by Cave, Hugh
"Oh, yes."
"I'm not hurting you?"
He glanced at Clarisse, who was watching intently. "So now we begin in earnest."
Though Clarisse had anticipated the performance, the intensity of it startled her. Ridges formed on Margal's forehead. A glistening film of sweat coated his face. His body trembled or vibrated, as though all the nerves in it were being stretched to the breaking point.
She stepped back in alarm, but he paid no attention to her now. His fingers on Merry's body were a hawk's talons clutching a helpless chicken. The astonishing thing was that the child did not cry out. Narrowed to slits, Margal's eyes stared without wavering at the candle flame.
For a while there was no change. Then the child began to whimper.
Margal sighed in surrender and let himself go limp. "It will take time. This land is not my home. I am a stranger here."
Clarisse stepped forward to frown down at him. "May I offer a suggestion?"
He shrugged.
"The purpose of all this is to make contact with the child's father, is it not?" She spoke in Creole. "Of course."
"But you have no idea where he is. Why not ask her if she knows where he might be staying? If she can even tell you the name of a hotel—"
"Ti-fi." He stroked the child's shoulder. "Look at me."
Merry did so.
"Do you know the name of the hotel in Miami where your father is?"
"He always goes to a place called the Greenway."
"Thank you."
"Is something wrong?"
"Only that I am trying to talk to him, to tell him that you are here, and I could not reach him."
"That happens sometimes when my mother tries to call him on the telephone."
"Well, let me try again. Just look at the candle, please, and think about him for me. Think hard about him." He gazed at the candle himself, and again Clarisse saw his body tremble.
What now?
She retreated to a chair and watched him. Sweat ran down his face like rain on a windowpane. Every little while he trembled violently for a few seconds.
The child went to sleep.
"I see something," Margal said at last.
"You see what?"
"Not the hotel. A building with a lighted sign beside the walkway to its door. 'Burl'—'Burling' —never mind. The second word is 'Apartments.' A man and a woman are approaching the door. The man is Dawson. The woman is not his wife."
Clarisse would have spoken, but he silenced her with a wave of his hand and said, "Wait!" Then he said, "They are inside now, climbing a flight of stairs. They have stopped before a door with the number 203 on it, and the woman is looking in her handbag, no doubt for a key. Yes, a key. She is opening the door. Now they have walked into the apartment and shut the door and are embracing. He has hungry hands, that man—yet, as I told you, the woman is not his wife. But at last I have found him!"
Triumph sharpened his voice. "Yes, I have found him at last! Take the child away. I have work to do!"
Chapter Fourteen
"One of these days, damn it, you're going to have to do some cooking." Stretched out on the sofa in Carmen Alvaranga's apartment, Brian Dawson said this to the woman locked in his embrace.
"So we can eat without leaving here, you mean?"
"Right. I'll buy you some cookbooks."
"Do that, darling." And be sure I'll never open one, even if every restaurant in reach is closed and you're starving. There were some things she just would not do for this man, and cooking was high on the list. She wouldn't look after his laundry, either; he could damn well lug it to the laundry room himself.
Things might be different if he showed any inclination to divorce his wife and marry her. But when she brought that up, he never failed to back off.
It was a stupid situation. Within a week after his transfer from Georgetown to Miami U., all those years ago, she had been sleeping with him. Even before she knew his father was big in Washington. He was good-looking, sexy, and a spender.
When she found out who he was—or, rather, who his father was—she had felt even better about being his bedmate. Then, damn it, he had dropped her for Sandra.
Since the clandestine renewal of their old relationship, he had tried more than once to tell her the why of that. "I was dumb, baby, that's all. College-kid dumb. A gorgeous doll like you, going to bed with me on our second date—I figured you were sleeping around."
"You could have asked me."
"If you'd said no, I wouldn't have believed you. Forget it. When the time is right, I'll get rid of Sandra and make it up to you."
Would he? It was possible, she supposed. And if she could maneuver him into marriage, she certainly would. You could build quite a future on being the daughter-in-law of Rutherford Dawson, confidant of the President. There sure as hell was no such future in running a minor art gallery, even with a young and virile male helper who adored you.
At the moment, the only son of Rutherford Dawson was doing his best to undress her. As he had every few hours at the North Carolina resort from which they had just returned. And at the Savannah motel last night on their way home. Even in the restaurant this evening, all through dinner, he'd kept finding ways to touch her.
"Damn it, don't!" she said now on the sofa. "You'll tear my dress.
To hell with your dress."
"To hell with you! I bought this to go to Carolina in, and it wasn't cheap." She slapped his hand away. "I'll take it off, if you don't mind. If you want to undress somebody, go undress yourself." Eluding his hands, she got up and stalked into the bedroom.
When he came in a moment later he was undressed, and she was on the bed ready for him. He sat beside her and kissed her, working his way up from between her legs to her mouth. By the time he reached her mouth he was frantic.
As usual, she was, too.
When she finished guiding him into her, to save what could be a brutal assault were he left on his own, she put her arms around his neck and prepared to enjoy herself.
Then a strange thing happened. The expression on his face suddenly changed from hunger to bewilderment, and he went limp inside her.
"What's the matter, for God's sake?"
"I don't know." He swung himself off the bed and stood there, staring. Not at her, but apparently at some invisible thing dangling in space just over the bed. "Five six two what?" he whispered. His face had become as white as the sheets.
Frightened, she cried out, "Brian! What's wrong?"
"A number I have to call. Right now. Right this minute." He was talking to himself rather than answering her, though perhaps there was some of both in it. "All right, all right!" he shouted. "I understand!"
Wheeling, he stumbled from the room.
Her phone was on a small table in the living room. She heard him dialing. When she got off the bed and went to the door to watch, he had begun to talk. "Yes, yes," she heard him say. "This is Brian Dawson. What?"
Listening, he turned his face toward her, and she saw such a look of panic on it, she felt sorry for him. "My daughter?" His cry nearly caused her hair to stand on end. "Here? In Florida? Where?"
Listening again, he sank limply onto a chair and fixed his gaze on her but was not really aware of her, she was certain. He looked—what was the word? Mesmerized. Hypnotized. Spellbound. Mechanically pulling a pad and pencil toward him, he wrote something, tore off the page, and stared at it, then looked at her again.
In a way it was totally ridiculous: a grown man sitting naked at a telephone, clutching a bit of paper while he stared unseeing at a naked woman in the doorway of the bedroom from which, for no apparent reason, he had just wildly fled.
"All right," she heard him mutter then. "All right. I'll be there." He let the phone fall back onto its cradle and still sat there, gazing at her without seeing her. Then, as she again cried out, "Brian, what is it?" he rose and turned to the couch where his clothes lay, and began to dress himself.
Filled with compassion now, she went to him.
"What is it about your daughter, Brian? Please!" He loved the child; she knew that. He might not love Merry's mother, but he worshipped the ground his daughter walked on.
Brian only shook his head at her while pushing the bit of paper into a pocket of his slacks.
"Who were you talking to?"
No one I know. A Haitian." Like a man three times his age, he sank trembling onto the couch to put his shoes on, thereby completing the task of dressing himself. Then he struggled to his feet and lurched to the door.
"Brian!" she heard herself screaming. "Where are you going?"
"To him," he said over his shoulder. "He said I must, if I want her back."
"But where?"
Ignoring the question, he walked out of the apartment, leaving the door open behind him.
She ran to the threshold and tried once more as he started down the stairs. "Brian, for God's sake—" Naked, she could not follow him. Again ignored, she could only stand there, wondering whether he was ill or had gone mad.
A man is making ardent love and suddenly goes limp? He mumbles part of a phone number, then stumbles to the phone and calls someone he doesn't know? He is told something about his daughter, who should be miles away in a foreign country, and that he must go to the person he is talking to if he "wants her back"?
It was crazy.
Except, she thought as she closed the door and went to a window from which she watched him get into the silver Jaguar at the curb . . . except that the country his daughter should be in was not just any foreign land. It was a land of voodoo and sorcery.
What was the number he had cried out in the bedroom? Five six two? It could be important. She ought to write it down before she forgot it.
In a daze she walked to the table and reached for the pad and pencil there.
Chapter Fifteen
Suitcase in hand, Ken Forrest strode out of Miami's airport to a line of waiting taxis. The hour was near noon, the day hot. Even in a short-sleeved sport shirt, with his jacket slung over a shoulder, he could feel sweat trickling down his back and chest.
"The Greenway."
Traffic was heavy. He had plenty of time to wonder what he would do if the man he sought was not at the hotel. For days Sandy had been trying to reach her husband by phone. So had the Embassy. For days the manager of the Greenway, one Norman Sack, had been almost frantically claiming he could not locate Brian Dawson.
What kind of hotel was the Greenway, anyway? It turned out to be a small one on a quiet Coral Gables street. The lobby was empty except for a gray-haired man at the desk—Norman Sack, himself. When Ken had explained the reason for his visit, Sack nervously leaned forward.
"Mr. Forrest, I don't know how to help you." His heavy sigh gave off an odor of sour stomach. "I have been calling and calling the number Mr. Dawson left with us. I must have tried twenty times. No one answers."
"You don't know whose number it is?"
"No, sir. In fact, I—ah—I'm afraid I have behaved badly about this. Mr. Dawson is an old friend of ours and specifically said we were not to give the number to any third party. 'If anyone wants me,' he always said, 'get their name and number and call me, and I will call them back.'"
"You don't know where he goes?"
"No, sir. It would hardly be proper for us to—"
"You haven't seen him since he checked in here?"
"No, we haven't."
"Is that normal? He usually just signs in and disappears?"
The manager hesitated. "Well, I . . . He does that sometimes. Yes."
"Do you mind giving me the number, Mr. Sack? Perhaps the phone company will tell me whose it is."
"Will they, do you think?"
"I'm not up on such things. But, as I told you, Mr. Dawson's daughter has been kidnapped. When I tell them that, maybe they'll cooperate."
"Of course!" Obviously the Greenway was not a hostelry that liked having its guests' children kidnapped. The man with the bad breath hastily flipped open a phone index and copied a number onto a sheet of paper.
Peering at it, Ken said, "Before I check with the company, why don't we give it one more try?" Reaching for the phone on the desk, he dialed the number.
A woman's voice said guardedly, "Yes?"
Ken flashed a glance of triumph at the manager. "Mr. Dawson, please. This is a friend of his, Ken Forrest."
"Who?"
"Ken Forrest. An old friend from Haiti."
"Oh. I'm sorry. He is not here."
Ken took in a breath. "Please," he said carefully. "It's very important that I speak with him. I'm just in from Port-au-Prince and—"
"He isn't here!"
"Tell me where I can reach him, then. His daughter has been kidnapped."
He heard a hiss of indrawn breath. Then, "What?"
"His little girl, Merry, has been abducted. His wife is frantic. I must talk to him."
"Oh, my God." Suddenly her voice was scarcely audible. "I don't know where he is. Believe me, I don't. He just walked out. But he said something about Merry, and I have part of a—" She paused to catch her breath. "Look. Can you come over here?"
"Of course."
Her tongue seemed to tremble as she gave him her address. Then she said, "Where are you? I'll tell you how to get here."
"The Greenway."
"All right. It's easy."
Ken listened to her directions and was told her name and apartment number, so he would know which bell to ring. He hung up and looked at the man across the desk. "Can you give me a room here, Mr. Sack?"
"Certainly, sir."
"Have my bag put in it, will you? And I need a cab. Right now."
"That will take but a minute." With a sigh of relief this time, the manager reached for the phone. "You could even go outside and wait, Mr. Forrest. He only has to come from around the corner."
Carmen Alvaranga, Ken thought. Brian had played around with a girl of that name at the university before his marriage to Sandy. It had to be the same one. There wouldn't be two women with that name in a man's life, even in a city where Latin names filled the phone book.
He had met her, he recalled. A beauty. Was she again Brian's girlfriend?
A cab swung to the curb to pick him up, and presently he was at the door of the woman's apartment
"I've seen you before," Alvaranga said, motioning him to enter. "You went to college here."
"Yes."
"And knew Brian?"
He nodded.
"I was a student then, too." She waved him to a chair. "Tell me about his daughter."
Briefly, impatiently, he told her of the child's disappearance and Sandy's anguish. How Sandy and the Embassy had been calling the Hotel Greenway and her number for days, trying to reach Merry's father.
"We—" She quickly corrected herself. "He was away on some kind of business. He got back only yesterday."
And you were with him or you would have answered your phone, Ken thought. "And now?"
"I don't know where he is." She leaned toward him. Her skirt was bright red and her blouse a Guatemalan Indian thing, brilliantly embroidered, that let him look down between exquisitely shaped breasts.
"Brian and I were—sitting here," she said. "Just sitting here, talking. All of a sudden a faraway look came into his eyes and he stood up, as if he were listening not to me but to someone else. He mumbled a number and said he had to make a phone call. 'All right!' he yelled. 'I understand!' Then he rushed to the phone."
"And called the number? What was it? You remember?"
"I wrote it down after he left." She went to the phone table and returned with a pad, On it was written 562.
"This is only part of a number. Did you hear what he said on the phone?"
"It was about his daughter. I didn't know she'd been kidnapped then, of course. He said something like, 'My daughter, here in Florida?' and sounded as if someone had clubbed him."
"Did you ask who he was talking to?"
"He didn't answer me."
"And then?"
&n
bsp; "He left. He just got dressed—I mean, he grabbed his tie and jacket—and went out the door as if I didn't exist. As if I—" She took in a breath. "Wait a minute. I should have known the child had been kidnapped. When he went out the door and I asked him again where he was going—almost screamed it at him, I was so upset—he said something like, 'To him. I have to if I want her back.'"
"So Merry is here in Florida." Ken looked at the number again and saw something he hadn't noticed the first time. Under it were indentations of a scribble that must have been written on a page tom off. They were too faint to be readable. But below them was a single word on which the writer must have borne down hard in anger or fear.
Margal.
He looked at Alvaranga. "Did Brian use this pad while he was phoning?"
"He wrote on it and took the page with him."
Margal. Here in Florida with Sandy's little girl? Striding across the room, Ken reached for a directory on the phone table. What he wanted was a list of Southeast Calling Zone Prefix Codes.
Five-six-two was Vero Beach.
Chapter Sixteen
He had telephoned Sandy to come to Miami on the next flight out of Port-au-Prince. He had rented a car. Now the car was parked in front of a shabby two-story apartment building in the section of Miami known as Little Haiti.
In one of its second-floor apartments Ken faced a man he had known on the plantation: a small, wiry Haitian who, unlike many others here, had come to Florida legally. Raoul Monestimé, a carpenter, had been in the city a year or so.
Ken leaned from his chair to peer into the man's lined face. "Raoul, the number Mr. Dawson called is in the Vero Beach area. Do you know any Haitians there?"
Monestimé frowned in thought, then shook his head. "No, M'sieu Ken. In fact, I am not sure I even know where Vero Beach is."
Ken produced a map of Florida. "It's north of here about a hundred fifty miles, on the coast. Other towns in the area are Gifford, Wabasso, Sebastian, Grant—"
"Wabasso? You said Wabasso?" The little man stood up. "Let me call in some friends of mine. There's a young fellow staying with them who came in at Wabasso only yesterday." He went to the door. "I'll be back in a minute," he called over his shoulder as he stepped onto the wooden walkway outside.
