The Diamond Bikini (12 page)

“I was lost,” I says. “The rabbit hunters tried to shoot us, but we got out of the lake and run off down in the bottom and we got separated and it got dark and I lost Miss Harrington and after a while I found out I was walking in a cornfield, and—”

“Well!”
Everybody let out a big sigh, and sat down. They all mopped their faces and shook their heads kind of slow, and looked real happy for a minute. Then doggone if everybody didn’t start to cuss.

Pop and Uncle Sagamore cussed the rabbit hunters, and Pop cussed me for going swimming with Miss Harrington, and Booger and Otis and Pearl cussed Pop, and the sheriff just cussed everybody kind of impartial until he happened to remember Uncle Sagamore and settled down to just cussing him.

“You’d know it,” he says, red-faced and rolling his hat around in his hands. “If there was going to be a goddam war or a hurricane or a outbreak of the bubonic plague or a revolution or a rest home for city gangsters with machine-gun battles breaking out all over the place, you’d know it’d be on Sagamore Noonan’s farm. It’s the logical place.”

He stopped and mopped his face with the sleeve of his shirt. Then he waved an arm. “All right, men. Load the condemned boat back on the condemned truck and if you’ve got all the dead gangsters in the condemned ambulance we’ll get out of this condemned place. We don’t have to drag the condemned lake now, because I guess there ain’t nobody in it.”

He sighed and shook his head, and then went on, “I mean there ain’t nobody in it we’re looking for at the moment, I’m glad we don’t have to look. I’m gettin’ old and I ain’t got much appetite for the seamy side of life any more. There just ain’t no telling, if you dragged this here peaceful lake on this peaceful little farm of Sagamore Noonan’s, how many dead bodies you’ll find, and old gangsters and gambling equipment, and pieces of old stills, and dope, and machine-guns, and brass knucks.

It was like Uncle Sagamore said, I thought, the sheriff was a real excitable man. But it looked like he was forgetting that Miss Harrington was still lost.

“But, sheriff,” I says. “We got to look for Miss Harrington. She’s still down there somewhere.”

He stopped then and stared at me. He shook his head. “That’s right. I forgot about her. I don’t know why—I mean, with nothing going on to interrupt a man’s train of thought—but never mind. You say you got separated from her?”

“Yes, sir,” I says. “About two hours ago, I reckon. And she can’t walk very well, because she hasn’t got any shoes.”

He nodded. “I know. I know. We found all your clothes. But she’s got on a bathing suit, hasn’t she?”

“Yes, sir. The diamond one. But it ain’t very warm, and there’s not much of it to keep the mosquitoes off.”

He stared at me. “Diamond one?”

I told him about it.

He didn’t say anything for a moment. He just sighed and walked over and leaned his forehead on his arms against the side of the truck, shaking his head from side to side. In the light from the lanterns I couldn’t tell if he was crying, or what. The rest of us just looked at him. Pop lit a cigar and Uncle Sagamore bit off a chaw of tobacco and looked around for a place to spit.

“If I had to grow up and be a peace officer,” the sheriff says, still with his forehead on his arms, “why couldn’t I have been born in some other county? There is other counties in this state. There’s lots of ‘em. Maybe there’s even places where they ain’t never heard of Sagamore Noonan. We got a big-city gang war. We got three dead gangsters. And now we got a cooch dancer lost in twenty thousand acres of river bottom with nothing on but a G-string.”

Booger and Otis and Pearl looked at each other, kind of frowning. Then the same idea seemed to hit all of ‘em at once. They jumped up and started to say something, but just then the sheriff jumped too like something had bit him. He whirled around and looked at Pop and Uncle Sagamore.

“Describe this girl again,” he snaps. “What’d you say she looked like?”

“Hmmmmm,” Pop says. “A real doll. About five-six, I reckon. Hundred and twenty pounds, or thereabouts. Black hair, blue eyes. Mebbe twenty-one or twenty-two years old, and built sort of—”

The sheriff was real excited. “And did she have a vine tattooed on one of her—uh—”

Pop took the cigar out of his mouth and stared at him. “Now, how the hell would I know what she’s got tattooed on her?”

“Hah!
the sheriff snorts. Then he whirled around to me. “Billy, you was swimming with—”

“Why, of course she has,” I says. “Hasn’t everybody?”

The sheriff and his three men says all at the same time,
“Choo-
Choo Caroline!”

“Right here in this county all the time,” Otis says.

“And now she’s lost in the river bottom,” Booger says. “At night.”

Otis mopped his face with his handkerchief. “In just a G-string,” he says.

Pop looked from one to the other. “Who,” he asked, “is Choo-Choo Caroline?”

“Nobody,” the sheriff says. “Nobody at all. Just a striptease cooch dancer that’s been on the front page of every paper in the country for the past three weeks, that’s being looked for by the FBI and the police of twenty-three states, and I don’t know how many different sets of gangsters. I understand they already named a new dance after her, and a television program, and two or three different drinks, and a new type of brassiere with roses on it, and some miscellaneous underdrawers and new hair-dos and face goo and lipstick. Aside from that she’s only a material witness in the biggest murder case they ever had in New Orleans, and she’s been missing for three weeks with the whole United States looking for her.”

“The only thing I don’t understand is why it never did occur to ‘em that the only perfectly logical place for her to be is wandering around in Sagamore Noonan’s river bottom in a G-string.”

“Well sir,” Uncle Sagamore says, “if that don’t beat all.”

“We better get busy and find her,” Pop says. “Imagine the poor girl wandering around in just that little—uh—”

Uncle Sagamore looked kind of thoughtful. “Oh, I reckon she’s safe enough down there. Ain’t nothin’ in that bottom that’d bother her.”

Pop started to get up. “Well, we better organize a search party, anyway. Can’t have her wanderin’ around down there, scared to death, in just that little wisp of—uh—”

He caught Uncle Sagamore looking at him and didn’t say no more.

The sheriff piped up then. “Course we’re goin’ to start a search party,” he says. He started giving orders. He says to one of the men I didn’t know, “Harm, you take them three gangsters on into town and turn ‘em over to the undertaker to hold for the inquest. Me and Pearl and Otis and Booger will stay here. We got three lanterns between us. Doughbelly, you drive the truck back with the rowboat. Get hold of Robert Stark. Tell him to round up twenty men—not no more because if we get this bottom full of people we’ll spend as much time looking for lost searchers as we will for her. Tell him to requisition Rutherford’s sound truck, the one they use during campaigns. If we make enough noise up here, she may find her way in by herself. Tell everybody to bring gasoline lanterns or flashlights. All right, get movin’.”

The fat one nodded his head and started to get in the truck. “May have a little trouble gettin’ twenty men, this time of night.”

“Just tell ‘em what she’s wearin’,” the sheriff says. “You won’t have no trouble at all.”

Pop and Uncle Sagamore just looked at each other again.

The sheriff waved his hand. “Oh, yes. Tell Robert Stark to call the state prison farm for the dawgs. They can have ‘em here by noon tomorrow, if we ain’t found her by that time.”

The truck and the ambulance drove away. Pop motioned for me to come along, and him and Uncle Sagamore went up to the house. We all sat down on the front porch.

“Where’s Dr Severance?” I asked. “And what did the sheriff mean about three dead gangsters? And where’s Sig Freed? And why was they going to drag the lake?”

Uncle Sagamore didn’t say a word. He just sat there wiggling his toes like he was thinking. Pop told me all about it.

They heard the shooting, and went over there and found our clothes where we’d left them on the log, so they figured the men had shot us and we was lying on the bottom of the lake. They called the sheriff from Mr. Jimerson’s house. And when the sheriff’s men got there they found Dr Severance up near the head of the lake. He was dead. And right near him there was two other dead men with tommy guns. They was the ones that tried to shoot us. I felt bad about Dr Severance, but I figured the other ones got just what was coming to them.

“Hey, Pop,” I said then, “there must have been three of them.” I told him about the one we heard while we was hiding in the ferns.

“Hmmmmm,” Pop says. “Well, likely he’s already give up and left, unless he’s lost, too. Anyway, I reckon he didn’t find her, because there ain’t been no more shootin’.”

“Well, you reckon the sheriff’s men will find her all right?” I asked. I was worried about her.

“Sure,” Pop says.

Uncle Sagamore still looked like he was blinking. There was a little light coming out the window from the lamp inside, and I could see him working his tobacco around in his mouth, from one cheek to the other. He spit. “Reckon they will, at that. Likely there’s a good chance of it,” he says.

“I expect you’re right,” Pop says. He looked thoughtful too.

I could see the three lanterns the sheriff and his men was carrying start down towards the timber on the lower side of the lake. Pop and Uncle Sagamore stayed kind of quiet for a minute.

“By God,” Pop says then.

“Ain’t she a beauty?” Uncle Sagamore asked.

“She sure is,” I said. I thought they meant Miss Harrington. I told them how she looked all tanned like that with her diamond bathing suit glittering. They looked at each other.

Pop choked on his cigar smoke. “Hush,” he says.

“Yes sir, by God,” Uncle Sagamore says. “It’s what you would call a natural situation. You couldn’t even start out and build one like it.”

“Stacked, famous, nakid, and lost,” Pop says.

“She ain’t nekkid,” I says. “She’s got on her bathing suit.”

“Damn it, Billy,” Pop snaps at me. “Will you hush up for a minute? A man don’t live through many moments like this in his life, and he don’t want ‘em spoiled with noise.”

“Yes sir, just think of it,” Uncle Sagamore says.

“Kind of makes little cold chills run up your back, don’t it?” Pop asked. Then he went on kind of discouraged. “But like you say, they’ll likely find her before morning.”

“Gosh, I sure hope so,” I says. They didn’t let on like they even heard me.

“A man couldn’t hardly get started with nothin’ by that time,” Pop says.

“That’s right,” Uncle Sagamore said to him. “He’d have to give guarantees, to do any dickerin’ with anybody.”

I didn’t know what they was talking about. And then I suddenly remember I still hadn’t found out anything about Sig Freed.

“Where’s Sig Freed?” I asked Pop.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I thought he was around here.”

“Have you seen him lately?”

Pop thought about it. “No. I reckon we ain’t, now that you mention it. Mebbe he went off looking for you.”

“You don’t suppose those people would hurt him, do you?” I asked. “He was there where we was swimming.”

“No, ain’t no reason they’d do a thing like that,” Pop says. “Now stop worryin’. A dawg can find his way back all right.”

I got up. “Well, I’m going to take a look around.”

“Don’t you go far,” Pop says. “I don’t want you to git lost again.”

“I won’t,” I says.

I walked up towards the big house trailer, calling “Sig Freed! Here, Sig Freed!” It was awful dark and I couldn’t see much, but I knew if he heard me he’d bark and come running. I didn’t get any answer from him, though. I came back down past Uncle Finley’s ark, and then cut back up the hill towards the front yard, meaning to go down past the barn and yell in that direction. Pop and Uncle Sagamore was still sitting on the front porch, talking.

“I can’t find him,” I says.

“Hell, don’t worry,” Pop says. “You can’t lose a dawg.”

I wasn’t so sure, though. “But, Pop, he’s a city dog.”

I started to go on across the yard, and then doggone if I didn’t hear him. It sounded like he was down the other side of the barn in the edge of the trees. He was barking.

“That’s him, Pop,” I says, and started to run down that way.

And then Uncle Sagamore and Pop both bounced off the porch. Pop caught my arm. “Wait a minute, Billy,” he says. “Hold it.”

“Why?” I asked. “That’s Sig Freed, all right. I know his bark.”

“Sure,” Uncle Sagamore says. “That’s him sure enough. But you ain’t been around dawgs as long as I have. That there’s a skunk bark sure as you’re born.”

“Just what I was thinkin’,” Pop says. He was still holding me by the arm. “When I heard it, I says to myself, that there dawg’s treed a skunk.”

“Well, maybe so,” I told him. “But we can’t just leave him down there to let the skunk stink him up.”

“You better let Sagamore take care of it,” Pop says. “He knows how. You just sit right here and wait.”

“But, Pop—”

“Never you mind. You just do like I tell you. I don’t want you all stunk up with polecat. You’d have to go off and live in the barn.”

Uncle Sagamore started walking down towards the barn real fast. Pop and me sat down on the porch. We could hear Sig Freed still barking, and it didn’t sound like he was too far the other side of the barn.

Nothing happened for a few minutes. Then Sig Freed’s bark changed a little, and in a minute he let out a yip and stopped barking altogether.

Uncle Sagamore yelled something.

Pop walked out by the well and called back, “What? What you say?”

“Call the dawg,” Uncle Sagamore yelled. “Git him up there and keep him.”

“Here, Sig Freed!” I called. “Sig Freed! Sig Freed!”

In a minute he came running up. He jumped up in my arms and started licking my face. “He didn’t get no skunk on him, Pop,” I says. “See, he smells just like he always did.”

“Well, that just goes to show you,” Pop says. “Sagamore knows how to handle one. Better hold on to that dawg, though. Don’t let him go back down there.”

We sat down on the porch again and I held Sig Freed by his collar. He was real happy. It seemed like a long time went by, though, and Uncle Sagamore didn’t come back.

“You reckon he’s having trouble with the skunk?” I asked.

“Sagamore having trouble with one crummy little old skunk?” Pop says. “Not on your life. He’s a match for any skunk that ever come down the pike. He’ll be back in a minute.”

Some more time went by, and I started Worrying again about Miss Harrington. She’d be awful scared down there by herself. “Hadn’t we all ought to go down there and help look for her?” I asked Pop.

He shook his head. “Ain’t much we could do,” he says. “And I don’t want you gettin’ lost again.”

Just then Uncle Sagamore came around the corner of the house. He sat down on the step in the dark and bit off a chaw of tobacco. “Well sir, by golly,” he says. “It was just like we thought.”

“Well, you can generally tell, by the bark, if you know dawgs.” Pop says. “You didn’t have no trouble?”

“Hmmmm,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Not overly much. Skunks is a lot like mules and wimmin. You just got to reason with ‘em. You ain’t goin’ to git nowhere givin’ orders to a skunk, but if’n you take the time to explain the whole thing to him he’ll generally see it yore way.”

“You reckon it’s safe to turn the dawg loose now?” Pop asked.

“Oh, sure. He ain’t going to locate him now. Let him go.”

I turned Sig Freed loose. He ran around out in the dark in the front yard, but he didn’t go far.

Uncle Sagamore sailed out some tobacco juice. You couldn’t see it, but you could hear the
ka-splott
when it landed. “You know, Sam,” he says. “I’m sorta worried about that there girl.”

“Well,” Pop says, “I have been, too, but I just didn’t want to let on.”

“Oh,” Uncle Sagamore says, “she ain’t in no danger. They ain’t nothin’ down there that’d hurt her, mind you. But it’s just that she’ll get scared, all alone like that, and the muskeeters is goin’ to chaw on her somethin’ awful, being light dressed like she is. Sam, you reckon the shurf’s handlin’ this thing just the way he ort? With only twenty men?”

“Just what I was thinkin’, myself,” Pop says. “It seems to me like the shurf just ain’t got a real grasp of the situation. Now, if it was me—”

“If it was me,” Uncle Sagamore says, “I’d offer a reward.”

“Why, of course,” Pop went on. “And kinda let people know about it.”

“Natcherly. I’d distribute a few hand bills and mebbe call the papers. Sort of describe her, how she looks and how she was dressed the last time anybody saw her, so people’d know what to look for. I reckon we could get out a pretty good description of the girl, now couldn’t we?”

“Ho-ly hell. I mean, of course we could. We seen her around often enough, ain’t we?”

“Well sir, I’ll tell you,” Uncle Sagamore says. “I just ain’t satisfied with the way the shurf’s handlin’ this thing. That there girl’s a good friend of ours, an’ Billy sets all the store in the world by her, an’ here that shurf’s going to go a-piddlin’ around down here with a little old dab of men that couldn’t find a dead mouse in a glass of buttermilk, while she works herself up into a swivet and gets bit all to hell by the muskeeters. It just don’t seem right to me.”

“Well, then, what do you reckon we ort to do?” Pop asked.

“Now, mind you,” Uncle Sagamore says, “I’d be the last one in the world to want to interfere with the workin’s of the law, but it shore seems to me like it’s our duty to let the people know what’s goin’ on down here so we can get more help to look for her. People’d come a-runnin’ if they knew the facts, “specially when they heard about the reward.”

“Hmmmm!” Pop says. “Mebbe about two hundred?”

“Better make it five hundred,” Uncle Sagamore decided.

“Say, that’s fine,” I told them. “We’ll get lots of help. Who’ll pay it?”

“Shucks, ain’t no use worryin’ about that now,” Uncle Sagamore says. The thing to do now is find that there girl. Plenty of time later on to worry about piddlin’ little details.”

“Well, what are we waitin’ for?” Pop says.

He jumped up. “We got a printing press out there in the trailer, haven’t we? And hundreds of pounds of paper. Come on, Billy. Let’s get to work.”

“Sure,” I says.

We got a lantern and went out to the trailer, pop closed the door and sat down at the little desk with a sheet of paper and a pencil. “You start settin’ her up as fast as I get it wrote out,” he says. “We don’t want to lose no time.”

He opened the little dictionary and started looking up the words. Pop can’t spell anything without looking it up.

It was hot inside the trailer, but we was too busy to notice.

Pop got the lead-off blocked out the way he wanted it and I set it up in big type, and then he started with the rest of it, the description and how to find the place and everything.

While we was working there was a sound like a horse outside and we looked out.

Uncle Sagamore had saddled one of his mules, and he was setting on his back with something that looked like a bundle of clothes under his arm.

“How you makin’ out, Sam?” he asked.

“Fine,” Pop says. “We’ll be ready to start printing her in a few minutes. You goin’ down in the bottom?”

“That’s right,” Uncle Sagamore says. I figured I ort to help the boys out, seein’ as how I can’t do nothin’ here.”

“What’s that you got in your arms?” I asked Uncle Sagamore.

“Oh,” he says. “I went up to the trailer an’ found a suit of Miss Harrington’s clothes. We find her, she’ll want something to wear.”

I hadn’t thought of that. It was a good idea.

We closed the door and started to work again.

Pop was chewing on his pencil. “Hmmmmm! Twenty-two years old—” he says, talking to hisself. “No. Better make that nineteen. Get a sportier type of searcher. Now. Which bosom is that vine on?”