The Four Corners Of The Sky (37 page)

“Sure, I’m the queen of the world and you could sell the Mona Lisa to a blind man and Christ’s tears to an atheist.” She stood up and picked up a notepad from the table. “Your passwords are 362484070N and 678STNX211. Do you want me to write them down for you?”

His voice was fading. “Amazin’. We won a lot of bets with you doing that numbers trick.”

Her mouth tightened. “I did it for you.”

“I know.”

“I wanted to make you proud.”

Slowly he pulled his shoulders higher on the pillow. “Just do one more thing for me? Fly me to Cuba?”

Surprise made her laugh. “What?”

He tried to sit up in the bed. “I figured I could fly myself but…” He held up his taped hands.

The request was so preposterous that she sat down again, shaking her head. “You can’t fly to Cuba from the U.S.”

“Sure you can.” His eyes took on a little of the old glimmer. “I’m serious about
La Reina Coronada del Mar.
The little jewels are in your hat. Most of the big ones are in Cuba.”

Annie watched the pink moon float past on baby blue clouds. “The big jewels meaning your stories about the seven emeralds and that huge ruby heart.”

He nodded. “That’s right. It’s a solid gold statue. These emeralds go in the crown.” He held up the green gem on the gold chain. “We’ve got three now. There are four more even larger, and the ruby, in the bank in Cuba—”

Leaping to her feet, Annie slapped the bed cover. “Stop. Stop!” Her shout brought Raffy back through the door. “Do you ever listen to yourself? You’re dying and you’re still trying to pull off some fraud about a bogus treasure hunt in Cuba! Do you get it that a cop from Miami Vice is going to arrest you and throw you in jail, that he has been hounding me to give you up, threatening to arrest me for harboring you?”

Her father raised himself wincing. “Daniel Hart?”

“Yes! Sgt. Daniel Hart, Miami Police.”

Raffy called from the doorway. “He nabbed me at the Dorado.”

Jack squeezed the bed sheet with his taped fingers. “Hart’s after me because of the Queen.”

“Dad, don’t insult me. That statue is not real!”

But his face was stubborn, just as Sam had often told her her own face would tighten. “My great-grandfather Boss Peregrine carried the Queen out of Havana and brought her back to North Carolina in a burlap bag.”

“I’m not listening to this craziness. And I’m not flying you to Cuba, or anywhere else till I talk to your doctor. Where’d you get this photo?” She slid out the picture of them at The Breakers from his wallet and palmed it while pretending to put it back. “Daniel Hart raided your room and got my cell number off the back of this.”

“Doesn’t surprise me. He must have put it back. You know what? I like Dan Hart. He won’t quit. But tell him from me, I’m not going to jail, not for a day, not for an hour.”

Suddenly Raffy waved his arms for them to be quiet. Then he hurried to the bed, grabbed the emeralds off the tray, yanking on Annie’s arm. “We gotta go,” he whispered. “Right now!”

Footsteps grew louder, passed the doorway, moved toward the other end of the hall. Raffy tugged at her. “We gotta go! We’ll come back and see Jack in the morning.”

Jack urged her to listen to Raffy, to leave now. He’d make sure his doctor was here at 8 a.m. “Raffy, watch out for her.”

The Cuban ran to look out the crack of the door.

She couldn’t resist raising her ironic eyebrow at her father. “It’s a little late to start taking care of me now, Dad.”

He blew a soft kiss with his bandaged hand. “I really was coming back for you.” His fingers reached for hers. “Somehow the years got away.”

She remembered how he’d left his wristwatch once in a motel room and although he’d loved that watch, thirty miles later he’d refused to turn around to go back for it. Upset that it had taken her so long to notice that he’d forgotten it, she’d been in tears, blaming herself for the loss.

She told him now, “You always cared more about what was ahead than what we’d left behind.”

“Did I, darlin’?”

“Don’t you know yourself by now?”

He smiled his old silly smile.

Slipping her fingers away from his, she pointed to his bedside monitors. “I guess it wouldn’t be so easy for you to run off this time, would it?”

“Nope.” He let his hands lift, then softly fall. “You’re the flyer now, Annie.”

Raffy flung back through the door. “It’s Ms. Skippings! Quick!” He grabbed Annie and pushed her out into the hall.

R
affy hurried Annie to the elevator bank. An attractive tall silvery blonde woman, sharp-edged and too thin, with a tag identifying her as “M. R. Skippings, Chief Hospital Administrator,” stepped around the corner and blocked their path. “Stop!” she ordered. She was Annie’s age and wore a remarkable platinum and diamond engagement ring that looked like a piece of modern sculpture.

So, Annie thought, this is “Ms. Skippings,” the managed-care supervisor of Golden Days who’d been described so unfavorably by the old patients on the lawn. The woman glared suspiciously at Annie’s naval officer’s uniform and at Raffy with his long hair in a ponytail and his tight chinos and floppy pink flamingo shirt. “Yes? You are?”

“Just leaving,” Annie replied politely, which likely would have been the end of it if Raffy hadn’t started slamming his fist on the elevator button, yelling, “Run!”

Skippings stiffened, barricading their way. “No visitors on Floor Five. You’re here to see…?”

Annie didn’t like her tone and turned sarcastic. “Well, certainly not Dr. Parker since he was nowhere to be found.”

“Dr. who?”

Annie gestured widely at the empty hallway. “In fact, where are
any
doctors? If my father is ill—”

“What’s the patient’s name?”

Annie paused. “…Buchstabe, Ronny Buchstabe.”

Skippings began flinging through the pages of a folder she carried.

Raffy, grabbing at Annie, pulled her behind him. “We’re not here for anybody. We accidentally by mistake went to the wrong floor.
¡Perdón! ¡Perdón!
” His finger pushed at the down button. “Come on!”

Skippings’ springs, already tightly wound, snapped with a sudden nasty thought. “The
Miami Herald!”
she exclaimed.

Raffy nodded, “Absolutely not. Good-bye.”

“I told you people I’d have you arrested for trespassing. We’re doing nothing we need to be investigated for!” She poked the slender Cuban in the sternum.

Flaring, Annie stepped between them. “This is a military matter now.”

Confusion momentarily unsteadied the tall blonde woman. “Military matter?” Recovering, she thrust herself closer to Annie. “I’m chief administrator at Golden Days.”

“Good for you. I like to see women go to the top.”

Skippings now poked Annie on the arm. “Show me the visitors’ badges they issued in reception.”

Annie flicked away the woman’s hand. “I’m with the United States Navy. We skipped reception.”

Skippings widened her mouth. “Excuse me?”

“Look, there’s no need to be such a bitch. We skipped reception. We came up the back steps.” Annie looked over at Raffy, who appeared to be praying to the elevator buttons.

Golden Days visitors did not speak this way to M. R. Skippings. (And patients were too intimidated to speak to her at all.) She let out the steam dangerously compressed in her long throat. “Well, then, we have a serious problem.”

Annie surveyed her. “Pancreatic cancer, serious problem. Genocide in Rwanda, serious problem. Hunger, land mines—serious problems. Whether or not we stopped by reception? I don’t think so.”

But in M. R. Skippings’s pink-stucco universe it was. “Are you refusing to show me those badges?”

Annie grinned. “Are you really actually saying to me ‘show me your badges,’ I mean actually really?” The elevator doors opened. Chamayra stepped out of the car. She looked at them horrified but didn’t speak and trotted quickly away down the hall. Annie shoved Raffy inside the elevator, jumping in with him. Skippings struggled to wedge open the doors.

Annie smiled at her pleasantly. “‘We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any stinking badges!’” The doors closed.
“Treasure of Sierra Madre
,” she explained to the wide-eyed Raffy as they descended. “I could feel it coming. That’s the correct quote; most people get it wrong.”

He appeared not to know what she was talking about. “I need a moment.” The slender man slumped rapidly down the elevator wall.

Annie leaned over him. “Are you okay?” He nodded weakly as she pulled him up by his armpits. “Raffy, pay attention. I want my father out of this place tomorrow. Let them arrest him and put him in a real goddamn hospital!”

“We’ll do that, first thing tomorrow. You’ll see Dr. Parker; we’ll make arrangements. Before we go to Cuba.”

“We’re not going to Cuba.”

Raffy took a deep breath as the elevator shuddered to a stop at the basement. “That was great, how you said, ‘This is a military matter now.’”

She smiled bitterly. “Well, I’m a con man’s daughter.”

He led her by backstairs up to the Golden Days lobby. “But what I mean is, you move fast. I guess you gotta, you fly planes.”

In the lobby, she glanced at the rumpled man and sighed. “You know how fast Mach 2.4 is?” He admitted that he did not. She said, “Well, you don’t drive your car that fast.”

“To be honest with you, my car has been temporarily repossessed.”

“You and my dad aren’t doing too well. Everything’s repossessed.”

Unhappily he smoothed the flamingos on his shirt. “We had a lot of setbacks lately. Looking for the Queen.”

“Sure.” She tapped an insignia on her uniform jacket. “Well, Mach 2.4 is what a Navy Tomcat F-14 could do. I trained on one. The Tomcat could go over 1500 miles per hour.”

He nodded appreciatively. “That’s fast.”

“It could climb 30,000 feet a minute. The Super Hornet goes even faster. And you know what? They’re replacing it with jets that may be able to go over 2500 miles per hour.”

“That’s very fast.”

Annie walked Raffy quickly past Miss Napp at reception while she was preoccupied with her fingernails. “The old Blackbird SR-71 can fly at 33 miles per minute, that’s Mach 3 or three times the speed of sound. It flies faster than a speeding bullet. Plus, there are unmanned jets that can go twice as fast as that.”

They hurried toward the front entrance. “Why?” he asked her.

“Why?”

Raffy stopped her. “Why do you need to go faster than 1500 miles per hour?”

Before Annie could answer, a tall well-built young man, looking upset, suddenly bolted around the corner at the end of the lobby. She was astonished. It was the same man who had been staring at her from the newspaper rack in the St. Louis airport last night. He still wore the old boots and jeans but now had on a blue linen shirt instead of a blue T-shirt.

Equally surprising, Raffy let out a curse of horror when he saw the man. He squeezed his hands in supplication at Annie. “Help me!” But without waiting for help he bolted to the front doors like a sprinter and slipped quickly through them.

Annie saw the man recognize the Cuban musician as well and start through the lobby toward them. She could tell he hadn’t seen her yet. To slow him down, just at the last second when he passed by, she crouched as if to tie her shoe and the man tripped over her back.

His arms were warm as he pulled her up to her feet. Both said they were sorry for the “accident.” He recognized her. “Wait a minute!” he growled. “You’re Annie Goode. Damn it, you’re here with Rook!”

She thought the man must be one of Feliz Diaz’s criminal henchmen. That he must have been in St. Louis on Diaz’s behalf, chasing her father, that he must have been the man who’d beaten her father up. “Let go of me!” Spinning free, she dropped back to a crouch and pushed him. He lost his balance, tripped backwards and crashed into an empty wheelchair.

Annie raced out the front doors before he could untangle himself.

“Malpy!” She shouted for the Maltese.

On the lawn, the dog was trotting around with a cheap little American flag clamped between his teeth. A candy striper was handing out the flags to patients, presumably for a belated Fourth of July. Malpy effortlessly dodged two overweight security guards who were trying to catch him. The old people fiercely cheered as he dashed through their wheelchairs and leaped into Annie’s arms.

Rook, who’d been hiding again in the huge hedge of bougainvilleas, hurried her into her rental car. Across the street a city bus wheezed to a stop; a man using two canes slowly climbed out of it.

Opening his car window while Annie was backing out of the parking place, Raffy craned to look behind him. “Go, go! There’s Sergeant Hart!”

Annie glanced amazed at the crippled man who’d been left on the curb by the departing bus. She pointed. “That’s Daniel Hart? The man getting off the bus with the canes?”

“No! Him!” Raffy pointed back to the Golden Days lawn. “The man that’s chasing us!”

The young man in the blue shirt was running in and out of clusters of old people like a running back through an extremely sluggish defense.

“I thought that man worked for Feliz Diaz! I thought he was after you!”

“He is after me! He’s with the
s.o.b.
Miami police! He’s Sergeant Hart.”

“Rook!” Hart was shouting as he jumped over an azalea bush and raced up the middle of Ficus Avenue in pursuit. “Rook! You’re under arrest! Halt!”

Annie looked in the rear view window, astonished. “
That’s
Daniel Hart?”

“Go! Go!” Raffy twisted around to yell out the window. “
Cingao!
”

Unable to catch the accelerating car, Hart bent over in the middle of the street, gasping for breath. Still doubled up, he gave Raffy the finger.

The Cuban, leaning far out the window, returned the gesture, shouting back at Hart, “
Son-of-a-bitch Miami police!
”

Annie watched in her rearview window as a white van suddenly drove up beside Hart in the intersection. It jolted to a stop and two men in suit jackets hopped simultaneously out of its side doors. One wore a porkpie hat. Annie stopped her car to watch but a passing
SUV
blocked what was happening from her view. When the
SUV
moved on, she could see that Daniel Hart was no longer standing there. The white van was speeding away, leaving the street empty.