«Has a Mr. Sam Tucker checked in?» he asked the clerk on the other end of the line.
«No, Mr. McAuliff. As a matter of fact, we were going over the reservations list a few minutes go. Check-in time is three o’clock.»
«Hold the room. It’s paid for.»
«I’m afraid it isn’t, sir. Our instructions are only that you’re responsible; we’re trying to be of service.»
«You’re very kind. Hold it, nevertheless. Are there any messages for me?»
«Just one minute, sir. I believe there are.»
The silence that ensued gave Alex the time to wonder about Sam. Where the hell was he? McAuliff had not been as alarmed as Robert Hanley over Tucker’s disappearance. Sam’s eccentricities included sudden wanderings, impulsive treks through native areas. There had been a time in Australia when Tucker stayed four weeks with an outback aborigine community, traveling daily in a Land Rover to the Kimberleys survey site twenty-six miles away. Old Tuck was always looking for the unusual—generally associated with the customs and lifestyles of whatever country he was in. But his deadline was drawing near in Kingston.
«Sorry for the delay,» said the Jamaican, his lilt denying the sincerity of the statement. «There are several messages. I was putting them in the order of their sequence.»
«Thank you. What are—»
«They’re all marked urgent, sir,» interrupted the clerk. «Eleven-fifteen is the first; from the Ministry of Education. Contact Mr. Latham as soon as possible. The next at eleven-twenty is from a Mr. Piersall at the Sheraton. Room fifty-one. Then a Mr. Hanley called from Montego Bay at twelve-oh-six; he stressed the importance of your reaching him. His number is—»
«Wait a minute,» said Alex, removing a pencil and a notebook from his pocket. He wrote down the names «Latham,» «Piersall,» «Hanley.» «Go ahead.»
«Montego exchange, eighty-two-two-seven. Until five o’clock. Mr. Hanley said to call in Port Antonio after six-thirty.»
«Did he leave that number?»
«No, sir. Mrs. Booth left word at one-thirty-five that she would be back in her room at two-thirty. She asked that you ring through if you telephoned from outside. That’s everything, Mr. McAuliff.»
«All right. Thank you. Let me go back, please.» Alex repeated the names, the gists of the messages, and asked for the Sheraton’s telephone number. He had no idea who Mr. Piersall was. He mentally scanned the twelve contact names provided by Hammond; there was no Piersall.
«Will that be all, sir?»
«Yes. Put me through to Mrs. Booth, if you please.»
Alison’s phone rang several times before she answered. «I was taking a shower,» she said, out of breath. «Rather hoping you were here.»
«Is there a towel around you?»
«Yes. I left it on the knob with the door open, if you must know. So I could hear the telephone.»
«If I was there, I’d remove it. The towel, not the phone.»
«I should think it appropriate to remove both.» Alison laughed, and McAuliff could see the lovely half smile in the haze of the afternoon sun on Tower Street.
«You’re right, you’re parched. But your note said it was urgent. Is anything the matter?» There was a click within the interior of the telephone box; his time was nearly up. Alison heard it, too.
«Where are you? I’ll call you right back,» she said quickly.
The number had been deliberately, maliciously scratched off the dial’s center. «No way to tell. How urgent? I’ve got another call to make.»
«It can wait. Just don’t speak to a man named Piersall until we talk. ’Bye now, darling.»
McAuliff was tempted to call Alison right back; who was Piersall? But it was more important to reach Hanley in Montego. It would be necessary to call collect; he didn’t have enough change.
It took the better part of five minutes before Hanley’s phone rang and another three while Hanley convinced a switchboard operator at a less-than-chic hotel that he would pay for the call.
«I’m sorry, Robert,» said Alex. «I’m at a coin box in Kingston.»
«It’s all right, lad. Have you heard from Tucker?» There was an urgency in Hanley’s rapidly asked question.
«No. He hasn’t checked in. I thought you might have something.»
«I have, indeed, and I don’t like it at all. I flew back to Mo’Bay a couple of hours ago, and these damn fools here tell me that two black men picked up Sam’s belongings, paid the bill, and walked out without a word.»
«Can they do that?»
«This isn’t the Hilton, lad. They had the money and they did it.»
«Then where are you?»
«Goddammit, I took the same room for the afternoon. In case Sam tries to get in touch, he’ll start here, I figured. In the meantime, I’ve got some friends asking around town. You still don’t want the police?»
McAuliff hesitated. He had agreed to Hammond’s command not to go to the Jamaican police for anything until he had checked with a contact first and received clearance. «Not yet, Bob.»
«We’re talking about an old friend!»
«He’s still not overdue, Robert. I can’t legitimately report him missing. And, knowing our old friend, I wouldn’t want him embarrassed.»
«I’d sure as hell raise a stink over two strangers picking up his belongings!» Hanley was angry, and McAuliff could not fault him for it.
«We’re not sure they’re strangers. You know Tuck; he hires attendants like he’s the court of Eric the Red. Especially if he’s got some money and he can spread it around the outback. Remember Kimberleys, Bob.» A statement. «Sam blew two months’ wages setting up an agricultural commune, for Christ’s sake.»
Hanley chuckled. «Aye, lad, I do. He was going to put the hairy bastards in the wine business. He’s a one-man Peace Corps with a vibrating crotch… All right, Alex. We’ll wait until tomorrow. I have to get back to Port Antone’. I’ll phone you in the morning.»
«If he’s not here by then, I’ll call the police and you can activate your subterranean network—which I’m sure you’ve developed by now.»
«Goddamn right. We old travelers have to protect ourselves. And stick together.»
The blinding sun on the hot, dirty Caribbean street and the stench of the telephone mouthpiece was enough to convince McAuliff to return to Courtleigh Manor.
Later, perhaps early this evening, he would find the fish store called Tallon’s and his arthritic contact.
He walked north on Matthew Lane and found a taxi on Barry Street; a half-demolished touring car of indeterminate make, and certainly not of this decade, or the last. As he stepped in, the odor of vanilla assaulted his nostrils. Vanilla and bay rum, the scents of Jamaica: delightful in the evening, oppressive during the day under the fiery equatorial sun.
As the cab headed out of Old Kingston—harbor-front Kingston—where man-made decay and cascading tropical flora struggled to coexist, Alex found himself staring with uncomfortable wonder at the suddenly emerging new buildings of New Kingston. There was something obscene about the proximity of such bland, clean structures of stone and tinted glass to the rows of filthy, tin, corrugated shacks—the houses of gaunt children who played slowly, without energy, with bony dogs, and of pregnant young-old women hanging rags on ropes salvaged from the waterfront, their eyes filled with the bleak, hated prospect of getting through another day. And the new, bland, scrubbed obscenities were less than two hundred yards from even more terrible places of human habitation: rotted rat-infested barges, housing those who had reached the last cellars of dignity. Two hundred yards.
McAuliff suddenly realized what these buildings were: banks. Three, four, five … six banks. Next to, and across from one another, all within an easy throw of a safe-deposit box.