Harry and the Bikini Bandits by Basil Heatter - Chapter 02

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 2

Miss Wong explained it to me. I mean about Harry and the name. It turned out she had been a psych major at Radcliffe before she dropped out to go sailing with Harry, and so she knew about such things. What she said was that any man who would name his kid Clayton Bullmore Third was simply reveling in his own self-hatred. I nodded like I knew what she was talking about and said I didn't know the Chinese were so interested in psychiatry. She said the Chinese had, in fact, discovered psychiatry-like almost everything else and that was where Freud stole most of it. It seems there was this Book of Ho which explained it all a couple of thousand years ago, and it was perfectly evident that at some point Freud had read Ho. I mean all this business about motherfuckers and all.

I didn't really see what it had to do with my name. She gave me a nice smile and said, "Where do you come from, Clay?"

"Peckinpaugh."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Nebraska."

I don't think that meant much more to her than Peckinpaugh.

"Where is your gear, Number Three?" Harry said.

I showed him my knapsack. Not really a knapsack, more like my sea scout seabag.

"That's all you've got?"

"Yessir."

"Good lad."

He turned around and went below. Miss Wong put on her dark glasses and went back to sleep. The monkey lay down beside her with one little black paw inside her bra. Since nobody seemed to have anything useful for me to do, I went to look at the bowsprit.

You ought to know that despite the fact that I am from Nebraska I am not by nature a plow jockey. I mean I have always had like a very big thing for the sea. Maybe I get that from Harry. One thing for sure; I don't get it from my dad. As far as he is concerned the only thing you should do about the sea is to stay as far away from it as possible. That feeling is probably a result of his war experience. It seems he joined the Coast Guard to beat the draft. After just two hours on board some kind of a patrol boat on Lake Michigan he was so unbelievably sick they relieved him of sea duty and sent him to a recruiting station in Kansas. He finished the war there and I guess did all right. In those days he had a kind of rangy, square-shouldered build, and in the pictures of him standing in front of a recruiting poster he looks real salty. I guess that despite his own feelings on the subject he still managed to persuade a lot of farm boys to go to sea.

I mentioned seabag. You wouldn't think there would be sea scouts in Nebraska, but there are. We messed around in a leaky old rowboat that we named Ticonderoga after that World War Two aircraft carrier. On Sunday mornings we would put on our uniforms and go rowing around the lake. Not a lake really, just an artificial pond that belonged to Mr. Thing-pen Old Herman Thing-pen hated the water too, but someone had told him if you wanted a lake all you had to do was call up the government and they would build you one free. He didn't want the lake, but he could never pass up anything free. So they came out with a bulldozer and dug it out for him. It was only about three feet deep and so muddy you could almost walk on it. The only things that could live in it were bullfrogs and mosquitoes and snapping turtles. We never could figure out where the turtles had come from. They got to be as big as roasting ovens and were as ugly as hogs. People used to say they could drag down a full-grown dog.

But it was the only water we had and so we used it. We would row around the lake and holler out stuff like: "Now hear this! All hands with big feet lay up to the quartermaster!" Or: "Now hear this! All those who have not already done so do so!"

In addition, we studied the Bluejacket's Manual and learned to splice, whip, and tie bowlines, and the difference between sheets and halliards and port and starboard. Also the Inland Rules of the Road, and what lights should be displayed by a tug going astern with three barges. You might say it was useless, but you never know.

So when I picked up the paper and saw the picture of Uncle Harry and his boat, the sea fever hit me. It happened also to be the day of my seventeenth birthday and I was feeling my oats.

The picture was datelined New York, and it was distributed by one of the big news services. I guess it was picked up by our local paper because Harry was probably the only former resident in the whole history of Peckinpaugh to have his picture in a New York newspaper. If dad hadn't recognized him, I would never have known him because he was wearing a beard and an earring in his left ear, and he was calling himself by another name. He had dropped the Bullmore and was now calling himself Captain Harry Hook.

"Probably beating out his creditors," Dad sniffed.

Anyway, in the picture he was sitting on this old tub wearing ragged shorts and a big straw hat. In his lap was a cat, and clustered around him were five girls who looked just about naked. Actually they were wearing bikinis or something, but you had to look twice to make sure. From the story that went along with the picture you got the impression he had made the girls pay for going to sea with him. They were secretaries or airline hostesses or whatever, and he had sold them on the idea of investing in the voyage.

The caption read: "Seagoing love-in. Captain Harry Hook, who declined to give his home port, resting at City Island, New York, before embarking on a voyage to the Bahamas with his all-girl crew. The captain said that after reaching the Bahamas he might very well continue on around the world if the fancy so strikes him. When asked what had given him the idea of traveling with so remarkable a crew, he answered, 'Is there any other way?' His vessel is aptly named Jezebel."

It was a great picture and I wanted to show it around, but Dad tore it to shreds and stamped on it. I told him I considered that a childish reaction and for a minute I thought he would try stamping on me too. But if the idea went through his mind, he dropped it. I'm three inches taller than Dad and haven't yet got my full growth. Last season I played right guard for the Peckinpaugh High Huskers, and we had a pretty solid team and went undefeated to the state finals. I was named All-State. I weigh 185 pounds now and will probably go 200.

So he just glared.

"I suppose you have some cockeyed idea that your Uncle Harry is cute," he said.

His voice was as usual-angry. I can hardly remember when he wasn't angry. I don't know why. I mean his insurance business is good and you would think he would smile once in a while. But he's pretty uptight. Possibly he is suffering from sexual frustration. Mother has been dead a long time now, and just what the hell does he do in a town like Peckinpaugh? He has a secretary, but she is built like those pictures you used to see of that old-time fighter Two-Ton Tony Galento.

"I don't know if he's cute or not," I said, "but you've got to admit he has pizzazz."

I knew I would drive him up the wall when I said it.

"Pizzazz! Oh he's got pizzazz all right, whatever the hell that is. But I can tell you one thing. If he's got pizzazz he's got nothing else!"

I didn't think that was true. I mean he had a boat and a cat and five beautiful girls. And he was smiling.

"Why do you hate him?" I asked.

"Who says I hate him?" he growled.

"Well, here you are tearing up newspapers and getting all red in the face just because you see his picture. You wouldn't exactly call that brotherly love, would you?"

"My relationship with him is my own affair," he said in a frosty voice.

"Just as you say."

"And don't be snotty, young man. I can still paddle you if I have to."

"Yessir."

You can see there was not much point in arguing. Anyway it didn't really matter, because in my mind I was already composing the letter I would send to Uncle Harry.