Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 123, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 751 & 752, March/April 2004

The Foreigner’s Watch by Patricia McFall

A writing instructor who ran the extension programs at Cal State Fullerton from 1999–2002, Patricia McFall has done some exceptional work in the crime genre. Her debut mystery, 1992’s Night Butterfly, was chosen one of the year’s ten best crime novels by the L.A. Times, and of her first mystery short story, published in the book Mystery Street, the Boston Herald said: “worth the price of the paperback.” Ms. McFall says her ambition now is to “write one worth the price of a hardcover.”

Tim Alter separated the hotel curtains, turning his back on his crew mate Jackson, who had claimed the better twin bed by throwing his duffel right in the middle of it. Tim wanted to see if there was any kind of view, any sign of this “insurrection” along the coast that had kept them from their original port. Another stop on the Asian leg of the yacht race, the last in a string of watery towns whose names he couldn’t pronounce and probably wouldn’t remember. Tim closed the curtains in disgust at the sight of a three-inch-long cockroach on the water pipe just outside the window. The view beyond was nothing but a brick wall. It must have been the heat that grew things so large in this sweaty part of the world. Tim’s policy was to stay with the air conditioning and try not to think about anything.

“You coming?” Jackson said in a voice so flat with lack of enthusiasm that it told what answer he wanted.

“Don’t think so.”

Jackson looked relieved. He was basically a good guy, and he probably sympathized even if he hadn’t seen what actually happened. It wasn’t Tim’s fault, but the skipper still thought it was. Everyone would be listening to him relive how Tim had supposedly waited too long to give the sign. Tim wasn’t going to sit there and pretend he didn’t know the skipper had been the one to delay, the damned sail wrapping around the mast like a dead sailor’s shroud. The race was dead enough now, and it was easier for the skipper to blame his crew leader than say he was the one who messed up himself. Losing was bad enough, but then the boat had been rerouted down the coast, and they were all tired as well as disappointed. Going out with them was an impossible choice: Tim could either keep his job or keep his pride. He simply chose not to choose.

Jackson stood, silhouetted in the open doorway. “We have two taxis waiting. There’s room.”

“No, really. I’m tired. Go on.”

Jackson, his duty met, shot out the door without another word.

Tim showered quickly and, since he didn’t like to be alone, took the stairs down the four dank, warm flights to the lobby level rather than wait for the unreliable elevator. There was supposed to be a nightclub, though the International Hotel didn’t look big enough for much. It was about the only game inside the walled compound, though. By the time he got to the lobby, the rest of the racing crew had gone into town to submerge the loss in local alcohol. No taxis anywhere. He was glad he’d begged off. Even outside the lounge, Tim heard music thumping against the wall. He nodded at the doorman as he entered, the beat louder now, a series of detonations. Good. He didn’t want to think, just sit and have a couple of beers, maybe dance if there were any good-looking women. Usually in these clip joints they made sure there were, even if they had to scrounge them up from the next town over or whatever. Even if you had to pay for the lady’s drinks and God knew what else.

Jackson had said that the International compound was built as R&R for American servicemen back during the Vietnam War, and it looked old enough. Tim pictured his father here, wild young version who flew helicopters, pretty impressed with himself, a girl on each arm, but oblivious to the greed and desperation in their glances. The last time Tim had seen his father, the old man had bragged about feeling invincible, being invincible. “I’m still around, aren’t I?” said Dad. “Most of the guys I knew didn’t have what it took.”

Tim had just looked at him, realizing that he was older than his father had been during his Asian tour. Still no clue, his old man. No survivor’s guilt, no respect for the cosmic roll of the dice, flip of the coin, track of the bullet that said you live, you die. “Maybe you’re still alive because of dumb luck, not because you control the universe. I thought combat was supposed to teach you that,” Tim would tell him one day.

The nightclub’s dim lighting disguised how run-down it was. Tables and chairs surrounded what passed for a dance floor in front of a stage where a cover band’s full-on amps disguised how badly they played. Besides some tourist couples and a few other Westerners, there were two tables where local women and men in same-gender groups sat eyeing while pretending not to notice each other. Everyone shouted over the music. The air conditioner was inadequate, and you could feel the bodies marinating. Tim decided that this nightclub, beached in a foreign land’s second-rate port town with a sign in English over the bandstand proclaiming its name Opportunity, this outpost at the end of the known world, with its mood of lust without expectation, fit his mood exactly.

He seated himself at the bar, knowing they could charge you ten times as much if you sat at a table, where several thirsty women might swarm you within seconds. Just when he’d decided he was only there to watch the show, he saw a white woman come through the door alone. Maybe she’d found exactly the right place, too — whether it was a lost yacht race or some psychic defeat, it didn’t matter here. Thin and fair and almost unremarkable, she wasn’t beautiful. But her gray-blue eyes were, the expression at once hopeless and still searching for next of kin. It was as though life had been a terrible swindle up until now, and her very ill-fortune made her believe her luck had to change. Somehow he could tell she wasn’t American. He guessed British; you found them everywhere. She was walking toward the bar, toward him.

Before she could say anything, Tim said, “Hello. Fancy a drink?”

In a clear English accent, she said, “That would be lovely,” floating weightlessly onto the barstool beside his, leaning in to be heard and extending a fine-boned white hand. It was small and pale, trembling like a dove trapped in his suntanned, work-weathered hand. “I’m Ann Gamble. Would you be one of the yachtsmen, then?”

Tim smiled. “Word must get around,” he said, gesturing for the bartender, who brought a drink to Ann without being told. Tim’s smile turned into a laugh. “Guess that saves me the line where I ask if you come here often.”

“Oh dear, how embarrassing, but I won’t deny it. My elbows have worn a hole in the bar by now, believe me.”

“I believe you.” He ordered a San Miguel beer for himself; safer to get something in a bottle. “So you live here?”

“I won’t deny that, either.”

The band took a break, so they were able to talk without shouting, though a stereo now played the unintelligible minor-key wailing of singers who must be complaining about being stuck in a place like this all their lives.

But Ann was no complainer. She was a good listener, and Tim felt easy talking to her, even if he held back telling her the reason why he was in the nightclub by himself rather than with the rest of the crew. He said, “I was here so I could meet you.”

She blinked. Perhaps with her British reserve she was surprised at his forwardness. While she assimilated his interest in her, she was silent. Then she surprised him in exchange by asking, “Do you dance, Tim?”

The band had returned, and after one fast version of “Roxanne,” turned to slow enough numbers for Tim to get by on the dance floor. Several other couples were out there, too, so nobody could really tell what he was doing with his feet. In a heavy accent, the singer was saying she was every woman in the world to him. And there was some kind of magic in the brothlike air, because for a few minutes, with Ann light in his arms, Tim forgot where he was, the dance transporting him as though it were a ritual. Didn’t the Hindus believe that? It didn’t have to make sense. He pictured a cloud in a hot turquoise Asian sky, the image of a naked goddess, dancing. He wondered if Ann’s light linen dress would slip off easily, what she might be wearing underneath, what she’d look like naked. But it went farther than that. He wondered what she would look like with sleep in those seeking eyes, barely focusing in the morning. Maybe every morning.

During the next break they had more to drink, and Ann told him why the boat had been rerouted down the coast. There was savage fighting between government troops and rebels, moving south along the coast. A lot of people were getting ready to leave, she said, but she thought she’d stay. Tim’s mind was still getting away from him, wishing he wasn’t in bad with the skipper, thinking they might take her along. He needed to clear his head, and the steady intake of beer on an empty stomach wasn’t helping. “If you’re hungry, let’s get something to eat,” he suggested. “There’s a restaurant here, right?”

They situated themselves in the cafe, and when he returned from using the men’s room he knew he was way too happy to see her quietly sitting there, as though he’d been half expecting her to disappear, to get away. In the middle of dinner, he asked her, “Why don’t you leave if things are getting dangerous?”

She smiled sadly. “The rebels have been fighting for a long time. It’s simply unusual for them to be this far south. The action is usually to the north, near the border. The embassies haven’t sent out any advisories for the southern provinces.”

“Yet,” he said.

She paused. “Anyway, here we are in a tourist compound, and I can’t imagine they’d want to bother with us. I can’t afford to leave on my own, and if we’re evacuated, well, they’ll have to send me home free of charge, won’t they?” She was obviously trying to make light of a serious situation. Tim wanted to help but didn’t know how to put it without acting like a jerk forcing himself into her life, so he let the topic die.

As if by agreement, they ordered a bottle of champagne with dinner, celebrating something nameless but singular. Tim didn’t want the meal to end, and when it did, he didn’t want the evening to end, but Ann said she didn’t want to go back into the cabaret. Feeling like a teenager, he asked her for a date he was sure he wasn’t going to get: “Would you like to go anywhere else, show me around a little?”

Again, Ann’s silence bore weight. “It’s probably cooled off outside,” she said at last, “but it’s getting late, so why don’t we just go for a walk?”

They could hear the music playing out on the beach side of the hotel, and they danced on the sand, maneuvering themselves closer together. When the music stopped, Tim thanked the moon for being full and clear and unapologetically romantic as they walked away from the harbor and along the deserted silver strip of water, his arm around her shoulders. She didn’t tell him not to kiss her, so he tried that, too, and she was surprisingly responsive, in her soft, sweet way. She pulled back gently and said, “Would you like some sherry?”

He knew that she meant in her room.

“I’d love to,” he murmured, kissing her forehead.

As a long-term guest, Ann had a cottage with a beach view, still inside the walled compound of the hotel. Compared with his very basic room, it was not at all bad: rattan furniture with striped green and white cushions around a coffee table on which were a vase of fresh flowers, a decanter with two glasses, and a photograph album. The book’s cover was tapestry depicting airplanes, babies, graduates, wedding bells, photographs, suitcases, the word Memories woven into the fabric among the images.

Ann offered and poured sherry from the decanter. Tim wanted to know everything about her all at once, so he said nothing.

Instead, he flipped open the album to the middle. “Oh, sorry.” He’d turned to a wedding picture of Ann and some guy with thick glasses and an intelligent face.

“Don’t be sorry. You see—” She was clearly trying with her expression to preempt Tim’s reaction — “David is gone — but not what you’re thinking. He may not be dead.” She looked at Tim as though he could tell her where David was if she asked him nicely enough. “Oh dear, I’m making a mess of it. Let me start over.”

She took the book from Tim, closed it, put it firmly on the table, and picked up her sherry glass with a shaking hand, composing herself as she took a sip. She set the glass down and began slowly, “My husband David is a journalist. He was covering the rebels near the border. He vanished a year ago after he’d gone to interview one of the rebel leaders. There’s been no word since, no indication he was kidnapped. In fact, the rebels say not. The government men have all been bribed for information, but nobody seems to know what happened to him. His mates and I have tried everything. I’ve run through my money. All I have left is this,” she said, reaching into a pocket in the skirt of her dress. She brought out a beautiful wrist watch and like a hypnotist held it up swinging, the band gleaming gold and flashing diamonds and emeralds. “I’ve been to this sort of pawnshop in the Chinese section twice,” she went on, handing Tim the watch while she got a business card from her pocket. “The second time I worked up the courage to go inside and ask for an estimate of what it was worth. More than enough to get me back to England without borrowing any more from my family, but I couldn’t do it. You see, it’s all that I have left from David. I sold the rest. Now the trouble’s moving south, I should go back and get the money and go, but I’m such a coward.”

Her eyes were brimming with tears as she turned to him, obviously upset that she’d made this confession to a near stranger. “It’s a year today he disappeared, and I know I’ve taken advantage of your kindness. I don’t want to be alone and—”

Tim didn’t know what to say to comfort her, it was all so complicated and sad. He mumbled, “Don’t apologize, Ann, I’m just glad I met you—”

And then he found himself grabbing her, kissing her with a spontaneous passion that almost scared him, the desire like an uncontrolled storm, pulling off the linen dress and finding her body lovely, its contours a perfect fit with his own, their movements as sure as the tides.

A very long time later, she slept.

But Tim Alter sat awake in Ann’s bed thinking until the sun rose. He had a plan by then, a way to make everything come out right. He wasn’t going to let her down, had to help. It was the right thing to do. He took the watch and the business card from the nightstand, picked his way silently across the room to his clothes, dressed, and left the room. He headed back to the hotel along the shore and through the trees, maybe a couple of blocks, not surprised to find the front desk abandoned at this early hour. But the lights were all out, the hall lit very dimly from windows at each end, and he reached his room with rising apprehension. Tim knew something was way off when he saw both his and Jackson’s bags gone, and a note left on his bed saying, “Where in hell WERE you? Get to the boat NOW or we’re leaving you behind. J.”

His heart beating fast, Tim took the stairs two at a time. There was nobody in the lobby, no cabs out front. He ran out of the hotel compound, all the way to the excuse for a harbor, not much more than a marina. He was going to ask the skipper to pay him off right now, let him stay behind.

Then he saw it. There were the slips, but no boats. None. All gone, except a couple of sampan-looking things with men loading bundles. He knew that asking them what was going on would be a waste of time. He went back to the International, now saw that there were a few people around, and he stopped a man he recognized, in a hotel uniform, and asked him for an explanation. “There is no cause for worry, sir. Just some soldiers are going to be using our harbor, sir.”

“What do you mean not worry? My boat’s gone!”

“Yes, sir, every foreign boat left very early, but you can reach your boat farther down the coast. You see, here is the car that takes you down there,” he said, pointing out a cab that had come up the circular drive. “Please don’t worry. He will take you. Your room was already paid, sir, and your friends have your belongings with them.”

Well, that was good news, at least. “Look, I have to take care of something first.” The desk man seemed honest enough, but there was no way he’d ask him to return the watch to Ann. Besides, his plan might still work. He could come back.

The uniformed man was jabbering with the driver and shaking his head as he called out, “Mr. Alter, sir, he cannot stay. The ride takes more than an hour, sir, and they are waiting for you.”

There seemed to be no choice. Tim got into the backseat of the cab and tried English. The driver spoke a little, so after they’d pulled out, he explained that he would like to stop at an address on the way. Without getting out the watch, Tim slipped the card from his pocket and handed it to him, saying, “I want to go here for a few minutes. I’ll pay you extra to do that.”

“I don’t want trouble,” the driver said, looking gravely at him in the rearview mirror.

“It’s all right,” Tim said with force. “I’ll take responsibility. I can pay.”

All the people who weren’t around the hotel complex must have come into the city, Tim thought. The crowds were so bad that the cab crawled among pedestrians and pedicabs, an old lady carrying a monkey in a bamboo cage. The day was hot again already, the people edgy, sullen, unwilling to yield though the driver honked with annoying frequency. The place smelled like an open sewer. A boy spit at the windshield as the car crept by, then turned and dodged between people down the mouth of an alley, his tattered clothes flying as he shoved past a group of men gathered there. The cab’s radio droned incomprehensibly.

By the time they’d reached the Chinese pawnshop where Ann said all the foreigners did business, Tim had almost decided to turn back, but then he realized that he couldn’t go back with the watch and have to explain why he’d taken it for no reason. Besides, the crowds were much sparser here, farther inland from the harbor. He pressed some cash into the driver’s hand to overcome the unreliability he read in the man’s apprehensive expression.

“It’s okay. I’ll be right back,” Tim told him. “Don’t go anywhere.”

The inside was dark, but the old pawnbroker was there, sitting in the back on a stool behind a glass counter. “I’ve brought this in for Ann Gamble,” Tim explained.

Without speaking or giving any sign of knowing Ann’s name, the old man put his hand out for whatever it was this time, and when he saw the gems on the lady’s watchband, he reached into a pocket of his apron, brought out a loupe with a light inside, and considered them carefully, nodding at last in recognition.

Not even offering to bargain, he reached into another pocket and counted out a pile of money onto the glass. Tim did a fast calculation, saw that it was at least eighteen hundred dollars, more than enough to take care of both of them, even if the boat and the skipper and the crew left without him. Relieved, Tim grabbed the big wad of money, took a paper the man scratched out, and almost ran for the door, stuffing cash into his pockets.

As soon as he got outside, he saw the cab was gone.

No, there it was. Well up the block, slowly driving away through the throngs. He pushed along the gutter trying to catch it, waving his arms and yelling, but had to give it up as hopeless after half a block. Now what? Find a pedicab? Call another taxi? He turned back. His yelling had drawn attention from the far end of the side street where a group of young men approached, one in front shaking his head and waving him away, “No good for you here. You go home now,” he shouted, looking more worried than angry.

Something inside Tim cleared then, like a lifting fog, and he knew what he had to do. He should never have taken her watch without telling her, it wasn’t his call, and he couldn’t be out on the street carrying this kind of cash. The watch he could hide, the wads of money he couldn’t. He smiled at his accosters with harmless good will, backing up to the pawnshop, going inside again. They didn’t follow him; maybe he was just a sideshow. He went back to the old man, put the money on the counter, and put out his hand.

The old man counted the money, then shook his gray head. “Need ten percent more.”

“No. I changed my mind.”

“You make deal.” Again the old man shook his head. He wasn’t going to budge.

The watch wasn’t on the counter, but Tim reached over and grabbed the front of his apron. “I said no deal. Now give it back.”

The old man was surprisingly strong. Tim’s angle was not a good one, leaning over the counter. He let go suddenly, pushing him hard, and the old man fell backwards over his stool, his head striking the shelf behind him as he slid to the floor. It was very still then, the sounds of the city crowds muffled by his own fear breathing fast. The pawnbroker didn’t move, and Tim dashed around to the back of the counter, tried to rouse him, lifted him to see a small puddle of blood under the loose, limp old head. He looked at the face then. The eyes were dead. The man was dead.

He checked himself, saw blood on his right hand. Repulsed, he tried to shake it clean, instead speckling the man’s apron front and chin with red spray. He steeled himself, reached into the pockets with tears of panic and desperation welling in his eyes, and gasped in relief when he found the watch, Ann’s watch.

His mind like four blank walls, Tim forced himself to walk, not run, from the store. As he closed the door behind him, he heard shouting down the street, then glass breaking and automobile horns, so he walked up the street, in the direction from which he’d come in the cab. He shoved his hand into his pocket to hide the blood and, touching paper, realized he still had the money.

But there was no going back now.

He was pushing against a crowd that wanted to go toward trouble, not away. A boy with no front teeth laughed at him, punching him in the arm.

What was he going to do when he got back to the hotel? How to explain himself? How to explain that the man was dead, but it wasn’t intentional, and that he hadn’t meant to end up with both the watch and the money? Behind him was shouting, a gang of boys and men, some with improvised clubs and blades. He kept moving forward even when someone struck him in the ribs, then a stunning blow over his ear. It ought to hurt, but didn’t. Did they know about the pawnbroker? Is that why they were after him? An angry human whirlpool, part festival and part riot, swirled around and past him. Windows shattered. In the distance, he heard sirens. He was very dizzy but kept walking as though toward a goal. The watch was still clenched in his hand, and he held it to his ear. It was ticking like a heart as he staggered ahead, one foot in front of the other. Finally he put it back in his pocket, some part of him advising him to hide it.

A police car was pulling through the crowd, and Tim put his hands up in the air, waving them, but that made him even dizzier. He stumbled back against a building, where he realized that he was hurt, that pain was a helmet crushing his head, a serpent coiling, squeezing the breath from his lungs. He pressed one arm against his side, saw the Asian man wearing a uniform, the crowd parting for his drawn gun, continuing to shout and jeer. Tim no longer knew what he hoped for, which he would choose, an honest policeman or a corrupt one. Maybe the man would speak English. Maybe he would understand. Maybe he never even got a report of a dead shopkeeper.

Tim could only look down now. He sank as though inside a great funnel, rivulets of blood coursing down the arm clenched to his ribs, dripping off his fingertips into his right shoe. Ann was waiting for him, must have found him gone, her watch gone and thought... and thought...

If he could only get back to her, he could explain. He could explain everything.