Chapter 7
Niles Jergens, Jack Petty's one-man police force, drove up the beach road and stopped at the Town Hall at eleven o'clock on Saturday morning of the Labor Day weekend. He was still puffy-eyed from sleep after getting into bed at three a.m.
Petty said, "Hi, Niles," in an abstract way and went on with a routine report he was doing for the City Council. When he finished a paragraph, he sighed, put the paper aside and swung his feet to the desk top. Miles sat down heavily in a straight-backed chair.
"Well, how'd it go last night?"
"Quiet," Niles said. He chewed on a fingernail. Petty stared out a window toward the ocean, his view of the sea blocked by a row of cottages along the strand.
"Had to pull one car out of the sand on a back road," Niles said. "Pretty little gal and a stud-hoss college boy."
"No strip tease in the park or anything interesting?"
"Well, it's early yet. They got a few more cases of beer and a couple more nights to get warmed up."
"Niles, you feel up to it, I'd like to have you take it for a couple of hours this afternoon. I don't think it would do any harm to have both of us up and around tonight and I'd like to take a nap if I'm gonna burn the candle at both ends."
"Sure thing, chief."
"I don't think you'll have to do much, just stay by the phone," Petty said. 'Things oughta stay quiet until after dark."
"How about me coming up about two and stayin' till five?" Niles asked. "That'd give you about three hours and I could grab a bite to eat between five and six."
"Yeah. It'll be quiet this afternoon."
At two-thirty, Niles Jergens drove the squad car with siren open to the Lundy Beach Amusement Park. A couple of college boys were climbing on the framework of the big Ferris wheel they called the Wheel of Love. The boys were all boozed up and having a ball showing off for their girls. The crowd was oohing and ahing every time one of the boys climbed out of the gondola and went hand over hand up the wheel as it moved. All the ride operator would have to do was to stop the wheel, but no one thought of that. Niles carried the boys back to the Town Hall in the police car. He let them sober up while he took their names and addresses. Then he let them go. Their dates came after them in a flashy Thunderbird and
Niles felt mild envy as the car roared off, breaking the thirty-five-mile speed limit before they got out of sight. He damned well couldn't afford a Bird on the salary Lundy Beach paid him.
At four-ten, two girls piled a new Buick into a telephone pole on the beach and Niles turned on his siren again. He liked to go roaring down the road with the thing wailing its head off under the hood. He helped the crowd get the Buick back onto the road. The grille was a mess, but there wasn't any damage otherwise. The radiator hadn't been busted. He took names and addresses, but he didn't make any charges.
There was only one other incident that afternoon. Niles had a call from the pier telling him that the boys on the beach were climbing a telephone pole and then jumping off into a sand dune. He said, "Let 'em jump. Call me when one of 'em breaks a leg."
On the strand in front of the new motel, just north of the pier, beer city was in business. Coolers had been restocked when the group began to straggle out of the motel rooms just before midday. The surf was running good and the boards were all busy.
Tom Jack Murray hadn't sobered up from the night before. It didn't take him long to get a full head of steam going after he woke up with sand in his face and the sun warming his back. He lumbered around the beach making passes at unattached girls. They laughed him off, because Tom Jack was red-eyed and wild-haired and drunk. When he made passes at escorted girls, their boyfriends laughed it off because, even drunk, Tom Jack looked like Tarzan and Samson put together. There wasn't a man on the beach who wanted to tangle with him.
Ernie Harper woke up with a fuzzy tongue. Coffee and eggs at the restaurant fixed that soon enough. He didn't take a beer right away. He didn't dig that bit. He couldn't understand how anyone could face booze first thing in the morning. He had to have a little recuperating time. There would be plenty of time later to drink beer, the whole day and the whole loving night.
He saw Tom Jack rambling around the beach looking beery, and he chuckled. He saw Tina Franklin mixing with a group down the strand and entertained the idea of going down to have a talk with her. However, she seemed to be real cozy with some tall cat in a green bathing suit. He decided against going to see her. He stood on a dune and surveyed his clan and thought that the weekend, in spite of his unsatisfactory bout with Tina, was off to a good start. The cats were beginning to feel their oats and they would be swinging before the day was over. Ernie liked things to swing. That's about all there was.
Judging from the way the beer was flowing, some of the cats would cut out early, but the real party boys and gals would still be there. And a party gal was what he wanted right now. He started to survey the situation and liked the looks of a little freshman blonde he'd noticed before.
He moved in slowly but surely. She was real friendly. He chatted with her for a while and then he felt the urge to move out. He needed to stretch a little.
"I'll get back to you, doll," he told her.
He started up the beach at a brisk pace, whistling, his arms swinging freely, his body loose and feeling good. He walked about a quarter of a mile and was ready to turn back when he saw, in the shelter of two dunes a couple under a makeshift tent formed of a blanket. The girl had nice legs. That in itself was enough to make him walk a little closer. Then, too, the chick had one leg propped up and a guy was really laying one on her. Ernie was curious to see who was making out. He came closer, whistling louder to let them know he was there. His whistle stopped in mid-phrase when he was a few yards away and the guy sat up suddenly and reached for a pair of black-rimmed glasses.
Well, well, Ernie thought, maybe we've all been wrong about Jean Loras.
"Ernie," David called. "How you doing?"
"Not as good as you," Ernie said, standing over the reclining pair with a grin on his face. "What's with you two? You isolationists or something?"
Jean Loras blushed prettily. David's face lost its smile.
"What are you doing way up here?" Ernie said.
"Well-" David said.
"It's nothing," Jean Loras said, in a way which indicated that it was not, indeed, nothing.
"Give, give," Ernie asked paternally.
"It's Tom Jack," David said, looking down at the sand. "He won't leave Jean alone."
"How now?" Ernie said wonderingly.
"It's all right, .David," Jean said. "I like it up here." She took a possessive hold on David's arm.
"Ernie, I wish you'd talk with him," David said. "He's a nice guy, but he gets awfully cruddy when he's drinking. He'll listen to you."
"Woof," Ernie said.
"If he makes one more crack at Jean there's going to be trouble," David said, sticking out his thin chest.
"You better watch out, boy," Ernie said. "That stud is built like Superman."
"I don't care," David said. "No one is going to talk to my fianc‚ like that."
"Hey!" Ernie said. "Run that one by again. Your fianc‚?"
Jean was blushing again.
David smiled sheepishly. "I wasn't suppose to say anything yet, was I?" He was looking at Jean with proud eyes. "But I don't care who knows it. Jean and I are engaged."
"Ain't that something else," Ernie said. "Hey, that's great. Let me be the first and all that jazz." He kneeled in the sand and planted a kiss on Jean's cheek. "Honey, if he beats you or anything, you call ole Ernie."
He'd forgotten, really, that there were girls who could blush. Jean looked flustered and pleased and she was damned pretty doing it. He shook David's hand and grinned. David looked so happy he might just bust. Well, he hoped they knew what they were doing. Jean was a nice, sweet kid.
"When is the happy event?"
"Well," they said, both at once.
"Just as soon as possible," David said.
"Before you finish school?"
"We have to see both our parents," Jean said. "We'll have to tell them. I just hope my father doesn't insist on a big wedding." Her voice told him that she was lying. She was the kind of girl who would die of disappointment if she didn't have a big wedding with all the silly, romantic things like rice and old shoes. It made Ernie feel good just to look at her.
"No big wedding," David said firmly.
Ernie laughed aloud when Jean said, "But, honey, if Daddy wants one, we can't disappoint him."
She was holding onto his arm, taking possession already, bossing him around where the female things were concerned. Ernie thought he knew Jean Loras, the kind of woman who needed a man to lean on, who left all the big things to the man, who was useless in a crisis outside the home but could be a soft-fleshed tyrant about woman things. He'd known a girl like Jean once. That was when he was in high school. She was a soft little girl with quite, big eyes and a smile which was the sun itself. He loved her with all of his silly heart and she got killed in a freeway accident in Dallas. It always made Ernie sentimental to think of her, with her way of kissing him totally and sweetly.
He shook his head to drive away the unwanted memories and raised his hand in blessing. "Peace on you both," he said.
"Thank you, Ernie," Jean said, looking very girlish and blushing again. Unbelievable.
"Don't do anything I wouldn't," he said to them, hiding his emotion behind the usual Ernie Harper flip talk.
"Will you talk to Tom Jack?" David asked.
"Yeah, sure. I'll tell that stud this corral is fenced off for good."
He went back down the beach, thinking of his girl. He'd never had but the one. He thought about how the car looked after the crash, and the blood on the upholstery. The day had become a mixture of something not quite good and not quite bad. There was the sweet sadness of remembering her. There was also the urge to whistle when he thought about how Jean and David looked at each other. He was damned happy for them. If that was what they wanted, the ball and chain bit, peace on them.
He found Tom Jack stretched out on his stomach, ogling the knockers on a tall, skinny girl. "Hey, sunshine," he said, waving toward Tom Jack.
Tom Jack came over on unsteady legs. "Big daddy," he said.
"You hanging it on a little early?"
"Ballsville, man. I'm tanking up for hard times ahead."
Ernie smiled. The big stud was gone, wild. "Look, T.J., " he said. "I been getting reports on you, like."
Tom Jack grinned sheepishly.
"like, man, that little Jean Loras chick is off limits. Dig?"
Tom Jack's grin faded. He had been noticing, that morning before she disappeared, how well Jean Loras filled her bathing suit.
Ernie threw his arm around the big man, having to look up to see Tom Jack's face. "Do me a favor, dad, and don't bug that pair of love birds. Dig?"
"I dig, Em," Tom Jack said, clapping Ernie on the back and forcing him to take a few steps forward to keep from falling.
"like, wow," Ernie said. "Don't waste that energy. Go put it to good use."
Tom Jack licked his lips. "That's the idea, man."
"You suffering from a chick shortage?" Ernie asked.
"Well, hell no," Tom Jack said, his pride hurt. "This stud never has no chick shortage."
In a way, Tom Jack was Ernie's problem. He had thought that Pat Emory would keep the big cat happy over the weekend, but that one got scrubbed. If he was going to keep Tom Jack out of trouble, he'd have to find the stud another chick, and quick. Tom Jack wasn't really his son or anything, but Jean and David had, in a way, become his responsibility when David asked for his help. He thought about the available chicks and drew a blank. Tom Jack was no prize package and as drunk as he was and as scroungy looking as he was after sacking out on the beach all night, it might be hard to fix him up. A chick would really have to be wild for a man to accept Tom Jack in his condition. When he thought of wild chicks, he was thinking about Tina.
"How about you go look up Tina Franklin, boy," he said, and was immediately sorry. Before he said it, it seemed like a good idea. After he said it, he wasn't sure. Tina might find what she wanted in a real stud like Tom Jack, but did he like it? What the hell.
"I dig," Tom Jack said, licking his lips again.
Well, the damage, if any, was done. He didn't understand why there should be any damage. Tina was definitely on the prowl after last night, so why not Tom Jack. Solve three problems in one, Tom Jack's, Tina's and David and Jean's. Tina was a damned kook anyhow.
Tom Jack stilted away and Ernie went after his blonde. She was waiting for him. He walked up to her and said, "Rejoice, I have returned."
"Ernie, you're so crazy." She smiled at him in a way that told him he was in like Flynn. He sat down and took her hand in one of his and a beer in the other.
"I never drink before what time is it?"
"Twelve o'clock," she said.
"I never drink before eleven-fifty-nine," Ernie said, going to work on the beer. The little blonde giggled and he grinned at her.
He bought his new drag lunch in the restaurant late that afternoon and then he got his guitar and sang to her. A group gathered around. Most of them knew the words to a few songs, so they sang while the sun went down and the fires started. He felt giddy and happy and the little blonde was glued to him and her eyes were absolutely adoring and he was in fine voice.
When he finally kissed her, in the darkness outside the glow of the fire, she was soft and pliant in his arms and he felt great.
Once he caught himself wondering about Tina. She was around before dark, but then she was gone. He saw Tom Jack, wondered how the big lunk was hanging on his feet. Apparently, Tom Jack had gone down swinging with Tina. However, he forgot all about both Tom Jack and Tina when he made his first moves and found that the little blonde got all shivery when he put his hand high on her thigh.