“I’ve seen it,” said Richard Gordon.
“Let’s have a drink,” said Spellman, happily. “Think of meeting you down here. You know, I’m a lucky fellow. Really lucky.”
“Why?” asked Richard Gordon.
“I’m crazy,” said Spellman. “Gee, it’s wonderful. It’s just like being in love only it always comes out right.”
Richard Gordon edged away a little.
“Don’t be that way,” said Spellman. “I’m not violent. That’s is, I’m almost never violent. Come on, let’s have a drink.”
“Have you been crazy long?”
“I think always,” said Spellman. “I tell you it’s the only way to be happy in times like these. What do I care what Douglas Aircraft does? What do I care what A. T. and T. does? They can’t touch me. I just pick up one of your books or I take a drink, or I look at Sylvia’s picture, and I’m happy. I’m like a bird. I’m better than a bird. I’m a—” he seemed to hesitate and hunt for a word, then hurried on. “I’m a lovely little stork,” he blurted out and blushed. He looked at Richard Gordon fixedly, his lips working, and a large blonde young man detached himself from a group down the bar and coming toward him put a hand on his arm.
“Come on, Harold,” he said. “We’d better be getting home.”
Spellman looked at Richard Gordon wildly. “He sneered at a stork,” he said. “He stepped away from a stork. A stork that wheels in circling flight—”
“Come on, Harold,” said the big young man. Spellman put out his hand to Richard Gordon.
“No offence,” he said. “You’re a good writer. Keep right on with it. Remember I’m always happy. Don’t let them confuse you. See you soon.”
With the large young man’s arm over his shoulder the two of them moved out through the crowd to the door. Spellman looked back and winked at Richard Gordon.
“Nice fella,” the proprietor said. He tapped his head. “Very well educate. Studies too much I guess. Likes to break glasses. He don’t mean no harm. Pay for everything he break.”
“Does he come in here much?”
“In the evening. What he say he was? A swan?”
“A stork.”
“Other night was a horse. With wings. Like a horse on a white horse bottle only with pair a wings. Nice fella all right. Plenty money. Gets a funny ideas. Family keep him down here now with his man- ager. He told me he like your books, Mr. Gordon. What you have to drink? On the house.”
“A whiskey,” said Richard Gordon. He saw the sheriff coming toward him. The sheriff was an extremely tall, rather cadaverous and very friendly man. Richard Gordon had seen him that afternoon at the Bradleys’ party and talked with him about the bank robbery.
“Say,” said the sheriff, “if you’re not doing anything come along with me a little later. The coast guard’s towing in Harry Morgan’s boat. A tanker signalled it up off Matacumbe. They’ve got the whole outfit.”
“My God,” said Richard Gordon. “They’ve got them all?”
“They’re all dead except one man, the message said.”
“You don’t know who it is?”
“No, they didn’t say. God knows what happened.”
“Have they got the money?”
“Nobody knows. But it must be aboard if they didn’t get to Cuba with it.”
“When will they be in?”
“Oh, it will be two or three hours yet.”
“Where will they bring the boat?”
“Into the Navy Yard, I suppose. Where the coast guard ties up.”
“Where’ll I see you to go down there?”
“I’ll drop in here for you.”
“Here or down at Freddy’s. I can’t stick it here much longer.”
“It’s pretty tough in at Freddy’s tonight. It’s full of those Vets from up on the Keys. They always raise the devil.”
“I’ll go down there and look at it,” Richard Gordon said. “I’m feeling kind of low.”
“Well, keep out of trouble,” the sheriff said. “I’ll pick you up there in a couple of hours. Want a lift down there?”
“Thanks.”
They went out through the crowd and Richard Gordon got in beside the sheriff in his car.
“What do you suppose happened in Morgan’s boat?” he asked.
“God knows,” the sheriff said. “It sounds pretty grizzly.”
“Didn’t they have any other information?”
“Not a thing,” said the sheriff. “Now look at that, will you?”
They were opposite the brightly lighted open front of Freddy’s place and it was jammed to the sidewalk. Men in dungarees, some bareheaded, others in caps, old service hats and in cardboard helmets, crowded the bar three deep, and the loud-speaking nickle-in-the-slot phonograph was playing “Isle of Capri.” As they pulled up a man came hurtling out of the open door, another man on top of him. They fell and rolled on the sidewalk, and the man on top, holding the other’s hair in both hands, banged his head up and down on the cement, making a sickening noise. No one at the bar was paying any attention.
The sheriff got out of the car and grabbed the man on top by the shoulder.
“Cut it out,” he said. “Get up there.”
The man straightened up and looked at the sheriff. “For Christ sake, can’t you mind your own business?”
The other man, blood in his hair, blood oozing from one ear, and more of it trickling down his freckled face, squared off at the sheriff.
“Leave my buddy alone,” he said thickly. “What’s the matter? Don’t you think I can take it?”