February Heat. Wilson Roberts

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СКАЧАТЬ She was touching my arm. I drew away. She noticed the abruptness of my movement and didn’t follow through with another touch. “And I didn’t want to see them because I really did need to be alone. I’d be alone right now if this hadn’t happened.” She pointed toward the bed with its bullet torn sheets.

      I put a forefinger through one of the holes. “What’s going on, Liz? What’s this pickup and drop and whose lives depend on it? If you want my help you’ll have to be straight with me.”

      She looked at her fingers, then at me with a half smile that spoke a surrender of guile. Her voice was back to its unaffected straight-forwardness. “It’s private business, Frank. I need your help and I can’t tell you a thing more than I already have. And I’m sorry I tried playing games with you to get your cooperation.”

      “That all you’ll tell me?”

      “I need your help.”

      I went to the window and stood looking into the darkness as I tried regulating my breathing. In the distance I could see lights from Queen Anne Island reflected on the dark sea. Everything was still. The wind had dropped. The sea was flat. The loudest sound was from the coquis. One legend says the tiny translucent tree frog, once a night bird, was stripped of its wings by a cruel and arbitrary fate, left only with its song. Ko-KEE. Ko-KEE. Ko-KEE.

      I could see no advantage in helping her; only disadvantages. Indeed, my quiet life on St. Ursula could be in jeopardy if I involved myself in her problems. I’d be stupid to let that happen.

      “There’s nothing I can do,” I said.

      Her demeanor changed abruptly. “You’re already up to your nose in this.” Her voice was sharper, calmer, her face expressionless as she looked at me, studying my reaction.

      I felt a rush of cold nausea, like the kind you get when you’re a kid and the teacher tells you the principal wants to see you right away, or see a state cop coming up behind you on the highway. The kind that comes from the undifferentiated guilt we all carry around with us. The guilt pool anyone can ladle from for us and we’ll drink it like stragglers lost in the desert.

      “Wrong, lady. I’m not involved.” My words did nothing to warm the cold nausea.

      “You brought me through Customs and Immigration. I was even carrying a bag of your stuff. St. Ursula is a small community and the officials knew you and saw me with you. We even drove off together in your friend’s Land Rover.”

      “You set me up.” I met Liz’s quiet, steady look.

      She shook her head. “I did not. It wasn’t a set-up. All I really wanted was for you to go through customs with me because I thought it would be easier, and they wouldn’t search my purse, notice my lack of luggage or check me over too closely as long as we seemed to be traveling together. You don’t have any idea how hard it can be when you’re a woman traveling alone. Later, when you gave me your card I was amused at the coincidence, you being a private detective and me being in this situation, but I didn’t have plans to use you.”

      “It’s a good thing. Like I said, I do a little work around the islands, but I’m not like your movie private eyes, and I don’t do work for drug dealers and drug smugglers.”

      Anger flashed across her face. Her quick words rasped in her throat. “I’m neither one.”

      My own throat was tight; my anger spilled over into words. The hardness suddenly came easily and it was no act. “Can it, lady. You manipulated me at Customs. You called me in the middle of the night and said someone tried to kill you. For all I know you fired those shots into the bed.”

      She flared. “That’s bullshit. You’re afraid and you’re grabbing any excuse you can.”

      “Wait a minute, Ms Ford. You set me up, then you come on to me and when that doesn’t work you threaten me.”

      She pushed her face into mine, her tight jaw slowly loosening. “I didn’t fire those shots and I didn’t come on to you. Not really. I tried, but I couldn’t. I’m no good at that kind of stuff.” She paused and walked back to the window where she stood looking out. Over her shoulder I could see the glittering lights of a cruise ship far off on the horizon, probably headed for St. Croix. She turned back, walking toward me, her face open and grave. “I really am in trouble. I need your help and I can’t tell you a thing more than I have. Help me. Please.”

      There it was again. Please. I studied her lips, her eyes. More cautious and experienced men than I have been drawn into violence and murder by their galloping gonads, a lovely smile and clear eyes. Maybe there wasn’t electricity flashing through the air between us, but perhaps it could happen. I couldn’t stifle my suspicions, but if she really needed my help, if she was in trouble and if lives really were at stake, and I didn’t do something about it I’d be a lousy person, a lousy poet and a very lousy private investigator.

      I sighed, nodded. “All right. We have to get you out of here. Come spend the night at my house. You can have the guest room. In the morning we’ll talk more and I’ll see what I can do for you, if anything.”

      “You’ll help me?” There was genuine surprise and relief in her voice.

      “You’ll have to convince me. I don’t want to climb out on a limb, but if you level with me about what’s going on and I believe you, maybe I’ll even do that. But there’s no way in hell I’m going to get involved in drug trafficking. If that’s what you’re into, I’m out and you’re on your own. I’ll probably even blow the whistle on you. I’m not taking any chances on getting sent to Her Majesty’s Prison, which, as I said, is a real hell hole. And, if I don’t end up there, I could end up back in the States. The government here has been known to kick people off the island for farting down wind.”

      “Thanks,” she said, sitting in the chair next to her dresser.

      Neither of us spoke for a time. Liz pulled a cigarette from a crushed pack she took from her purse.

      “First cigarette I’ve had in five years. I’ve carried this damn pack with me ever since I quit, just in case I need one.”

      She lit it, smoking less than a third before crushing the butt in an ashtray.

      “Tastes terrible.” She made a face and went into the bathroom. I heard her running water and spitting. She was brushing her teeth as she came out.

      “Tell me, what are you supposed to do?” I slapped my thighs and sucked my lips as I rose from my chair.

      She mumbled around the toothbrush. “I’m supposed to rent a car, meet a plane at ten tomorrow night, pick up a package from the pilot and deliver it to the beach at Micah’s Bay. Somebody in a dinghy will meet me and take it. That’s supposed to be the end of it. I’ll be in the clear as soon as it’s done.”

      I didn’t like it. It sounded like drugs, and the thought of getting mixed up in it conjured up visions of the inside of Her Majesty’s Prison with three foot thick cell walls, broken only by air holes so small not even a mongoose could crawl through them. The sanitary conditions were like something in the Moroccan prisons I’d heard of, years of the dark, years of the dank. A gallows stood in the courtyard upon which the island’s occasional murderer would be publicly reviled, then hanged.

      It’s a rough place. There are no happy convicts on St. Ursula. Sometimes, walking through the downtown paying my bills, I pass Her Majesty’s Prison as СКАЧАТЬ