Unafraid too. Until he learned better. He’d been stretching his hatband for some little while when he got his come-uppance. Now he knew some things you should be afraid of, knew for sure that only a fool or a madman wasn’t afraid at one time or another.
Only this year he’d been unnerved by the capture of a guy called Theodore Bundy down the road in Pensacola, Florida. He’d heard what Bundy had done for certain and heard the unconfirmed stories about what he may have done: about all the other women in four states he may also have raped, murdered and done God knows what else to.
What worried him was that this Ted Bundy, after his second jail break, had got to Pensacola via a bus from Atlanta, where he’d dumped a stolen car. That was around the time Wilson’s niece had disappeared in Atlanta.
The chances of Bundy bumping into her when she’d taken off were low but that was the problem – statistics counted for nothing when you were dealing with a bogeyman.
Wilson glowered into his coffee and watched the Limey order another beer.
Luke Hanson knew it was only a matter of time before they came to the island. He’d cursed his stupidity when he realised he’d been spotted because of Joni’s funeral.
He had to say goodbye to her. Joni had saved his life and helped him get off the drugs that were killing him. He was on the nickel in San Francisco when she came to him. An angel it seemed, though one with a dirty laugh. A vision, certainly, this ethereal blonde with translucent skin who turned out to be as tough as nails.
She got him off heroin and she took care of him until his head was in some space approximating normal. He’d never understood why she’d done it or what was in it for her. He thought it might be sex but when he’d made a move on her she’d brushed him off, indignant.
Eventually she told him about her brother, another lost boy. Dead in his own dirt by a dumpster at the age of nineteen, needle hanging out of his arm.
‘You remind me of him,’ she whispered. ‘I see you, I see my brother.’
So a brother he became. He told his story and she was appalled at some of the things he’d done. But she stuck by him. She was manager of one of the new Japanese/Schezuan fusion restaurants. She took him on there and before long he was deputy head chef.
And when he moved on she understood although she never asked why and he never told her about the guy who’d come calling. The guy he had dropped off the Golden Gate Bridge.
‘Should I expect trouble?’ was all that she asked.
He shook his head.
‘People asking questions maybe. Just say I took off, like the ungrateful wretch you feared deep down I’d always be.’
They kept in touch, in various oblique ways. When she told him she was dying his first impulse was to rush to her side. She cautioned him against.
‘Maybe you’ve made me paranoid,’ she said from a payphone in the centre of town. ‘I feel I’m being watched.’
When she went into the hospice he phoned every couple of days but he knew he should really be with her. She didn’t have a man but there were a couple of close friends who sat with her. One of them phoned the day she passed.
He travelled to the funeral by a circuitous route. He was in what he thought to be an impenetrable disguise. He slipped into church after the service started and sat at the back. He slipped out before it ended and waited in the churchyard for the coffin to be brought out. He watched the burial from a distance, scoping everyone and everything around him. It was a large turnout.
He watched the coffin being lowered into the ground and stayed behind until everyone had drifted away. Thirty minutes after the last person had left the cemetery he made his cautious way over to her grave. He had flowers for her and he had tears. He knelt. He didn’t know for how long.
He’d left the hire car three blocks away. He came at it slowly, waited and watched to see if anyone else was watching it. Drove away and doubled-back. Doing a three steps forward, two steps back routine all the way to the airport. He flew to Chicago then New Orleans and picked up another car and drove to Savannah.
He spotted the tail at a diner en route for Savannah. He had no idea when he’d picked him up. Perhaps this man or one of his colleagues had spotted him at the funeral. If he’d been tailed since then this team was very good.
Business-suited guy, unobtrusive, driving a Ford. Luke couldn’t have said what tipped him to the guy. Just that feeling, that sixth sense that the hunted get for the hunter.
He took his time with his steak and coffee, wondering how to play it. If he couldn’t shake him on the road Luke would ditch him in Savannah. It was getting close to home but he’d buy a ticket for another plane out – to Washington or Los Angeles maybe – then disappear.
Luke believed he’d lost his man en route to Savannah. He’d abandoned his disguise at the airport, bought a ticket to New York then sat and watched. Nobody. Nothing untoward. He’d taken the bus from the airport back into Savannah to pick up his car.
And in the car park: another tail. Pretty much walked into him, actually. And the second he realised who it was coincided with the tail realising he’d been blown and suddenly they were tussling. Except Luke had long ago forgotten how to tussle. He only knew how to kill.
Chapter Four
Natasha Innocent watched Johnny Finch as the cars drew near. Three more for golf. The best golf courses were on the bigger isles and they got most of the action but Paradise did okay. There was a reasonable course on the south of the island with a small complex of motels, restaurants and bars to service them. She knew Finch liked knocking a ball around down there himself sometimes.
Sheriff Wilson insisted his deputies spend a little time by the tollbooth, to see who was coming on the island, watch out for desperados. She quite liked the gig. Johnny Finch hated it.
He said to her once:
‘Saddest moment of my life was when those three boys gave up without a fight the other year.’
‘You’re a sick man, Finch.’
‘I need the experience.’
Finch was always vague about exactly how much law enforcement experience he’d had before he came on the island. He implied he had lots of experience but then occasionally let things slip that suggested otherwise.
That particular exchange had not gone well.
‘I know you’re itching to get a job on the mainland in real law enforcement,’ she’d said.
‘Sure I want to work on the mainland for a serious police force. But nothing wrong with being keen to get on.’
Innocent nodded.
‘But, you know, funny thing is you’ve not even got through to an interview. Excuse me – just that once and that came to nothing.’
‘That’s been a disappointment,’ Finch said quietly.
‘And you figured a shoot out with desperados, however young, is just what you needed to give your career a boost? What kind of sick is that?’
Finch glared at her.
‘Why are you always trying to needle me, Tasha?’
He turned away.
Innocent scanned the three cars in line before her. In the first, a convertible, a quartet of lardy, middle-aged men, flushed of face from either the humidity or the beer she was sure they would have been stoking on their way down here.
The second car had North Carolina plates and an elderly couple already dressed for the golf course, both in big checks with matching chequered baseball caps.
The driver of a Chevy with Illinois plates needed a cushion to reach the steering wheel. He had hunched shoulders and didn’t look as if he’d have the strength to hit a ball any distance at all. Natasha couldn’t make out his features as he was wearing a panama hat pulled low to shade his face. It looked like he was a newcomer to the game, judging by the brand-new set of golf clubs in the bag tossed in the back seat.
Finch was back at her shoulder. He snorted. Muttered:
‘Desperados? I don’t think so.’
Wilbur Parker hated golf. Especially you saw it on the television. What was the po
int? Somebody whacked the ball, the camera swivelled up in the air but you couldn’t see any fucking thing except sky.
He looked in the rear view mirror of the Chevy to make sure that cocky-looking cop and the sexy one weren’t eyeballing him then slid up in his seat, growing by a good foot, and straightened his shoulders. He adjusted the rear view mirror to his new height and caught sight of the golf bag in the back. He’d been in such a hurry he hadn’t had the time to get a used one to stash stuff in. Still, this had served the purpose. He was on the island and he had his tools with him. Now he just had to find Luke Hanson.
‘Pyreneisme versus Alpinisme, that’s what we have right here.’
Ruth looked at the tall, long-haired man with the build of an athlete who was standing beside the counter in the bookstore.
‘I’m sorry?’ she said.
The tall man indicated the man at the cash register.
‘Grady here and me. That’s where we differ. Grady is for Pyreneisme but I’m your Alpinist without a doubt.’
‘I don’t follow,’ she said, taking in the other man: of an age, equally tall, shaved dark head and goatee beard.
‘I’m being rude,’ the blond man said. ‘Jumping ahead here, figuring any friend of Barbara is a friend of ours – you are Barbara’s friend aren’t you? Staying at her house?’
Ruth nodded.
‘My husband and I arrived yesterday.’
The blond man shook his head sadly.
‘Some words just cut you to the quick don’t they, Grady?’ He flashed Ruth a smile. ‘For me, “husband” is one of the worst offenders.’
Ruth flushed and lowered her eyes.
‘Behave, Tom,’ the man called Grady said. ‘ We don’t even know this lady.’
The tall man grinned again.
‘Tom Haddon and this is Grady Cole. He owns this bookshop. He’s what passes for an intellectual on this island, which tells you what a parlous state we’re in.’
He held out his hand. Ruth stiffened. Willed herself to take the proffered hand, conscious her own palm was wet.
‘Ruth Grant,’ she said, avoiding his eyes.
‘Ma’am,’ Cole held out his hand too and dipped his head. ‘Do excuse my friend’s rudeness. He’s what passes for a village idiot on this island. Does it right well too.’
‘Anyway,’ Haddon said. ‘I like doing the thing for the pleasure of the thing itself. That’s Alpinism. Grady here needs a goal – getting to the top of the Pyrenees to explore those villages hiding up there.’
She forced a smile.
‘Got it,’ she said.
‘You another actress?’ Haddon said. ‘Sure got the looks for it if you don’t mind me saying.’
‘Me and a million other women,’ Ruth said, more sharply than she intended. Her nerves were screaming even though there was nothing remotely threatening in Haddon’s open, innocently flirtatious manner. Grady’s intense gaze was, however, unsettling.
‘I used to act,’ she added, more softly.
‘Believe when you’re not working you call it ‘resting’ your side of the pond,’ Haddon said. ‘Here I’ve heard it called ‘on hiatus’, which sounds vaguely medical.’
Finally she found the strength to look him in the eye.
‘Well, I’m one of those who has been resting so long it’s hard to distinguish it from the word “retirement”.’
Haddon laughed easily.
‘We got a few actors here but of course they’ve got to be where the work is so mostly it’s artists and writers, who can pitch camp anywhere.’ He waved a hand. ‘Has Barbara told you about the island? It’s got quite a history. Pirates used it as their base. You’ve heard of Blackbeard? Supposed to be his treasure here somewhere.
‘Then a bunch of rich folk built houses on it in the twenties and thirties. Pierpoint Morgan, the Rockefellers. They ran it as a private club. Got closed down in the war though – the government freaked at the thought that the most important people in America were all on one island. Figured some Jap sub would turn up and whisk Wall Street back to the land of the rising sun. The properties were left to rot. In the fifties artists settled here. There was quite a scene. Jack the Dripper visited.’
‘And now?’
‘Well, we’ve got more artists per square foot than most places outside of Greenwich Village. We’ve got a healthy tourist trade buying up their pictures and sculptures. Not sure what it does to the quality of the work but it sure makes our artists a handy living. It’s a nice place to be.’ He wiped his brow with a large blue handkerchief. ‘Except at this time of year it gets a little …sticky.’
‘You’re an artist?’ Ruth said.
‘Me?’ Haddon laughed. ‘No, I teach yoga and tai chi. I’ve got a centre a hundred yards down the street by the natural health store. You should join my morning class.’
Ruth was thinking he looked too big for yoga – most people she knew who did it were slender, etiolated. He took her silence for disapprobation.
‘Well, maybe not. But listen my house is right next door to yours –’ he grinned again – ‘and your husband’s. Both come over and have a drink why don’t you? I’ll get a few people together – this is a real friendly spot.’
He leaned closer.
‘But be aware that sound travels. One artist on the island, who shall remain nameless until I’ve had at least one sip of wine, insists on leaving the windows open when he and his friend are having their afternoon…siesta.’
‘Tom, for God sake,’ Grady said, throwing him a look. ‘I’m sure Ruth doesn’t need things spelling out.’
‘It’s – it’s fine,’ Ruth said, though to tell the truth she was starting to panic. ‘Well…’ She turned and fumbled for the door but Tom was there first, looking down at her and smiling. He held it open for her.
‘Shall we say tomorrow around six?’
Ruth nodded.
‘I’ll tell my husband,’ she said.
Haddon and Cole watched her hurry along the street, her head down, dipping into the pools of shade offered by a line of maritime oaks.
‘How am I supposed to make a living if you scare my customers off the minute they come into the shop?’ Cole asked.
‘That is one uptight lady,’ Haddon said. ‘A looker though.’
Cole punched him lightly on the arm.
‘Lay off – she’s married. Anyway, I thought you were going to be good after what happened last time.’
Haddon watched her go.
‘Sure, I can be good. But when I’m bad I’m better.’
Wilbur Parker had once thought of changing his first name. It just had no relevance to him. He’d decided in the end that would have been effete. For a time he went by his last name alone but that only works in fiction. People would make a big hoo-ha about why he only went by his last name. In the days when he had friends he tried Will for size. But that was a long time ago. Now people were strangers or clients. And targets, of course.
In bars, on the rare occasions he went to them off-duty and on the rarer occasions he got into conversation with anyone, he used the first name that came into his mind.
He’d thought about establishing all these false identities, like that man who’d tried to assassinate the President of France. But he rarely left the country, never really wanted to. Why complicate things?
He’d studied French once though, without ever leaving the US. Or, frankly, wanting to. He’d tried his French out in Quebec. Montreal. Doing one of his first jobs, trying to blend in with a bunch of francophones.
Couldn’t understand a word they said. He still tried to read his French authors in the original though.
He liked to keep thing simple. That was his rubric. Which is why he wouldn’t normally have done this job. He liked a clean kill. Lewis wanted anything but.
It wasn’t that Parker had qualms. He regarded himself as an existentialist and if you’re an existentialist why do you care a shit about other people’s lives? But he didn’t like messiness.
He saw the bookshop on the main drag, its façade shaded by a magnolia tree. He loved reading. Hardly ever came out of the bubble. He worried sometimes that it was obvious he was so different in an occupation where it was essential you blended in if you were to do the job and, more essentially, get away with it.
He was carrying a battered compendium copy of Sartre’s Age of Reason trilogy. On a job, more than his guns he needed to keep his books hidden. The places he ended up they would be the first thing the maid remembered.
He pulled over.
A woman was just leaving the shop, head bowed. A big blond guy and a leaner, intense looking man stood in the doorway watching her go.
Parker found a space some twenty yards away from the shop. The two men said a few words then the blond guy loped off across the street. Something about his ease of movement caught Parker’s interest. He sat in the car and watched him go.
‘Paintings? I don’t know.’
Jimmy Ruffin looked at his brother in disbelief.
‘What? What do you mean you don’t know? You’re an art critic now? What do you care what we’re stealing so long as there’s money in it?’
They were circling an upper class mall in Atlanta looking for a place to park their van. Donny was driving, Jimmy was riding shotgun, as per, and choosing the sounds, switching between a rock and roll station playing this punk/New Wave shit and a bluegrass show. Man, he loved a good fiddle-player but his brother kept banging on about the H-Bombs and the Voidoids. Just noise as far as Jimmy was concerned.
‘No, I mean it brings us extra problems. You got to be careful not to damage them – and don’t you have to worry about humidity and all that atmospheric stuff? It’s not like high-jacking cigarettes or whisky or lifting jewellery.’
Donny saw a spot on the other side of the street, crossed two lanes of traffic with absolutely no warning and went front-first into the parking space, leaving the rear of the van sticking half out in the road. As drivers honked their horns Jimmy gave him a sidelong look.
Paradise Island Page 3