[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
here. I feel in danger.' She put her arms round his neck. 'Don't think I'm
being hysterical.' She kissed him. 'Now you can go. I just wanted to see you.
Gome back quickly.'
Leiter had called and Bond had closed the door on her and locked it.
He followed Leiter to his car on the Parkway feeling vaguely troubled. He
couldn't imagine that the girl could come to any harm in this peaceful,
law-abiding place, or that The Big Man could conceivably have traced her to
The Everglades, which was only one of a hundred similar beach establishments
on Treasure
Island. But he respected the extraordinary power of her intuitions and her
attack of nerves made him uneasy.
The sight of Leiter's car put these thoughts out of his mind.
Bond liked fast cars and he liked driving them. Most American cars bored him.
They lacked personality and the patina of individual craftsmanship that
European cars have. They were just Vehicles', similar in shape and in colour,
and even in the tone of their horns. Designed to serve for a year and then be
turned
in in part exchange for the next year's model. All the fun of driving had been
taken out of them with the abolition of a gear-change, with hydraulic-assisted
steering and spongy suspension. All effort had been smoothed away and all of
that close contact with the machine and the road that extracts skill and nerve
from the European driver. To Bond, American cars were just beetle-shaped
Dodgems in which you motored along with one hand on the wheel, the ladio full
on, and the power-operated windows closed to keep out the draughts.
But Leiter had got hold of an old Cord, one of the few American cars with a
personality, and it cheered
Bond to climb into the low-hung saloon, to hear the solid bite of the gears
and the masculine tone of the wide exhaust. Fifteen years old, he reflected,
yet still one of the most modern-looking cars in the world.
They swung on to the causeway and across the wide expanse of unrippled water
that separates the twenty miles of narrow island from the broad peninsula
sprawling with St. Petersburg and its suburbs.
Already as they idled up Central Avenue on their way across the town to the
Yacht Basin and the main harbour and the big hotels, Bond caught a whiff of
the atmosphere that makes the town the 'Old Folks
Home' of America. Everyone on the sidewalks had white hair, white or blue, and
the famous Sidewalk
Davenports that Solitaire had described were thick with oldsters sitting in
rows like the starlings in
Trafalgar Square.
Bond noted the small grudging mouths of the women, the sun gleaming on their
pince-nez; the stringy, collapsed chests and arms of the men displayed to the
sunshine in Truman shirts. The fluffy, sparse balls of hair on the women
showing the pink scalp. The bony bald heads of the men. And, everywhere, a
prattling camaraderie, a swapping of news and gossip, a making of folksy dates
for the shuffle board and the bridge-table, a handing round of letters from
children and grandchildren, a tut-tutting about prices in the shops and the
motels.
You didn't have to be amongst them to hear it all. It was all in the nodding
and twittering of the balls of blue fluff, the back-slapping and
hawk-an-spitting of the little old baldheads.
'It makes you want to climb right into the tomb and pull the lid down,' said
Leiter at Bond's exclamations of horror. 'You wait till we get out and walk.
If they see your shadow coming up the sidewalk behind them they jump out of
the way as if you were the Chief Cashier coming to look over their shoulders
in the bank. It's ghastly. Makes me think of the bank clerk who went home
unexpectedly at midday and found the President of the bank sleeping with his
wife. He went back and told his pals in the ledger department and said, "Gosh,
Page 58
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
fellers, he nearly caught me!" '
Bond laughed.
'You can hear all the presentation gold watches ticking in their pockets,'
said Leiter. 'Place is full of undertakers, and pawnshops stuffed with gold
watches and masonic rings and bits of jet and lockets full of hair. Makes you
shiver to think of it all. Wait till you go to "Aunt Milly's Place" and see
them all in droves mumbling over their corn-beef hash and cheeseburgers,
trying to keep alive till ninety. It'll frighten the life out of you. But
they're not all old down here. Take a look at that ad over there.' He pointed
towards a big hoarding on a deserted lot.
It was an advertisement for maternity clothes. 'STUTZ HEIMER & BLOCK,' it
Said, 'IT'S NEW!
OUR ANTICIPATION DEPARTMENT, AND AFTER! CLOTHES FOR CHIPS (1-4) AND
TWIGS (4-8).'
Bond groaned. 'Let's get away from here,' he said. 'This is really beyond the
call of duty.'
They came down to the waterfront and turned right until they came to the
seaplane base and the coastguard station. The streets were free of oldsters
and here there was the normal life of a harbour
wharves, warehouses, a ship's chandler, some up-turned boats, nets drying, the
cry of seagulls, the.
rather fetid smell coming in off the bay. After the teeming boneyard of the
town the sign over the garage:
'Drive-ur-Self. Pat Grady. The Smiling Irishman. Used cars,' was a cheerful
reminder of a livelier, bustling world.
'Better get out and walk,' said Leiter. 'The Robber's place is in the next
block.'
They left the car beside the harbour and sauntered along past a timber
warehouse and some oil-storage tanks. Then they turned left again towards the
sea.
The side-road ended at a small weather-beaten wooden jetty that reached out
twenty feet on barnacled piles into the bay. Right up against its open gate
was a long low corrugated-iron warehouse. Over its wide double doors was
painted, black on white, 'Ourobouros Inc. Live Worm and Bait Merchants.
Coral, Shells, Tropical Fish. Wholesale only.' In one of the double doors
there was a smaller door with a gleaming Yale lock. On the door was a sign:
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]