Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 07 by Carnal Hours (v5.0) Read Free Book Online

occasional bicycle gave me a start, and the tropical scenery, burning with color, remained a distraction.
    I was saved by the sudden appearance of the sprawling pink terra-cotta monstrosity that was the British Colonial Hotel, which even had a parking lot where I could leave the Buick and get back on my own two feet for a while.
    The room that awaited me at the British Colonial wasn’t a suite, but it was plenty big, and seemed bigger, thanks to the light pink walls and white woodwork. It had a double bed, a chest of drawers, lots of closet space, a writing desk and a good-size bathroom. I could live here awhile.
    There was also a wrought-iron balcony and an ocean view to go with it, but the white beach was near empty under the graying sky.
    I unpacked, and figured I ought to get to work, but I had a couple of things to do, first. For starters, I’d only brought this one, currently sweat-soaked, suit. The guy at the front desk pointed me toward a little tailor shop near the hotel. I stopped in and from a cheerfully weary, berry-brown tailor named Lunn bought two white linen suits off the rack. He would have preferred to make them to order (promising them within two days!) but reluctantly sold me a couple in my size, sighing, “Can’t argue with you, sir! You’re a forty-two reg—nothing special!”
    Story of my life.
    Next stop was the Royal Bank of Canada, which seemed a fitting place to cash Sir Harry’s check; I had them wire most of it to my account at Continental Bank back home.
    Off Rawson Square, I bought a Panama hat with a light brown band from a heavyset, gregarious straw lady whose cart was piled high with hats and bags and mats; she asked “fifty cent,” I argued her down to a quarter, then gave her a buck for the fun of it.
    She gave me a little extra value by pointing me to a camera shop where, since every good bedroom dick needs one, I picked up a flash job, a fifteen-buck Argus with universal focus. Also some 35mm black-and-white film and bulbs.
    “Don’t you want color film, sir?” the cute little Caucasian clerk asked; she had a corsagelike flower in her brunette hair. “You can catch all the beautiful colors of the island….”
    “I’m going more for mood,” I said.
    By the time I got back to the hotel it was nearly two p.m. and I had an armful of clothes—including two short-sleeve white shirts, four obnoxiously colorful sport shirts, some sandal-like leather shoes and three ties with painted tropical scenes—all of which would keep me in comfort and looking properly touristy.
    Wearing one of my new white linen suits over a flowery sport shirt, hiding under my Panama and behind a pair of round-lensed sunglasses, I tooled my Buick down the left, remember, left -hand side of Bay Street. Most of the cars I encountered were, like the Buick, of American extraction; but now and then a Humber Snipe or Hillman would roll by in the “wrong” lane and befuddle me further, with their drivers sitting on the right. Bell-jangling surreys, donkey carts, wheel-barrows and your occasional straw-hatted native leading a goat kept traffic less than brisk; then at the east end of Bay Street, after the shopping district petered out, near the modern Fort Montagu Hotel and the old fortress the hotel was named for, was the Nassau Yacht Club.
    The rambling pale yellow stucco clubhouse, while typical of Nassau’s nineteenth-century, plantation-owner-style architecture, was clearly a recent structure; its landscaped grounds, with their not-yet-tall-enough-to-be-sheltering palms, had the unspoiled, sterile look of the new.
    I ambled into the clubhouse. Nobody stopped me to see if I was a member or a Jew or anything. I was almost disappointed. The bar had framed photos of famous yachts and yachtsmen, as well as a few customers and a white-jacketed bartender (in the flesh—not photos). A wall that was mostly windows looked out on the eastern harbor. I stepped outside, where I was on the edge of terraced grounds