The Cry of the Halidon (17 page)

“Sorry for the delay,” said the Jamaican, his lilt denying the sincerity of the statement. “There are several messages. I was putting them in the order of their sequence.”

“Thank you. What are—”

“They’re all marked urgent, sir,” interrupted the clerk. “Eleven-fifteen is the first; from the Ministry of Education. Contact Mr. Latham as soon as possible. The next at eleven-twenty is from a Mr. Piersall at the Sheraton. Room fifty-one. Then a Mr. Hanley called from Montego Bay at twelve-oh-six; he stressed the importance of your reaching him. His number is—”

“Wait a minute,” said Alex, removing a pencil and a notebook from his pocket. He wrote down the names “Latham,” “Piersall,” “Hanley.” “Go ahead.”

“Montego exchange, eighty-two-two-seven. Until five o’clock. Mr. Hanley said to call in Port Antonio after six-thirty.”

“Did he leave that number?”

“No, sir. Mrs. Booth left word at one-thirty-five that she would be back in her room at two-thirty. She asked that you ring through if you telephoned from outside. That’s everything, Mr. McAuliff.”

“All right. Thank you. Let me go back, please.” Alex repeated the names, the gists of the messages, and asked for the Sheraton’s telephone number. He had no idea who Mr. Piersall was. He mentally scanned the twelve contact names provided by Hammond; there was no Piersall.

“Will that be all, sir?”

“Yes. Put me through to Mrs. Booth, if you please.”

Alison’s phone rang several times before she answered. “I was taking a shower,” she said, out of breath. “Rather hoping you were here.”

“Is there a towel around you?”

“Yes. I left it on the knob with the door open, if you must know. So I could hear the telephone.”

“If I was there, I’d remove it. The towel, not the phone.”

“I should think it appropriate to remove both.” Alison laughed, and McAuliff could see the lovely half smile in the haze of the afternoon sun on Tower Street.

“You’re right, you’re parched. But your note said it was urgent. Is anything the matter?” There was a click within the interior of the telephone box; his time was nearly up. Alison heard it, too.

“Where are you? I’ll call you right back,” she said quickly.

The number had been deliberately, maliciously scratched off the dial’s center. “No way to tell. How urgent? I’ve got another call to make.”

“It can wait. Just don’t speak to a man named Piersall until we talk. ’Bye now, darling.”

McAuliff was tempted to call Alison right back; who was Piersall? But it was more important to reach Hanley in Montego. It would be necessary to call collect; he didn’t have enough change.

It took the better part of five minutes before Hanley’s phone rang and another three while Hanley convinced a switchboard operator at a less-than-chic hotel that he would pay for the call.

“I’m sorry, Robert,” said Alex. “I’m at a coin box in Kingston.”

“It’s all right, lad. Have you heard from Tucker?” There was an urgency in Hanley’s rapidly asked question.

“No. He hasn’t checked in. I thought you might have something.”

“I have, indeed, and I don’t like it at all. I flew back to Mo’Bay a couple of hours ago, and these damn fools here tell me that two black men picked up Sam’s belongings, paid the bill, and walked out without a word.”

“Can they do that?”

“This isn’t the Hilton, lad. They had the money and they did it.”

“Then where are
you
?”

“Goddammit, I took the same room for the afternoon. In case Sam tries to get in touch, he’ll start here, I figured. In the meantime, I’ve got some friends asking around town. You still don’t want the police?”

McAuliff hesitated. He had agreed to Hammond’s command not to go to the Jamaican police for anything until he had checked with a contact first and received clearance. “Not yet, Bob.”

“We’re talking about an old friend!”

“He’s still not overdue, Robert. I can’t legitimately report him missing. And, knowing our old friend, I wouldn’t want him embarrassed.”

“I’d sure as hell raise a stink over two strangers picking up his belongings!” Hanley was angry, and McAuliff could not fault him for it.

“We’re not sure they’re strangers. You know Tuck; he hires attendants like he’s the court of Eric the Red. Especially if he’s got some money and he can spread it around the outback. Remember Kimberleys, Bob.” A statement. “Sam blew two months’ wages setting up an agricultural commune, for Christ’s sake.”

Hanley chuckled. “Aye, lad, I do. He was going to put the hairy bastards in the wine business. He’s a one-man Peace Corps with a vibrating crotch.… All right, Alex. We’ll wait until tomorrow. I have to get back to Port Antone’. I’ll phone you in the morning.”

“If he’s not here by then, I’ll call the police and you can activate your subterranean network—which I’m sure you’ve developed by now.”

“Goddamn right. We old travelers have to protect ourselves. And stick together.”

The blinding sun on the hot, dirty Caribbean street and the stench of the telephone mouthpiece was enough to convince McAuliff to return to Courtleigh Manor.

Later, perhaps early this evening, he would find the fish store called Tallon’s and his arthritic contact.

He walked north on Matthew Lane and found a taxi on Barry Street; a half-demolished touring car of indeterminate
make, and certainly not of this decade, or the last. As he stepped in, the odor of vanilla assaulted his nostrils. Vanilla and bay rum, the scents of Jamaica: delightful in the evening, oppressive during the day under the fiery equatorial sun.

As the cab headed out of Old Kingston—harbor-front Kingston—where man-made decay and cascading tropical flora struggled to coexist, Alex found himself staring with uncomfortable wonder at the suddenly emerging new buildings of New Kingston. There was something obscene about the proximity of such bland, clean structures of stone and tinted glass to the rows of filthy, tin, corrugated shacks—the houses of gaunt children who played slowly, without energy, with bony dogs, and of pregnant young-old women hanging rags on ropes salvaged from the waterfront, their eyes filled with the bleak, hated prospect of getting through another day. And the new, bland, scrubbed obscenities were less than two hundred yards from even more terrible places of human habitation: rotted rat-infested barges, housing those who had reached the last cellars of dignity. Two hundred yards.

McAuliff suddenly realized what these buildings were: banks. Three, four, five … six banks. Next to, and across from one another, all within an easy throw of a safe-deposit box.

Banks.

Clean, bland, tinted glass.

Two hundred yards.

Eight minutes later, the odd, ancient touring car entered the palm-lined drive of Courtleigh Manor. Ten yards in from the gates, the driver stopped, briefly, with a jerk. Alex, who was sitting forward, taking out his wallet, braced himself against the front seat as the driver quickly apologized. Then McAuliff saw what the Jamaican was doing. He was removing a lethal, thirty-inch machete from the worn felt next to him, and putting it under the seat. The driver grinned.

“I take a fare into old town, mon. Shack town. I keep long knife by me alla time there.”

“Is it necessary?”

“Oh, mon! True, mon. Bad people; dirty people. Not Kingston, mon. Better to shoot alla dirty people. No good, mon. Put ’em in boats back to Africa. Sink boats; yes, mon!”

“That’s quite a solution.” The car pulled up to the curb, and McAuliff got out. The driver smiled obsequiously as he stated an inflated charge. Alex handed him the precise amount. “I’m sure you included the tip,” he said as he dropped the bills through the window.

At the front desk, McAuliff took the messages handed to him; there was an addition. Mr. Latham of the Ministry of Education had telephoned again.

Alison was on the small balcony, taking the afternoon sun in her bathing suit. McAuliff entered the room from his connecting door.

She reached out and he took her hand. “Have you any idea what a lovely lady you are, lovely lady?”

“Thank you, lovely man.”

He gently released her hand. “Tell me about Piersall,” he said.

“He’s at the Sheraton.”

“I know. Room fifty-one.”

“You spoke to him.” Alison obviously was concerned.

“No. That was his message. Phone him in room fifty-one. Very urgent.”

“He may be there now; he wasn’t when you called.”

“Oh? I got the message just before I talked to you.”

“Then he must have left it downstairs. Or used a pay phone in the lobby. Within minutes.”

“Why?”

“Because he was here. I talked with him.”

“Do tell.”

She did.

Alison had finished sorting out research notes she had prepared for the north coast, and was about to take her
shower, when she heard a rapid knocking from Alex’s room. Thinking it was one of their party, Alison opened her own door and looked out in the corridor. A tall, thin man in a white Palm Beach suit seemed startled at her appearance. It was an awkward moment for both. Alison volunteered that she had heard the knocking and knew McAuliff was out; would the gentleman care to leave a message?

“He seemed very nervous. He stuttered slightly, and said he’d been trying to reach you since eleven o’clock. He asked if he could trust me. Would I speak only to you? He was really quite upset. I invited him into my room, but he said no, he was in a hurry. Then he blurted it out. He had news of a man named Sam Tucker. Isn’t he the American who’s to join us here?”

Alex did not bother to conceal his alarm. He bolted from his reclining position and stood up. “What about Tucker?”

“He didn’t go into it. Just that he had word
from
him or
about
him. He wasn’t really clear.”

“Why didn’t you tell me on the phone?”

“He asked me not to. He said I was to tell you when I saw you,
not
over the telephone. He implied that you’d be angry, but you should get in touch with him before you went to anyone else. Then he left. Alex, what the hell was he talking about?”

McAuliff did not answer; he was on his way to her telephone. He picked up the receiver, glanced at the connecting door, and quickly replaced the phone. He walked rapidly to the open door, closed it, and returned to the telephone. He gave the Sheraton’s number and waited.

“Mr. Piersall, room fifty-one, please.”

The interim of silence was infuriating to McAuliff. It was broken by the soothing tones of a subdued English voice, asking first the identity of the caller and then whether the caller was a friend or, perhaps, a relative of Dr. Piersall’s. Upon hearing Alex’s replies, the unctuous voice continued, and as it did so, McAuliff remembered a cold night on a Soho street outside The Owl of Saint George. And the
flickering of a neon light that saved his life and condemned his would-be killer to death.

Dr. Walter Piersall had been involved in a terrible, tragic accident.

He had been run down by a speeding automobile in a Kingston street.

He was dead.

W
alter Piersall, American, Ph.D., anthropologist, student of the Caribbean, author of a definitive study on Jamaica’s first known inhabitants, the Arawak Indians, and the owner of a house called High Hill near Carrick Foyle in the parish of Trelawny.

That was the essence of the information supplied by the Ministry’s Mr. Latham.

“A tragedy, Mr. McAuliff. He was an honored man, a titled man. Jamaica will miss him greatly.”

“
Miss
him! Who killed him, Mr. Latham?”

“As I understand it, there is very little to go on: the vehicle sped away, the description is contradictory.”

“It was broad daylight, Mr. Latham.”

There was a pause on Latham’s part. “I know, Mr. McAuliff. What can I say? You are an American; he was an American. I am Jamaican, and the terrible thing took place on a Kingston street. I grieve deeply for several reasons. And I did not know the man.”

Latham’s sincerity carried over the wire. Alex lowered his voice. “You say ‘the terrible thing.’ Do you mean more than an accident?”

“No. There was no robbery, no mugging. It was an accident. No doubt brought on by rum and inactivity. There is a great deal of both in Kingston, Mr. McAuliff. The men … or children who committed the crime are undoubtedly well into the hills now. When the rum wears off, the fear will take its place; they will hide. The Kingston police are not gentle.”

“I see.” McAuliff was tempted to bring up the name of
Sam Tucker, but he held himself in check. He had told Latham only that Piersall had left a message for him. He would say no more for the time being. “Well, if there’s anything I can do …”

“Piersall was a widower, he lived alone in Carrick Foyle. The police said they were getting in touch with a brother in Cambridge, Massachusetts.… Do you know why he was calling you?”

“No idea.”

“A great deal of your survey will take place in Trelawny Parish. Perhaps he had heard and was offering you hospitality.”

“Perhaps … Mr. Latham, is it logical that he would know about the survey?” Alex listened intently to Latham’s reply. Again, Hammond:
Learn to spot the small things
.

“Logical? What is logical in Jamaica, Mr. McAuliff? It is poorly kept secret that the Ministry—with the gracious help of our former mother country—is undertaking an overdue scientific evaluation. A secret poorly kept is not really much of a secret. Perhaps it is not logical that Dr. Piersall knew; it is certainly possible, however.”

No hesitations, no overly quick responses, no rehearsed words
.

“Then I guess that’s what he was calling about. I’m sorry.”

“I grieve.” Again Latham paused; it was not for effect. “Although it may seem improper, Mr. McAuliff, I should like to discuss the business between us.”

“Of course. Go ahead.”

“All of the survey permits came in late this morning … less than twenty-four hours. It generally takes the best part of a week.”

The processing was unusual, but Alex had come to expect the unusual with Dunstone, Limited. The normal barriers fell with abnormal ease. Unseen expediters were everywhere, doing the bidding of Julian Warfield.