time was nearly up. Alison heard it, too.
'Where are you? I'll call you right back,' she said quickly.
The number had been deliberately, maliciously scratched off the dial's centre. 'No way to tell. How urgent? I've got another call to make.'
'It can wait. Just don't speak to a man named Piersall until we talk. 'Bye now, darling.'
McAuliff was tempted to call Alison right back; who was Piersall? But it was more important to reach Hanley in Montego. It would be necessary to call collect; he didn't have enough change.
It took the better part of five minutes before Hanley's phone rang and another three while Hanley convinced a switchboard operator at a less-than-chic hotel that he would pay for the call.
'I'm sorry, Robert,' said Alex. I'm in a coin box in Kingston.'
'It's all right, lad. Have you heard from Tucker?' There was an urgency in Hanley's rapidly asked question.
'No. He hasn't checked in. I thought you might have something.'
'I have, indeed, and I don't like it at all... I flew back to Mo'Bay a couple of hours ago, and these damn fools here tell me that two blacks picked up Sam's belongings, paid the bill, and walked out without a word.'
'Can they do that?'
'This isn't the Hilton, lad. They had the money and they did it.'
'Then where are you?'
'Goddamn it, I took the same room for the afternoon. In case Sam tries to get in touch, he'll start here, I figured. In the meantime, I've got some friends asking around town. You still don't want the police?'
McAuliff hesitated. He had agreed to Holcroft's command not to go to the Jamaican police for anything until he had checked with a contact first and received clearance. 'Not yet, Bob.'
'We're talking about an old friend!'
'He's still not overdue, Robert. I can't legitimately report him missing. And, knowing our old friend, I wouldn't want him embarrassed.'
'I'd sure as hell raise a stink over two strangers picking up his belongings!' Hanley was angry, and McAuliff could not fault him for it.
'We're not sure they're strangers. You know Tuck; he hires attendants like he's the court of Eric the Red. Especially if he's got some money and he can spread it around the outback. Remember Kimberly, Bob.' A statement. 'Sam blew two months' wages setting up an agricultural commune, for Christ's sake.'
Hanley chuckled. 'Aye, lad, I do. He was going to put the hairy bastards in the wine business. He's a one-man Peace Corps with a vibrating crotch... All right, Alex. We'll wait until tomorrow. I have to get back to Port Antone'. I'll phone you in the morning.'
'If he's not here by then, I'll call the police and you can activate your subterranean network - which I'm sure you've developed by now.'
'Goddamn right. We old travellers have to protect ourselves. And stick together.'
The blinding sun on the hot, dirty Caribbean street and the stench of the telephone mouthpiece was enough to convince McAuliff to return to Courtleigh Manor.
Later, perhaps early this evening, he would find the fish store called Tallon's and his arthritic contact.
He walked north on Matthew Lane and found a taxi on Barry Street; a half-demolished touring car of indeterminate make, and certainly not of this decade, or the last. As he stepped in, the odour of vanilla assaulted his nostrils. Vanilla and bay rum, the scents of black Jamaica; delightful in the evening, oppressive during the day under the fiery equatorial sun.
As the cab headed out of Old Kingston - harbour-front Kingston - where man-made decay and cascading tropical flora struggled to coexist, Alex found himself staring with uncomfortable wonder at the suddenly emerging new buildings of New Kingston. There was something obscene about the proximity of such bland, clean structures of stone and tinted glass to the rows of filthy, tin, corrugated shacks - the houses of gaunt children who played slowly, without energy, with bony dogs, and of pregnant young-old women hanging rags on ropes salvaged from the waterfront, their eyes filled with the bleak, hated prospects of getting through another day. And the new, bland, scrubbed obscenities were less than two hundred yards from even more terrible places of human habitation: rotted, rat-infested barges, housing those who had reached the last cellars of dignity. Two hundred yards.
McAuliff suddenly realized what these buildings were: banks. Three, four, five... six banks. Next to, and across from each other, all within an easy throw of a safe-deposit box.
Banks.
Clean, bland, tinted glass.
Two hundred yards.
Eight minutes later, the odd, ancient touring car entered the palm-lined drive