IT WAS ALMOST dark before Akitada returned to the inn to collect his belongings and pay his bill. He would not reach home until late, but he wanted to be with his wife on this final night of the festival. They would mourn their son together, sharing their grief as they had shared their love.
When he rode out of Otsu, people were lighting the bonfires to guide the dead on their way back to the other world. Soon they would gather on the shore to send off the spirit boats, and the tiny points of light would bob on the waves until it looked as if the stars had fallen into the water.
Someday he would return to visit this other Yori, the child who had come into his life to remind him that life places obligations on a man that cannot be denied.
ED MCBAIN
LEAVING NAIROBI
June 2003
THIS WAS THE final story by the late Ed McBain/Evan Hunter to appear in AHMM. Typical of this remarkably versatile writer, though th best known for his 87th Precinct police procedurals, this story skillfully builds suspense amid the beautifully evoked backdrop of the Kenyan countryside.
On the jumbo jet from Nairobi to New York, Jeremy is trying to explain to his wife why he feels … well … somewhat guilty about Davey Ladd’s suicide.
Everywhere around them, passengers are wearing earphones and watching the movie.
Jeremy is whispering all this.
“But why should you feel guilty at all?” Therese asks.
She is whispering, too. They have spent the last two days in a courtroom on Taifa Road, where a panel of magistrates ruled that David Lawrence Ladd had taken his own life. It rained during the entire inquest. It was still raining when the plane took off from Jomo Kenyatta International this morning.
“Well, you know,” Jeremy says. “Because of the problem we had with him.”
“The problem was of his own making,” Therese says.
“Even so.”
“He was a very troubled individual,” she says.
Therese is thirty-two years old, lean and supple, and almost as tall as Jeremy; a startlingly beautiful brunette with large brown eyes and long black hair. On safari, she wore her hair coiled into a bun at the back of her neck. She wore khaki shorts she bought at the Gap and a khaki jacket with huge flap pockets. For the long plane ride home, she is wearing jeans and a baggy white cotton sweater.
Therese is twenty years younger than Jeremy.
He never expected the difference in their ages would become a problem, especially not so soon after their marriage. He knows he is not a spectacularly handsome man, but he considers himself reasonably good-looking in a somewhat distinguished way, with graying sideburns and a tall … well, almost stately … bearing. He considers himself a modest man, and he’s not at all sure he agrees with New York Magazine’s evaluation of him as one of the best internists in the city. He recognizes that he is a very good doctor … but one of the best? All he knows for certain is that he has tried to live both his personal and professional lives by the credo “Do no harm.”
But now Davey Ladd is dead, isn’t he?
“By his own hand,” Therese reminds him.
“Yes.”
“So why should you be feeling guilty?”
“You should have seen him.”
“You see dead people all the time.”
“Not that many.”
“Enough. You’re in the hospital every day …”
“Yes, but …”
“There are dead people in the hospital.”
“They don’t look the way he did.”
Davey Ladd lying naked on his back with his own 9-millimeter pistol in his mouth, blood all over the pillow and the bed …
“This was uncontrolled bleeding, Therese. This was … wanton. The back of his skull was gone, the force of the explosion burst his eyeballs. It was gruesome.”
“I can imagine.”
They are silent for several moments. The man sitting on Jeremy’s left, on the aisle, has fallen asleep with his earphones half on, half off. He is snoring loudly, and the muted sound of actors shouting at each other comes from the one earphone hanging loose on his cheek.
“I just hope it wasn’t anything …”
“It wasn’t,” Therese says.
“… I said or did.”
“How could it have been?”
“I don’t know.”
“It was getting out of hand, Jere.”
“I know.”
“He was a very troubled person.”
“I know.”
“From the very start,” Therese says.
“WELL, WELL, WELL,” Davey says. “What have we here!”
These are his very first words to them.
They are standing with Frank Dobbs just outside the tent that will be theirs for the next eight days. It was Frank who appeared like a savior out of the maelstrom of baggage and travelers at the Nairobi airport the night before. It was Frank who drove them to their overnight lodgings in Nairobi, Frank who picked them up again early this morning for their charter flight to the Masai Mara. Frank Dobbs, in his early forties, Jeremy guesses, looking ruddy and robust and sporting a handlebar mustache that gives him the appearance of a London pub keeper.
Their campsite is on the banks of the Mara River, which bisects the huge game preserve. Bordered by a patchy forest on one side, the muddy river meanders through the vast plain, hippos lazing in its waters, crocodiles sunbathing on its scrubby banks. The proximity of the crocs is not reassuring to Jeremy; the camp cannot be more than fifty yards from where they tilt their gaping jaws to the sun.
“This will be home till the twentieth,” Frank says.
He is showing them a thirty-foot-long sleeping tent with twin cots, a wardrobe, two folding camp chairs, and a low round table. There is a separate toilet enclosure some five feet behind the tent. There is a small shower stall to the left of that. Everything under canvas. This is not the royal palace. Nor does it even seem like the “luxurious accommodations” promised in the Dobbs-Ladd Safaris brochure.
“Well, well, well. What have we here!”
They all turn when they hear the voice.
Davey Ladd is wearing very short, tight khaki shorts that bulge with his masculinity. He is wearing as well high-topped shoes and moss-colored socks, a short-sleeved khaki shirt that exposes muscular arms. A shooting vest over that, with loops for shotgun cartridges. He is perhaps a shade under six feet tall, bronzed from constant exposure to the sun. He is hatless, his hair blond, his eyes a greenish-gray. A 9-millimeter pistol is bolstered on his right hip.
“Well, well, well. What have we here!”
Jeremy might accept these welcoming words as boyish enthusiasm—Davey is perhaps twenty-seven years old—were they not so blatantly directed to Therese.
“Davey,” Frank says, “please meet Dr. and Mrs. Palmer. My partner, Davey Ladd.”
“How do you do?” Jeremy says, and extends his hand.
Davey takes Therese’s hand instead. Looking into her eyes, holding her hand, he says, “My pleasure, Mrs. Palmer.”
And holds her hand a fraction of an instant too long.
Flustered, Therese withdraws it.
THE OTHER COUPLE on the safari is from Minnesota.
They introduce themselves at dinner that night as Lou and Helen Cantori. Lou is a building contractor. Helen works at the public library in Minneapolis. They are both in their mid-forties, Jeremy guesses, both a trifle overweight. Helen is eager to take notes and photographs she can use for a talk at the library when she gets home. Lou tells them he would have preferred going to Vegas, but he always goes instead to all these exotic places Helen keeps pulling out of a hat. Last year they went to Papua New Guinea. God knows where they’ll end up next year.
They sit around a huge campfire after dinner, looking out over the boundless plain, sparks flying into the darkness beyond. A huge star-filled sky spreads endlessly above them. On the perimeter of the camp they can see the Masai guards patrolling, their spears at the ready.
Davey takes a huge torchlight from where it is resting beside his camp chair. Rising languidly, he snaps on the torch and begins moving its beam in a slow semicircle along the outer reaches of the compound.
Eyes.
There are eyes out there.
Pairs of eyes gleaming in the darkness.
Watching the fire.
Watching the camp.
“Oh my God!” Therese says.
It suddenly occurs to Jeremy that their safety and their wellbeing—indeed their very lives—are entirely dependent on two strangers their travel agent recommended.
Grinning, Davey snaps out the torch.
“Don’t worry, Terry,” he says. “I’m here to take care of you.”
“JEREMY?” she whispers.
“Yes?”
“Are you awake?”
“Yes, darling.”
Beyond the canvas walls of their sleeping tent, Jeremy can hear the cries and calls and rumbles of the night, some very distant, some sounding too terribly close.
“What’s wrong with him?” she whispers.
“Who, darling?”
“The Great White Hunter.”
“He’s just trying to be friendly.”
“I don’t need a friend,” she says. “What does he mean he’ll take care of me? Let him take care of Helen Cantori if he wants to take care of someone.”
Something makes a low rumbling sound just outside the tent.
“Did you hear that?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“What was it?”
“Maybe the Masai guard.”
They lie still on their separate cots, listening.
“I feel very exposed,” Therese says.
“Yes.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Frightened. I feel frightened.”
“Yes, I do, too.”
They have been married for only three months now. When Alicia died, Jeremy thought he could never be close to another woman again. But then, two years ago, he met Therese at a medical convention in the Caribbean, staying alone at the same hotel where the assembled internists held their daily meetings under umbrellas on the beach.
“Shall I come to your bed?” she asks.
“Please.”
He hears her rustling in the dark. Hears her footfalls on the groundsheet. He throws back the light blanket for her, and she crawls into the narrow cot beside him. She huddles close in his arms. He can hear her gentle breathing beside him. And then the low rumbling just outside again.
“There it is again,” she whispers.
They listen.
In the dark, every sound seems amplified.
The rumbling again, just outside the tent flaps now.
“Some honeymoon,” Therese says, and they both laugh in the darkness, like terrified children.
THERE ARE TWO LAND ROVERS.
Frank will be driving one of them, Davey the other. The Cantoris, suspecting that Frank is the more experienced of the two Great White Hunters, if only because he is the older, are already waiting in his car after breakfast, innocent smiles on their faces.
“Ready for a little excitement?” Davey asks Therese.
She and Jeremy climb into the backseat of the vehicle. The top is open. Jeremy wonders aloud if this is safe. “Won’t animals be able to jump inside?”
“Don’t worry, Doc,” Davey says. “You’re in good hands.”
The lead car is pulling out of the campsite. The native workers are carrying buckets of water up from the river to the cook tent, where they will heat it for the canvas sacks above the shower stalls. As Jeremy understands this, they will shower only in the evenings, before dinner and after the day’s game drives. For their morning ablutions, their two tent boys will carry steaming water to the sink just outside the sleeping tent.
All of the sleeping tents—those for the two safari owners, those for the safari guests—are set up in one corner of the camp, not five yards away from each other. The mess tent is in the center of the camp, the cook tent on the far end, closest to the river. There is another small tent Frank calls the “library,” full of literature about Africa. As they drive out of camp, two men in the cook tent are busily stripping some sort of animal.
“Impala for dinner tonight,” Davey says, swinging in behind Frank’s car. “Ever taste impala, Terry?”
“No,” she says.
“Delicious. Bet there are lots of delicious things you’ve never tasted,” he says, turning from the wheel to look back at her and smile.
“You know,” she says, “I’m sorry, but nobody ever calls me Terry.”
“Hey, I’m sorry,” he says. “Thought that was your name.”
“My wife’s name is Therese,” Jeremy says.
“Therese—got it, Doc,” Davey says, and winks at him in the rearview mirror.
“And I wish you wouldn’t call me Doc. That was for med school.”
“Sorry, guys,” Davey says. “Let’s just have some fun here, okay?”
IN ALL HIS years as a physician, Jeremy has delivered only one baby, and that while he was still interning at Beth Israel in New York City. Today, on the endless plain of the Masai Mara, where sudden death is a minute-by-minute possibility, an impala gives birth before their very eyes.
The Land Rover is not five feet from her as she squeezes the newborn from her loins and licks it clean. She raises her head. Her long ears begin twitching. Her nostrils twitch as well. They are close enough to see her wet nose, her nostrils. And then, to their immense surprise, she moves off, leaving the newborn lying in the tall grass, as still as any rock, unable to see or to walk, seemingly helpless.
“There are probably cheetah out hunting,” Davey explains. “The mother will be back for her tomorrow. Better and safer not to draw attention to her now.”
AT DINNER THAT night, Therese can’t stop worrying about the baby impala.
“Will the mother know where to find her?” she asks.
“Oh, sure,” Frank says. “Besides, she won’t have any scent for maybe two, three months. The predators won’t be able to …”
“Oh, please,” Therese says, “don’t even suggest it!”
“She’ll be all right, don’t worry, hon,” Helen says reassuringly and pats Therese’s hand.
“She was so adorable,” Therese says. “I’d like to take her home with me.”
“Take me home instead,” Davey says.
There is a silence at the table.
“I’d make a lovely pet,” he adds, and this time Helen and Lou laugh at what they realize is a joke.
Davey grins like an adolescent boy.
Shrugs.
Lifts his wineglass in a silent toast to everyone at the table.
“Do you have any children at home?” Frank asks, possibly trying to change the subject; Jeremy can’t be certain.
“We’ve only been married since September,” he says.
“Really?” Helen says. “Lou, do you hear this? They’re newlyweds.”
“In fact, this is a delayed honeymoon,” Jeremy explains. “I couldn’t get away in the fall.”
Therese takes his hand on the table top, squeezes it.
“Oh, how sweet,” Davey says.
THERESE IS AFRAID to go to the toilet in the middle of the night, because she will have to cross five feet of open space to get to the primitive hole in the ground, and she is fearful wild animals may be marching around the camp, despite the Masai guards with their spears. Jeremy accompanies her to the toilet before they turn in for the night, waiting outside the small canvas enclosure for her, and then escorting her back to the sleeping tent again.
In the dark, in the personal privacy of their own tent, they begin whispering again. This is only their second night out, but they have come to realize that the sole privacy they will ever have is here in this tent, and in the shower stall behind it, and in the little toilet hut al
ongside that.
“He makes me uncomfortable,” Therese whispers.
“Yes, me, too.”
“His remarks are so inappropriate.”
“Yes.”
“Is it something I’m doing?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Maybe I should stop wearing shorts.”
“Honey, you can wear whatever you like, whenever …”
“I don’t want his attentions, Jere. I don’t want his goddamn innuendoes …”
“Shhh, shhh.”
The canvas walls are terribly thin. Whenever they rustle with the slightest vagrant wind, Jeremy is sure it’s a lion rubbing against them.
“I feel so helpless,” Therese says.
“Yes.”
“I mean, we’re in the middle of the jungle …”
“The plain.”
“… and they’re supposed to be here protecting us and making sure …”
“Yes.”
“But instead, he keeps hitting on me!”
They are silent for a very long time.
“Do you want to go home?” Jeremy asks at last.
“How can we do that?”
“I’ll just tell Frank we want to leave.”
“He won’t return our money, you know.”
“I know.”
“There’s a ‘no-refund’ clause …”
“I know. But it’s only money, Therese.”
She nods, says nothing for several moments.
“All this way for nothing,” she says at last.
“All this way.”
“Jere, am I imagining all this? I mean, he really is …”
“Yes, he really is.”
He hears her sigh heavily in the darkness.
“Let’s see how it goes tomorrow,” she says.
Far out on the plain, they hear the sound of some poor creature being torn to shreds, its shrieks sundering the night.
THE TWO LAND Rovers are parked side by side.
In the near distance, a pair of cheetah are stalking a herd of wildebeest.
Frank has set up camp chairs for the entire party, and they are observing the hunt through binoculars.
“We’ll have wildebeest one night this week,” Davey says to Therese. “I’ll ask the chef to prepare it specially for you.” When she does not answer, he says, as if answering himself, “Thank you, Davey, that’s very kind of you.”
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine Presents Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense Page 57
