Harry and the Bikini Bandits by Basil Heatter - Chapter 11

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 11

I nipped down below as soon as Harry and miss Wong had gone ashore. No briefcase. But it had to be somewhere. I mean he might have taped it under the floorboards or something but since our bilges were always full of water, that wouldn't have been practical. Under the mattress. They always hide things under the mattress. So had he. With adhesive tape over the hole. But in addition it was booby-trapped. Saw it just in time, a little piece of pink thread in the zipper. You could not move that zipper without breaking the thread. Tricky.

Someone on deck. Shoved the whole business back under the mattress. Ambled out yawning and rubbing my eyes. Mrs. Burger.

"Why hello, Clay."

"Hi."

"Just passing by."

Like I happened to be just browsing under Harry's mattress.

"Where is everyone?"

"Shopping, I guess. Anyway they've gone ashore. Want some coffee?"

"Why I'd love some, Clay."

She was embarrassed but trying to put a good face on it. We both knew she had come looking for Harry but neither of us was supposed to acknowledge it. I reckoned Harry's coffee would switch her mind to other things. His coffee is very distinctive. He makes it about once a week in an old tin percolator. He lets the whole mess stand, and then every day or so throws in more coffee. After a few months you have Harry's coffee.

She was game but all the same went a little pale when she tasted it.

"Tell me about yourself, Clay."

I could have been a wise-ass with an opening like that but declined.

"What do you want to know?"

"Do you go to school? How long have you and your uncle been sailing together?"

She couldn't have cared less but she was nervous, poor thing. Just wanted to rap.

"I guess you could say I'm a dropout." I really was although I had never thought about it quite that way. "And I've only been sailing with Harry since the day you met him in Miami."

She blushed. I hadn't meant to make a pointed reference to that particular occasion, but that was the way she took it.

"Well," she said searching for neutral ground, "what do you plan to do with your life?"

What a way to put it. The thing is it isn't like five pounds of cement that you do something with. There it is and you just kind of live it. It's more what it does with you. What she meant of course was did I want to be a doctor or lawyer or right guard for the Green Bay Packers?

"I don't know," I said.

"May I ask you a personal question?"

When they put it that way they mean to ask it anyway. "Sure."

"How old are you?"

It never fails. The old age syndrome.

"Seventeen."

"Oh I would have thought you were easily twenty. You're very big for seventeen."

A regular Cardiff Giant.

"So you have no plans for the moment beyond just sailing around?"

I shook my head.

"Doesn't your uncle ever do anything else?"

It had taken her quite a while to get to it.

"I don't know."

"I didn't mean to be nosy."

I liked her and felt sorry for her. It was a bad scene. Even with every hair in place and the pink dress and the pearls, she was out of her element and knew it. She was great for the Charisma but all wrong for the Jezebel. But now she wasn't right for the Charisma either. Harry had knocked her out of orbit and left her nowhere. She was flying blind without instruments. She wanted Harry to tell her which way to steer, but if I knew him that was the least of his concerns.

When she had gone off with Harry in Miami, I had figured her for a real swinger who could take it or leave it. But now that I had a closer look at her slender fingers and really beautiful legs and the little tight lines around her eyes and the nervous way she kept watching the dock, I had a different impression. She wasn't so much of a swinger after all. With all her money she was still scared and kind of tired, and I guess that what had happened in Miami was not just wanting to ball Harry but really some kind of basic dissatisfaction with herself and her life.

The shadows were growing longer. The fishing boats were coming back in from the day's run, some of them flying flags to indicate the sailfish they had snagged. The ferry that went back and forth to South Bimini was loading up and discharging passengers, and you could hear them singing out to each other like birds. Over in one of the bars a jukebox was making sad music about a sailor who had left his island girl.

We sat in silence for quite a while and at last she stood up and said, "It seems to be getting late. I suppose I had better be going. Your uncle didn't say what time he was coming back?"

I shrugged. "Even if he did it wouldn't make any difference. None of us has a watch. We just sort of do what we like whenever we like."

"Isn't that lovely."

She meant it. I guessed everybody on the Charisma knew what time it was all the time.

"Goodbye, then. Tell him I was here, won't you?"

"Sure."

She put on her oversize blue shades and went off with her tummy in and shoulders back.

I was considering another go at the contents of the briefcase when who should come along but Mr. Hamilton Burger himself. It was too close for coincidence. I guessed he had been watching her from behind a tree somewhere. Anyway there he was in his white tasseled loafers and white slacks and striped sailor's jersey. I mean you'd think he was meeting like Brigitte Bardot. At least he wasn't stoned and didn't seem to be carrying that Smith & Wesson.

"Good afternoon, young man."

The chairman of the board himself.

"Hello, Mr. Burger."

"Anybody aboard?" Here we go again.

"Just me." I wasn't somebody. He had been brought up not seeing people. Now he looked like a kid who has found a nickel and got to the candy store after it closed.

"Mind if I wait?"

"Not at all."

Those white pants were a problem. The cockpit was none too clean. He finally scrunched down in a kind of half-assed way.

"Say when they were coming back?"

If he and his wife would compare notes it would save everybody a lot of time.

"Nope."

"Well, there isn't much to do around here."

Did he really believe that or did he suspect that Harry had already found something to do? Probably both. Anyway, it was not my problem. I was happy to watch the water turning from blue to purple, and the clouds going red with the sun behind them. It was very beautiful. And the wind made a lovely sound in the palms. Not like temple bells at all, but more like Venetian blinds on a midsummer afternoon in my room at home.

Listening to it made me all of a sudden just a little bit homesick. I remembered the way Mary Ann had looked that last night before I went away, her face all kind of squeezed up and her tears sparkling in the hard blue light of the drive-in. It was about time I sent her a card. She would enjoy getting a card from foreign parts. So too would my dad. I mean he wasn't really such a bad old goat. I would send the cards from Nassau.

Burger kept looking at his watch. I tried to think of something to say. Hamburgers? Stock market? Pro ball? Chavering? Johnny Unitas? Viet Nam? Did you ever notice the way Unitas drops back and passes out of the pocket? Sheet!

Fortunately Miss McGee came along. Elvira. And with her the senator. He was big, almost as tall as myself, and with no fat. But you could see he was like maybe sixty or so. Black or white? Hard to say. Dark skin but thin lips. Full of life. An opinion on everything. Oh, I could see what she saw in him.

She was barefoot. She wiggled her toes and winked at me. I felt my pecker rise.

The senator and Burger got into an argument. Something about Wall Street. Thinking about Elvira I wasn't paying much attention. The senator claimed it was a festering sore on the dying body of WASP society. Burger said he sounded like some Panther commie. The senator said if he was a little younger and not a senator he probably would be. Burger wanted to know how a United States senator could talk such rubbish. They have been talking nothing but rubbish for twenty years, the senator told him.

So it went. They were having a great time. They lapped up our rum. Elvira's toe caressed my instep. My heart jumped. I tasted the rum. It was awful. Burger was getting oiled. He sang two choruses of his department store song. The senator looked pained. I saw Burger glance at him sideways and start a third. He was putting the senator on. They really hated each other. I wished Harry would get back. The rum was running low. The jukebox had switched from 'Aquarius' to Johnny Cash.

"Eldridge Cleaver should be shot," said Burger. "If it's up to Nixon he will be," said the senator. "You'd like that, wouldn't you? It would give you the excuse you're waiting for."

"Excuse for what?"

"Insurrection. Rebellion. You'd like to see another Castro over here."

"The only thing wrong with Fidel is he ran all the whores out of Havana."

"Well what about Buckminster Fuller?"

"Wha?"

"What about the shortage of plastic ore? Where do you get your whole grain rice? What about a handy little do-it-yourself boffing kit?"

"Hey," said the senator. "Hey, I really dig this cat."

Along came Harry. He had been in the ocean and his hair stood up like red steel wool. The monkey was a black growth on Miss Wong's creamy shoulder. With them was the littlest man you ever saw. No bigger than a ten-year-old. Wearing a white linen suit, horn-rimmed glasses, and a short gray beard. He could have sat in the palm of my hand.

"This," said Harry, "is Professor Grogan. Now I want to know which one of you bastards finished off my rum."

"Permit me," said the senator and was off the boat and across the street and into the bar.

Harry watched him go. "Now who was that?"

"My senator," said Elvira.

"Are you a constituent?"

"You might say that."

"Well, Burger, old buddy, what are you up to?"

Burger began another chorus of his song. Harry interrupted him coldly. "Any more of that shit and I'll throw your ass off this boat."

Burger shut up..

The senator came back with a bottle of rum in either hand. "Ecology," he said breaking the seal. "Everybody's talking ecology these days. There seems to be a race on to see which way the world will end. I only hope I live to see it."

"It will end with water," said Professor Grogan. "The way it began. Did you know for instance that this very Bahama bank on which your boat is floating was once the site of a vast Inca civilization?"

"I wrote a poem today," said Harry. "While I was walking back. Want to hear it?"

No one said anything but he went ahead anyway.

portable typewriters, tape recorders, card table sets,

ski bindings, microscopes, electric can openers, battery chargers,

slot car racing, portable snow thrower, automatic steam cooker,

washing machines, clothes dryers, playpens, Volvos,

Stereo tapes,

electric toasters,

permanent-press,

Buick,

Mercury,

Oldsmobile,

Chrysler,

This is the way the world ends.

"I like that," I said. And I did.

"Noble cities once stood here," said the professor. "Each one the equivalent of Atlantis. Gone now, buried under the sands of time. But their mark remains. Golden artifacts. Nameless treasures. A little digging, my friends, and you have the world in your hands."

"Has it ever occurred to you to wonder," the senator was saying to Burger, "what would have happened if the Cuban missile crisis had occurred at exactly the same moment as the East Coast power blackout?"

"Statistics," said Burger. "Figures. Buckminster Fuller."

"I'll give you statistics," said Grogan. "Did you know that since the last ice age three quarters of the earth has been water, and of the one quarter that is land very little has been lived on? Ninety-nine percent of humanity has lived on only five percent of the earth. Civilizations come and go in the twinkling of an eye. But the debris they leave behind. Now if either one of you gentlemen would be interested in a little venture into the unknown . . .”

Elvira's toe warm against my instep. Hand in pocket. "Care for a little swim?"

She leaned closer. "Love to, baby, but not now." Inclined her head in the direction of the senator. "Right now is a no-no."

But the senator wasn't paying much attention. He was absorbed in Miss Wong. She was giving him a brief course in Taoism.

"You could start with Thomas Merton's The Way of Chuang Tzu. That, of course, is of primary interest when viewed through the perspective of Virajananda's Paramartha Prasanga. Or if that is not easily obtainable in these parts, you might start with Sivananda's Concentration and Meditation."

"Let's fuck," said the senator.

"I used to work in Chicago . . . " began Burger. "That does it," said Harry. "Everybody off."

When they had all gone Miss Wong prepared supper. "They keep asking me what you do for a living," I said to Harry.

"What did you tell them?"

"That I don't know."

"You really don't?" I shook my head. "Hell, boy, I'm a crook."