Precipice

by Tom Savage

  And she had. Because of her he’d been in St. Thomas, and briefly in Florida. That had been the first stop, nearly three weeks ago.

  He’d tailed the cab from Glen Cove to Kennedy, being careful not to get too close. Rule Number One: keep your distance. When she’d alighted in front of Delta Air Lines, Robin had grabbed his bag and followed.

  He’d been in the line behind her when she checked in. Her reservation—to Miami, as it turned out—was under the name Selena Chase. She’d flown first class, and he’d booked passage in coach. Rule Number Two: watch expenses.

  Rule Number Three, which was really Number One in importance: never lose the mark. That had very nearly happened at the Miami Hilton.

  He’d shelled out twenty to the redcap who’d carted her luggage and hailed her cab, to ascertain her destination. Then he’d made his way to the hotel and paid more than he could afford for a room. He’d spent most of the night and morning in the lobby, his battered suitcase on the floor next to him, waiting for her to show. She’d never left the place, as far as he could tell. It was nearly noon, and he was just, formulating an elaborate plan for storming the front desk and finding out which room she was in (brother? husband? messenger?), when the tall brunette in the sunglasses had emerged from the elevator, followed by a bellhop with her bags, and proceeded to settle her bill.

  He’d barely noticed her. She was out the door and in the taxi before it registered. That walk. And then the suitcases: fairly large, with an intricate brown and beige pattern and the designer’s name all over the place. Courreges. He’d made a note of them at Kennedy, when he was behind her in line. . . .

  In seconds he was lunging into the backseat of the next cab at the stand, shouting that ridiculous, timeworn cliché at the back of someone’s head. He’d been lucky: the head belonged to one Angelo Merino, a hip, handsome nineteen-year-old from the country that had produced Mario Andretti. Angelo had known what to do. There was a desperate man in his backseat and a beautiful woman in a car somewhere ahead of his car. It was a matter of national pride. After screeching to a halt behind her cab at the entrance to American Airlines at Miami International, he even refused the fifty.

  Robin had spent the entire flight to St. Thomas wondering why she was now traveling as Diana Meissen, and why she’d changed her hair.

  He’d followed her to Bolongo and settled in to watch and report. He registered as Robert Taylor—a perfect role model for actors and detectives. Besides, the name was close enough to his own, and the initials were the same, just in case anybody happened to notice the RT on his suitcase, his key chain, and his wallet. Rule Number Four: pay attention to details.

  After several days of watching her swim, paint, shop, and dine in restaurants, he’d begun to believe that he was being paid a great deal to take a vacation. He’d even gone so far as to introduce himself to her twice—“Hi, I’m Bob!”—as anyone would have, considering they were both tourists staying at the same small hotel. His daily calls to Margaret Barclay had been downright boring, yet she had never once suggested that he relax the surveillance.

  In the ten days before her disappearance, Robin had seen her come into contact with only two people aside from himself, and both meetings were apparently accidental.

  The first had occurred on her third day on the island. She’d been swimming earlier, and then she’d hopped into her rental (pale-blue Chevette, T-48734) and gone into town. She wandered down Main Street, window-shopping and making occasional purchases. She spent some time in a drugstore, where she bought a tube of Colgate toothpaste, dental floss, Tampax, L’eggs pantyhose (Medium Tan), a lipstick (this involved a long ritual in front of a mirror, and she and the two native girls behind the counter discussed, in great detail, the relative merits of Really Red and Passion’s Promise before the latter was chosen, to everyone’s delight), a large bottle of Renu Multi-Purpose Solution, a small bottle of Bain de Soleil tanning oil, a huge bottle of Après le Soleil post-tanning lotion, a yellow box of something-or-other by Clairol (he was too far away to read the label), and a package of Daisy disposable razors. A few minutes later she went into a perfumerie called Tropicana and asked for a small bottle of something that sounded like Bollifer Sigh.

  Her next stop had been a tourist shop with an Arab-sounding name, where she’d bought two souvenir T-shirts, one of which read “I’m a Virgin (Islander).” The other read “If you love someone, let them go. If they come back to you, they’re yours forever. If they don’t, hunt them down and kill them.” She and the salesman, a swarthy gentleman in a turban, shared a good laugh over that one.

  Then he’d followed her down an alley to the Waterfront and into a restaurant called Sparky’s Waterfront Saloon. She sat at a small table in one corner of the packed room, and he took the only other available table in the place, across the floor. Several groups and couples concealed him from her, but they also nearly obliterated his view. The restaurant had a nautical motif, running to ropes and barrel-stave tables and dim hurricane lamps. They both ordered lunch. When, some minutes later, he got his next unobstructed look at his mark, she was no longer alone.

  She’d been joined by another young woman, a big-boned, rather heavyset girl with pudgy features and dull brown hair. They were chatting amiably as they ate, and Robin assumed that the restaurant’s obvious popularity had necessitated the doubling up at tables. He looked around: he was now the only lone diner.

  Eight people, tourists, had entered and sat at a large table in the center of the room, cutting off his view entirely. He wolfed down his omelette, paid, and headed for the door, having decided to wait outside the restaurant to resume the tail. On his way across the room, he glanced over at the two women and noticed that the big girl was now holding up an overstuffed six-by-nine-inch manila envelope. As he got to the doorway, she laughed rather loudly and placed the envelope in her purse. His quarry watched this, smiling.

  Twenty-five minutes later his girl had emerged from the restaurant, and he had followed her back to the hotel.

  That evening, he had reported every unremarkable detail of the day’s activities to Miss Barclay, right down to the brand of toothpaste she’d bought. The woman seemed puzzled by a couple of her niece’s purchases.

  The second meeting had been right here on the beach a week later, the day after he’d joined her for lunch. He’d been sitting on his balcony, rereading Farewell, My Lovely and occasionally glancing down at her as she painted by the water. One of the club members—that good-looking older gal, the redhead who’d sat next to them the day before—came over to her. They talked and laughed and pointed at the easel. Then they lay on beach chairs and ordered drinks from the waiter. The conversation, apparently casual, lasted about an hour. The redhead left, and a few minutes later the mark rose, collected her easel and paintbox, and came into the hotel. He heard only one part of the conversation: as the older woman was leaving, she turned—right under his balcony—and called back to the girl.

  “Good-bye, Diana. I’m glad I finally got up the courage to approach you. See you tomorrow.”

  The following evening he had lost her, but only temporarily. At about five-thirty he’d tiptoed to her room and put his ear to the door. Running water, a shower. She was getting ready for something. Thinking he’d have a half-hour’s grace, he returned to his room, showered, shaved, dressed in his new lightweight seersucker, and then wandered innocently down to the parking lot to wait. He stood there for a good fifteen minutes before he noticed that her rental car was gone.

  He’d panicked, but only for a moment. Some club member had invited the girl to dinner, or perhaps a party. Maybe she was an art lover, or an acquaintance from the girl’s first visit to the islands a couple of months ago (Miss Barclay had mentioned a Caribbean trip in the dossier). He kicked himself for his own stupidity in losing her and drove into town for dinner. Hell, he could use a night off, away from her.

  He’d dined in a noisy, crowded restaurant on the waterfront called The Greenhouse. Three tourist women at t
he next table had struck up a conversation with him and invited him to sit with them. It was their last night in St. Thomas, and they wanted to go dancing. They were all slightly drunk, and they made it clear—in a friendly, well-bred way—that they were available to him. One woman, a college girl from New Orleans named Ginger, had attracted him. So he’d gone dancing with them, and had entirely too much to drink.

  He’d spent the night with Ginger at her hotel. As he made love to her, it occurred to him that he had not been to bed with a woman in nearly six months.

  It also occurred to him that she reminded him of his mark.

  When he returned to Bolongo the next morning, he’d seen that the pale-blue Chevette was once again in its usual space. The rest of the day was uneventful: the girl painted on the beach and he sat, hung over, watching her.

  Now that he thought of it, he remembered something rather peculiar happening on that day, too. He’d been in the pool next to the bar, hoping vainly that the sun and the chlorinated water would ameliorate the throbbing in his head. At one point, the girl left her easel and came over to the bar. She ordered a Coke and asked if she could use the bar’s phone for a long-distance call. Robin crawled nearer in the water and lurked there, mere feet away, as the instrument was placed before her.

  Just then, a gaggle of boisterous children had crashed into the water nearby. The girl clamped her free hand over her ear and leaned forward, speaking into the phone. He didn’t catch all of what she said, but he distinctly heard her ask the operator for a number in Long Island. She uttered a word that might have been “gables,” and something else that sounded like “hospital.” A moment later someone came on the line, and she spoke for about five minutes. Then she hung up and returned to the beach.

  When he heard her ask for Long Island, Robin had assumed she was calling her aunt. That night, however, Margaret denied having heard from the girl. He’d shrugged it off and, professional detective that he was, forgotten all about it.

  The next day, as he sat at the bar, the girl had walked out of the hotel and disappeared.

  Robin came out of the water and rested on the sand. As the mid-afternoon sun bore down on him and the tropical breeze dried his body, he reviewed his actions since the girl had vanished.

  He’d started with the rental car. He’d traced it to the correct agency and flirted outrageously with the girl behind the counter until she admitted to him—though, she whispered, it could cost her her job—that the car had been retrieved from the hotel parking lot on the morning of the girl’s disappearance. The client had settled her bill the day before—in cash.

  Margaret Barclay had repeated to him what the girl had told her in their last phone conversation. They both knew it was probably a dead end. She’d claimed to be in Miami when she was actually calling from St. Thomas; there was no earthly reason for them to expect that there was a family named Goodman on the island.

  In fact, there were two such families. Unfortunately, neither of them included a child—or anyone else—named Linda, nor had either of them recently hired an au pair. They’d never heard of a Diana Meissen. The name Selena Chase meant nothing to them, either. When he mentioned the third possibility, her real name, they lost patience and insisted that he obviously did not have the right Goodman. He thanked them and hung up.

  There were only a few major flights from the island each day. He planned each morning and afternoon around his trips to the airport. He watched the amorphous crowds boarding planes and scanned the waiting lounges: nothing. He could only hope she would not embark by some other means.

  He made the rounds of hotels and guest houses. He walked the length of Main Street and wandered through the shopping centers and large gathering places. Every beach, restaurant, bar, and nightclub. And every night, very late, he returned alone to the little room with the balcony to gaze out over the moonlit waves and fall, exhausted and empty, into heavy, dreamless sleep.

  It was during this time, this long fugue state that lasted only days but seemed to go on for weeks, that he began to realize that he was alone on the island. He didn’t know anyone here, and the strangeness of his surroundings heightened his sense of alienation. As this feeling intensified, so did another that had long been suppressed, unnamed and unacknowledged. For the first time in his life, he admitted to himself that he felt despair.

  The word, once spoken, opened up a floodgate somewhere in his soul, and out flowed all the pent-up doubt and fear. He was not a detective, not an actor, not anything. He was twenty-six years old, and there was nothing he could point to with any sense of accomplishment or fulfillment.

  If searching for an unknown young woman in an unfamiliar place achieved no other goal, it gave him this: when the assignment was over—when he found the girl or did not find her, when he was back in New York with his parents and his few friends once more within reach—he would have to take stock of his life and see if he could discover what it was that he wanted. He would have to reconsider everything.

  But first he would find the girl.

  A thrill, almost of pleasure, surged through him. It really was that simple, he thought. A sense of purpose, of something that had to be done. Now. Immediately. It was a step, the first of many, in what he hoped was the right direction. And with the decision came the inspiration: the woman. The redhead, the club member who’d spoken to her on this beach—and who’d probably been with her elsewhere as well. He would get to her and see if she knew anything. A real detective would have thought of that before.

  He knew better than to ask the manager, or even the friendly bartender, about the redhead. At this hotel, as at all exclusive places, privacy was respected. But it hardly mattered: he’d seen the woman here before, more than once, and he felt certain that she’d show up again, and soon.

  He picked up the folder. He would reread the file and commit the brief details of the young woman’s biography to memory. Then he’d go back to his room and call Miss Barclay. Put her mind at ease. There was hope, after all; he was sure of it. He would find her niece for her.

  As it turned out, he never did find her.

  She found him.

  SEVEN

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 18

  PARIS HAD JUST GIVEN the golden apple to Aphrodite, thus making a botch of the world’s deadliest beauty pageant, when a shadow fell across the open book. Startled, the young woman looked up to find that Adam had joined them on the patio.

  He loomed over them, his hands in his pockets, his body blocking out the sun. A lazy smile played at the corners of his mouth as he gazed down at the young woman and the child huddled together on the loveseat. They blinked mutely up at him, reorienting themselves to St. Thomas in the twentieth century.

  “One of my favorites,” he drawled without preamble, prompting her to wonder just how long he’d been standing there. “And a lesson to us all. The wrath of the gods—and female gods, at that. The poor man never had a chance. But even so, he should never have chosen Aphrodite. Not when her fellow contestants were so much more powerful. What do you think, baby?”

  Lisa, who obviously did not appreciate his interruption of the story, flinched at the hated familiarity and then shrugged.

  “Maybe he thought she was the prettiest,” she said.

  Adam chuckled. “It wasn’t about beauty; it was about power. Three choices: Love, Wisdom, and Power. The Queen of the Gods, the wife of Zeus. I would have chosen Hera in a New York minute. And you, Diana—whom would you have chosen?”

  She thought about it. Handing the book to Lisa, she rose and went over to the driftwood railing to stand, her back to them, staring down at the water crashing against the rocks far below. It had been three days since the beach, since she found the little house with the blankets and the wine bottle and his wife’s cigarettes. This was the first time since then that she’d seen him alone, without Kay. Kay Prescott. His wife.

  When at last she turned around and spoke, her voice was colder than the depths of the unquiet sea behind her.

  �
�Assuming I were a man,” she said, looking directly into his eyes, “assuming I were Paris, I would have selected the goddess I could not control.”

  He returned her gaze. “And which of them would that have been?”

  She didn’t smile, and she didn’t back down from the deadlock of their eyes.

  “Whichever one of them wanted me the least,” she replied.

  It was Adam who looked away. As soon as he had done so, she turned to the child. “I think we should get some drawing done this afternoon, don’t you?”

  Lisa was apparently grateful for the excuse to leave.

  “Sure,” she said, rising and heading for the house. “I’ll get the pads. I’m gonna get a Coke, too. Would you like one, Diana?”

  “No, thank you.”

  The child was at the steps to the sundeck before she remembered her manners. “How about you?” she called back to Adam.

  “No, thanks.”

  The moment Lisa was gone, Adam took a step forward and spoke. “What’s the matter with you? You just sounded like—”

  “Listen,” she said, cutting him off, “we only have a few minutes. Did you make the reservations?”

  He stared a moment, then nodded.

  “New York on Friday the thirtieth,” he said. “American Airlines. Frances will meet us at the Waldorf and take Lisa. Our return is set for Thursday the fifth. School starts that week, but Frances will probably keep her in Greenwich, all things—”

  “And you?”

  “West Palm Beach, the next day. Saturday the thirty-first. Return to New York on the fourth. I have a room booked at the Waldorf for that night. The next day Frances brings Lisa there, and then we fly back here. That’s what everyone thinks, anyway. . . .”