eyed that morning, the first time I'd been out in public without the tinted contacts since I'd been on St. Thomas— unnecessary, but I was still feeling bold. I crossed straight to the elevators as if I belonged there and rode up to the second floor.
Cotler's room was at the rear. I let myself in with the tagged key. Stuffy little box, its single window overlooking a corner of the hotel garden and most of the gravel parking lot—probably the cheapest accommodations the Hotel Caribbean had to offer. The maid hadn't been there yet that day; the bed was rumpled, the glass-topped teak nightstand littered with cigar ash, an ashtray cradling a couple of cheroot butts, and an empty beer bottle and several wet-rings. The room stank of stale cigar smoke.
I looked in the nightstand drawer first. Empty except for the usual Gideon Bible. In the closet, half a dozen shirts and pants on hangers and an imitation leather suitcase. I opened the suitcase on the bed, checked through all the pockets inside and out. Coder's American Airlines return ticket was in one of them. Economy fare, the cheapest available judging from the rate. From what I knew of airline practices, economy fares were nonrefundable; if a ticket wasn't used, it was immediately canceled, the passenger's seat was given to somebody else, and no permanent record of the cancellation was kept. I called the American counter at the airport later to make sure.
The rest of Coder's clothing was in one of the bureau drawers—underwear, socks, T-shirts, an extra belt. The only personal item in the bathroom was his toilet kit, and it contained nothing other than his ring of keys and the usual travel items. The only other place in the room to look was under the bed; I found nothing there but a freshly dead roach. I was satisfied then that Coder hadn't brought anything with him that pointed to Jordan Wise or Richard Laidlaw. Or to Annalise.
Had he told anyone other than Annalise that he was going to St. Thomas? Probably not. You don't advertise a trip you're making for the sole purpose of extorting money from a fugitive. He could be traced here, of course, once his disappearance was reported, but only if someone cared enough about him to pursue an investigation—someone other than Annalise. The police in places like Yonkers don't have enough manpower to run thorough backchecks on every missing-person case. If Cotler was traced to the island, the odds were good that his trail would lead no farther than the Hotel Caribbean. And I was about to make those odds even better.
I gathered up Coder's belongings and packed them into the suitcase, double-checking to make sure I had everything before I left the room. Tourists often carry their own bags in a hotel like the Caribbean; I attracted no attention on my way to the desk.
Both clerks, a man and a woman, were native blacks. All to the good. The woman waited on me. Professional smile, and only the briefest of eye contact when I put the key down and said, 'Checking out, please.'
She got the bill from the file, studied it for a few seconds before making eye contact again. 'Is anything wrong, Mr. Cotler?'
'Wrong?'
'Your room is reserved for two more days.'
She said it without suspicion. That and her calling me Mr. Cotler put me at ease. There'd been only a slight chance that any of the hotel staff would know I wasn't Fred Cotler; too many tourists come and go for them to equate names with faces. And West Indian blacks tend to regard snowbirds the same way Annalise had regarded natives, though not necessarily for the same reason—not as individuals but as see-through members of a class and race to be dealt with and immediately forgotten. If by some quirk the woman had noticed I wasn't Cotler, I would have told her he'd asked me to check out for him. As it was, I said, 'No, no, nothing wrong. Just have to cut the vacation short, is all. Business reasons.'
'I'm sorry you'll be leaving us so soon.' taught to say that, and the next by-rote sentence: 'Will you need help with your luggage?'
'Not necessary.'
She slid the bill around for me to look at. The only charges on it other than the room rate were a $38 bar and room service tab—no long-distance phone calls. The total came to just under $300.
'Will you be paying by credit card, sir?'
'No,' I said, 'traveler's checks.'
I signed all seven left in the folder. She glanced at the top one to make sure the signatures matched—just a glance—and after that looked only at the denomination on the rest as she counted them. She shuffled the checks together, put them into a cash drawer. Gave me another see-through smile along with the change and a copy of the bill.
'Please come and see us again, Mr. Cotler.'
Not in this life, I thought, and smiled back at her, and walked out carrying all that was left of Fred Coder's short visit to St. Thomas.
Two problems solved, provisionally. What happened next was up to luck or fate or whatever you wanted to call it. And up to what Annalise did when Cotler failed to return with the blackmail money.
Annalise.
I let myself think about her then. The anger had gone cold. For the time being I could consider her and her role in all this with unemotional detachment.
I tried to put myself in her position, to think as she would think. She would probably call the Hotel Caribbean eventually, and when she was told that Cotler had checked out, she might call the airline to ask if he'd used his ticket or taken another flight. But they wouldn't tell her anything. Airline passenger manifests are confidential as far as the general public is concerned; government and law enforcement agencies could get the information, no one else. I'd checked on that, too, when I called American and verified their economy cancellation policy.
What would she think then? The obvious was that Cotler had gotten the payoff, maybe even a bigger payoff than they'd planned, and run out on her with it. She might believe that, if she wasn't too sure of him and if he had little money and no other valuables or ties in Yonkers. Even if she had doubts, it wouldn't occur to her that I could be responsible. To her I would always be Jordan Wise, accountant—a passive personality in spite of the Amthor crime and the Richard Laidlaw persona, a man incapable of violence. I would have said the same about myself before Cotler. She wouldn't contact me. Still wouldn't want me to know she was in on the extortion. And she wouldn't go to the police. For all her craving for excitement and danger, and all her drunken antics, Annalise was fiercely self-protective. The same as I was.
Still, she had an unpredictable side. Her sudden disappearance the previous year proved that. It was possible she'd do something unexpected, something brazen and foolish and threatening to both of us.
Time would tell. All I could do was wait and see.
I was too restless to return to my daily routine, and I wasn't about to sit around counting the hours. The Weather Center forecast was for clear skies and winds of from ten to fifteen knots, good sailing weather, so I took
The course I'd set was for Laidlaw Cay. I anchored just inside the reef on the lee side. Swam, fished, watched the nesting terns and frigate birds, napped under one of the screw palms. An hour before sunset I rowed back to the yawl, ate my supper on deck while the rainbow colors appeared and shifted and blended like patterns in a kaleidoscope. After dark, I sat with my back to the deckhouse and sipped Arundel and watched the constellations in the night sky. It was so clear the stars in the Milky Way burned like points of white fire.
Two more days and nights at sea, and the restlessness was gone and I was poison-free again.
Shortly after docking, I talked to Bone. He was the best source I knew of local news. Nothing had happened in the three-plus days I'd been gone that I didn't want to hear about. Later I read through recent issues of the
A week passed.
Two weeks.
Still no mention in the papers or on the radio of anything amiss at the old French cemetery. Or of a missing snowbird named Fred Cotler. No one called, or wrote, or came to see me except Bone.
