The Last Thing He Wanted (11 page)

The figure that was part of what she believed to be a delusion, the figure that had been the
bel canto
of her childhood, the figure that was now a memory, an echo, a dream, a romance, an old man’s fairy tale.

The million-dollar score, the million-dollar pop, the million-dollar payday.

The pop that was already half owed to other people, the payday that was already garnisheed.

The score that was not even a score anymore.

I’m in for a unit, my father’s doing two, Wynn Janklow would say to indicate investments of one and two hundred million dollars.

Million-dollar score, million-dollar payday.

She had gone her own way.

She had made her own life.

She had married a man who did not count money in millions but in units.

She had turned a deaf ear, she had turned her back.

It might be you’d just called from wherever.

In the creased snapshot she had taken from her mother’s bedroom her father was holding a bottle of beer and her mother was wearing a barbecue apron printed with pitchforks and the words
OUT OF THE FRYING PAN INTO THE FIRE.

Or it might be that you hadn’t.

She remembered the day the snapshot was taken.

Fourth of July, she was nine or ten, a friend of her father’s had brought fireworks up from the border, fat little sizzler rockets she had not liked and sparklers that made fireflies in the hot desert twilight.

Half a margarita and I’m already flying, her mother had kept saying.

This is all right, her father had kept saying. Who needs the goombahs, we got our own show right here.

We had a life and now we don’t and just because I’m your daughter I’m supposed to like it and I don’t.

What’s going to happen now, her father had said on the day she brought him home to the house in Sweetwater. Goddamn. Ellie. What’s going to happen now.

I’ll take care of it, she had said.

By eight o’clock on the morning of July 2 she had already checked out of the Hotel Colonial and was in the taxi on her way to the San José airport. By eight o’clock on the morning of July 2 she did not yet know that her father’s obituary had appeared in that morning’s Miami
Herald,
but she did know something else.

This was the third thing she already knew.

She had asked for her passport when she checked out.

Her own passport.

The passport she had left at the desk the night she arrived.

For the authorities, for safekeeping.

The clerk was quite certain that it had been returned to her.

Por cierto,
he had repeated.
Certísimo.

The airport taxi had been waiting outside.

If you would look again, she had said. An American passport. McMahon. Elena McMahon.

The clerk had opened the safe, removed several passports, fanned them on the desk, and shrugged.

None of the passports were American.

In the mailboxes behind the clerk she could see room keys, a few messages.

The box for her room was empty.

She considered this.

The clerk raised an index finger, tapped his temple, and smiled.
Tengo la solución,
he said. Since the passport had certainly been returned to her, the passport would doubtless be found in her room. Perhaps she would be so kind as to leave an address.

I don’t think so, she had said, and walked to the open door.

Buen viaje, Señora Meyer,
the clerk had called as she was getting into the airport taxi.

8

W
hen she landed on the island at one-thirty on the afternoon of July 2 the sky was dark with clouds and the runway already swamped with the rain that would fall intermittently for the next week. The Costa Rican pilot had mentioned this possibility. “A few bands of showers that will never dampen the spirit of any vacationer,” was how the pilot had put it in his English-language update from the front cabin. It had occurred to Elena as she sheltered the unfamiliar passport under her T-shirt and made a run for the terminal that these bands of showers would not in fact dampen the spirit of any vacationer, since there did not seem to be any vacationer in sight.

No golf bag, no tennis racket, no sunburned child in tow.

No anxious traveler with four overstuffed tote bags and one boarding pass for the six-seater hop to the more desirable island.

There did not even seem to be any airport employee in sight.

Only the half-dozen young men, wearing the short-sleeved uniforms of what seemed to be some kind of
local military police, lounging just inside the closed glass doors to the terminal.

She had stopped, rain streaming down her face, waiting for the doors to slide open automatically.

When the doors did not open she had knocked on the glass.

After what seemed a considerable length of time, once she had been joined outside the glass door by the crew from her flight, one of the men inside had detached himself from the others and inserted a key to open the door.

Thank you, she had said.

Move on, he had said.

She had moved on.

Gate after gate was unlit. The moving sidewalks were not moving, the baggage carousels were silent. Metal grilles had been lowered over the doors to the coffee bars and concessions, even the shop that promised
OPEN
24
HOURS DUTY-FREE
. She had steeled herself on the plane to make direct eye contact when she went through immigration but the lone immigration official had examined the passport without interest, stamped it, and handed it back to her, never meeting her eyes.

“Where you stay,” he had said, pen poised to complete whatever form required this information.

She had tried to think of a plausible answer.

“You mean while I’m here,” she had said, stalling. “You mean what hotel.”

“Correct, correct, what hotel.” He was bored, impatient. “Ramada, Royal Caribe, Intercon, what.”

“Ramada,” she had said.

She had gotten a taxi for the Ramada and then, once the doors were closed, told the driver that she
had changed her mind and wanted to go to the Intercon. She had registered at the Intercon as Elise Meyer. As soon as she got upstairs she called Barry Sedlow’s beeper and left the number of the hotel.

Twenty minutes later the telephone had rung.

She had picked it up but said nothing.

So far so good, Barry Sedlow said. You’re where you should be.

She thought about this.

She had left the number of the hotel on his beeper but she had not left the number of her room.

To get through to the room he had to know how she was registered.

Had to know that the passport was in the name Elise Meyer.

She said nothing.

Just sit tight, he said. Someone’s going to be in touch.

Still she said nothing.

Losing radio contact, he said. Hel-lo-oh.

There had been a silence.

Okay I get it, he had said finally. You don’t want to talk, don’t talk. But do yourself a favor? Relax. Go down to the pool, tip the boy to set up a chaise, get some sun, order one of those drinks with the cherries and the pineapple and the little umbrellas, you’re there as a tourist, try acting like one, just tell the operator to switch your calls, don’t worry about their finding you, they’re going to find you all right.

She had done this. She had not spoken to Barry Sedlow but she had done what he said to do.

I do not know why (another instance of
what “changed” her, what “motivated” her, what made her do it
) but she had put down the telephone and waited
for a break in the rain and then done exactly what Barry Sedlow said to do.

At four that afternoon and again at noon the next day and again at noon of the day after that, she had bought the local paper and whatever day-old American papers she could find in the coffee shop and gone down to the Intercon pool and tipped the boy to set up a chaise within range of the pool shack telephone. She had sat on the chaise under the gray sky and she had read the newspapers all the way through, one by one, beginning with the local paper and progressing to whatever Miami
Herald
or New York
Times
or
USA Today
had come in that morning. She read on the chaise at the Intercon pool about the dock strike in the Grenadines. She read on the chaise at the Intercon pool about the demonstration in Pointe-à-Pitre to protest the arrest of the leader of the independence movement. She read in a week-old
USA Today
about the effect of fish oil on infertile pandas in distant zoos. The only stories she avoided outright, there on the chaise at the Intercon pool, were those having to do with the campaign. She moved past any story having to do with the campaign. She preferred stories having to do with natural forces, stories about new evidence of reef erosion in the Maldives, say, or recently released research on the deep cold Pacific welling of El Niño.

About unusual movements of wind charted off the coast of Africa.

About controversial data predicting the probability of earthquakes measuring over 5.5 Richter.

American, the pool boy had said when she tipped him the first day with an American dollar. Whole lot of Americans coming in.

Really, she had said, by way of closing the conversation.

Good for business, he had said, by way of reopening it.

She had looked around the empty pool, the unused chaises stacked against the shack. I guess they don’t swim much, she had said.

He had giggled and slapped his thigh with a towel. Do not swim much, he said finally. No.

By the third day she had herself begun noticing the Americans. Several in the coffee shop the night before, all men. Several more in the lobby, laughing together as they stood at the entrance waiting to get into an unmarked armored van.

The van had CD plates.

Swear to Christ, that deal in Chalatenango, I did something like three and a half full clips, one of the Americans had said.

Shit, another had said. You know the difference between one of them and a vampire? You drive a stake through a vampire’s heart, the fucker dies.

No Americans at the pool.

Until now.

She had become aware as she was reading the local paper that one of the men she had seen waiting to get into the van with the CD plates was standing between her chaise and the pool, blocking the tiled walkway, smoking a cigarette as he surveyed the otherwise empty pool area.

His back was to her.

His warm-up jacket was lettered
25TH DIVISION TROPIC LIGHTNING.

She realized that she was reading for the third time the same follow-up on a rash of thefts and carjackings in the immediate vicinity of Cyril E. King International Airport on St. Thomas.

Excuse me, she said. Do you know what time it is.

He flicked his cigarette in the direction of the clock over the pool shack counter.

The clock read 1:10.

She put down the local paper and picked up the Miami
Herald.

She continued reading the Miami
Herald
until she reached page sixteen of the B section.

Page sixteen of the B section of the July 2 Miami
Herald,
two days late.

McMAHON, Richard Allen: age 74, died under care of physician June
30, 1984,
at Clearview Convalescent Lodge, South Kendall. No services are scheduled.

She folded the newspaper, got up from the chaise and edged her way past the American in the warm-up jacket.

Pardon me, he said. Ma’am.

Excuse me, she said.

Outside the hotel she got a taxi and told the driver to take her to the American embassy. The “little business” (as she thought of it) at the main embassy gate took ten minutes. The “kind of spooky coincidence” (as she thought of it) or “incident” (as it immediately became known) at the embassy picnic took another ten minutes. When she got back to her room at the Intercon at approximately two-thirty on the afternoon of July 4 she wrote two letters, one to Catherine and
one to Wynn Janklow, which she took to an air express office to be shipped for delivery the next day in the United States.
Sweet bird,
the letter to Catherine began. She had spoken to Catherine twice from San José and again the evening she arrived on the island but the calls had been unsatisfactory and now she could not reach her.

Tried to call you a few minutes ago but you had signed out to go to Cape Ann with Francie and her parents—didn’t know how to reach you and there are two things I need you to know right away. The first thing I need you to know is that I’m asking your father to pick you up and bring you to Malibu for a while. Just until I get back from this trip. You don’t need summer credits anyway and he can probably arrange a way you can do the S.A.T. prep out there. The second thing I need you to know is I love you. Sometimes we argue about things but I think we both know I only argue because I want your life to be happy and good. Want you not to waste your time. Not to waste your talents. Not to let who you are get mixed up with anybody else’s idea of who you should be.

I love you the most. XXXXXXXX, M.

P.S. If anyone else comes and wants to take you from school for any reason repeat
ANY REASON
do not repeat
DO NOT
go with him or her.

The letter to Wynn Janklow was short, because she had reached him, at the house in Malibu, as soon as
she got back from the embassy. She had placed the call from a pay phone in the Intercon lobby. Had he not answered the phone she would have waited in the lobby until he did, because she needed to talk to Wynn before chancing any situation (the elevator, say, or the corridor upstairs) in which she might be alone.

Any situation in which something might happen to prevent her from telling Wynn what it was she wanted him to do.