by Cave, Hugh
He heard Sam telling someone else—Lynne, no doubt —about the footprints. Then Lynne took the phone.
"Darling, we've found Ima and she's coming. We're waiting right now for Ken Daniels to drive us to Kingston."
"Where are you?"
"At the Villa Bella." It was a guest house just outside Christiana, on the road to Spaldings. "Ima is with us. She shared my room last night. She was working in Mandeville." A pause. "Will, use my apartment until we get there. Don't go back to your own!"
"Thanks. I'll be glad to take you up on that."
"Sam wants to talk to you again. Will, I love you. Be careful."
Sam took the phone and said, "If we're lucky at the embassy, old boy, we may be able to catch a plane for Miami this afternoon. At worst we'll be on the first one out tomorrow."
"I'll keep my fingers crossed."
"Ima wants a word."
The phone changed hands again. Ima Williams's warm voice said, "Mr. Will? This is Ima. I just want to say that I hope I can help you. I will do my best."
"Thank you, Ima. I know you will."
"I have been back to Haiti since I saw you last. Not for long—just a visit—but I stayed with Manman Lespri, my mambo, and received instructions that will make me more knowledgeable, I am sure."
"Good."
"Your Miss Lynne is nice. I like her."
"Thank you, Ima."
He heard a tangle of voices then, after which Lynne took over the phone. "Will, Ken Daniels is here and we're leaving. Take care of yourself, darling. Bye for now."
"Goodbye, love," he said. But she had hung up.
That day was better than the one before. Knowing they would soon be arriving with Ima, and telling himself she would know how to help him, he was not so tense. The boats on the lake were not such a lodestone for his attention, either. He could accept their presence now without constantly imagining they might drag up something to bring Karl Jurzak to his door again.
Would Sam succeed in getting a visa for Ima Williams in time to catch a plane today at the Palisadoes airport? Will climbed the stairs to his apartment and looked for a Jamaica-Miami timetable but failed to find one; must have thrown away the one he had. Platt, you're a writer; you should keep things like that, damn it! He remembered the departure times from Montego Bay, but Kingston's were different.
Anyway, it was highly unlikely the embassy would be that cooperative, even with the urging of Sam's United Nations friends. Tomorrow, then. They would be turning up tomorrow.
If no hitch developed.
33
"He Wants to Find Her Again"
Will watched the boats while eating lunch on Lynne's veranda. There were six today. He had never witnessed a dragging operation before and could discover no apparent pattern in this one.
When tired of watching, he washed and dried the lunch dishes, put them away, and went up to his own apartment to change into swim togs. When he got to the pool, he was happy to find it deserted.
His mood changed as he swam. Forgetting his problems, he found himself thinking of the day he had met Lynne Kimball here. Absolutely an arranged-in-Heaven encounter, not a mere accident, he told himself again.
What a woman she was! And what a miracle he had at last found her, after writing her into book after book while convinced there really was no such woman in the world.
Thinking about her, he swam contentedly back and forth until he was too tired to continue. Then he returned to Lynne's apartment and, after drying himself, lay naked on her bed and slept for an hour. The sleep refreshed him, and he was able to get through the remainder of the afternoon without pacing the floor.
It was still daylight—the boats were still plying the lake—when he began to wonder just how Ima Williams would try to help him, and what her chance of success might be.
As a hounsi kanzo she would know most of the voodoo ceremonies, of course. Her own hounfor's version of them, at any rate, for the rituals varied widely in different parts of Haiti. The awesome rite by which a person became kanzo was one he himself would never forget: the servitors all in white, the seven black iron pots turning red over individual pine-stick fires, the houngan filling them with oil, the peristyle reeking with the smell of it as the oil began to boil and smoke.
He could picture Ima at the time of her initiation, being led from the secret djévo, that room in the adjoining hounfor where for the past seven days she had been left alone to meditate in silence on the commitment she was about to make. The houngan would have taken her by the hand and walked her into the peristyle, where the three drums were almost silent now, just barely whispering, and the crowd of onlookers all but held their breath while watching.
By the hand he would have led her to the first of the zins, those now glowing iron pots in which the boiling oil bubbled. He would have shifted his grip to her right wrist and slowly dipped her hand into the oil and held it there for ten seconds or so. Then he would have walked her to each of the other six pots and repeated the dipping.
After that, Ima would have been returned to the hounfor for a further three days of meditation from which she would emerge kanzo, with knowledge and powers she had not possessed before.
That knowledge and those powers, Will reflected, had not been enough to enable her to match wills with Sister Merle in Jamaica. But perhaps her recent stay with her mambo in Haiti had sharpened them.
As for a ceremony by which she might undertake to protect him from the dead, he could think of only one such that he had ever attended, but there were several. Voodoo involved scores of ceremonies. There were the gardes to protect one against evil magic. The more powerful arréts to safeguard whole families from the loup-garou and evil spirits. The mysterious and legendary gros arréts used in the old days to secure the safety of whole villages when the people-devouring baka were on the prowl.
Ima would know about those.
She knew, too, about the unusual powers of the cocomacaque, of course. He well remembered the night in Jamaica when he had inched her door open to see what she was up to, and discovered her brandishing a monkey-palm stick while calling on the loa for help in finding Sam. He had such a stick in his closet at this moment, if she wanted to use one here.
There had not been another phone call from either Kingston or Miami. Sam had not made the hoped-for connection, then. As the day faded, Will went out onto the veranda for a final look at the boats, and found them returning to the condo beach.
If Lynne and Sam would not be returning tonight, he might as well go out for something to eat. The motel, maybe. The food there was seldom better than awful, but he felt no need to drive as far as he had driven yesterday. Locking Lynne's door behind him, he went down to his car.
He found some of the condo's people in the motel restaurant, and one of them beckoned to him. Pearl Gautier was eating alone, or rather waiting alone to be served, and he accepted her invitation.
"Have the boats found anything, Will?"
"Not yet, so far as I know."
"God, I'm so frightened," she said. "Do you know I haven't slept, not really, since Connie was killed?"
She leaned toward him just as a waitress stopped to take his order. There was a moment of confusion, the waitress not knowing whether to retreat or not. Pearl sat back to wait for privacy. Will said, "I'll just have the special, whatever it is."
"Yes, sir, it's fried clams." The waitress went away.
"Someday I'll learn to take the special in this place, even when I don't want it," Pearl said. "You can wait forever if you shake the kitchen up." She went on at some length about the service, the food, and other motel trivia. Then for a time both of them were silent. Then she said, frowning at him, "Tell me something. Has Karl Jurzak been to see you?"
"More than once."
"What do you think of him?"
"I wish I had his mind. I might write better books."
"I knew him before any of this happened," she said. "Shall I tell you about him, so you'll know what to expect?"
<
br /> The waitress came with Will's food, but curiosity kept him from touching it, and he nodded. The nurse still had nothing in front of her but a glass of water.
"He came here from New York when his wife was killed in a car accident," Pearl said, speaking so quietly now that other sounds in the restaurant intruded enough to be annoying. "He was in love with her. Really in love, I mean. He told me once it was a very special thing, spiritual more than physical, as if—well, this may sound awfully corny, but it's what he said—he said he was convinced they'd been selected."
She paused to stare at him. "You know what I mean? They found each other late in life for both of them, after each had made mistakes and been divorced, and it was special. Then she died, and he felt he was only hanging around—that's how he put it—until his time came to be with her again. It won't be too long. He has terminal cancer."
"What?"
"Haven't you noticed how he hangs onto his stomach all the time? He's always in pain. About six months, that's all he can hope for at the most. I've nursed him through some bad times. I know."
"Lord," Will said.
"He isn't bitter," she said. "He wants to find her again." The waitress came at last with her food and she stopped talking until it was arranged in front of her. Then she said, frowning at Will's untouched plate, "I'll bet I've spoiled your appetite. I'msorry."
He shook his head as he picked up his fork. "I kept thinking of Les Miserab1es," he said, and looked at her to see whether she understood.
She nodded. "The policeman. So relentless and efficient."
"But there was something more. This man had compassion. Now I know why."
The rest of his conversation with Pearl Gautier was ordinary. Will said he hoped those residents of the condo who were spending their nights at the motel would soon be able to return to their apartments. She hoped Jurzak's people would catch the alligator before it killed someone else. Then, leaving her, he returned to Lynne's apartment intending to switch on the tv and idly amuse himself until bedtime.
And, on opening her door, he felt the swamp smell explode in his lungs, and slammed the door shut again.
After trembling outside for a moment he opened it a second time and reached for the light-switch. Footprints? Yes, they were there, leading in wet trails from the veranda to all parts of the apartment. Last night repeated.
He shut the door and walked to the elevator. Pushed the button. Stood there looking back at the apartment door while fearfully waiting for the car to come up to him. It seemed to take forever. The doors opened when they were good and ready, as though deliberately taunting him. He quickly stepped in and sent the car down to floor one.
At his rapping on the manager's door, big Ed Lawson appeared—the first time Will had faced him since the night on the lake. In his usual deep voice he said, "Well, hello, Will. Come on in."
Will walked in and sat down, still cold, still shaking. "Ed, I need a favor."
"You look as though you need a stiff drink. What's happened?"
"The thing that attacked Helpin before the 'gator got him – you remember?"
The manager nodded.
"It's after me now." Will described the footprints he had found in his own and Lynne's apartments. But be careful, he warned himself. This is a man with a no-nonsense mind. A man who damned near drowned Carl Helpin in the pool when Helpin stupidly propositioned him. He isn't going to believe too much.
Big Ed listened. His shrug was accompanied by a frown of genuine bewilderment. "So what do you want me to do?"
"You have apartments for rent in this building, don't you?"
"A few."
"Rent me one for tonight."
"Will, we don't rent by the night. The by-laws don't permit it. A month. Nothing less." Lawson rose from his chair and went to another part of the apartment. Returning with a key, he dropped it into Will's hand. "Be careful," he said. "All I've got that's ready to sleep in is 102, next door to me here."
Where you can keep an eye and ear open, Will thought. To protect me or to check on me?
"Just remember," Ed said, offering his hand and exerting pressure that made Will wince, "that damned thing won't have to climb the building if it wants you tonight. You see or hear anything, you holler real loud."
34
Hidden Fire
He spent most of the night watching the lake, but nothing happened. Something must have come out of the lake when he was not on sentry duty, however, for when he left the first-floor apartment at daybreak and went up to Lynne's, he found more of the wet footprints. There were fresh ones in his own place, as well.
At quarter to eleven he walked out onto his veranda to watch Jurzak's boats through binoculars. Some were equipped with outboard motors this morning, some powered by oars. One of those being rowed was alone in a patch of marsh about half a mile from the condominium.
It held two men. One stood in the stern, peering at the marsh as the craft moved slowly through it. Suddenly he bent down and came up with a rifle, took aim, and fired.
The sound of the shot was a single sharp crack, as though a bullwhip had been snapped over the lake's quiet waters. Ten yards from the boat's bow something in the reeds erupted in a furious splashing.
The rifle cracked again. It cracked a third time. The eruption subsided.
The man with the gun waved his weapon over his head in a gesture of triumph, and appeared to be yelling.
At once the other craft of Jurzak's fleet made for the marsh, those with outboards filling the morning stillness with a rumble of motor noise and trailing wakes full of foam and disturbed vegetation.
In the marsh something long and pale came up alongside the killer boat—a 'gator, belly up—and the man who had slain it exchanged his rifle for a pole. He poked at it a time or two, then put the pole down. Kneeling, he leaned over the boat's side with a loop of rope in his outthrust hands.
Other boats arrived then, and Will could not make out what individual men were doing or trying to do; it appeared to be a group effort accompanied by some confusion. It lasted all of five minutes, with the boats milling about and bumping one another. Then with all six craft present and the 'gator apparently secured, the fleet moved toward a strip of shore where a smooth patch of meadow dipped gently to the water's edge.
Will watched them beach the boats and haul the creature up onto the grass. There were some big 'gators in Florida these days, due no doubt to the length of time they had been protected as endangered wildlife. This one looked huge. At that distance, with so many men standing around it, he could not be certain how huge, but it was surely sixteen to eighteen feet long.
Would they open it up right there on the grass, to find out what its stomach contained? He watched until he was tired of watching. When he gave up and went inside, some of Jurzak's men were on their knees, others standing around looking on.
Presently his phone rang, and it was Sam Norman at the airport in Miami.
"Sorry we couldn't make it yesterday, old boy," Sam said cheerfully. "But we did get out first crack this morning. Are you okay?"
"I'm okay, Sam. Lynne's with you? And Ima?"
"Both here. We're headed for the parking garage where I left the car. Be seeing you."
With a deep sense of relief Will hung up and went to the veranda again. Someone had driven a pickup truck in from the highway, and men were lifting the 'gator into it. Karl Jurzak's car was parked beside it and the investigator himself was directing the operation. As Will watched the fat man squeeze into the car and drive out through the meadow with the truck following, he thought of what Pearl Gautier had told him in the motel restaurant.
Fifteen minutes later, when his doorbell rang and he drew the door open, Jurzak was standing there.
"May I come in, Mr. Platt?" The voice was almost too gentle.
"Of course."
The man with terminal cancer entered and, seemingly weary from his morning's work, lowered himself gingerly into an easy chair. After waiting for Will to sit, he said,
"You saw us catch the 'gator, Mr. Platt?"
"Yes."
"Relieved, are you?"
"I suppose so, after what happened to Helpin."
"And to your wife."
"Oh, my God. You don't mean—"
Jurzak slowly nodded. "We didn't find anything—ah —conclusive, mind you. I mean to say, there was nothing of hers in the animal's stomach where we found some fragments of Mr. Helpin along with his belt and one of his shoes. We did find this, however."
Reaching into his shirt pocket, he held something out for Will to accept. "And, of course, it may not have belonged to your wife at all. Mrs. Helpin says it did, though. I took the liberty of showing it to her when I went to tell her about the shoe and the belt."
His flabby shoulders moved very slightly. "I thought I wouldn't bother you unless I had to, Mr. Platt. Was it your wife's?"
Staring down at the opal ring in his palm, Will slowly nodded.
"I am sorry," Jurzak said. "It was wedged in one of the creature's tooth-pits. Are you quite certain it was hers?"
"Yes."
"It's rather an odd stone. I mean, I know a little something about such things. So dark and—ah—murky, for an opal. I believe it was Orpheus, the poet of Greek legend, who said they filled the hearts of the gods with delight." He paused and frowned. "But this isn't that kind of opal, is it? It awes one a little. Do you recall where your wife obtained it?"
Tonelessly Will said, "We bought it for three hundred dollars from an old Indian woman in Mexico who said it had certain powers. And I believe it has."
"Some do, it's said." Jurzak pursed his lips and moved his head up and down as he leaned from his chair for another close look at the stone in Will's palm. "In ancient Greece opals were thought to give their wearers the power of foresight and prophecy. Did you know that?"
"Well, yes. I've read it, at least."
"Eastern peoples still believe they are sacred stones endowed with a power to command the truth." The word "truth" hung in the air between them as the investigator gazed solemnly at Will's face.