Paradise Island

by Peter Guttridge

  Donny eased off the accelerator. Slowed right down, in fact, as they came onto Main Street.

  Just near a bookshop a pretty woman was skateboarding along the pavement in shorts and a T-shirt.

  ‘Fucking silly bitch,’ Donny hissed. ‘What does she think she looks like, a grown woman acting like a five year old?’

  As he said it, the woman, who was some 50 yards away, went into the road and skateboarded ahead of them. She tried to do an Ollie. Badly.

  ‘What a fucking retard,’ Donny said, braking hard again and crawling along right behind her.

  ‘Pull past her for Christ’s sake,’ Karen said.

  Instead Donny pressed his hand to the horn.

  Heads turned as it blared out on the quiet street. The woman jerked and almost overbalanced. Donny cackled.

  ‘Are you out of your fucking mind?’ Karen said, hitting Donny’s shoulder. At the same moment the women on the skateboard looked back, her face suffused with anger, and gave the white van the finger.

  ‘Asshole!’ she shouted.

  Sheriff Wilson heard the brief commotion outside on Main Street and walked the couple of yards to the window. He couldn’t immediately see anything. He looked down the alley across the street. He was trying to see if any of the cars parked there were occupied. He felt Mr Smith had been watching him all morning but that could just have been paranoia.

  The door of the bar opened and Wilson turned, his hand moving down to his gun. It was the Limey. Head down he headed for the bar and sat at what had become his regular perch.

  The Mayor walked in after him. She was wearing a wafty summer frock that showed off her legs and, although it was as hot as hell out in the street, she looked cool and definitely collected.

  ‘An iced tea, if you could, Bob,’ she called as she headed for Wilson. ‘I’ll have it at the Sheriff’s table.’

  Wilson stood until she was seated then resumed his chair.

  ‘Has your coffee got a kick to it, Sheriff?’ the Mayor said, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

  ‘No, ma’am, although the gallon I’ve drunk this morning has made me kind of juddery.’

  ‘I wondered why otherwise we were meeting in a bar,’ Horton said. She waved vaguely around her. ‘Not that I’m averse to them but time and place and all that.’

  ‘Public meetings seemed best today,’ Wilson said. His head was aching. Maybe coffee wasn’t the best thing to drink with possible concussion.

  The Mayor watched the barman put her iced tea on the table.

  ‘Thanks, Bob,’ she said, flashing him one of her range of winning smiles.

  ‘Bring me a jug of iced water would you, Bob?’ Wilson said.

  Bob nodded and headed back to the bar. The Limey ordered a beer. The Mayor chinked her tea against Wilson’s coffee mug.

  ‘What’s it about, Harry?’

  ‘I thought I should alert you to a situation.’

  His voice was low.

  ‘A situation?’

  ‘There’s a hit man on the island looking for someone here who’s in WITSEC.’

  She blurted out a laugh.

  ‘What? You’ll have to say that again, please, because none of it made sense.’

  Wilson repeated his statement. Horton’s back got even straighter and she clasped her hands together in her lap. Bob came back with the jug and a glass. He poured the glass and left them again.

  ‘But that can’t be,’ Horton said, her voice tight. ‘There can’t be a hit man coming for someone in WITSEC because we don’t have anyone in WITSEC here, right? Because if we did I’d know about it because you’d have told me. Right?’ She searched his face. ‘We do? We do. And I don’t know anything about it?’ She scowled. ‘Fuck me, Harry.’

  Wilson held his tongue. He drank the glass of water in one and poured himself another. It felt like pouring water into sand in the desert. He was still parched.

  Horton looked around and lowered her voice to a hiss.

  ‘And fuck you too, Sheriff. I’m your boss. What the hell do you think you’re doing letting a potentially dangerous person settle on the island without telling me?’

  Wilson took another long swig of water and leaned forward. Keeping his voice low he said:

  ‘With respect, ma’am, you’re not my boss. The electorate is.’

  Horton gave him a cold look.

  ‘Save it. How long has this person been here?’

  ‘A couple of years.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘I don’t mean his real name, I mean the name he goes by here.’

  ‘That’s what I can’t tell you.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  Wilson didn’t reply.

  Horton worked her mouth. Wilson couldn’t help remembering their night together but felt faintly embarrassed to be doing so.

  ‘Do I know him?’ she said.

  ‘Ma’am, I’m not at liberty to disclose anything about this person. I’ve already told you too much admitting it’s a man.’

  Horton made a dismissive gesture.

  ‘I bet if I put my mind to it I can figure out who it is.’

  ‘I’m sure.’ Wilson sat back. ‘Just don’t expect this person to be wearing horns.’

  The Mayor’s laugh always sounded dirty. Wilson enjoyed it for a moment. She seemed to relax.

  ‘So what are you doing about this hit-man?’

  A damned good question. No way he was going to give Hanson up. This was going to end bloody.

  ‘Hunting him down,’ he said, with much more confidence than he felt.

  The Mayor nodded, stood and turned on her heel.

  ‘See that you do,’ she called over her shoulder.

  Wilson watched her go, admiring the best hip swivel this side of Marilyn Monroe.

  ‘Paradise,’ he murmured.

  When a good-looking brunette in a kaftan answered the door, Chris and Karen were standing on the stoop, hand in hand.

  ‘Hi,’ she said.

  ‘Wondered if we could look at some of your art,’ Chris said in a low voice. ‘I’m Chris and this is Karen.’

  ‘Sure thing – and pleased to meet you. I’m Evangeline. It’s my boss’s art.’

  Evangeline stepped back and the couple walked into the salesroom. Chris and Karen both towered over her but she was only looking at Chris.

  ‘Everything in here is for sale,’ she said. ‘Take your time.’

  Chris nodded.

  ‘Listen, I’ll be on the stoop,’ Evangeline said.

  She went out and lit a cigarette. Karen watched her check out the white van across the street. She glanced back into the studio and Karen knew she was wondering if it was theirs.

  Some of the paintings on the wall were nudes. Chris and Karen exchanged glances.

  They waited five minutes then, as the woman finished her cigarette, Karen pushed the screen door open.

  ‘Seem to recognise you in some of those pictures,’ Karen said.

  ‘I model for Julian,’ Evangeline said with a little shrug.

  ‘Beautiful,’ Chris said and Evangeline preened.

  ‘Why thank you,’ she said, assuming he was referring to her and not the pictures.

  ‘You staying at the Golf Motel?’ she continued. ‘Most people do.’

  ‘Sure. Artist around?’

  ‘He’s working.’

  ‘Well, we’re thinking of buying some stuff but we’re disagreeing. We’d love to meet him first. Makes all the difference, don’t you think?’

  ‘He asked especially not to be disturbed.’

  ‘I know that look in my wife’s eye,’ Chris said. ‘She’s in a buying mood. Sure he can’t spare a minute?’

  Evangeline kept her smile on her face but it was more forced now.

  ‘I’ll see,’ she said quietly.

  If Earwaker was like every other artist she’d ever met, Karen knew he probably hated the people who bought his work. Nevertheless, he liked to make
money and Chris and Karen were walking dollar signs.

  Evangeline went down a short corridor, tapped lightly on a door at the far end. Karen heard a curt male voice.

  ‘Come,’ he said, as if he were the Pope or somebody.

  As Evangeline entered, Karen glimpsed him, a big, bearded man, sitting in the middle of the room behind an easel, bathed in light from above, his eyes fixed on the painting before him.

  ‘Yes?’ he said coldly.

  ‘A couple of tourists want to buy your stuff but want to meet you first. Just to say Hi…’

  Evangeline glanced back and saw Karen watching. She pulled the door closed behind her.

  Luke Hanson found Sheriff Wilson at lunchtime in the bar staring a hole in a cup of coffee, a jug of water by his elbow. Hanson greeted Bob at the counter and, at the sheriff’s signal, took his own coffee over to Wilson’s table.

  Wilson, wearing his hat indoors, tilted it up and stared at Hanson.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me they’d found you?’ he said in a low voice.

  Hanson grimaced.

  ‘I tried to but I’ve never got you on your own.’

  ‘I told you not to go to that funeral,’ Wilson said.

  ‘Joni was a special woman. If I can’t pay my respects to someone important in my life then I have to doubt the value of what I’m doing. I know you well enough to know you’d have done the same.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘They saw me; trailed me.’

  ‘How come they don’t know your alias? How come they’re trying to find out from me what name you’re going by and where exactly you can be found?’

  ‘They had a breakdown in communication at the final stage.’

  Wilson looked at him.

  ‘Do I want to know what that means in plain English?’

  ‘I killed the guy who was trailing me in Chatham.’

  Wilson slapped his hand down lightly on the table.

  ‘No, I don’t want to know. Jesus – you’re telling an officer of the law this?’ He reached for his cup of coffee then went for the water and took a deep swallow. ‘This guy said they had found you twice before.’

  ‘You knew that.’

  ‘But I don’t know how you got away on both occasions. You kill those guys too?’

  Hanson ignored that.

  ‘You certain your visitor was a trigger man, not just a finder?’ he said.

  Wilson nodded.

  ‘I know the type.’ He looked into Hanson’s eyes. ‘You were waiting for someone like him to come on the island, weren’t you. You figured you’d handle it yourself. You were going to kill him too.’

  ‘Something like that,’ Hanson agreed. ‘If I move again they’ll just find me in a couple of years.’

  ‘But they’ll keep sending people. You have to get lucky every time. They only have to get lucky once.’

  Hanson chewed the inside of his cheek.

  ‘I was thinking maybe I’d take it to them.’

  Wilson looked out of the window.

  ‘You sure he was a trigger man?’ Hanson repeated.

  Wilson glanced back at him.

  ‘I told you. I’ve met his type before.’

  ‘You didn’t get a sight of him?’

  ‘I tried. Ended up scraping my dinner off the wall for my efforts.’

  Hanson pondered a moment.

  ‘I’ve met him,’ he said. ‘Kind of.’

  ‘What? And you tell me this now?’

  ‘He was in disguise, I’m pretty sure. Wig and moustache that didn’t look right. I put it down to vanity.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’ Wilson said. ‘Make himself known, I mean.’

  ‘Get a reaction. He’s on a clock, I’m guessing.’

  ‘He said that he was,’ Wilson agreed.

  ‘Spook me into revealing myself.’

  ‘Are you spooked?’ Wilson said.

  ‘No. I’m pissed. But you’re not going to find him sitting in his motel room. He’s gone.’

  ‘How do you figure that?’

  ‘Once he’s come to you he knows you’ll be looking for him and others will be able to describe him.’

  ‘Then I don’t get what he hoped to achieve.’

  Hanson looked around the bar and out of the window.

  ‘Maybe this meeting.’

  Bob saw him look over.

  ‘Want that coffee freshening, gents?’

  Hanson knew Bob had been vaguely watching his sit-down with the Sheriff. He wasn’t sure if in the course of the morning Bob had heard mention of somebody in the Witness Protection Programme.

  ‘Thanks, Bob.’

  Bob bustled out from behind the bar, coffee pot in hand.

  ‘No problemo,’ he said, filling both cups to within a hair of the rim.

  Wilson contemplated his cup. He reached for it, took a scalding sip, put the cup back on its saucer. He didn’t spill a drop.

  ‘If you think he’s somehow watching,’ Wilson said, ‘from that row of parked cars across the street maybe? That’s exactly why I’ve spent the morning here, taking all my meetings. He’s not going to be able to separate you out from a dozen other people. Not even going to know for certain I’ve met with you.’

  Hanson nodded. He liked Wilson, admired him mostly. But he’d heard the rumours too. When it came down to it, he didn’t know whether the Sheriff could really cut it. He blew on his coffee.

  It didn’t much matter. Hanson had learned to look out for himself a long time ago. It was a habit that was hard to break.

  Chapter Eleven

  Julian Earwaker shuffled down the corridor into the gallery behind Evangeline. He paused at the entrance. He was expecting a couple but another man – short, slender, kind of ferrety-faced – had joined them. This man smiled and beckoned Julian and Evangeline forward.

  There was something about the atmosphere in the room that just wasn’t right. Evangeline sensed it too, Julian could tell. He saw her look from one to the other of the visitors. They were all smiling but there was a stillness, an expectancy. And it didn’t feel good.

  Julian thought of the Monets back in the studio. He turned to go back down the corridor. He bounced into a big man with immense shoulders who had materialised behind him. As he looked up at him he heard a chink. With dread in his stomach he turned round to see three guns pointed at him.

  ‘What are those for?’

  ‘Oh, you know,’ the tall woman said. ‘One for the Monet, two for show?’

  Luke Hanson was remembering. It was hot that summer of 1970. The four of them in this scuzzy, stifling apartment, waiting for The Man. Miguel. Waiting to score but not that way. Lewis and Rojas high. Hanson bombed and sick.

  Santiago was leading Elvira, the drug-dealer’s wife, into the bedroom.

  ‘She’s nine months pregnant, for Christ’s sake,’ Hanson said.

  ‘Say what?’ Santiago was immediately in his face.

  ‘Do you have to?’

  Santiago turned and swept a hand across the woman’s face. He walked into the bedroom. She looked at Hanson. He looked away. She followed Santiago.

  Hanson kept watch for the drug-dealer at the window. When Santiago came back out of the bedroom, dragging the wife with him, she had a burst lip and a swollen eye. He pushed her onto the sofa. Her skirt rode up. She wore no pants. She clutched her belly.

  Miguel was on his own when he came into the flat. They had him disarmed and cowering in minutes. But he wouldn’t give up his stash.

  They tried to persuade him. Santiago had been a torturer in some right-wing death squad in Central America before he came to the States to make his fortune. He turned the radio up loud and went to work on the guy with a pair of pliers. Miguel’s eyes bulged, neck cords like hawsers, face puce. He trumpeted like a fucking elephant behind the tape wrapped round his mouth. Hanson watched with dreadful fascination as Santiago tore flesh and ligament and splintered and cracked bone.

  The man’s wife lay back on the sofa, eyes glazed, moa
ning, clutching at a crucifix round her neck. Hanson focused on what Santiago was doing to the man, who was becoming less human with each act.

  Lewis and Rojas walked over to the woman. They tore her dress off. Her belly looked enormous but her breasts too were massively swollen.

  Lewis went across to Santiago, who was kneeling on the floor at work on the drug-dealer’s feet. He put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. Santiago smeared blood on his face with the back of his hand and looked up. His pupils were black pinpricks.

  ‘Ask him whether he’s going to have a boy or a girl.’

  ‘Say what?’ Santiago said.

  ‘Ask him,’ Lewis said.

  Santiago took hold of the man by his chin and tilted his face up.

  ‘Is the bitch carrying a boy or a girl?’

  The man’s eyes rolled in his head. Some kind of noise came from behind the tape.

  ‘He can’t tell me anyway,’ Santiago said with a laugh, reaching to tear the tape off the man’s mouth. It tore his lips too. ‘Boy or girl?’

  The man moaned, eyelids flickering.

  ‘Don’t you want to know?’ Lewis said. ‘I’d be curious to know.’

  The man’s eyes slowly focused. He looked from Santiago to Lewis, licking his bleeding lips with short darts of his tongue.

  ‘Here’s the deal,’ Lewis said. ‘I’m going to guess whether it’s a boy or a girl. If I’m right, you tell me where your stash is. If I’m wrong you get to keep it. How’s that sound?’

  Santiago looked at him, puzzled.

  ‘How’s that going to work, man? What if he don’t know?’

  Hanson was wondering the same thing.

  ‘Ask him if it’s a deal,’ Lewis said to Santiago.

  ‘Answer him,’ Santiago said, slapping Miguel’s face.

  Miguel looked blearily at him.

  ‘Boy or bitch?’ Santiago said.

  ‘Man’s confused,’ Lewis said.

  He was standing over the woman now. She was looking up at him, mouthing something to the crucifix.

  ‘Tell him he oughtn’t be.’

  He looked at the woman.

  ‘Boy or bitch?’

  She started to open her mouth.

  ‘No, I’m not asking you, stupid.’ Lewis tapped his chest. ‘I’m asking me.’