The Far Side of the Sun

by Kate Furnivall

  Christie’s eyes flicked to the somber portrait of King George VI in full regalia that hung on the wall, as though seeking reassurance that order and justice still prevailed. “But, Miss Wyatt”—he smiled, spreading his charm a little thicker—“I do think you’re barking up the wrong tree here, my dear.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I can understand your interest in Morrell, indeed I can. But it’s time that you were aware of this fact: a black woman came to see me here two days after the murder. She wouldn’t give her name, refused point-blank. But she told me about Mirabelle.”

  Dodie sat straight. “Who is Mirabelle?”

  “She’s a prostitute. A friend of the woman.”

  “What is her connection with Morrell?”

  “What do you think?”

  Flynn didn’t allow a flicker of his anger to show. “What did this woman say?”

  “Mirabelle came to her the night of the murder, covered in blood.”

  Dodie gasped.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Wyatt, but Mirabelle told her that she had ‘entertained’ an American gentleman in an alleyway that night and he’d got rough. He’d been drinking. He carried a knife and threatened her with it. They struggled and”—Christie paused to make sure he had their full attention—“she ended up stabbing him.”

  Dodie’s hand went to her mouth. Flynn gave her the faintest shake of his head.

  Christie released a fog of smoke into the room. “Mirabelle apparently snatched his wallet and ran. The next morning she left the island, refusing to say where she was going.”

  “Are you telling us”—Flynn gave weight to each word—“that Morrell was killed by a prostitute who has since disappeared? And you were told this story by a woman you don’t know who refused to give her name?”

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

  For the first time Christie looked uncomfortable, aware of the thinness of his tale.

  “And you haven’t informed the police?” Dodie asked.

  “On the contrary. I have done so already.”

  “But why did she come to you?”

  “Ah, Miss Wyatt, you have to remember that I am well known in this community. I have a reputation for helping Bahamians, though I say it myself. This woman is not the kind of person who would go to the police, but she needed to tell someone in authority—someone who cares about the people here—so she came to me.” He spread his arms, as though to wrap them around all Bahamians.

  Flynn rose to his feet, pushing back his chair. “It sounds plausible, Mr. Christie. It’s a good story and a damned convenient one for everybody. It’s true that Morrell carried a knife. It’s true he hooked up with prostitutes sometimes.” He exhaled a long hard gust and stared down at the man on the other side of the desk. “But you’ve got one thing wrong. Morrell would never get rough with a woman, not in a million years.”

  Dodie looked across at him, but there was a tightness to her face; she was holding something back.

  “Thank you, Mr. Christie, for your time,” she said.

  They walked to the door and went through the shaking-hands ritual in a cursory manner. Just as they were leaving the office, Christie said in an unruffled tone, “Mr. Hudson, no man knows what another man fantasizes about when it comes to sex. Any man—or woman—can release his inner monster when there is no one else to see. Think about that.”

  The words hung in the corridor and Flynn wanted to put his fist through them. Dodie took his arm and steered him out of the building.

  * * *

  In the street, rain was striking the pavement and hissing under tires.

  “You could be wrong,” she said.

  “Dodie, don’t believe him.”

  “What if it’s true? He has told the police.”

  They were standing under a billowing awning on Bay Street, cars hooting at each other on the crowded road, pedestrians darting between the traffic to escape the sudden downpour. The air felt damp and solid, swirling in off the ocean with sudden force. Flynn had an arm wound around Dodie’s waist, holding her close.

  “Listen to me, Dodie. Morrell was not that man.”

  She narrowed her eyes, cutting out all else but him. The shock of what Christie had told them still lingered on her face, but Flynn could see there was a desire in her to believe the land agent’s words and it made him fear for her. It made him mute. She pressed her face against his neck and his nostrils caught the scent of her wet hair.

  “Don’t, Flynn,” she whispered.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t be fierce. Don’t be silent. Not with me.”

  “Morrell was not that man,” he said again. “He would not threaten a woman with a knife.”

  “Not even if he caught her trying to steal his wallet? Maybe that was the truth.”

  “And his fear of being bumped off if he went to the hospital? What about that? Where does it fit into this convenient story Christie has concocted for you and the police?”

  She tilted her head back to look at him. “Morrell was a member of the mob. I know he carried a gun and I assume he used it. You say he wouldn’t threaten a woman.” She shook her head sadly. “But he was a killer.”

  Her words lay between them. She couldn’t remove them. When a surrey plodded past, the horse gleaming like a seal in the rain, Flynn hailed it and bundled them both inside. They sat side by side, unspeaking, and the knowledge that Dodie regarded Morrell as a killer filled every inch of space under the small vehicle’s canopy. Because if she thought that of Morrell, then she thought it of him too.

  Flynn took her hand in his. It was cold. But she did not snatch it away.

  * * *

  Dodie was tough. The way she walked upright, denying the pain the slightest outward sign of its grip on her body. In the tiny shack in Bain Town Flynn eased her down on to the lumpy mattress, stripped off her dress, and massaged more of Mama Keel’s ointment onto her back.

  “Looking better?” she asked, facedown on the sheet.

  “Much.”

  Her back looked as though someone had thrown an ill-mixed pot of paint over it, a wild canvas of blues and blacks and purples.

  “Stop growling,” Dodie murmured.

  “Growling?”

  “Yes. You sound like one of Mama Keel’s stray dogs, all stiff legs and hackles raised.”

  Did he? He knew how to wear a blank mask, how to give nothing away by even the twitch of an eyelid. Often his life had depended on it. But with her he was transparent and it unnerved him. Yet in an odd way it gave him a sense of release. The freedom to let go of everything else and just love her. He lowered his head and kissed her shoulder. It tasted of strange herbs.

  “You must rest now and let your back heal.” He headed for the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To see a man.”

  “What man?”

  “Dodie,” he said calmly so that she wouldn’t know what it cost him, “I want you to leave this island.”

  “No.”

  “Please, Dodie. I’m going to arrange a boat.”

  “No.”

  “It’ll be safer.”

  “Safer for me. Not for you.”

  “You must go. I’ll stay. I gave my word to find Johnnie Morrell’s killer and I don’t go back on my word.”

  “Neither do I, Flynn.”

  He knew she would never leave till this was over.

  “Together,” she told him. “We do this together. And then we leave.”

  * * *

  The rain had stopped. The sky was a sullen gunmetal gray that robbed the dingy bar of what little light it possessed. But Flynn knew that the sun would put in an appearance in an hour or two. He was growing used to the rhythms here, to the heat and the brilliance of life on the island, very different from Chicago with it
s air so gray and so brittle it broke in his mouth.

  Spencer was there in the bar waiting for him, his narrow face tense, a well-used glass of scotch in front of him. He had been curt on the phone when Flynn rang his office. Neither had mentioned Flynn’s intrusion into his bedroom or his removal of Spencer’s gun at knife point.

  “What the hell are you still doing here?”

  “Real nice to see you too, Spencer.” Flynn grimaced as he sat down and signaled for a beer. “I told you before, I will leave when I’m ready, and not before. And until then, I could use some answers from you.”

  “Go to hell.” Spencer stood up. “Or more to the point, go to Miami. I only came to deliver this message: Lansky wants to speak to you.” He relished the threat implied in those words. Meyer Lansky too often did his speaking with a snub-nosed .38 Special.

  Flynn took a long drag on his cigarette and knew Spencer was not going to walk away. The beer arrived and he clinked his glass against the abandoned whiskey tumbler.

  “Happy days,” he said.

  He’d knocked back his beer and followed it with what was left of the scotch before Spencer put both his hands on the greasy table and leaned over it.

  “What the fuck are you playing at, Hudson?”

  “This isn’t a game.” Flynn tipped his chair back. “Don’t for one minute think I’m playing. I intend to find whoever killed Morrell.”

  “Don’t be a bloody fool. Forget Morrell. Get out of Nassau before . . .”

  “Before what?”

  “Before things get worse.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  Spencer sat down. “Just stay away from me. I don’t want scum like you anywhere near my house and don’t even think of breathing the same air as my wife again.”

  Flynn recalled the dark-haired woman asleep in the bed and wondered how wised up she was on what her husband was up to with the mob. This was a guy who didn’t like to get his nice clean cuffs dirty and sorted out his problems by using muscle like the two meatheads who had attacked Dodie. For that alone Spencer was lucky not to find his arms bending in the wrong directions, but right now Flynn needed this guy. He was the bridge. One foot in with the mob and one foot in the limey colonial camp in Nassau. So Flynn let his chair drop back to all four feet on the floor with a clatter that made Spencer jump back and his eyes widen warily.

  “I went to see Harold Christie today,” he said in a tone that implied more. “We chewed the fat awhile.”

  Spencer reacted by becoming very still. Not a muscle moved.

  “He peddled me a story about a prostitute putting the knife in Morrell,” Flynn informed him. “Know anything about that?”

  “It’s a rumor going around. It could be true.”

  “It could just as likely be true that one of your hoods did the job for you.”

  “No, Hudson, don’t be a bloody idiot. Whether we like it or not, you and I work for the same side.”

  “Okay, Spencer, so tell me who is on the other side. Who is it who had something to gain from Morrell’s death? You?”

  “No.”

  “Sir Harry Oakes?”

  “Christ alive, you are poking a stick into a snake pit if you go about saying that.”

  Flynn mentally sharpened his stick. “What’s so special about this deal? Everyone knows Oakes owns half the island. So what the hell is it that is getting everyone so riled up about this . . . ?”

  Spencer went for his glass and pushed it aside with annoyance when he found it empty. “Go back to Miami, Hudson. Keep your nose out of Lansky’s business.”

  A shout came from across the bar where two black guys in dungarees were bickering over a game of cards and it drew Spencer’s attention. He turned his head and in that unguarded moment Flynn saw the pulse in his neck below his jaw. It was racing like a cat out of hell. This man was scared. But of what? Of Oakes? Or Lansky? Or of something in his own shadow?

  Flynn lit himself another cigarette and drew the smoke deep into his lungs to smother the questions he wanted to hurl on the table. Instead he asked only one. “What happened to the money on Morrell? The police are looking for a wallet.”

  The mention of the police got a reaction.

  Spencer bared his bad teeth at Flynn. “How the fuck do I know what happened to the wallet? For all I know you pocketed it yourself.”

  Flynn flicked his cigarette to the floor and stamped on it. The other guys in the bar were keeping their eyes to themselves as they talked to each other in their deep voices and slipped a fold of ganja weed from one hand to another. They avoided the two white men in their midst as if they were invisible. Flynn reached across the table, seized the front of Spencer’s sweaty shirt, and yanked him forward hard against the table.

  “Last question, buddy. What’s the name of the factory where the girl used to work?”

  Spencer’s narrow eyes doubled in size. His hand gripped Flynn’s wrist, trying to release his shirt. But suddenly understanding hit him, and with a great whoop of breath, he started to laugh.

  Chapter 38

  Ella

  As a picnic, it was a failure. As a moment of fracturing Ella’s life, it was a resounding success.

  So much so that she became convinced someone else had crawled under her skin when her head was turned. What else could explain the stranger she found inside her bones who did things and uttered words that would make any happily married woman blush?

  Her hand slid into his waistband. “Let me touch you,” she’d whispered in his ear.

  Shameful, shameful things.

  It had started well. Ella was happy and talkative, relaxing in the car with the windows down as Dan drove inland. There were only narrow dust-laden roads that wound like coral ribbons between the overhanging trees, empty except for an occasional donkey cart or a couple of women sashaying along in bright dresses with boxes of limes or melons perched on their heads. No habitations. Just the wild bush with its vivid green scrubland punctuated by dense coppices of pine trees and strong flamboyant palms of all shapes and sizes that fanned out their fronds against sapphire-blue skies.

  It felt private. Away from all houses, far from the people of Nassau and their relentless wagging tongues. Was that what did it? Was that what gave her such a sense of freedom and release? Or was it Dan? The way he seemed unfettered. His elbow on the window ledge, the wind clutching at his hair. He must have been to the barber’s early that morning because there were tiny snippets of hair on the white collar of his open-necked shirt and the skin behind his ear gleamed pink in the sunlight.

  Today there seemed to be no barrier between them and he made her laugh when he sang back to a mockingbird that seemed to be serenading them. She liked to laugh with him. They sang all the words of “London Pride” together, his strong bass voice rolling alongside hers, and it felt good.

  Dan knew the tracks and trails well, which ones he could squeeze a car down and which ones he couldn’t. The bushland stretched out around them, dense and secretive, full of sounds and smells that were unfamiliar to Ella, as she had never ventured this deep before. It felt wild to her. Trees spread their heavy branches farther, bushes were speckled with red berries that glittered like jewels in the sun, and the undergrowth of ferns and prickly vegetation rustled with the sounds of small unseen animals.

  “Are there snakes here?” Ella asked suddenly.

  He laughed at her expression. “Yes, but no poisonous ones.”

  When finally he selected a shaded spot under a grove of pine trees to lay out their picnic rug and spread Emerald’s array of fancy cakes and sandwiches around them, Ella felt as though she had a champagne bubble of happiness caught in her throat.

  She couldn’t eat. Not with that bubble lodged in her throat. She was frightened that if she did it would burst, so she just drank the wine and smoked one of Dan’s cigarettes, warm from his pocket. But she watc
hed him. Her eyes feasted on the relish with which he sank his teeth into Emerald’s blueberry pie, the purple juice trickling onto his chin, and she was shocked by the strength of her desire to lick it off.

  So she lay back on the rug, forcing her eyes to stare at the sky instead of at him, seeing the clouds start to roll in from the west, feeling the lightness in her limbs and the slow contented beat of her heart. When a black ball of mosquitoes chose to hover over her face, she couldn’t even rouse herself to swat them away, but Dan’s large hand swept back and forth, defeating them.

  “You don’t want them biting you,” he said, smiling.

  Was it her imagination or did he put an emphasis on “them”? As if she might want something else biting her. Or someone else. But a sudden sense of stepping too far over the line of what was decent made her close her eyes. Denying them the pleasure of gazing at him, at the way his hair sprang from his temples, at the large collarbones that edged into view above his shirt. She could sit a peach on his collarbones. Above all she denied her eyes their desire to watch his hands. To imagine what they could do.

  “Are you asleep?”

  She smiled and rolled her head languidly from side to side. “Not yet.”

  She heard his teeth bite into an apple. Quietly he started to tell her about his work. About the black women who slunk into the police station with swollen faces and cut lips on a Friday night, which was payday. Payday meant rum swilling. He told her about the lost dogs, the drunks, the petty thefts, the spats between neighbors, the traffic accidents, about the fair but disciplined attitude of his boss, Colonel Lindop, but at no time did he mention the murder. The large numbers of military personnel now on the island had brought an inevitable increase in his work, but he spoke about it with a sense of commitment that pleased her.

  At one point he rested a hand on her leg, on her bare shin. Casually, as though he scarcely noticed. She made herself breathe quietly. And when he removed his hand to flick away another mosquito invasion, she kept her eyes firmly closed, so that he would not see what that did to her. That was why she didn’t catch sight of the clouds turning gray or notice when the horizon flattened to a dull backdrop where the trees around her rose in black-edged silhouettes. When the rain hit, it was like pennies hurled at her face.