“Tia Chita, estoy tan alegre hablar con usted.”
“?Donde esta usted?” she said. “Soy asi que preocupado.?Esta usted bien?” Conchita Crystal looked around the suite. Harry had called her cell phone and she was not alone. After a night with Devereaux, she traveled on to New York. One of her agents, the one she used to negotiate advertising endorsements, was in the living room of her Plaza Hotel accommodations. He brought three of his assistants with him. She had a week of meetings scheduled with a series of different people and since she hated going out, dodging crowds and press, especially in New York, she had taken a large suite and told everyone to come to her. She had the living room, where she could handle her business affairs quite comfortably, a formal dining room that could easily host dinner for twelve, a full kitchen and two bedrooms, across from each other, down a hall. One was for her and the other was left empty. She was told, when she made the reservation herself, using the name Linda Morales, if she wanted the big suite overlooking Central Park, she had to take one with two bedrooms. The one-bedroom suites were simply too small. When Harry called, she excused herself, walked down the hallway and into her bedroom closing two sets of doors behind her.
“Are you there, Harry?” she said, this time in English.
“I’m still here,” he said.
“Where?” she asked.
“I shouldn’t tell you. It may be dangerous for you to know.”
“Let me worry about that. Where are you?”
“It’s better you don’t know,” said Harry.
“Are you still in London, Harry?”
“No, I’m not. I just wanted you to know I’m all right. Tell aunt Sadie. She worries, you know.”
“I’ll let her know,” said his Aunt Chita. “Wherever you are, are you safe there?”
“I think so. I hope so. This whole thing is crazy. Even people who are supposed to help me seem like they’re not. I can’t figure out why this is happening.”
“You have something,” she said, “something important. Something a lot of people don’t want revealed.”
“Yes, I know,” he said. “I’ve been reading it. I can’t tell you. .. it’s not safe for you to know anything. People have been murdered, Tia Chita. Is it worth killing for?”
“Apparently so, Harry. Don’t worry about me. My concern is your safety. I want you to listen to me carefully. Do you understand? ?Comprende?”
“Si.”
“Bueno.” His aunt told Harry she had contacted somebody who would help him, someone who would take him to a place where he would be absolutely safe. “Su nombre es Walter Sherman. Confielo en.?Confielo en solamente!”
“Chita, don’t try to help me. Not now. I’ll be just fine. I know what I’m doing.” Harry’s aunt didn’t know he was under orders from the President of the United States. He thought better about telling her that. “Don’t send someone after me. He won’t find me.”
“Yes he will,” she answered, sounding very much like his mother. “And when he does, trust in him. Trust only in him. Do you hear me, Harry?”
“I will,” said Harry. “I will trust him and only him. I promise.” Then he added, with a tremble in his voice that brought tears of joy to his aunt’s eyes, “I love you, Aunt Chita.”
“El dios este con usted, mi Harry querido.”
When the gentle winds come rolling in off the sea, early in the morning, a sweet breeze blows through Billy’s. Helen brought Walter the usual, a plate of scrambled eggs and toast. Of course, he drank a Diet Coke. The New York Times was waiting for him. When the paper arrived on St. John, brought over on the early ferry from St. Thomas, the first place they took it was across the square to Billy’s. It’s a small island. Everyone knows everyone else and everyone knows Walter Sherman liked to read The New York Times with his breakfast.
Helen was playing with the CDs. Billy needed to hear music. He was the kind of man who turns on a radio when he enters a bathroom, and when he walks into the kitchen first thing in the morning. He hadn’t been in a car without music playing since he was a teenager. He had the place wired for sound. In the back, in a small office behind the kitchen, he had a whole bookcase stacked with CDs. Usually, he brought a dozen or so out to the bar. He’d play them, one after another, until he went through them all. Then he would get a new batch. Neither Walter nor Ike ever intruded on Billy’s selection. His taste covered all kinds of music and they rather liked the element of surprise. Who knew what Billy would play next? Van Morrison, Rosemary Clooney, Monk or Miles Davis. These days Helen shared this part of Billy’s life as well. It was just as likely what you heard was her choice as his. Walter watched her tinker with the machinery. When she finished and walked away, the plaintive cry of James Brown, The Godfather of Soul, The Hardest Working Man in Show Business, called out to him, demanding and receiving Walter’s complete and willing agreement. Isn’t that the truth, he thought.
“It’s a man’s world. It’s a man’s world.
But it wouldn’t be nothing. Nothing
Without a woman or a girl.”
“You ever drink coffee?” Helen asked him.
“I used to,” Walter said. “Sometimes I still do, as a sort of dessert with dinner. But hardly ever in the morning. Not anymore.” She shook her head and made her way back to the kitchen. Billy was already back there, busy checking the fresh fish-red snapper, grouper, tuna-that had come in less than fifteen minutes before.
No one was at the bar. Ike had yet to show up. Walter’s cell phone rang. He reached into his shirt pocket, flipped it open and said, “Yes.”
“He called me, Walter. I just spoke to him. I gave him your name, but he wouldn’t tell me where he is. He’s not in London anymore. He said that. But where he is, I don’t know. Go, find him, please! Where can he be?”
“Chita, calm down now. I think I know where he may be. Don’t worry. I’ll find him.” Walter found it very strange and unsettling saying this to a client, even Conchita Crystal. Reassurance was not part of the deal. Sympathy and concern were not included with his services. Personal involvement was the worst of all sins. Caring for either the target or the client frightened Walter. Detachment was essential to his success, or so he believed for forty years. Nevertheless, he said, “I’m going to go get him. It’ll be all right. I promise you.”
“When will you leave?” she asked.
“Soon,” he said. “Soon as possible. I have to start earning my twenty-five dollars a day, don’t I?” He thought he heard a small sob on the other end of the phone.
“What twenty-five…?” she said, clearing her throat and sniffling. She was crying, thought Walter.
“I rented it. We can do that, even here, in the middle of…”
“Nowhere?”
“Middle of nowhere, that’s right. The Big Sleep. I’m taller than Bogart, you know. Have a better tan too. And you don’t look a thing like Lauren Bacall.”
“Oh, now you hurt my feelings, Walter.” He knew it couldn’t be done, but he was thrilled to hear her say so.
“You’re more beautiful than she was,” he blurted out, instantly feeling a flush on the back of his neck, a heat rash that ran at breakneck speed all across his face. Was I out of line? he worried.
“Muchos gracias, senor.”
“De nada.”
“You still talking with that Chita Crystal,” said Ike. Walter looked up to see the old man sitting at his regular table. Grandson Johnson had dropped him off at the curb. It wasn’t a question Ike asked, even though it may have sounded like one. And Ike pronounced her last name like it was just another piece of glass. His grandson Johnson-called Sonny by just about everyone who knew him-helped Ike make the short walk from Sonny’s jeep to the table in Billy’s that was as much the old man’s home as the house he slept in. When Ike was settled in, Sonny kissed him on the top of his bald head, smiled and saluted in Walter’s direction, then took off. “Nice boy,” Ike said. “Real nice boy.”