The Four Corners Of The Sky (53 page)

“That’s no excuse. If you’re not divorced, you’re married.” He chewed on a piece of bacon from her plate. “If they told you this was bacon, they lied. Me, I’m officially legally divorced. Trust me, Annie, you’ve got to pull the trigger.” He tasted her scrambled eggs and made a face.

When their waitress paused at their table with a pot of stale coffee, Dan asked her if their eggs came from chickens.

She was too tired to joke. “Yeah, probably.”

“Go find out where the chickens came from.”

“Wise guy.”

Dan pointed out the window. “Uh oh. There goes your friend Rafael. Looks like the Feds are picking him up.”

Annie stood to look outside. A stolid man wearing a tropical shirt was strong-arming the disconsolate Rafael Rook through the steamy-hot asphalt parking lot while a thin man in a straw porkpie hat trotted ahead to open the side door of a white van. Dan pulled her back to her chair.

She resisted him. “I want to tell Raffy I’ll get him a lawyer.”

“Yeah, looks like he’ll need one. Don’t worry. I’ll call somebody. He’s safer with the
FBI
than with Diaz picking him up. You should know, the Feds want me to bring you in too.”

“I don’t think so.” She watched as the
FBI
men placidly lowered Rafael’s head into the van. His hair worked loose from his glossy black ponytail when he struggled against them. The agent in the straw hat walked over to the restaurant, tapped on the window, and gestured at Dan to come outside.

A frown narrowed Dan’s eyes. It was like a fast cloud hurrying over the sky, graying the blue for an instant. “That’s the agent that grilled me about your dad. If I’m not back in ten minutes, call this number. My partner.” He pulled a card from his wallet. “Okay, now I need you to put on a show. Right now.”

She looked at him suspiciously.

Dan turned his back to the window. “It’s for your dad. I want you to act as if I’d just made you really really angry. I mean it. Slap me.”

Immediately she slapped him hard in the face.

He rubbed his bright-red cheek. “Damn, you’re fast.”

“Don’t ask for things you don’t want.” She raised her hand again.

He grabbed her wrist. “I’ll remember that. Now wait here. Trust me.” He hurried outside. “We’ll get you out of this.”

“Out of what?”

As she watched from the window, Dan approached the
FBI
agent, listened to him talk for a few minutes, then walked with him to the van and vanished inside its side door.

Ten minutes later, Annie lost patience and hurried from the log-cabin restaurant; she was crossing the parking lot toward the van when Dan hopped out of it and grabbed her by the arm, leading her away. “Hang on. I worked something out. You’re going to Key West for questioning.”

Annie was taken aback. “I’m not about to go to Key West!”

“This isn’t an invitation you can
RSVP
. If you don’t believe me, get in touch with your Commander Campbell in Annapolis. FBI’s already talked to him.” Reaching his vintage truck, he tilted his head in the direction of the white van. “Okay, keep acting. Righteous indignation. Look unhappy.”

“This is not an act.” She shoved hard at his chest. Old angers surged in her. “Are you lying to me? Raffy told me not to trust you!”

Dan caught her hand, holding it tight against him. She could feel his heart. They stood that way for a minute, hearing their own breath.

He looked at her fiercely. “I mean this, trust me. I just heard something from my partner. Somebody in
MPD
spotted your dad about an hour ago. You want him back?”

Annie stared at him, then at the van. “He got away from them?”

“Yes, but that’s not going to last. They are real serious.” Dan touched her shoulder softly. “And he’s not well, Annie. My partner heard on the street your dad’s seriously sick.” Did she want to make it possible for her father not to spend the last months of his life in prison? If so, she had to trust Dan. Did she believe him?

There was nothing to go on, thought Annie, except his eyes. Clarity, careful thinking, wise decisions—these were the habits of her life. But, somehow deeper than any thought she could fashion was the beat against her palm of his heart.

Near them, a thin teenaged boy was loudly and dexterously shoving shopping carts into a silver chain. Racing them into motion, he stepped gracefully onto the back of the last cart and rode the clattering train he’d created across the asphalt, passing the white van when it pulled out of its parking spot. The boy’s leg stretched out behind him like the god Mercury, flying faster and faster.

“Yes.” Annie nodded. “Help me.”

Dan grabbed her arms. “Okay. Here we go. I said I’d bring you in. So let’s do it. Make it look like you’re arguing. Fight me. But for Christ’s sake, don’t slug me again!”

She let him push her into his truck just as the van drove slowly past them. She saw, in the passenger seat window, a flash of Raffy’s sorrowful face.

Chamayra was waiting for them in the Dorado lobby, where her tight shiny orange Capri pants and turquoise La Loca T-shirt was in noticeable contrast to the loose taupe linens of the hotel guests.

“This is all your fault,” she shouted as they walked toward her. It was hard to know whether the accusation was at Annie or at Daniel or both. “Golden Days was my best shot at not dying a waitress and now I’m out on my ass. So gracias! Plus I lose the first man I met this year not a fuckin’ druggie beating up on Wife Number Four!” Chamayra did a rapid dance of rage. “So you get Raffy out of Dade County jail pronto pronto pronto!” She had begun at so intense a pitch that she had no place to go but the physical, which is where she went, jabbing Dan in the collar bone with her short strong fingers.

Snatching her hands out of the air, he pulled them together and to her shock kissed them. The surprise calmed her. “Baby,” he told the quivering woman, “you take a deep breath. I didn’t put Rook in jail and I can’t get him out. My ass is as fired as yours. But I will
try
to get him out, if you’ll just have a little faith. I will
try.”
He pointed over at Annie. “Meanwhile, what about her?”

Chamayra glared. “What about her? Her daddy stole that Lexus and got me fired. And why didn’t you tell me Ms. Skippings was the Melissa you’ve been bitchin’ about for two years?”

He put his arm around Annie. “Annie just heard her dad went off the causeway into the bay in Melissa’s car.”

She gasped. “Shit, I saw something about that on the news! I didn’t know it was Raffy’s Jack.”

“Well, I don’t hear any sympathy. Come on, Chamayra, where’s the Love sign? First things first.”

The young Latina woman gave a great shuddering sigh that shook her short frame. Reaching out, she hugged Annie brusquely. “He’s right! Danny, you’re right. I’m out of line. Anybody’s daddy checks out like that, it’s primo.”

Annie felt the woman’s embrace, her short sturdy arms pressing against her and she realized in that moment curiously enough that she’d never before let herself feel the physical presence of other people when they touched her—to shake her hand, to kiss her cheek, to rub her shoulder. Now she let herself actually feel Chamayra’s sympathy. It was as true as thought. “Thank you but I don’t think my dad was in the car,” she told her. “I think it’s all a con.”

“What else you gonna think?” the waitress said kindly. “Can I do something?”

Annie impulsively hugged her back. “Could you possibly keep my dog Malpy till tomorrow night?”

Without hesitation, Chamayra said, “Sure.” She held out her hands at different distances. “How big’s this dog?”

“Little,” Dan assured her. “Cute. Friendly. Wait right here. We’ll be right back with him.” He explained that Annie had been ordered to appear at the naval base in Key West and Dan was going to drive her there.

“If they’re sending you to Kuwait? Tell ’em no fuckin’ way. What did I say to my brother Luis?” asked the waitress. Angrily she crossed her arms, lifting her breasts. “I go, ‘Luis, don’t enlist!’ Now he’s got one leg.” She followed them to the elevator. “And Danny, soon as you find Raffy, you gonna call me, right? You got my number.”

“I’m gonna call you.”

“You call me.”

“I’ll call you.”

When Annie thanked her profusely, Chamayra made her imaginary Love sign in the air.

In the hotel room, Annie quickly packed, while Dan spoke with his former partner at the police department. The Peregrine case, the detective told him, had not only been taken over by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, other government agencies were also involved now, for unknown reasons. Rafael Rook was at this moment being transferred out of Miami to Sigsbee Naval Base in Key West. Meanwhile, the partner said, word was there was a mob contract out on Rook. That Feliz Diaz’s people had offered fifteen thousand dollars cash for Rook’s right hand, so no doubt the musician’s leaving Miami was a good thing.

As for Jack Peregrine’s whereabouts, some people in
MPD
seemed to believe that the con man had really drowned while trying to escape from the submerged Lexus
SUV
. But Dan’s partner had confirmed the rumor that a cop had spotted Peregrine today at a bus station. By the time this officer had called in the ID, Peregrine had given her the slip.

“His specialty,” said Annie.

“Soon as the
FBI
hears he was spotted, there’ll be a mega-search.”

There was a sharp rapping on the hotel room door. Holding Malpy, Dan motioned for her to keep quiet. After a check through the peephole, he yanked the door open.

Brad Hopper stood in the hallway, carrying a soft leather briefcase with the Hopper Jet logo on it. Shocked to see not Annie but Daniel Hart standing there, Brad made a series of faces, widening his mouth, squeezing his eyelids, apparently unable to assimilate the coincidence that the anonymous, annoying businessman whom he’d flown in his jet on the Fourth of July from Emerald’s Destin Airworks to St. Louis was the same man who was now standing in the doorway of his wife’s Miami hotel room.

Eventually Brad stopped trying to make sense of the disjunction and simply shouldered his way into the room. “What’s up, A? I’ve been looking all over hell and—” Thought caught up with him. “What the fuck is this guy doing in your room?”

“Brad, calm down.”

Malpy flew out of Dan’s arms at Brad, snarling madly.

“Get that dog away from me!”

Annie scooped up the Maltese, grabbing his muzzle. “Malpy, be quiet!”

Brad pointed a rigid arm first at Dan, then at the young woman he still thought of as legally his. “You know who this is? This is that businessman your bud D. K. made me give a ride to, back on the Fourth, the guy I flew from Emerald to St. Louis!”

Annie zipped up her packed bag. “Yes, I know that. Brad, I am really sorry but I can’t explain it all now, there’s no time. I should have called you but things are crazy, my dad’s disappeared again—”

“On the local news they’re saying your dad’s dead! I’ve been worried sick about you.”

“Don’t believe the news.” She gestured at Dan. “This man’s a police officer. I tried to tell you not to come to Miami, Brad. I tried to—” She stopped talking, since nothing made much sense even to her. She came to the abrupt decision that she would simply tell Brad the truth about Dan. And that decision stopped her cold because she had to ask herself what the truth was. Bizarrely enough, what popped into her mind was the line that Claudette Colbert said near the end of
It Happened One Night
when she was about to marry a man she didn’t even like and her father asked her to tell him about the Clark Gable character, the one she’d ridden with on the bus all the way from Miami. And Claudette had told her father, “I don’t know very much about him…Except that I love him.”

Annie recalled how earlier (was it today?) she’d said something similar to Georgette about Daniel Hart. “I don’t even know him and I want to spend the rest of my life with him.” What an astonishing thing that a line from a movie, and such a ridiculous line, should feel like the right answer to so much. “I love him,” she blurted out. Then speechless, she looked over at Dan.

“Love who?” Red-faced, Brad set down his briefcase. “A, what’s going on here? What are you talking about?”

Annie looked to Dan for help.

With a frown, he slid out his wallet, flipping it open to show a large police badge. “Mr. Hopper,” he began in a professional tone. “I’m with Miami Vice. Sorry about the undercover thing but I had three warrants for major felonies on Jack Peregrine and I had a tip his daughter was meeting him in St. Louis.” Dan pulled steel handcuffs from the back of his jeans. “Lt. Goode here is under arrest for aiding and abetting in the escape of a wanted criminal.” He shook his head solemnly at Annie. “Love’s no excuse for crime. She’s implicated in Peregrine’s felonies, including—just today—grand larceny and international fraud. Possible spying. That makes it treason.”

Brad’s mouth dropped. “Treason?”

Dan shook the cuffs. “Could be. But Lt. Goode claims that you’re actually the one who sneaked her father out of St. Louis. Is that true? Because harboring a felon’s a felony. ’Course, it’s your constitutional right not to answer.”

With a queasy nervous smile, Brad glanced from Annie to Hart and back to Annie. Then, with his eyes blinking rapidly, he swore to the Miami detective that he had never been involved in any act that might even remotely have aided or abetted Jack Peregrine.

Dan asked if Brad was accusing Annie of lying.

With a reproachful look at his not yet ex-wife, Brad advised her to cooperate with the police.

Annie picked up Brad’s briefcase, shoved it at his midriff. “Will you just get out of here?”

“A, come on. If I went to jail, it could kill Mama Spring,” he whispered.

“That bitch will outlive us all,” Annie predicted.

Brad’s face puckered. “Don’t start.”

“Brad, the extra month I promised you? You can forget it. We’re signing those divorce papers.” He looked caught between anger and a puzzled relief. She added, “I’ll be in jail in a month anyhow. And I hope you go too.”

Dan clicked the handcuffs on her. “I wouldn’t be surprised. But Hopper here could cut a deal. ’Course he can’t testify against you if you two are still married.”