The Cry of the Halidon (18 page)

Latham said that the Ministry had anticipated more, rather than less, difficulty, as the survey team would be entering the territory of the Cock Pit, miles of uninhabited
country—jungle, really. Escorts were required, guides trained in the treacherous environs. And arrangements had to be made with the recognized descendants of the Maroon people, who, by a treaty of 1739, controlled much of the territory. An arrogant, warlike people, brought to the islands as slaves, the Maroons knew the jungles far better than their white captors. The British sovereign, George the First, had offered the Maroons their independence, with a treaty that guaranteed the Cock Pit territories in perpetuity. It was a wiser course than continuing bloodshed. Besides, the territory was considered unfit for colonial habitation.

For over 235 years that treaty was often scoffed at but never violated, said Latham. Formal permission was still sought by Kingston from the “Colonel of the Maroons” for all those who wished to enter their lands. The Ministry was no exception.

Yet the Ministry, thought McAuliff, was in reality Dunstone, Limited. So permissions were granted, permits obtained with alacrity.

“Your equipment was air-freighted to Boscobel,” said Latham. “Trucks will transport it to the initial point of the survey.”

“Then I’ll leave tomorrow afternoon or, at the latest, early the next day. I’ll be hiring out of Ocho Rios; the others can follow when I’m finished. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of days.”

“Your escort-guides, we call them ‘runners,’ will be available in two weeks. You will not have any need for them until then, will you? I assume you will be working the coast to begin with.”

“Two weeks’11 be fine.… I’d like a choice of runners, please.”

“There are not that many to choose from, Mr. McAuliff. It is not a career that appeals to many young people; the ranks are thinning. But I shall do what I can.”

“Thank you. May I have the approved maps in the morning?”

“They will be sent to your hotel by ten o’clock. Good-bye,
Mr. McAuliff. And again, my deeply felt regrets over Dr. Piersall.”

“I didn’t know him either, Mr. Latham,” said Alex. “Good-bye.”

He did not know Piersall, thought McAuliff, but he had heard the name Carrick Foyle, Piersall’s village. He could not remember where he had heard it, only that it was familiar.

Alex replaced the telephone and looked over at Alison, on the small balcony. She had been watching him, listening, and she could not conceal her fear. A thin, nervous man in a white Palm Beach suit had told her—less than two hours ago—that he had confidential information, and now he was dead.

The late afternoon sun was a Caribbean orange, the shadows shafts of black across the miniature balcony. Behind her was the deep green of the high palms, behind them the awesome rise of the mountain range. Alison Booth seemed to be framed within a tableau of chiaroscuro tropic colors. As though she were a target.

“He said it was an accident.” Alex walked slowly to the balcony doors. “Everyone’s upset. Piersall was liked on the island. Apparently, there’s a lot of drunken hit-and-runs in Kingston.”

“And you don’t believe him for an instant.”

“I didn’t say that.” He lighted a cigarette; he did not want to look at her.

“You don’t have to. You didn’t say one word about your friend Tucker, either. Why not?”

“Common sense. I want to talk to the police, not an associate director of the Ministry. All he can do is babble and create confusion.”

“Then let’s go to the police.” Alison rose from the deck chair. “I’ll go get dressed.”

“No!”
McAuliff realized as he said the word that he was too emphatic. “I mean, I’ll go. I don’t want you involved.”

“I spoke to the man. You didn’t.”

“I’ll relay the information.”

“They won’t accept it from you. Why should they hear it secondhand?”

“Because I say so.” Alex turned away, ostensibly to find an ashtray. He was not convincing, and he knew it. “Listen to me, Alison.” He turned back. “Our permits came in. Tomorrow I’m going to Ocho Rios to hire drivers and carriers; you people will follow in a couple of days. While I’m gone I don’t want you—or any member of the team—involved with the police or anybody else. Our job here is the survey. That’s my responsibility; you’re my responsibility. I don’t want delays.”

She walked down the single step, out of the frame of color, and stood in front of him. “You’re a dreadful liar, Alex. Dreadful in the sense that you’re quite poor at it.”

“I’m going to the police now. Afterwards, if it’s not too late, I may drop over to the Ministry and see Latham. I was a little rough with him.”

“I thought you ended on a very polite note.”

It was Alison who spotted Hammond’s small things, thought McAuliff. She was better than he was. “You only heard me. You didn’t hear him.… If I’m not back by seven, why not call the Jensens and have dinner with them? I’ll join you as soon as I can.”

“The Jensens aren’t here.”

“What?”

“Relax. I called them for lunch. They left word at the desk that since it was a day off, they were touring. Port Royal, Spanish Town, Old Harbour. The manager set up their tour.”

“I hope they enjoy themselves.”

He told the driver that he wanted a half hour’s tour of the city. He had thirty minutes to kill before cocktails in Duke Street—he’d spot the restaurant; he didn’t know the specific address—so the driver could do his imaginative best within the time span.

The driver protested: thirty minutes was barely sufficient
to reach Duke Street from the Courtleigh in the afternoon traffic. McAuliff shrugged and replied that the time was not absolute.

It was precisely what the driver wanted to hear. He drove out Trafalgar, south on Lady Musgrave, into Old Hope Road. He extolled the commercial virtues of New Kingston, likening the progress to Olympian feats of master planning. The words droned on, filled with idiomatic exaggerations of the “alla time big American millions” that were turning the tropical and human overgrowth that was Kingston into a Caribbean financial mecca. It was understood that the millions would be German or English or French, depending on the accent of the passenger.

It didn’t matter. Within minutes, McAuliff knew that the driver knew he was not listening. He was staring out the rear window, watching the traffic behind them.

It was there.

A green Chevrolet sedan, several years old. It stayed two to three cars behind, but whenever the taxi turned or sped ahead of other vehicles, the green Chevrolet did the same.

The driver saw it too.

“You got trouble, mon?”

There was no point in lying. “I don’t know.”

“I know, mon. Lousy green car be’n d’ere all time. It stay in big parking lot at Courtleigh Manor. Two block sons of a bitch drivin’.”

McAuliff looked at the driver. The Jamaican’s last statement triggered his memory of Robert Hanley’s words from Montego Bay.
Two black men picked up Sam’s things
. Alex knew the connection was far-fetched, coincidental at best in a black country, but it was all he had to go on. “You can earn twenty dollars, friend,” he said quickly to the driver, “if you can do two things.”

“You tell me, mon!”

“First, let the green car get close enough so I can read the license plate, and when I’ve got it, lose them. Can you do that?”

“You watch, mon!” The Jamaican swung the wheel to the
right; the taxi veered briefly into the right lane, narrowly missing an oncoming bus, then lurched back into the left, behind a Volkswagen. McAuliff crouched against the seat, his head pressed to the right of the rear window. The green Chevrolet duplicated the taxi’s movements, taking up a position two cars behind.

Suddenly the cabdriver accelerated again, passing the Volks and speeding ahead to a traffic light that flashed the yellow caution signal. He swung the car into the left intersection; Alex read the street sign and the wording on the large shield-shaped sign beneath:

TORRINGTON ROAD
ENTRANCE
GEORGE VI MEMORIAL PARK

“We head into a racecourse, mon!” shouted the driver. “Green son of a bitch have to stop at Snipe Street light. He come out’a d’ere fast. You watch good now!”

The cab sped down Torrington, swerving twice out of the left lane to pass three vehicles, and through the wide-gated entrance into the park. Once inside, the driver slammed on the brakes, backed the taxi into what looked like a bridle path, spun the wheel, and lurched forward into the exit side of the street.

“You catch ’em good now, mon!” yelled the Jamaican as he slowed the car down and entered the flow of traffic leaving the George VI Memorial Park.

Within seconds the green Chevrolet came into view, hemmed between automobiles entering the park. And then McAuliff realized precisely what the driver had done. It was early track time; George VI Memorial Park housed the sport of kings. Gambling Kingston was on the way to the races.

Alex wrote down the license number, keeping himself out of sight but seeing clearly enough to know that the two black men in the Chevrolet did not realize that they had passed within feet of the car they were following.

“Them sons of bitches got to drive all way ’round, mon!
Them dumb block sons of bitches!… Where you want to go, mon? Plenty of time, now. They don’t catch us.”

McAuliff smiled. He wondered if the Jamaican’s talents were listed in Hammond’s manual somewhere. “You just earned yourself an extra five dollars. Take me to the corner of Queen and Hanover Streets, please. No sense wasting time, now.”

“Hey, mon! You hire my taxi alla time in Kingston. I do what you say. I don’ ask questions, mon.”

Alex looked at the identification behind the dirty plastic frame above the dashboard. “This isn’t a private cab … Rodney.”

“You make a deal with me, mon; I make a deal with the taxi boss.” The driver grinned in the rearview mirror.

“I’ll think about it. Do you have a telephone number?”

The Jamaican quickly produced an outsized business card and handed it back to McAuliff. It was the taxi company’s card, the type that was left on hotel counters. Rodney’s name was printed childishly in ink across the bottom. “You telephone company, say you gotta have Rodney. Only Rodney, mon. I get the message real quick. Alla time they know where Rodney is. I work hotels and Palisados. Them get me quick.”

“Suppose I don’t care to leave my name—”

“No name, mon!” broke in the Jamaican, grinning in the mirror. “I got lousy son-of-a-bitch memory. Don’t want no name! You tell taxi phone … you the fella at the racecourse. Give place; I get to you, mon.”

Rodney accelerated south to North Street, left to Duke, and south again past the Gordon House, the huge new complex of the Kingston legislature.

Out on the sidewalk, McAuliff straightened his jacket and his tie and tried to assume the image of an average white businessman not entirely sure of which government entrance he should use. Tallon’s was not listed in any telephone or shopping directory; Hammond had indicated that it was below the row of government houses, which meant below Queen, but he was not specific.

As he looked for the fish store, he checked the people
around him, across the street, and in the automobiles that seemed to go slower than the traffic allowed.

For a few minutes he felt himself in the pocket of fear again; afraid that the unseen had their eyes on him.

He reached Queen Street and hurried across with the last contingent making the light. On the curb he turned swiftly to watch those behind on the other side.

The orange sun was low on the horizon, throwing a corridor of blinding light from the area of Victoria Park several hundred yards to the west. The rest of the street was in dark, sharply defined shadows cast from the structures of stone and wood all around. Automobiles passed east and west, blocking a clear vision of those on the north corner. Corners.

He could tell nothing. He turned and proceeded down the block.

He saw the sign first. It was filthy, streaked with runny print that had not been refinished in months, perhaps years:

TALLON’S
FINE FISH AND NATIVE DELICACIES
311½ QUEEN’S ALLEY
1 BLOCK—DUKE ST. WEST

He walked the block. The entrance to Queen’s Alley was barely ten feet high, cut off by grillwork covered with tropical flowers. The cobblestone passage did not go through to the next street as is common in Paris and Rome and Greenwich Village. Although it was in the middle of a commercial market area, there was a personal quality about its appearance, as though an unwritten sign proclaimed this section private: residents only, keys required, not for public usage. All that was needed, thought McAuliff, was a gate.

In Paris and Rome and Greenwich Village, such wide alleys held some of the best restaurants in the world, known only to those who cared.

In Shenzen and Macao and Hong Kong, they were the recesses where anything could be had for a price.

In Kingston, this one housed a man with arthritis who worked for British Intelligence.

Queen’s Alley was no more than fifty feet long. On the right was a bookstore with subdued lighting in the windows, illuminating a variety of wares from heavy academic leather to nonglossy pornography. On the left was Tallon’s.

He had pictured casements of crushed ice supporting rows of wide-eyed dead fish, and men in soiled, cheap white aprons running around scales, arguing with customers.

The crushed ice was in the window; so were several rows of glassy-eyed fish. But what impressed him was the other forms of ocean merchandise placed artistically: squid, octopus, shark, and exotic shellfish.

Tallon’s was no Fulton Market.

As if to add confirmation to his thoughts, a uniformed chauffeur emerged from Tallon’s entrance carrying a plastic shopping bag, insulated, Alex was sure, with crushed ice.

The double doors were thick, difficult to open. Inside, the counters were spotless; the sawdust on the floor was white. The two attendants were just that: attendants, not countermen. Their full-length aprons were striped blue and white and made of expensive linen. The scales behind the chrome-framed glass cases had shiny brass trimmings. Around the shop, stacked shelves lighted by tiny spotlights in the ceiling, were hundreds of tins of imported delicacies from all parts of the world.