The Big Caper | Page 6

on the bed without
bothering to remove the spread.
In another moment he was once more in that strange, exciting
half-dream world in which he spent the greater part of his life.

4.
Sam Loxley, who had sat in a canvas deck chair and spent most of his
time opening cans of cold beer, and Jim Dexter, the local carpenter
whom Frank had hired to help him do the work, had got a big kick out
of the garage.
"You're like all those crazy Northerners who come down here," Sam
had told him. Sam himself had been in Florida a little more than a year.
"Just like the rest of 'em. Think you have to build like you do in the
North. Hell, you don't need nothin' but a roof."
Jim Dexter was being paid for his work, and so he didn't say much one
way or the other, but it was obvious that he thought Frank was wasting
his time.
Frank had tried to explain it.

"You see," he'd said, "I'll probably get a little repair work now and then,
and hell, the gas station just isn't big enough for it. I figure I can bring a
car or two out here and this old barn will be a nice place to work on
them in my spare time."
"But why bother to close it in?" Sam asked. "All you gotta do is keep
the rain off of 'em."
Frank told him that he'd just feel safer if the cars were locked up when
he wasn't around. And so he had gone ahead, following the plans that
Flood had given him, and rebuilt the ramshackle barn into a tightly
closed garage that would hold three cars and a good-sized workbench.
There were double overhead doors and only one small window, high up
in the back. Even Jim squawked about that.
"Boy," he said, "you'll roast to death working in here. You gotta have
air in this country. Wait till you try and come in here in the summer."
But Frank had gone ahead anyway and let them think he was stupid.
Flood wanted the garage in back of the house, and what Flood wanted
he was going to get.
Kay and Frank passed the doors of the garage and then circled around
the left side of the building. There were two folding lawn chairs and a
weather-beaten redwood table under a large rubber tree a few yards
from the building, and they sat down there.
"No," Frank was saying, "I've never met him. But I know all about him.
He's the best torch in the business. Flood wouldn't have him if he
weren't the best."
"But Frank," Kay said, "you should see him. Doesn't look as though he
could get out of his own way. And his eyes. He looks insane. There's
something sick, unhealthy, about him. He gives me the creeps."
"Look, kid," Frank said, "of course he gives you the creeps. What the
hell, the guy's a maniac. If Flood wasn't paying him to do it, he'd do it
anyway. That's how he gets his kicks. He likes to see 'em burn."

A shiver went through her and she shook her head. "Well, thank God,
he's your problem," she said. "But you better get him sobered up and
out of those smelly clothes before you start taking him around town.
The way he looks and smells, he could be locked up on general
principles."
"Don't worry about him," Frank said. "He'll be all right. I'll let him rest
up and take him around this afternoon. It'll have to be this afternoon.
Paulmeyer gets in tomorrow and I'll have to drive down to Fort Pierce
and see him. I want to take him the plans and go over the details."
"Paulmeyer?" Kay said. "He's the... "
"He's the dynamiter," Frank said.
Suddenly he turned in his seat so that he was facing her. His face was
very sober and there was a petulant expression in his eyes.
"Goddamn it, baby," he said, "I wish you didn't have to go to Palm
Beach: I wish you didn't have to see Flood tomorrow."
She reached quickly for his hand and squeezed it. She tried to be easy
and casual about it, to keep the undercurrent of worry out of her voice.
"Don't worry about Flood," she said. "I can handle him all right."
"Nobody can handle him," Frank said. "I know.. My God, I've been
around him enough."
He looked down at the ground between his feet, his eyes half squinted
and worry lines around his mouth.
"What I still can't get is his sending you down here with me. He might
have figured--"
"Not Flood," she interrupted. "You know how he figures. Nobody
would ever have the guts to take