It Takes Two Read Online Free PDF

earlier to charter the boat for a late-afternoon fishing trip for two, for today.
    “Now Mayson up and tells me he’s invited four more folks to go along. That’s six, including, if you please, that no-account weasel Lou Salmi.”
    Salmi, a wartime torpedo specialist, had served a long patrol under the officer who later became my boss, Bruce Asdeck. Now a swing-shift waiter at the Caloosa, Salmi had spilled coffee while filling my cup not five minutes earlier.
    I knew Salmi and the Maysons about as well as I wanted to. Salmi, a George Raft stand-in with low-slung sideburns and pants too tight to ignore, had a smug, narrow face, sleek Mediterranean nose and honey-colored skin. I trusted him about as far as I could throw him.
    Jamie Mayson, a pot-bellied machine-parts millionaire from Detroit, had approached me during an afternoon cocktail party in the club room. In a tone of voice he must have used for buying steel by the ton, he said he wanted to watch another man service his wife. The Mrs., a dark-haired Jane Russell type named Barbara, was more than game for it, he said. And he’d heard from his very close friend Bruce Asdeck that Dan Ewing had a real gentleman’s touch and might help him out.
    I’d have jumped at such a situation a year or two earlier in Tokyo. Performing for a powerful older man like Mayson would have seemed exotic, erotic and attractively risky. But now that I was committed to Bud, even loosely, it didn’t tempt me at all.
    Finding an acceptable actor for Mayson’s little drama was a relative snap. Salmi, the onetime torpedo greaser, enjoyed a reputation as a stud who could fuck a hole in a phone book. As Mayson and I spoke, Salmi was standing four feet away, right behind the bar. So I called him over and made introductions. What else is a hotel manager for?
    Salmi’s midnight show had clearly been successful enough to take on tour.
    “So what’s the problem?” I asked Emma Mae. “Assuming you can keep the tub afloat long enough to ferry them out to the Gulf and bring them back?”
    “Boat’s going to hold together if we haul in fish from dawn to midnight, boss. Pump’s working fine. But we ain’t got Mae West jackets enough but for four, not counting the old coast guard inflatable you found for me. That leaves us one short, or two counting me, should we encounter”—here she took a bite out of an orange-pecan muffin—“some unforeseen emergency.”
    Is she worried about pirates? I wondered. Out-of-season hurricanes? Unexploded mines? It was true that we needed more life jackets. But it didn’t seem like much of a problem, and I said so.
    “That ain’t all, Dan,” Emma Mae replied. “My son-of-a-bitching advance order went in yesterday for picnic boxes. For three—namely the Mr. and Mrs. plus crew of one, plus ice, beverages and potato chips.”
    When I asked Emma Mae what the charter was worth, she answered that the Maysons were paying the going rate of $50 per half day plus tip. When I asked her what a box of war-surplus Mae Wests cost, she punched me on the shoulder, laughing. “No more than five goddamn smackeroos. But the marine supply store is closed, boss. So’s the Army-Navy. This is Sunday, don’t forget.”
    Behind me, Lou Salmi approached with the coffee pot.
    “Hear you’re going fishing,” I said, catching his eye and throwing him a big-brotherly smile.
    “Long as Mother Carmen lets me off,” he answered, pouring carefully and wiping the lip of the pot with a napkin. “Already got my seasick pills packed.”
    “Mother Carmen” was our food and beverage manager, a South Texas transvestite who sometimes performed under the drag name Carmen Veranda.
    “You think there’s enough food in Carmen’s kitchen to make up three or four more lunch boxes?” I asked.
    Salmi bent closer. His jaw was freshly mowed, his aftershave lotion a blend of testosterone and gasoline.
    “There’s definitely no shortage of fried chicken, sliced ham for sandwiches, Cole slaw or