Harry and the Bikini Bandits by Basil Heatter - Chapter 06

1971 Genre: Vintage Sleaze / Casino Heist

A wildly erotic novel of intrigue, suspense, and adventure...

There's a lot to be said for my Uncle Harry. Mostly unprintable. All my life I'd heard about him, and from a distance he was a kind of legend. But the moment I signed on as one-man crew to his beat-up old bucket, Jezebel, I found my hero of the sea was really a pirate. Broads and booze kept him afloat between capers—and so far, his luck was holding...

But this new harebrained scheme—to heist the loot from an island gambling casino—was the daffiest—and most dangerous yet.

And there I was. Right in the middle. Up to my virginal ears in naked nymphs and Nitrous oxide—with nothing between me and the future but a leaky getaway and a pot of gold that was fast disappearing behind Harry's private rainbow.

CHAPTER 6

The old Palmer farted and then caught. It died once and caught again.

"Good enough," Harry said. "Prepare to shove off. Stand by to let go lines."

Two of the ragged dock lines had already parted by themselves, so all I had to do was take in the ends. We edged out into the river.

"Take the wheel, Number Three."

"Where are we going?"

"The Strait of Juan de Fuca. Around the Horn. Guadeloupe. What the hell do you care?"

"Well, I mean which way do I steer?"

"Down the cruddy river."

Miss Wong lay in the sun on the fore-deck in her orange bikini. The monkey had gone up the mast and sat there eating peanuts and spitting the shells down on our heads. Harry put on his big straw hat. The cat slept in his lap.

There were twelve bridges that had to open for us. Harry handed me an old brass foghorn on a leather lanyard. I had to blow three short blasts before each bridge. The horn made a noise like a sick cow, and every time I blew it Ho threw more peanut shells.

Harry looked up at the monkey and said, "Next thing he'll piss on you."

I reached behind me to where the foul weather gear was hanging and brought up the rubber hat.

Threading those bridges was no fun. I mean our horn seemed to infuriate the bridge keepers. The big classy boats with air horns went through like a dream, but not us. We had to fiddle around in mid-stream and I kept waiting for that asthmatic hunk of rusty iron he called an engine to quit altogether, then for us to slide into the bridge, the masts to come down on our heads, and all of us to be killed.

If Harry was perturbed, he didn't show it. When we were about halfway down the river and I was blowing my guts out without getting anywhere, he gave me a lesson on the art of playing the foghorn.

"The thing is," he said, "you've got to understand the bridge-keeper's temperament. You've got to blow a tune that will sing to him, that will make him want to open that fucking bridge."

"You said three short blasts so that's what I'm giving him."

"Of course I said three short blasts, but it's how you blow them that counts. What I mean is each one of them up there in those boxes is an individual, and each one marches to a different drummer, if you know what I mean."

"I don't."

He sighed. "Number Three, you have no feeling for your fellow man. But we'll be charitable and simply attribute it to the arrogance of youth. Now suppose you were up there in that cage. You sit there all day watching them come and go. I mean beautiful yachts with gorgeous chicks going God knows where. And there you are getting older and balder and fatter and going nowhere except maybe home to some lousy furnished room with a wife who probably has bad breath. Do you dig me, son?"

"I dig you."

"Very well then. So here you come blowing that goddamn horn like Caesar returning from the wars. I mean what you are saying with that horn is, 'Open up, you crud, and let the beautiful people pass.' In which case he is just naturally going to let you drag your ass around out there until he is good and ready. What you have to remember is that he already hates your guts just looking at you. I mean you are talking to an underprivileged man. Be kind to him. Cajole him. Understand his personality. Now look at that one dead ahead."

I looked where he pointed. The bridge was a good two hundred yards off and if Harry could see the bridge keeper at that distance he had better eyes than mine.

"Now I would deduce," said Harry, "that that sonofabitch was probably rejected by the ILU at some point and is a red-hot reactionary who voted for George Wallace in the last election. By the time I get done blowing this horn he will think I am the Grand Panjandrum of the Ku Klux Klan and will open this bridge like it was Lester Maddox himself."

Whereupon he took up the horn and blew. If my calls had sounded like a dying cow his were like a love-sick mule. But I will be damned if it didn't work. When we were still about a hundred yards off the bridge began to open.

"You see?" said Harry, and pulled the hat down over his eyes and went to sleep.

Only when we were almost on the other side did I see the tugboat coming toward us with six barges. That of course was what they had opened for in the first place. I thought it better not to mention this to Harry.

The river had widened slightly and was full of terrible old hulks. Some were half sunk and all smelled bad. There were old tubs from Honduras and Turks Island and Panama that seemed to have a smell all their own. The Cuban refugee boats had a pretty distinctive odor too, but at least they were painted purple and sky blue and other beautiful colors.

Where the river left the land we passed through a dredged-out canal to the ocean. At the end of the canal there were two stone jetties, and beyond the jetties the open sea. It was the first time I had ever seen the ocean. It looked formidable. All kinds of craft were passing between the jetties and bouncing around like corks. Would Jezebel hold together? What if there was sediment in the fuel tank and the engine quit? What if I got seasick? Did Harry know what the hell he was doing?

Then we were right in between the jetties, and the chop there was something fierce. The wind was beating against the tide and the water boiled. Jezebel tried to pull herself loose and drive straight in toward the rocks. When I finally got her under control we were only about six feet off. Clouds of spray shot over the deck and once or twice she was just about laid over on her beam ends. The masts described sickening arcs through the sky, and the monkey hung on for his life. Suddenly he opened his mouth and a stream of half-digested peanuts rained down. Harry never budged. He was as calm as if we were still in the river.

Then we were through it. The waves were still high but spaced out longer, and the boat had a chance to recover between them. Harry stretched and said, "I'll take her now. Secure the engine and get up the main."

I had the sail about halfway up when it stuck. I gave it a good yank, the rope parted in the middle, and the whole thing came down with a bang. When I looked at the rope I could see where the strands were kind of gray and dead-looking. Like practically everything else on the boat, it was rotten. But Harry wasn't disturbed about little things like the main halliard breaking.

"Murphy's Law," he said.

"What's Murphy's Law?"

"Whatever can go wrong will go wrong and always at the worst possible time. One of the primary rules of the sea."

"I see," I said for lack of anything better. I mean there we were floundering around out there with no way to get up the sail.

"Any suggestions, Number Three?"

If I had known him a little better, I would have suggested that we sink her right there and collect the insurance. But then he probably didn't carry any.

"I guess we'll have to try to rig a new line," I said. "I guess you will," Harry agreed. "Get cracking."

It meant shinnying up the mast. That cost me most of the skin from the inside of my legs. The boat was broadside to the swells and rolled like crazy. The mast went back and forth about forty degrees on each roll. And the monkey bit me.

"Kick him into the ocean," Harry advised.

I finally bypassed Ho and wriggled up to the top. I had with me another piece of line which did not look much better than the original. And even if the line held, the block looked about ready to pop. And the shrouds were covered with rust. It was a long way down. I figured on the next roll the whole mickey-mouse contraption would let go, and I would be shot out into space like from a slingshot.

In a way, though, it was kind of great up there. I mean you could really see. From that distance Miami Beach looked like Camelot. And up ahead an endless sheet of purple water flecked with whitecaps. On the horizon a couple of big tankers shoveling white water. And sticking its nose out between the jetties unmistakably and absolutely was Charisma.

When I came down I said, "Don't look now but I think we're being followed."

He squinted back to where I had pointed. She was coming up fast and certainly in our direction.

"What does that poor boob want now?" said Harry. "Maybe he's decided to kill you after all," said Miss Wong.