McGuire checked the car again. No one had approached it.
When he turned away to begin eating, it disappeared in a ball of fire and shredded metal.
Children and their mothers began screaming hysterically. “Holy shit!” shouted one of the truck drivers. Debris landed on the open patio of the restaurant. The counter staff stood frozen and open-mouthed at the sight.
McGuire set his sandwich aside, stood and walked casually to the washroom, then detoured through the kitchen area, abandoned by staff who had run to the front counter where they watched the remains of the Mercedes burning a hundred yards away, four flaming tires marking the corners of the blackened, twisted hulk.
He left through the employees’ entrance, keeping the restaurant between him and the wreckage, telling himself it had been a warning, damn it, a warning, and not just his good luck.
An airport. He needed an airport.
He needed somewhere to hide.
Even Paradise can become a bore, Koko admitted. Especially when you’ve grown up. And she had grown up so much over the summer.
Standing sullenly on the upper deck of the Abaco Cay ferry, she watched the yachts manoeuvre out of the harbour. It was late August; another three weeks before college resumed.
She had no regrets about working in the Bahamas all summer. At the beginning, the parties had been fun, the laughter plentiful, the boys interesting. But she wouldn’t be as sad to leave as she had expected back in June. Twice she had almost returned home. Once when her parents and young sister came for a visit and she stood at the airport sobbing openly as they boarded their plane for Miami and home. And once when that jerk Louis, the weightlifter, treated her like a piece of meat. The bastard. Stuck on his muscle-bound body. Which was a lesson, she assured herself. Good looks, a great tan, curly hair, they’re all silly reasons to choose a boy. Or a man. Louis had made her grow up. Louis had reminded her that she had choices. Hers to make. Hers to live with. Knowing that, accepting that, realizing that, it was all part of maturity.
She began her final trip of the day. One stop at Green Turtle Cay and then back to Abaco, where she would curl up with a book, one of the Faulkner novels her mother had brought. That’s how she planned to spend her evenings from now until school began. Doing something with her mind.
The ferry nosed into the dock at Green Turtle Cay. Nothing ever changes here, she mused, except the faces of the tourists. The same boats at anchor in the harbour. The same bar and restaurant perched at the end of the pier, where the same palm trees wave in the dusky light, shading the path to the tourist villas and swimming pool and beyond to the crest of the hill and the small cabin.
Koko blinked and raised her sunglasses to her forehead. Something had changed after all.
There was a light in the cabin window. A figure stood on the small deck facing the harbour. At this distance it was only a silhouette, resting its weight on its arms. But the stance looked familiar.
She left the ferry at Green Turtle, the Bahamian captain smiling and nodding, reminding her the last sailing was at one o’clock. She entered the bar, chose the last stool and ordered a beer and conch fritters. Two yacht sailors hit on her almost at once, but she smiled silently and shook her head, avoiding eye contact, and they left her alone with her Miller Lite and greasy dinner.
“Been here a week now,” the manager of the bar replied to her question. She was a large, grey-haired Bahamian woman who seemed to be always smiling and laughing. “Comes down every night,” she said, her face clouding over and acquiring a rare serious expression. “Sits over there in the corner and has one drink all alone.”
Koko asked for another beer, took it outside and sat on the rotting hull of an overturned dinghy that lay between the bar and the path up the hill to the cabin.
He came loping down the path soon after the sun disappeared behind the other side of the Cay, walking silently in moccasins, wearing a grey sweatshirt and lightweight slacks. He nodded at her as he passed on the far side of the stony walk.
“Welcome back,” she said, and he studied her from the corner of his eye and nodded again. “Remember me?”
He paused at the corner of the building, glancing quickly at the entrance to the bar, across the harbour, back up the path, and finally meeting her eyes again. “Twisted Sister,” he muttered.
“Hey,” she laughed. “Not any more. I’ve changed. Anyway, I wondered if you wanted to talk?”
His eyes narrowed. “About what?”
“Just talk.” Koko stood up. “I’ve been here nearly three months and nobody talked to me the way you did that first time we met. I mean, people talk but they don’t listen, you know?”
He studied her for a moment, then angled his head toward the entrance. He watched her enter ahead of him, looked over his shoulder at the boats bobbing in the harbour, and followed her into the darkened bar.
“Faulkner?” McGuire asked almost an hour later. “You’re reading Faulkner? That’s good.” He nodded and sipped his drink. “That’s good.”
“Things like that mean something to me now.” She scooped a handful of peanuts from a bowl, popped several in her mouth and talked around them. “The thing about growing up is, a lot of it happens when you don’t expect it, doesn’t it? I mean, sometimes it’s not a gradual process. Sometimes you just wake up one morning and a lot of things that were stuffy and boring the day before just look more interesting. And all the stuff that used to be important is shit. Sorry,” she added.
“Is that how it happened with you?”
She nodded. “A couple of times.”
“After some pain, right?”
She smiled and avoided his eyes.
“Experience is what you get,” McGuire said, “when you were expecting something else.”
“Yeah,” she mused. “Yeah!” she said again. She was feeling light-headed. “That’s right.” She tried to remember something her father had told her, something he once tried to pass on to her as wisdom. “There’s . . .” she began. She couldn’t remember it now, so she said, “There’s no substitute for experience, I guess.”
“Sure there is,” McGuire replied. He drained his glass.
“What? What’s better than experience?”
McGuire smiled, a rare event for him, and she felt a chill sweep over her. “Being sixteen,” he said.
She laughed so loud she embarrassed herself, and looked around the room, covering her mouth with her hand. But the room was empty; only the manager stood behind the bar, polishing glasses and humming to herself. “That’s right!” Koko said, reaching to touch his arm. “God, when I was sixteen . . . I mean, I knew it all. All of it. Sex and life and all the dumb things my parents didn’t know about. I figured they would never know about it.”
“That wasn’t so long ago,” McGuire said.
“What wasn’t?” She left her hand on his arm.
“When you were sixteen.”
“Five years,” she said.
“Not long.”
“Maybe. But it seems long. Maybe because I’ve changed so much, going to college, working here.” She watched her fingers as she drummed them absently on his arm. “Talking to you. Where have you been?” she asked suddenly.
“Away.” His eyes grew wary.
“Up north?”
“Some. Spent some time in Mexico.”
“Really? Did you like it?”
“No.” He turned his empty glass around and around in his hands. “I despised it.”
“So that’s why you came back here?”
He shifted his eyes at her, looking for something in her expression. Then he pulled his lips against his teeth and nodded. “Next best thing to home,” he said.
She watched him, sensing the change in mood, feeling the hurt that had risen briefly within him and flown away to hide somewhere again.
He looked at his watch and
nodded toward the bar. “Martha’s getting ready to close,” he said. “And the last ferry back to Abaco should be leaving any minute.”
“It left ten minutes ago,” Koko said.
“What the hell are you going to do now?” McGuire asked.
She curled her hair between her fingers. “I don’t know. I could bunk here all night in one of the booths, I guess. Or maybe you could show me your cabin.”
“I love saxophones. What’s the name of that song?” She was standing at the window of the cabin, a small tumbler of Scotch in her hand.
“‘Come Rain or Come Shine,’” McGuire said, walking back from the stereo to sit in the overstuffed armchair.
The cabin was sparsely furnished. A carved mahogany bed was pushed against the far wall. A sink, microwave oven and refrigerator were grouped near the door to the bathroom. Large bookshelves stocked with paperbacks flanked a new stereo system. A tiny writing desk, the overstuffed chair occupied by McGuire, and a scarred side table completed the interior setting.
“Who’s playing?”
“Zoot Sims.”
“Is he good?”
“The best.” McGuire looked out through the window at the darkened harbour below, where white lights lay scattered along the shoreline. He told himself it had only been a warning. He told himself it had only been a signal he had been smart enough to heed. They knew that. They knew he had heeded it. Now they would leave him alone.
Koko sat on the arm of the upholstered chair, looking down at him. “Will you tell me how you got that scar?” she asked.
“No.”
She touched the top of his head lightly with her hand, feeling the curls beneath her open palm. “Are you afraid I’ll tell people?” she teased.
“No.”
“Are you afraid I’ll give you another one just like it? If I know how you got this one?”
He looked up at her and smiled, the expression crinkling the corners of his eyes. “You? Give me a scar like this?”
“You think that’s funny?”
The smile broadened. “I think it’s hilarious.”
“And I think I just made you smile. How about that?”
He leaned away from her and closed his eyes. “Koko,” he said, “you’re sweet and smart and very pretty. But you’re too young for me.”
“I know,” she replied, twisting to set her empty glass on the table beside the chair. She dropped her arm across his shoulder and slid her body closer to his. “You miss the point,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“You’re not too old for me.” And she laughed and bit her lip, and laughed again at his expression: surprised, amused and perhaps, just perhaps, almost happy.
About the Author
John Lawrence Reynolds is the author of more than two dozen works of fiction and non-fiction. He has previously written six mystery novels—most recently, Beach Strip—and is a two-time winner of the Arthur Ellis Award (for The Man Who Murdered God and Gypsy Sins). His many non-fiction books include Leaving Home, Free Rider (winner of the National Business Book Award), The Naked Investor and Bubbles, Bankers & Bailouts. Shadow People, his bestselling book on secret societies, has been published in sixteen countries. A former president of the Crime Writers of Canada, he lives in Burlington, Ontario. Visit him online at johnlawrencereynolds.com.
Copyright
Whisper Death © 1991 John Lawrence Reynolds
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EPub Edition May 2015 ISBN: 9781443443685
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Originally published by Penguin Books Ltd in 1991. First published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd in this ePub edition in 2015.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are use fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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