Heaven Is High (4 page)

“Barbara, come on,” he said, sounding offended. He could do that well. “So what do you want me to do?”

“I want you to go to the restaurant. I'll take my car and follow you, and I'll invite them out for a little spin while you see if there's a bug. How long will it take?”

“Hour, maybe less, depends. You want it out?”

“Nope. Don't touch it if it's there. Then back here, and do the same. If I'm clean, then we can talk about the next step. Okay?”

“Okeydokey,” he said. “Where's the restaurant?”

She gave him the address and the key to her house, and left his car to get into her own. A few minutes later they were both stopping at the curb outside a neat house with a small sign swinging in the yard,
MARTIN
'
S RESTAURANT
. It was only six blocks from her own house.

This house was very well maintained, freshly painted white, windows shining clean with brilliant white café curtains, flower boxes sporting blooms on a narrow porch, and a walk bordered by gold daffodils.

Barbara left Bailey by his car as she went to the door and rang the bell. When Martin opened the door, surprised to see her there, she put her finger to her lips and motioned him to come out. Beyond him Barbara saw Binnie standing by an open door, probably to the kitchen, Barbara assumed after a swift appraising glance about. The restaurant was tiny, with a few booths, half a dozen tables, and little else. It wouldn't take Bailey very long. Binnie, at the door, looked as surprised as Martin had been. He turned to her and spoke with his hands. At her nod he followed Barbara out and to Bailey. She introduced them.

“I suspect that there's a listening device in there,” she said to Martin. “If there is he'll find it. Can you and Binnie leave for half an hour or so, take a little ride with me so we can talk while he goes about his business?”

Martin's face had frozen in alarm at her words, and his hands clenched.

Barbara put her hand on his arm and said, “Relax. Take it easy. I may be altogether wrong. Overly cautious.”

“I'll get Binnie,” he said tightly. “I want to talk to you.”

This time Bailey followed him into the restaurant and a minute later Martin and Binnie came out.

“I'm afraid you'll have to ride in front,” Barbara said when Martin opened the back door. “No legroom back there for you.” She tried to ignore the look of terror on Binnie's face and went around to get in behind the wheel. Martin barely had legroom in the front seat, but it couldn't be helped, and she didn't intend to go far. Just to the parking area at the base of Skinner's Butte. She told them it would take only a few minutes and they drove in silence until she pulled into a parking space. Ahead was a swatch of grass, then the bike path, and beyond that the flashing Willamette River, her favorite walking place. That day she remained in the car, twisted around to see them both and started. The windows soon fogged so heavily that no one passing by could have seen inside, which suited her just fine.

“A couple of questions first,” she said. “You got the letter Tuesday night. Did you talk a lot about it that night? All day Wednesday, and after you saw me yesterday?”

“Sure, we did. That's all we could think of.”

“Right. What all did you talk about? What options did you voice out loud? When did you first mention my name?”

He rubbed his eyes, glanced at Binnie, then said, “Ms. Holloway—”

Barbara held up her hand. She didn't know when it happened, but in her mind they had become Martin and Binnie, not Mr. and Mrs. Owens. “Let's get less formal. I'm Barbara.” She pointed to him, then to Binnie. “Martin and Binnie. All right with you?”

He smiled a big, expansive smile that made him look like a kid, but it didn't last more than a second and he was sober-faced again. “Barbara, we're scared to death, to tell the truth. Yeah, we talked. You know, out loud, ASL, a mix of both. I talked about running, just getting in the car and taking off, down to Tucson maybe, get across the border and keep going. Maybe if I could speak Spanish, I'd still be talking about that. I don't know when we thought of you. Late the next day?” He looked at Binnie and she nodded. “Yeah, late the day before we showed up at your door.”

“And after you left my place? Still talking about it?”

“Sure, all day, this morning. Why are you asking about that?”

She told them about Nicholson's visit, his message. Martin looked as if it left a bad taste in his mouth, but Binnie seemed willing to consider the proposal. She made rapid hand gestures and Martin shook his head. “Be an informer? Spy on folks who trust me? Not my style,” he said flatly.

“Have you applied for a driver's license, a Social Security card, any official identification?” she asked Binnie. She shook her head hard. “I think someone tipped off the immigration people. There was no reason for them to get you in their sights otherwise. And for Nicholson to show up the way he did makes me wonder if his people haven't been spying on you, Martin. The timing is too close, too coincidental, and I have little faith in coincidences.”

“Why? Why would they?” he asked in bewilderment.

“That's the real question, isn't it?” Barbara said. She glanced at her watch. “We should be getting back soon. I'd rather not raise any questions right now about your silence in the restaurant for too long a period. But first, is there someplace you can go to keep a low profile, out of sight for the next few days, maybe most of the week? Someplace where we can talk freely?”

They had a silent conversation with their hands for the next minute or two. Then Martin said, “I told you we heard about you from Tawna and James Gresham. They've invited us out to their place a couple of times. We never made it yet, but we could go there. You know where they are, up the McKenzie? I think it's called Turner's Point, something like that.”

Barbara felt as if every cell in her body shrank at the thought of going back there. Martin was still speaking, but now he sounded a long way away.

“We'd be okay there. I don't think a soul would dream of looking for us there.”

Barbara nodded. She opened her window and turned on the fan to clear the fog. When she spoke again, her own voice sounded strange, hollow. “Did you mention their names at all? Out loud, I mean.”

Martin glanced at Binnie and after a moment he said, “I don't think so, not until we turned up at your place anyway.”

“Good. I want Bailey to drive you out there, if you agree. He would make sure you weren't followed. I don't want you to drive because if there's a bug in the restaurant, there's no way to know about your car, how secure it might be. For the rest of today, tonight, don't say a thing out loud that bears on anything we've said, anything about the whole situation, and especially don't breathe a word about the listening device if there is one. Okay? I'll come in with you and tell you again about Nicholson's proposal, and you say something like you'll have to think about it, talk it over. Will you do that? Put on an act?” She suspected that they would have a lot of conversations about it in the days to come. “It would be absolutely normal if you keep talking about that, in fact, let them know you're considering it.”

“Sure,” Martin said. “Barbara, are you all right?”

“Yes. It's getting a little stuffy in here. I'm fine. I'll ask Bailey to pick you up tomorrow, whenever you say. If you call Tawna or James, use a pay phone somewhere, not your own.”

“We can be ready by ten in the morning,” Martin said after another silent conversation with Binnie. He reached in his pocket and brought out a card and wrote on it. “Our home address.”

“Thanks,” Barbara said, and turned on the engine, engaged the gears, but paused before backing out of the parking space. “I'll come out to the house on Sunday, after you get settled in. We'll have a long talk then. You should have my phone number, in case you want to get in touch with me.” She wrote it in a notebook, ripped out the page, and handed it to him.

“We haven't talked yet about paying you, Barbara. I'm good for it,” he said as she drove back to the restaurant.

Bailey would be pleased to hear that, she thought with relief. Again, she had failed to bring it up herself. Because this is not my case, she told herself sharply.

When they reached the restaurant, Bailey met them in the dining room. He held up his finger, one bug, and indicated the kitchen with a jerk of his thumb, then without a word he saluted and left. Barbara repeated Nicholson's proposal and Martin responded exactly right. “I'll be in touch,” she said at the door. “Take it easy, you two.”

Done, she thought, returning to her car. She would give Bailey some time at her house, buy some sandwich makings to feed him, and go on from there.

4

When she opened her door later, Bailey stepped out from the bedroom, saluted, and stepped back in. She took her groceries to the kitchen, left the bag on the table, shrugged out of her jacket, and went into her office.

Twenty minutes later, Bailey came to the door. “You're clean.”

She glanced at the several boxes on the floor. “Those, too?”

“Just the one on top. Barbara, you plant a bug, you want to make it quick and easy, not start unpacking boxes to hide it. In, out, done, that's the way. A day later same thing, in, out, done. You need padlocks on your doors. I can do them. There's dry rot in your bathroom. What's in the bag?”

“Lunch. Let's make some sandwiches.”

A few minutes later, at the table with ham and cheese sandwiches, beer for him, she told him what she had. “Nicholson's a creep. Forget him for now. According to the letter Binnie's mother wrote, her sister, Anaia Santos, married an American, Lawrence somebody. I want his name. And the father was a businessman, name Augustus Santos. Sometimes a grandfather has more regard for a grandchild than for the child who strayed off base. Company, business, how influential is he, the usual background. I want to get in touch with him, but I don't want to go in cold. And finally, what happened to the kidnapping charge? Why didn't Domonic Guteriez pursue it? You'd think with a rich American sports figure, he'd be hot after big money. Why wasn't he?”

As she listed her Christmas order, Bailey grew more and more disgruntled. “What's Belize? Besides a name. Never heard of it. You want me to go traipsing off to a foreign country God only knows where it is, and what language, or if they shoot Americans on sight. Come on, Barbara.”

“It's a tiny country in the Caribbean, nestled in the armpit of the Yucatán. English language. Gained independence a few years ago. Before that governed by British Honduras, British law system, no doubt. Two traffic lights in the whole country, which is sixty-eight miles wide and under two hundred miles from north to south. Exporter of sugar, mahogany until they cut down all the trees. One of the major marijuana growers until Reagan sent in planes to spray the fields last year. They're still doing it. With marijuana on the decline, down to less than two hundred tons apparently—” She stopped when Bailey snorted, then continued, “They could be looking for another way to bring in the big bucks. Could be the reason the DEA got interested in Binnie, if they know there's a connection. What more do you want? If Santos is a prominent businessman, in a country that size he shouldn't be hard to find.”

Bailey's gloom did not lighten. “And the sister married an American. Whoopie! When?”

“Binnie thinks she's twenty-one, but she may be younger, and the sister was already married when Shala sailed out with her lover. Start there, around twenty to twenty-two years ago—1960 on. There should be a record of the piracy and murder of the crew and others.”

She gave him the address Martin had provided. “They'll be ready at ten in the morning, straight out to Tawna and James Gresham's house at Turner's Point. You know where it is?”

He nodded. “I'll get word to them to meet me at long-term parking at the airport and go from there. In case a neighbor spots me at the house.”

And that was why she wanted Bailey, she thought. He took account of things like that and she had not. “Right. You said you had other work going on. Can you get to this right away, like yesterday, in fact?”

“Yeah. You realize you're just like your old man? He always wants things yesterday,” he said morosely, then grinned. “This is more fun. Watching you tangle it up with INS and the Drug Enforcement Agency is a hoot. If the IRS and or the FBI get involved, I'll give you some pointers on skipping out of the country, up to Canada, and on to Finland or someplace like that.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I'll keep it in mind. I'll go out to Turner's Point on Sunday and talk to them, but Binnie doesn't know any more than what her mother told her.” She hesitated a moment, then added, “Bailey, Martin can pay. And Dad isn't to get involved in this. No way, not even a hint.”

“Gotcha,” he said. “He'll have to be on the outside to post bail bond or something.” He stood and pulled on a raincoat that looked to be fifty years old. “I'll be in touch.” Everything about him screamed slouch, even his amble to the door, but he delivered. That was what mattered, Bailey delivered.

She wanted a long walk more than anything, she decided. There was nothing else she could do until she saw Martin and Binnie on Sunday, and called Krugman back on Monday or Tuesday. She thought uneasily about Bailey's words, tangling it up with the INS and the DEA. But she had given Martin Nicholson's message and if they were listening, they'd know that she had done her duty, as a good citizen should. She put away the remains of lunch, pulled on a jacket, and left to take her walk.

That day the river was a restless palette of gray, black, and silver, with white lacy foam where rocks created ripples. High with spring runoff, the river seemed in a terrible hurry to reach the sea, a futile, never completed task, a goal as unreachable as the horizon.