“Lock all the doors,” she said, “and leave the lights on.
Those guys who were protecting me said it’s safe, not to worry, but—”
It suddenly occurred to him that Hannon might not be on the ship—or that somehow he might get off. “Why don’t you go over to Zack’s penthouse and stay in my room? The condo has a security guard. You’ll feel a lot safer.”
Her phone chirped, signaling a low battery. “I’m about to lose you,” she said.
They both paused. It was clear she was talking about the dying battery, but the way she’d put it made them both uneasy.
“I meant the battery,” she said.
“I know. I’ll be careful, okay?”
“Love you,” she said as the line disconnected.
He was about to reply, but the signal was dead. His heart sank with an empty feeling as he reached across the bed and hung up the phone. He lay back against the headboard, thinking that Karen had been no more fooled by their words than he. They both knew he hadn’t hopped a plane and finagled his way onto a cruise ship just to get a story. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the FBI to do its job, and he wasn’t even sure he could be of any help. But with Karen so high on a serial killer’s hit list, he was sure of one thing.
He had to make sure they got Frank Hannon—whatever it took.
389
a
t sunrise, the
MS Fantasy
docked at pier number 3
on Prince George’s Wharf, beside two empty berths.
Heavy ropes as thick as an elephant’s thigh moored the towering vessel to oversized cleats on the old wood pier.
Gentle waves from Nassau Harbor lapped at the barnacles clinging to the hull.
The cruise from San Juan had been fairly smooth, but Hannon didn’t even have to get out of bed to tell they were in port. The cabin had lost all sense of motion, as if the ship had run aground.
There was a light knock on his cabin door. “Room service,” came a muffled announcement from out in the hall.
Hannon sat up in bed and checked his watch. Seven-thirty. Exactly on time. He rolled out of the double bed and slipped into a terry-cloth robe. He started for the door, then stopped and looked around the room. He still had a tinge of concern over the
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James Grippando
medical emergency yesterday, and he felt the need to be extra careful.
“Just a minute,” he shouted.
He checked his face in the mirror. No one onboard had seen him without a hat and sunglasses, but he couldn’t very well be seen walking around the room that way first thing in the morning. He thought fast, then rushed to the bathroom. He dug out his shaving kit and ran some hot water, then lathered his face with thick white shaving foam. He picked up the razor and took a couple swipes, to make it look like he was in the middle of it.
Perfect,
he thought. He went to the door and opened it.
“Good mornin’,” said Leddy Coolidge in a friendly Jamaican accent. “I’m sorry, sir. Did I catch you shavin’?”
“No problem.” The sweet smell of French toast and hot syrup filled the air. Hannon stepped aside, allowing the steward to pass.
He rolled the cart inside and positioned it in front of the television set. It was a warming cart with cabinets underneath to keep the food hot in transit from the kitchen, and it also had moveable leaves that folded up on top so that it could be converted into a dining table. The steward opened the lower cabinets and removed one tray, but paused as he reached for the second tray, seeming to do a double take.
“Should I keep the second meal in the warmer until Mrs. Ellers returns?”
“Huh?” said Hannon. “Oh, yeah. She’s in the bathroom. No problem.”
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THE INFORMANT
The steward hesitated again, remembering what the FBI agent had said about a tall, single male in a cabin for two. He glanced at Hannon, then looked away quickly.
“I’ll just leave it right here for her,” he said, then started for the door.
“Don’t I need to sign anything?” asked Hannon.
The steward stopped. His smile was nervous as he took a leather-bound pad from his pocket and presented it to Hannon. “Just sign anywhere.”
Hannon signed the name “Keith Ellers.” He noticed the steward’s hand was shaking as he retrieved the pen.
“Thank you, sir,” said the Jamaican.
Hannon nodded, then watched carefully as the steward left the room. He was trying not to be paranoid, but the steward had seemed exceedingly nervous. He took the cloth napkin from the table and wiped the shaving foam from his face, thinking. The CNN report yesterday. The airlift to the ship. A nervous cabin boy this morning. His instincts were telling him to get the hell out.
On impulse, he grabbed the suitcase from the closet and threw it on the bed. He checked the zipper pouch along the side flap. Inside a lead-lined Kodak photography film-protector bag, impervious to X ray, was the stainless-steel Smith & Wesson .45 ACP caliber pistol he’d purchased from a gun shop in San Juan. He cracked open a box of hollow-point ammunition and removed twelve rounds. His eyes brightened at the sound of the double-stack magazine clicking into place.
He wheeled quickly and pointed the pistol at the 392
James Grippando
full-length mirror, like a gunslinger on the draw, as if taking aim at his enemy. Slowly, his aim drifted down toward the color brochure on the dresser, which featured a bronzed young couple in skimpy bathing suits, hugging and smiling as they stupidly proclaimed the islands’ official tourist slogan:
It’s better in the Bahamas.
“We’ll see about that,” Hannon said with a smirk.
Mike couldn’t bring himself to eat in his fleabag surround-ings, so he headed for Bay Street, Nassau’s busy main avenue on the waterfront. He had a light breakfast at the old British Colonial Beach Resort, an imposing pink edi-fice on the beach with a view of the cruise ships at Prince George’s Wharf. At 8:00 A.M. he took the ten-minute walk along the Western Esplanade, passing restaurants and shops on one side of the street and pink sand and palm trees on the other. A warm, salty breeze greeted him at the end of pier number 3.
Even from a distance, the
Fantasy
looked about as big as the hotel he’d just left. A gangplank with an arching blue canvas canopy joined it to the pier. The tentlike booth at the end of the gangplank was where the attend-ant would check the passes, Mike presumed. A steady stream of passengers was already filing off the ship, besieged by the tourist industry from the moment their feet hit the ground. A friendly man in dreadlocks and a New York Yankees jersey greeted them with shouts of “Taxi, taxi!” Women in loud print dresses hustled straw hats and junk jewelry. T-shirts were available at every turn.
The passing tourists just smiled
393
THE INFORMANT
at the commotion, flashing their teeth and American dollars.
Mike was dressed in shorts and polo shirt, with a tourist bag slung over his shoulder. A baseball cap and dark sunglasses were enough, he felt, to keep from being recognized. He stopped near an old man selling hand-carved statues that were made in Taiwan. He wanted to board the ship, but he realized now wasn’t the time to try his bogus shore pass. Passengers were only coming
off.
He would have to wait a few hours, closer to lunch, when the traffic would flow in both directions. In the meantime, it wouldn’t hurt to watch for a while, maybe catch a glimpse of something to confirm his guess that the
Fantasy
was the right ship.
As the parade of passengers continued down the gangplank, he wondered whether Hannon himself might come out with the morning rush. Out of curiosity, he started singling out every tall man who came down the plank. He was surprised to find how few he could say were definitely
not
Hannon. It chilled him to think he could be looking right at Hannon and not even know it.
The corollary, however, turned the chill to a shiver.
Hannon could be looking right at
him
.
Frank Hannon wore a broad-brimmed hat and mirrored sunglasses as he headed down the hall toward the atrium lobby. His suitcase had a shoulder strap, and with his height it looked no bigger than the camera bags most of the other tourists had slung over their shoulders.
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James Grippando
From the housekeeper’s closet at the other end of the hall, the cabin steward watched as Hannon headed toward the stairs. He’d been ashamed of the way he’d lost his nerve at breakfast—the way he’d gotten so scared he didn’t even look around the room. He could have counted the number of suitcases or looked for women’s clothing, or even just glanced at the bed to see if it looked like two people had slept in it. He did none of that. He knew the FBI had told him to report anything suspicious, but the
only
thing he knew was that a tall guy had ordered room service. He couldn’t really say there’d been no Mrs. Ellers sitting in the bathroom.
Nobody was going to call Leddy Coolidge a fool. Back in Jamaica, they just called him “Cool”—or at least that’s what he told everyone. He wasn’t about to blow his image by going back to the FBI with absolutely nothing to tell them. It was easy enough to go back for a minute and check out the cabin, the way he should have in the first place.
He watched as Hannon disappeared down the staircase, then waited a few minutes, just to make sure he was really gone. When the hallway was clear, he started toward the cabin. He stopped outside the door to check left, then right.
He drew a deep breath, then took out his key and opened the door.
The early shift for breakfast was just about over, and a flood of land-hungry tourists was flowing from the dining room. Hannon planted himself in the middle of the crowd and shuffled toward the exit. He could see 395
THE INFORMANT
blue sky through the opening in the side of the ship. The crowd, however, soon reached a bottleneck. He was inching forward, pressed between some starry-eyed hon-eymooners and a pack of gray-haired fossils who belonged on a tour bus outside the Vatican. He bent slightly at the knees as he waited his turn, so that he wasn’t the tallest in the crowd.
It took several minutes, but they finally turned the corner. The gaping exit was in plain view, straight ahead.
People were marching off in pairs down the narrow gangplank. Hannon stopped just twenty feet from the exit.
“Come on, buddy,” someone groused from behind.
Hannon stepped aside, allowing them to pass. His face showed concern. There was a security camera.
Was that thing there when we boarded in San Juan?
He couldn’t remember, but he had a sneaking suspicion that it had been mounted just for him. He moved farther to the side, letting still others go around him. The glare from outside made it tough to see, but he could swear that on the doorframe opposite the camera there were little red markings every inch or so—like those height scales in the doorways at convenience stores that measured the height of robbers on their way out.
Hannon felt that twinge in his gut again—that instinct that had never failed him. He needed to think through his options. Coolly, he broke from the crowd and started back toward his cabin.
Leddy Coolidge had stood in the open doorway for nearly a minute, searching for the nerve to step inside.
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James Grippando
It suddenly occurred to him that there might really be a Mrs. Ellers, and that she might be inside or out on the private veranda. The last thing he needed was to be accused of breaking and entering. He rapped lightly on the door and called inside.
“Cabin steward,” he announced, then waited. The cabin was perfectly still.
“Anyone here?” he asked politely. He waited a few moments, but no one replied. Finally, he closed the door behind him and switched on the light.
He stepped carefully, as if he were afraid that with one false move he might knock something over. He checked the bathroom first—where Mr. Ellers had said his wife was. There was no makeup or hair spray on the counter.
He checked the tub. No little containers of women’s shampoo or conditioner.
Carefully but with a little more speed, he moved toward the main part of the cabin. The curtains were drawn shut—unusual for someone who’d paid extra for an ocean view cabin with private veranda. The bed was a mess, making it impossible to tell how many people had slept there. He checked the closet. No women’s clothes.
His brow furrowed with concern. He’d almost seen enough, but the room service cart caught his attention.
Only one tray was on the tabletop, but they might possibly have put the other one back. Curious, he knelt down beside the cart and opened the cabinet. Sitting in the warmer was the second breakfast, completely untouched.
His heart raced as he rose from his knee. He started toward the door, then froze in his tracks. He 397
THE INFORMANT
could hear the key in the lock, and the door swung open.
He retreated quickly, even considered jumping off the balcony to the Lido Deck below. Just as he reached for the door to the veranda, Hannon had him in his sight.
“What are you doing here?” Hannon said sharply.
Coolidge stood frozen behind the cart. His throat went dry, and his voice cracked as he answered. “I, uh—I wanted to see if I could bring anything more to Mrs.
Ellers.”
Hannon shot a steely glare across the room, then closed the door and locked it. He took just three steps forward—large steps, the kind that nearly gobbled up the room. He stopped just a half-step away, towering above him, close enough to enjoy the fear in the young Jamaican’s eyes.
“You and I both know my name’s not Ellers,” he said as he reached for the silverware resting on the tray.
398
t
he double bed was stripped, and what was left of the sheets lay in a shredded heap on the floor. Heavy blackout drapes were drawn across the glass door to the veranda, and a bath towel stretched across the threshold to block out light and sound. The FBI’s emergency beeper lay atop the room service cart, beside Hannon’s half-eaten plate of French toast. The coffee cup was empty, the fork and spoon lay crisscrossed on the tablecloth.