‘I still don’t believe a word of it. But even if it’s true, what the hell are we supposed to do about it. The war ended four years ago. If she’s still alive, she could be anywhere in the world.’
‘These guys seem to feel that she is alive, and somewhere on this side of the Atlantic.’
‘For Jesus’ sake, Pa, somewhere from Labrador to Cape Horn, right? Anyway, if she is here, she’s probably married with six kids.’
‘Ten thousand dollars.’
The two men gazed at each other. And Don Giovanni opened his desk drawer to find his packet of Rennies.
‘You’re not supposed to take more than twenty of those a day,’ Luis remarked. ‘You’ll give yourself ulcers.’
‘I already have ulcers,’ Don Giovanni pointed out. ‘If this dame is the vicious murderess Botten’s principals think she is, she ain’t got six kids. She’s never had the time.’
‘But he couldn’t prove that.’
‘Ten thousand dollars still says he could be right.’
‘For Christ’s sake Pa, do we need ten thousand of probably Russian money?’
‘Maybe we don’t, right now. But with this guy Kefauver and his Crime Commission breathing fire and smoke, it could come in handy. Anyway, I took the money.’
Luis gazed at his father for several seconds. He knew the Family’s code of honour. ‘And you genuinely think she did the job on Roberto. The Mexican police aren’t claiming that she’s anything more than a witness.’
‘They don’t know what we know.’
‘I still don’t see how we have a hope in hell of finding her.’
‘The trouble with the modern generation,’ Don Giovanni commented, mildly, ‘is that that they, you, have lost the power to think. They like everything spelled out for them. So let me spell it out for you. I’ve had Benjy look into this and get some details: he has an in with the Mexico City police. So, according to the chauffeur, this O’Brien, who fits in with the long-haired blonde in that picture, hijacked his car and forced him at gunpoint to drive her to Matamoros, with the intention of crossing to Brownsville. She told him she was going to do this.’
‘Why?’
‘To get out of Mexico, of course.’
‘I mean, why did she tell the taxi driver what she was aiming to do. According to you, she’d just killed five men, right? And you say it wasn’t the first time, right? One more life ain’t going to make a damn bit of difference to her, right? So she needed transport to get to the border, fair enough. But why didn’t she just have this guy drive her out of town on to a lonely road, put a bullet through his head, roll him into a ditch, and take off with the car?’
Don Giovanni considered. ‘How the hell do I know what goes on inside a dame’s brain? I never met one who thinks like a human being. Maybe, as this was obviously a contract killing, she only kills for money, and this guy wasn’t on her list.’
Luis blew a raspberry.
‘The point is,’ his father went on, ‘we know from this Senora Jaquetta, that O’Brien was travelling on an Irish passport. But according to US Immigration at Brownsville, there is no record of anyone answering that name or description entering the country on the date in question.’
‘So she either didn’t cross, which would be a good reason for her to tell the driver that she was crossing, or she used some kind of disguise and a false passport. Either way, that was it. She’s gone.’
‘Not that far. You won’t believe this, but that same morning the Matamoros police received a telephone call from San Antonio Airport, from a broad with an Irish accent, telling them where to find the driver.’
Luis looked at the photo again. ‘She has to be nuts. But she don’t look nuts.’
‘The Mexican police were able to trace that call, so they went back to Brownsville, again, with time and date, and this time they came up with a hippie type Irish girl, probably blonde although they couldn’t be sure as she had her hair concealed, with an American passport in the name of O’Donovan. Using that they were able to discover that this dame boarded a flight that same morning, San Antonio to Miami.’
‘So she’s organized. And in Miami she disappeared, right?’
‘Right. So she flew San Antonio–Miami. Tell me where she went after that.’
Luis shrugged. ‘The obvious place would be somewhere in Florida. She either hired a car or had one waiting for her, and went home.’
‘No she didn’t. They checked Miami out, and while they drew a blank with the airlines, using both the description and name O’Donovan, the clerk at the desk at the Airport Hotel had a customer that day, a hippie-type using the name Eliza Doolittle.’
‘You’re putting me on.’
‘Fact. It didn’t register with this guy. But he remembered her because she paid for the night in advance, told him she was flying out the next morning to New York, and then half an hour later just walked out, apparently looking for a meal, and leaving her gear, such as it was, in her room; she never came back for it.’
‘So she was trying to muddy her trail. But obviously she never intended to catch that flight. She’s in Miami. Or somewhere in Florida.’
‘So you tell me why, if she simply had to catch a cab to her home, she bothered to check in to the hotel at all, and pay for the room? If she had a car waiting for her, or intended to hire one, why didn’t she just use it? The hotel provided an extra link in her trail, so why take the risk?’
‘Because,’ Luis said patiently, ‘She was laying that extra trail.’
‘Think. God damn it. She’s running for her life, mind. If she was merely heading for home in Miami, why try to pretend she was going on?’
‘Like I said, because she knew they’d be able to find out which flight she was on. So she tried to throw them off her track.’
‘But she must’ve known, after the way she walked out of that hotel, that they’d figure she wasn’t taking that flight to New York. Then they’d start looking locally. And they’d find her, eventually. If she was there. Just as she must’ve had a pretty good idea they’d find her wherever she went in this country. This is a high profile hit.’
Luis considered, frowning. Then snapped his fingers. ‘She was leaving the country.’
‘Bright boy!’
‘Going back to Ireland.’
‘Dumb boy.’
‘Eh?’
‘If she wanted to go to Ireland, and she’s in a hurry, mind, why go to Miami first? San Antonio is a big international airport. She could probably have got a flight from there. But even if she felt she had to get further east, it’d be for another big international, say for another really big one, like Atlanta or Idlewild, where she’d get a trans-Atlantic flight much quicker than from Miami, it’d be too much of a risk, after that phone call. She was using the name O’Donovan, and she’d know the cops would latch on to that, PDQ. It’s maybe four hours from San Antonio to New York, then a wait for a flight, then maybe eight hours to Shannon. Once they picked up that booking, they’d have the Garda waiting for her as she stepped off the plane. Anyway, Botten said that if she was in Europe, or went back there, they’d be able to take care of her themselves. She must’ve known that.’
‘So where would she go from Miami, internationally? If not to Europe? South America? Cuba? Cuba! That’s the most likely.’
‘I’ve been looking at some schedules. She could have caught a flight to Havana from San Antonio. She had to go to Miami because only from Miami could she get the flight she wanted, to the Bahamas. There’s a local airline operating out of there. Otherwise she’d have had to go to Atlanta or New York, and they only operate one flight to Nassau a day. By the time she got there, she’d have missed it.’
‘Yeah, but say, if the cops could track her to Miami surely they could track her to a one-horse town like Nassau.’
‘How? They tracked her to Miami because they had a name. They also had a description, but the way she could change her appearance it wasn’t too accurate, and there are one hell of a lot of good-lo
oking blondes wandering about. It was the name on the passport that mattered. O’Donovan.’
‘But if she flew out, it’d have to be on a ticket register at some airline desk in Miami. Don’t you suppose the cops checked that out?’
‘Of course they did. I told you that. But like I said, they only had a name and a rough description. She must have had a third passport.’
‘In a name we know nothing about. I’m pretty goddamed sure it wasn’t Doolittle.’
‘We don’t need a name. We have that photograph. And this is a dish not too many men would forget.’
Luis studied the photo once again. ‘Nine years. I still think she could’ve changed.’
‘Not that much. Unless she’s had her face pushed in, and both Jaquetta and this driver say she was a looker. Now I don’t want your people asking questions around Miami International. She’s still hot, and we don’t want to have the cops getting interested in what we’re doing. We’re going to act on my hunch. You have someone go across to Nassau and show that photo around the shops, hotels, banks . . . the Bahamas don’t have too many blonde visitors. If she’s there, she won’t be bothering with no disguises, and someone will remember her.’
‘She might have moved on again.’
‘OK, so she’s moved on. But if she was there, even for a day or two, we’ll have a lead we can follow. Nassau is a mainly black community. A dame like this would stick out like a beacon.’
Another study of the photo. ‘You know what, Pa? There ain’t too much going on around here right this minute, and I’ve never been to the Bahamas. I’ll handle this one myself.’
‘You just want to get your hands on those tits. You telling Lisa about this?’
‘Lisa,’ Luis said, ‘Doesn’t want to know what we do, or have to do, in the business. She told me so.’
‘But I bet she don’t want to be a widow, either.’
‘This chick? Don’t make me laugh.’
‘Look, according to this guy Botten, this chick kills, with gun, knife or her bare hands. And she’s fast, so fast that her victims don’t know what’s hit them till they’re dead.’
‘Botten says.’
‘Maybe. But it seems to be a fact that a couple of days ago she did for five guys, and they were the best in the business. Like I said, Carlos Dias was a top gun. According to Benjy, his hand was round the butt of his weapon, so he knew what was happening, but he never got it out of the holster. Anyway, you can’t go right now. We have the Family AGM coming up next week, and I want you here for that. Now I’m getting on, some of these guys are getting a little uppity. You may have to knock a few heads together.’
‘No problem. OK, Pa, I’ll have Lorna take a preliminary look. Send a snake to catch a snake, eh?’
‘Yeah, that’s a good idea. But you tell her to take a back-up and don’t take no risks. She has to treat it as a major job and plan it that way. She also wants to bear in mind that we don’t have any clout in the Bahamas, and that British law acts kind of quicker than ours. They don’t go in for too many appeals. If they get her for murder, she could be standing on the trap with a cloth over her head before our lawyers could spring her.’
‘I’ll remember that. What’s the old saying? Softly, softly catchee monkey? But you know, Pa . . . if this dame is as good as all this, maybe instead of doing her we should get her working for us. You can always give Botten back his dough and say we couldn’t find her.’
‘That,’ Don Giovanni said, severely, ‘would be to break a contract. Oh, there is just one thing more. If Lorna were to get close enough to do the job, Botten’s principals want proof of death.’
‘How the hell are we supposed to provide that?’
Don Giovanni pulled his nose. ‘They want her head.’
Luis stared at him. ‘You have to be kidding me.’
‘That’s what the man said. Seems it’s an old European custom. Kind of went out of fashion a few hundred years ago, but these guys would like to revive it.’
Luis looked at the photograph. ‘That head? Shit!’
‘What’s eating you?’ his father inquired. ‘She’ll be dead when they cut it off.’
*
As was her usual custom, Anna was awake at dawn. And this was a special day: Friday, 20 May.
She stroked Isis, who responded with her usual loud purr, got out of bed, and went down to the pool for her swim. Normally she exercised first – a large room in the house had been fitted as an elaborate gymnasium and short shooting range, a copy of the SS one in which she had trained in Berlin – but today she had too much to do. She swam several lengths, hair piled on top of her head, joined by the dogs who swam beside her, then had a freshwater shower, while Jupiter and Juno shook vigorously. Then she rinsed the dogs clean of salt, returned to her bedroom, and dressed, in pants and loose shirt; she would change into shore-going clothes when she got to Nassau. As she could not possibly have any need for her shoulder bag in Nassau – in any event her pistol and spare magazine were both on board the Chris-Craft – she selected a straw shopping bag in which she placed her jewellery and kid gloves and a straw hat before going down to breakfast with her parents.
‘Excited?’ Jane asked.
‘My bed gets very lonely, from time to time.’
‘Do you think, this visit . . .?’
‘We’ll have to wait and see.’
‘I know we all owe this man our lives,’ Johann said, ‘And I know he’s your favourite man. But you’re quite sure he’s not just stringing you along?’
Anna refused to take offence. ‘He’s genuine, Daddy. It’s just that with me having to lie low and stay out of the UK, for him to join me permanently, cut himself off from the surroundings he’s lived in all of his life, would be an immense step, both physically and psychologically.’
‘And he knows that you’ll always be here, waiting for him.’
‘Yes, he does.’ She squeezed her father’s hand. ‘If I wasn’t a patient woman, none of us would be here now.’ She finished her coffee.
‘What time are you leaving?’ Jane asked.
‘Nine. The flight is due in about two, so if I get to Nassau by twelve I’ll have time for lunch.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Eight thirty.’ She kissed them both. ‘See you for dinner.’
As she left the room, her parents exchanged glances. They had seen her in action, more than once, appreciated and admired, even if they could not entirely understand, the ice-cold way in which she went about her business, and indeed, all life, apparently. So they could both tell, from her restlessness, that today she was agitated.
Anna went on to the porch, carrying her hat and bag, put on her dark glasses, and whistled. Immediately the dogs came bounding round the house, still shaking water. ‘No hugs,’ she warned. ‘You’re still wet.’ They padded at her heels as she walked down to the dock, where Tommy was polishing the bright-work on the boat. ‘Good morning, Tommy. All set?’
‘All set, Miss Anna.’
‘I’ll be with you in a moment.’
A snap of the fingers, and the dogs followed her along the path to the two cottages, and Desiree, having served breakfast at the house, sweeping her front porch. ‘You were going to give me a list for Nassau.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Desiree went into the house and returned a moment later with a small sheet of paper. Anna glanced at it and then folded it into her bag. ‘I’ll give it to Tommy. And as I told you, there’ll be a guest for dinner and the next few days.’
‘Yes, ma’am. But you said not to make up the spare room, right?’
‘That’s right, Desiree. I’ll see you this evening.’
‘You stay here with Desiree,’ she told the dogs, and joined Tommy on the dock. It was five to nine, and he already had disconnected the electrics and had the engines running, growling quietly to themselves. Anna went up to the bridge. ‘Let’s go.’
He cast off the warps, stepped on board, and the boat glided away from the dock. Tommy took in the fenders while Anna made herself c
omfortable on the steering bench, guided the boat through the reef, and then opened the throttle to her cruising speed of twelve knots, feeling as she did so a glow of the most utter contentment. This, she thought, was what she had wanted all of her life . . . and when she came back this afternoon, Clive would be beside her!
They tied up in Nassau just after twelve. Anna went below, changed into the frock she had bought in Miami, replaced her bandanna with her straw hat, leaving her hair loose save for a clip on her neck, put on her Italian dark glasses, pulled on her gloves, picked up her high-heeled shoes and went on deck. ‘Here’s Desiree’s list, Tommy,’ she said. ‘And I want you to go to the Lumber Company and order four five-gallon drums of chlorine. Have them delivered by half past two. While you’re there, get a couple of bottles of algaecide and some tablets for the pool. Tell them to put it on the account. And have some lunch. I’m going to do the same, then I’m going out to Oakes Field to meet the London flight. I’ll be back on board by three.’
‘You got it, ma’am. I thought I might top up on fuel at the same time.’
‘Why not? Just be back here by three.’ She walked into Rawson Square and hailed a taxi for the Royal Victoria Hotel.
*
‘Miss Fitzjohn!’ Charles the maitre d’ was as ever delighted to see her. ‘It is so good to have you back so soon. But of course, you are meeting someone.’
Anna took off her glasses. ‘How did you know that?’
‘Well, the lady was here yesterday, ma’am.’
Anna considered. ‘You’ll have to fill me in on this, Charles. A lady was here, yesterday, looking for me?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘And she asked for me, by name?’
Charles looked embarrassed. ‘Well . . . not exactly, ma’am. As I understand it, she went to reception, and showed them a photograph.’
‘A photograph?!’ Anna’s brain started to buzz. The only photographs of her that existed, so far as she knew, were in the possession of herself, Clive, or Joe Andrews. ‘What exactly did she say, do you remember?’
‘She said she was supposed to meet you, and did we recognize you. Well, naturally, James said of course, that is Miss Fitzjohn.’
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