Harry and the Bikini Bandits by Basil Heatter - Chapter 05

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 5

In the morning I was promoted to chief engineer. Harry said he didn't know a spark plug from a rectal thermometer and didn't want to. He said if I was any kind of a good, healthy, clean-cut American boy, I would know how to get the old one-lunger percolating. I swung the big flywheel and found about as much compression as you would look for in a cigarette lighter. It looked kind of hopeless but I thought that maybe with a dose of STP for the burned bearings and a new set of points, I might yet get her going.

The trouble was he had no tools except a pair of rusty pliers and a screwdriver with a broken handle. How had he gotten this far? Lots of luck, I decided. Or faith.

I took the engine serial number off the block and then went ashore to see if I could find the points and maybe a carburetor kit. There was an engine repair shop a couple of blocks away, and they looked up the number for me and told me the Palmer company had stopped building hat particular clunker back in 1934. I was encouraged because I figured it was probably 1834.

So I stayed with it and finally came up lucky in a junkyard. When I got back I found that Mr. Burger, the owner of Charisma, had tried to shoot Harry. You all know Hamilton Burger-owner of the famous Bigger Burger drive-in restaurants that are like on every street corner in America. I had passed maybe a hundred of them hitchhiking down. Hamilton Burger. With a name like that I guess it was inevitable.

Anyway he had come after Harry with a Smith & Wesson and had let go one shot before Miss Wong skulled him with the iron frying pan.

The way I got the story he had jumped down onto the deck of the Jezebel, spotted Harry in his bunk, and tried to pot him through one of the cabin ports. He was either the world's worst shot or still polluted from all that booze, because he had not only missed Harry but almost the whole damn boat. He was lucky he didn't shoot his foot off, because the slug had gone through the deck right where he was standing. It had torn up two inches of solid pine like cardboard. While he was standing there looking at the hole, Miss Wong came on with the frying pan. Although she never seems to move fast, there must still be some Genghis Khan in her blood.

If Harry was shaken up by that little fracas, he didn't show it.

When I got there he was puffing on his pipe and looking down at Mr. Burger, who was stretched out on the bunk with a towel around his head. He wasn't exactly unconscious, just lying there with his eyes shut and the tears running down his cheeks and dripping off his chin. He smelled like a brewery.

Harry looked uneasy, kind of embarrassed.

"Now look here, old man . . . " he said. "I say, Burger old boy . . . "

Burger gave a combination groan and hiccup and unleashed another batch of tears.

"You don't want to take on like that over a little friendly chavering," Harry said.

Burger opened his eyes. They looked like rainy sunsets. "What are you talking about?" he said in a voice that might have been his last breath.

Harry rubbed his pipe on his nose and scratched his beard. "Well . . . you know."

"What's all this chavering?"

Harry shuffled his feet. "You get the idea."

"The idea I got," cried Burger, "is that while I was below sleeping you laid my wife. Did you or didn't you?"

"Is that what she told you?"

"You know damn well she did."

"I wonder why?"

"You wonder why you screwed her, you sonofabitch?"

"I wonder why she bothered to tell you."

"Then you admit it?"

"Well, of course."

Burger snatched away the towel and tried to sit up, but in so doing banged his head on the deck beam and collapsed again. Another flood of tears soaked the pillow.

"You're taking a very emotional approach," Harry said. "Why not think of it as nice healthy physical exercise. Like deck tennis. Don't you ever play deck tennis on that bloody great tub?"

Burger sat up again, more cautiously this time. He used the towel to mop his cheeks. His watery blue eyes looked like they were swimming in blood. I guess when he was fixed up and reasonably sober, he wasn't a bad-looking man, but now he was a mess. He was wearing Bermuda shorts, and his legs looked like kind of hairy asparagus.

"You're a lunatic," he said with conviction. "Deck tennis. Chavering. A madman. Crazy as a bedbug. You should be put away."

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"Sure thing," Harry said.

"Why I'm glad now I didn't kill you, you poor nut." Harry looked thoughtful. "The trouble with you, Burger, is you're not getting much fun out of life. And neither is your chick. You've got all that dough, but you're so smashed all the time you don't know what day it is. You've got to loosen up a little, Burger boy. Now I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll work a little deal with you. Pass Mrs. B. down here for a while, and I'll lend you Miss Wong up there."

Burger calmed down at once. A crafty gleam penetrated his bloodshot eyes. He mopped his cheeks. "Well now, Hook . . . " he began.

But Miss Wong was having none of it. Her face was as sweet as ever, but her eyes were black ice cubes. "Not on your motherfucking life," she said.

Harry shrugged. "I tried, Burger, but you see how it is. You're just too godawful. Nobody will touch you with a barge pole. But don't give up, man. Never give up. Shades of John Paul Jones and all that. Now for one thing, you ought to swear off the sauce; and for another, you ought to get rid of that mothering boat."

Burger was suddenly defensive. "What do you mean mothering boat? Why that's one of the most beautiful boats in the world. That boat was designed by Alden in Boston and built by Abeking & Rasmussen in Bremerhaven."

"Shit," said Harry. "All that air conditioning and television and wall-to-wall carpeting. All those captains and stewards and deckhands and prattboys. Why I'd be smashed all the time too if I was on a boat like that. The trouble with you, Burger, is you're bored to death. And that goes for your sweet little lady too. Get with it, man."

"Why the Charisma has been written up twice in Yachting . . . "

"Never mind fucking Yachting and never mind your fucking boat. I've tried to give you a little friendly advice, but you're too goddamn hardheaded to take it."

"I suppose you think this filthy wreck is better."

"You may know something about hamburgers or sausage or whatever that garbage is you sell, but you don't know a bloody thing about boats. Why of course she's better and ten times as beautiful. Consider her courageous sheerline, her saucy fantail, the rake of her spars."

"You're insane! Absolutely insane."

Harry nodded. "Maybe I am. But I'm living, which is more than we can say for you. Now get back to that fucking Taj Mahal and take this with you." He extended the pistol.

Burger stared at the weapon in bewilderment, as if he had never seen it before. "What do I want that thing for?"

"You might want to shoot yourself," Harry said.