A Wild & Lonely Place (v5) (epub)

by Marcia Muller

  “And if not?”

  Lash set his glass down and spread his hands. “Then, lady, you on your own. I tell you this much: you go near that compound without a damn good plan, for sure you gonna die.”

  Sixteen

  Black star-filled sky, blacker water. Orange lights in the distance. I’m all alone. Should be afraid, but I’m not.

  Waves gentle, water warm. Soft tropic breeze against my face. My limbs are leaden. Should swim for shore, but I can’t.

  I start to sink, but feel no panic. I want to lose myself in this warm darkness. The water closes over my head. Safe at last.

  But what’s that?

  Something floating on the surface above me, great wings spread. A giant bat.

  I glide closer, look up. Not a bat, a woman. The wings are a robe billowing on the swell. And her eyes…They’re empty holes. I can see through them, down into her soul. But there’s only darkness there.

  Oh God, Mavis, your blank forever eyes—

  I jerked upright, clutching at my throat, my heart pounding. My breath came in short, harsh gasps and sweat filmed my body. It was hideously hot. I itched from a hundred insect bites. Something had even stung the knuckle of my little finger; it felt as if a match were being held to it. Glaring light slanted through the half-closed louvers on the window next to the bed. I looked around at the simple furnishings, my travel bag, my discarded clothing.

  After a minute my panic ebbed. I propped up the pillows, leaned back, reached for my watch where it lay on the nightstand. One thirty-three; I’d awakened from a nightmare in the middle of the day.

  Anxiety, of course, over the prospect of striking off in unfamiliar waters toward a strange place in the dark of night. Dark of tonight, because I’d persuaded Cam to fly me to Jumbie Cay as soon as possible. At first he’d refused, then tried to talk me out of it for hours after we left Zeff Lash. When he finally gave in, he said he wanted to go along. I wouldn’t allow it; his debt was to Hy, not to me.

  The dream images returned: all alone in the dark sea…

  For the first time my resolve weakened. I permitted myself to wonder if I’d be doing Habiba a favor by bringing her home to her despotic grandmother. After all, as Cam had repeatedly pointed out, Dawud Hamid was her father; he had a right to her. But then my uneasy feeling about Hamid returned, and I thought of Speed Schechtmann and what might go on inside his closely guarded compound. I suspected Malika Hamid was ignorant of how Schechtmann was accustomed to living, had only sent Mavis and Habiba with him to get them out of harm’s way at the consulate. She fully intended for them to return to her control when the bomb threat was finally laid to rest. But now that Mavis was dead and Dawud had possession of his daughter, I doubted he’d willingly relinquish her. Whatever control his mother once exercised over him had been severely weakened, if not destroyed, when Habiba stepped ashore at Jumbie Cay.

  My resolve firmed again. Malika Hamid might be tyrannical, but she loved Habiba and she wasn’t a criminal. Better the little girl live with her than her father and his corrupt associates.

  As Connors and I had argued into the small hours of the morning, he’d asked me why I cared so much about a child I’d only seen twice. I simply told him that she was an exceptionally appealing little girl who deserved a chance in life, but of course that wasn’t the half of it. From the moment I’d seen her solemn eyes regarding me over the lip of the huge urn at the consulate I’d connected with her. From the moment she’d owned up to her loneliness I’d been solidly in her corner. I, too, had been a lonely child.

  You wouldn’t have suspected it, had you seen the McCone household during my growing-up years. Five kids—two older brothers, me in the middle, two younger sisters. Aunts and uncles and cousins stopping in by day or night. Dogs and cats underfoot; hamsters and gerbils escaping their cages; a pair of turkeys named Gregory Peck and—my bawdy father’s contribution—Gregory Pecker scratching away in their pen. A gaggle of friends belonging to each of us crowding the rambling house that was constantly in the throes of an ongoing renovation project that eventually would span two decades. How, you might ask, could anyone be lonely in a place that resembled a beehive on a June day?

  It wasn’t as difficult as it might seem. I was the middle child, and middle children are often overlooked. I wasn’t a rowdy male ever on the brink of juvenile delinquency like John and Joey, nor was I a rebellious female ever on the brink of teenage pregnancy like Charlene and Patsy. Instead I was the one who made no waves, was on the honor roll, made the cheerleading squad and the prom queen’s court. Oh, there was one disgraceful episode when I was caught in a compromising position with the captain of the swim team—now family legend, Mick claimed. But if so, it was only legendary because it involved the white sheep of the flock. Otherwise I played it safe, as John once bitterly told me.

  Always playing it safe makes for loneliness.

  There was a coldness at the core of our household, too, in spite of a lot of ritualistic hugging and kissing. Pa was a chief in the navy, often out to sea; when he retired, his sojourns in his garage workshop lengthened to the extent that he frequently slept there on a cot. Ma was busy juggling the demands of raising five kids on a very limited budget; she had no time for our questions or problems, and usually she put them off until they were either unimportant or critical. I suppose the emotional vacuum was what made John drink and get into brawls and Joey go off on petty-thieving rampages. I suppose it was what made Charlene decide to get pregnant while still in her senior year of high school and Patsy run away from home at fifteen.

  I know for sure it was what made me a loner—a dreamer who spent hours by herself in the tree house in our backyard canyon. Eventually the web of schemes I spun there would bind me more firmly within my isolation. I went off to college at Berkeley, where I knew no one. I financed my education by taking lonely graveyard-shift security jobs. Then I moved from Berkeley to San Francisco as soon as I graduated. If I hadn’t run into my old housemate, Hank Zahn, in front of City Hall one day, all my college ties would have remained severed. Even when I went to work for very little money at All Souls, I refused their offer of a rent-free room, preferring my tiny, overpriced studio apartment. I formed romantic relationships, but never let down my guard enough to allow true intimacy.

  But then I met Hy, who was shaped by a similar emotional vacuum. Together we’d made a life that worked for us.

  Those years before Hy hadn’t been unhappy ones, but they’d taught me some bitter lessons; and the sum of those lessons made me afraid for Habiba. If she remained on Jumbie Cay, she might never be in real physical jeopardy, but she might be emotionally scarred by events no child need experience. Most certainly she would become more tightly bound within the web of isolation she’d already begun spinning. But unlike me, she would never have the chance to break free. Her world would forever be a wild and lonely one.

  That was why I’d swim through those unfamiliar waters toward a strange place tonight. That was why I’d do my damnedest to take her home.

  * * *

  The previous evening Zeff Lash had mentioned that the old man who sold Jumbie Cay to Schechtmann had an estranged daughter living on this island. After I showered and dressed I checked the phone book, but there was no listing for a Regina Altagracia. Of course, that didn’t have to be her name now—she might have married—and I wasn’t sure where Princes Quarter was, anyway. Cam had gone out on an early charter and wouldn’t be back till after six, so I couldn’t ask him. As I paged through the directory to the section for rental-car companies, though, I remembered the card Kenny had handed me yesterday when I paid my cab fare.

  I called the number on the card and found the driver at home. Sure, he knew where Princes Quarter was, and he also knew Regina Altagracia’s goat farm. “Snazzy family around here once,” he added. “No more.”

  I asked him what he’d charge to take me there.

  “Thirty bucks, U.S.?” He sounded so tentative that I was certain he’d doubled his usual r
ate.

  “Fine.” After all, it was RKI’s money. “Pick me up where you left me yesterday, please. In an hour.”

  I set the receiver in its cradle and calculated the time difference between here and San Francisco. It was ten-seventeen in the morning there. Cam had told me the best way to make an international call was through an independent long-distance carrier that accepted Visa; I punched in the number he’d written down and gave the operator the numbers for my card and for Adah Joslyn.

  Joslyn’s phone rang eleven times before I hung up. No answering machine again. Had she been home at all since I last tried to call her? Time to have someone look into the situation.

  I redialed the long-distance carrier, this time giving Greg Marcus’s extension at the Hall of Justice. The call went through quickly, and Greg’s voice came on the line as clear as if I were phoning from across town.

  Not so on his end. He said, “Where’re you calling from? You sound like you’re in a tunnel.”

  “I’m in the Caribbean.” To forestall questions, I added, “Long-distance minutes here are as precious as diamonds. Did you find out anything about the people I asked you to run checks on?”

  “Nothing except the gambling indictment on Schechtmann. Nothing on his wife, Ronquillo, or Newton, but plenty on Chloe Love. She’s dead, was murdered in her apartment in Oakland’s Lake Merritt district on January twenty-sixth, nineteen ninety. That much I got from my lady, who knew her from when they were both students at the Culinary Academy. Yesterday I called an OPD guy who worked a couple of homicides in cooperation with me a few years back; he accessed their records on the case. Nasty business: she was raped and strangled. Dawud Hamid was questioned about the murder—very briefly.”

  My skin prickled and I gripped the receiver more tightly. “Briefly, because an attorney appeared and put a stop to the questioning on grounds of diplomatic immunity?”

  “You got it. He was in and out of headquarters within two hours.”

  And early the next month he’d dropped out of sight. According to Mavis, the police hadn’t been called because it was too soon after some event she then refused to discuss. She thought her mother-in-law had hired private detectives, but I now suspected that was a fiction designed to keep Mavis from finding out that Malika had sent Dawud abroad to live. But why to Klaus Schechtmann, whose influence had already weakened the once-strong hold she had on her son? Why not back to Azad?

  I could think of one reason: the born-again Sheik Zayid bin Muhammad al-Hamid had reinstituted the death penalty for murder and rape. The sheik had been rough on family members before and, as I understood it, Muslim law had worldwide jurisdiction. Malika didn’t want to risk her son being tried for his crimes in an Azadi court—and possibly being stoned to death.

  “Greg,” I asked, “why did they question Hamid?”

  “He’d been bothering Love. Not exactly stalking her, but close enough that she went to her attorney two days before she died to get a restraining order against him. The attorney told her nothing could be done because of his diplomatic status.”

  “Did they ever solve the murder?”

  “It’s an open file, and it always will be.”

  “Because Hamid actually was the perp.”

  “Right. There was enough physical evidence that he’d been in the apartment to bring charges, plus an eyewitness who saw him leaving the building at the right time. The D. A. was considering charging him anyway, maybe making a landmark case of it, but then Hamid disappeared.” Even from thousands of miles away I could feel Greg’s anger; it infected me, made me more determined to get Habiba off that island.

  “Greg, one more thing—I’m worried about Adah Joslyn. She left me a message on Monday saying she had a lead on the bomber and I should call her, but she hasn’t been answering her phone and her machine’s off. Can you check on her?”

  “Sure. Do you want me to call you back?”

  “No, I’d better call you.”

  “Wait—what’re you doing in the Caribbean? Does it have to do with—”

  “Thanks, Greg.”

  One more detail to take care of. I called RKI and was patched through to Renshaw at the consulate. “I can only talk for a minute,” I said. “Did you get hold of Habiba’s passport?”

  “Yes. The kid has dual citizenship—U.S. and Azadi. Schechtmann took the Azadi passport, didn’t want the American.”

  Better for me that way; an Azadi child traveling with an unrelated American might attract attention. “How’d you persuade Hamid to hand it over?”

  “I didn’t. Kahlil Lateef snagged it from the consulate safe.”

  “Good for him. Now—I need it tomorrow morning. Any problem with that?”

  “I’ll send it by courier, one of our people. Where?”

  “The airport, by nine. If I don’t show, he should hang around till I do.”

  “You’ll recognize him by our blazer. Anything else?”

  There was a soft rap at the door. Kenny, early. “Not now, but I’ll be in touch.” I told Kenny to wait a minute, then called the airline and made reservations for Habiba and me on tomorrow morning’s flight to Miami.

  * * *

  Princes Quarter lay inland: a lushly green valley studded with cholla cactus, where trees and brambles that Kenny called thorn forest grew in profusion. Small rock formations protruded among the vegetation, and free-ranging goats scrambled over or perched atop them, regarding the taxi solemnly as we drove by. Rain-filled clouds lowered over the surrounding hills, threatening to sweep down their slopes and dump their burdens on us.

  Kenny was curiously subdued this afternoon; perhaps he’d realized I was not a normal tourist. He commented once or twice on the scenery, called a goat that wouldn’t move out of the road a “fuckwit,” but otherwise we rode in silence.

  After thirty-some minutes he reduced speed, pointing to two piles of stones that marked a dirt track. As he steered between them he said, “This Miz Altagracia’s place.”

  “She’s not married?”

  “No mon in his right senses go near that dame. She jus’ sit out here with her goats, dry up like a dead crab on the beach.”

  “Why?”

  He looked puzzled, then shrugged. Clearly he wasn’t one to question root causes. People did what they did, and that was that.

  We drove through more thorn forest and then a house came into view: whitewashed shingles, with a peaked red iron roof and wooden louvers on the doors and windows. A second building stood next to it, joined by a latticed walkway overgrown by hanging vines; its windows were covered by storm shutters for hurricane season. Brown, black, and white goats noshed on what little greenery remained in front of the house; they scattered, bleating, when Kenny tooted the horn. As he brought the Toyota to a stop, the louvers on the front door opened slightly. I felt, but couldn’t see, someone looking out.

  Kenny asked, “How long you be?”

  “I’m not sure. Can you wait?”

  He shrugged. “I already miss the three o’clock plane from San Juan, so yeah, I guess.”

  “If I’m more than fifteen minutes, I’ll pay ten dollars extra.”

  That satisfied him. He switched on the radio, leaned back, and tilted his Dodgers cap over his eyes. As I walked toward the house rhythmic, percussion-dominated music followed me.

  Before I could knock, the door opened on well-oiled hinges. A tall, heavyset woman with tight gray curls above a high square forehead regarded me, eyes squinting myopicaliy. “Yes?”

  “Ms. Altagracia?”

  She nodded.

  I told her my name, showed identification. “I’d like to talk with you about your father.”

  “That old fool? What’s he gone and done now?” Her speech had none of the local flavor; if anything, she sounded as if she were from New Jersey.

  “Well, you know he’s sold Jumbie Cay.”

  She blinked. “I did not!”

  “He has, and he may be in serious trouble.”

  “You can depe
nd on that—he’s in serious trouble with me. That island is all that’s left of my family’s heritage. How could he sell it!”

  “It was a forced sale. May I come in?”

  “Of course. I’ve forgotten my manners.” She opened the door all the way and let me into a room full of diffuse light. Its floors were covered by grass-cloth mats, its walls by color photographs of what looked to be local landscapes. The furnishings were simple rattan like Cam Connors’s.

  Regina Altagracia motioned for me to be seated and lowered herself into a recliner chair, moving carefully as though she suffered from back trouble or arthritis. She placed a hand on the yoke of her flowered shift dress and said, “What you just told me tears at my heart. Jumbie Cay—gone.”

  “You sound as though you love the island.”

  “Yes, I do.” She nodded at the photographs on the walls. “I took those. Now they’re all I have left.”

  “But you moved away from there.”

  “No, Ms. McCone, I moved away from my father.”

  “Why?”

  She sighed. “Many reasons, but you don’t want to hear them. Please tell me what happened. And where my father is now.”

  “He’s still on the island; he was allowed to keep his home and some land. Are you aware that he has a gambling problem?”

  “Yes. That’s one of the reasons I can’t live with him. I’m Seventh-day Adventist, converted when I was at college in New Jersey.”

  “I thought I recognized a Jersey accent.”

  She smiled, momentarily diverted from the sale of Jumbie Cay. “It always surprises people. I attended high school in Newark and Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck. My brothers and sister, too.”

  “Why there?”

  “My father’s brother married a woman from Newark. They were unable to have children, so they encouraged us to come live with them and attend school. After graduating I stayed on and worked for an insurance company; my brothers and sister are still in the States.”

  “Why did you come home?”