O’Hara unbolted the door and checked the hallway. The maid was in the cabin next door. He locked the door behind him and went up on the upper deck. It was empty. So were the dining room, the bar, the game room, the salon. The pool area was attended by a lifeguard who was asleep in a deck chair. Nobody cared, because nobody was there, either.
He went back and tapped on the door again. Still no answer.
The Magician was sitting on a crate sipping a pina colada when O’Hara went ashore. ‘Well?’ he asked.
O’Hara led him down through the flea market. ‘He’s gone,’ he said. ‘My message must have backfired. He’s probably running scared. I checked the upper decks, dining rooms, everyplace.’
‘Maybe they’re gonna meet on the boat,’ the Magician said.
‘I doubt it. If the Cutout meets him on the boat, they’ll have to kill him on board. Much safer luring him out in the open. No, he’s out here, somewhere.’
‘He could be meeting with the cutout right now, all we know.’
‘A definite possibility.’ O’Hara looked at his watch again. Eleven o’clock. ‘Hell, he could be dead by now.’
They stopped on the far side of the marketplace and looked around. Somewhere out there, Avery Lavander had an appointment with death. Their only chance to save him was if Eliza spotted Hinge when he arrived. That, of course, was assuming he was not there already, in which case Lavander was most definitely a dead man.
The Montego Bay airport terminal was a large two-story building. Its main waiting room encompassed most of the first floor, with a half-dozen airline counters lining the wall facing the entrance. Customs inspection was carried out in a small room on the east end of the building and was cursory at best. The restaurant was on the second floor, directly over customs.
Eliza had been in the airport since six-thirty that morning and it was now close to noon. Three planes had arrived so far. She was sure Hinge had not come through the gate yet. She checked her list. Five more planes were due before sundown: two from the States, one of which stopped in Puerto Rico and was at the gate now; one from Mexico; an Air France jet from Paris via Port-au-Prince; and a small island connector from Kingston. She found a seat in the waiting room near the door and settled down with a flight schedule. She had rented a car and bribed a porter to let her park it near the front door.
Another planeload of tourists streamed from customs and hurried past, yelling for taxis. Hinge was not among them. She hardly glanced at the tall hawk-faced man with shiny black hair as he went by carrying an attache case. He was Derek Frazer, vice president of AMRAN, a new oil consortium out of Houston, and he had an appointment in less than eight hours with Lavander.
The day dragged on. After each plane arrived, she called the hotel, leaving the same basic message. Her last had been: ‘EAL 610 from Miami has arrived. Your luggage is not on it. The next plane arrives at six-five.’
Then she went upstairs to the restaurant and took up her dreary vigil at the window overlooking the runway. The next plane was not due for two hours.
O’Hara and the Magician had spent the morning perusing the town of Montego Bay, hoping to luck into Lavander. Finally they settled in at a small bar across from the pier, where they had been sitting for hours, watching the gangplank, hoping Lavander would return. Or perhaps leave, O’Hara realized he could easily have missed him when he searched the boat.
Lavander could still be aboard, but it was a slim chance. In fact, it was wishful thinking.
O’Hara knew by early afternoon that he had overplayed his hand. What had seemed like a good idea, a way to keep Lavander from leaving the cruise ship, had turned into a disaster. Perhaps Lavander was afraid of Quill. And there was also the distinct possibility that he did not know who Quill was, in which case the message could have spooked the eccentric consultant right into Hinge’s arms. It was one of the things he hated about the Game. There was n margin for error when dealing with people like Hinge. In the Game, death was the penalty for a bad call. He brooded about it until the Magician dismissed the ploy with a wave of his hand.
‘Stop agonizin’,’ he said. it could have been a good idea.’
‘That helps a lot,’ the reporter said drearily.
‘He’s a weirdo, Sailor. You can’t tell which way a weirdo’s gonna lump. Hell, you took a shot and fucked up. Don’t let it get to you.’
‘1 could have cost Lavander his life.’
‘Ah shit, que sera is what I say. It was a long shot, anyway.’
As the day wore on without a sign of the eccentric consultant, they became more and more convinced that it was too late, that somewhere on the island Lavander’s body was waiting to be discovered.
Normally, Lavander would have stayed on board until just before the meeting with the AMRAN executive, but the message he had received made him uncomfortable. Who knew he was travelling under the name Teach’? And who in God’s name was this Quill?
It had bothered him for two days, so he left the ship by way of the cargo hatch as soon as it docked. Now he would have to kill the entire day waiting for the meeting.
AMRAN wanted to discuss a matter of benefice reciproque, and that intrigued him. Even if the talk turned out to be a bust, he was sure he would learn something, for even gossip sometimes provided him with invaluable information, bits and pieces here and there which, when fitted together, added to his remarkable knowledge of the oil business.
Lavander’s appointment was not until eight o’clock, so he moved from restaurant to teashop to bar to newspaper vendor, trying to keep busy. Lavander was not a man long on patience, and his annoyance turned to irritation and then to anger as the day grew hotter and the streets more crowded and be was reduced to fighting his way through the rush of street hucksters, who offered everything from caged crickets to expensive watches, and kids who trotted beside him, whispering, ‘
‘Get on, you little urchins, I’ll report you to the police,’ Lavander snapped and one of the kids made a face at him and ran off into the crowd.
