Wakulla Springs Read Free Page A

keep it upright.
    With a grunt, they lowered it to the ground next to a big wire cage outside theprop tent. Weissmuller could hear angry screeches from inside the box.
    “What’s in there?”
    “Monkeys.” The man opened the cage door and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Two more crates up there. Turtles and some kinda birds. Parrots, I think.”
    He pulled on a pair of heavy gloves while his partner used a crowbar to open the lid, splintering it. The gloved man grabbed the nimble little animalsby the scruffs of their necks as they clambered out, and tossed them into the cage.
    “How’re you going to ship them back?” Weissmuller pointed to the ruined crate.
    “Don’t have to. One jungle’s the same as another. We’ll just let ’em go when the shoot’s over.” He closed the cage, rattled the handle to make sure it was latched, and headed back toward the hotel.
    “Quiet on the set!” the assistantdirector yelled through his megaphone.
    Johnny turned back to the action above the river.
    The next dive was as slick as a whistle, almost as good as he could have done himself. He flexed his shoulders. He hated the idea of a stunt double, but the studio demanded it. At two grand a week, he was too valuable to risk. He glanced at the thirty-foot diving platform over the deepest part of the springs.Thorpe had been away yesterday afternoon for a meeting, and Johnny had spent an hour diving off again and again, happy as a kid. The other guests at the Lodge had gathered around, applauding.
    That was okay, too.
    “We almost done?” he called to the assistant director after he’d yelled Cut!
    “Yeah. Losing the light.” The man walked over, looking at his watch. “I should remind Thorpe he’s got dinnerwith Mr. Ball in an hour. Coat and tie for the dining room.”
    And a direct line of sight across the lawn to the platform. No diving tonight. “Okay.” Weissmuller stood up, towering over the other man. “I’m going to change, drive into town.”
    “Thorpe says—” He paused. “—He says to keep it in your pants and go easy on the booze. You’ve got close-ups tomorrow. Ten o’clock call.”
    Johnny shrugged.“Tarzan have fun.” It wasn’t his idea to film in a dry county. He stepped over the tangle of cables and headed for his room in the Lodge. His robe open, his feet bare, he padded quietly across the terrazzo floor of the lobby, almost as silently as if he were the king of this jungle.
    Twenty minutes later, showered and shaved, his long hair slicked back and tamed with Brylcreem, he stepped outof the elevator and looked around the ornately tiled lobby. He’d been told the hand-painted designs on the cypress beams of the ceiling were Moorish, with a little art-deco Mayan, like Grauman’s, but they reminded him of the barns in the Pennsylvania Dutch country where he grew up.
    He smiled and strode down the hallway to the front door. It would have seemed unlikely to any observer that theman in the crisp, short-sleeved tropical weight shirt and knife-creased linen slacks had been swinging half-naked through the primeval forest an hour before.
    “Black Packard,” he said, tossing the keys to a colored boy.
    “Yessuh.” He brought the convertible around, chrome winking golden in the last of the afternoon sun, and held the door open.
    Johnny Weissmuller nodded his thanks, flipped theboy a coin, and got behind the wheel. He slid his sunglasses from under the visor, put them on, and angled the sleek car out onto the highway that led north to Tallahassee. Twenty miles between him and the admiring young co-eds of the Florida State College for Women. A good night to be a movie star.
    *   *   *
    The Wakulla Springs Lodge was a palace, out in the middle of nowhere, a private countryclub surrounded on all sides by gator-filled swamps and piney woods. It was only a few years old, and had been built to impress. White stucco and terra-cotta outside, with a tiled lobby, hand-loomed area rugs, and a wrought