Bahamarama, page 14
part #1 of Zack Chasteen Series
“More?” asked Tiffani.
“Please,” I said.
I handed the sheet of paper back to Zoe. She said, “The man called back an hour later. And he insisted on speaking to Burma again. This is what he told her the second time.” She handed me another sheet of paper.
It said: “Show us we have a deal. Have two hundred fifty thousand dollars ready by Monday. We’ll be in touch.”
Tiffani returned with my rum and another smile.
I asked Zoe, “Have you called the police about this?”
Before she could answer, there was a grunt from the wheel-chair, and I saw Burma shaking and the cigarette dropping from her hand. As Zoe picked it up and snubbed it out, Burma reached down for the chalk and wrote something on the chalkboard. Zoe took the chalkboard, read it, and then showed it to me.
“NO POLICE!” it said.
Zoe patted Burma on the shoulder.
“It’s alright, honey, it’s alright.” And then she turned to me. “Burma and I have discussed this. It is her wish to not inform the police. She does not trust them. She does not want to risk the life of her father. And I am sure that you do not wish to en-danger your friend’s life, either.”
“So what do you propose we do?”
Burma Downey scribbled again on the chalkboard. This time it said: “GET THE MONEY.”
I stayed there for another hour and we talked about getting the money.
The first two hundred fifty thousand dollars wouldn’t be a problem, Zoe Applequist told me. She said they could have it by the next morning. She said she had talked it over with Burma and she felt certain that, given a few days, and depending on how quickly the bankers in London moved, they could put together another seven hundred fifty thousand dollars, totaling their half of what the man on the phone had demanded.
Which meant I had to come up with a million dollars.
I told them I didn’t have that kind of money. I didn’t get specific, but I made them understand I wasn’t long on liquid assets. I say “them,” but it was mostly Zoe Applequist. Burma Downey just sat there and smoked cigarettes. Tiffani St. James just sat there. Every now and then she would pout or readjust her legs.
“Surely Ms. Pickering has resources, doesn’t she?” asked Zoe.
Yes, I told her, she did. But I told her I knew nothing about Barbara’s finances. That was her business.
Burma wrote something on her chalkboard and held it up.
“JEWELRY?” it said.
“Barbara’s not big on jewelry,” I told her. “She might have something in a safe-deposit box, but I couldn’t even tell you where it is.”
“Relatives, next of kin?” asked Zoe.
I told her Barbara’s mother had died two years earlier and that, as far I knew, she had no other relatives.
“Then you’ll have to contact her attorney,” said Zoe.
I had no idea who Barbara’s attorney was, but I told Zoe I would make some calls and go from there. That didn’t leave us much else to talk about. We were playing a waiting game. Waiting on that cell phone to ring again so the man could tell us what to do next. I told them I would stay there until the call came. We were all in this together.
“Thanks so much, but it really isn’t necessary,” said Zoe Applequist. “I’m afraid we’re all quite exhausted. If anything happens, we’ll get in touch.”
She stood, and I got up to shake her hand, but she gave me a hug instead. I hugged back. It was like hugging a steel girder. The woman was solid. She told me, “We must keep this quiet. Do you understand?”
Actually, I didn’t understand. And I wasn’t sure I agreed. I was ready to call in the troops. This was bigger and more dangerous than we could handle. But before I could say anything, Tiffani got up and gave me a hug, too. It was considerably softer than the one Zoe had given me.
I told Burma Downey good-bye. She scribbled something on her chalkboard.
“THANK YOU,” it said.
29
Funny how you can hold things together when you have to. The whole time I was inside Burma Downey’s house, I was Zack the Detached, absorbing the details of the kidnapping and coolly discussing a plan to come up with the ransom. The moment I stepped outside I became Zack the Zombie. I walked away in a daze, not paying attention to where I was going. Instead of heading out through the compound gate and on the road back to town, I wound up by the dunes.
I sat down in the sand and looked at the ocean, trying to focus, trying to get my mind to settle down long enough to figure everything out. But my thoughts, wild and awful thoughts, were shooting in all directions, like someone was poking my brain with a hot wire every time I almost got a handle on things. The whole world was jumpy and spinning, and I sat there clenched up, unable to set it right again.
Once, when I was just fifteen or sixteen, a rich guy from Orlando asked me to crew on his sailboat during the Coronado Cup, this big-deal offshore regatta the Minorca Yacht Club sponsors every year. We were on the last leg of the course, a haul-ass spinnaker run to Coronado Inlet, when a squall line blew in out of nowhere. In half an instant the wind shifted, the boat jibed, the mast snapped, and the spinnaker began filling with water, threatening to suck the boat down after it. That was the first time I ever confronted real, true panic. There was an excruciating moment when everything inside of me was going helter-skelter while I stood there frozen, utterly incapable of action. Then came a calmness as I realized: It could be worse. It’s not my boat. And I’m not going to drown. The next thing I knew I was up on the foredeck, cutting the spinnaker sheets. Someone cranked the engine and we made it in just fine.
Slowly, sitting there in the dunes, that same calmness returned. This wasn’t going to suck me down. Things could be worse. Less than twenty-four hours ago I thought Barbara had run off with another man. Then he turned up dead and I feared Barbara might be dead, too. But the situation had improved. Hell, things were downright rosy: Barbara was alive. And I was going to get her back. Just a matter of finding a million dollars.
I got up and walked through the compound toward the road. Clarissa Percival was pulling away in a golf cart. She stopped when she saw me and offered a ride back to the Albury. We weren’t a hundred yards down Front Street when Clarissa broke down in sobs. She pulled the golf cart onto the side of the road. I let her cry awhile.
Finally, she said, “They blame me. They say it’s my fault.”
“It’s not your fault. Someone came in and kidnapped him.”
“But I left him, I left him there. And then they came and took him. And now . . .”
She cried some more. When she was done I asked her to tell me how it had happened. I had heard a little bit of the story before, but Zoe Applequist had done the talking.
“After you left yesterday evening, I let Lord Downey stay sleeping on the couch,” she said. “I didn’t want to move him. He looked so peaceful and he hasn’t been sleeping well at all lately. So I let him stay there.
“I went to the kitchen to make something for dinner. And that’s when the power went out. Do you remember?”
I told Clarissa I didn’t remember the power going out in the evening. It had been on at the Albury and elsewhere on the island. I just remembered that it wasn’t on when I woke up that morning.
“Well, there’s no predicting when or where. It goes out some places and not others. It’s a mess, the power on this island. All the time broke up,” she said. “So I go looking around in the kitchen for the candles we keep there. But I can’t find them. And the kerosene lamp, it’s gone, too. Sometimes the power, it can be out for hours, and I didn’t want to sit here in the dark. I’m a little bit afraid of it, you know?”
She laughed a sad laugh.
“Sometimes, when Lord Downey was feeling better, he’d play tricks on me. Everyone, they know I’m scared of the dark. And he’d go flipping off the main power switch just to scare me some, just to see me throw a fit. They’d all get a laugh out of that. Then he’d flip it back on and laugh some more. Oh, that man . . .”
Just thinking about him made her cry a little bit more and then she calmed down again.
“So last night I got on the phone and I called my mother. She only just lives down the road. She said she had power, but if I came down there, then she’d let me borrow her lamp and some candles.
“So I went down there. And I wasn’t gone long. It couldn’t have been ten minutes. I came back here and I went straight in the kitchen and lit the lamp and I cooked dinner. I cooked peas and rice and chicken, and made some johnnycakes. And then I took a plate of it out into the living room, just to see if maybe Lord Downey, he’d like to eat a little. Johnnycakes usually perk him right up. But he was gone.”
“What time was that?” I asked her.
“I don’t know, maybe then it was eight-thirty or nine. I can’t say for sure when they might have come in the house and took him away. Could have been while I was gone, or it could have been while I was in the kitchen. I didn’t lock the house. No one on the island ever locks their houses. And they just came in and snatched him up. Poor man, he didn’t weigh a thing.”
She started crying again.
The no-see-ums were coming out. They were getting in my hair and biting, and I slapped some off my ankles. They didn’t seem to be bothering Clarissa. Or else she was just too upset to notice them.
I asked her, “So when you found him gone, did you go and tell Burma?”
“Not right away, no. I went looking for him first, carrying the lamp. I looked around in the yard. And then I went down on the beach, but not too far. I went by a couple of the neighbors’ houses because sometimes before he has gone there. And only after I’d checked all those places did I come back and tell Burma about it. By then it must have been ten o’clock or so. Yes, it was a little after ten because, when I got back here, the power was on, and I had to reset all the clocks.”
Clarissa found a tissue in her purse and dried around her eyes.
“How long has Lord Downey been like this?” I asked her.
“You mean the wandering off and all?”
“Yeah, is it something that has just been getting gradually worse or what?”
“No, it came on fast. Just since Burma’s accident, actually.”
“He was OK before that?”
“Well, he is seventy-eight and he has some troubles. But his mind, it was always alright. I’ve been taking care of him, let’s see, almost a year now. And it has only been in the last month or so that he’s gone down. After Burma came back here. The sight of her, it was like that set him off, like it was more than he could handle.”
I said, “It’s a lot to handle, all those bandages and casts, and her not being able to talk. What do the doctors say?”
Clarissa shrugged.
“I don’t know. I don’t talk to the doctors. I just barely talk to Burma and her crowd. They keep pretty much to themselves.” She shook her head. “They say they can get that two hundred fifty thousand dollars, but I don’t know where they can get it from.”
“Does Burma have money of her own?”
“No, not that I know of. She’s all the time been asking her father for some, especially this last month or so, since the accident. That’s one of the reasons they weren’t getting along.”
“What about Zoe Applequist? Do you think she has money?”
“I don’t know much about her. Not much at all. Claims to be a physical therapist or something.”
I slapped at the no-see-ums. They were getting worse.
“We get moving, they’ll stop biting,” Clarissa said.
She turned on the golf cart and pulled back on Front Street. We bumped along for a few blocks. It was almost dark. People were out visiting, enjoying the cool of the day. Most everyone we passed waved or said good evening. We smiled and waved back, as if everything were right with the world.
30
Back at the cottage, I noticed that someone had come in and straightened up and filled the ice bucket with the bottle of Schramsberg in it. I went through a stack of Barbara’s things until I found an address book. I looked up Steffie Plank’s home phone number, then went down to the main house to give her a call.
One of the Charleston women was using the phone in the salon. She saw me and gave a little wave—I’ll just be a minute, dear—and kept on talking. The other Charleston women were sipping cocktails in the salon while their husbands played gin rummy. It looked like a serious game. They had a pad for keeping score and everything. The television was on, but the sound was off, and the picture was all gray and speckly with horizontal bands cycling over and over. Dr. and Mrs. Something-or-Other were chatting with another couple in a corner of the salon by the stereo. Sarah Vaughan was singing, all deep and husky, “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love.” It was like being back in the 1950s—highballs and card games, songs with sweet lyrics, and shitty TV reception.
No one was sitting at the bar. I sat there.
“Barbancourt?” said Mr. Pindle.
“No, think I’ll go light tonight. How about a Kalik?”
“Silver or gold?”
“Silver,” I said.
“Smart man. That gold will kick your ass.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s kicked me before.”
“That what kick you last night, made you do all that hollering up there?”
“No, that was rum, all rum. And a little Beefeater’s.”
“Oh, man. Put the clear on the brown, you wake up with a frown.”
“Never heard that one before,” I said. “What about you put the brown on the clear?”
“You wake up pissing beer. Or you wake up lost an ear. I’ve heard it both ways.”
Dr. Something-or-Other came for a round of drinks. Mr. Pindle poured them. Dr. Something-or-Other stepped away and Mr. Pindle leaned on the bar by me.
“I heard about the picture man. Some bad business. Things like that don’t happen here,” he said. “They got any ideas about it?”
I shook my head.
“What about Ms. Pickering?” he asked.
I shrugged. It was better than lying about the kidnapping.
The woman from Charleston finished her telephone conversation. I stood and walked to the salon, but one of the other Charleston women beat me to the phone.
“Do you mind?” she smiled.
She started dialing. I went back to the bar. Sarah Vaughan started singing “Perdido.” A busboy was setting tables in the dining room. Chrissie Hineman was making sure all the tables had fresh flowers in their vases. She saw me and rushed over and gave me a hug.
She said, “You OK?”
“Fine,” I said. “Just trying to take it all in and figure out what to do next.”
“Well, you know Charlie and I are here for you, whatever you need.”
After Chrissie stepped away, Mr. Pindle said, “I know someone who saw ’em.”
“Saw who?”
“Ms. Pickering and that Gannon fellow. Last night.”
“Who’s that?”
“Jesteen, works in the kitchen, the one gave you the orange juice this morning. She saw ’em on her way home last night. Ms. Pickering, the picture man, and this blonde woman. In a golf cart. The blonde woman driving, the picture man up front with her, Ms. Pickering in the back.”
“The blonde woman was driving?”
“That’s what Jesteen said.”
That seemed a little off. I thought Bryce Gannon had offered to give Tiffani St. James a ride. That’s what Tiffani had told Lynfield Pederson.
“Has Jesteen gone and told Lynfield Pederson about this?”
“I don’t know about that. I suspect not. Most people, they wait until the police come to them. Not the other way around.”
The young woman in the starched blue uniform came out and rang her little bell. People started making their way toward the dining room. The Charleston woman was still talking on the phone.
I asked Mr. Pindle, “What do you think of him?”
“Who, Pederson? I like him alright. He plays it pretty straight. Not a man you want to cross though.” Mr. Pindle took my empty Kalik and brought me another one. “You knew him when you were playing ball, didn’t you?”
“Knew who?”
“Lynfield Pederson, man. Who you think?”
“He played football?”
“Yeah.”
“Where?”
“Florida Gators, just like you. About the same time, too. At least, that’s what he said.”
“He said he played football with me?”
“He don’t have to say it, I know it. I remember when he went off there. Maybe twenty years ago. Stories about it in the paper here. Some kinda news when a boy from Harbour Island starts playing football for a big college team.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. But why don’t you just ask him?” said Mr. Pindle. “There he is.”
I turned to see Lynfield Pederson striding across the salon toward the bar. He had gotten rid of his suit and tie and was wearing a plain white T-shirt and khaki shorts. He didn’t look particularly happy. Matter of fact, he looked mad as hell.
“Speaking of the devil,” I said.
“You ain’t begun to see the fucking devil yet,” said Pederson. “We need to talk.”
31
“So when were you planning on letting me know about this shit, huh?”
We had gone back to the cottage to talk. Only I wasn’t doing much talking. Mostly I was listening to Lynfield Pederson unload on me for not telling him about the phone calls from the man who wanted two million for Barbara and Lord Downey.
“I just found out about it,” I said. “It isn’t like I’ve been sitting on it. I just got back here a little while ago.”
“And so you went down there and you were sitting at the bar, drinking, and then you were getting ready to go in and eat dinner. And then maybe sometime when you got around to it, after dessert maybe, or after you drank a glass of cognac, then you were going to let me know?”
“I was waiting to use the phone. They’ve only got one phone here, you know.”
