'You mind?'
'I'm jes going in the shade here,' Ordell said. He took the straw bag with the big blue and pink straw flowers on it to the patio bar beneath the thatched roof and began feeling through it.
'You can have the money and the Coppertone and the Kleenex, but leave my wallet, okay? I just got the driver's license. It took me months.'
Ordell came back with the straw bag in one hand and her keys in the other. He dropped the bag on the cement and sat down on the edge of the lounge, looking at her through his Spectra-Shades. 'He upstairs? Or has he still left the island?'
'Oh,' Melanie said.
Ordell smiled a little. 'Yeah, oh.'
'It's the truth, he's not here. I'm staying at his place while he's gone.'
Ordell threw the keys underhand to the other man, a Bahamian. Melanie strained a little higher, turning her head to the side. She recognized the man's tight gray pants, very tight, with no hips, and the pink shirt, the man walking off through the shrubs toward the front of the building. Cedric, yes. She had met him at Churchill's or The Pub, one of those places.
'You getting red marks all over your titties from the chair,' Ordell said.
'They rub off,' Melanie said. 'Listen, I know the other guy. If you want to chat, fine, but if I lose any teeth over this it's Cedric's ass, because sooner or later I'll call the cops.'
Ordell frowned, hurt. 'Lose some teeth?'
'So we understand one another,' Melanie said. 'Or if I'm not around at dinner time and my mother starts worrying. The island isn't that big you can hide somebody very long.'
'I found that out,' Ordell said. 'I came down here about seven, eight years ago. I had some money to spend, I said hey, go down to a paradise island and have some of those big rum drinks and watch the natives do all that quaint shit beating on the oil drums, you know?'
Melanie watched him, one eye closed in the sun. She seemed interested.
'I got to the hotel out at West End,' Ordell said. 'I register, ask for my room key. The man say, We don't have no room keys. He say, No, you don't lock your room in the Bahamas, mon, we honest people. See, this was some time ago. It's all changed now. I said to myself, Hey, shit. I look in some rooms during the time I was there. Sure enough, all the rooms, the people leave their stuff on the dresser, some in the open suitcases, some of them stick the wallets and travelers' checks under the socks, you know?'
Melanie nodded, one eye still closed. 'You rip 'em off?'
'Noooo, I didn't rip nothing. I say to my man Cedric Walker the bone-fisherman I met, Hey, you understand all the bread they is, all the loot laying around here waiting on you? He say, What? I say, Money, honey, sitting on the dressers. He say, Oh. Say, You take all that stuff, mon, where you take it to? I say, You take it home, baby. Give some to mama.'
Melanie said, 'That's wild.'
'But he say, No. You got money, you got a new watch, they see it, the police, everybody see it. What you going to do, bury it? So nobody see it? I said to him, Then go some place else--'
Ordell looked up. Melanie followed his gaze to see Cedric Walker coming back through the shrubs.
'Mr. Walker the bone-fisherman,' Ordell said, 'he take me all the way to the other side of the island where you see jes rocks there and sand and the waves coming in. Nothing. He say to me, Here. I say, Here what? He say, Here is some place else. Here is as far as some place else is ... You understand what I'm saying?'
'That's wild,' Melanie said. She saw Cedric Walker shake his head. 'Didn't believe me, did you?'
'Wasn't I didn't believe you,' Ordell said. 'I had to satisfy my mind. You understand? Now put your top on, we gonna go some place.'
They drove over to Lucaya in Cedric Walker's '72 Vega, Ordell looking at the hotels and the gambling casino and the cars driving on the wrong side of the parkway, Melanie looking down at the way Cedric Walker's leg filled out his light-gray pants and the vein that popped in his forearm when he worked the gearshift.
At the marina, walking along the cement to Mr. Walker's 20-foot Boston Whaler, Melanie said, 'There isn't any place around here you have to get to by boat.'
'To get out in the ocean you do,' Ordell said.
He and Melanie sat aft on green life-preserver cushions while Mr. Walker stood amidships at the wheel, his face raised to the spray, enjoying it, the square bow of the Whaler slapping through the waves as they headed out Bell Channel, passing the charter boats coming in for the day. Melanie didn't say anything until Ordell stood up and took her by the arms. She said, 'What the fuck--hey, come on, don't!' as he threw her over the side.
Cedric maintained his heading for a hundred meters or so, then brought the whaler around in a wide arc, into the sundown sky beyond Pinder Point, cut the revs to a low rumble and let the boat drift toward the head of hair glistening in the water.
When the boat was close, Ordell, leaning on the gunwales, said, 'You want to tell me where the man's at?'
In the car, driving back to Freeport, Melanie sat in the back seat with Ordell. He said he didn't mind, she could get him wet. She was a good girl. She was a nice big girl, all clean and shiny from her swim in the ocean. Yes, she could take them to this friend's house where Mr. Dawson was spending the day, sort of getting away from everything. Or, Ordell offered, they could go back to Mr. Dawson's place and call him, tell him to come home, huh? That sounded like the way to do it, instead of walking in somebody's house not knowing who was home. At Fairway, Mr. Walker waited in the car while Ordell and Melanie went up to the beige-and-white top-floor apartment with the playpen sofa.
Ordell looked around while Melanie put on her caftan and pulled the string bikini out from under it. 'Like magic,' Ordell said. 'Go ahead, call him.'
'I've got something to tell you first,' Melanie said, 'I think's gonna mess up your scam, but don't blame me, okay? It's the timing.'
'What's the timing?' Ordell said.
'He filed for divorce two days before he came down.'
Ordell waited. 'Yeah?'
'And you tell him he'll never see his wife again?' Ordell didn't move or say anything.
'He doesn't want to see her again,' Melanie said. 'You're doing him a favor. You're saving him about a hundred grand a year in alimony.'
'He say that?'
'He doesn't have to, I know him. He's telling himself right now there's nothing he can do. If you kill his wife it won't be his fault. You told him not to go to the cops; that's one out, he can say he was worried about her safety, right? And legally, he can tell himself he's not supposed to deal with extortionists. So if he does nothing he's free and clear.'
'The man come right out and say he want his wife dead?'
'He won't say anything. He wants it to happen without his thinking about it.'
'Now wait a minute'--Ordell had to slow it down--'what if we let her go?'
Melanie shrugged. 'He goes home and gets his divorce.' She paused. 'But where does that leave you? He won't involve the cops, for reasons you undoubtedly know. But she'll call them in a minute. Then where are you?'
'She hasn't seen us.'
'Come on,' Melanie said, 'you don't know what she's seen, or what she might've heard. You've got guys working with you--maybe she identifies one of them, and if the cops've got any kind of sheet on you I'll bet you're picked up in two days.'
Ordell kept staring at her. 'You ever been busted?'
'Just dope a couple of times. Possession.'
'But you know a few things, been there and back, huh? And what you're wondering most,' Or-dell said, 'is what's gonna happen to you.'
Melanie smiled, giving him an easy shrug, and moved to the marble-top bar. 'It passed through my mind You want a drink?'
'Something with rum,' Ordell said.
