Chameleon (22 page)

The plastique blew Chiado’s head off. It bounced, like a soccer ball, across the yard.

The woman shrieked. And kept shrieking, hysterically, into the phone and then suddenly she began to scream, over and over, ‘No! No! Pasco, no! Está muerto? And she began screaming again.

Falmouth drove, without speeding, six blocks to the first main street, parked the car and went down an alley. He found the rear door of the restaurant, just as Angel had described it, went in through the kitchen and walked casually past the tables and out the front door. Nobody paid an’ attention to him. The cab was waiting.

‘Rico?’ Falmouth asked.

‘Si, señor,’

‘Bueno,’ he said and got in the cat. ‘Lléveme al Hotel Tamanaco, por favor.’

Areno’s eyes bulged as he listened to Chiado’s wife, screaming hysterically over the phone. He slammed down the receiver.

‘Los bastardos lo mataron! he yelled and grabbed for the pistol on the table. Hinge turned the briefcase toward him and pressed the laser trigger hidden in the handle. The green laser ray swept across the wall and pinpointed itself on Areno’s chest. There was a series of faint sounds and the man with the beard was lifted up on his toes and smashed into the corner. His chair clattered against the wall. A dozen bullet holes appeared in his chest. Blood squirted across the table and against the wall as he fell in a limp pile, like a suit falling off a hanger. He lay there, his good eye crossed, the gray eye staring bizarrely at the ceiling. His mouth popped open and he made a deep, gurgling sound and his left foot jerked violently for several seconds. Then it went limp.

The two others stared in disbelief.

Hinge turned the briefcase in their general direction. A green spot roved the wall.

‘Now, lissen here, boys, that little green spot on the wall, that’s called a laser. And if it touches one of you chinches, the gun just naturally goes off. You comprende? Watch.’

He put the briefcase under his arm so nothing was touching the handle and slowly swept it down toward Areno’s body. The bright-green pinpoint of the laser moved across the wall and down to Areno’s forehead.

Bupbupbupbupbupbupbupbupbupbup.

Areno’s head seemed to explode from the inside.

‘Now do you assholes comprende?’ Hinge said.

The two terrorists stared at Areno, then at Hinge. They both raised their hands.

‘That ain’t necessary, muchachos. You just listen real good. We want our man back, alive and unharmed. Ya have one hour to drop him off in front of the teleferico station on Cota Mil Street.’ He turned toward Chico, the bastard, and spoke directly to him. ‘And if he’s not there, we’re going to kill you, and yer wife, and all yer children, and yer perros and gatos and cochinos and pollos and we’re going to burn yer house to the fuckin’ ground. You comprende that, asshole?’

He turned to the next man. ‘And then we’re gonna do the same for you, pal. We’re going to kill you, and yer wife and yer children, and yer dogs and cats and pigs and chickens and burn yer house to the fuckin’ ground.

‘And you’re not gonna know when it’s comin’. It could be before the sun rises tomorra, or it could be a month from now.’ Hinge smiled. ‘Get the point? Y’got an hour. Una hora. And don’t let it happen again, hokay?’

And he turned and left the room.

At eleven thirty-two, Avery Lavander, scared, unshaven, gaunt-eyed, but in relatively good health, was shoved rudely from a car in front of the cable-car station in the El Centro district.

9

And two hours later Falmouth, who could not get away from Hinge quickly enough, was on his way back to Miami.

O’Hara walked down to the edge of the pier and squatted, Indian fashion, waiting for the sun to rise. The ocean was as docile as a lake. The cruisers, with their outriggers swaying gently in the morning breeze, were silhouetted against the scarlet dawn. The sun had not yet broken the horizon, but its reflection spread across the night sky like a splash of blood.

Somewhere on the other side of the marina, a motor coughed to life, and a sleek speedboat keeled steeply and growled out toward open water.

If isolation was Falmouth’s game, lie had picked a great place. Walker’s Cay, a reclaimed coral reef not much larger than a football field, hardly deserved to be called an island. One of the Abaco chain, it lay a hundred miles or so due east of Palm Beach, the northernmost fishing atoll in the Bahamas.

The fifteen-hundred-foot oyster-shell. runway was half the length of the island. The beach was a strip of sand two or three hundred feet long near the runway. The customs inspector, a paunchy ebony-skinned man in red-striped black pants and a starched white shirt, was also chief of police and maître d’ of the hotel restaurant. Radiophone service was limited to one hour in the morning and one hour in late afternoon. And from the tiny balconies of the ancient hotel ne could see the entire length of the island and all the boats that entered the marina. It would be almost impossible for anyone to gain access to the island without being seen, day or night. But the place had a kind of battered charm, and the food was excellent.

O’Hara had been on Walker’s Cay for about eighteen hours when the burly, dishevelled fisherman appeared at his door at one-thirty in the morning.

‘Cap’n K. at your disposal, sir,’ the man said, with a smile that revealed several gaps in his teeth. The tart smell of gin drifted in with his words. He offered his card, which looked as if it had been rained on, then left out in the sun to dry, and as O’Hara gave it a cursory glance, Cap’n K. snatched it back, stuffing it in the back pocket of his Levi’s. He wore a windbreaker open almost to the waist, revealing a tangle of graying red chest hair, and lace-up Keds, with a small toe peeking through the torn canvas side of the left one. A rude shock of red hair tumbled from under the peaked captain’s cap, which had seen much, much better times.

‘I’ll be picking you up on Pier Two at five-thirty, sir,’ he said, in a voice cultured in the South Bronx. ‘And we’ll be makin’ wake, toot-sweet,’

‘Oh, really?’ O’Hara said. ‘And just where the hell am I going?’

The grin got bigger, the gaps more prevalent. ‘Why, it’s part of the arrangements made by the travel company,’ Cap’n K. said around a chuckle. ‘The best deep-sea fishin’ in the world is within sight of this very island.’

And with that, Cap’n K. winked and strutted out, a bit rheumatically, and down the hallway, snapping his fingers. ‘It’s the Miami Belle,’ he said over his shoulder, and began singing a badly off-key version of ‘Give Peace a Chance.’

Ah yes, O’Hara said to himself, -welcome to the islands. Twenty-four hours and the nuts were already popping out of the woodwork. ‘Five-thirty,’ he had sighed and closed the door.

So here he was, squatting on a pier in the middle of the ocean at five-thirty and the sun not yet up and not even a cup of coffee in sight, just because some boozy old fart had appeared at his door in the middle of the night.

‘Over here, sir,’ a gravelly voice called through the amber light. Cap’n K. loomed above O’Hara, a bulky shadow framed against the flaming sky, on the flying bridge of a sleek, well-kept fifty-foot cabin cruiser. The captain was sipping from a steaming mug.

‘I was a shark, I’da bitcher foot off by now. Come aboard and get yourself some java. And ya might throw off the lines on your way.’

He turned and pressed a button and the twin five-hundred- horse-power engines under the boat cleared their throats and rumbled to life. O’Hara unhitched the fore and aft lines and jumped aboard. The boat moved beneath him, backed slowly out of its slot and then eased out toward the open sea.

O’Hara went below and checked the cabin. It was empty. So was the galley, which was spotless. A coffee pot steamed on an electric stove. Nearby were a Braun electric grinder and three bags of coffee beans. O’Hara checked the label on one of them. Tanzanian Kilimanjaro.

He poured himself a cup, went back n deck and sat on the gunwale, watching Walker’s Cay grow smaller as the sun made a spectacular entrance. Gulls swept down over the wake and bitched at him. The engines got serious and the Miami Belle picked up speed.

By the time the sun cleared the horizon, Walker’s was a mere speck. Small, sandy islands abounded, protected by jagged peaks of coral jutting from the placid sea. Here and there, fishing boats plied the troughs, trolling for big game. Several big sharks, ten-footers or larger, glided close to the boat, looking for a handout. Clumps of coral drifted below them, thirty feet down, yet seeming close enough to touch through the crystal water.

They had been out fifteen or twenty minutes when Cap’n K. altered his course, circling a flat, sandy island. On the west side, away from the fishing traffic, near the mouth of a tiny inlet, a man was hunched under a broad-brimmed straw hat, fishing from the back of a small rowboat -

‘Ahoy down there,’ Cap’n K. barked. ‘How’s th’ fishin’?’

Tony Falmouth looked up and smiled. ‘The bloody bugs’ve damn near done me in. Thirty minutes, and they’ve sucked me dry. Here, get this lifeboat hooked up and get me aboard while I’ve still got some blood left in me.’

‘Gotcher, toot-sweet,’ the red-haired master of the Miami Belle yelled down. He throttled back and threw a line to Falmouth.

Falmouth looked good, but tense. He seemed taller than O’Hara had remembered and was definitely thinner. A little grayer, too, maybe. But his handsome features were etched by a deep tan and he still had the smile of a rascal. The year and a half had treated him kindly, particularly in a game where a week could sometimes do terrible things to a human being.

The tall man climbed on deck and lit a cigarette. He threw the match underhanded, watching it arc out and vanish, with hardly a sizzle, into the mirror-like sea.

‘Cheers, Sailor,’ he said, as if they had met yesterday. And O’Hara grinned and stuck out his hand.

‘Glad to see you’re in one piece, lad,’ Falmouth said. ‘For a while there I was a little worried maybe they’d get you.’ The years had refined everything about him, including his accent, although it was still softly tempered with an Irish lilt.

‘I knew you were around somewhere,’ O’Hara said.

Falmouth raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh? And how’s that?’

‘A discussion we had one night over dinner in San Francisco. About coffee.’

‘Jesus, that must have been four years ago.’

‘About that.’

‘And you remember the kind of coffee I like?’

‘No, I remember you like to grind your own. Now, the captain there, he looks like it would be fine by him if the coffee were made out of buffalo chips. There’s three bags of gourmet coffee and a grinder down in the galley.’

‘Neat,’ Falmouth said. “A” for the course. Want to put some legs under your java?’

‘Brandy?’

‘I think we can accommodate you.’

Falmouth went below and emerged with a bottle of Courvoisier. He doused both cups liberally.

‘Before I forget, thanks for getting me off the hook in Washington,’ O’Hara said.

‘My pleasure, Sailor. Listen here, I was on the cuff to you. Let’s not lose our perspective, eh?’

‘So, we’re starting dead even.’

Falmouth hesitated for just an instant. ‘So to speak,’ he said.

Cap’n K. secured the lifeboat in its rig on the stern. He wiped his hands on an oily rag. Then he asked, ‘Anybody want a bagel with their coffee?’

‘A bagel?’ O’Hara said. ‘Two days ago I was on Howe’s yacht having scrod for breakfast.’

‘Well, fuck it, then,’ Cap’n K. said and disappeared down the hatch toward the galley.

‘Where did you dig him up?’ O’Hara asked.

‘Expatriate American,’ Falmouth said.. ‘Knows these waters better than the fish. Was a lawyer once big pistol. About ten years ago he got fed up, said the hell with it, took his two boys outta school, bought himself a boat and he’s been here ever since. The boys run the business now. They also have an air charter service that works the islands. And a very handy radiophone.’

‘You thinking of becoming a beach bum, now that you’re retired?’

Falmouth looked at him with mild curiosity for a moment and then said, ‘It’s a thought. The bloody rascal not only knows more about these islands than anyone alive, he sees nothing, hears nothing and says nothing.’

‘What in hell are we doing out here in the middle of nowhere?’

‘Nobody can sneak up on you out here.’

‘Getting a little paranoid, aren’t you?’

‘There’s good reason,’ he said, without explaining the remark.

O’Hara had never seen him this edgy. But Falmouth changed his mood quickly. ‘Pour yourself some more mud and try one of Cap’s bagels. We’ll get under way. take a little sun, catch a fish or two. I’ll tell you a story will turn your toes up.’

‘Can we set the lines while we’re lyin’ idle?’ Cap’n K. asked, interrupting them as he emerged from below. For the next few minutes there was a flurry of activity. The captain turned the Miami Belle out toward the open sea and tied down the wheel. He came back to the stern, dragged a four-foot barracuda out of the bait box and buried a hook the size of a grappling iron deep in its gills. He threw the hook overboard and fed the line out about fifteen feet, then set the rod in a bracket in the gunwales. He pulled up some slack from the line, hooked it over a small pulley and reeled the line out to the point of the outrigger and set it in place with a clothespin.

He repeated the procedure with the other rod, using a tattered fish head for bait. Then he leaned on the side of the boat. ‘Just remember,’ he said, ‘the big ones, the billfish, they hit twice.’ He held up two fingers to make his point.

‘First time, they use that schnozz on the end of their nose, they use that to stun their meal, they lay back a second or two, whap, they hit again. That time the hook goes in, okay? You’ll know it. When they make that first hit , the line’ll snap outa the outrigger, the line picks up the slack so the bait don’t run away from the fish, then bang, he’ll hit it again. Then you haul ass, toot-sweet, set that hook in good, or the fucker’ll spit it Out. Then it’s you and him, one on one.’ He waved disdainfully at the other rod. ‘The other line’s fixed for smaller stuff. They’ll hit it and dive deep. Maybe we’ll pick up something tasty for dinner.’

He went back to the bridge and eased up the throttles. The bait skittered along the surface of the water, fifty or sixty feet behind the boat.

Falmouth settled down in one of the two fighting chairs in the stern. ‘I figgered we’d mix a little pleasure with business,’ he said. ‘Grab a chair and let’s chat.’

‘For the record, Tony, why me? Why pick a guy on the dodge?’

‘Well, Sailor, we know each other and you know the territory and you know I’m not a bullshitter.. . Who else would I pick, Walter-bleedin’-Cronkite? Stickin’ it to that bloody Winter Man and bringin’ you in, I felt I owed you that. Once done, you’re the best man I know for the job.’

‘Job?’ O’Hara said.

‘It’s what you do now, isn’t it? Reporting for a living.’ Falmouth lit a cigarette and threw the match to the wind.

‘How come you turned down the Winter Man’s offer?’ O’Hara asked.

‘Hell, we’re friends. Also I don’t like him. It’s bastards like that give the Company a bad name. Besides, Sailor, I wasn’t all that sure I could turn you up. I’m not a tracker. My specialties are planning and execution. And even if 1 had turned you up, I wasn’t that sure I could take you.’

He looked stone-hard at O’Hara for a moment, then laughed.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘what son of a bitch would kill a buddy for a lousy twenty-fiver, right?’

‘Maybe that’s why that cheap bastard got such bad help,’ O’Hara said.

Falmouth took off his shirt and threw it on top of the catch box. ‘To begin with,’ he said, ‘I’ll have to tell you a little story, for it to make sense, if there is any sense to it at all, Sailor. It will put the whole thing in proper perspective. But you won’t mind. It’s one helluva yarn.