Chapter 5

The Sleepy Weasel

After all that, I couldn’t just fall into bed and go quietly to sleep.

I climbed a narrow, breakneck staircase to the sports deck, walked across the vague white markings for shuffleboard and deck tennis, and stood for a time at the rail looking astern toward the southwest. Somewhere, there below the horizon, Nantucket light must be flashing, and New England lay. Above me spread the dark, starry sky. Below was the black-and-white wash of our wake.

That had been quite a story. And told by quite a girl.

Toward the bow, two windows glowed in the cabin below the darkened bridge. That would be the ever-wakeful radio shack. Radio has always drawn me like a magnet. When I was a kid, one of my daydreams was to be radio officer on a ship. Not the captain, not the exec, not the admiral of the fleet—just the “sparks” talking to other ships, and to faraway places, and to home.

I crossed the deck and looked in a window.

It was half-open and a man sat under it, enclosed in a glassed-in booth, at a desk with a phone on it. He was talking on the ship-to-shore phone.

It was the sleepy weasel of the bar this noon.

“...just for a minute,” he was saying. “She was just finishing her dinner. In her cabin...Sure, she seemed okay...No, don’t worry about that, Mr. Harlow...”

I moved far enough from the window to be out of its light and still hear.

“...going to watch over that girl like a—like a mother hen. She’s not the first star that Sam Jones has watched over, you know...Tonight? Tonight she was going to bed early, right after she finished dinner, and read.”

She was, eh?

“And she’s got that maid with her—you know...Okay, Mr. Harlow. Why don’t I call you every night around this time? Give you a little report, so to speak...Right, Mr. Harlow. ’Bye now.”

This was the press agent, then. And Newt Harlow was doing a little checking. On me?

I heard the receiver click and a chair scrape, and I moved back into the darkness beside a stack of deck chairs.

Jones came out of the radio office and walked briskly to the ladder. When his head disappeared below the deck’s edge I followed on tiptoe.

I didn’t know what I was doing or why. I was a little wound up, I suppose, and also suddenly aware that things were going on which I didn’t know about.

Shadowing is a genuine art, and I’ve never had to practice it, but Jones made things easy for me. He headed straight for the bar where I’d seen him earlier. From the outside I saw him settle himself on the same bar stool and say something, probably the same thing, to the same bartender. Again there were few people in the bar. I walked in and sat one stool away from him.

I told the bartender “CC and water” and let my gaze wander around. Finally we noticed each other.

“Hi. You’re the magazine guy, right?”

“Right.”

“Editorial?”

“Right.”

“Sure. I can tell editorial guys from advertising a mile off.”

“I could be in the printing end. Or a layout artist.”

He laughed. “Tell ’em a mile off,” he said. “Have a drink.”

“Got one, thanks. How do you tell them?”

“I been dealing with ’em all my life. I probably know a lot of people you know. I’m in public relations.” He eyed me; the weasel look that he had lost for the moment returned now. “You know—a lousy flack.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s a living—I guess. Gimme another pour, barman. How about you? Sam Jones is my name. I’m one of the Jones boys. With one of the studios.”

“Bill Deacon. Glad to know you. No thanks, on the drink. One nightcap’s my limit.”

“Deacon. Sure. I know you. I read your magazine all the time. I know Bernie Welden.”

Bernie’s our Hollywood correspondent.

“Sure. Nice guy.”

“He is that. You know”—he took a long pull on the fresh drink—”I envy guys like you. I’ve read your stuff in the magazines. Lot’s of people’s stuff. That’s what I always wanted to be. A reporter. You’ve written some good stories.”

“Flattery will get you anywhere.”

“I mean it. Me—I got sidetracked into this lousy business. Years ago. I took it as a temporary fast buck.” He looked into the bar mirror and even the walrus mustache seemed to droop a little. “I been fast-bucking ever since.”

He sighed and sipped. “I guess that’s why you always find me at a bar.”

“We seemed to find each other at bars,” I said.

“Then have a drink with me.”

“No, thanks. Honestly.”

He pushed his glass toward the bartender. “You going over on a story?”

“No. Strictly pleasure this time. You?”

“I’m working. I guess you’d call it that. Nutty assignment.”

“Publicity?”

The weasel face grew momentarily alert. Then he shrugged.

“How’d you like to turn down ten thousand dollars?” he said. “In one-hunnert-dollar bills? That’s what I did tonight. Just before dinner. Bribe money. And I coulda ask for twenny-five thousand and got it, too. And I’d turn that down, too.”

“That’s a lot of money.”

“Sure it is. People think a press agent is a crook, always out for what he can get, willing to sell anybody down a river. Or up the river. Well, I ain’t selling her—anyone, I mean—down a river.”

He talked between steady sips, never moving the glass far from his mouth. I waited. He went on, as if someone had asked a question.

“Because I’m nuts about her, that’s why. I need money much as any guy. Maybe more. But she’s nice kid. I’m almost old enough be her father, but I’m nuts about her. And if you think I’d sell out...when I think what a nice kid she is...what’s a lousy handful of hunnert-dollar bills?”

“Sure. Who is she?”

“No, you don’t, pal. I’m a little stoned. But I can’t tell you. I won’t. Anyway, she’s a long way from here.”

“I see. Well, take it easy. And I’ll take a rain check on that drink.” I slid off the bar stool.

“You got one. You’re smart, pal. Like I said. Like I shoulda been. I’m a little stoned. ‘Night.”

He wasn’t the weasel now. He was just a defeated, middle-aged man, befuddled by life and, at the moment, liquor.

“Good night.”

* * * *

The library door was still open as I went by and a man was sitting inside smoking a pipe over a book, the cover of which I recognized: The Complete Sherlock Holmes. He looked as if he enjoyed what he was doing. I went in and sat down. I wanted to think about what I had learned, and about how much I didn’t know. I dropped into a deep leather chair.

But when books are around I cannot keep my eyes off them. In front of me was a shelf of reference books in both French and English, assembled for the passengers’ convenience by a thoughtful ship line—dictionaries, a Columbia Encyclopedia, a Who’s Who, Standard and Poor’s securities manuals, and an athletic-record book. I took out the Who’s Who and looked up Moore, Merrilee. She had an inch and a half of type which didn’t tell me much I didn’t already know, except that it reminded me of a few movies I had forgotten. I looked up Tom and was reminded that he had been born in Drogheda. I tried a couple of other friends to see if they had made it or were still there, and then, just for the hell of it, I tried Reginald Pennypacker.

He wasn’t there, which did not surprise me. The only Pennypacker in Who’s Who was a professor of psychology at a small California college, now retired. I tried the other spelling—Penneypacker—but there wasn’t one. I put the book back. The man with the pipe still looked contented.

* * * *

In the suite I undressed, got into laid-out pajamas, turned out the bed light, and thought about Merrilee.

As I did, I heard people come down the hall, arguing. A man’s voice came through our door: “Lousy damn food on these foreign ships. Lousy damned service!”

A key rattled in a nearby lock and a woman’s voice answered him softly. The door slammed. Then, a subdued murmur continued behind the head of my bed. But I had recognized his voice. The couple who sat with the Pennypackers in the dining room had the suite next to ours. I looked at the luminous dial on my wrist. It was one o’clock.

I went back to thinking about Merrilee. She certainly had an effect on people.

It was a nice way to go to sleep.