cigarette.
Not a good sign: the only time in my life I ever smoked was those months I was in the Corps, on the Island- Guadalcanal. The nicotine craving came only rarely, since I got back-like the malaria flare-ups, one of which seemed to have hold of me now.
I cracked the window to unfog the windshield. The rain hammered down. I checked my wristwatch: almost midnight. How long had I slept? Had I missed anything? Maybe I ought to take my camera and go wading across the streaming street and crawl through the soaked shrubbery and see if some sort of Caribbean white-folks-only orgy was in progress.
But about that time the party began to break up; couples found their way to their cars-with the exception of the puffy Clark Gable and his underage Betty Grable. Oh, the happy couple exited, all right, snuggled under an umbrella; but they quickly took the side staircase up to what was apparently an apartment over the garage.
Lightning flared as the American Freddie left in the company of one of the male guests, an older, distinguished-looking man. That meant the Count was alone with the two RAF wives.
Maybe de Marigny was going to live up to his reputation.
Maybe I ought to reach for my camera….
But then de Marigny, his jacket collar up, made a run for his Lincoln on the lawn. He got it running, backed it closer to the steps which led from the side of the porch. Then one of the servants-Curtis, I think-escorted the blond RAF wife, under an umbrella, to the waiting car.
I smiled. Looked like I was in business.
Except that then Curtis went back and returned with the
Cozy. I thought of some of the other French words I knew:
I trailed the Lincoln down to Bay Street, the Buick’s windshield wipers working furiously. His car swayed in the wind; so did mine. Neither vehicle was exactly a featherweight, either. The rain was unremitting. The street was half flooded, completely flooded around blocked drains; the shops were shuttered and shining with rain, turned silver-blue now and then by lightning. A pharmacy’s neon stood out in the night like a modern apparition.
We went past my hotel-alive with occasional lights, a bed waiting there for me-and headed west. This was the way Samuel had taken Miss Bristol and me, earlier today, a century ago. A little ways beyond Westbourne, which was barely visible as I went by, lights ablaze on the upper floor, the Lincoln pulled in past a post with a hanging wooden sign that said hubbard’s cottages.
It seemed to be a small development of rental properties. I went on by, but I could glimpse the Lincoln, stopped, and the two young women making a mad dash for the front door of a cottage. De Marigny was sitting with the motor running….
When I had found a place to turn around and coasted by the cottage again, the Lincoln was gone.
I could only sigh. Tonight would definitely not be the night to get the goods on the Count. De Marigny, like a proper host, had merely driven his two female guests home. There were red taillights way up ahead of me-probably his-but I didn’t bother trying to catch up.
It was after one a.m. and this long, long day-and night-was over; even at a thousand bucks, I’d earned my pay.
6
Thunder shook the sky like barrages of artillery and made my night a fitful hell of delirious combat dreams. I awoke half a dozen times, prowling the hotel room, looking out at the roiling sea and the turbulent sky, wishing I had a smoke. Below, palms bent impossibly, black silhouettes that became blue in the lightning. The goddamn storm kept turning itself up and down, like some ungodly radio tuned to station HADES, a squall followed by gentler wind and pattering rain and then
I was finally dreaming about something else, something peaceful, something sweet, swaying in a hammock while a native girl wearing nothing but a grass skirt held a coconut out for me to drink from. She looked like Marjorie Bristol, but darker, and when I’d finished sipping the coconut milk, she soothed my brow with a hand soft as a pillow and,
Sitting up in bed, breathing hard, sweat-soaked, I heard the sound again and realized it was just somebody at the door. Somebody insistent and knocking in an obnoxious manner, yes: but not artillery fire.
I threw off the sheet and went to answer it, pulling my pants on over the underwear I’d slept in. If this was the maid wanting to make up my room, I was prepared to be indignant-at least, until I glanced at my watch and realized how late I’d slept in: it was after ten o’clock.
Cracking the door, I said, “Yes, what is it?” before seeing who was out there.
It was a black face in a white helmet with a gold spike.
“Nathan Heller?” a Caribbean voice asked.
I opened the door wider. There were two of them, two black Nassau cops in their sun helmets, white jackets, red-striped trousers and polished boots. They might have stepped out of a light operetta.
“I’m Heller,” I said. “You fellas want to step in? I just woke up.”
They marched in, shoulders straight. Why did
“You’re to accompany us to Westbourne, sir,” one of them said, standing at attention.
“Westbourne? Why?”
“There has been a difficulty involving your employer.”
“My employer?”
“Sir Harry Oakes.”
“What sort of difficulty?”
“That’s all we’re at liberty to say, sir. Will you come?” The lilting Bahamian accent, added to the formality of what he was saying, gave the officer’s words a stilted poetry.
“Well, sure. Give me five minutes to brush my teeth and get dressed?”
The spokesman nodded.
“I can meet you in the lobby,” I suggested.
“We’ll wait outside the door, sir.”
“Up to you.” I shrugged, but it was obvious something serious was afoot.
My police escorts rode in front and I had the backseat to myself as we traveled a West Bay Street slick with rain, sandy with mud. Gutters were clogged with palm leaves. The sky was overcast, making midmorning more like dusk, and the winds were humid and high, blowing an occasional branch across the police car’s path.
I leaned forward. “Come on, fellas-what’s this all about?”
They didn’t seem to hear me.
I repeated my question and the one who hadn’t spoken yet still didn’t, just glanced at me and shook his head no. They might be native Bahamians, but these two had as much stiff-upper-lip reserve as any British bobbie.
The Westbourne gate was closed, but a white-helmeted black copper was there to open it for us. The crescent-shaped driveway was choked with cars, most of them black with police in gold letters on the doors-like the one I was in.
“Come with us, Mr. Heller,” the spokesman said, opening the car door for me politely, and I followed him up the steps onto the porch and inside, where I was greeted by an acrid, scorched smell that seemed to permeate the place. Had there been a fire?
Glancing about, I noticed the carpeting and wood on the stairway to the second floor were scorched; the banisters, too. But intermittently, as if a flaming man had casually walked up or down these stairs, marking his path….
“Mr. Heller?” This was a crisp, male, no-nonsense voice I’d not heard before. British.
I turned away from studying the stairs to see a military-looking figure approach, white, dimple-jawed, jug- eared, fiftyish, wearing a khaki uniform cut by the black leather strap of a gun belt, and a pith helmet with a royal insignia where a badge should be.
He looked like a very efficient, and expensive, safari guide.
