“Pardon,” she said to each woman, popping her P’s in the explosive French way and clutching her canvas briefcase.
The tall street lamps around the inner harbor clicked on and lit the quay with a sickly yellow light. She stopped in her tracks, stunned for a fraction of a second, before she began to run.
“Hey, stop that man!” she yelled. “Arretez! Allez, quelqu’un!” A fat man was in her inflatable, attempting to unscrew the clamps that held the outboard to the transom, and though she was yelling at people to stop him in both French and English, not a soul moved to help her. As she ran, she called out to the group of young boys standing on the quay in front of her dinghy, the red ends of their cigarettes glowing in the dying light. She waved her arms, portfolio in one hand, papers in the other, pointing at the man’s large behind that now obliterated her view of the engine.
The boys turned and looked at her with round white faces and narrowed eyes. The man in her boat, meanwhile, gave up on the outboard and stood up. He glanced in her direction, his fleshy lips in an exaggerated pout, then he grabbed the oars and leapt to the seawall with remarkable agility for a man his size. By the time she jumped onto the quay, he was gone, having disappeared across the street, into the crowd of people gathering on the Place de la Victiore for the evening social hour.
She spun in a circle and flung her arms down at her sides, looking for someone or something to kick. It took all her will power not to violate her resolution about cursing. She wanted to let loose with every blue word she’d learned in the Corps.
When her temper felt more or less under control, she motioned aside one of the boys in the group and questioned him in French, asking him if he knew the man, if he had been acting as a lookout. She pointed out to him that the cable she used to secure the outboard and lock the dinghy to the rusted chain on the seawall had been cut. Surely he had seen the big man cutting the cable and known something was wrong. She asked him why, as a good citizen, he didn’t do something to stop the thief.
The youngster shrugged and blew air through his pooched-out lips. He told her it was none of his business, that if she had a problem, she should call a flic or gendarme, not bother him.
She turned away from him, throwing her arms into the air to blow off steam so she didn’t grab the little twit by the throat and pinch his pouty lips right off. Here she was, just a good citizen minding her own business, trying to help someone out, be a good samaritan, and the result was the someone she’d been trying to help — Bob — had stolen her radio and caused the authorities to take her passport. And now, in the middle of the city, under the eyes of half a dozen people, a thief had nearly taken her outboard and hadn’t had a problem stealing her only set of oars. She turned back and had begun to lecture the youth on his civic duty, when someone tapped her shoulder and she heard her name.
“Riley?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Pointe-à-Pitre
March 25, 2008
6:55 p.m.
Riley swung around, then blinked. “Diggory?”
For a moment, she wondered if she were dreaming. Perhaps she had fallen asleep on the passage across from Antigua, and she would wake and be aboard Bonefish and neither Bob nor Beaulieu nor her missing passport — nor any of the day’s events including this moment —would be real.
“Riley, you look like you could use some help.” As she was trying to think through her confusion, unable to stop staring at those electric blue eyes, he turned his back to her and walked the boy back to his group of friends. She saw him remove a fat gold money clip from his pants pocket, the fabric pulling tight across his backside as he did. He handed one bill to each of the six boys and they all took off running. When he turned back around, he held his arms out and smiled.
God, he looked good, she thought. Tall and slender and dressed as if he’d just stepped out of a photo shoot for some very expensive Scotch. She shook her head. “You must be joking.”
“No kiss?” he said, forcing his lips out in a pout. “That’s all right. It has been a while. I know we have our date tomorrow, but I saw you from my table across the square, and I thought you looked like you could use a hand. You look fabulous – as usual. I like the haircut. It suits you.”
She could not believe it was really him. If this were a film, she thought, the soundtrack would be soaring about now. How long had it been? Ha! As if she didn’t know down to the day. She hadn’t seen him since that last day in Lima when he had walked right past her in the midst of the foul smoke and rubble. Neither of them had said a word.
God, her shoulder ached.
Back at Bethesda, she’d thought she would get a phone call, an email, a note. Certainly, he had been recalled to the capital, too. He had to be out there somewhere in the city answering their unending questions the same way she was. But as time passed, and they grafted layer after layer of skin onto her shoulder, she questioned whether she even wanted to recover.
And now, here he was smiling as though the past years had never happened.
She stepped back and put her hand to her forehead, as though to shade her eyes from the non-existent sun. “Dig, what did you say to those boys?”
“I heard you asking them about your oars, so I gave them each five euros and told them the first one back here with the goods would get a hundred euro note. I’d say it won’t be more than ten minutes.” He pointed to a small kiosk with a couple of sidewalk tables on the harbor end of the Place de la Victoire. “Shall we have a drink while we wait? I want to hear all about what you are doing with this boat.” He lifted his chin in the direction of the dinghy and took hold of her arm.
She pulled her elbow out of his grip. “Wait a minute. Stop. After the day I’ve had today, I can’t believe this.” She walked away from him, hands on hips, needing the room to breathe.
She’d wanted to meet him on her terms. She wasn’t ready yet.
“Riley,” he said, speaking her name in the familiar intimate tone he had used hundreds of times before.
She looked back at him. Even after all that had happened between them, she could feel places deep inside her moving. Parts of her traitorous body that had lain happily dormant were now thrumming with the expectation of his touch. But her mind was sending other signals. Danger! Flee! She took a deep breath to fend off the nausea crawling up her throat.
“Dig, I can’t do this, not now, not today — maybe never.”
“What?”
“Let’s turn around, pretend we never saw each other. Start again tomorrow.”
He spread his hands, palms up. She glanced at the white skin on those palms, criss-crossed with hundreds of lines. She remembered what it felt like to have those hands sliding down her naked skin, the feathery touch of those long slender fingers. Those hands could make her do almost anything. Forget about the angular jaw, black curly hair, and the little dent in his chin she had once found so sexy. No, she could have resisted any of that. He had seduced her with those hands.
“Riley, I’ve never stopped thinking about you. You just left — disappeared. Now that I’ve found you again, don’t push me away. Don’t make me into a ghost like your brother. You’re having a bad time of it, I can see that. At least let me help you.”
Oh, he was good. She had to grant him that. He told women what they wanted to hear. And he knew how to listen. The most talented chameleon she had ever met, but that was all part of the job, of course. As if he couldn’t have found her any time he wanted to. She shook her head and turned her back to him. Yeah, he was lying, something she normally found unforgivable, but part of her didn’t give a damn. In fact, very specific parts of her wanted to grab a cab and head straight to his hotel room.
“Whatever it is, I’ll take care of it,” he said, touching the back of her neck, brushing his fingers along her hairline.
She could see he was baffled by her silence, and she felt a brief moment of triumph at his unease.
“I have resources, you know,” he said. “Come on, let’s share a glass of w
ine, and you tell me all about what’s been happening with you. Surely you have time tonight to share a glass with an old friend?”
He slid his hand over to her shoulder and squeezed. Her scars ached, and she felt sick, as though her belly were full of shards of ice.
“Get your hand off me.” Her voice was low, trembling as she struggled to keep in control.
“Oh, come on, love, you don’t have to be like this.”
Her hand was in motion before she was conscious of her decision, and the crack of her palm striking his cheek startled the evening strollers like the sudden bang of a balloon popping. She kept her eyes focused on his as he lifted his hand to touch the growing red spot on his cheek.
“Don’t call me that,” she said in a harsh whisper.
He bowed his head once and said, “I apologize. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“Offend? Oh please. Love? As if you knew the meaning of the word. I’ve been waiting more than two years for some kind of communication from you, some explanation of what really happened that day. Dig, people I loved died down there. Others were maimed and wounded and their lives changed forever. Including me.” She yanked at the collar of her polo shirt and exposed the patch of mottled skin on her right shoulder.
Dig’s eyes flicked to the injury, then away again. “Riley –”
“No. You take a long look, Diggory. And that’s after Bethesda’s best did their work. After months in the hospital. Wondering what happened to you, but knowing I couldn’t reach out to you. Waiting. And did I hear one word from you?” She tried to force a laugh. “Offend me? Every time I think about what happened I feel like I’m going to vomit. Those flames haven’t stopped burning. I’ve carried this, this —” She stopped, not knowing what to call it, afraid to put it into words. Just as all the other times when she thought about that day, she smelled the greasy smoke of burning flesh, and the stench of it made the bile burn at the back of her throat. She shook her head. “I don’t want any more of your lies. What I want is the truth. The truth about what happened down there.”
“Do you really?” he asked.
He spoke in those seductive tones, and she clenched both of her fists in an effort not to hit him again.
“There’s more you and your kind aren’t telling me,” she said. “I know it. And if you won’t tell me,” she started, then stopped short of saying it.
“What? It was a terrible thing, but it had nothing to do with us.”
“Oh really? Why is it I have such a difficult time believing that? I kept my mouth shut, kept you out of it, and every day I grew more sick with myself.”
His hand started for her, ever confident that his touch could quiet her.
She raised her hands in self defense and stepped back. “You keep your hands off me, Diggory Priest. You hear me? I’m out of it now.”
Riley spun around and ran across the quay to her dinghy. She stepped into the boat, untied the painter, and pushed the boat away from the sea wall. Her outboard engine started on the first pull, and she spun the throttle, gunning the engine, forcing the small boat onto a plane. The hot wind stung her face and blew the tears from her eyes as her boat roared out into the dark harbor.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Pointe-à-Pitre
March 25, 2008
7:15 p.m.
Diggory stood on the quay and watched the small dinghy disappear out of the inner basin and into the night. The harbor side fish market was now abandoned, the tables empty, the dark awnings flapping in the breeze. Some movement attracted his attention farther down the dock, and he saw a large brown rat tightrope walk the dock lines securing one of the local fishing boats. The animal disappeared into the hold.
Diggory shuddered then began walking down the street that formed one side of the inner harbor. He steered clear of the fishing boats moored along the seawall and walked down the center of the asphalt, his strides growing longer with each step. By the time he reached the end of the street where it curved in a sharp left, he broke into a run. He could still hear the high pitched whine of the straining outboard engine. One hundred yards ahead the houses gave way to a waterfront restaurant, and he rushed through the tables, pushing aside empty chairs and startling diners who watched wide-eyed as he hurried to the terrace. He stopped at the railing, breathing hard, staring out into the anchorage where the half dozen or so cruising sailboats bobbed in the wind chop.
The sound of the outboard died and he waited. He was not disappointed. Less than a minute later a masthead light blinked on. Straining his eyes to see through the darkness he made out the white of the hull, the dim yellow of a cabin light. Her boat was a white-hulled sloop anchored close to the red flashing channel marker. It would be easy for them to find.
“Monsieur, est-ce que vous voulez quelque chose a boire?”
“Non, merci,” he said to the waiter who had appeared at his elbow. Much as he could use a drink, now wasn’t the time. He had found her, and this time, he would see it through to the end. Marguerite Riley represented one of his rare missteps, and now, here she was like a gift, one that would keep on giving with all its ramifications.
He hadn’t been lying when he told her she had improved with age. She was the physical embodiment of Nietzsche’s Superwoman: fit, smart, and most of all, well-bred. There had been few women he remembered longer than a week or two, few who had been of his class. Riley had been different. He could not ask her to do the things he asked of the whores or the bored foreign service wives he encountered. He knew — from the first moment he saw her in her crisp, creased USMC uniform, brown shirt, blue pants, chest covered with ribbons, firm grip announcing herself as Sergeant Riley — he had to have her and his usual sexual repertoire would never be seductive to a woman like her. The little upper crust daddy’s girl masquerading as the enlisted working class. She was the sort of girl who had acted as though he were invisible back when he was in high school and sitting in a booth waiting for his mother to get off work.
Only a few days later, he’d asked her out and brought her back to his apartment in San Isidro. He’d shuddered at that first embrace when her fingers stroked the naked skin of his shoulders and back. With her, he had come the closest to feeling the pleasure of a caress. She was the polar opposite of the human offal his mother had worked with at the diner.
And now, she said she wanted to know the truth about what happened down in Peru. Riley, darling, he thought, you of all people should know when to leave well enough alone. And the amusing part was that he had every intention of telling her, in good time.
Diggory left the restaurant and ambled back toward the harbor on autopilot, lost in memories of Lima. As he passed the immigration office, he surfaced from his reveries, paused, and looked back in the direction of the anchorage. After a moment, he climbed the steps to the government building. He tried the door. It was open.
The reception desk inside stood abandoned. The clicking of his shoes echoed as he crossed the tile floor, and he heard giggling from a back room. He cleared his throat.
About a minute later, a young woman with enormous breasts and a huge gap between her front teeth emerged from the back room pushing at her lopsided bra with the back of her wrist. Her hair was tousled, and her skin flushed when she saw him look at the open buttons of her blouse. She clutched at her neckline and said, “Bon soir, monsieur.”
He told her who he was and explained that he needed information.
Whether it was his ID or his charm, he didn’t know or care, but the secretary immediately showed him into the office of Monsieur Beaulieu, the French Immigration officer who, the girl said, had been on duty that afternoon. He was the one who had spoken to the American woman.
The man was in his shirt sleeves, his tie pulled loose, his bulbous nose reddened from the half-empty bottle of wine and the pair of smudged tumblers standing on his desk. Diggory showed him the same ID he had shown the secretary, and Beaulieu, impressed, invited him to take a seat. The immigration man told him that technically they
were closed. That was the reason things were so informal at the moment. Clearly, he wanted to make a good impression on the important American agent.
Diggory didn’t care if he was preparing to slam it to the secretary on the desktop in the next hour. He just wanted some information. He spoke to the bureaucrat in flawless French.
“You understand that the questions I am asking you are confidential and of utmost importance to the national security of both of our nations. The young American woman on the sailboat in the harbor. Marguerite Riley. Did she clear in here?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I have her passport right here. There was a serious difficulty.”
“What happened?”
“She came in to clear, and she told us she had one passenger on her yacht. Picked him up in the water offshore off the coast of Basse Terre this morning.” He snickered and made a snorting noise in his large nose. “She said he was totally nude. Well, except for a necklace.”
“Describe this necklace.”
“She said it was a coin of some sort. Gold.”
“And the man’s name?”
“He gave her a false name.”
“What was the name?”
“Robert Surcouf.”
Diggory closed the door behind him leaving the immigration officer and his secretary to continue with the disgusting little rendezvous he had interrupted. He stood on the doorstep and watched the lights reflecting on the water of the inner harbor, the French tourists and locals mingling as they hurried on their way to home or dinner or, like Beaulieu, to surreptitious meetings or animal gropings.
Circle of Bones: a Caribbean Thriller Page 8
