Hard Look Read online

  I walked past the handcarts to the food court. A fellow tossed a balsa wood plane at me, but it looped over and went right back to him. He grinned, probably expecting me to buy one for the kiddies. Sorry, I thought, no kiddies. He ignored me and looked for a more likely prospect.

  I entered the food court and saw a gift stall right in the center of it. All around me people were buying burgers, fries, fish, baked goods, ice cream, yogurt, and anything else the human body can consume—and believe me, when you’re on vacation the human body can consume almost anything.

  I walked to the gift stall and entered. Aside from magazines and books and film and gifts they had two circular racks of postcards. There were plenty of cards showing lots of skin—some of it obese, most of it hard—but none resembled the one I had in my pocket.

  I picked out a few to send back home, mostly hard male bodies in skimpy bathing suits to send to Caroline, Linda, and Geneva, and a few scantily clad women to send to the bar for Geneva to hang up for the regulars.

  “Do you have any other postcards?” I asked the East Indian woman behind the counter.

  “What other?” she asked.

  I took the postcard Jerry Meyer had given me out of my pocket and showed it to her. It was physically larger than any of the cards she sold.

  “Like this?”

  She looked at it but didn’t touch it.

  “We do not sell those,” she said.

  “Someone—a friend—told me he bought this here, at the Pier.”

  “There is a shop,” she said, “in the front.”

  “I must have missed it,” I said.

  “You can walk all the way around,” she said, “or you may go out these side doors, walk to the front, and enter through a side door. That will leave you right by the shop.”

  “Thank you.”

  I paid her for the cards, which she put into a small plastic bag. I added Meyer’s card to them and thanked her again.

  I followed her directions and exited by way of the side doors. Outside, a big boat was docked with a gangplank out. A nearby sign said that gambling cruises were available. You had to ask for a schedule, but I wasn’t interested, so I didn’t ask.

  I walked toward the front of the building and saw the side door the woman had mentioned. I entered through it and sure enough, I was right next to a large gift shop. It was big, but it was cluttered. Luckily I didn’t have to go all the way in to find what I wanted. They had circular racks of postcards right by the door, and most of them were along the lines of Jerry Meyer’s. Oversized photos of hard-bodied women in bathing suits—if you could call the tiny bits of cloth they were wearing bathing suits—and these women were gorgeous. Tanned, smooth, firm, blond, brunette, redhead, blonder, front shots, side shots, rear shots. I found the same card Meyer had given me, then started looking at the others. Two elderly women standing next to me were looking for Disney cards and giving me the fish-eye.

  “Pretty racy, huh?” I asked.

  They didn’t answer, just continued to stare at me, sucking on imaginary lemons. For some reason that pissed me off.

  “I’m sending them to my sons,” I said.

  That got to them.

  “How old are they?” one of them asked.

  “Nine and eleven,” I said.

  They gasped and looked at each other, then made an effort not to look at me.

  Instead of standing there looking at the cards, I just took one of each—well, in some cases two or three of each—and brought them all to the counter.

  “You must have a lot of friends,” the man said.

  “Can I ask you something about these cards?”

  “Sure.”

  “Where do you get them? There’s no name or address on the back.”

  “From a distributor,” the man said. “Some of the cards have names and addresses of the distributor, some names of the photographer.”

  “Like this one?” I said, showing him the one I had taken off the rack that matched the Meyer card.

  “That’s a beauty,” he said. “See here, on the back? This one has the name of the photographer and some serial numbers. A lot of them are like that.”

  “How would I find out the name and address of the distributor?”

  He looked at me funny then. I guess he’d never had anyone express more interest in the back of one of these cards than in the front.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Well . . . I like them. I’d—I collect postcards, and I’d like to see their stock.”

  “You’ve got all the cards here that I carry,” he said, spreading my booty out on the counter. The people waiting behind me to pay craned their necks to look around me and over my shoulder. They either wanted to see the cards or were wondering what was taking so long.

  “I know,” I said, “but I’d like to get more. Could you give me an address?”

  He gathered my cards together and started ringing them up. They were like fifty-nine cents each, and my total came to well over ten dollars.

  “Why don’t you pay for these and then go up top and see the sights?” he suggested.

  “Up top?” I asked.

  “Up on the observation level,” he said. “The very top. I’ll get someone to spell me here and come up and meet you. You can buy me a drink.”

  “A drink, huh?” I asked, handing him a twenty.

  “Sure,” he said, “for starters.”

  He didn’t give me any change.

  9

  I took the glass elevator to the fourth floor, even though there were other elevators inside the building. I figured, what the hell, I was there, I might as well do everything. Well, almost everything. I didn’t stop off on the third floor, where they supposedly had an aquarium.

  The glass elevator let me off right in front of the bar, and I stopped and got a cold beer. I asked for Mexican, but all they had was Corona, which any real beer drinker will tell you is not Mexican beer. It may not even be beer. Dos Equis, that’s Mexican beer. I asked the young male bartender, who looked like he belonged on a postcard, for St. Pauli Girl, but he said the only German beers they had were Beck’s and Heineken. I finally asked for Rolling Rock, which they had, so the bartender and I were both happy.

  I took the beer outside, where some people were sitting in lounges getting the sun and drinking frozen drinks. Others stood by the rail, looking out at the water. Evenly dispersed along the rail were those high-powered binocular things that usually cost a quarter, only here they were free. I was liking Florida more and more.

  I was looking through one of them, trying to figure out what that pink stucco building across the way was—an office building? a hotel?—when the guy from the gift shop moved up alongside me.

  “It’s a hotel,” he said.

  “I sort of figured,” I said, “but who decided to make it that color?”

  “Hey, this is Florida,” the man said. “Everything’s got to be bright, right?”

  I looked at him and asked, “Including the people?”

  “Well,” he said, contriving to look modest, “some of us are brighter than others. Here.” He handed me a piece of paper.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s the address for my distributor. For more information on who makes the cards, you’ll have to go to them.”

  I looked at the address. “This says Sarasota.”

  “It’s not far,” he said.

  I folded the paper and put it in my shirt pocket. “You couldn’t give me this downstairs?”

  “Then you would have missed out on all this,” he said.

  He stared at me expectantly, so I did the honorable thing. I gave him another ten dollars. “Have a beer, on me,” I said.

  “Do yourself a favor,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Buy a hat, a Panama Jack.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re from New York, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “The sun is gonna cook you,” he said.


  The sun was hot, especially up here, where it was reflecting up off the concrete floor. I made myself a bet that the bar up here did better business than the one downstairs.

  “How do I get to Sarasota?” I asked.

  “Well, you could get back on the highway and keep going, but that would take you over the Skyway Bridge.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “It . . . uh . . . fell down a few years ago.”

  “Fell down?”

  “Oh, they built it back up,” he said, “but . . . uh . . . some people don’t like to go over it.”

  “Is that the fastest way to get where I want to go?” I asked.

  “Yup.”

  “I’ll take the chance,” I said. “I’m driving a rental.”

  “Hey,” he said, “that’s funny.”

  “New York humor,” I said.

  “Buy a hat, so it doesn’t get baked out of you,” he advised.

  “You don’t own a piece of the hat store downstairs, do you?”

  “No,” he said, “I don’t even own the gift shop.”

  Now I knew why he couldn’t give me the address downstairs.

  “Thanks for your help.”

  “Say hello to the girls for me,” he said, “when you find them.”

  “Sorry,” I said, “I’ll be too busy saying hello for me.”

  10

  Rather than head back to Tampa and my hotel I decided to go directly to Sarasota. I bypassed the hat shop, resisting the impulse to buy a Panama Jack, went to the parking lot, retrieved my rented Caddy, and tried to retrace my steps to the highway. I finally had to ask directions, but once I got back on it I just followed the signs to Sarasota.

  The Skyway Bridge was an impressive structure, long and built low to the water. I drove over it, trying not to think of what the fellow from the card shop told me about it falling down. It looked fairly solid now.

  I hate highway signs like the one that said: sarasota, next three exits. Which exit did I want? I finally decided to get off at the first exit because it also said Dog Track. If there was a track there, there had to be a lot of people, right?

  Actually, I didn’t pass a lot of homes along the way, although I did pass a shopping center. Still, I’d been in Florida long enough to realize that it was mostly shopping centers, malls, and residential neighborhoods called “Cedarwood Estates” and “Cypress Trace” and “Holly Hill Homes.”

  Finally, I came to the dog track, and just a few hundred yards farther along, the Sarasota Airport. When I reached Route 45 I either had to go straight into the Ringling Museum, or turn right or left. Since I’d gotten off at the first Sarasota exit, I decided to turn left and ride in the direction of the other two exits.

  Eventually I came to an area that looked roughly like downtown Sarasota. Actually, it looked more like a small town, but there were some homes, stores, and even a parking lot, so I figured I must be in the city by now.

  I stopped and asked someone for the address I wanted, and found that just out of sheer luck I had come to within three blocks of it.

  “Find someplace to park,” the man said, “and you can walk there.”

  I thanked him, but finding someplace to park was easier said than done. I finally decided to go ahead and make use of the outdoor parking lot. Driving around looking for a spot before settling on one, though, had gotten me turned around again. I had to ask the attendant for the address I wanted, and he told me it was about four blocks away. All I had to do was walk west.

  I walked the four blocks, found the street I wanted, then the number. From what I could see, this was a gift shop, but next to it was another door, and next to the door was a plaque that said: c & c novelty co., inc. Apparently the place I wanted was upstairs. I looked around for a bell to ring, either to announce my presence or to gain entry, but I’d forgotten that I wasn’t in New York. The door was unlocked, so I went in and ascended the steep stairs to the second floor. There I came to a door that was half frosted glass, which also said c & c novelty co., inc. Like the downstairs door, it was open, so I went in.

  Rather than finding myself in an office or a reception area, I had entered an extremely busy workplace. Cartons were stacked all around, and men were stacking even more. The entire second floor of this building looked like one room, and the whole room was stacked with cartons.

  I looked around for someone who looked like he might be in charge, but I finally approached one of the stackers and said, “Hi.”

  He turned his head and looked over his shoulder and then down at me.

  “What?”

  “I’m looking for someone to talk to . . . about postcards.”

  “There’s an office in the back,” he said.

  “The back?”

  “That way,” he said, pointing.

  “Thanks.”

  I tried to go in the direction he’d indicated, but there was no clear path. Boxes were stacked haphazardly, and I had to work my way around them, feeling like a rat in a maze. Several times I came to a dead end and had to double back, until finally I found some daylight and broke through. I looked around for someone to give me some cheese, but when none was forthcoming I looked for the “office.” It turned out to be a squared-off section of the floor with a cardboard sign hanging from the ceiling by a straightened wire hanger that said office. The sign said office, that is, not the hanger.

  Pushed up against a wall was a desk stacked with In and Out boxes and a telephone. Sitting at it with her back to me was a woman who was, at that moment, on the phone.

  “No, Henry, I can’t send you a hundred gross. I don’t have a hundred gross. I can send you fifty gross, and the rest when I get it. I’m sorry, take it or leave it.”

  I looked around at rows and rows of stacked boxes and wondered just how many hundreds of gross were in this room. If all of those cartons were filled with postcards, or even some other paper goods, then this place was a prime candidate for a raging fire. I looked around for fire extinguishers but couldn’t spot even one.

  “Can I help you?” the woman asked. She had swiveled around in her chair and noticed me.

  I noticed her, too.

  11

  She appeared to be in her early forties, but I was willing to bet that fifteen—hell, ten years ago—she might have been on the front of some of those postcards herself. When she stood up, I noticed her full breasts and hips and knew I was right. If not for some extra flesh at her throat, and some lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes, she probably still could have made some postcards.

  Her hair was red, worn long, and a pair of thick-lensed glasses in oversized red plastic frames distorted what might have otherwise been a very attractive face. She was wearing designer jeans and a blue short-sleeved T-shirt that was tight over her breasts. The T-shirt said beach balls. Her bare arms looked as if they were in good shape, with no sag at all to betray her age.

  “Hello?” she said to me impatiently.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was looking for someone to talk to.”

  “We’re all looking for someone to talk to, honey,” she said. “Did you have something particular in mind?”

  “You’re not from Florida, are you?” I asked.

  “Who is?” she asked. “We’re all transplanted northerners down here, babe. Some of us have just been down here longer than others.”

  “Jersey?”

  She smiled then, a real, honest-to-God smile, and said, “Newark. You’re probably the first person in a long time who didn’t ask me if I’m from New York.”

  “Couldn’t be New York,” I said. “The accent is pure Jersey.”

  “Of course,” she said. “You’d know that because you’re from New York.”

  “Right.”

  “What brings you here?” she asked. She was a lot friendlier now than she had been a minute ago.

  “Angie,” someone shouted.

  “In a minute!” she shouted back. “That’s me, Angie Worth. And who’re you?”

/>   “My name’s Miles Jacoby,” I said. “I’m here about a postcard.”

  “Just one? We usually deal in volume here, sweets.”

  “Like a hundred gross?”

  “Hundreds,” she said, then smiled when she realized I had heard her conversation on the phone. “It don’t pay to give in to somebody’s demands the first time around.”

  “I guess not.”

  “If you go downstairs,” she said, “we also own the gift shop. We got postcards in there.”

  “I have the postcard,” I said. “I’m interested in the girl on it.”

  She frowned and said, “You ain’t one of those, are you?”

  “One of what?” I asked, hoping that my goodwill wasn’t about to go out the window.

  “Those weirdos who actually go looking for the girls on those postcards.”

  “I’m not a weirdo,” I said, “but I am looking for a girl.” I took out my investigator’s license and showed it to her

  “Private eye, huh? That means some weirdo hired you.”

  “Did you get a lot of weirdos looking for you?” I asked.

  “Whataya mean?”

  “I mean when you were on the postcards,” I said. “Did they come looking for you?”

  She gave me a look, trying to figure out what my game was.

  “Are you jerking my chain?”

  “Well,” I said, “it was worth a shot. You look like you could have been on some postcards yourself. I just thought—”

  “You trying to play on my vanity, sweets?” she asked. “’Cause I ain’t got none.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “It was worth a shot.”

  She studied me for a moment, then sighed and said, “Let me see the card.”

  I handed it to her, and in order to examine it she pushed the glasses up onto her head. I could see now that she was very pretty and had probably once been very beautiful.