The Cry of the Halidon: A Novel

  “Obviously,” answered McAuliff. “I made it a condition of your employment that you stay away from Craft. You agreed.”

  “I didn’t have a choice. When we got off the plane, you and Alison stayed behind; Whitehall and the Jensens went on ahead to the luggage pickup. I was taking some infrared photographs of the airport.… I was in between, you might say. I walked through the arrival gate, and the first person I saw was Craft himself; the son, of course, not the old fellow. The son runs the Foundation now. I tried to avoid him. I had every reason to; after all, he sacked me. But I couldn’t. And I was amazed—he was positively effusive. Filled with apologies; what outstanding work I had done, how he personally had come to the airport to meet me when he heard I was with the survey.” Ferguson swallowed a portion of his punch, darting his eyes around the brick courtyard. He seemed to have reached a block, as if uncertain how to continue.

  “Go on,” said Alex. “All you’ve described is an unexpected welcome wagon.”

  “You’ve got to understand. It was all so strange—as you say, unexpected. And as he was talking, this chap in uniform comes through the gate and asks me if I’m Ferguson. I say yes and he tells me you’ll be delayed, you’re tied up; that you want me to have your bags sent on to the hotel. I should write a note to that effect so British Air will release them. Craft offered to help, of course. It all seemed so minor, quite plausible, really, and everything happened so fast. I wrote the note and this chap said he’d take care of it. Craft tipped him. Generously, I believe.”

  “What kind of uniform was it?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t think. Uniforms all look alike when you’re out of your own country.”

  “Go on.”

  “Craft asked me for a drink. I said I really couldn’t. But he was adamant, and I didn’t care to cause a scene, and you were delayed. You do see why I agreed, don’t you?”

  “Go on.”

  “We went to the lounge upstairs … the one that looks out over the field. It’s got a name.…”

  “Observation.”

  “What?”

  “It’s called the Observation Lounge. Please go on.”

  “Yes. Well, I was concerned. I mean, I told him there were my own suitcases and Whitehall, the Jensens. And you, of course. I didn’t want you wondering where I was … especially under the circumstances.” Ferguson drank again; McAuliff held his temper and spoke simply.

  “I think you’d better get to the point, Jimbo-mon.”

  “I hope that name doesn’t stick. It was a bad evening.”

  “It will be a worse afternoon if you don’t go on.”

  “Yes … Craft told me you’d be in Customs for another hour and the chap in uniform would tell the others I was taking pictures; I was to go on to the Courtleigh. I mean, it was strange. Then he changed the subject—completely. He talked about the Foundation. He said they were close to a major breakthrough in the baracoa fibers; that much of the progress was due to my work. And, for reasons ranging from the legal to the moral, they wanted me to come back to Craft. I was actually to be given a percentage of the market development. Do you realize what that could mean?”

  “If this is what you had to tell me, you can join them today.”

  “Millions!” continued Ferguson, oblivious to Alex’s interruption. “Actually millions … over the years, of course. I’ve never had any money. Stony, most of the time. Had to borrow the cash for my camera equipment, did you know that?”

  “It wasn’t something I dwelled on. But that’s all over with. You’re with Craft now.”

  “No. Not yet. That’s the point. After the survey. I must stay with the survey—stay with you.” Ferguson finished his rum punch and looked around for the waiter.

  “Merely stay with the survey? With me? I think you’ve left out something.”

  “Yes. Actually.” The young man hunched his shoulders over the table; he avoided McAuliff’s eyes. “Craft said it was harmless, completely harmless. They only want to know the people you deal with in the government … which is just about everyone you deal with, because most everyone’s in the government. I am to keep a log. That’s all; simply a diary.” Ferguson looked up at Alex, his eyes pleading. “You do see, don’t you? It is harmless.”

  McAuliff returned the young man’s stare. “That’s why you followed me this morning?”

  “Yes. But I didn’t mean to do it this way. Craft suggested that I could accomplish a great deal by just … tagging along with you. Asking if I could join you when you went about survey business. He said I was embarrassingly curious and talked a lot anyway; it would be normal.”

  “Two points for Craft.”

  “What?”

  “An obsolete American expression. Nevertheless, you followed me.”

  “I didn’t mean to. I rang your room. Several times. There was no answer. Then I called Alison.… I’m sorry. I think she was upset.”

  “What did she say?”

  “That she thought she heard you leave your room only minutes ago. I ran down to the lobby. And outside. You were driving away in a taxi. Then I followed you, in another cab.”

  McAuliff put his glass aside. “Why didn’t you come up to me in Victoria Park? I saw you and you turned away.”

  “I was confused … and frightened. I mean, instead of asking to tag along, there I was, really following you.”

  “Why did you pretend you were so drunk last night?”

  Ferguson took a long nervous intake of breath. “Because when I got to the hotel, I asked if your luggage had arrived. It hadn’t. I panicked, I’m afraid.… You see, before Craft left, he told me about your suitcases—”

  “The bugs?” interrupted Alex angrily.

  “The what?” Instantly, James understood. “No. No! I swear to you, nothing like that. Oh, God how awful.” Ferguson paused, his expression suddenly pensive. “Yet, of course, it makes sense.…”

  No one could have rehearsed such a reversal of reactions, thought Alex. It was pointless to explode. “What about the suitcases?”

  “What … oh, yes, Craft. At the very end of the conversation, he said they were checking your luggage—checking, that’s all he said. He suggested, if anyone asked, that I say I’d taken it upon myself to write the note; that I say you were having trouble. But I wasn’t to worry, your bags would get to the hotel. But they weren’t there, you see.”

  McAuliff did not see. He sighed wearily. “So you pretended to be smashed?”

  “Naturally. I realized you’d have to know about the note; you’d ask me about it, of course, and be terribly angry if the luggage was lost; blame me for it.… Well, it’s a bit unsporting to be hard on a fellow who’s squiffed and tried to do you a good turn. I mean, it is, really.”

  “You’ve got a very active imagination, Jimbo-mon. I’d go so far as to say convoluted.”

  “Perhaps. But you didn’t get angry, did you? And here we are and nothing has changed. That’s the irony: Nothing has changed.”

  “Nothing changed? What do you mean?”

  Ferguson nervously smiled. “Well … I’m tagging along.”

  “I think something very basic has changed. You’ve told me about Craft.”

  “Yes. I would have anyway; that was my purpose this morning. Craft need never know; no way he could find out. I’ll just tag along with you. I’ll give you a portion of the money that’s coming to me. I promise you that. I’ll write it out, if you like. I’ve never had any money. It simply a marvelous opportunity. You do see that, don’t you?”

  11

  He left Ferguson at the Devon House and took a cab into Old Kingston. If he was being followed, he didn’t give a damn. It was a time for sorting out thoughts again, not worrying about surveillance. He wasn’t going anywhere.

  He had conditionally agreed to cooperate with Ferguson. The condition was that theirs was a two-way street; the botanist could keep his log—freely supplied with controlled names—and McAuliff would be kept informed of this Craft’s inquiries.
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  He looked up at the street signs; he was at the corner of Tower and Matthew, two blocks from the harbor. There was a coin telephone on a stanchion halfway down the sidewalk. He hoped it was operable. It was.

  “Has a Mr. Sam Tucker checked in?” he asked the clerk on the other end of the line.

  “No, Mr. McAuliff. As a matter of fact, we were going over the reservations list a few minutes go. Check-in time is three o’clock.”

  “Hold the room. It’s paid for.”

  “I’m afraid it isn’t, sir. Our instructions are only that you’re responsible; we’re trying to be of service.”

  “You’re very kind. Hold it, nevertheless. Are there any messages for me?”

  “Just one minute, sir. I believe there are.”

  The silence that ensued gave Alex the time to wonder about Sam. Where the hell was he? McAuliff had not been as alarmed as Robert Hanley over Tucker’s disappearance. Sam’s eccentricities included sudden wanderings, impulsive treks through native areas. There had been a time in Australia when Tucker stayed four weeks with an outback aborigine community, traveling daily in a Land Rover to the Kimberleys survey site twenty-six miles away. Old Tuck was always looking for the unusual—generally associated with the customs and lifestyles of whatever country he was in. But his deadline was drawing near in Kingston.

  “Sorry for the delay,” said the Jamaican, his lilt denying the sincerity of the statement. “There are several messages. I was putting them in the order of their sequence.”

  “Thank you. What are—”

  “They’re all marked urgent, sir,” interrupted the clerk. “Eleven-fifteen is the first; from the Ministry of Education. Contact Mr. Latham as soon as possible. The next at eleven-twenty is from a Mr. Piersall at the Sheraton. Room fifty-one. Then a Mr. Hanley called from Montego Bay at twelve-oh-six; he stressed the importance of your reaching him. His number is—”

  “Wait a minute,” said Alex, removing a pencil and a notebook from his pocket. He wrote down the names “Latham,” “Piersall,” “Hanley.” “Go ahead.”

  “Montego exchange, eighty-two-two-seven. Until five o’clock. Mr. Hanley said to call in Port Antonio after six-thirty.”

  “Did he leave that number?”

  “No, sir. Mrs. Booth left word at one-thirty-five that she would be back in her room at two-thirty. She asked that you ring through if you telephoned from outside. That’s everything, Mr. McAuliff.”

  “All right. Thank you. Let me go back, please.” Alex repeated the names, the gists of the messages, and asked for the Sheraton’s telephone number. He had no idea who Mr. Piersall was. He mentally scanned the twelve contact names provided by Hammond; there was no Piersall.

  “Will that be all, sir?”

  “Yes. Put me through to Mrs. Booth, if you please.”

  Alison’s phone rang several times before she answered. “I was taking a shower,” she said, out of breath. “Rather hoping you were here.”

  “Is there a towel around you?”

  “Yes. I left it on the knob with the door open, if you must know. So I could hear the telephone.”

  “If I was there, I’d remove it. The towel, not the phone.”

  “I should think it appropriate to remove both.” Alison laughed, and McAuliff could see the lovely half smile in the haze of the afternoon sun on Tower Street.

  “You’re right, you’re parched. But your note said it was urgent. Is anything the matter?” There was a click within the interior of the telephone box; his 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 center. “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 at 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 black men 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?”

  “Goddammit, 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 Hammond’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 Kimberleys, 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 travelers 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 odor of vanilla assaulted his nostrils. Vanilla and bay rum, the scents of Jamaica: delightful in the evening, oppressive during the day under the fiery equatorial sun.

  As the cab headed out of Old Kingston—harbor-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 prospect 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 one anothe
r, 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 of Courtleigh Manor. Ten yards in from the gates, the driver stopped, briefly, with a jerk. Alex, who was sitting forward, taking out his wallet, braced himself against the front seat as the driver quickly apologized. Then McAuliff saw what the Jamaican was doing. He was removing a lethal, thirty-inch machete from the worn felt next to him, and putting it under the seat. The driver grinned.

  “I take a fare into old town, mon. Shack town. I keep long knife by me alla time there.”

  “Is it necessary?”

  “Oh, mon! True, mon. Bad people; dirty people. Not Kingston, mon. Better to shoot alla dirty people. No good, mon. Put ’em in boats back to Africa. Sink boats; yes, mon!”

  “That’s quite a solution.” The car pulled up to the curb, and McAuliff got out. The driver smiled obsequiously as he stated an inflated charge. Alex handed him the precise amount. “I’m sure you included the tip,” he said as he dropped the bills through the window.

  At the front desk, McAuliff took the messages handed to him; there was an addition. Mr. Latham of the Ministry of Education had telephoned again.

  Alison was on the small balcony, taking the afternoon sun in her bathing suit. McAuliff entered the room from his connecting door.

  She reached out and he took her hand. “Have you any idea what a lovely lady you are, lovely lady?”

  “Thank you, lovely man.”

  He gently released her hand. “Tell me about Piersall,” he said.

  “He’s at the Sheraton.”

  “I know. Room fifty-one.”

  “You spoke to him.” Alison obviously was concerned.

  “No. That was his message. Phone him in room fifty-one. Very urgent.”

  “He may be there now; he wasn’t when you called.”

  “Oh? I got the message just before I talked to you.”

  “Then he must have left it downstairs. Or used a pay phone in the lobby. Within minutes.”