Tropic of Darkness (21 page)

CHAPTER

THIRTY-FOUR

After an age of groping around blindly, Aldo Torres managed to find one of his candles and light it. Its glow did not penetrate very far into the surrounding murk, but it at least gave him the chance to find one of his flashlights.

His arm was trembling as he played the beam about the room. And that lent everything a jerky, unreal quality all over again. His heart seemed to have climbed into his throat. He still couldn't find Jack.

“Somebody?” he yelled, as much to shatter the silence as anything else.

Noises came from one side of him. And the shivering light touched faces, none of them the Yanqui's.

Leland Hague was hunched where he had first been, and was looking badly dazed. As for Manuel Cruz, he'd managed to pull the knife out of his shoulder. And was still sitting against the wall, clutching at his blood-drenched shoulder.

The light found Dolores's bedraggled corpse, but no one else.

Torres pulled himself together and attended to Manuel's wounds, using strips of the man's shirt for bandages.

“Where's the Yanqui?” Manuel croaked. “Where
is
he?”

Maybe he had fled the same way as Luis. Torres started calling out as loudly as he could. And Hague added his own voice.

The only answers they got were their own echoes. Torres scowled with exasperation. Jack could possibly be hiding, or even lying unconscious somewhere. He would have to search the entire place.

He turned . . . to find Dolores staring at him.

No, it was just a misty image of her. Her corpse was still lying on the floor. This was her ghost.

Her face was no happier than it had been when she'd been alive. She frowned, studying him. Her mouth moved, but there was not the slightest sound. He got the sense of what she was trying to tell him, however.

Come with me.

And he'd already been through so much this evening that she didn't even particularly frighten him. He'd met with spirits before, and this one seemed to mean no harm. So he followed her out along the corridor, to a door at the far end. The room beyond was filled with junk, and dust lay thickly over everything.

Torres rummaged around until he dug out something covered with a very old layer of cloth. There was a painting underneath. An old and faded portrait, in cracked oils. But unmistakable.

The same woman who'd risen from the floor when he had summoned something from the other side.

“The mistress of this house?” he asked, the question almost sticking in his throat.

Dolores nodded.

“And the Yanqui
?
”

She simply shrugged, then disappeared from view.

*   *   *

A while later, the remaining three men made their way out through the front door, Manuel clutched between the others, and Doctor Hague moving like a crippled insect on his single crutch. Without a word passing between them, they made their way through the tangled undergrowth, over to the waterside, where they sat down on the jutting rocks. They stared across the bay at Old Havana.

The moon had dropped almost the whole way to the far horizon. The wave tops glistened brightly in its thin remaining light. And the Old Town looked very beautiful, its high roofs edged with an almost celestial silver.

Torres lowered his head.

“I never even considered this.”

He took two short stubs of cigar from the front pocket of his shirt, offered one to Manuel and then lit the other.

“It's not your fault,” Manuel told him. “You did what you had to. There was no alternative. We'd all have died, and the result would be the same.”

“What you're saying,” Hague broke in, “is that the
mother
might have Gilliard?”

“Any of them might now. There is no way of telling.”

They were silent for another while, Hague chewing over his next question. “Can it really be as bad as you make out?”

Torres let his gaze drop farther, the beauty of the bay becoming unbearable to him. There was a saltwater pool in the rocks below his feet. A self-contained world filled with little crabs and fishes. And he could wreck it in an instant, if he so desired. Simply destroy it with one swift stamp of his heel. Had the world that
they
inhabited become like that?

“If the dream world and the real one start to coincide . . . if the gap between them becomes bridged . . 
.
”

He drew on his cigar.

“Then who knows what might happen? There is no way to predict it. The old rules will be replaced by new ones. Or perhaps there will be no rules in the slightest. Is not that a frightening thought?”

There were still things that needed to be done. They all knew that, and got to it. The cigar stubs were tossed aside. The three men got up painfully to their feet and headed back into the house again. They wrapped Luis's corpse in an old rug and by slow degrees dragged it outside.

The mottled disc of the moon had faded partially from view by the time they emerged. A glimmer of pale yellow toward the east spoke of the approach of dawn. And—as was traditional amongst high priests of the Santería cult—Torres stretched his arms out to the new day's sun in a ritual known as
nangare
.

The words he spoke were a petition to the sun. That the world would be a fine place to live in, this coming day. That the gods and their servants should keep everybody safe and well. No evil should befall them. They should walk into the following evening happy and at peace.

He spoke the words with special feeling, this particular morning.

Hague waited until he had finished before asking, “We can only hope, then?”

All that the high priest could do was pull a face. And then he went back into the DeFlores house one final time.

He returned to the same room where the battle had taken place. Except it didn't look quite so important any longer. It looked more like a crowd of fractious kids had gotten loose in here, powder scattered everywhere, shards of pottery strewn across the floor.

He was reaching out, now, with his finely tuned senses. Looking with his inner eye. And could no longer sense the presence of Dolores's spirit. She'd gone somewhere else, taking her unborn child along with her. The souls of the men trapped in the jars had gone away as well. In fact, this entire ruined mansion . . . it was empty as the husk of some abandoned shell.

Nothing. There was nothing here at all. To that effect, they'd succeeded. For the first time in centuries, the DeFlores house was no longer a danger.

Except they'd simply moved the problem on. And where else in the world might it start showing its grim face?

Torres rubbed his brow and sighed. He retrieved his staff, and then began to search extensively through the whole place.

He hunted through every room. Through every corner, nook, and cranny he could find.

But however hard he tried, he could not find the slightest sign of what had happened to Jack Gilliard.

EPILOGUE

CLOUDS ON
WATER

THE PRESENT DAY

She had been noticing the tall man in the pale cream suit for several days. She'd only ever seen him at a distance, but he stood out in this place where almost everyone dressed casually. He seemed rather gaunt, and she was not sure she liked that. But he had gripped Carolyn Mitchell's attention. Some quality about him fascinated her.

She thought she saw him now, in the corner of her eye, over by a row of tentlike structures at the far end of the beach. He was wearing dark glasses and a hat of the same color as his suit, as usual. But when she turned her head in his direction, he was gone.

Carolyn sighed and tried to relax.

The Varadero beach sprawled out in front of her, a light golden color like the palest Demerara sugar. The hotel, only two years old, reared into the humid air behind her like some modernistic obelisk. She was at a round glass table on the edge of the terrace, by the swimming pool. A couple of feet ahead of her, the concrete slabs gave way to sand.

She'd come here, from London, on one of those “singles” packages that were so popular these days. And she wasn't looking for new friends. Carolyn worked in entertainment, the publicity side of the business, and already had more of those than she knew what to do with. No, she had her mind on something else. But the men who had arrived with her on the same tour were so completely unacceptable that, by the end of the first week, she'd wound up taking one of the waiters from the cocktail bar back to her room. And that had been fine, but not really what she was after.

And now, this. This sudden change in weather. It was still stiflingly hot, but dense clouds churned above her, swaths of them. They were reflected in the Caribbean waves, so that it was hard to tell where the ocean left off and the sky started.

It had all started happening about the same time that the man in the pale suit had first shown up.

Belts of cloud kept moving in, then swirling off again. A bolt of lightning would come flashing down occasionally and scorch the surface of the water. Thunder would erupt without the slightest warning, making everybody jump. And the heavens kept taking on peculiar colors, sickly mauves and even stranger greens.

It made her slightly nervous. Was it tornado season round these parts? She wasn't sure.

She was still in her bikini, but took off her sunglasses, since she couldn't see the point of wearing them. The pool was empty. People didn't like using it when there was the threat of lightning.

The beach in front of her was only thinly populated. A fierce wind was starting to blow up, throwing spray in from the sea. But there was one couple out there who were oblivious to everything around them. Sitting on a beach towel, they were kissing. And she knew they'd only met two days ago. Somebody, at least, had found romance.

She looked around for the tall man again, but he was not in view.

Maybe she ought to go back to her room. But she'd be even more alone there than she was out here. Carolyn chewed at her lip, then decided—
to hell with it
—and slumped back in her seat.

The noise of wind and waves melded together in her ears. The lack of sunlight made her drowsy, as if evening were approaching. She felt her head tip back.

And before she really knew it, she had fallen fast asleep.

*   *   *

The dream was of a kind she'd never had before.

She was in some kind of nightclub, an enormous one. There was no roof to the place—it was open to the darkened sky. The swollen moon and stars peered down. There were dozens of tables, and they were jam-packed with guests. Everyone was very finely dressed, but in a somewhat old-fashioned way.

She was alone at her table, and still wearing her bikini. Which made her feel awkward and embarrassed, until she figured out that nobody was looking at her. Every eye was glued to the wide stage up front.

The same tall man was on it, standing in a spotlight. And why was she surprised by that? His suit was pure white now, as was his hat, as were his shoes. He wore white gloves. And he still had his dark glasses on.

He had a trumpet pressed to his lips. No, she corrected herself. She'd been around musicians long enough to know that this was a cornet.

He wasn't using any microphone. But his playing was so loud and avid it reverberated around the club.

She recognized the tune, an old classic. It was “I've Got You Under My Skin.”

And when he finished, there was wild applause.

He didn't bow. Didn't retreat to the wings. He simply climbed down from the stage and began to walk in her direction, the instrument swinging from his grasp. Carolyn felt aware anew that she was half naked. Her body hunched in on itself.

But this didn't seem to bother him. He didn't seem to notice . . . or at least, he acknowledged it no more than the applause he'd gotten. He pulled out the chair opposite her and settled into it, the black discs of his sunglasses aimed directly at her face.

He
was
rather thin but handsome, very masculine.

Except that when his narrow lips moved, it was a female voice that came out. Low and sumptuous and very smooth, with a Hispanic accent.

“Under my skin,” it said.

She went completely rigid, unable to do anything but listen.

“I've been under this skin for a while now, you see. And feel it's time to move on. I yearn so very much to have a woman's body once again.”

This alarmed her so badly that Carolyn woke up.

The man in the pale suit was sitting down across from her, the black discs of his sunglass lenses staring coolly at her face.

*   *   *

For a moment, dream and reality merged, and she wondered if she really was awake. And then the man cracked a cautious smile.

“Hi,” he said, “I hope I'm not disturbing you.”

She pulled herself together. This was just coincidence, and that was all. She told herself that several times, because she hated silly women who gave too much credence to their dreams.

“No.” She shook her head briskly, trying to hide the fact that she was slightly nervous. “Not at all.”

Why, she kept on wondering, was he dressed that way at a beach resort? Maybe he was with the hotel's entertainment.

“You're American?” she asked.

“Yeah, sure. But I haven't lived there in a good few years.”

He began to list the places that he'd stayed in, all of them south of the border.

And something began to dawn on her as one location followed the next. One of the things she prided herself on was keeping up with current affairs. She read the serious papers every day, almost from cover to cover.

Some of the places he was mentioning . . . hadn't there been disasters there, the past couple of years? Earthquakes, floods, or else some kind of violence? Was she remembering it right? She wasn't even certain.

But perhaps he was a journalist, and followed such events around. Maybe
that
explained the constant traveling.

She was about to ask him, when the sky rumbled again. The clouds got even darker, taking on colors around their edges she had never seen before. The wind grew even stronger, blowing parasols over and knocking empty glasses from adjoining tables. Waiters scurried about, looking troubled. And the kissing couple left the beach.

Carolyn stared up with a shiver.

“Do you think there's going to be a storm?” she asked.

The man looked unbothered. He tilted his face back. Took off his shades. And that was when she got another mild surprise. She'd never before seen anyone with blond hair who had such dark brown eyes.

He studied the clouds, their peculiar hues reflected in his gaze.

“Yes,” he told her finally. “I think there's going to be a big one.”

Then he stared back at her.

“Have you been to Havana yet?”

“No,” she answered. “Why?”

He smiled again, rather stiffly this time.

“There's a place I'd like to show you.”

A nightclub?
she wondered, the idea seeming to come to her out of nowhere.

And the word had not been in her dream. But she thought it anyway.

Karibe
.

What did that mean? She'd never even heard a word like that before. But it continued to echo through her mind, in spite of her bewilderment.

Karibe
.

The wind had become so unruly that the pale jade sea looked like it was trying to tear itself apart.

Carolyn stared out across the hissing, churning waves, uncertain what to do.