The phone rang and he stopped.
"Excuse me," Melanie said. She went over to the marble-top dry bar that was open, the louvered doors pushed back to show bottles and crystal, and picked up the phone.
"Mr. Dawson's residence." She waited a moment. "I'm sorry, but Mr. Dawson's out. Would you care to leave a message? ... No, I'm afraid you're mistaken. Mr. Dawson left the island earlier today and didn't say when he'd return. Good night--" in a pleasant telephone voice. She hung up.
"I used to be a receptionist for a p. R. guy in Los Angeles. He was a real asshole, a friend of my father's, but I met some interesting people."
"At the moment I'm a little more interested in who just called," Frank said. He was feeling mellow and didn't sound drunk, though he showed it when he weaved from his favorite chair on his trips to the bathroom and, coming back, would make a dive at Melanie if she happened to be on the sectional sofa that could be arranged to form a playpen. The apartment was done in shades of beige and neutral raw silk, with touches of wicker and aluminum and graphics Melanie had picked up at the International Village.
"He really didn't say anything. He asked for you, then said he knew you were here."
"How would he know that?"
"He's guessing."
The phone rang again, several times before Melanie picked it up.
"Hello." She waited, listening, picking at the front of her white caftan. "That's very interesting, but I can't very well put him on, sport, if he isn't here, now can I?" She was losing her receptionist manner. "Yes, it is. And who are you?" She listened again, rolling her eyes now. "I'm sorry, he's gone and didn't say when he'd be back. Ciao." She hung up.
"He knew my name."
"What'd he say?"
"He said your wife wanted to talk to you. So--"
"She was on the phone?"
"No, it sounded like a black guy. He said tell him his wife wants a word with him."
Frank was thoughtful, silent now.
"So what does that tell us?" Melanie said. "They can be faked out. You didn't pay and they haven't done anything about it."
The phone rang again.
"I better talk to them," Frank said. He put his hands on the chair arms to push himself up.
Melanie raised the receiver and then replaced it, breaking the connection. She said, "What did we decide, Frank?"
"I know, but--maybe if I talked to them I could find out who they are."
"What difference does it make? If you start listening to them--it's like with hijackers and the PLO and all those guys. You start to give in, Frank, and they've got you. You don't have anything to say to them, do you?"
"I guess not," Frank said.
"I don't know, I had a feeling," Louis said. "But you're the one had it first. Somebody in it you hadn't planned on, you didn't know about. I guess that started me thinking."
"She pick up the phone, they no way to get past her."
"Well, he's sitting there," Louis said. "She isn't doing it by herself. So--what're they doing?"
"Seeing if we serious," Ordell said. "We got to impress it on the man some way. Go down there and sit on him, say look here ... show him something, huh, like maybe his wife's baby finger."
"He knows we got her," Louis said.
"Impress it on him. Hey, we serious."
"Either he cares what happens to her or he doesn't give a shit," Louis said. "The finger isn't gonna do anything. He gives us the finger. Stick it." He didn't like to hear Ordell talking that way. Maim the woman for nothing, that wasn't a good idea. That was getting into something else and it would no longer be clean and simple. "But you're right," Louis said. "We got to put him against the wall."
"So we go down there," Ordell said. "Leave Richard with her."
Richard, Louis thought, Jesus. He said, "If you go, you got this guy Cedric Walker. I mean if you go alone and I stay here. I think one of us's got to be with her and not just Richard. In fact I'm gonna insist on it."
"You want to stay, that's cool," Ordell said. "I'll do it. Me and Mr. Walker." Ordell thought a moment, watching Louis. "You worried about Richard?"
"No, we get along. If I don't have to talk to him."
"Then you got nothing to worry about, have you?"
"No, I'm not worried about anything," Louis said. "I've never been happier in my life."
Chapter 15
MELANIE ROSE TO HER ELBOWS brushing hair from her eyes, the tips of her bare breasts resting on the lounge, and said, "Hey!" to the black guy walking off with her straw bag. She was alone at the pool and saw, now, there were two of them.
"You mind?"
"I'm jes going in the shade here," Ordell said. He took the straw bag with the big blue and pink straw flowers on it to the patio bar beneath the thatched roof and began feeling through it.
"You can have the money and the Coppertone and the Kleenex, but leave my wallet, okay? I just got the driver's license. It took me months."
Ordell came back with the straw bag in one hand and her keys in the other. He dropped the bag on the cement and sat down on the edge of the lounge, looking at her through his Spectra-Shades. "He upstairs? Or has he still left the island?"
"Oh," Melanie said.
Ordell smiled a little. "Yeah, oh."
"It's the truth, he's not here. I'm staying at his place while he's gone."
Ordell threw the keys underhand to the other man, a Bahamian. Melanie strained a little higher, turning her head to the side. She recognized the man's tight gray pants, very tight, with no hips, and the pink shirt, the man walking off through the shrubs toward the front of the building. Cedric, yes. She had met him at Churchill's or The Pub, one of those places.
"You getting red marks all over your titties from the chair," Ordell said.
"They rub off," Melanie said. "Listen, I know the other guy. If you want to chat, fine, but if I lose any teeth over this it's Cedric's ass, because sooner or later I'll call the cops."
Ordell frowned, hurt. "Lose some teeth?"
"So we understand one another," Melanie said. "Or if I'm not around at dinner time and my mother starts worrying. The island isn't that big you can hide somebody very long."
"I found that out," Ordell said. "I came down here about seven, eight years ago. I had some money to spend, I said hey, go down to a paradise island and have some of those big rum drinks and watch the natives do all that quaint shit beating on the oil drums, you know?"
Melanie watched him, one eye closed in the sun. She seemed interested.
"I got to the hotel out at West End," Ordell said. "I register, ask for my room key. The man say, We don't have no room keys. He say, No, you don't lock your room in the Bahamas, mon, we honest people. See, this was some time ago. It's all changed now. I said to myself, Hey, shit. I look in some rooms during the time I was there. Sure enough, all the rooms, the people leave their stuff on the dresser, some in the open suitcases, some of them stick the wallets and travelers' checks under the socks, you know?"
Melanie nodded, one eye still closed. "You rip 'em off?"
"Noooo, I didn't rip nothing. I say to my man Cedric Walker the bone-fisherman I met, Hey, you understand all the bread they is, all the loot laying around here waiting on you? He say, What? I say, Money, honey, sitting on the dressers. He say, Oh. Say, You take all that stuff, mon, where you take it to? I say, You take it home, baby. Give some to mama."
Melanie said, "That's wild."
"But he say, No. You got money, you got a new watch, they see it, the police, everybody see it. What you going to do, bury it? So nobody see it? I said to him, Then go some place else--"
Ordell looked up. Melanie followed his gaze to see Cedric Walker coming back through the shrubs.