Bob Morris_Zack Chasteen 02 (19 page)

“Me, too.”

“You, too, what?”

“I miss you,” she said. “And I’m beginning to wonder just what in hell I’m doing here.”

“Thought you were having fun.”

“Oh, I am. Kinda. Not really. Oh, not at all,” she said. “Should have stayed at home.”

“Why?”

“It’s a control thing, you wouldn’t understand.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning you never have to worry about being in control of what’s going on around you because you are in control no matter where you are.”

“Believe me, I’m in control of nothing that’s going on around me right now. I can’t seem to get a handle on anything.”

“But you will. You’ll find a way. Because that’s who you are.
You can plop down anywhere and you’re still the same Zack. You’ve got everything you need within you. You’re that army of one, like in those commercials they run to get kids to sign up for the military.”

“Stupid commercials.”

“Yes, but that’s you through and through. You’re self-contained. You define yourself. Me, I need my office, my people, the phone ringing all the time, this emergency to deal with, that fire to put out. It tells me who I am, and I’m feeling a little cut off from all that here, and I’m out of my element and, yes, I’m a little drunk.”

“Don’t you think that’s what Hockelmann had in mind?”

“What, getting me drunk?”

“No, taking you out of your element, putting you on his turf. Getting you drunk was just a bonus.”

“Oh yes, that’s absolutely what he had in mind. I knew it when he suggested I get on his stupid jet and fly over here with him. I knew it was just a power thing. It’s just that I thought I could cope with it better than I seem able to.”

“So what you’re saying is that, basically, you are a control freak and you can’t stand letting someone else be in charge of things and calling all the shots.”

“Yes, that’s it exactly. I make no bones about it. Only when I’m with you my whole control neurosis shuts off and I don’t feel that need to . . .”

“Boss people around?”

“Yes, that. What do you think that means, Zack?”

“I think it means you’re having some real misgiving about selling Orb to Aaron Hockelmann.”

“Oh, I know that. I’ve already made my mind up. I can’t possibly do it, no matter how much money he throws at me and, believe me, he is throwing a lot,” Barbara said. “But what about the other part, Zack? Why is it that I’m not like that when I’m with you?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Zack?”

“Yes?”

“Why is that?”

“I don’t know exactly.”

“Me either. But it’s that way, isn’t it? We go good together, don’t we?”

“Yes,” I said. “We do.”

My standby flight was at noon, so I got up early, went for a long walk, hit the Libido breakfast buffet, dropped by Darcy Whitehall’s house—he was still gone, Ali and Alan were still in bed—and was on the A1 to Montego Bay before 9
A.M.

They’d reopened the airport to traffic, and I found a spot under covered parking to leave the Mercedes for a couple of days. Then I went through immigration and security and sat in the Air Jamaica terminal for more than an hour only to learn there wouldn’t be a seat for me on the noon flight. The only guaranteed seating was on a 7:30
P.M.
flight to Miami. I took it.

No way I was going to sit in the terminal until then. So I did the whole immigration and customs thing again, got the Mercedes out of parking, and thought about the best way to kill an afternoon. I thought about eating, but I didn’t want to eat. I thought about drinking, but I didn’t want to drink. That didn’t leave much to do but drive, so I drove.

I followed the Queen’s Road to a butt-puckering, four-lane roundabout and let it spit me out where it wanted. I wound up on a road that followed the gentle curve of the broad harbor and I looked out on the water.

Three hundred years earlier the Spanish were drawn to this
point of land by the large number of wild pigs that roamed the shore. They killed the pigs and rendered the fat to lard, or
manteeca,
“pig’s butter,” as they called it. On some early British maps, the area was even called Lard Bay, but most stuck with manteeca, and over the years that mutated into Montego, which had a lyricism not normally associated with swine.

As I neared the crunch of shops and so-called craft markets known as Gloucester Avenue, I made the obvious observation: things really hadn’t changed all that much over the years, at least in the sense that vast numbers of porkers still roamed the shore, only now they were known as tourists, most of them fat, happy Americans recently disgorged from cruise ships or on furlough from all-inclusive resorts. And the locals were busy rendering them into cash flow.

Cheap beads, hair braids, and wood carvings; snorkeling trips, fishing trips, sunset cruises; ganja, cocaine, more ganja—Gloucester Avenue had the highest concentration of hawkers, hagglers, and touts of just about anywhere in the Caribbean. And given the natural Jamaican propensity for confrontation—a direct result, many claimed, of Jamaica being on the receiving end of slave ships that pulled their primary cargo from the ranks of Ashanti warriors—the tourists walked in tight little groups, some of them clutching each other with the nervous eyes of wary prey.

I couldn’t blame the locals for their aggressive pursuit of business, not if it meant a ticket out of the tin-shack ghettos in the hills above Montego Bay. Prying bucks from tourists yielded richer results than selling yams on a blanket at the vegetable market. And I couldn’t blame the tourists for being repulsed by the whole scene. Most of the stuff for sale was crap, and some of the people selling it were really scary.

Faced with all this, Kenya Oompong’s tirades against cattle-call tourism made a certain kind of sense. Maybe if this were my home, I’d be just as outraged and militant as she was. Maybe I’d join Nanny’s People, spray-paint invectives on resort walls, harass the fetch-boys of foreign interests, and head for a better life in the hills. It wasn’t an altogether unreasonable
reaction to what was surely an unpalatable set of circumstances.

The only downside: I wouldn’t look good in a red-and-yellow bandanna.

Which got me to thinking: What was I going to wear to Monk’s memorial service?

The only clothes I had were the ones on my back—khaki shorts, a blue polo—both way too big and borrowed. With the change in flights, I wouldn’t have time to buy anything in Miami, where I was now going to have to spend the night, or in Tampa, where I was going to have to get off the plane, rent a car, and drive straight to the memorial service. It was scheduled to take place at the national cemetery in Bushnell, a small town just north of Tampa. I couldn’t show up looking the way I looked.

I found a parking lot where the attendant seemed slightly trustworthy, or at least she did after I gave her ten dollars with the promise of ten more if the Mercedes was still there when I got back. I left the metal canister sitting in the front seat, although Monk would have probably loved walking around Gloucester Avenue, and I took with me the backpack containing the few other things I had—a toothbrush, a clean T-shirt and the black daybook I’d taken from Monk’s dresser.

I headed up the avenue and cut into the first shopping mall I came to, a three-story warren of shops, one of which turned out to carry some fairly presentable sportswear. I bought a long-sleeved black silk shirt, some tan silk pants, and a pair of black loafers. It wasn’t a funereal ensemble by any means, but it was fairly dignified in an island kind of way and it would have to do.

Point of fact: I can run boats across open water without charts and get exactly to where I’m going, but put me in a shopping mall and I get all turned around. I couldn’t find the way I came in, and when I stepped out it was on the backside of the mall and I didn’t recognize anything. I started walking in what seemed like the right direction, but stopped after a couple of blocks when it became clear I was going the wrong way.

I looked up at a street sign: Dover Road. I knew that name from somewhere. I reached into the backpack, pulled out Monk’s black daybook, and flipped to the final entry.

****EQUINOX INVESTMENTS****
314 DOVER RD MB

It was only a couple of blocks away. What the hell.

There wasn’t a sign that said Equinox Investments outside the building at 314 Dover Road. But there was something even better parked on the street: Darcy Whitehall’s black Mercedes, recognizable by his initials monogrammed in gold on the front doors.

How freaking fortuitous.

The building wasn’t much to look at, six stories of glass and concrete that could have been anywhere. I walked into the lobby, which was occupied by the building’s main tenant, Great Nation Bank. Lines were long and the tellers were busy. A directory listed Equinox Investments in Suite 601. I took an elevator to the top floor and got out.

Suite 601 was the only office on the sixth floor. A small, tasteful brass plaque on one of the polished teak double doors gave the company name. I opened the doors and stepped into a small reception area. Nothing fancy, but much nicer than the rest of the building would have led me to believe: muted lighting, soft textured carpet, contemporary furniture, nice art on the walls.

A pretty young woman wearing black reading glasses and a navy blue suit sat behind a polished teak console that served as the reception desk. Another set of double doors was behind her.

The pretty young woman looked down her glasses at me and said: “May I help you?”

“Yes, I have an appointment later today with Darcy Whitehall. I was walking by, saw his car out front, and thought I might just pop in and catch him, save us both a little time. Could you tell him I’d like to see him if he’s not too busy?”

The woman studied me for a long moment. I gave her my friendliest “aw-shucks” grin. Somehow she managed not to melt.

“And you are?”

“Zack Chasteen.”

“One moment, Mr. Chasteen, and I will see if Mr. Whitehall is available.”

She stood and went through the double teak doors. I nosed around the reception area. There wasn’t much to see. No magazines on the table. And the art on the walls really wasn’t as good as it had appeared at first. Just prints in fancy frames.

After about five minutes, the young woman returned.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but it seems as if Mr. Whitehall is not on the premises at this time.”

“Oh, shoot, that’s too bad,” I said. “Is he with Mr., uh, Mr. . . .”

“Mr. Arzghanian?”

“Yes, is he with him?”

“I would assume so, yes.”

“And they went to . . . ?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know that.”

“And they’ll be back . . . ?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know that either.”

“Oh well,” I said. “It was worth a shot.”

The young woman nodded.

“Is there a message?” she said.

“No, no message,” I said. “But do you happen to have any company brochures?”

“Excuse me?”

“You know, something that tells me a little bit about Equinox Investments, an annual report, anything like that. Mr. Whitehall has spoken so highly of your company that I’d like to learn a little more about it for myself.”

The young woman shook her head.

“No, Mr. Chasteen,” she said. “I’m afraid we don’t have anything like that at all.”

“Hmm, that’s too bad. Because they’d be nice to have. You might want to mention that to Mr. Afghanistan.”

“Arzghanian,” she said.

“Him, too,” I said.

I rode the elevator down to the first floor and tried to figure out what I’d just accomplished. I knew slightly more than when I’d arrived. I knew that Darcy Whitehall had been there and was scheduled to come back. Or maybe he really was there and just didn’t want to see me. I knew that he was most likely with Mr. Arzghanian, whoever he was. I knew that while Equinox Investments didn’t balk at throwing around money for expensive office furniture, it cheaped out when it came to printing up a few measly company brochures. Not much on public image.

I also knew that the pretty young woman looked quite fetching in her navy blue suit with just a hint of cleavage and a nice pair of legs to go with it. But that was neither here nor there. Hell, maybe it was all neither here nor there.

Still, there had to be some reason why Monk had made a note about Equinox Investments in his daybook, just as there had to be a reason why Equinox Investments was buying the piece of land off Old Dutch Road from Darcy Whitehall for a whole lot more than it was worth.

I made it back to Miami just in time to check into my room at the MIA Hotel then catch dinner at the sushi bar in the concourse lobby. The place was getting ready to close, and I was the last one left sitting at the bar, holding down a stool that gave me a primo view of people coming and going in the terminal.

I was sipping a Kirin Ichiban and working on my first course, a spicy bowl of ika sansai, when a short stocky guy with a briefcase came in from the concourse, walked all the way around the bar, and sat down next to me.

I nodded at him. He nodded at me. The sushi chef came over and said to the guy: “Sorry, we close now.”

“No problem,” said the guy. “I’ll just sit here and watch my friend eat.”

He turned in his stool to look at me. I looked at him. He had close-cropped hair, bushy eyebrows, and a nose that sat off kilter in his chunky face. My age, maybe a little older. He was wearing a suit, a cheap one, and a white polyester shirt with the tie loosened.

“I know you?”

The guy ignored my question. He looked at the bowl of ika sansai.

“What the hell is that?”

“Marinated squid salad,” I said. “Pretty good.”

The guy made a face, shuddered. Then he smiled.

“Hey, you hear the one about the squid who walks into a jazz club?”

I didn’t say anything. I went back to eating my ika sansai. But the guy was not to be denied.

“Bartender tries to kick the squid out and the squid says: ‘My good man, I’ll have you know that I’m a very talented musician.’ Couple of musicians sitting at the bar overhear him, and one of them says: ‘Oh, yeah? Well, I’ve got a guitar right here. And fifty bucks says you can’t play it.’ He slaps a fifty-dollar bill on the bar, pulls a guitar out of a case, and hands it to the squid. Seconds later, the squid is wailing on the guitar. It’s like Jimmy Fuckin’ Hendrix. He puts down the guitar and collects the fifty dollars.