice.
There was no possible explanation for it, but I knew I was
right. I watched her closely the rest of the day, checking it,
and found that whenever I was talking, no matter what the
subject, she listened in that same way. She said nothing about
herself except that she was the private secretary to a
businessman in a small town named Thomaston in central
Louisiana. It might even be true, I thought, in spite of the
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expensive watch. She could have presents like that any time
she wanted them. There was no longer any doubt that fishing
bored her. She raised a sail, and lost it, with no more interest
than she’d shown in the dolphin. I hooked up with a six-foot
sail, and landed it; it wasn’t badly hurt and there was little
blood, so we released it. That was it for the day, except for
two or three small dolphin and another bonito. We were back
at the dock at four forty-five.
We paid Holt, and I drove her car back to the motel. Outside
No. 17, she held out her hand and smiled. “It’s been
wonderful. I enjoyed every minute of it.”
“Would you like to go out again tomorrow?” I asked.
“I’d rather not take that much sun again so soon.”
“How about dinner tonight?”
I got the same cool, polite brush. “Really, I couldn’t. But
thank you just the same.”
I went back to my own room. After I’d showered and
changed into gray flannel slacks and a light sports shirt, I sat
down in front of the air-conditioner with a cigarette and went
back over the whole thing from the time I’d noticed she was
eavesdropping. She’d looked me over and dropped me. Why?
And what had she really wanted? An adventure, an interlude,
a break? Whatever it was, I’d failed to measure up
somewhere. Well, you couldn’t win ’em all. The phone rang.
“I’m just stirring some Martinis,” she said warmly. “Why
don’t you come over, Mr. Hamilton, and have one with me to
celebrate your sailfish?”
You never know, I thought; maybe that’s why they’re so
fascinating. “Love to,” I said. I dropped the phone back in the
cradle and was out the door in two strides.
I knocked on No. 17, and stepped inside. She’d changed
into a pleated black skirt and white blouse, and was very
smart and very, very attractive from the sling pumps to the
sleek dark head. There was a bucket of ice on the glass top of
the dresser, and she was stirring Martinis in a pitcher.
She turned and smiled. “Do sit down, Mr. Forbes.”
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Two
The way she said it told me there was no point in trying to
bluff. I stepped inside and closed the door. Her room was
exactly the same as mine, furnished with a brown carpet and
curtains, twin beds with yellow spreads, a dresser, and a
glass-covered desk at the right of the door. The telephone was
located on the desk, and beside it— almost under my hand—
were two sheets of motel stationery covered with the slashes
and pot-hooks of shorthand. Two names were spelled out in
the message; one of them was Murray, and the other Forbes.
I glanced up at her. “You just got this?”
She nodded coolly, and poured the Martinis. “Just a few
minutes ago.”
“But you knew who I was all the time? You practically told
me there in the bar.”
She smiled. “I couldn’t resist it; you were so insufferably
smug. And I wanted to see how you’d react.”
“Are you from the police?”
“Of course not,” she said. She handed me the Martini, and
picked up her own. “Here’s to your sailfish. Or should we
drink to Mr. Murray’s durability, or the high cost of
extradition?”
“What about Murray?” I demanded.
“Haven’t you heard?”
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“How could I? I was afraid to call anybody on the Coast.
And there was no mention of it in the papers I could get.”
“Then you were still afraid you’d killed him?”
I took a sip of the drink; I needed it. “No. I assumed he was
tougher than that. But felonious assault is pretty damn
serious itself. What do you know about it?”
“Would you hand me those notes, please?”
I took them off the desk and passed them to her, so
completely at sea now I didn’t feel anything at all. She walked
around between the beds and sat down on the farther one
with a leg doubled under her and the pleated skirt spread
carefully over her knees. Taking a sip of the Martini, she said,
“Hmmm,” as she studied the shorthand. Then she put her
drink down on the night table and groped for a cigarette. I
held the lighter for her. She smiled, and nodded to the
armchair near the end of the bed. “Please sit down.”
“What about Murray?” I said impatiently.
“Broken jaw,” she said, consulting her notes. “Mild
concussion. Something or other to the something sinus—
ethmoid, I think. Scalp lacerations. Various minor injuries. A
hundred and fifty dollars’ damages to his camera and possibly
two hundred to the furnishings of a motel room. He’s
recovering satisfactorily, and the woman’s husband appears
to have used a little influence to smooth it over and keep it
hushed up. You might go to jail for any one of half a dozen
misdemeanors if they could get their hands on you, but
there’s no felony charge. Nothing they would extradite you
for.”
I sighed with relief.
“You apparently don’t care much for private detectives.”
“I can contain my enthusiasm for them,” I said. “Snoopy
bastards. I had to have that film, anyway; and since I didn’t
know how to get into a Speed Graphic, I opened it on his
head.”
“You were lucky it was no worse.”
I lit a cigarette. “Would you mind telling me who you are,
and just what this is all about?”
“I’ve already told you who I am,” she replied, taking a sip of
her drink. “Mrs. Marian Forsyth.”
All The Way — 15
“And you’re a private secretary to some businessman in
Louisiana,” I said. “Don’t give me that.”
“I am,” she said. “Or was, rather. However, let me finish this
dossier. Correct me if there are any errors. Your full name is
Jerome Langston Forbes, you’re usually called Jerry, you’re
twenty-eight, and you are from Texas—at least, originally.
You’re single. You drink moderately but you gamble too much,
and at least twice you’ve been involved in a messy affair with
a married woman. You attended Rice Institute and the
University of Texas, but didn’t graduate from either. I believe
it was some trouble over a crap game at Rice, and you left the
University of Texas to go into the Navy during the Korean war.
You don’t appear to be the plodding type of wage-earner, to
say the least. Since your discharge from the service in
nineteen fifty-three you’ve owned a bar in Panama, written
advertising copy for two or three San Francisco agencies,
been a race-track tout, and at the time you got into this brawl
in Las Vegas you were doing publicity for some exhibitionist
used-car dealer in Los Angeles. Is that fairly accurate?”
“Except for a minor point,” I said. “I wasn’t the racetrack
tout; I was the man behind him. I made him. It was a publicrelations
deal. But never mind that. How’d you find out all
this?”
She smiled. “You’ll love this. From a private detective.”
“But for God’s sake why? And where was it I saw you
before?”
“Miami Beach,” she said. “Six days ago.”
“Oh. Then you were staying—”
She nodded. “At that same Byzantine confection you were.
The Golden Horn.”
The Golden Horn was one of those chi-chi motels in the
north end of Miami Beach that really aren’t motels at all
except that you can park your own car if you want. I didn’t
have a car, of course; I’d stayed out there merely because
they were less expensive than the big places. I thought of it
now, trying to remember when I’d seen her.
“It was by the pool,” she said. “You were trying to pick up
some girl from—Richmond, I believe.”
I frowned. “I remember the girl, all right. Silver blonde with
a seven-word vocabulary. Priceless, hilarious, hysterical—I
All The Way — 16
can’t remember the other four. But I don’t know why I’m so
vague about seeing you. As attractive—”
“Competition, perhaps,” she said. “The pool side is not my
terrain. Nor the beach. I’m too thin.”
“You’re entitled to your own opinions,” I said. “Don’t try to
brain-wash me. I still say I’d have noticed you. I could spot
the line of that head a hundred yards—”
“I had my hair up, and I was wearing a swimming cap,” she
said crisply. “Now, if we’re through discussing my visibility, or
lack of it, would you care to know what I was doing?”
“That one I’ve already figured out. You were listening.”
She gave me an approving glance. “Right.”
“But why? What was it about my voice? If you’re a talent
scout for Decca, I can’t sing a note.”
For the moment, let’s just say your voice has a certain
unique quality that interests me. And it might make you a
great deal of money.”
“How?” I asked.
I can’t tell you right now; maybe I won’t at all. I don’t know.
But at any rate you know now why I started investigating you
—especially after I began to suspect your name wasn’t really
George Hamilton.”
“What tipped you off about that?” I asked. “I thought I was
pretty careful.”
“Pure chance,” she replied. “It just happened there was a
man named Forbes registered there at the same time—”
“Oh,” I said. “Sure. I remember now. And he was paged,
there by the pool. But, dammit, I wouldn’t have believed it
was that obvious.”
“It wasn’t,” she replied. “On the contrary, you recovered
beautifully. I wouldn’t have noticed it if I hadn’t been looking
right at you. Naturally it made me wonder, since I’d just heard
you tell the girl your name was Hamilton. I don’t remember
whether that was before or after you told her your father was
Chairman of the Board of Inland Steel.”
“It was a waste of breath,” I said. “She was a girl who liked
to strike closer to the source. She collected the board
chairmen themselves. But what did you do then?”
All The Way — 17
She finished her drink and started to get up. “Let me,” I
said, and refilled the glasses with what was left in the pitcher.
I sat down again. “Go on.”
“I went up to my room,” she said. “It was on the second
floor, overlooking the patio and the pool, and I could watch
you from the window. I called the desk and asked them to
page Mr. Hamilton.”
“Oh. I remember that call. So you were the mixed-up type
from Eastern Airlines that kept insisting she’d found the
luggage I hadn’t even lost?”
She nodded coolly. “That’s right.”
“Why?”
“Several reasons. I had to find out if you really were
registered under that name, or just lying to the girl on the
grounds that you should always lie to girls. And I wanted to
hear your voice over the telephone—”
“And that was the same deal last night?” I interrupted. “I
mean, when you asked all those questions about fishing, over
the phone?”
“Of course.” She gestured impatiently with a slim hand.
“But to get back—primarily, I wanted to watch you while you
were being paged.”
“I see.” This girl was clever. “And I flunked?”
“You flunked. The boy called you three times from the other
end of the pool before you remembered who you were.”
“Well, there was an awful lot of blonde extruded from that
bathing suit—”
“I allowed for a certain amount of preoccupation. But your
subconscious should have been on duty, anyway. It was fairly
obvious you hadn’t been Mr. Hamilton for very long.”
I nodded. “So then you put the private snoops on me? You
know, sometimes I get the impression I’m a kind of backlog
for the whole damned industry.”
“Well, perhaps if you behaved yourself—”
“If you’re referring to this last deal,” I said, “the woman told
me she was separated from her husband. What was I
supposed to do, get an affidavit? But never mind that. How
did the snoops find out where to dig? After I rocked that one
up with his camera, I was running scared, believe me; he
All The Way — 18
didn’t seem to be the healthiest. I think I used three different
names from Las Vegas to Los Angeles International to
Chicago to Miami, and I registered from San Antonio, Texas.”
It was quite simple,” she said. “I got your correct name and
your Los Angeles address off an old credit card.”
“What?”
”When you try to change your identity, you should clean out
your wallet.”
“I don’t leave my wallet lying around—”
“No. But you don’t take it in swimming with you, either.”
I was beginning to feel like an absolute chump. This girl had
picked me to pieces as if I’d been an oaf at a county fair.
“Listen,” I said, almost angrily, “I know I’m not that stupid.
When I was in the pool or on the beach, it was in my room.
And the room was locked.”
“I know,” she said. “But you have a bad habit of not turning
the key in at the desk. And the next afternoon you went
swimming off the beach. Remember? I merely took the key
from the pocket of your wrap and went up to the room.”
I shook my head. “You’ve got a really cold nerve. Don’t you
know that’s a serious offense, whether you took anything or
not?”
“There was really no risk,” she said. “Your room overlooked
the beach, so I could see you out there. And the whole thing
didn’t take five minutes.”
“You don’t let anything stop you, do you? So then what?”
“That was when I called the detective agency. They put their
Los Angeles office on it, and when you checked out of the
Golden Horn they told me where you were staying down here.
I came down. I wanted to keep in contact, and perhaps meet
you, but not commit myself until I received the report from
California and learned a little about you. When we came in a
while ago, I called Miami. They’d heard from the West Coast
at last, and they gave me the report over the phone. Parts of it
were quite interesting, so I called you to come over.”
”What do you want?” I asked.
“Primarily, to know quite a bit more about you. What are
your plans?”
All The Way — 19
“I don’t know,” I said. “If your information’s accurate, I
suppose I can go back to my right name and start looking for
a job. Probably in New York.”
“How much money do you have?”
“Little over four hundred.”
“That’s not much. And good jobs aren’t easy to find at
twenty-eight with your record of moving around. Let me make
you an offer.”
“Go ahead.
“Put it off for a few days. I have a proposition in mind, but I
can’t tell you what it is until I’m sure of several things. You
don’t stand to lose anything; if nothing comes of it, you’ll still
have your four hundred dollars. I’ll make up anything you’ve
spent.”
“What kind of proposition?” I asked.
“I’d rather not say yet. But how would you like to go back to
Miami Beach?”
“When?” I asked.
She stood up. “Right now. I’m expecting some very
important mail, and I have to do some shopping in the
morning, so I thought we’d drive up tonight.”
I rose. “Sounds fine to me.” Then I took hold of her arms,
and said, “In fact, I’ve just had a wonderful idea—”
The blue eyes were coolly satirical. “That I don’t doubt in
the slightest. No.”
“But you haven’t even heard it—”
“I don’t have to. But it just happens I still have my room at
the Golden Horn, and that I’m expecting the mail there, under
my own name. I’d suggest you re-register as George
Hamilton; after all, they’ll probably remember you.”
”But—”
“I’ll drop you in downtown Miami Beach, and you can take a
cab. I’d rather no one knew of our relationship.”
“Relationship,” I said. “Hah!” She smiled, but said nothing.
* * *
All The Way — 20
“We’d stopped for dinner in Marathon, so it was shortly after
eleven when she let me off in Miami Beach. “I’ll see you in the
morning,” she said. “Call me in room three-one-six.”
“Sure,” I replied. I carried the bag into a bar and killed
about ten minutes over a drink before I called a cab and went
out to the Golden Horn. It’s still slow in the Miami area in
November, so I wasn’t worried about getting a room. It turned
out I could have one fronting the ocean if I wanted. “Third
floor, if possible,” I said.
I signed the registry card and followed the boy across the
corner of the patio court, past the illuminated pool and palms
bearing clusters of colored lights. We entered a corridor in
the left wing and took an elevator to the third floor.
312 was round the comer from her room. It was like the one
I’d had before, with turquoise walls and beige carpet and an
oversized bed. The bedspread was persimmon, as were the
floor-to-ceiling curtains covering the bay window at the far
end. The bath had a tub and stall shower and was finished in
persimmon tile. The boy put the bag on the luggage stand
beside the dresser over on the right, adjusted the airconditioner
thermostat, thanked me for the tip, and left. I
waited three minutes before I stepped down the corridor and
knocked on 316. The door opened slightly and she looked out
round the edge of it.
“I might have known,” she said.
“I just thought of several more things I should tell you about
myself,” I replied. “It was in Panama I first became interested
in big-game fishing-”
“I see. And you’re afraid you might forget them before
morning?”
“They might be lost for ever. But I don’t have to come in; I
can tell you from out here in the corridor. Or through the
door.”
She sighed. I couldn’t tell whether she was really angry or
not. “Just a moment.” She disappeared. I heard a rustling
sound, and then she pulled the door open and I stepped
inside. She closed it. Her room was the same layout and color
scheme. She’d scrubbed off what makeup she’d been wearing,
even the lipstick, and had on a rather conservative nightgown
under the négligé she was struggling with, but she was
unbelievably exciting. I didn’t know why.
All The Way — 21
“Mostly trivial,” I said. “But revealing. For instance, when I
was a kid, all the other slobs put their money in the Christmas
Club, but I kept mine in a regular account. Got two per cent.”
“You don’t have to hit me over the head,” she replied. I
kissed her. This was even more exciting, in spite of the fact
she obviously didn’t care whether it was or not. She finally
broke it up, but she said, “All right.” It was rather the way
you’d buy a potato peeler from a salesman to get rid of him,
but by this time I didn’t even care what the terms were.
* * *
She was smooth, deft, experienced, and agreeably
cooperative about the whole thing. I lay there afterwards in
the annealed and quiescent dark trying to pin down her exact
attitude, and decided the word I was looking for was pleasant.
That was it. She was quite pleasant about it—the perfect
hostess, in fact.
She said something, but I missed it. I was still thinking
about her, trying to remember exactly what she looked like—”
“You’re not even listening,” she said.
“What?”
“Speech. It may have escaped your attention, but for a long
time now people have been able to communicate—”
“Oh. I’m sorry. What was it?”
“You mentioned acting. Was that by any chance the truth?”
“Yes. But just amateur. In school. I never did try to turn pro;
not enough talent.”
“Were you a fast study?”
“Fairly so,” I said. “I usually knew my lines by the time we
finished the first rehearsal. For some reason I learn fast, or
easily. Just luck, I suppose.”
“Tell me about your family.”
“I’m it, except for my step-father. My mother and father
were divorced when I was about five. He was a geologist;
spent most of his time in South America, usually at high
altitudes. My mother wouldn’t live up there. He was killed the
next summer; a station wagon he was riding in went off the
road into a gorge. My mother remarried a couple of years
afterwards. Widower several years older than she was,
All The Way — 22
partner in a Houston brokerage firm. He’s retired now, lives
on a big place near Huntsville and raises Black Angus cattle.
My mother died while I was at sea, during the Korean thing.
She left me a little money; that’s when I bought the bar in
Panama.”
“What happened to the bar?”
“It was put out-of-bounds for military personnel because of
a couple of bad fights, so I sold it.”
”At a loss?”
“No. I was lucky. This live one was fresh from the States and
didn’t know what out-of-bounds meant down there. I think he
wanted to make it a fag hangout, anyway.”
“What did you do with the money when you got back to the
States?”
“Lost most of it in Las Vegas.”
“Tell me about the tout business.”
I reached over and turned on the reading lamp on the night
table. She looked at me questioningly. “What’s that for?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just got tired of talking to you in
the dark. I wanted to look at you.”
“Why?”
“Tell me,” I said. I raised myself on an elbow and ran a
finger-tip along the line of her cheek. “You’re beautiful. Is that
it?”
“Don’t be silly.”
“I was never less silly. How about striking? Exciting? It’s a
quality of some kind—fragile, elegant, cool, hard-boiled, and
sexy—all at the same time. There’s no such combination? I
was afraid not.”
She shook her head with exasperation, but she did smile.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. And I had some weird idea I was
going to talk to you—”
“I am talking.”
“Like an idiot. Why the campaign; you’re already here,
aren’t you?”
“Don’t be so cynical.”
“Turn out the light.”
All The Way — 23
I turned it out, and took her in my arms and kissed her. She
came to me readily, and was as deftly and pleasantly cooperative
as before. If that was the only way to achieve a calm
and rational conversation, by God she was willing.
“What about the tout business?” she asked after a while.
“It was nothing,” I said. “You know how they operate.
You’ve seen ’em by the dozens passing out their sheets at the
entrance to racetracks—Clocker Joe, Stablehand Maguire,
Exercise Boy—no imagination, competing with each other,
and working for buttons. So I made a deal with this one; I’d
put him in the big time for half the take. We set it up as a
telegraphic service and I bought time on a Tijuana radio
station to sell him—a real saturation build-up about the time
Santa Anita was opening. Lot of spot announcements and a
quarter-hour of hillbilly junk with a plug every minute or two.
That’s about all there was to it, besides convincing him he
had to raise his prices. Obviously, nobody has any confidence
in a cheap tip on a horse race; you’ve got to charge plenty to
be good. We were splitting two thousand a week for a while.”
“What happened?”
“He couldn’t stand prosperity; turned out to be a lush. Kept
getting his records all fouled up so he couldn’t remember who
got the winners yesterday. And you’re dead without records,
obviously.”
“I see,” she said thoughtfully.
I woke once during the night. She was lying quite still
beside me, but after a while I began to suspect she was
awake. I put my hand on her thigh. It was tense and rigid. Her
arms felt the same way, and when I slid my hand down to
hers, lying at her side, I found it was clenched into a fist.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
She made no reply. I asked again. She still said nothing. I
gave up, and after a while I went back to sleep.