by Dane Hartman
“Mr. Braxton, I suggest you hold up right there.”
In desperation Braxton gazed toward the limousine; between the fog and the intense glare from the headlights it was impossible to make out just who the occupants of the vehicle were.
No sooner had Harry gotten the words out of his mouth than he became aware of a car coming up in back of him. The roar that its motor produced was monstrously loud, its tires screamed against the pavement.
Automatically, Harry turned just in time to see the front of an Impala, gleaming chrome, materializing from out of the thickening fog. Having shot around the corner, it was now bearing right down on Harry, leaving him only seconds in which to act before being pinned to the prison wall and quite possibly crushed into that very wall.
He leapt to the left and as far as he could to avoid the Impala but in doing so he stumbled, half-falling. The Impala at the last moment skillfully maneuvered itself off the sidewalk and back out onto the street again. Harry, still in an awkward position, let loose three rounds at the departing car but he was deprived of the satisfaction of seeing any of them do damage.
Of course, Braxton was nowhere to be seen. While Harry was busy saving his ass, Braxton’s friends had snatched him away. It was hardly much of a surprise.
C H A P T E R
F i f t e e n
Braxton had arranged his escape too late for it to make the early editions of the papers but the wire services and radio news commentators were not subject to the constraints of such deadlines. Outrage was the one word that described reaction the best. Authorities, all sorts of authorities—the mayor (through his press secretary), the police commissioner, the correctional system’s administrator, the chief warden of the prison itself—all vowed to undertake prompt investigations into the escape of Matt Braxton. Naturally, no one admitted guilt or complicity but rather expressed astonishment that such a thing could have happened. Opinion was divided among the public—at least that part of the public which was randomly sampled by reporters; half of them believed that Braxton’s escape proved that he must have been guilty, the other half thought that he had no other choice but to escape since he was bound to be framed and convicted.
In situations like this Harry knew what happened was that a scapegoat—probably some poor sucker who worked as a guard—would be quickly found, tried, and punished, just so that the whole affair could be gotten off the front pages and expunged from the public’s memory which was scarcely a problem, the public’s memory being notoriously short. And Braxton would still be at large, living not like a fugitive afraid of every shadow but rather as an exiled potentate who’d not neglected to take the national treasury with him when he fled his native land.
Only one benefit seemed to have resulted from the escape, if the news commentators were to be believed (and they weren’t, Harry was convinced) and that was that the picket lines were beginning to come down on the docks and the men, who’d gone off the job illegally, were returning to work. What no one seemed to realize was that this was the price exacted for abetting Braxton’s bid for freedom. It was to Harry an obvious quid pro quo; you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.
It wasn’t the lingering pain from his wounds nor the depleted condition of his body from getting too little sleep but rather an overwhelming sense of futility that wearied Harry. You work your ass off, you struggle mightily to do your job, only to have someone snatch the rug right out from under you. He felt at that moment that he would have done better to be giving out speeding tickets. At least he would have half a chance of actually apprehending an offender without someone interferring all the time.
Toward evening he decided that he would take a therapeutic walk and set out from his apartment building in no particular direction.
It wasn’t long, however, before he realized that he was being followed. There was a car—a cream-colored Seville—tailing him half a block behind and on the other side of the street. It crept along for a while, then stopped. Harry kept going but he maintained a leisurely pace, interested to see who it was. He doubted that it was a professional. No professional would be so clumsy and obvious in his surveillance.
Harry turned a corner and, pressing himself into a doorway out of sight, waited for the tail to catch up.
It sure wasn’t what he’d expected. A tall, leggy woman who’d probably long ago forgotten what color her hair used to be. She had come to a halt, astonished and a bit irritated to discover that her quarry had vanished. She put a finger under her lip as a sign of puzzlement and turned in place, looking every which way for Harry. Because she did not expect to see Harry concealed in the shadows of the doorway, she failed to find him.
Instead, Harry made himself known to her, coming up right in back of her and taking her by surprise. She let out a stifled scream and pressed her hand to her heart. “Oh,” she said, “you frightened me!”
The voice; Harry identified it immediately. It was the voice of the woman who’d called him twice before.
“You were looking for me?”
“Well, no, actually . . . Why should I be looking for you?”
Harry shrugged. “I don’t know. These days a lot of people look for me, it’s contagious.” He started to walk away from her.
“Wait a minute. I’m sorry, yes, I was looking for you. I don’t know why I said that just now.”
Harry turned to look at her. Not bad looking, he considered, but she had an unhealthy neurotic energy to her which was obvious simply by the hunger in her eyes and the excessiveness of her gestures; it was not enough for her to exhibit her emotions on her face, her whole body was marshaled to dramatize them.
“You have a name?”
“Well, yes . . .” Even at this late date she was reluctant to divulge it. “Andrea Foley.”
“Now tell me what your real name is.”
Because she’d been helpful to him twice before Harry resisted the impulse to express his impatience. He had the feeling that he was going to have to coax even the most trivial bit of information from her now that she had finally decided to appear in person.
“Darlene Farley,” she said. It was as though she were apologizing. “I don’t know where I got Andrea Foley from. It just came to me on the spur of the moment.” She kept her eyes away from Harry; clearly she was embarrassed.
“I expect you might have something to say to me.”
“I guess I do.”
“All right then. There’s a place we can talk in privacy.”
If Darlene Farley had anticipated an intimate atmosphere for their conversation she was sure to be disappointed. A place called Kwik-Lunch was hardly the setting for an exchange of confidences. On the other hand, Harry was comfortable in this pedestrian hamburger establishment and never had to worry about being disrupted at his meals, such as they were.
“The usual, Mr. Callahan?” Jaffee, the proprietor, called from behind the counter. As soon as Harry signaled that he was in no mood to try anything new, he was already throwing a meat patty on the grill. “And for you, Miss?”
“Just a cup of coffee.”
They took a seat at a table some distance from the window.
There was a moment of silence. Darlene was evidently waiting for Harry to speak but he had settled back to let her do all the talking.
At last she said, “You let him get away.”
“I did what I could. Some things I can’t control.”
She did not seem to hear what he said. “You shouldn’t have let him escape. Now you’ll never get him back inside.”
“What’s Matt Braxton to you?”
“Do I have to tell you?”
“This is no court of law, lady, so if you’d rather not tell me don’t. But I hate having my time wasted.”
She picked up a cigarette and tried lighting it with one of those gold lighters that look fine but don’t operate the way they should. The flame flickered erratically and she had to repeatedly fiddle with it before she was satisfied. “We’re lovers. That is, we used to be. H
e’s a son of a bitch, a real bastard.”
“I kind of got that impression myself.”
“He’s fucking around, but he expects me to remain faithful. He has these eunuchs—well, they’re not really eunuchs but they might as well be—they’re supposed to look out for me.” At this her eyes went to the window. “I don’t know whether they suspect me yet. But he’s still got people following me. Only reason nothing’s happened so far is he thinks me too dumb a broad to worry about. The way he figures it, no one crosses Matt Braxton. No one’s even clever enough to cut him down. Maybe that’s why I’m doing it, to prove he’s wrong. Am I making any sense?”
“I think so.” He recalled the old saying about a woman scorned and the fury she could ignite that hell couldn’t match. Well, there was some truth to the adage.
“If I told you where he’s gone would you be able to do something about it?”
“Depends what you mean by doing something.”
“Look, one of these days he’s going to find out what I’ve done. I told you so far I’m all right. But sooner or later Matt’ll find out and then I’m fucked. There’s no other way to put it, I’m afraid.” In her distractedness she had difficulty concentrating on what she was saying; her gaze was constantly directed on the street or that portion of it that the front window of Kwik-Lunch revealed. “I shouldn’t have taken the Seville. It’s too easy to spot,” she remarked.
Harry tried bringing her back to the subject at hand. “Where is he?”
“Tapaquite,” she answered right away.
“Where the hell’s that?”
“Lesser Antilles, oh, a little south of St. Lucia and St. Vincent but north of Grenada. It’s not much of an island but there’s a thriving tourist business there. I know. Matt took me there a few times. Always business trips, tax deductable. He owns half the island. I don’t know, maybe he owns the whole thing. I wouldn’t be surprised. Where do you think all that money he’s been ripping off from the union pension funds has been going all these years?” She looked triumphantly at Harry, then went on. “He’s been investing in hotels and casinos. Not alone, of course. The Syndicate’s sharing expenses. I don’t know to what extent but they’re involved. They’ve always been involved.”
“Ah, so that’s where the Chicago boys come in.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Go on.”
“So he’s down there. They had a plane waiting for him last night. It took him right there. Of course, it’s hopeless to try to get him back with what do they call it?”
“Extradition proceedings?”
“Extradition proceedings, that’s it. He owns the island, he owns the government. Just a bunch of spades anyway. His word’s law down there. Hell, it’s law up here, too, isn’t it? Every fucking where he goes it’s the same story.”
“I see,” was all that Harry would say.
“So what are you planning to do?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Well, I wish you’d do something fast.”
Harry gave her a wan smile. “You can be sure, Miss Farley, that whatever I decide to do it’ll be fast.”
Harry didn’t wait until Monday to return to the department. He showed up late that same afternoon. Bressler was surprised to see him and not what you’d call exactly pleased. But then again he was never very pleased to see Harry.
“What’s the matter, Harry? Couldn’t stay away from work, you had to come back for the weekend?”
“I’d like to put in a request for a vacation.”
Bressler didn’t frown precisely but he did something with his jaw muscles that approximated a frown.
“A vacation, you say? Take a little time off from duty and you get to enjoying the easy life, is that it?”
In no mood to argue, Harry didn’t respond.
“How long would you be going for?”
“A week. Make it a week and a half. Ten days.”
“OK, tell you what you do. Fill out the forms and get them to me. At this point I don’t see any reason why your request should be denied. Now that this shit on the docks is settled we got a little room to breathe. Harry?”
“What is it?”
“This vacation, where would you be going?”
“The Caribbean.”
Bressler nodded. “Nice place, the Caribbean, especially this season. But I got to tell you, I wouldn’t figure you for lying on a beach collecting a tan.”
“Everyone needs a change.”
“Yeah,” Bressler said as if this were a revelation for him, “I suppose they do.”
C H A P T E R
S i x t e e n
From San Juan Harry caught an Air France plane south to Fort-de-France on Martinique. There he was obliged to wait for four hours for a shuttle to Ocho Rios on Tapaquite. This shuttle was an antiquated Cessna that had seen much better days; it remained aloft only with reluctance, at the mercy of winds that buffeted it about, while below the glistening blue-green waters of the Caribbean remained lovingly tranquil, stirred up only by the occasional fast-moving power boat.
The only other people on board this shaky craft—and there weren’t more than a dozen in all—looked like their purpose in going to Tapaquite was probably not very legitimate. They all bore the appearance of millionaires who having derived their fortunes from shady enterprises had salted the whole lot of it away and were now resolved to indulge themselves with all that untaxed wealth. Their skin was either too white or else floridly red from too sudden an exposure to the tropical sun and their bellies protruded like pregnant women’s. Which was another thing that Harry noticed; only two women were on board—and one of them was the lone stewardess, whose insolent stare caused passengers to think twice before making any requests of her. The other woman was apparently the wife of the Hispanic man sitting next to her; she wasn’t attractive and the husband seemed completely bored with her, preferring to stare out the oval window at the sea than give her the time of day.
Harry had taken the precaution of disguising himself, not wishing to alert Braxton or his henchmen to his presence on the island, not immediately anyway. He’d chosen the same costume he’d worn when meeting with the hitmen Longlegs had introduced him to that afternoon on Fishermen’s Wharf: wig, loud shirt, white ducks. He could have passed as an ambitious entrepreneur, maybe a gun smuggler and or high-priced consultant promoting Caribbean real estate or tax shelter deals on the Cayman Islands, someone who was out to make a killing. Well, that was true in a sense; he was out to make a killing.
The Cessna landed like it flew, with uncertainty. The bump the wheels made on the asphalt surface of the airstrip caused the seats to wobble as though they were soon to pop out of their moorings. The dozen passengers seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief once it was clear that the plane was down, and down to stay.
The airport at Ocho Rios—which was all that the island had to offer in the way of a capital—was a modest affair: two airstrips, neither of them large enough to accomodate a craft larger than the Cessna, and a brand new terminal that appeared to be constructed without the benefit of an architect’s planning; cement ladled over glass.
One customs inspector was all that they had, but then there wasn’t much use for another. There was only one flight into Ocho Rios a day—and that was only in good weather.
This inspector barely glanced at either Harry or at his passport (which like his disguise revealed another identity: James A. Balsam, born in Seattle, Washington). As soon as he was out in the central terminal area he was besieged by a small army of boys and aged men with coconut skins who offered to carry his bags and transport him into the city proper which was a distance of ten miles away. Harry selected one man who could have been thirty or sixty-five, whose face was shadowed by a wide-rimmed straw hat. Despite Harry’s protest, he insisted on grasping hold of his one bag and lugging it out to his cab.
The cab, a dented, obsolete green Ford, circa 1950, looked like it wasn’t going to make it farther than the next block
. The windshield was cracked into a web that made viewing through it virtually impossible.
It lumbered and lurched and rattled, this cab, but the damn thing moved, inching laboriously up the hilly road, stirring up a cloud of dust as it went. All the while the driver rambled on, mixing the local patois with a strange brand of English so Harry couldn’t make heads or tails out of what he was saying, though he did gather that he was recommending one hotel in town over the other, no doubt because his preferred hotel gave him a commission for each new guest he brought in.
At a sharp bend in the unpaved road, the driver stopped abruptly, gesturing out to Harry’s right. There was a wide stretch of tangled growth, broken here and there by mimosa and palms whose fronds extended almost to blot out the dazzling late afternoon sun; beyond that you couldn’t see much at all. Harry couldn’t understand what it was that so sparked the driver’s interest. All he could make out were the words—“Boca de la Sierpe”—which he repeated incessently.
“What’s there? What should I know about Boca de la Sierpe?”
“Grande casa,” the driver said. “Grande casa de Señor Braxton.”
He didn’t pronounce Braxton correctly but there was no doubting whom he was referring to. Somewhere through the undergrowth then was Braxton’s home-away-from-home. Obviously if this underpaid taxi driver was aware of where Braxton was living then so was everyone else on the island.
“You bring many people here?”
The driver couldn’t comprehend him. Harry did his best to make himself clear but further communication was out of the question. The driver resumed his erratic progress into Ocho Rios.
Tapaquite’s capital was like an Old West town waiting for the gold rush to get to it; there was a Crown Street, a Prince Street, and a Kingston Street, all testifying to a colonial British heritage. Where the three collided a vast square—Plaza de Armas—formed and it was here in this square that all the business, cultural and political life of the city was conducted. Opposite the sprawling porticoed capital building was the Whitby Hotel, a white stucco structure with all its windows shuttered against the intense heat. It was either the Whitby or the Crown Bay which could be found, as its name implied, closer to the shore. The driver advocated the Whitby; Harry took one look at it and decided on the Crown Bay. More inconspicuous, he reasoned. The driver complained furiously but at length relented.
