Chapter 2

Phil had been wounded in the World War, so he knew danger; he even knew the stress of facing immediate death. But this afternoon he'd had a long swim and then delicious but exhausting sex, so he felt weak when Singleton's two thugs dragged him out on deck. He needed a few moments to recover. No man who ever had sex with Vic Singleton's ripe daughter was going to be able to climb into the prize ring right after!

George Panther chatted nervously as he tried to cool the bootlegger down. Vicious Vic had towed George to the yacht in his larger launch shortly before, enthusing that he'd just met a Boston blueblood who'd make a great match for Flair. Vic dreamed of society status now that he had money, so he'd invited the young man to the yacht for dinner.

On the yacht frightened servants told Vic's group that Flair had ordered all the help out of sight and somehow lured this stranger into the main bedroom. It was the worst possible time for Phil to have come along and deflowered Singleton's daughter. But Panther spoke up.

"Remember, Vic, this young guy can help with our water show at the aquarium," he babbled, hanging on to Vic's arm.

The gangster just said, over and over: "You bastard! You've ruined my daughter for a big shot wedding. You've ruined her!" And the two thugs lugged Phil out on deck.

"If we shoot him on the right side of the boat nobody from shore can see," said one thug.

"But we could throw the body over easier from the back of the boat," countered the other.

"It's not the right side of the boat, you punk!" sang Vic. "It's the goddam starboard side. The left side's your port side."

"The rear of the boat?" asked the second.

"The stern, you asshole."

While this curious instruction went on, Phil felt some of his strength return. His active life made him far stronger than Singleton's hoods. He gave a shove to the left and sent one man reeling. He gave the other a shove to the right, not caring which was port, which was starboard. The second man went down to skitter along the deck. Then Phil bounded toward the rail.

He planned to do a magnificent Doug Fairbanks leap from the high rail down into the water and swim to safety. Flair Singleton stopped him. She glided from nowhere to a place in front of him to shove the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun into his middle.

"Where do you think you're going?"

"Unk!" Phil stopped dead with both barrels prodding his belly. At least the girl had covered her essential parts with the big towel.

"He's ruined you, baby!" cried Vic. "He has to die!"

"You're not going to kill my husband-to-be!" she shot back.

"Hub-husband?" said Vic, thunderstruck.

"You always said I had to save my girlhood for my husband. Since he took it, he has to marry me."

Father and daughter glared at each other. Phil broke it up.

"A shotgun wedding with the bride holding the gun?" cried Phil. He jerked the gun from Flair's grasp. He waved it to stop the chagrined hoodlums who'd recovered. "I thought all crazy people went to California. New Jersey's worse."

"My daughter's not marrying any poor, overmuscled California swim tramp. That's final," fumed Vic.

"Tramp!" yelled Phil. "You're the tramp! I teach Olympic swimmers, world-respected young athletes who compete for the highest honors of civilization. You sell booze, degrading every man, woman and child in this nation, pulling down society's standards, creating poverty and filth. You're the tramp, Singleton, and a punk besides."

"You're overstating, Phil," George warned.

"He has a point," murmured Flair.

But Vicious Vic looked from his determined daughter to the angry Phil and then at the menacing shotgun. His face relaxed.

"I was just letting off a little steam," he said quietly. "Let's all get dressed for dinner."

Phil collected his clothes from George's boat and felt very sexy sitting there without his trunks underneath. They were floating somewhere in the ocean. But Flair had apparently had enough lessons in sex for one day; she all but ignored him. Nobody mentioned the earlier embarrassing incident, nor marriage. Instead father and daughter picked at each other, making Phil suspect that she'd used him to get back at her father. She was a cool female after all.

The Boston blueblood sent his regrets which made Singleton subdued. Meanwhile the dinner was delicious, a boiled terrapin with a sublime red sauce imported from Baltimore, prepared by the top chef in Baltimore's finest Shore Dinner establishment. It was rushed to Atlantic City by express train and messenger.

Phil and George gorged themselves at Vic's expense. Phil decided that if the bootlegger could spend money like this, he was a potential backer for Phil's California project with Maddy, so he remained in good humor. Singleton was morose and finally picked on George Panther.

"We've got to square away your dumb, two-bit water show," he said. "Phil, that's the least you can do for me after enjoying both my daughter and my dinner. Panther's roped me into this stupid girlie thing in some goddam converted aquarium where they used to show off fish but went broke."

George murmured that all his show needed was a little tightening and polishing.

"Polish, hell!" sang Vic. "Those girls are ugly and they swim like stones. One night one of 'em is going to drown! Phil, since you're such a bigshot, world-respected swim teacher, I want you to go over to that aquarium and straighten out this shit."

"I'll looked at it," Phil promised. After all, he had to stall until Maddy came to town.

Singleton explained to him that Maddy had been a nurse to his sick wife until she died. Now Maddy was on duty in New York with Vic's aged mother. She came down with the mother every couple of weeks or so.

Phil looked forward to that. It was a cinch that Flair was not going to swim for him, or sleep with him, much as he might desire either or both. So it was back to Maddy. The crafty girl had wisely picked up a profession at which she could make a living after the Olympic team failure.

Phil and George chugged back over the water in George's small boat.

"That Flair's crazy," Phil fumed. "She teased me to romp with her and then turned herself off. Did you notice she hardly spoke to me at dinner?"

George sat back, flask in his lap, and watched Phil steer. He spoke from twenty-five years of experience in the hard world of show business.

"Flair doesn't want to marry nobody," he said. "I don't think Vic wants her to marry either. I think they've got it for each other but won't admit it. So you did 'em a favor, lifting her virginity. If some important guy did it, they might talk themselves into some lousy marriage. This way when a nobody takes it they don't have to worry."

"Thanks a lot," said Phil.

"Nothing personal," said George quickly. "Uh... how was she?"

"We're getting close to shore," countered Phil. "Where do I head in?"

Phil almost died when he saw George's set-up. His show was in a musty old building on an insignificant street just off the Boardwalk. There was an ancient, faded sign "Wonders of the Sea" superseded by George's garish new one: Panther's Water Show Passion Pixies-Merry Mermaids-Cool Music-Hot Divers-Sexy Swimmers-Comedy Acts.

A separate sign informed the public that the one and only Texas Bunny Long, Chanteuse Extraordinaire, direct from Paris, sang ballads in an exclusive engagement.

Texas... Paris?

The show was even more drab than Phil had been told. Six listless girls, not really as bad looking as Vic had said, went through swimming formations with an embarrassing lack of skill, showing skin. Two guys did comic dives. Texas Bunny sang to a piano that George pounded with more verve than art. She was a real looker with some class compared to the others, but her voice sounded weak to Phil.

It cost $1.00 to get in and hard wooden benches served as seating. The place could only hold about one hundred people. The air stank of a fishy smell from the former occupants and there was a penetrating sweetish odor that Phil didn't recognize. Still, the house was full.

Sitting through the ghastly show, Phil realized that George had lured him East not so much to help his niece as to save himself from being dropped off the Steel Pier in cement overshoes by Vic.

After the first show, Phil cornered George.

"What you've got is a lousy show in a crummy auditorium isolated in a impossible location. Even at five dollars a head you'd lose money."

"Oh, I make a little. Singleton wants more."

"You make a little, with a payroll of eight swimmers and the doll singer?"

"Well," said George with a sly look, "the girls pay me, you see. I think they hook after the show. There's one of those 'boarding houses' with rooms that rent by the hour up the street. The guys come to the show to see the bodies before they rent 'em. But you see I don't let 'em show too much. So I charge the girls instead of paying them."

"My God!" said Phil.

"Don't let Vic know about that. He'd think it lacks class," begged George.

"What about the platinum blonde, Texas Bunny. She must cost a bundle with her looks, even if her voice is weak."

"Oh, that's Vic's mistress. He pays for her. I charge him to give her show business experience."

"What a con. How about the men divers?"

"Oh, they siphon off a little and sell it on the side."

"Siphon? Sell?"

"Maybe you noticed the smell. We don't use water in the tank here. It's filled with ten thousand gallons of pure Canadian gin."

Phil felt his mind rock.

"Your water show - the girls swim in gin?"

"Right. It's Vic's storage vault. Doesn't hurt the stock for people to swim and dive in it. Alcohol kills germs. So the divers take a little home. I don't pay 'em, I don't charge 'em."

Flabbergasted, Phil said weakly, "And I suppose you sell some of your trusted audience a little."

"Oh, just a little, Phil. I don't want Vic's men to notice too much evaporation."

"Holy crumb!"

"So can you train those girls better?"

"I'm sure I can," laughed Phil, "if we can keep them sober!"

Phil retired to George's office for the intermission and the second show. He couldn't bear to watch it all over again.

Swimming in gin? It was a nutty idea, but there was no reason why it couldn't work. In fact, he was tempted to swim in the stuff himself and maybe even sip a little. What a goofy set- up!

As for George... sleaze, sleaze, sleaze, since the days he'd sold patent medicines from the back of an ancient wagon, medicines laced with alcohol. Nothing had changed with George!

Phil passed the time by catching up on the news with some New York papers George had on his desk. There were two big stories that riveted his attention. Gertrude Ederle had just finished a successful English Channel swim, the first time by a woman, with a time-lapse that beat the best men's records. It looked like she'd come back to America a heroine with a ticker-tape parade down Broadway in New York and all the rest of the accolades.

Phil grinned happily. He'd followed Trudy's endurance swim faithfully. Her success meant that his California project was no longer a daydream. If Vic Singleton didn't buy it, some other millionaire would.

The other news was about Houdini's fabulous trick immersion under water in the pool of the Hotel Sheraton, New York. Houdini, a world hero for many years with his escapes and feats of magic and daring, had done it again. A young Egyptian, Rahman Bey, had challenged Houdini to match his immersion in a bronze coffin in water for an hour. The Egyptian claimed he could live in his casket for an hour, using only the air in that enclosed space because he could induce a trance.

Houdini said it could be done without a trance. Accordingly Houdini had himself immersed underwater in a metal box, soldered shut, and remained under for an hour and a half, a half hour longer than the Egyptian "miracle man". There was no trance or trick involved; Houdini had merely taught himself to breathe shallowly and remain at complete rest. His superb physical conditioning did the rest.

Phil applauded that. Phil's father had been a friend of Houdini's, working in the famous Society of Magicians, when he was alive. Phil would have to write Harry, or "Ehrich" as his wife and close friends called him, and offer congratulations in the name of the Griffin family. Phil had met the great sorcerer and escapist several times in his early years when his father had still been alive.

The door opened and Texas Bunny Long came into the room. With her came a burst of tinny music from George's hand-wound Victrola as his swimmers swam lackadaisically as George monitored the machine to make sure it didn't run down.