upset. You look sick…what is it….”
“Nothing.”
“It’s something! Tell me.”
“I have to walk a second. I need to breathe….”
She walked with me along the beach, our footsteps slowed by the sand; the rush of the tide, the beauty of the moonlight, calmed me.
“I’m all right, now,” I said.
I didn’t know how to tell her that the last time land crabs had skittered across my path, I’d been in a shell hole on another tropical island, waiting for the Japs to come and finish the job they’d started on me and the rest of the patrol….
She looped her arm in mine; she was close to me, gazing up at me. Those huge eyes were something a man could get lost in. Right now, I felt like getting lost.
I stopped in my sandy steps and she stopped, too, and I searched her eyes for permission before I took her in my arms and kissed her. Gently, but not too gently.
Oh, those lips; soft and sweet and they told me how she felt without a word.
Still in my arms, she looked past me. “We’re to Westbourne.”
The rectangular shape of the place where Sir Harry died was outlined against the sky, haloed by moonlight. We stood where Oakes and I had strolled that first day.
“We should turn back,” she said.
I agreed, and walked her home, and gave her one, brief, final kiss before she slipped inside, wearing a haunting little smile.
But somehow I think we both knew there was no turning back.
14
Off Rawson Square, behind the sullen statue of Queen Victoria and the white-pillared, pink-walled, green- shuttered buildings she guarded, was an open square of administrative buildings that included the post office, fire brigade HQ, and Supreme Court. At the square’s center a plot of grass was home to a sprawling, ancient silk-cotton tree, a beautiful, grotesque thing whose trunk extended in buttresslike waves of wood, branches spreading forever, a wonderful monstrosity that would have been at home in the forest Disney drew for Snow White. In the shelter of its shade stood the courthouse overflow: lawyers in wigs and robes, policemen, and citizens black and white (litigants and witnesses, no doubt), discussing their cases, rehearsing their statements, escaping the afternoon sun.
Next to the yellow courthouse, over which the Union Jack flapped, vivid against the blue Bahamas sky, stood a pink building with a green wooden veranda, white shutters and a blue-glass, Victorian-looking lamp on a post: the police station.
Colonel Lindop’s office was up on the second floor, and his white, male, khaki-wearing secretary sent me right in. From behind a tidy desk, the long-faced Police Superintendent acknowledged me with a nod, not rising, gesturing to a chair that waited across from him.
This little office-with its couple of wall maps and several wooden file cabinets-being that of the city’s top cop indicated just what a small-time operation this was. Not that it justified the Duke inviting those two Miami clods in to fuck up the case.
“You wanted to see me, Colonel,” I said.
A humid breeze drifted in from the open window behind him; a ceiling fan whirred lazily.
He didn’t look at me. “Yes. Thank you for coming. Mr. Heller, I’ve been asked by Attorney General Hallinan to…clarify your role in the de Marigny matter.”
“Clarify my role…what the hell does that mean?”
“It’s just,” he said with patience he was having to reach for, “that Mr. Hallinan wants you to understand what it is you’re to do, here.”
I laughed. “Frankly, Colonel, I don’t give a goddamn what Hallinan wants me to understand. It isn’t up to him to define my role in this case-he’s the prosecution. I work for the defense. Remember?”
Now he looked at me; his eyes said nothing. “Mr. Heller, I’ve been asked to inform you that you are absolutely forbidden to investigate anyone other than Count de Marigny.”
I winced, shook my head. “I’m missing this. What are you talking about?”
He sighed; started tapping a pencil on the desk. “It is the prosecution’s attitude that, since one man is already charged with this crime, it would be…improper to look elsewhere for a culprit, until or unless the person so charged is acquitted.”
I felt like I’d been hit with a pie, but not a particularly tasty one. “You’re saying I’m not to go out and try to find out who really did kill Sir Harry Oakes.”
He shrugged. “That’s Mr. Hallinan’s view. You sent a request to our office yesterday…”
“Right. I figure, what with the war on, you must have official records of every person traveling to and from Nassau, with dates of arrival and departure. I’d like a look at those records.”
“That request is denied.”
I sat at the edge of the chair; did my best not to shout. “Why in hell not?”
“It doesn’t pertain to the investigation.”
“In my view it does!”
“Your view, Mr. Heller, counts for little here.”
I almost hurled a curse at him, but then I thought better of it: his expression seemed an odd combination of disgust and sympathy.
Instead, I settled back in my chair. “You don’t like this any better than I do…do you, Colonel?”
He didn’t reply; just studied the pencil he was tapping.
“Where
He knew who I meant. “Captain Melchen is in the field. Captain Barker has flown to New York to consult with a fingerprint expert.”
“I thought Barker was supposed to be a fingerprint expert himself.”
He shrugged again, with his eyebrows this time.
“Of course you’re aware,” I said, “what an insult this is to you. Sure, your department’s small…maybe it was a reasonable idea to bring in somebody to work with you, or even handle the case for you. But hell-why not Scotland Yard? You’re a British colony. Or if it’s a problem bringing somebody over in wartime, then the FBI. But a couple clowns from Miami? How can you put up with it, Lindop?”
I pushed back my chair and stood, shaking my head.
“Mr. Heller,” he said, looking up at me like a sorrowful hound, “there’s a limit on what I can do.”
“Well, here’s something you can do. I think either a blowtorch or a flamethrower of some kind was used in the killing. A flamethrower could be hard to trace…it might be a souvenir from the last war. But a blowtorch ought to be rare on an island like this-except in one place: where wartime building’s going on. These airfields under construction, for example. If I can’t get permission to check into that myself, you
He was thinking that over. “All right. I’ll take it under advisement.”
“Thanks.”
I was halfway out the door when he called, gently, “Mr. Heller…before you go…stop in and say hello to Captain Sears.”
“Captain Sears?”
“Two doors down the hall. He’s superintendent in charge of traffic. I understand he may have seen something…interesting…the night of the murder.”
I grinned. “Are you giving me a tip, Colonel?”
“Well, let me put it this way…you may mention my name in this regard to Captain Sears himself-but
