“Just what I mean. We don’t drop our line in deep waters, do we? Some things we just don’t talk about; our souls, and God, and eternity and that.”
“I don’t think there is a God,” said Kumara .
“No,” said Frenchie. “I don’t guess I’d let Him make much of an impression on me, either. Easier that way, ain’t it? If there’s no God, there’s nothin’ tellin’ us to be more than we are, is there?”
She rested her eyes on the garbage can at her knee. “Makes things easy. Still, the music the other night, it opened up a door to a room I didn’t even know was there.” Her gaze fell once more to the fish. She cut off its head. “Better safe,” she said, almost at a whisper.
“Better safe,” said Kumara, though in response to what, exactly, it was impossible to tell.
Something drew Frenchie’s attention to the window, where Truck waited in patient, dog-like contemplation, its single functioning headlight fixed on the eastern horizon. “Better safe. Too right.
“That’s what the music stripped away,” she said, unconsciously shifting focus from Truck to her reflection in the intervening window, “all the safe stuff we talk about like it’s life. But it ain’t.”
“Half the police force on both islands have been looking for him,” said Hawkes, flustered at having to admit defeat to his attractive American visitor. “His photo is on telly, in the newspapers. Everywhere. Somebody as famous as he is can’t just fall off the grid without a trace.”
“That’s what concerns me, Senior Sergeant,” said Mrs. Bridges, trying to remain calm and cool despite an unspoken desperation that had been rising in her since Albert had been reported missing—a full three days after the last documented sighting of him. “Especially since, if I understand correctly, he attempted suicide. He’s, he’s not . . . he’s . . .”
“I know what you mean,” said Hawkes. “And I understand your concern. Believe me, we’re doing everything we can.”
Bridges swished the cold coffee in the styrofoam cup, her eyes on a little cloud of gulls circling a fishing boat not far offshore. “Did you get them all, Senior Sergeant?”
“All those involved in the Trade, you mean?” He stuck a thumbnail in his near-empty cup. “I wish I could say yes, but . . . I can’t. Personally—and this isn’t the official line—I have a hell of a time crediting Pyle with being this great mastermind who was putting it all together. I mean, I’ve interviewed him for hours—and while he’s certainly not the harmless cipher he makes himself out to be—I just don’t see it.”
“And I take it he’s not pointing any fingers.”
“Nor about to!” said Hawkes, slamming his coffee cup to the pavement and, despite its not being empty, stomping on it in frustration, the consequence being that demanded by the immutable laws of physics. He swiped the splatter from his trouser legs with the back of his hand. “You’d think we had him under charge for a traffic violation! As if he expects to be released any moment.
“I can’t figure it out.”
“And these . . . these secret societies, or whatever you want to call them? Have they all been rounded up?”
“Yes. That we can say for sure, thanks to Albert. Credit where credit’s due,” said the senior sergeant. “Once we got them in separate rooms, they sang like a Broadway chorus. They all had cover stories, of course, well-practiced, but once we found the weakest link—that being the young man ill-advisedly hired to sheer the bolts on Dr. Marcos’s car—they all turned pretty quickly. Before we knew it, they were confessing to charges we hadn’t made! Pretty soon, the wheels were off the wagon.”
“But all the evidence pointed no further than Pyle?”
Hawkes shrugged. “So far.” He lit his pipe and watched the smoke rise into the afternoon air. “If I’m right, and someone else is behind him—maybe an organization—they’re either so powerful that he feels they can protect him, somehow, or they’ve got him scared stiff.”
“Scared of what? You say he has no family to speak of . . .”
“None whatsoever.”
“Okay, so no one’s threatening to wipe out kith and kin . . . what could they have over him that’s worse than life imprisonment?”
Hawkes shook his head.
“He must be confident they can pull him out of the soup,” said Bridges. “You’re right. It would take someone with a lot of pull. That points to someone in either law enforcement, or government.”
Hawkes sighed deeply. “A conspiracy.”
“I need to speak to Jeremy Ash,” said Bridges, stuffing a few ancillary bits and pieces into her purse. “Can you take me to the Braemar?”
“Of course, of course. I asked Sweetman to book you, as soon as you called from the airport. You’ll be having the room formerly occupied by Pyle,” he said apologetically. “I hope there are no objections, only Sweetman’s determined to hold Albert’s room for his return.”
“Of course,” said Bridges. “No objection at all.” She smiled. “Though I will look under the bed.”
“Mrs. Bridges!” said Angela answering Hawkes’ knock at the door. “What are you doing here?”
The lacunae were filled in during an intense question-and-answer there in the hallway. “Where is he now,” said Mrs. Bridges, “Jeremy Ash? What was he doing letting Albert out of his sight? I need to speak to him.”
“Then I hope you’re clairvoyant,” said James Simon, who had caught the tail end of the conversation from the sitting room doorway. Hasty introductions were performed, at the conclusion of which, he said. “Jeremy and Wendell are both gone.”
“Wendell?”
James explained.
“How long ago?” asked Hawkes.
“We last saw them about three hours ago.”
“We?”
Angela threaded her fingers though James’s. “We were in the garden, with Mr. Sweetman. Jeremy Ash and Wendell were playing chess . . .”
“Checkers,” James corrected.
“Checkers, then,” said Angela. “Over there.” She pointed at the wedge of garden that was visible from the hall, through the sitting room and beyond the French doors, where a small white, wrought-iron table and chairs occupied a shady nook.
“Bindy came out and said something to him,” said James Simon, “and they got up, said they were going for a stroll, and left through the back garden gate.”
“She told us later . . .”
“Bindy,” said Simon.
“Bindy, yes,” said Angela, squeezing his hand. “She told us later that he had had a phone call.”
“Jeremy Ash had a phone call?” said Mrs. Bridges impulsively. “Who’d be calling him . . .?”
“Did she . . .?” Hawkes began.
Simon held up his hand. “No, she didn’t recognize the caller.”
“Male, female?”
“Not even that,” said Angela. “She said whoever it was whispered, so it was hard to tell. She’d guess a man, but wouldn’t swear to it.”
“And they just got up and left, like that?” said Hawkes, snapping his fingers.
“So it would seem.”
“Shouldn’t be hard to track down,” said Bridges. “I don’t mean to presume, Senior Sergeant, but a large Maori pushing a legless boy in a wheelchair?”
Hawkes took the hint, went to the phone in the hall, and put out an all-points bulletin.
Crain Emeny had been surprised by Snake’s call. As head pilot for Chatham Air, he was no stranger to being summoned at odd hours for unscheduled flights, sometimes for the transport of time-sensitive materials, but most often for emergency medical transport to the mainland. He’d never been asked to make an emergency flight from point-to-point in New Zealand, then to Pitt Island, without stopping to change to the smaller Cessna on Chatham.
He had told Snake in no uncertain terms that it was impossible to land the DC-3 on the tiny strip of runway on Pitt, to which Snake replied that money was no object. Emeny made some quick mental recalculations and decided that it was only “practica
lly impossible.”
“Name your price,” said Snake.
“Any price?”
“Name it.”
“Well, I could use a new plane.”
Snake didn’t miss a beat. “Done.”
“Are you serious?”
“Can you do it?”
“I’ve never tried landing the big plane on such a short runway. . .” Emeny equivocated; a new plane, after all, would be of little use to a pilot who had died trying to attempt the impossible in the previous one.
Snake let silence argue for him.
“Okay. I’ll give it a go!” said Emeny at last, hardly believing the words that were coming out of his mouth.
“Now, who or what am I carrying?” He had sudden second thoughts. “Hey, wait! This isn’t anything illegal, is it? I’m not going to. . .”
“Nothing illegal,” said Snake. “I promise, Craig. It’s a person.”
“Who?”
“Can’t say.”
The only other person who flew fairly regularly to Pitt was Pyle, and everyone had heard the rumor that he was in jail for reasons that weren’t exactly clear. Besides, that had only been in the small plane, after the customary change on Chatham.
“Why would anyone want to fly to Pitt?” he wondered more aloud than in expectation of an answer, which was just as well, for none was forthcoming. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll give it a go. I mean, I’ll pick him up . . . where?”
“Napier.”
“Great. I’ll pick him up in Napier and fly him straight to Pitt, but I’ll do a couple of fly-overs there first, and if conditions aren’t ideal—I mean perfect—I make for Chatham. If he still wants to go to Pitt from there, we change to the Cessna. Which,” said Emeny, “I don’t see why he doesn’t do in the first place. Wouldn’t add more than fifteen or twenty minutes to the trip.”
Snake deliberated and decided to bring Emeny into his confidence—a little bit. “Secrecy,” he said.
“The passenger doesn’t want anyone to know he’s going to Pitt?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“Good luck with that, mate!” Emeny laughed. “There are forty four people, about eighty thousand sheep, and half again as many chickens on that island, and every last one of ’em will know everything there is to know about this stranger of yours before my props stop spinnin’. And what they don’t know, they’ll make up.”
Snake knew this was true, and that no amount of money could buy secrecy on the islands. “Well, what do you suggest then?”
Emeny thought a moment; then his eyes brightened. “Only one man I know could get your friend to Pitt without anyone knowing.”
“?”
“Woolie!” said Emeny. “And if your friend is who I think he is—which, as I’ve been thinking about it, he must be, ’cause no one else I know has the kind of money it takes to hire the big plane for two days, much less buy me a new one—then Woolie will jump at the chance.”
Emeny studied Snake closely. “It’s him, isn’t it? Albert?”
It tore Snake up inside to let go of the secret but, in the end, he knew he’d have to. “But not a word, Craig. Got that? It’s up to you, me and Woolie to get him where he needs to go with none the wiser. You reckon we can do it?”
Craig was already several steps ahead on the itinerary. “You square things with Woolie,” he said. “I’ll clear my schedule—tell folks the plane’s down for maintenance—then file my flight plans in N Zed. Pick up in Napier, you said?”
“Right. Don’t mention your cargo in those plans.”
“Goes without saying. Then?”
“Christchurch. Shouldn’t be there more than a couple of hours.”
“Okay, if he’s ready by ten in the morning, and all goes to plan, that’ll put us on Chatham just at twilight. Perfect.”
“Okay,” said Snake, warming to the new arrangements. “I’ll pick him up at the airfield, and get him down to Woolie’s boat. Won’t be anyone on the roads at that time of evenin’. Then him and Woolie can make their way to Pitt in the dark.”
“None the wiser,” said Craig.
“None the wiser,” echoed Snake.
“Thing I can’t sort out,” said Craig, “is what’s so important on Pitt? Pyle’s house is the only thing I can think of that would be of any interest, and that’s been gone over by the N Zed police and Navy both, when they were out here.”
“Can’t say,” said Snake.
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Don’t know, can’t say, and wouldn’t if I did.”
“Fair go. I’ll be at Napier at 10, ready for take-off.”
Albert stood in the stern of Woolie’s boat, watching the wake zipper the black water, stirring up furious little eddies of glowing phosphorus. Now and then the bow would cleave a wave at an angle that would send a shower of freezing spray at him. The wind was wild, seeming to come from all angles at once, whipping his hair and tugging at the beard that, in the space of five days, had grown thick enough to attract its interest. His glasses were clouded with salt and fingerprints, but it wasn’t important. There wasn’t anything to see, anyway: nothing but that mesmerizing maelstrom of luminous microscopic creatures. The few lights of Chatham had faded in the distance. On Pitt, there were no lights; the generators were off for the day.
Woolie had only said, “Ready?” when—after an exhilarating cross country ride astraddle Medusa—Snake delivered him to the wharf. Albert had been ready. Neither of them spoke until he cut the engine about fifty yards from shore and let the Mermaid’s Tale drift quietly up on the white-blue sands of Flowerpot Bay.
“Know where you’re goin’?”
Snake had given him directions to Pyle’s house, about half a mile along the main road south from the beach, along Flowerpot Glory Road. “Just before the plateau rises,” he’d said. “A little road off to the west. His place is tucked under the cliff there.”
“Yes.”
“You want me to just wait here?”
“Yes, please.”
“How long you think?”
“I don’t know.” Albert spoke the magic words. “I’ll give you a thousand dollars to wait . . . as long as it takes.”
“No need for that, Al. Take as long as you like. I just thought I’d ask.” Something occurred to Woolie that hadn’t occurred to either of them. “Say, you want me to come along? Little muscle come in handy?”
That certainly made more sense than asking him to just sit there by the boat for however long it might take. “Okay.”
“Might need this,” said Woolie. He reached under the console and produced a flashlight. He flicked it on and shone it in his face, nearly blinding himself. “Good batteries, these.”
There weren’t many houses or buildings of any kind along the road to Pyle’s place, and the few there were stood well off the road, their silhouettes cutting rectangular swatches from the star-spangled darkness. Judging from appearances, the island might as well have been deserted. “Early risers, Pitt folk,” said Woolie as they climbed the road toward the plateau. “Bill and Di Hunt’s kids will be first up, I reckon. Somebody’s got to wake the roosters. They’ve got more kids than sheep. Look behind a rock, under a bush, in a cave, or up a tree anywhere on Pitt, and you’ll find a Hunt kid there grinnin’ back at you.”
This piece of local information constituted Woolie’s travelogue until they reached the rutted and tufted path leading to Pyle’s house. He stopped, turned the flashlight on and stabbed the darkness with it. “I’ll go first. Mind your step,” he said. “Sheep.”
Albert didn’t see or hear any sheep, but soon realized it was not the animal Woolie was warning him of, but the evidence of their passing—which they apparently did often.
There was a short strip of yellow “Police – Do Not Enter” tape at the top of the steps leading to the little porch fronting the house. “Never saw this before except on telly,” said Woolie. He tore it off and stuffed it in his pocket. “Souvenir,” he said.
He reached for the doorknob and twisted it. “Locked. Want me to knock it in?”
“No,” said Albert, moving to the door. He removed a small piece of wire from his pocket, inserted it in the lock and in seconds the lock clicked. “It’s open now.”
In disbelief, Woolie reached for the knob and turned it. The door swung open. “Well, sins of the fathers, would you look at that. How did you . . .?”
But Albert was already inside. Woolie shone the light after him. “What are you looking for?”
“Papers,” said Albert.
“What kind of papers?”
“Papers that will tell us where Pyle spends two months every year.”
“Like, ticket receipts?”
That would be good. So would a note in Pyle’s own hand that said something like “This is where I go for two months every year.” “Yes. Or brochures, travel books. That kind of thing.”
Woolie found a candle, lit it, and handed it to Albert. It took the two of them less than five minutes to find what they were looking for: a nest of papers wedged under an abalone shell on a desk, as well as two books about the French Riviera, a French phrase book, and a letter confirming “your usual room” from the Hotel Negresco in Nice.
“Nice?” said Woolie, pronouncing it the way it looked. “That’s a place?”
“Neece,” said Albert, turning the letter over in his hands. He’d stayed at the Negresco several times while on tour. It wasn’t modern. He liked it. He looked at the dates. “Two months,” he said. “That’s where he goes.”
Woolie had found a brochure for the hotel. “Crikey! Must cost a packet to stay at a place like that for two months!”
Stapled to the welcoming letter was a receipt. Albert showed it to his fellow felon. “Crikey!” He shone the light in Albert’s face. “I guess we know where he spent his money.”
Albert reached out and directed Woolie’s flashlight to the paper. “Look at this,” he said.
Woolie read the words aloud. “‘Caduceus Corporation, 632 Quai Amiral Infemet, Nice, France.’ That mean something?”
“Yes.” Albert gathered up the slim bundle of documents and tucked them into the pocket of his pea coat. “That’s what we need.”
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