The Crimes of Jordan Wise (14 page)

His two gold teeth flashed in one of his rare smiles. "Nothing Bone likes better than shining up a good salty sea boat."

The $16,000 price was firm, but I wouldn't have tried to haggle anyway. We signed the papers that same day, in Marsten's office. When I told Annalise that night, she wasn't pleased I'd gone ahead with the deal without talking to her first, but she didn't turn bitchy about it. Not then. I took her out to dinner and Bamboushay to celebrate.

The next day I went to the harbormaster's office, reregistered the yawl in Richard Laidlaw's name, and arranged for slip space not far from Bone's at the Sub Base harbor marina. Once she was barnacle-free and had been relaunched, Bone and I ran her over to Sub Base harbor under power. The auxiliary diesel labored somewhat, but he was satisfied with its durability. The first thing we did after we got her there was to paint a new name over the old one on the transom. She'd been
Moonlight Lady;
now she was
Annalise.

I thought Annalise would be pleased when I brought her down to show off the yawl. Wrong. Her reaction was distaste, scorn. The bitch coming out in her then, as if it were the end product of a long brood since I'd told her about the purchase.

"This is what you named after me?" she said. "This is what you spent sixteen thousand dollars on?"

"She's rough around the edges," I admitted, "but Bone says she—"

"Bone says. Bone says."

"She needs work, that's all. A lot of hard work."

"So you'll be spending even more time down here."

"It's going to take some time, yes."

"You and Bone."

"I asked him to help me. What's wrong with that?"

"Oh, nothing. Nothing at all." Heavy sigh. "I suppose now you'll never take me to Paris. Or even to New York."

Paris again, New York again. She'd been pestering me about a long trip to both cities, and I kept putting her off. The FBI wouldn't have forgotten about Jordan Wise after only two and a half years; there was still a risk in traveling on the mainland and in Europe. But it was a small risk, I couldn't deny that. And now that I had what I'd always wanted, and the way she was reacting to it...

"All right," I said.

"All right?"

"We'll go to New York. We'll go to Paris."

"When?"

"This summer. June or July."

Fast change. The bitch vanished; she was soft and sweet again. "Richard! You mean it?"

"Yes."

"Promise? You won't try to back out?"

"No. We'll start making arrangements right away. But you have to promise me something in return. When the repair work is finished and the
Annalise
is ready for a shakedown cruise, you'll come along. No fuss, no argument."

"When will that be?"

"At least six months. Maybe not until the end of the year."

"Just the two of us?"

"Well, maybe. Bone might have to join us."

"Why, for God's sake?"

"I don't know when I'll be ready to sail a boat this size by myself. It could be another year or two before I can singlehand. If Bone does come along, he won't bother us. You'll hardly even know he's there."

"So you say."

"Will you promise?"

"Yes, I promise," she said. Then she said, "New York, Paris. Monte Carlo, too? I've always wanted to go to Monte Carlo. And London? Oh, God, I can't wait!"

"I wouldn't describe her as a fixer-upper," I said. "She's got a good pedigree. She just hasn't been taken care of."

"Well, everybody needs a hobby."

"It's more to me than a hobby."

"Sure, I understand. Every man needs a vice, too." He winked at me. "Mine's making money."

At the rate the repairs were progressing, and with the off-island trip with Annalise coming up, there wasn't much chance the yawl would be ready for cruising until the end of the year. And maybe not even then.

Six days in Paris, three in Monte Carlo, five in London. Annalise loved them all. For me the whole trip was an exhausting and uncomfortable experience. The cities were interesting enough, but not to my taste. Too many people, too many eyes. Every time we went through passport and customs checks, I felt exposed and vulnerable. I imagined policemen were watching me, thinking that I looked familiar. Ordinary citizens, too. In London a tourist pointed a camera in my direction, and I ducked and turned away before I realized it wasn't me but one of the double-decker buses behind me that he was interested in. If Annalise noticed my discomfort, she ignored it because she was having such a good time.

I was relieved to get back to St. Thomas. The island was my safe harbor, the Caribbean my comfort zone. An illusion, sure; I could've been recognized there just as easily as in New York or London or Europe. But everybody has a place where he feels secure, a lifestyle that suits him perfectly, and this was mine. More of a home, after only two and a half years, than Los Alegres or San Francisco had ever been.

I slept for fourteen hours and then went down to the harbor and talked Bone into a day sail on
Conch Out.
I needed time on a boat on the open sea to unwind and resettle.

She was still on a high from the trip and she started lobbying for us to move to New York—"not immediately, in a year or two." I told her it wasn't going to happen, and why it wasn't going to happen. At first she pouted. Then, when the high faded and sank into a low, she turned broody and distant.

One set of the designs she'd distributed in New York came back stuffed in a envelope with no note and postage due. The others were never returned. This depressed her, started her drinking more than she had before. And the drinking brought out the bitch again.

"I'm never going to get anywhere with my designs living down here. If we were in New York I could talk to people, meet somebody who'd look at them and see the potential and give me a chance. Or I could enroll in Pratt Institute and eventually get a referral from them."

"How many times have we been over this?" I said. "New York is too expensive. And the weather is miserable."

"Somewhere outside the city, then."

"Same negatives apply."

"I suppose you want to stay here for the rest of our lives."

"That was the plan, wasn't it? We're settled now, we're safe here—"

"We'd be safe in New York, after all this time. That's just an excuse."

"Don't you like St. Thomas anymore?"

"You want the truth? No, not very much."

"Why? What's changed?"

"Nothing's changed, that's the point. There's not enough to do on an island this small—half the time I'm bored to tears. But you don't even notice. You don't seem to care about my feelings, my needs. All you care about is that goddamn boat of yours. And your black buddy Bone."

"That's not true, Annalise."

"Isn't it? Makes me wonder if you still love me. Or if now I'm just somebody you keep around to screw when you feel like it. . . ."

She drank more and more; I hardly ever saw her without a glass in her hand. We went out together less often. There were long silences whenever we were together. Our sex life slacked off, to the point where I was spending much more time on
Annalise
than I was on Annalise. It didn't seem to bother her. Before, she'd been in a constant state of heat, and the aggressor at least half the time; now the aggressiveness stopped altogether. She was still cooperative enough when I initiated lovemaking, but without any of the wantonness that had always made it special between us. She was the dutiful wife, nothing more.

I kept trying to put us back together, giving her little presents, surprising her with an evening at a restaurant she liked on St. John. Nothing worked. The rift between us kept on widening. But I refused to believe it was permanent. Denial. I needed us to be all right, so we'd be all right. Every marriage has its rocky periods, I told myself, and this was ours—a bad patch that would smooth itself out sooner or later.

There were other problems, too. By the end of hurricane season, she was no longer spending time with Maureen Verriker. When I asked her about it, all she'd say was a curt "The friendship's run its course." She wasn't seeing much of her other friends, either, the apparent reason being that she'd made a new one at Sapphire Bay she liked more. JoEllen something—Hall, I think—an artist who lived out near Red Hook.

I didn't care for JoEllen. She was from somewhere in Florida, one of the divorcees who stayed on to make a new life for herself. It wasn't much of a life, as far as I could see. She was fortyish, loud, bawdy—the bohemian type who dressed sloppily in shorts and a loose halter that kept threatening to expose one or the other of a pair of juiceless brown tits. A polar opposite to Annalise in every way except for their shared fondness for sun, steel and scratch bands, and rum punches. Beach buddies, drinking buddies. JoEllen lived hand to mouth on what she earned from seascapes and island scenes aimed at the tourist trade. Annalise thought the oils and watercolors were better than they were, just as she thought her fashion designs were better than they were. She saw JoEllen as another yet-to-be-discovered genius. JoEllen saw her as a regular source of free drinks and small loans.

They hung out together three or four days a week, sometimes well into the night. Once Annalise didn't get home until after midnight. I was waiting up for her and I heard her squeal the Mini into the driveway, veer off the pavement, and slalighter half a dozen plantings on the way down. She wasn't just drunk—she was glassy-eyed, slack-jawed, jelly-legged plastered.

I was furious. "What the hell's the matter with you, driving in that condition?" I yelled at her. "What if you'd had an accident, run over somebody?"

"Well, I didn't."

"But you could have. You could've been stopped, arrested, thrown in jail. Any kind of serious trouble, the police might do a background check, and then we'd be finished. We can't afford to call attention to ourselves, we can't afford to lose control—not ever. How many times have we been over that?"

"A million. Two million. That's your favorite word—control. You know what you are? A control freak, that's what you are."

"That's not true, I've never tried to control you—"

"Oh, bullshit, Richard. You've been controlling me for four goddamn years. Do this, don't do that, don't take chances, don't take risks. What's that if not controlling?"