Laguna Heat

by T. Jefferson Parker

  Wade rose from the bed and slowly paced the floor, his head down. “You’re remembering your mother,” he said.

  “Aren’t you?”

  “It’s too late for hatred, son.”

  “It’s too late for a sermon.” Shephard sighed. “I’m sorry.” He picked up the telephone and called La Ceiba.

  “You’re playing the dark notes, after all.”

  A moment later, Shephard was put through to Marty, who was disappointed that his fishing trip would have to be canceled.

  “Pop. You’re going back to Cozumel on the seaplane. You’re going to wear my clothes and sunglasses, and carry my bag. Here, wear this hat, too. If Mercante hasn’t seen either of us yet, it might help.”

  Half an hour later, they stood facing each other in the small room, Shephard buried in his father’s white linen suit, Wade squeezed into his son’s clothes. Shephard helped his father pack the rest of his clothes into his own suitcase. With the sunglasses in place, the resemblance was close. He looked at Wade. When you go, I’ll be here. I’ll be the Reverend Wade Shephard.

  He called the desk for a taxi back to the airstrip.

  TWENTY-SIX

  He checked out of the del Marquez at four that afternoon, lugging his father’s suitcase into the stifling heat of the island. The street was crowded with tourists and vendors. One withered old man approached Shephard with a collection of dried, shellacked sand sharks bobbing from a stick. Shephard bought a very small one, which looked like a goblin dancing on its tail. It satisfied his need for some local talisman. Inside his left coat pocket he felt the sea lion tooth given him by Jane, then slid the dried shark in to give it company. The Indians considered the teeth good luck, he remembered, issuing his own brief prayer that that luck would be with him in the next few hours. He had never thought of himself as superstitious, but the heat, the musical mystery of the language being spoken, and the heavy smells of this tropical Eden all condensed around him as a reminder that he was wholly out of his own context.

  His first move was to arrange himself more visibly, and in a place where Mercante would have no trouble trying to kill him.

  He strolled past the hotels and shops of the main street, wondering if Mercante had perhaps already seen him and was right now viewing him from some upstairs balcony, beer in hand, planning the logistics of murder. The thought unsettled him still more: he had never pursued a man of such brazen and unfathomable cruelty. He thought again of the cut spark plug cable lying on the seat of his motorcycle, an eloquent reminder that he had arrived late, anticipated poorly, and had been spared by only seconds the ordeal of having to stare into the lifeless face of the Fire Killer’s third victim. Shephard stopped suddenly and looked behind him, half expecting to see Mercante trudging a block behind, closing in. But the sidewalk was filled only with tourists.

  He registered at the Serenidad, which overlooked the beach on the north side of town. He signed in clearly as the Reverend Wade Shephard and requested an upstairs room. The bellboy was a cheerful man with the high cheekbones and subtly upturned eyes of the native Indians. His name was Cantil.

  “Cantil, isn’t that a snake?” Shephard asked as they headed for his room.

  “Yes. Only a name for me. From when I was small.”

  “Were you like a snake?”

  Cantil set down the bag and opened the door to room 58. It opened with a stale, mildewed puff. “Very quiet,” he said. “Why Cantil, I don’t know.”

  Shephard gave the man a dollar, asking for a bucket of ice and two extra pillows. “For my back, chum,” he said. “Gets sore in this heat.”

  He unpacked the suitcase carefully, hanging up the extra trousers and shirts, which were heavily wrinkled from the hasty switch with his father. The Colt Python .357, wrapped in a bath towel with two extra cylinders, he slipped under the bed. He noted the layout of the room: the door opened to a small hallway, with a large closet on the right. To the left of the closet, a doorway opened to a bathing area, and behind that a toilet. Five steps from the doorway the main room began, a neat square with a single queen-sized bed to the left, a dresser opposite, and a small table and chairs placed in front of the window that overlooked the street. He drew back the curtains and looked down. The foot traffic below was minimal, with most of the shops and hotels a hundred yards toward the center of the town. To his right, he could see a stand of banana trees whose trunks vanished into the dense green of the jungle. Beyond the trees the water, the sand, the mainland.

  “Señor Shephard?” Cantil’s voice outside the door. Shephard opened it and he came in.

  “Call me Wade,” he said. “I like that better.”

  The bellboy put the ice on the dresser and offered Shephard the two extra pillows. “For your back,” he said.

  Shephard stood close to him now, and spoke slowly. “I’m very interested,” he said as he found another dollar, “in any visitors that I may have. If you can let me know of anyone asking about my room number here, or of anyone looking for Reverend Wade Shephard, I would appreciate it very much. If you are asked, say only that I am an older man. I would need to know, by phone, immediately.”

  Cantil understood perfectly. “I’ll call you fast, Señor Wade, if anyone comes here for you. The snake sees all things in his hotel.” He smiled, thanked Shephard again for the tip, and quietly disappeared, leaving the pillows on the bed.

  Shephard sat in front of the air conditioner and smoked. Positioned in the far corner of the room, he could see down the street, which by seven was still filled with pedestrians and an occasional motor scooter. He studied again the Identikit sketch of Azul Mercante, placing it on the table in front of him, imagining what he was doing, where he was staying, what plans he had made for Wade, the object of his revenge. When the evening came, announced only by a slow darkening to the east, he ordered dinner from room service. The steak picado arrived an hour later, just as the sun was streaking the sky in orange, dripping its color into the water. He ate silently and drank a light Scotch.

  Jane answered on the first ring. “Are you okay, Tommy? Is Wade okay? Did you find Azul?”

  He let her breathless rush play itself out. “I’m fine. Wade’s heading back to the States. No Azul, though, not yet. I miss you, Jane.”

  “I miss you too, but don’t expect me to admit it.” She paused, then spoke more quietly: “Tommy, you know the cardboard file cabinets where dad kept all his financial stuff? Well, they’re gone. I left them in his living room, and went back to clean them out for good, but they’re not there. And your friend who drives the dark blue Porsche was outside your place when I fed Cal this morning. I’m a little scared.”

  Shephard felt the adrenaline coursing through his veins like fuel. He closed his eyes and tried to quiet his breathing. “Jane, listen to me. I’m going to send a man over to stay with you. He’s big and he’s scary, but you can trust him. Stay home until he comes—it should be an hour at the most. He’ll know what to do.” Though his mind was reeling, Shephard tried to bring some assurance to his voice. If Harmon hurts her, he thought, I’ll kill him.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you,” she said. Both at the same time.

  He called Little Theodore and made arrangements, then dialed Louise’s Malibu number.

  “Lou? This is Tom.”

  “Where are you? I can hardly hear you.”

  “Far away. Look, I just wanted to tell you that … well, everything between us is okay, at my end. I’ve been sitting here thinking, and thought you should know that. If we don’t get to see each other again, I at least want you to understand there’s no hard feelings, Lou.”

  “I really don’t think we should see each other. It’s just too hard for you … for both of us.”

  Shephard grinned: same old Louise, he thought.

  “Tom, are you drunk again?”

  “I’ll call you sometime. ’Night, Lou.”

  Just after nine, Shephard placed his dishes outside the door, which he left unlocke
d. He arranged the extra pillows lengthwise, molded the thin covers into legs, formed a dark shirt into a head. With the bedspread pulled up and the lights out he could see the man asleep there—the Reverend Wade Shephard, perhaps—conked out after a hot day.

  Shephard brought the Python from under the bed and clicked the loaded cylinder into place, then put the second cylinder in his pocket. He unstrung two yards of dental floss from its container and tied one end to the pull chain of the light over the table. To the other end he tied a pencil, which he set on the floor beside him. The light flicked on as he pulled, then off again. He backed into the farthest corner of the room, his shoulders resting against the cool wall, the Python in one hand and the pencil in the other, and waited.

  With his eyes closed in the darkness, his mind flickered with fatigued visions of the last week, and when Jane’s image came he tried to hold it still to admire her beauty. He saw her bending back in ecstasy in the water of Diver’s Cove; he saw her warm and silent in the bed beside him while he stared at the alarm clock; he saw her the first day he’d met her standing in the waders. Intermittently, another face began to appear beside Jane’s, but it never materialized fully, remaining only half-formed, eclipsed by the raw energy that was Jane Algernon. It was only then that Shephard realized the fundamental change that had taken place inside him, that his heart was no longer a mourner for the woman who had left him, but a celebrant of the one he had found. For a moment the future—whatever it was and wherever it would be—seemed to overflow with possibilities of tenderness and love. He wondered if it was only the end of loneliness, an interruption of it. Among the images of Jane was the last he had seen of her, lying in his bed kissing him with gentle possessiveness, saying she would be with him. Then telling him again something that he had not heard in many years, words that seemed to have fallen from his own experience like extinct and useless birds: I love you.

  If I die tonight in Mexico, it will be with you, he thought.

  Just as he had done as a young boy, he released a flock of telepathic birds in the direction of California, trusting them to find her and sing the love that he would never be able to phrase himself.

  Stiff and sore, his stomach queasy with fear and love, he stood, stretched, paced the room. It was nearly eleven. He slid open the window over the now-empty street and inhaled the clean night aroma of the ocean. With the air conditioner turned off, the only sounds were of an occasional scooter on the street and the muffled voices in other rooms.

  Just before three in the morning, Shephard strapped on his shoulder holster and slid the Python into its place. He removed the extra pillows from the bed and untied the string from the pull chain. Locking the door behind him, he headed downstairs to the Serenidad lobby. The deskman was reading a magazine.

  “Messages for Wade Shephard?”

  “No, señor,” he said, checking the box for room 58. “No messages for you.”

  “How many hotels are there on Isla Arenillas?”

  The desk man, whose badge said Aguilar, shrugged as if the question were too demanding for such a late hour. “Many.”

  “Exactly how many?” Shephard brought out a five-dollar bill and placed it on the desk. Aguilar grinned.

  “I will tell you.” He opened a drawer and removed a bright orange pamphlet, which he gave to Shephard. It was a listing of island hotels, complete with addresses and phone numbers. He counted twelve.

  “Is this up to date?” Shephard asked. “Current?”

  “Oh, it is the most up to date,” Aguilar said with a nod. “Only place not listed is Hotel Cora, which is no open any more. Closed two years ago but they are soon to build it again. All others you will find on this.” He reached out and pinched the pamphlet between his thumb and forefinger, shaking it quickly.

  “Where is Cantil?”

  The deskman looked disappointed. “Across the water. None of us live on the island.”

  Shephard turned for the door.

  “Señor, con permiso, but the night life on Isla Arenillas is … minimal.”

  “Just some fresh air,” he said.

  Among hotel night clerks there is a universal reluctance to expend energy past midnight. Shephard encountered one sleepy deskman after another, all of whom eyed him as a nuisance rather than a potential customer, none of whom had any guests registered as Hodges, Steinhelper, Dixon, or Mercante. He made each clerk double-check the last name, using up whatever patience they had at that hour of the morning. In the lobby of the impressive Presidente Caribe, he was met as he left by a stout, steely-eyed security guard who took him aside for a terse interview. Shephard produced his passport and room key, explaining mournfully that he had had a terrible fight with his fiancée but loved her very much. Untouched, the guard watched him through the glass as he headed back down the curving entryway.

  By four-thirty, he had gone through every hotel in the pamphlet except the La Palapa. The lobby of the hotel was engulfed in banana trees and illuminated only by soft neon light, which flickered onto the young face beneath it.

  “Buenos dias,” Shephard said, exhausting his Spanish. The young man nodded and put down the magazine. Shephard ran through his litany of names once again, and once again he was answered only by the slowly shaking head of the clerk. He explained that he was looking for his father, an older man with bright blue eyes who was a wealthy eccentric given to changing names and hotels on a moment’s notice. He had arrived sometime yesterday—probably early morning—but had neglected to give him the name of his hotel. And now, desperate that the old man had become lost or worse, he had taken to the island on foot and failed to find his father at any of the dozen hotels. Shephard offered the man a cigarette, which he accepted with a smile.

  “Very problem,” he said. “Isla Arenillas not very big. Oh, five miles and two miles, but the jungle is very dark at night. Your father walk far?”

  “He might. But I think he would want some place dry to sleep. I don’t think he would sleep … under the stars.”

  The desk clerk examined the cigarette and nodded with concern. “Possible that if he is a little, you say, loco?”

  “Yes, a little loco maybe.”

  “Possible if he walked to other side of island to Hotel Cora and got lost on his way back. Hotel Cora closed two years, but it is soon to be built again,” he noted proudly. “Possible he is lost in the jungle. Hotel is very dark at night.”

  “There is nothing on the other side except the Cora?” Shephard asked.

  “Only where the new hospital will be. Jungle is gone there now. New hospital will be Seesters of Mercy. Built by loco man of God with many pesos. Dollars really. He is American, Reverend Chephard.”

  Shephard considered Mercante’s penchant for sliding in and out of derelict hotels and apartments, his talent for picking lairs away from—but somehow in the very midst of—where someone would look for him. It wasn’t beyond possibility that he would hide in the Cora, and its closeness to the Sisters of Mercy made all the more sense. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more it fit into Mercante’s twisted logic. And if Mercante was there, perhaps he would be sleeping, an easy mark for a morning visitor.

  “How do I get to the Cora? I want to go there.”

  “Oh, señor. You must wait until light. Long walk, three miles now. Very dark and the path is full of iguanas and many cucarachas.” The clerk held up two forefingers about three inches apart. Some cockroaches, Shephard thought.

  “I can’t wait. The poor man could be wandering that path right now, very terrified. Comprende?”

  The clerk sighed and rose from his stool, tapping across the lobby in his hard shoes. Outside, he led Shephard past the first row of rooms, the porch lights of which swirled with moths and outsized winged beetles. Translucent lizards clung to the walls, darting intermittently. He stopped at the end of the cement sidewalk, as if going any further would offer him a personal risk. The clearing to which he pointed seemed large and passable enough.

  “Here the path is wi
de, but farther away it will be small,” the man said gravely. “About a half of mile from here, it will go to the right and to the left, and you go to the right. At the end you will be on the beach again, and the Cora is left, on a hill over the water. I don’t think she has her lights because it is very expensive here. If your father is on the pathway, you will hear him because the jungle is quiet except for the monkeys and some pigs but they will run away. If you find a wild pig and babies, you should run first. They can be very, very muy peligroso. Comprende, señor?”

  “Oh, yes. Thank you. I have a lucky sea lion’s tooth.” Shephard produced the tooth, which shone dully in the lights of the porches.

  The footing was soft and moist. Shephard felt his heels sinking as he moved into the clearing and past the first cluster of banana trees. He stopped in the darkness for a last look at the light of the hotel, then located the moon, which was a full quarter now and clear in the eastern sky. He could see the pathway winding ahead, a shade darker than the trees that crouched at its borders. Another thirty yards, around a gentle right-hand bend that brought him under a bower of some sort—the smell was of honeysuckle—he stopped again and realized that even in so short a distance the jungle had consumed him fully. It seemed to hump around him in rounded forms that looked ready to uncoil. A dark shape cut across the pathway ahead of him, dragging a reptilian tail into the vegetation. He moved to the other side and continued, ducking low again under the banana leaves, using the moist trunks for balance where the trees threatened to choke off the path. Holy Christ, he thought, his mind filling with visions of fat tarantulas dropping like rain from the trees.

  He lit a cigarette and began scuffing his shoes, slapping the leaves that reached out from the foliage. Halfway to the other side of the island—what he guessed was halfway, at least—he stopped dead in front of a huge iguana poised athwart the pathway in front of him. While Shephard choked his fear back down, he waited for the beast to move, but it didn’t so much as twitch.