I had made a note of the phone number in the Citrus Inn apartment, and I phoned.

Deeleen answered. “Who? Oh sure. Hi. You want Corry? Well, she isn’t here. You want her, what you do is call that bitch after I’ve gone.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I’ve had it with her, boy. Believe me, I’ve had it. You should have hung around. It was a big evening. She got drunk and she got nasty. I’m telling you, we’re splitting up.”

“Is the cruise off?”

“Hell no! We’re leaving from here six-thirty tomorrow morning, and go some place to get some work done on the boat and leave from there and go to Bimini at night. In the moonlight. Like I told her, the only thing I want is come back and find her moved out. She says I should move out. Where does she get that? I found this place, didn’t I? Who needs her? She likes to spoil everything for everybody. The thing was she snuck off with Pete. He’s a nice kid, but what’s the point? She knew he’s been trying to make out with Patty for months, God knows why, but that’s their business, isn’t it. She had to know it would bitch up the cruise and all. It was a mess around here last night, Patty crying her eyes out. So she busted up the trip sort of, but she didn’t spoil it. That’s what we decided last night after she came back to the boat with Pete, both of them stoned, and there was a big fight and they took off. Just Dads and Patty and me. And the hell with Corry and Pete. I don’t know where they are, and nobody cares. The cruise’ll get Patty’s mind off him. The thing is, there’d have been no harm done if Pete gets from her what Patty won’t give him yet, but she has to come back smashed and bragging about it in front of Patty.”

“How did it all start, Dee?”

“I don’t know. We were all just kidding around, rough kidding maybe, and Corry got sore at something Dads said, and then Pete got sore at something Patty said to Corry, and then Corry went away, and a little while later Pete slipped away”

My admiration for Junior Allen was reluctant. He had simplified things for himself. They could not know that they had been maneuvered, any more than Cathy had known in the beginning. So he could set off with his little putty-haired pig, and with the wan victim of the lover’s quarrel and the betrayal.

“I was going to stop around a little later on, Dee, and have a bon voyage drink with you people.”

“There’s nobody here now but me, Trav. Dads is off picking up supplies. Patty went home. She’s coming back tonight and stay here at the apartment so we can get off at six-thirty like Dads wants. My stuff is aboard already, so I’ll probably sleep aboard tonight. Maybe Patty too, if she wants. What you could do, you could come around tonight because four would be better’n three for a bon voyage drink?”

“You don’t think Corry will be back?”

“Man, I know she won’t be back. She and Pete took off together, and they’re shacked someplace. She’s out of the picture, Trav. You know, I wisht Patty was more of a doll, and then maybe you’d like to come along, because now there’s room. What you do, when you come around, you take a good look at her. It could turn out three’s a crowd and she’ll need comforting the way she feels now. She’s really got a nice complexion. And she says things you would laugh yourself sick when she’s feeling good.”

“That would be up to Dads.”

“You can come around and if you like the idea, then we can ask him, but it wouldn’t be fair not telling you you don’t make out with Patty. She’s got a thing about it, scared or something. I don’t know. Maybe it would be different, off on a cruise. The way I figure it, if you want to go, honey I can make Dads do about anything I want. Come right down to it, this cruise was my idea in the first place.”

“I guess he can afford it.”

“A guy like that, he gets what he wants and I get what I want, so it works out nice, and he wants to keep it that way. You come around later on, huh?”

“I’ll be there.”

“You don’t have to bring any bottle, honey. Dads has loaded cases of it aboard.”

My lady returned. Tilty eyes, swirl of a white skirt, little beads of the hotness on her upper lip and at her hairline.

I took her hands. Swung her around. “You are a fine, fine thing.”

“What’s happened to you?”

“I like lovely ladies. You are refreshing.”

“I’m hot and sticky.”

“And rich?”

“I mailed the check to the bank.” I beamed at her. She asked me again. “What’s going on?”

“It’s the contrast, I think. Because you can cry and not know why. Because I was looking around and saw your toothbrush. And some diaphanous items dripping dry in our shower stall. And because you have tidy hips, and when you are very passionate, it is all of you trying to say what your heart is saying, not just an end in itself-which sounds like a vulgar pun and isn’t at all.”

“Have you been drinking?”

“I’m drunk with power. Phantom McGee strikes again. Junior Allen is a stupid crafty man. And McGee is going to put him out of business.”

She looked alarmed. “Darling, he’s a terrible man.”

“I am even more terrible in my wrath. How’s this for glower?”

“Remarkable.”

“No hairs in the sink and you put the butter away.”

She looked owlish. “Are we engaged?”

“Ask me again, after we put this dull, foolish, sly fellow out of commission.”

She swallowed. “We?”

“I need one very small assist from you.”

She swallowed again. “And this act you’re putting on is supposed to give me confidence?”

“Doesn’t it?”

“Not very much.”

“No danger for you.”

“You know what just seeing him did to me.”

“I know. Lois, he just isn’t that ominous. Evil, but not ominous. Sly, but not prescient. Once he is off balance, he will stay off balance, and fall heavily. And the law will gather him in.”

She sat, her face wan and thoughtful. “What do you want me to do, Travis?”

In the sultry blue dusk, the three of us lounged in the spacious cockpit of the Play Pen, kindly old lump-jawed, crinkle-eyed Dads Allen in his spotless whites, Deeleen slumped and placid in low-waisted short shorts and a narrow halter which provided a startling uplift, Fearless McGee in pale blue denims and an old gray sport shirt. McGee with a short sturdy pry bar taped to his leg, and an old white silk sock in his pocket, with a goodly heft of bird shot knotted into the toe of it.

A lazy hour of the day. Deeleen yawned and said, “Patty should be along any time.” She lazily scratched her belly, her nails making a whispering, fleshy, sensuous sound. “How about Trav coming along with us, lover?”

“I don’t know whether I want to,” I said.

Dee snickered. “He wants another look at Patty, huh?”

“We haven’t invited him yet,” Junior Allen said.

“What I want to do over there,” Deeleen said, “I want me one of those buckets with the glass in the bottom, and you look at the coral and fish and stuff. And I want to go shopping in Nassau. Are you going to take me for a little shopping, lover?”

“All you can use,” he said, his smile white in the night. Lights were reflected on the still black water of the sea-walled canal. Two kinds of music merged in the softness of the night.

“Geez, I wish we could take off tonight, as soon as Patty gets here,” she said.

“How is she going to get here?” I asked.

“She’s taking a cab, like to go to the bus station, but she isn’t,” Dee said. She tilted her glass. The ice rattled up against her lips. I had been trying to time the drinks, and this time her glass and mine were empty, and Junior Allen’s was more than half full. I stood up and reached and took her glass and said, “Okay if I fix a couple?”

“Go ahead,” he said.

I went below. There was a light on in the galley. Spotless galley. Pristine whites. Trim happy ship. I gave her a heavy shot and hoped it would cover the other taste. Twisted the two capsules open, spilled the powder, stirred it in. A powerful barbiturate. Even with the liquor, I was more than reasonably sure it would do her no harm. She was a young and healthy animal. Fifteen minutes after she got it down, she would become unbearably sleepy. It would knock her out for a good fourteen hours, and leave her dulled and lethargic for the following two days. I wondered with a certain irony if it wasn’t practically what Junior Allen had all planned for her, and I was merely jumping the gun. Or maybe he had decided she would be a willing accomplice.