Corkoran to a senior editor of the leading Bahamian newspaper:
"Old love! It's me. Corky. How are we? How are the dancing girls?"
Coarse intimacies are exchanged. Then the nub:
"Sweetheart, listen, the Chief wants a story killed... pressing reasons why the hero of the hour doesn't need the spotlight... young Daniel, very hyper boy... I'm talking serious gratitude, a mega-improvement to your retirement plans. How about 'a practical joke that came unstuck'? Can you do that, lover?"
The sensational robbery on Hunter's Island is laid to rest in the great cemetery for stories permanently spiked by Higher Authority.
Corkoran to the desk of a senior Nassau police officer known for his understanding of the peccadilloes of the rich:
"Heart, how are we? Listen, in re Brother Lamont, last seen at Doctors Hospital by one of your heavier-footed brethren... can we just kind of lose that one from the menu ― do you mind? The Chief would greatly prefer the lower profile, feels it's better for Daniel's health... wouldn't wish to prefer charges, even if you found the culprits, hates the fuss... bless you.... Oh, and by the by, don't believe all that crap you're reading about Ironbrand shares going through the floor.... Chief's considering a very nice little divi this Christmas; we should all be able to buy ourselves a piece of whatever we like best..."
The strong arm of the law agrees to withdraw its claws. Burr wonders whether he is listening to Jonathan's obituary.
And from the rest of the world, not a peep.
* * *
Should Burr return to London? Should Rooke? Logically, it made no difference whether they hung by a thread in Miami or in London. Illogically, Burr needed nearness to the place where his agent was last seen. In the end, he sent Rooke to London and the same day checked out of his steel-and-glass hotel and moved to humbler premises in a sleazy part of town.
"Leonard's putting on the hair shirt while he waits this thing out," Strelski told Flynn.
"Tough," said Flynn, still trying to come to terms with the experience of having his agent immolated by Burr's ewe-lamb.
Burr's new cell was a pastel-painted art deco box beside the beach, with a bedside light made out of a chrome Atlas holding up the globe, and steel-framed windows that buzzed to every passing car, and a doped-out Cuban security guard with dark glasses and an elephant gun, lounging in the lobby. Burr slept there lightly, with his cellular phone on the spare pillow.
One dawn, unable to sleep, he took his phone for a walk down a great boulevard. A regiment of cocaine banks loomed at him out of the misted sea. But as he went toward them he found himself in a building site full of coloured birds screaming from the scaffolding, and Latinos sleeping like war dead beside their parked bulldozers.
* * *
Jonathan was not the only one who had disappeared. Roper too had entered a black hole. Deliberately or not, he had given Amato's watchers the slip. The tap on the Ironbrand headquarters in Nassau revealed only that the Chief was away selling farms ― "selling farms" being Roperspeak for "mind your own damn business."
The supersnitch Apostoll, urgently consulted by Flynn, offered no consolation. He had heard vaguely that his clients might be holding a business conference on the island of Aruba, but he had not been invited. No, he had no idea where Mr. Roper was. He was a lawyer, not a travel agent. He was Mary's soldier.
* * *
Another evening came, and Strelski and Flynn determined to take Burr out of himself. They collected him from his hotel and, cellular phones in hand, made him stroll among the crowds on the promenade beside the beach. They sat him at a pavement cafe and fed him margaritas and forced him to take an interest in the people who went by, in vain. They watched muscular blacks in multicoloured shirts and gold rings, rolling with the majesty of high life for as long as the highs and the living lasted, their dolls in skintight miniskirts and thigh boots toppling between them, their shaven-headed bodyguards in robes of mullah grey to conceal their automatic weapons. A swarm of beachboys on skateboards raced past, and the wiser ladies whisked their handbags out of reach. But two old lesbians in straw trilbies refused to be daunted and marched their poodles straight at them, causing them to veer. After the beach-boys came a shoal of long-necked fashion models on roller skates, each more gorgeous than the last. At the sight of them, Burr, who loved women, did for a moment come alive ― only to lapse again into his melancholy abstractions.
"Hey, Leonard," said Strelski, making a last gallant effort. "Let's go see where the Roper does his weekend shopping."
In a big hotel, in a conference room protected by men with padded shoulders, Burr and Strelski mingled with the buyers of all nations and listened to the sales talk of wholesome young men with name tags pinned to their lapels. Behind the men sat girls with order books. And behind the girls, in shrines cordoned off with blood-coloured ropes, stood their wares, each polished like a loved possession, each guaranteed to make a man of whoever owned them: from the most cost-effective cluster bomb through the all-plastic undetectable Glock automatic pistol to the latest thing in hand-held rocket launchers, mortars and anti-personnel mines. And for your reading man, standard works on how to build yourself a rocket-propelled gun in your own backyard or make a one-time silencer out of a tubular can of tennis balls.
"About the only thing missing is a girl in a bikini poking her fanny at the barrel of a sixteen-inch fieldpiece," said Strelski as they drove back to the operations room.
The joke fell flat.
* * *
A tropical storm descends on the city, blackening the sky. chopping the heads off the skyscrapers. Lightning strikes, triggering the burglar alarms of parked cars. The hotel shudders and cracks, the last daylight dies as if the main switch has failed. Jets of rain spew down the window-panes of Burr's bedroom, black flotsam rides on the scurrying white mist. Billows of wind ransack the palm trees, hurling chairs and plants off balconies.
But Burr's cellular phone, ringing in his ear, has miraculously survived the attack.
"Leonard," says Strelski in a voice of suppressed excitement, "get your ass down here fast. We got a couple of murmurs coming out of the rubble."
The city lights bounce back again, shining gaily after their free wash.
* * *
Corkoran to Sir Anthony Joyston Bradshaw, lately unprincipled chairman of a group of derelict British trading companies, and occasional purveyor of deniable arms shipments to Her Majesty's procurement ministers.
Corkoran is telephoning from the Nassau apartment of one of Ironbrand's smart young men, on the mistaken assumption that the line is safe.
"Sir Tony? Corkoran here. Dicky Roper's gofer."
"Fuck do you want?" The voice sounds clotted and half drunk. It echoes like a voice in a bathroom.
"Pressing matter, Sir Tony, I'm afraid. The Chief needs your good offices. Got a pencil?"
While Burr and Strelski listen transfixed, Corkoran struggles to achieve precision:
"No, Sir Tony, Pine. Pine like the tree, Pine like a sick dog. P for Peter, I for Item, N for Nuts, E for Easy. That's right. First name Jonathan. Like Jonathan." He adds a couple of harmless details, such as Jonathan's date and place of birth and British passport number. "Chief wants the head-to-toe back ground check, Sir Tony, please, preferably by yesterday. And mum. All very mum indeed."
"Who's Joyston Bradshaw?" Strelski asks, when they have heard the conversation to the end.
Seeming to wake from a deep dream. Burr allows himself a cautious smile. "Sir Anthony Joyston Bradshaw, Joe, is a leading English shit. His financial embarrassment is one of the major joys of the current recession." His smile spreads. "Unsurprisingly, he is also a former partner in crime of Mr. Richard Onslow Roper." He warms to his theme. "As a matter of fact, Joe, if you and I were fielding the all-English team of shits, Sir Anthony Joyston Bradshaw would feature high on our batting list. He also enjoys the protection of some other highly placed English shits, some of whom work not too far distant from the river Thames." The relief shone through Burr's strained face as he broke out laughing. "He's alive, Joe! You don't check a corpse, not by yesterday! Head-to-toe background, he says. Well, we've got it all ready for him, and nobody better suited to provide him with it than Tony bloody Joyston Bradshaw! They want him, Joe! He's got his nose into their tent! You know what they say, the Bedouin? Never let a camel's nose into your tent, because if you do, you get the whole camel."