The Crimes of Jordan Wise

THE FIRST WEEK was very bad. I didn't leave the house, didn't bathe or shave or bother to get dressed except for a pair of shorts. I drank steadily, without ever getting to the blotting-out stage, until the supply of liquor ran out. I raged at her. I raged at myself for misjudging her and for being too stupid to see it coming, and because maybe part of it was my fault for neglecting her, and because there was still some residual love left in me in spite of what she'd done. The phone rang three times during that week and I answered each time, thinking it might be Annalise, and when I heard somebody else's voice I hung up without saying a word.

When I couldn't stand the empty house or my own miserable company any longer, I cleaned up and got out of there. I needed to talk to somebody, and the only one I could confide in was Bone.

He listened to me unload as much as I dared to, without interrupting. His face showed no emotion, but I could tell that he empathized; we were friends and he'd gone through the same kind of thing himself with the second wife whose name he wouldn't mention. He didn't offer any bullshit advice, as most men would have. All he said was, "You hurting bad, Richard. Mon hurts like that, only one thing to do. Go out. Let wind and sea wash out the poison."

I said, "Will you go with me?"

"No, mon. No place for Bone on that kind of trip."

"Alone? I couldn't do it. I'm not ready to singlehand."

"You're ready," he said. "You never be more ready."

The next day I put in fresh stores, fuel, water. Then I painted a new name on the yawl's transom and reregistered her with the harbormaster's office. Annalise was gone; I wanted Annalise gone, too. Her new name, picked at random, was Windrunner.

The day after that, I left early into a stiff wind and an uncertain forecast. I had no idea where I was going. If I succeeded as a singlehander, fine. If I screwed up badly enough so that the yawl lost a mast or broached and went down, so be it. I didn't much care then, either way.

I set sail to windward on a starboard tack and let the trades take me wherever they felt like. I had a little trouble handling her at first, without Bone's sure hand with the rigging and the Dacron, and came close once to a bad jibe. But the lessons I'd learned from him, plus instinct and applied skill, allowed me to regain and maintain control.

The not-caring didn't last long. Singlehanding a thirty-four-foot yawl is work, hard work, and requires constant vigilance even under optimum conditions. When you have a passion for sailing, the work soon translates to pleasure and then to that sense of exhilarating freedom. I could singlehand. I was on my own boat, alone on the open sea. Everything else diminishes after a while, loses some of its importance—even betrayal and a suddenly brutalized love.

By nightfall I was no longer running aimlessly. I reckoned my position by compass and celestial navigation, used the nautical almanacs and logarithmic tables to chart a course that would take Windrunner on a broad loop around St. Croix, and put her on the right coordinates.

The weather held until the afternoon of the third day, when I encountered a rain squall off East Point on the northeastern tip of St. Croix. That was the only real test of my seamanship that I faced. A following breeze had risen, and before long the swells steepened and there was a rough cross chop. Then, as the wind increased, I saw the squall line moving in dark and fast. I double-checked the hatches, lashed down the loose gear, then went forward to replace the genoa with a working jib, again to reef in the main, and one more time to replace the working jib with the storm jib. Rain burst over the yawl in a blinding tropical downpour. The squall lasted about an hour, but despite the driving rain and thrashing sea it wasn't bad as Caribbean blows go. Windrunner showed no desire to broach, and I rode it out with the wheel tied down and a lifeline fastened around my waist and clipped to a backstay.

I stayed out five and a half days. At night I slept on the cushions in the cockpit aft. Every morning I pumped the bilges, ran the auxiliary for an hour to charge the batteries, checked the sails and halyards. I shot the sun at noon and took star sights at dusk and dawn, and kept a daily log. The yawl sailed herself with the wind abeam or on the quarter; those times I ran a piece of the sheet from a cleat on the lee coaming to the wheel's king spoke to keep her off the wind, and made my meals and lazed on deck, communing with the towering emptiness of sea and sky. I saw schools of flying fish, and what I was sure was the dorsal fin of a trailing shark. I passed deserted cays and other boats with their sails bellied fat, and avoided reefs, and once made five knots running close-hauled against the wind.

Bone was right, as usual.

When I sailed back into the harbor at Charlotte Amalie, the poison was gone.

The second dose came two weeks later.

I was all right then. But I wouldn't have been if I hadn't purged myself of the first dose with that long singlehand voyage.

I don't know why I picked that Tuesday to make my last visit to the Royal Bay Club. I don't believe in predestination, cosmic manipulation, any of that crap. It was a random choice of day and time to clean out my locker and cancel my membership. I'd never really felt comfortable at the club, and now there was no longer any need to keep up appearances. Since my return I'd managed to avoid the Verrikers and Kyles and other members, and I intended to keep on avoiding them; the last thing I wanted to have to deal with was pity.

The club was usually more or less deserted in the middle of the afternoon, the hottest part of the day. I expected to be in and out in a few minutes. The fact that Gavin Kyle happened to be in the lounge, and I happened to overhear him talking to the British banker, Horler, was sheer coincidence.

The steward wasn't in his customary cubicle at the front entrance, so I walked into the lounge looking for him. Gavin and Horler were at the bar. I would have done a quick about-face before they saw me, except that voices carry in a mostly empty room. When I heard Gavin use my name, I stopped and listened.

"You can't help but feel sorry for Laidlaw," he was saying in his gossipy way. "He doesn't know how much better off he is without that bitch. She—"

I was on the move by then, straight toward them. Horler spotted me first and jabbed Gavin with his knee. When Gavin saw me, his moon face warped in on itself as if squeezed from within. He squirmed visibly on his stool.

"Go ahead," I said. "Don't let me stop you."

"Christ, Richard, I—"

"Let's hear the rest of it."

Horler muttered an excuse and made a hasty exit. Gavin gulped his drink and started to get up, but I held him down with a hand on his shoulder. His eyes pleaded with me, as if he were a dog about to be kicked.

"I'm not going to make a scene," I said. "I'll just buy you a drink and we'll chat a little."

"I don't blame you for being pissed—"

"I'm not pissed. What're you drinking?"

" . . . Scotch and soda."

I ordered another round for him, a double shot of Arundel for myself. Then I said, "What did you mean, I'm better off without that bitch?"

"I've got a big mouth," he said. "Robin says so, and she's usually right about my shortcomings."

"What did you mean?"

"You don't really want to hear it."

"Why is Annalise a bitch? Why am I better off?"

The drinks came and he slugged half of his. "All right, you asked for it," he said, not quite looking at me. "She wasn't faithful to you. She . . . well, not for a long time."

It was several seconds before I asked, "How long a time?"

"At least six months."

"How many men?"

"I'm not sure. Two that I know of."

"The first?"

"Does it matter?"

"You, Gavin?"

"Christ! I don't play around. Never have, never will."

"Who, then?"

"If I tell you . . . what're you going to do?"

"Nothing," I said. What could I do that wouldn't call attention to me? "I'm not the confrontational type. Or the violent type. I just need to know."

I watched him struggle with it for half a minute. Then he said, "Screw it, I don't owe him any favors," and swallowed some of his fresh drink. "Royce Verriker."

Verriker. I felt a rush of hatred for him. Every man needs a vice; mine is making money. And making friends' wives.

"How do you know?"

"I saw him going into your house one afternoon," Gavin said.

"When you were out and Maureen was away visiting in San Juan."

"It could've been innocent."

"It wasn't. I asked him about it later on and he owned up."

"Just like that, he owned up?"

"You don't know Royce like I do. He's a shit when it conies to women. Likes to brag about his conquests. He never bragged to you?"

"No. But then he wouldn't, would he, if he was screwing Annalise."

Gavin made the rest of his Scotch disappear. "He's been like that ever since I've known him. Dozens of women—that divorce practice of his is tailor-made."

"How long did it go on with him and Annalise?"

"A while. Until he met somebody new, I guess."

"Does Maureen know what he is?"

"Hell, how could she not know? She either doesn't care or just turns a blind eye because she loves him."

So that was the cause of the rift between her and Annalise, the reason they'd stopped being friends. Had Annalise felt any shame? Probably not. Did she feel any over running out on me? Probably not.

"Who else besides Verriker?" I asked him.

"Nobody you or I know. Some rich tourist from New York."

"Name?"

"Jackson, Johnson, something like that. Manufacturer of women's clothing. Down here for the sport fishing, stayed at the old Grand."

"How do you know about him?"

"It was right before she left you," Gavin said. "A week or so. By then she wasn't bothering to be discreet about it. Snuggling up to him in public, spent at least one night in his room while you were off on your cruise."

"When did he go back north?"

"I can't tell you that. You'd have to ask at the hotel." Pause. "You think she ran off with him?"

Of course she'd run off with him. A women's clothing manufacturer from New York? She'd have sat naked on his lap on the plane for an opportunity like that.

Gavin said, "Richard, man, you're not thinking of going after her and this guy? Trying to get her back?"

"No," I said.

He seemed relieved. "That's the right attitude. What you heard me say to Horler . . . well, it's a fact. You really are better off without her."

He was right.

I had no doubt of it by then.

In an odd way, finding out the full scope of Annalise's betrayal made it easier for me to get on with my life. You might think that I hated her then, but I didn't. Nor did I have any love left. I felt nothing at all for her. It was as if someone who had once been very close to me had died, and I'd gone through a short period of bereavement, and then I was able to move ahead with no emotional baggage.

At first I tried to figure out how and where it had all gone wrong, if there was a turning point, any specific incident that had led to her betrayal. But of course there wasn't. It was a gradual thing. She had been right when she accused me of evolving back into Jordan Wise, but she'd been undergoing a metamorphosis of her own. We were two divergent life forms, changing in opposing ways—that was what had doomed our relationship. It wouldn't have mattered if I'd realized it along the way. I couldn't have stopped it. The deterioration, the decay, was inevitable.

I could see all this now with an objective eye, as if across a chasm. I understood Annalise as I never had before. And I understood myself, as an individual and in relation to her.

She'd given me a lot to be thankful for since that night in her apartment in San Francisco. Four years of greater passion and stimulation than I'd ever known. St. Thomas and the sea and sailing and Bone's friendship. But I hadn't given her all she'd wanted. She had never been content living here. Or content with me. From the first, I was a means to an end, a source of satisfaction for her cravings—an integral part of a package deal. If she'd ever felt love for me, even a little, it had been for that reason and that reason alone. That was why she'd stayed with me as long as she had.

Verriker had been a dalliance, a way to relieve the restless boredom. The New York clothing manufacturer had been a ready-to-wear excuse. When I refused to satisfy the most important of her hungers, a shot at the New York fashion world, she ran off with the first man who could offer it to her. She'd been gone a long time before she actually left.

What it boiled down to was that I couldn't have held on to her because I'd never really had her in the first place. That was what hurt the most. Even at the moments of our deepest connection, in and out of bed, she'd never really been mine in the way that I'd been hers. I don't mean love—I mean the extension and cornmingling of self, the absorption of one persona into the other that creates a bonded third. Or, hell, maybe I do mean love. Maybe that's another thing love is, the only definition that's not strictly personal.

If I hated anybody during that time, it was myself for not understanding sooner. Love is blind—the platitude makers got that one right. Blind and stupid and short-sighted. I accepted that, and accepted that I was a fool for believing otherwise. That was why, when the hurt went away, the rest of the emotion went with it.

Did I stay in the villa? Yes. I would have moved out right away, except that the lease ran until December; I'd been paying the rent in six-month increments to take advantage of a discount offered by the owners. Giving it up immediately would have meant breaking the lease and taking a heavy financial hit, because one condition of the discount was that the biannual payments were nonrefundable. I'd been so careful with money up to then, I couldn't bring myself to throw away thousands of dollars for no good reason.

Aside from a short period of adjustment, I had no trouble learning to be alone again. I slept at the villa most nights, but I spent very little time there otherwise. Days, except when there was a storm, I was at Sub Base harbor or Frenchtown or the native quarter, or out on Windrunner. In port I worked on the yawl's upkeep or just sat on deck reading and listening to music. Sometimes Bone would join me; sometimes I would join him on Conch Out. I ate all my meals alone or with him on one boat or the other, or in Harry's Dockside Cafe or one of the native eateries. Now and then I would drive over to Red Hook to see Dick Marsten, or up to the top of Crown Mountain for a sunset watch, or out to Coki Bay or Sapphire Bay for a swim and some snorkeling among the coral reefs. Once at Sapphire I helped a native kid with a speargun drag a big moray eel in from the reefs offshore—an ugly creature with a body like a bar of white iron and foxlike jaws, that even dead scared hell out of a couple of female tourists.

St. Thomas crawled with unattached and willing women; it would have been easy enough to pick one up for a one-night stand. But I had no interest in playing that kind of game. No interest in female companionship, no interest in sex. My libido had reverted to what it was before I met Annalise. Maybe that would change eventually, I thought, and maybe it wouldn't. It didn't seem to matter much either way.

What mattered was doing as I pleased twenty-four hours a day, every day, with no encumbrances. I didn't have to attend any more parties, play any more handball, dance in any more nightclubs or eat in any more expensive restaurants or take any more lengthy trips that didn't involve sailing. I let my hair get long and shaggy and I grew a beard to go with my mustache. I saw none of the people who no longer cared to see me. The only one of that crowd who ever came around, once, was Jack Scanlon. I didn't encourage him and he never came again.

After a while I came to realize that I not only preferred this way of life to the one I'd had with Annalise, but that it was actually a relief to be alone again. You can change your financial status, your environment, your perspective, but you can't change your basic nature. After three years or thirty, you're still the same person. Jordan Wise had led a quiet, contemplative, mosdy celibate, loner's existence in San Francisco; Richard Laidlaw, without Annalise, gravitated to the same on St. Thomas. She had been only half right when she accused me of evolving back into my former self. I'd never really been anything else.

I thought about her less and less. And when I did, it was only to wonder, with detached curiosity, whether she was still with the manufacturer, whether her intro into the fashion industry had paid off, whether she had any regrets, whether she ever thought of me. I didn't wish her ill and I didn't wish her well—I didn't care one way or the other.

Out of sight, out of heart, out of mind.

Gone.

On one of the solo voyages on Windrunner, I discovered an island. A tiny cay, actually, out near the King fish Banks, so small and low-lying it didn't have a name on the charts. It was about the size of a couple of football fields, humped in the middle, not much more than a sandspit formed by the action of wind and sea. One day it would probably disappear if a Category 4 or 5 hurricane passed anywhere near it.

Curiosity and the fact that the day was clear and the seas calm led me to explore it. I hunted up a gap in the reef that surrounds almost every cay, large or small, eased in as close as I dared under power, and then weighed anchor and put the dinghy over and rowed in the rest of the way. There was nothing on the cay other than a few twisted screw palms, scatters of broken coral and shells, some tiny, almost translucent crabs, and a noisy colony of nesting terns and frigate birds. It was a beautiful place, quiet except for the birds and the murmur of the sea, lonely unless you were a loner yourself. There were tidepools and a little lagoon among the reefs on the leeward side, the water so clear you could see the dark red starfish on the bottom sand and the multicolored fish darting in and out among the lace and brain coral. I stripped down and had a swim in the lagoon. Later, in the tidepools, I cought a brace of yellow-and-black-mottled crayfish and pried loose a couple of dozen mussels.

Fine, lazy afternoon, so much enjoyed that I returned twice over the next few months for more of the same. On the third trip, I decided the spit-kit needed a name and christened it Laidlaw Cay. When I told Bone about it, he laughed and said, "Next thing, you gonna want to move out there and build a house."

"Nope. I was thinking of burying my loot on it like one of the old buccaneers."

"Not you, mon. No pirate blood in you."

That made me laugh. That's what you think, my friend, I thought.

That's what you think!

On the first of November I gave six weeks' notice that I would not be renewing the villa's lease. That was fine with the real estate agent: rental prices were climbing—there were a lot of new expats moving in, and other wealthy people looking for vacation homes—and the owners would be able to command a much higher lease price from the next tenant. He asked whether I wanted him to find me a smaller house or apartment, but I said no. I was spending so much time on Windrunner, I figured I would try living on her once the lease expired. Her main cabin was large enough to hold all my possessions. Surprisingly few possessions, I found when I took stock of them—clothing, a small collection of books, the brass-bound chest, a few odds and ends. And I could rent a parking space for the Mini cheap.

All the prospects looked good. Life looked good. Uncomplicated. Comfortable.

Then, without warning, the bottom fell out again.

I was having lunch alone in Harry's Dockside Cafe. A day like any other day. The place wasn't crowded and I was at a corner table, looking out through the open-air window while I ate, admiring a racing yawl with a balloon spinnaker, hull down on the horizon, tacking in search of a steady breeze. The scrape of the chair opposite pulled my gaze around. A man I didn't know sat down and fed me a lopsided smile around a thin, dark-brown cheroot.

He was about my age, late thirties, short but muscular, and hard-looking in an indolent way. Thick biceps bulged the sleeves of the blue pullover he wore. Fair hair, blue eyes, a sideways bend in his nose that indicated it once had been broken and the break hadn't healed properly. Pale skin that marked him as a snowbird, the local name for northern tourists who flock to the Caribbean in the winter months. He seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn't quite place him.

"What's that you're eating?" he said.

"Fish chowder."

"Looks greasy. How's it taste?"

"It tastes fine," I said. "Even better without cigar smoke."

He tapped ash on the floor. "I don't like fish," he said. "That's all you get down here, fish and more fish."

"Try one of the downtown restaurants."

"They serve meat in this place? Any kind of red meat?"

"Look, I really don't want company—"

"Maybe I'll just have a beer."

"Have it at another table."

"I like this one."

He sat watching me, smoking, while I spooned up the chowder. I could feel his eyes on my face, like bugs crawling; they were making me uncomfortable. I pushed the bowl away and started to get up.

"Hold on there," he said. "Let's talk a little."

"I don't think so. I've got work to do—"

"The work can wait. My name's Cutter, Fred Cutter."

"Good for you."

"And you're Richard Laidlaw."

" . . . You know me?"

"I know a lot of things about you."

"What do you want? Are you selling something?"

"Might say that."

"Well, whatever it is, I'm not interested. I don't need anything."

"You need what I'm selling. You just don't know it yet."

"All right, what is it you think I need?"

"Silence," Cutter said.

"What?"

"Richard Laidlaw's a good name," he said, "but I like Jordan Wise better."

I could feel the muscles pull as my back stiffened. I went cold all over. "You must have me mixed up with somebody else."

"I don't think so. Not anymore." The lopsided smile was broader.

My control had slipped for only a second or two, but that was long enough for him to see it. "I thought I recognized you when we bumped into each other yesterday morning. I wasn't a hundred percent sure, with the beard and the long hair. Now . . . I'm sure."

Outside my bank on Dronningens Gade, that was where I'd seen him before. We'd almost collided on the sidewalk when I walked out.

I said, "I've never heard of anybody named Jordan Wise."

"You're not from San Francisco, either, I suppose?"

"That's right, I'm not."

"I used to live in Frisco myself," Cutter said. "Worked for an insurance company in the same building as Amthor Associates. I saw you a few times in the elevators, the lobby, remembered you when the story broke in the papers. Everybody figured you disappeared into Mexico, but no, you came down here instead. Real clever, the way you pulled off the whole deal."

Crazy coincidence. The y factor. Three years, all the traveling in the Caribbean, to New York, Paris, Monte Carlo, London, and recognition happens right here in Charlotte Amalie.

"I've never even been to San Francisco," I said. "I'm from Chicago."

"Uh-huh. Retired tool-and-die manufacturer, made a killing in the stock market, sold your business and showed up here three years ago. Out of the same blue Jordan Wise disappeared into."

"If you know all that about me . . ."

"I know that's your cover story. I made it my business to find out."

"You want me to prove I'm Richard Laidlaw? My passport says so. So does my driver's license."

"Sure they do," Cutter said. "The way you had the embezzlement and the disappearance planned out so smooth, you had to've arranged for some pretty good false ID."

He was leaning forward, his voice low, confidential, but I couldn't: stop myself from glancing around at the other tables. Nobody was paying any attention to us. He didn't want to be overheard any more than I did.

"Pretty good," he said, "but not perfect. Wouldn't stand up to a background check. And then there's fingerprints. The FBI must have yours on file."

"If you're so sure of yourself, why come to me? Why not just go to the FBI and turn me in?"

"Well, I'll tell you, Jordan, I thought about doing that. Might be a reward or something, even after four years. But then I thought, no, why not give you a break? I admire the way you pulled off that big score of yours. Real clever, like I said."

"Blackmail."

"I don't like that word. Call it a business deal. You thought I was a salesman when I first sat down, okay, that's what I am. I sell silence and you're in the market. I'm happy, Richard Laidlaw stays free and happy, too. Simple."

"How much, Cutter?"

"Well, I don't know yet. I'm not sure just what to charge."

"How much?"

"I mean, what I have to offer is a one-of-a-kind commodity, right? I don't want to sell it too cheap. Then again, I don't want to set a price so high it puts a strain on the deal."

"I'm not as well off as you might think," I said. "I've already spent a lot of what I came here with."

"Not all that much, you haven't. I told you, I did some checking up. You'd be surprised how much you can find out about somebody in twenty-four hours, if you see the right people and ask the right questions."

"All right. You've made your point."

"Tell you what," Cutter said. "I'll give it some thought and let you know. You going to be around that boat of yours the rest of the day?"

"Yes."

"Maybe I'll drop by later. Or else give you a call at home tonight."

"I'll be there after six."

"Good man." He pushed his chair back, then leaned toward me again. "One thing, Jordan—"

"Don't call me that. That's not my name."

"Sure. One thing, Richard. Don't go getting any ideas about trying to run. You wouldn't get very far."

"I won't run."

"Just so we understand each other. If you're not on the boat when I come around, or not home when I call, I won't waste any time having a talk with the FBI."

He stood up. "Well, it's been a pleasure. Later." The lopsided grin again, and he was gone.

He didn't show up at the yawl. I didn't expect him to. Old psychological ploy: once you've got somebody on the hook, let him squirm for a while—make sure he's good and cought.

I squirmed plenty at first. Panic kept rising and I had to struggle to hold it down. Once I thought, To hell with Cutter, to hell with the FBI, go straight downtown and clean out the bank account and catch the first plane out of St. Thomas, no matter what its destination. Or sail the yawl to Puerto Rico and charter a small plane or catch a commercial flight before the alarm went out. But without a careful plan and enough time to implement it, running was a fool's game. They'd catch me quick, and that kind of cought meant federal prison until I was too old to care anymore. Even if I'd had time to make a plan, where would I go and how would I establish a new identity? St. Thomas was the only place I wanted to be. Richard Laidlaw was the only man I wanted to be.

Eventually I stopped squirming. Bitter resignation set in. Pay Cutter his blood money, whatever the amount, and hope he wouldn't come back too often. What else could I do?

He didn't call that night either. I drank too much, waiting, but there was no more inclination to panic. He'd call in the morning, early—I knew that before I went to bed. The bastard was too eager for his payoff to let me squirm for long.

The phone rang at seven fifteen. I'd been up two hours by then. "I thought it over," he said, "and five thousand seems like a nice round number. What do you think?"

"I can afford that," I said.

"Sure you can. Cash, nothing larger than a hundred."

"When and where?"

"How about I come up to your house tonight around eight o'clock? That way we can do our business in private."

"I'll have the money waiting."

"Good man. You know, I think we'll get along just fine."

Five thousand dollars. Not nearly as much of a bite as I'd expected. He'd want more later—blackmailers never stop bleeding their victims—but if he limited the amounts to five thousand and spread them far enough apart, it would be a tolerable price to pay to keep my freedom.

It was almost eight thirty before the doorbell rang. Muggy night, overcast, storm clouds making up on the horizon; the barometer had been falling steadily since mid-afternoon. A salt-laden northwest wind was already blowing at around twenty knots. I had the doors and jalousies open and all the fans running, but the house still sweltered with a sauna-like stickiness.

Cutter wasn't late on purpose, it turned out. His face had a dark-red flush, and he was breathing heavily and wiping away a coating of sweat, when I opened the door. The yellow shirt he wore over white ducks showed dark stains under the arms and down the front.

"Whew," he said, "that's some goddamn climb. That last set of steps almost did me in."

"You walked up here?"

"No point in renting a car. I won't be on this island much longer and I'd probably have gotten lost anyway. But I'd've grabbed a hack if I'd known what a ballbuster of a hike it was."

I led him into the living room. He stood fanning himself with his hand, looking around. "No air conditioning?"

"No. Just the ceiling fans."

"How the hell do you stand the humidity? It's like a fucking oven in here."

"You get used to it."

"Not me, brother. All those clouds piling up, smells like rain."

"Storm forecast for tonight."

"Well, I'm not hoofing it down those steps in the rain. You can drive me back to my hotel." He went to the open terrace doors, stepped out briefly as if to make sure there was nobody lurking around out there, and came back inside. "I could use a cold beer," he said.

"I don't have any beer."

"A drink, then. Gin and tonic, vodka tonic, something cold."

"Only liquor I have in the house is rum."

"Rum. All right then, rum. What've have you got to mix it with? Tonic, juice?"

"Water and ice, that's all."

"Christ. You're some host, you know that?"

At the sideboard I poured twice from the cut-glass decanter of Arundel, added ice cubes to my glass, ice and water to his. He took a long pull, made a face.

"I don't know what you see in this stuff," he said. "Tastes like cough medicine to me."

"Don't drink it if you don't like it."

"Let's get down to business. Where's the money?"

"Manila envelope on the coffee table."

He moved over there, scooped it up, sat down with it in one of the rattan chairs. I followed him, perched on the sofa, and watched him open the envelope, dump the rubber-banded packets onto his lap, riffle through each one. Then he let me see his crooked grin.

"Five thousand on the nose, all fifties and hundreds. I figured you'd come through, but I had to be sure. Good man, Jordan."

"I asked you not to call me that."

"Yeah, okay, whatever." Cutter put the money back into the envelope, slugged more of his drink and then rolled the wet glass across his forehead. He was still oozing sweat, his face still red-flushed with prickly heat; the wet spots on his yellow shirt hadn't dried any. "How the hell can you stand this climate? Even at night, you can hardly breathe."

"It isn't always this muggy."

"Well, you can have it. Closing in on winter up north, but I'd rather freeze my ass off than suffocate any day."

"Where do you live, up north?"

"Uh-uh," he said, "you don't need to know that. All you need to know is what I tell you. Now here's the deal, Jordan. Tomorrow—"

"Richard. My name is Richard."

"Jordan, Richard, who the hell cares?"

"I care," I said.

"Just shut up and listen. I wasn't going to spring this on you for another day or two, but I've had enough of this shithole. I'm leaving as soon as I can rebook my flight. And when I go, I'm taking the second installment with me."

I tightened up inside. "What do you mean, second installment?"

"You think all I wanted was a paltry five thousand? Uh-uh. This was just a test."

"How much more?"

"Another twenty-five."

"Twenty-five thousand!"

"Nonnegotiable and no arguments. Then I'll go away and you can stay here and keep on drying out like old shoe leather."

"Until the next time, the next installment."

"Don't worry about that," Cutter said. "You just go back to your bank tomorrow and draw out the twenty-five thousand and have it waiting for me here when I call you. Fifties and hundreds, same as the first installment."

"I don't have that much in my account."

"Then get it from the one in the Cayman Islands. A wire transfer doesn't take long."

" . . . How did you know about the Cayman account?"

"How do you think? Same way I found out everything else about you."

"Not by asking around, you didn't," I said. "Nobody on this island knows about that account but me and my bank, and they wouldn't give out the information."

"Well, somebody else knows."

I got it then. All at once, like a rocket going off inside my head. Crazy coincidence, hell. Y factor, hell. Yplus x equals xy squared—that was the real equation here. My hands had started to shake. I pressed them together, hard, between my knees.

"Annalise," I said.

His face bunched into a scowl. "Who?"

"Blue eyes. Jesus, I should've known. She always was partial to men with blue eyes."

"Huh?"

"She told you. That's how you knew about the Cayman account. About Jordan Wise. About the steps from downtown, too—you couldn't have figured out the way up here just from looking at a city map, or been able to find this house in the dark. You're not from San Francisco, you never laid eyes on me before that bump in front of the bank. She told you where to find me, told you everything. You're in this together, you and Annalise."

He didn't try to deny it. "Oh, what the hell," he said. "She didn't want you to know, but you figured it out anyway and I don't give a shit. That's right, me and Annalise."

"How long have you known her?" I could barely get the words out.

"Three months, if it matters."

"Living together?"

"Uh-uh. I had enough of that."

"What about her?"

"What do you care?"

"Where does she live? New York City?"

"Never mind where. None of your business anymore." The grin was back on his mouth. Now that the truth was out, he was openly enjoying himself. "She's some piece," he said.

"Some piece."

"You were lucky to hang on to her as long as you did, you know that? Woman like her." The grin widened into a smirk. "Really something in bed, isn't she? Man, she could suck the varnish off a table leg."

I couldn't look at his face any longer. I lowered my gaze to the front of his shirt, fixed it there. You could almost see the sweat stain spreading. The shape, if you looked long enough, seemed oddly trapezoidal.

"She come down here with you?"

"No way. She's had it with this island."

"The blackmail—her idea?"

"Mine," Cutter said. "We were drinking one night, she had a little too much and dropped your name, and I dragged the whole story out of her. But she didn't try to talk me out of it, I'll tell you that. She needs money, same as me."

"Why does she need money?"

"Dumb question, Jordan. Everybody needs money. The shittier your job, the more you need."

"What kind of shitty job?"

"Quit trying to pump me. You got all the information you're going to." I had something else I wanted to say, something I wanted him to tell her, but the words seemed clogged in my throat. Even after another swallow of rum I couldn't push them out.

Cutter pasted one of his dark-brown cheroots into a corner of his mouth, left it there unlighted. His drink was gone; he rolled the tumbler over his forehead again, then tapped the melting ice cubes into his mouth and began to chew them, the cigar bobbing up and down with the motion of his jaws. The sound he made was like glass being crushed.

He said, chewing, "So you'll go down to your bank tomorrow and get the twenty-five thousand, right? No arguments?"

"Yes."

"Good man." He took the cheroot out of his mouth, scowled at it, spat out a shred of tobacco, and extended the empty glass. "Do this again, Jordan. Tastes like crap, but at least it's wet. Then you can drive me back to my hotel."

I got up slowly, took his glass, went around behind him and across to the sideboard. The shaking had stopped; my hands were steady. I put ice in the glass, picked up the heavy decanter. And then I just stood there.

Annalise. Annalise and Fred Cutter. The twenty-six thousand she took with her—gone or almost gone. The clothing manufacturer, the shot at being a fashion designer—gone, too. A different kind of life on the edge now, after only eight months. Back to working at shitty jobs, like the one she'd had in San Francisco. Bedding down with a muscle-bound halfwit, resorting to blackmail. Scraping bottom.

Outside, the wind was rising. I could hear it making a frenzied rattle in the palm fronds, feel its sultry breath swirling in through the open terrace doors.

"Hey," Cutter said, "hurry up with that drink. I'm dying over here."

I turned around. He was leaning forward, rubbing slick off his face again. There was a wet spot on the back of his shirt, too, between the shoulder blades. Another geometric shape, this one a ragged-edged circle with a darker circle in the middle where the cloth stuck to his skin. It reminded me of something, but I couldn't think what it was. Couldn't seem to think clearly at all.

Twenty-six thousand. Five thousand. Another twenty-five thousand. And more bites to come, little ones and big ones until they bled me dry.

Screaming, that wind. Like jumbees in the night.

Some piece. Great in bed. Suck the varnish off a table leg. Lucky to hang on to her as long as you did.

It was as if the coming storm, the jumbees, were inside me now. Blowing hot and wild. Screaming.

Cutter and his Good man, good man. Cutter and his smarmy grin. Cutter the lowlife blackmailer. Hurry up, I'm dying over here—I don't remember crossing the room.

I don't remember hitting him with the decanter.

One second I was standing in front of the sideboard, looking over at him, the storm wind shrieking inside my head, and the next I was beside the chair staring down at him on the floor. The back of his head was crushed and there was blood mixed with rum streaked over the fair hair, blood and rum on the floor, blood and gore on the decanter and spattered across my shirtfront.

I knew then what that sweat stain on the back of his shirt reminded me of.

It looked exactly like a target.

Either I dropped the decanter or it slipped out of my hand, I don't know which. The sound of it hitting the tile floor dragged my gaze away from Cutter. An edge of the heavy cut glass had gouged a triangular chip out of a tile.

Now how am I going to fix that? I thought.

I kept on standing there. Looking at him again, at what I'd done to him. The wildness was still inside me, but it had mutated into a near panic overlain with numbness—

What? Yes, I know that sounds contradictory, but it's an accurate description. All the crazy rage and fear held down under the weight of dazed confusion, like a lid on a bubbling pot.

Time seemed to have gone out of whack, to stop and stutter with long spaces between the ticking seconds. I couldn't think; my mind was a wasteland. Then I grew aware of something moving on my cheek, like a fly walking. I raised a hand, brushed at it. The fingers came away wet and sticky. When I looked at them I saw that they were smeared with blood and something else, a whitish gelatinous substance that must have been brain matter. That broke the spell.

Bile pumped thick and hot into the back of my throat. I ran blindly for the bathroom, barely made it to my knees in front of the toilet before the vomit came spewing out. I pliked until there was nothing left but strings of saliva. It left me weak but calmer. I flushed the toilet, rinsed my mouth. Washed the blood off my hands and face. Pulled my shirt off, found more blood spots on my chest and neck and washed those off. Better still by the time I finished, both the wildness and the numbness starting to fade. I went back through the living room, not looking at what lay sprawled on the floor, and out onto the terrace.

The storm clouds were a dark, fast-moving mass, the wind blustery and hot, the air thick with moisture. When the rains came, the downpour would be heavy for a while but the storm wouldn't last long; before morning the skies would be clear again. You get so you don't need the Caribbean Weather Center to gauge the severity and length of each blow, from squalls to hurricanes. I had developed a mariner's eye, ear, and feel for any barometric change and what it meant.

I sat on one of the wrolight-iron chairs, letting the wind fan my naked torso, listening to it moan in the palms and guava trees while I ordered my thoughts. I was all right by then, my mind working more or less clearly again. It seemed incredible that I could have killed a man, any man; that in the span of a few seconds I had gone from blackmail victim to taker of human life. But the fact didn't have as profound an effect on me as I would have believed beforehand. Didn't frighten or disgust or even sicken me any longer. Temporary insanity, irresistible impulse. The product of circumstances and of my dark side. I was sorry it had happened, if not sorry that the life I'd taken was Fred Cutter's, but it was done and I couldn't undo it. The only thing to do now was to find ways to protect myself from the consequences.

I approached it as I'd approached the Amthor crime: as a series of mathematical problems—three of them—to be broken down and solved one at a time, by a combination of logic and creative planning.

First and most important: what to do with the body.

Limited options, on an island of just thirty square miles. The optimum solution would be to take it off the rock, dump it at sea, and let the sharks have it. But that wasn't possible. No way could I transport a dead man onto Windrunner without being seen. The slips at the Sub Base harbor were well lighted at night, and there was a watchman on duty and others like Bone who lived on their boats.

Wait until late and leave the body in Frenchtown or out near one of the beaches? Crime was becoming a problem on the island, and there were occasional acts of violence against tourists; Cutter's death might pass for a mugging or a drug deal gone bad. No, that was no good either. The last thing I wanted was a murder investigation. Suppose one of my neighbors had seen him come here? Suppose he'd mentioned Richard Laidlaw to someone at his hotel, or at the harbor the day before? If he had, and the police found it out, it would bring them straight to my door.

Hide the body in the jungle? There were stretches of dense growth on both Crown Mountain and St. Peter's Mountain, and there'd be very little late-night traffic on the roads during or after a storm. I wouldn't have to carry the body far to conceal it. But the disadvantages outweighed the advantages. It would mean parking on a turnout or overlook—I couldn't just leave the Mini in the middle of the road—and what if a passing police patrol stopped to investigate? Snakes, prowling animals, unseen hazards made a night foray into a tropical jungle dangerous. And even if I managed that part of it, there was no guarantee the remains would stay hidden. Turnout and overlook areas were magnets for road crews, curious tourists, hikers. Dead flesh attracted scavenging animals and carrion birds. If just one human bone surfaced, the rest could be tracked down and identified through forensic means. Even a cold trail might someday lead back to me. I'd always be afraid something like that would happen.

Still, I might have to do it that way. The only other solution I could think of was to cut up the body, get rid of it piecemeal. I liked the irony in that, given the bastard's name, but I knew I didn't have the stomach for such grisly work. Or for that matter, any idea of how to go about it.

I didn't waste any thought on the other two problems. They were secondary concerns until I dealt with the major one. Annalise? No. I wasn't ready to think about her yet. Dangerous to let myself think about her. An emotional overload was what had led me to smash the decanter into Cutter's skull; I couldn't afford to let it happen again and interfere with the job ahead. For the next several hours I had to be as disciplined as I'd been at any time in my life.

The longer I sat there, the icier my resolve and the clearer my thinking. The combination produced another solution to the disposal problem. The best one, if a potential obstacle didn't stand in the way. Bold, clever, audacious—all the adjectives the newspapers had applied to the Amthor crime. I knew I was going to try it. If I were successful, I would have no cause to worry about Fred Cutter's body ever being found.

The blow started shortly after nine. Gusty winds that whipped the trees into a frenzy, scraped palm fronds across the roof tiles, hammered at the closed doors and shutters as if clamoring for admittance; mutters of thunder, flashes of lightning, driving torrents of rain. Even with the jalousies closed I could smell ozone mixed with the sweet fragrances of white ginger and hibiscus.

I had just finished emptying the thing's pockets and rolling it into the yawl's old storm jib that I'd brought home and hadn't gotten around to restitching. The thing. It. That was how I was thinking then. What was wrapped in that piece of Dacron wasn't Fred Cutter, wasn't the shell of a man; it was a thing, an it, a large bundle of trash to be hauled away.

I'd also found a roll of duct tape in the garage and I used strips of it to tightly bind the sail in the middle and on both ends so there would be no leaks. The dead weight put a strain on my arms when I lifted it, lugged it into the kitchen. I'd have to use a fireman's carry after this, I thought as I lowered it to the floor near the side door that led out to the garage.

The storage closet yielded a plastic bucket, some rags, a pair of rubber kitchen gloves. I filled the bucket with warm water and dish soap, found a can of cleanser under the sink. In the living room I cleaned off the decanter first and replaced it on the sideboard. There was still some Arundel inside and I badly wanted a drink, but I didn't let myself have one. No more liquor until after the job was done.

On my hands and knees, I scrubbed the red and gray-white spatters, the spilled rum, off the tiles and the chair and table legs. A few blood spots stained the chair fabric; I couldn't get them out no matter how much elbow grease I used. No sense in worrying about it. People spill things on furniture that leave dark stains; the fabric was a brownish weave and you couldn't tell that the spots were blood. No sense in worrying about the gouge in the floor tile, either. If the real estate agent or his cleaning staff noticed the minor damage, the cleaning deposit would cover it.

When I finished, the wind was still howling but the rain had already let up. Fast-moving storm. The worst of it would be over an hour or so past midnight. I emptied the bucket, rinsed it out, washed off the gloves, put the rags in the washing machine with my stained shirt and pants. Then I went into the bedroom and sat on the bed to look through what I'd taken from Cutter's pockets.

Wallet. Folded piece of paper with a crude map and directions to the villa written in Annalise's backslanting hand—all the proof I needed of her duplicity. Folder of traveler's checks. Handful of change. Room key attached to a piece of plastic with Hotel Caribbean embossed on it. The package of cheroots and a book of matches. That was all. No other keys, and no return airline ticket; those things must be in his hotel room.

The wallet contained $72, three snapshots, and a driver's license, social security card, and U.S. Post Office ID all in the name of Frederick Coder. The address on the Ucense was Hollyoak Street in Yonkers, New York, but the license had been issued in 1977 and the address might or might not be current. There was no street address on the postal identification, but the city was the same.

So his name had been Coder, not Cutter. A small, sly deception in case I had any intention of trying to track him down.

And he'd worked for the Post Office. A mailman? The fact struck me funny. Annalise and a mailman! Some progression she'd gone through. From an accountant and embezzler to a cheating divorce lawyer to a manufacturer of women's clothing to . . . a mailman. From San Francisco to Chicago to Charlotte Amalie to New York City to . . . Yonkers. From a department store buyer to accomplice in a major embezzlement to thief to blackmailer to . . . what? What next, Annalise? Shoplifter, bag lady, hooker? Somebody else's mistress—a truck driver's, a garbage collector's, a pimp's? Yonkers to Harlem or the Bowery? How low can you sink? Not low enough to suit me. Hell wouldn't be low enough to suit me.

It wasn't funny any longer; the anger had begun to burn hot and bitter again. I forced it down, forced the thoughts of her out of my mind. Cold focus. Rigid control.

None of the snapshots was of Annalise. One depicted a much younger Coder (I had to think of him by his real name) in a dark blue suit, and an attractive redheaded woman wearing a white gown and holding a bouquet of flowers. Another in color was of the same redhead, older, heavier, staring at the camera with a tight little leer on her mouth and her middle finger upraised just below the point of her chin. The third was an old black-and-white portrait of a graying, sad-eyed woman. Written on the back of that one in ballpoint pen was "Mom, '62." Fred Coder, the sentimental blackmailer.

Was he still married, screwing Annalise on the side? Possibly, but he hadn't been wearing a wedding ring and he'd implied that he lived alone. And a man would be more likely to keep a photo of an ex-wife giving him the finger than of a current wife making that gesture. Much better for me if he'd been divorced. A wife would likely try to find him when he failed to come home; an ex might never know he'd disappeared, or care if she did know.

I flipped through the folder of traveler's checks. Seven altogether, each in the amount of $50. Except for the "F" and the "C," his signature was an illiterate squiggle like the up-and-down lines on a seismograph or a lie detector graph I'd seen once in a movie. I studied the signature for a time, then located a pen and a pad of paper and tried to duplicate it. The first few attempts, the initials didn't look right, but then I got the hang of it. After a dozen or so, I was able to match the scrawls on the checks fairly closely.

Fatigue had given me a headache, put an abrading graininess in my eyes. I set the alarm clock for two A.M., stripped, shut off the light, and sprawled naked on the bed. I was out in less than a minute.

The alarm dragged me up out of a sticky, restless sleep. I put on the nightstand lamp long enough to take an old pair of blue pants and a dark-blue long-sleeved pullover out of the closet. I dressed in the dark, then rummaged up a clean pair of shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. In the kitchen I reviewed the mental list of items I would need from the house. The flashlight I'd used in the garage earlier. The rubber gloves. A plastic garbage bag. A handful of clean rags. I gathered everything, shut off the light, and went outside.

The wind still blew in noisy glists but it was no longer raining. Some of the humidity was gone; the air had a fresh, sweet taste, the way it does after a storm has passed. Clouds moved sluggishly across the sky now, thick piles of them—cumulonimbus, not rain-swollen cumulus. Here and there you could see a random star shining faintly in a ragged patch of clear. The only lights showing in the neighboring houses were night lights, tiny islands surrounded by restless dark. It would be another couple of hours, I judged, before the cloud cover broke up enough to free the moon and stars.

I shut myself inside the garage. Gloves, garbage bag, rags, and the change of clothes went into the Mini's trunk. The flash beam picked out a folded section of sailcloth I'd planned to use for patching, and the largest shovel among the gardening tools against the back wall. I added the shovel and the torch to the other stuff in the trunk, put the sailcloth on the roof, and left the passenger door standing open.

Back to the house. It was a struggle getting the thing hoisted and slung over my shoulder. Its joints had stiffened with the onset of rigor mortis; I couldn't make it bend all the way in the middle. The dead weight put a staggering strain on my knees as I carried it outside. I stood braced against the door jamb, looking up at the street, listening. No headlights, no engine sounds, nothing but the calls of night birds flying again after the blow. I moved slowly, to keep from stumbling, as I crossed the few yards to the garage.

I eased the thing through the Mini's open passenger door. Getting the legs and arms bent so it would fit low into the seat, the sailcloth draped over and around it to make it look like a shapeless bundle, was a ten-minute chore. I was running sweat by the time I finished.

I waited until I had the Mini out of the driveway onto Quartz Gade before I switched on the headlamps. There was no traffic; I didn't see another car as I came down across Dronningens Gade to Veterans Drive and turned west, and only one, heading in the opposite direction, on the drive to Harwood Highway. The road was deserted in both directions when I made the swing onto the narrow lane that led to the old French cemetery.

What better place to hide a dead thing than in somebody else's grave?

I shut off the lights, coasted up to the closed gates. If the gates had been locked, I would've had no choice but to turn around and head up Crown Mountain. I had neither the tools nor the facility for busting locks, and even if I had I couldn't risk arousing suspicion by breaking and entering. But I'd counted on the gates being unlocked, and they were. The place was ancient, overgrown, not much used anymore. The only reason to lock it up at night was vandalism, and there hadn't been any of that.

The rusted iron squeaked and sprayed me with rain-wet as I pushed the gates open. I ran back to the car. Just as I shut myself inside again, headlights appeared on the main road, coming from the west.

I hunkered down on the seat. For a few seconds the light glare seemed to fill the Mini. If it'd been a police patrol, they'd have stopped, sure as hell, and I would have been as dead as the thing beside me. But it wasn't. The car whooshed past without slowing down.

I let out the breath I'd been holding, straightened up. When the taillights passed out of sight, the highway was a shiny black smear empty in both directions. I drove ahead into the cemetery. Got out quickly to close the gates again.

It was thick dark in there, a place of indistinct shapes like figures on a nightmare landscape. Not enough light filtered through the cloud gaps for me to make out more than a few feet of the rutted mud-and-gravel lane, and the mist-streaked windshield made it even harder to see. I rolled down the window, leaned my head out. Better, but I had to move ahead at a crawl.

I'd been to the cemetery a few times to walk around looking at headstones and grave markers, and once when I followed an old-fashioned Cha-Cha funeral procession led by a robed priest, the coffin balanced on a donkey cart. I remembered the layout of the place. Visualized it, fixed it in my mind, before I put the Mini in gear and crept forward.

Rain puddles had formed in the ruts; the tires splashed deep into a couple of them. Twice I lost sight of the verge, veered off onto softer ground and barely managed to correct in time to keep from getting stuck. When I reckoned I'd gone far enough, I stopped and shut off the engine and got out with the flashlight.

Pale shifting rays of moonshine came and went among the clouds, enough for me to orient myself. I was near one of the branch lanes that led toward the rear wall. I set off that way on foot, shielding the flash beam with my hand and aiming it downward. The whitewashed tombs seemed to shine faintly, as if with an inner ghost light; the trees were like shadowy, skeletal figures performing weird gyrations. In the night hush, the sound of dripping water rose above the mutter of the wind. My shoes and pantlegs were sodden before I'd gone fifty yards.

The older section I came to was heavily overgrown with grass and vines and gnarled sapodilla and gumbo-limbo trees, all but forgotten. I prowled a short distance through the tangle until I found what I was looking for, under the sprawling branches of a gumbo-limbo and half hidden from the lane by a scabrous tomb. If it hadn't been for the lean of a wooden marker, you wouldn't have been able to tell that there was a grave beneath the thick grass mat. I shone the torch briefly on the marker. So old that the wood was split and insect-pitted, and whatever had been written on it had completely faded away.

I drove the Mini as close to the grave as I could. I pried the thing out of the passenger seat, using the handle of the shovel to loosen one of the stiffened legs, then carried it through the wet grass and dumped it a dozen feet from the grave. To the car again for the shovel and the piece of Dacron and the rubber gloves. When I had the sailcloth spread on the grass, I paced off a distance of six feet back from the marker and dug the rough, shallow outline of a rectangle six feet long by two feet wide. I cut the inside of the rectangle into small squares. These I dug up in three-inch-deep clods, setting them aside under the tree one by one to preserve the tall stalks of grass. Then I scooped out the new grave, shoveling the muddy soil onto the Dacron.

It was hot, filthy work. But not as hard as you might think. The clearing sky now shed enough moonlight and starshine to give me some visibility. The earth was sandy and moist from the rain; the only difficulty I had was chopping through straggles of tree root. I don't know how long it took to open up that six-by-two rectangle to a depth of six feet. There were no visible lights, no sounds except for the wind and the dripping water and the bite of the shovel into the earth—nothing to make me aware of the passage of time.

The muscles in my back and shoulders were on fire by the time I'd gone deep enough to uncover the buried coffin. There wasn't much left of it, just rotted crumbles of wood; the blade sliced through and clanged against something that sounded like bone. I scraped away shreds of wood and flung the pieces up onto the pile of dirt, widening and deepening the hole a little more. The flashlight was hooked onto my belt; I turned it on to take a quick look at the partly exposed skeleton and the grave walls. Deep enough, wide enough.

I climbed out, wet to the skin and covered in slick mud, a quivering in my arms and legs from the strain of digging. For a little time I sat under the gumbo-Umbo with my back against the trunk to rest. When my strength returned, I went to Uft the thing again and haul it to the grave. It wouldn't lie flat when I dropped it in, and I had to get down there with it and use the shovel in a couple of ways I'd rather not talk about. It fitted the space well enough when I finished.

I shoveled and scraped most of the dirt back in. Picked up the ends of the sail and dumped in the rest. Firmed it down, replaced the clods of grass, dragged over a couple of dead tree limbs and some brush and vines. You could still see the seams here and there, tell that somebody had been excavating, but you had to be standing right on the spot. From a distance of a few feet there were no visible signs of disturbance; I put the light on briefly to make sure. If nobody came poking around back here in the next week or so, enough new grass would sprout to hide the seams completely.

I shook out the sailcloth, folded it, took it and the shovel back to the Mini. Off with the gloves and filthy clothing, into the garbage bag with them and the rags I used to scrub mud off my arms and face. On with the clean shirt and shorts. I rested again for a time before I started the engine and got the car turned around.

The highway was deserted when I reached the gates. It stayed that way as I rolled through and closed them behind me and turned toward Charlotte Amalie. My hands were steady on the wheel. I drove slowly, carefully. None of the handful of other cars I passed was a police patrol, and none of the drivers paid any attention to me.

Home safe and sound. Exhalisted, so relieved I was weak and tin-gUng. I admit to a feeling of exhilaration, too—the kind you can't help but feel after a dangerous job well done.

There were still a few things left to do. In the garage, I dropped the plastic bag into the trash can, rinsed off the shovel and the Dacron in the utility sink and put them away, and hosed mud spatters off the Mini. In the house, I scrubbed down under a long, hot shower. Afterward, I shaved off my beard and mustache, then used a pair of scissors and a hand mirror to trim my hair all around—preparations for the solution to the next problem.

It was full dawn when I crawled into bed for few hours' sleep.

The Hotel Caribbean was a small, old-fashioned hotel on Kronprind-sens Gade off Market Square, built before World War II when the Virgins were sleepy islands and the tourist trade was at a relative minimum.

It's long gone now. In the early eighties it was staggering along on its last legs, catering to small package-tour groups and individuals who wanted a little island ambiance on the relative cheap. Naturally Fred Coder had gravitated there; it was the only inexpensive hotel in the downtown area.

The lobby was crowded when I walked in at ten o'clock. It was my first visit to the hotel, so there was little danger of my being recognized as Richard Laidlaw. Shaved, hair trimmed, talcum powder lightening my sun-weathered skin, wearing a Madras shirt and white slacks, I blended right in with the snowbirds. I was even blue-eyed that morning, the first time I'd been out in public without the tinted contacts since I'd been on St. Thomas—unnecessary, but I was still feeling bold. I crossed straight to the elevators as if I belonged there and rode up to the second floor.

Cotler's room was at the rear. I let myself in with the tagged key. Stuffy little box, its single window overlooking a corner of the hotel garden and most of the gravel parking lot—probably the cheapest accommodations the Hotel Caribbean had to offer. The maid hadn't been there yet that day; the bed was rumpled, the glass-topped teak nightstand littered with cigar ash, an ashtray cradling a couple of cheroot butts, and an empty beer bottle and several wet-rings. The room stank of stale cigar smoke.

I looked in the nightstand drawer first. Empty except for the usual Gideon Bible. In the closet, half a dozen shirts and pants on hangers and an imitation leather suitcase. I opened the suitcase on the bed, checked through all the pockets inside and out. Coder's American Airlines return ticket was in one of them. Economy fare, the cheapest available judging from the rate. From what I knew of airline practices, economy fares were nonrefundable; if a ticket wasn't used, it was immediately canceled, the passenger's seat was given to somebody else, and no permanent record of the cancellation was kept. I called the American counter at the airport later to make sure.

The rest of Coder's clothing was in one of the bureau drawers—underwear, socks, T-shirts, an extra belt. The only personal item in the bathroom was his toilet kit, and it contained nothing other than his ring of keys and the usual travel items. The only other place in the room to look was under the bed; I found nothing there but a freshly dead roach. I was satisfied then that Coder hadn't brought anything with him that pointed to Jordan Wise or Richard Laidlaw. Or to Annalise.

Had he told anyone other than Annalise that he was going to St. Thomas? Probably not. You don't advertise a trip you're making for the sole purpose of extorting money from a fugitive. He could be traced here, of course, once his disappearance was reported, but only if someone cared enough about him to pursue an investigation—someone other than Annalise. The police in places like Yonkers don't have enough manpower to run thorough backchecks on every missing-person case. If Cotler was traced to the island, the odds were good that his trail would lead no farther than the Hotel Caribbean. And I was about to make those odds even better.

I gathered up Coder's belongings and packed them into the suitcase, double-checking to make sure I had everything before I left the room. Tourists often carry their own bags in a hotel like the Caribbean; I attracted no attention on my way to the desk.

Both clerks, a man and a woman, were native blacks. All to the good. The woman waited on me. Professional smile, and only the briefest of eye contact when I put the key down and said, "Checking out, please."

She got the bill from the file, studied it for a few seconds before making eye contact again. "Is anything wrong, Mr. Cotler?"

"Wrong?"

"Your room is reserved for two more days."

She said it without suspicion. That and her calling me Mr. Cotler put me at ease. There'd been only a slight chance that any of the hotel staff would know I wasn't Fred Cotler; too many tourists come and go for them to equate names with faces. And West Indian blacks tend to regard snowbirds the same way Annalise had regarded natives, though not necessarily for the same reason—not as individuals but as see-through members of a class and race to be dealt with and immediately forgotten. If by some quirk the woman had noticed I wasn't Cotler, I would have told her he'd asked me to check out for him. As it was, I said, "No, no, nothing wrong. Just have to cut the vacation short, is all. Business reasons."

"I'm sorry you'll be leaving us so soon." taught to say that, and the next by-rote sentence: "Will you need help with your luggage?"

"Not necessary."

She slid the bill around for me to look at. The only charges on it other than the room rate were a $38 bar and room service tab—no long-distance phone calls. The total came to just under $300.

"Will you be paying by credit card, sir?"

"No," I said, "traveler's checks."

I signed all seven left in the folder. She glanced at the top one to make sure the signatures matched—just a glance—and after that looked only at the denomination on the rest as she counted them. She shuffled the checks together, put them into a cash drawer. Gave me another see-through smile along with the change and a copy of the bill.

"Please come and see us again, Mr. Cotler."

Not in this life, I thought, and smiled back at her, and walked out carrying all that was left of Fred Coder's short visit to St. Thomas.

Two problems solved, provisionally. What happened next was up to luck or fate or whatever you wanted to call it. And up to what Annalise did when Cotler failed to return with the blackmail money.

Annalise.

I let myself think about her then. The anger had gone cold. For the time being I could consider her and her role in all this with unemotional detachment.

I tried to put myself in her position, to think as she would think. She would probably call the Hotel Caribbean eventually, and when she was told that Cotler had checked out, she might call the airline to ask if he'd used his ticket or taken another flight. But they wouldn't tell her anything. Airline passenger manifests are confidential as far as the general public is concerned; government and law enforcement agencies could get the information, no one else. I'd checked on that, too, when I called American and verified their economy cancellation policy.

What would she think then? The obvious was that Cotler had gotten the payoff, maybe even a bigger payoff than they'd planned, and run out on her with it. She might believe that, if she wasn't too sure of him and if he had little money and no other valuables or ties in Yonkers. Even if she had doubts, it wouldn't occur to her that I could be responsible. To her I would always be Jordan Wise, accountant—a passive personality in spite of the Amthor crime and the Richard Laidlaw persona, a man incapable of violence. I would have said the same about myself before Cotler. She wouldn't contact me. Still wouldn't want me to know she was in on the extortion. And she wouldn't go to the police. For all her craving for excitement and danger, and all her drunken antics, Annalise was fiercely self-protective. The same as I was.

Still, she had an unpredictable side. Her sudden disappearance the previous year proved that. It was possible she'd do something unexpected, something brazen and foolish and threatening to both of us.

Time would tell. All I could do was wait and see.

I was too restless to return to my daily routine, and I wasn't about to sit around counting the hours. The Weather Center forecast was for clear skies and winds of from ten to fifteen knots, good sailing weather, so I took Windrunner out the next morning. Coder's suitcase went along with me, hidden inside a large cardboard box for transport and then stowed belowdecks. And when I was out near the Kingfish Banks, no other boats in sight, I weighted it with a couple of heavy and dispensable wrenches and consigned it to the briny deep.

The course I'd set was for Laidlaw Cay. I anchored just inside the reef on the lee side. Swam, fished, watched the nesting terns and frigate birds, napped under one of the screw palms. An hour before sunset I rowed back to the yawl, ate my supper on deck while the rainbow colors appeared and shifted and blended like patterns in a kaleidoscope. After dark, I sat with my back to the deckhouse and sipped Arundel and watched the constellations in the night sky. It was so clear the stars in the Milky Way burned like points of white fire.

Two more days and nights at sea, and the restlessness was gone and I was poison-free again.

Shortly after docking, I talked to Bone. He was the best source I knew of local news. Nothing had happened in the three-plus days I'd been gone that I didn't want to hear about. Later I read through recent issues of the Virgin Islands Daily News and the St. Thomas Source, just to make sure.

A week passed.

Two weeks.

Still no mention in the papers or on the radio of anything amiss at the old French cemetery. Or of a missing snowbird named Fred Cotler. No one called, or wrote, or came to see me except Bone.

I moved out of the Quartz Gade villa the first week in December. If the cleaning crew noted the gouge in the floor tile or the blood spots on the chair fabric, they didn't report it; I heard nothing from the real estate agent or the absentee owners. A short time later, I received a check for the full amount of the cleaning deposit.

By then I knew I was going to get away with the Cotler crime, too.