He had told Faye he would call her at the Connecticut farm whenever he had the opportunity, but not to be upset if she couldn’t reach him during the next week, since he expected to be occupied almost continuously with meetings. His plan was to telephone her from Ocho Puertos on Tuesday and again on Thursday, telling her he was calling from Arlington each time. He wasn’t sure whether or not that part of it mattered too damned much, whether Faye discovering he was an unfaithful husband would change their lives one way or another. Maybe they were already too far gone for that.
The screen door closed noisily behind him. He glanced up at the bedroom window and saw Sondra standing behind the drapes, a blue robe thrown over her shoulders, her blond hair touched with early morning sunshine. For a foolish moment he entertained the hope that the car would turn out to be an Ocho Puertos version of the Welcome Wagon. And then, because he knew the situation had to be faced realistically, he pulled back his shoulders and lifted his head and started up the driveway.
The birds in the mangroves set up an unholy chatter as he continued up the driveway. Up ahead, a huge egret fluttered into the air in an awkward flapping of fuzzy feathers, its long neck bobbing. Cummings, startled, brought both hands up in front of his face, as though expecting an attack. The birds swooped up and then gracefully circled away into the mangroves on the other side of the driveway, vanishing. A new cacophony of bird calls shattered the air as Cummings approached the bend and rounded it.
The car was a green Chevrolet, circa 1958.
It was empty.
Cummings stood staring at the car for perhaps three minutes, unmoving.
He had met no one in the driveway.
Now he wondered if whoever had parked the car wasn’t somewhere in the thicket silently watching the house.
He turned and began walking back.
The incoming security calls from the diner and each of the houses on the beach had been switched to the phone booth outside by nine o’clock, thereby freeing the office phone for any possible calls from Costigan’s clients. Jason had insisted that each of the men on the beach call in at five-minute intervals, right down the line starting with the diner and working west to the Tannenbaum house, and then back to the diner again. In that way, any trouble in any of the houses could immediately be spotted by the simple fact that the security call had not been made. At the same time, he had realized that such an operational plan would effectively monopolize the single telephone in the marina office, and had supplied the alternate number to his men for use after 9 A.M. It was now 10:05, and Willy still had not found the courage he needed to take him back to the Stem house where the girl Lucy was being guarded by Flack. Instead, he stood some ten yards from the glass phone booth outside the office and heard the phone ringing, and saw Goody Moore lift the phone from the hook and say something into it. Willy wiped the sweat from his mustache and walked over to the booth. Goody was just hanging up the phone.
“Everything okay?” Willy asked.
“Fine,” Goody answered.
Willy gestured to the three new cars parked in front of the marina office. “I see they made it from Key West all right, huh?”
“Yeah, last of them pulled in about ten minutes ago.”
“Who was that?” Willy asked.
“Rafe.”
“What took him so long?”
“Didn’t take him too long,” Goody said. He watched Willy for a moment and then said, “Where’re you supposed to be, Willy?”
“I took Costigan over to the repair shop,” Willy answered. “Like Jase said.”
“That must’ve been an hour ago,” Goody said. “Where’ve you been since?”
“Harry said I should go back to the Stern house.”
“So why don’t you?”
“I’ve been there,” Willy said. “I was looking around outside.”
“What for?”
“I was checking the water.” Willy licked his tongue over his mustache. “I figured maybe some of Costigan’s customers might be coming this way, you know. Over the water.”
“Yeah,” Goody said. “But that’s why Clay’s on the end of the dock with binoculars, Willy. To let us know if any boats are heading in. See?”
“Yeah.”
The telephone rang. Goody pulled it immediately from the hook. “Goody here,” he said. “Yep, Walt. Right, thanks,” he said, and hung up. “Walt over at the Ambrosini house,” he said to Willy, and then grinned. “When he busted in this morning, the old guy was on the pot.”
“Who?” Willy said, grinning.
“Ambrosini. He looks up at Walt and says ‘What’re you doing in my toilet?’ ”
Both men burst into high almost female giggles. The laughter helped to ease some of Willy’s nervousness. He fished into his pocket for a cigarette and started to light it. Goody’s laughter trailed. “You better get back,” he said. “Jase won’t like it if he sees you hanging around this way.”
“Back where?” Willy said, puffing on the cigarette as he lighted it.
“To the Stem house. That’s where you’re supposed to be, isn’t it?”
“Flack’s there, you know.”
“I know. Two men in each house, though, that’s the plan.”
“That’s right,” Willy said, and shook out his match. “You want me to go back, Goody?”
“Yeah, you’d better get over there.”
“Right,” Willy said. “See you.”
He started up the road. His heart was fluttering wildly in his chest. He could hear the sound of the surf rolling in against the shore and up on the main road the sound of a truck racing past, but these were almost lost in the pounding of his own heart and the rush of blood to his ears. He could remember the way the girl looked when they had broken in through the French doors, could remember her trying to cover herself with the sheet, could remember the feel of the rifle in his hands and the trigger against his finger and then the gun bucking and the man on the bed jerking back in bloody spasm. He forced himself to walk at a normal pace because Goody was watching him from the booth, but there was a furious propelling force within him — his mind was already in that bedroom with the girl again, his eyes were coveting her breasts, he was watching the steady ooze of bright red blood against the white sheet. He wondered if Flack would object to his taking the girl and then he thought, He damn well better not, I’m the one got him into this; if it wasn’t for me, he wouldn’t even be here.
It was exciting the way Willy and Flack had got involved in this operation; oh, not exciting the way his thoughts of the girl were as he moved steadily toward the Stem house up the road, his heart beating in his chest, not that kind of wild, fluttering excitement, but a different kind of excitement, right from the beginning, right from the first time Clay Prentiss talked to him in Goldman’s drugstore. Even then he’d known something big was about to happen to him. Otherwise, why would Clay — who was an older man and a war veteran and all — even bother talking to him? “Willy,” he had said, “I’d like to discuss something with you. Whyn’t you stop by the agency one day?” The agency he meant was the Buick agency he owned downtown on Columbia Street. Since Willy was about to graduate from high school that June, he figured maybe it was about a job, but there had been something very mysterious about Gay’s manner, something that was exciting even then about the slight pressure of his hand on Willy’s arm, as though they were already sharing a secret; this wasn’t about no job.