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it’ll be all right?” I asked. “They haven’t tapped your phone?”
    “It’s not likely,” she said. “But you never know for sure. Just be careful what you say; tell me you want to see me again, or something like that. I think it’ll be all right if we meet just once more, to give you the money, but beyond that it’s too risky.”
    “Yes, it would be,” I agreed, knowing she was right but still feeling let down about it.
    We both fell silent, listening to the music. A moment or two went by. I was looking at her face when she suddenly raised her eyes and saw me.
    “You’re quiet,” she said. “What are you thinking about?”
    “You,” I said. “You’re probably the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life.”
    It was completely unexpected. I hadn’t intended to say a thing like that. It startled me, and I cursed myself for an awkward idiot.
    She was startled, too, for an instant. Then she smiled, and said, “Why, thank you, Bill.”
    She was probably wondering when they’d flushed me out of the hills and put shoes on me.
    We finished our drinks in silence while I tried irritably to figure out why she affected me that way. God knows I wasn’t a particularly smooth type, but I’d never had this many thumbs and left feet around a woman before. She was married, I had known her exactly one day, and yet in less than four hours I’d managed to insult her and then startle her out of her wits with a piece of off-the-cuff brilliance like that. Maybe it just wasn’t my day.
    We walked back to the car. She offered to drive me out to the pier, but I vetoed it. “You’d better stay away from places like that,” I said. “They’re not safe with those people following you.”
    She nodded. “All right.” We shook hands, and she said quietly, “I’ll be waiting to hear from you. You’ve got to help me Bill. I can’t let him down.”
    I watched her drive away. Restlessness seized me, and I didn’t want to go back to the pier. I went into another bar and ordered a drink, nursing it moodily. Twice I started to the phone to call one of the girls I knew for a date; both times I gave it up. I tried to think calmly back over the day, to pull it into perspective, and I kept bumping into Shannon Macaulay at every turn. She ran through it like a brilliant silver thread through a piece of burlap.
    Look, I asked myself, what was with Shannon Macaulay? I didn’t know anything about her. Except that she was married. And her husband was on the lam from a bunch of mobsters. So she was tall. So she was nice looking. So something said sexy when you looked at her body and her face, and sweet when you looked at her eyes. I had seen women before, hadn’t I? I must have. They couldn’t be something entirely new to a man 33 years old, who’d been married once for four years. So relax.
    I left the bar.
    I remembered after a while I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. I went into a restaurant and ordered dinner. When it came I wasn’t hungry.
    It was an easy job. It probably wouldn’t take a month altogether, if he really knew where that plane was. A month— Just three of us at sea in a small boat. I shook my head irritably. What the hell difference did that make? It was just a job, wasn’t it?
    I’d own the Ballerina . After I landed them I’d sail her across to San Juan. I’d go to work for the Navy, at least until the hurricane season was over, and then cruise the West Indies. Why, with that much money I could sail her around the world. I’d try writing again.
    I pushed the food back and looked around for a phone booth. I dialed the yacht broker’s office. There was no answer. It went on ringing. At last I remembered to look at my watch. It was nearly seven.
    I went out in the street and bought a paper, standing on a corner while I rustled impatiently through it to the classified section. She was still listed among a dozen others in the broker’s ad. 36 ft. aux, slp. Ballerina. Slps 4. Now there was