The Big Caper | Page 5

morning. Fact, I'm on my way out to the house now. Don't know what it'll do to our plans."
Sam Loxley shrugged. "Hell, boy," he said, "bring 'im along. The more the merrier."
Frank hesitated for a second. "Well," he said, "I don't know. The old boy's been a little under the weather, from what I've heard, and I don't just know...
Sam stopped smiling and looked serious. "That's too bad," he said. "But we'll hold it open. Anyway, Kay and Alice can get together on it."
He said good-by then and turned to enter the bank. Frank walked over to the curb, opened the car door, and climbed behind the wheel. He had to wait for the stop light, the only one in the center of the town, and then headed west on Orange Drive until he came to the city limits, some thirty-five city blocks out.
He cut over a lateral throughway to the south and drove another mile, then turned west once more and continued for about ten minutes. On this last road he passed few houses and no cars. Once more he turned left. This was a dead-end road, of hard-packed sand, extremely narrow and little used. He drove by several groves without seeing a house, then passed the small, neat, modern one-story bungalow that the Loxleys had recently built.
Alice Loxley was hanging clothes in the yard; Bitty, the three-year-old golden-haired baby, playing in the basket at her feet. Alice waved.
He waved back and then drove another quarter of a mile and turned into the driveway circling around in back of the rambling old house where he and Kay lived, in complete respectability, as Mr. and Mrs. Frank Gerald Harper.
Kay was standing in the driveway by the back porch. Her long legs were bare and she wore a pair of pale-blue shorts. She had a halter, also blue, around her high, full breasts. In between, the skin was bright gold, and it had an almost iridescent quality. Her long straw-colored hair was turned under at the ends. The bangs failed to cover her wide forehead completely, and they were ragged, but very attractive.
Her eyes were blue with a strong greenish tinge.. Her face was just a trifle too long and thin to be considered beautiful in the classic sense, and possibly her well-formed, full mouth was a bit too large. But she was the picture of health. Even women considered her attractive; men found her completely stunning.
She looked exactly like what everyone that they knew in Indio Beach believed she was--the young, extremely attractive wife of a nice-looking ex-Marine who was establishing himself in business and was about to settle down and raise a fine, healthy family, which would be an asset to the community.
Kay spoke as Frank braked the car to a stop.
"Well, he's here," she said. "And drunk as a pig."

3.
Kosta stood at the window, his round, fat body naked except for shorts. He was not drunk; he was never drunk. Liquor did many things to him, but the one thing it never did was to interfere with the clarity of his mind.
Kay had directed him to a bedroom on the second floor, and the moment he'd closed the door, he'd stripped off his clothes. He wanted to talk with Frank, but that could wait. Right now his main wish was to lie down arid rest. The gin had relaxed him, temporarily relieved that strange tension under which he always moved, especially when he was physically exhausted.
He had gone to the window to pull down the shade so as to darken the room, and that was how he happened to look out and see Kay and Frank walking along the path leading to the garage, sixty or seventy yards to the rear of the house.
Frank had his right arm around her waist in a half-careless, thoroughly familiar manner, and, watching them, Kosta sensed a strong intimacy between the two.
His normally phlegmatic expression suddenly changed and there was a peculiar, almost avid look in the bulging eyes.
"Flood's in for a surprise," he muttered under his breath.
He turned then and left the window, falling 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