He led Nathan into the private apartment. Nathan flopped onto the king-sized bed, head on pillow, short leg dangling over the side.
“Why aren’t we dead?” Tom said, looking down.
“Why are you asking me?” Nathan whined.
“There’s a reason for all this,” Tom said. “I want to tell you first, before I talk to the others. I don’t think it’s all that bad.”
“Oh? What’s the good news? Maybe this nutcase won’t boil us in oil before he blows our brains out?”
The grandson of the founder of Stein, Gelb, Hector amp; Wills turned his face into the pillow and sobbed. “He’s gonna kill me because of some shitass meat.”
The sound filled Tom with satisfaction. He heard his voice deepen triumphantly. “We’ll hear from Walter soon enough. But that’s not what I’m talking about.” Tom had already come to the conclusion that Leonard Martin had stopped killing people because there was something else he wanted. He didn’t know what, but felt certain it would be revealed. If Leonard Martin wanted a deal, that was fine with Tom Maloney. Dealing was his life’s work.
“Nathan,” he said. “I strongly suspect we’re as safe as cows in Calcutta.”
St. John
They wound it up at six. Isobel badly wanted to go to the beach. “I am a beach girl, you know,” she laughed. “And you are a beach man, aren’t you?” They changed, jumped into Walter’s open-top Jeep, and took off down the hilly road heading toward the sea.
“Where are we going?” she asked, her girlish enthusiasm bubbling over. “Wheee!” she shouted, smiling, spreading her arms high and wide in the open air as Walter sped down the hill.
“Cinnamon Bay,” he said.
“What a wonderful name,” said Isobel. “Cinnamon Bay.”
There were four beaches, he told her, one after another. Caneel Bay was the first. That’s where the island’s biggest resort was. Then they would pass Hawk’s Nest and Trunk Bay before finally arriving at Cinnamon Bay. Once there, Isobel quickly threw off her long shirt, dropping it at Walter’s feet, and, not looking back, dashed to the water, kicking up sand behind her as she ran. She wore a two-piece black suit with the bottom cut low, very low, and the sides, no bigger than the straps on her blouse, rose high on her hip. Walter felt an unfamiliar stirring, watching her from behind as she raced into the surf. “Oh, shit,” he said to himself, “I can’t stand here like-this.” He pulled off his T-shirt, slipped out of his sandals, and ran after her. He didn’t stop until the cold water covered him above his waist. He had a hard time looking at her and she knew it. She splashed him and he dove headlong into the Caribbean.
Later, Walter offered to throw some steaks on the grill, but at Isobel’s insistence, they went back to Billy’s for dinner.
She’d arrived that morning unnerved and uncertain; the siege with Leonard burdened her, strung her out. When she spoke with Walter on the phone she’d fought against feeling unhinged. Today had dissipated that. She felt a much greater sense of control. She felt that she had a stronger, more subtle grasp of the facts. Her working alliance with Walter made her feel good. It gave her a deeply reassuring groove. And quite aside from that, she’d found a new sense of comfort with herself, some traction on how she felt about her story, some certainty about what to do next. All that and it was still early. She remembered the dishes she’d seen at Billy’s and passed up for a sandwich. She’d promised Ike a drink. She’d been feeling a sexy edge for a while, and she wanted to let it sharpen. A long and promising night lay ahead. She wanted some dinner at Billy’s.
“Back again?” Ike piped up. “I was just on my way out of here, but if you’re ready for that drink, I’m staying.”
Isobel smiled at him, wondering if he ever really went home. It was too early for the dinner mob. The place was far from empty but hardly full. Billy stood behind the bar, at the far end, as usual, reading what looked like a menu from one of his competitors.
“Drinks and dinner,” Walter called to Billy, and then to Ike, “got room?”
“My treat, if you don’t go overboard.” Ike garnished the offer by raising his cap and showing off his teeth again.
Billy towered over them. “Diet Coke. Usual. And for the lady?”
“Vodka martini, plain as day.” She unleashed her smile at him.
“Don’t look at the menu,” Billy said to Isobel. “I’ll take care of dinner. Everything’s good, but I know what’s best. These two don’t know nothing.” He left with what looked like a wink of his own. That was just as well. She’d left her drug-store glasses at Walter’s; the menu would be useless.
Ike squinted intently, as though he were trying to see through her skin. It was not an unpleasant sensation. “Is something wrong?” she said.
“Where you from?”
“Fiji.”
“That’s an island too?”
She nodded, charmed.
“Out by Australia, in that direction?”
She gave him the coordinates. He nodded and sipped his usual, visibly satisfied. “Always like to learn new things. You sound like some kind of island, but…”
“I don’t look it?” she laughed a wondrously full, strong laugh, and looked at Ike as if they shared a secret-which they did: white girl and black man, both island people.
She asked if Ike knew the old man sleeping in the park. “The Poet,” Ike said. He told her everyone did. “You heard of Clarence Frogman Henry? Very good singer, sadly departed. He could sing in three different voices: high, low, and medium. One song goes like this [Ike threw his head back and tried out his partly mended falsetto]: ‘I’m a poor little frog and I ain’t got no home.’” His ancient feet kept time loudly beneath the table.
He sipped his usual, cleared his throat, and then told Isobel, “That was in the song. Difference is, the Poet don’t want no home. He’s what you call the outdoor type. He’s the only homeless person we got, to my knowledge. Also, he is a poet. He’ll say one for you if you ask, if you got a little money. Sometimes they rhyme. Sometimes they don’t. The Poet sell some stuff right here. Got a young boy lives on a boat down here. What’s his name, Walter? Kenny something? I don’t know. He’s got a really great big boat. Boy is a famous performer. Sings rock and roll songs all over the world. Got records and all the rest. And he lives on a boat right here. My boy Truman rebuilt his engine couple years back. That man’s got some boat. You can see it from Walter’s house most of the time. He bought poems from him and paid him some money too. But the Poet prefers to be homeless and everyone shows him consideration, looks after him very good.” Ike looked around to see where Billy was and then leaned forward toward Isobel and said in a low whisper, “Even Billy feeds him, and won’t admit to it neither.”
Isobel quickly came to admire Billy’s kitchen. Curried goat, jerk pork kabobs, coconut jasmine rice, sweet potato wedges. Ike warned her off the scotch bonnet peppers. Isobel took care not to stuff herself and noted with deep satisfaction that Walter was eating light. He took it very easy from first to last. At one point Ike said, “You feel okay?” then covered himself with a friendly chuckle. “No reason to get no fatter than you are.” He talked at some length about his family’s predisposition to leanness of body and limb, tactfully excepting from this description two cousins on his long-passed father’s side and several of their daughters. Very fine girls, but not thin.
“Dessert’s on the house,” Billy announced, Jenna trailing. Billy pulled up a chair. Jenna had brought four portions of Billy’s Island Pudding with the coffee. “The recipe dies with me,” he said. “I brought it down here from… all I can say is one word: ‘Bacardi.’ And that’s the only word I’ll ever say about Billy’s Island Pudding.”
He noticed Jenna standing behind him and shooed her away.
They talked a while about smuggling, and how American cops and Island cops, French and English cops, and mostly South American cops are basically the same, except for some being stupider and cheaper to bribe than others. Isobel rang the final bell by fa
king a generous yawn. As chairs began squeaking, she apologized, saying, “I’ve got to get an early plane.” She and Walter thanked Ike for the dinner, said their goodnights, and left.
“Then why don’t she take the ferry tonight?” Billy demanded of Ike.
“’Cause she ain’t going nowhere tonight. She’s going with Walter now.”
“That’s my point,” Billy persisted. “ Didn’t you say it wasn’t gonna be? Better chance I fucked a whatever, and all that?”
“That was then. Now is now. Everything is different now.”
“No it ain’t.”
“Boy, you thick?” Ike’s patience was not infinite, especially after paying for dinner. “They was not ready before. Now they had some drinks and dinner, they talked things over, and everything’s different now. You saw how he didn’t eat nothing. He need to be fit for what follows.”
“There ain’t no difference then or now.”
Ike studied Billy’s long face. “What are you talking about?”
Billy waved Jenna forward to clear the table. As she did, he leaned across so the girl had to scurry around him. His face was now barely six inches from Ike’s: “I don’t know who’s fucking who. But he don’t have a clue what’s going on. It’s been that way since she walked in.
It ain’t no different now or then. He’s gonna wind up with towels he never heard of.”
Billy did not have many theories, least of all about people. He did have one about Walter. Billy believed he knew why Walter had never had a girlfriend on St. John-or, as far as anybody knew, a date. He believed that Walter’s wife would show up one day, and that Walter had a religious nature where that was concerned. He was waiting for his wife. Billy respected him for that, the way he used to respect the Church before his mother lost her faith.
Billy also had a general sense that the worst was most likely to happen. Once in a while he got a more specific feeling-that something was coiling to strike like a snake. He had that accurate intuition to thank for his presence here, in relative safety and comfort, in a business of his own.
He had that feeling the minute he saw the straps on Isobel Gitlin’s little white blouse.
Clara brought Walter and Isobel ice in a bucket, and placed a pitcher of white sangria toward the edge of the black marble table. She made an interesting point of saying that she was feeling tired now and would go to bed if that was all right. In the cool repose of her room downstairs she opened the thriller she’d started the day before. Clara hoped Walter knew what he was doing. She understood quite well that the girl knew what she was doing.
Isobel had spent five years discussing great books, and she’d written “Sex and the Serious Scholar.” She had few illusions, and none about this kind of thing. The horny goddess had taken her now for good and sufficient reason. She was overstimulated. The dread, and relief, and intimacy; the sudden rush of ambition, and the unexpected knowledge of her seductive power… do things to a girl. And here was Walter, bursting for her, walking around inside her head; a perfect gentleman, with really good eyes, an eminently decent sort, with what looked like a perfectly…
Oh, who the fuck cared why?
She’d had enough of gratification delayed. She sipped her sangria delicately and said, “I’ll be back in a little while. I have to use the bathroom.”
He told her he had plenty to think about. He did not confide that it wasn’t easy because his thoughts were past controlling. He hoped she’d not seen that he was burning up inside.
Where sex was concerned, he had one rule: “Not with anyone close.” That left women he met in the course of his travels-good natured, attractive women without expectations, who asked or implied no questions that required him to lie. Plus, of course, professionals. And over the course of twenty years, that had worked well enough, from time to time.
But now… now he was nervous as a kitten up a helluva redwood tree. He could not honestly tell himself when it started-not at the Mayflower, surely. Probably during those days in her apartment, but not as he could clearly recall. On the phone last night? Yes, it was in his head then, as soon as he awoke. Maybe she was in the vanished dream. And when she walked into Billy’s, wearing that little white thing with the straps… He wondered how he’d managed to think straight all day, and force his eyes off her, even for seconds, at dinner.
Minutes after Isobel’s afternoon arrival, Clara had shown her to a cozy room under the deck beneath where Walter waited now. It had dark walls, a bronze tile floor with throw rugs, a wall of closets, a comfortable-looking king-size bed. She never even looked at the bathroom. Instead, she’d left the wheelie unopened, tossed her coat, and gotten her tour of the house.
She remembered Walter’s room at the other end of the hall and stopped there en route to her own. Compared to Walter’s, hers seemed awfully small. She peeled off her clothes and opened the bathroom door. The sight astonished her. It was half the size of the bedroom. The toilet and vanity set in a corner hardly seemed to matter. A vast, black-tiled shower filled most of the bathroom. It had no curtain and no wall. It was more like a locker room shower. You walked right onto the sloping tile floor, and you looked out through a huge glass door to the sea, the very same view from the deck just above. She looked for a curtain. There was none. She saw that the door could slide, and she moved it back. The warm, humid air flowed in. She turned on the faucet and water rushed down with extraordinary force from a very large showerhead. She soaped and let the water work on her body and her mind. She watched the ocean outside, the lights on the water; the boats still at sea, testing the darkness, strings of lights across their decks. She remembered Leonard telling her she was being watched. And if they were looking back at her? Fine. And if they could make her out clearly? “I hope they like what they see,” she thought.
She turned off the water and stepped outside. It wasn’t a night for a moon. The sky was black. She did not attempt to dry herself, but slid on the T-shirt she’d pilfered from Walter’s room. She looked in the mirror. It stuck to her. She tied her hair behind, touched scent to herself, and went upstairs.
Walter heard her coming, smelled her coming, knew she was coming before she came. That drove his heart faster than fear ever had. The sight of her and the meaning in her eyes had him shaking. She knelt in front, undid his belt, and took him into her mouth. The act sent vibrations through her and she looked up into his eyes to let him see that. The sounds he made stroked her insides; she wanted them louder, and making them louder was all that mattered. When the throbbing started she forced herself back, sat on her heels, let him see her breasts rise with her rapid breathing, then stood. She pulled the T-shirt over her head and said, “Let’s go to bed.”
He took her first smoothly, expertly, with more than enough crazed urgency to set her off within seconds. He was strong and he quickly understood what she needed most. He showed remarkable stamina and excellent self-control. He shuddered when she wanted him to and he could get sounds out of her at will. It was like they’d been at it forever; like they knew each other before they’d begun. And then they began experimenting, and to Isobel’s overflowing amazement, everything worked as well as it ever had. And when she could think, she thought she was getting what someone had been missing out on for years. She fell asleep after coming again-wondering whether it was the fourth or the fifth… and awoke still joined with him, awkwardly, at right angles. He was sleeping too. It was just after three in the morning. She watched the rise and fall of his gut. She shivered seeing the white of her leg against his dark brown belly. Walter was her first old man, the first one close to her father’s age. He was a revelation, all right. But was he a one-time wonder? Could he ever do it-quite that way-again? Was it Viagra?
Walter woke up alone. Seven-fifteen. Clara would sleep till nine. He sniffed. Nothing was brewing or toasting now. He creaked out of bed, stepped into his shorts, made his way upstairs. He realized that he was smiling; he imagined his smile painted on, like a clown’s. It occurred to him that he had not though
t of his wife-not from the moment Isobel told him to wait. Not when she came to him on the deck, or in the blazing mindlessness that followed, or in the dreams that followed that. That was a first in twenty-five years. Walter felt better than fine. He did not dwell on the fact that he was thinking of Gloria now.
Nobody on the deck. He took the stairway down to the guest room. He found her asleep, on her belly, facing the shower and the ocean. A sheet had drifted over the small of her back, but her shoulders were bare, and most of her backside, and both of her legs, one of them bent at the knee. He noticed a twitch at the top of one shoulder; waited to see it again. Her mouth was open, just slightly. She didn’t look nearly as pretty as she had. Her eyes seemed smaller, her nose somewhat thinner at the bridge, her skin looked like normal skin. He liked her a good deal better this way. She must have heard his boxers hit the floor. She smiled before she opened her eyes. When she saw him, she said, “Oh, m-m-y,” and maneuvered onto her back with her arms outstretched.
Nashville
They arrived at the Nashville airport in late afternoon. The flight from Atlanta was short and uneventful. They looked like any two businessmen in town to make a sale, attend a seminar, or talk about a merger-each with a bulging attache case in hand and a lightweight garment bag over his shoulder. Nicholas Stevenson, the older, bigger man, silver mane expertly layered and routinely trimmed, took long, easy strides. Harvey Daniels, the shorter man, dark-haired, rumpled, nervous, momentarily fell behind, quickened his step, fell behind again.
Through airport windows they saw Nashville blazing with Christmas lights refracted by pouring rain. They didn’t join the line for cabs to the Renaissance or The Hermitage Hotel. Instead, they made their way to the rental cars and took the white Camero reserved for them. “They don’t make Cameros the way they used to,” Harvey griped.
The tallest of Tennessee’s skyscrapers showed off bright decorations. “Sure as hell rather spend the night here,” said Nick. He was thinking of dozens of times he’d been on Music Row, in the bars and clubs that line Nashville’s streets, open night after night, proving, to his way of thinking, that Nashville will always be the musical heart of the South. And he said as much as they drove.
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