She chuckled somewhat wryly at herself.
For the first time since she could remember, her Catholic roots were showing. As an intelligent being and as a doctor, she had an intense awareness of life’s transience, but she’d never concerned herself with what lay at the end of her tunnel.
Not so these days.
These days she thought a lot about her own mortality.
Doubtless, this was related to Arthur’s death. This would be her first Carnival without him. Wherever he was, that was where she wanted to go. Not right away, of course, but ultimately. When it was her time.
Meanwhile, the annual celebration had to be endured.
In the gloom of dusk among the trees of the mountain, a light flashed ahead of her. Glancing at the odometer, she realized that she was nearing the location of her house call. She had been averaging no more than fifteen miles an hour. Even had she not recalled the location on her own, she was hardly likely to have missed the figure waving a flashlight at the side of the road.
She stopped the car and stuck her head out of the open window.
The messenger directed the flashlight’s beam into her eyes. She covered them with one hand and, with the other, opened the car door.
“How’s the patient?”
“Patient be dead.”
The stranger, a masked male youth judging by the width of his shoulders, stepped into Peta’s line of vision. He was quickly joined by a group, seven or eight strong, of Jab Jab Molassi.
In the distance, she heard drumbeats, punctuated every now and again by the bleating of a goat. At the Grand E
´ tang Lake, Mama Glo, the goddess of the river, was worshiped, especially during Saraka, the period of honoring the dead and appeasing evil spirits. Animals were sacrificed. The days of feasting and singing and dancing attracted Shango worshipers, who believed that the African god of thunder and thunderbolts punished troublemakers and rewarded his worshipers.
Heart pounding, Peta reached for her cell phone—and realized that she had left it inside the car. She felt for her belt and pushed the button on the left of her beeper. It went off with resounding clarity in the night darkness.
A Jab Jab laughed and closed in on her. He removed the pager from her belt and tossed it into the trees.
“We have maldjo,” he said, in a mixture of patois and English. “We have the evil eye.”
“Maldjo,” his buddies chanted. They were close enough that she could hear their breathing. Feel it. The smell of the cheap rum they’d been drinking mixed with the stench of tar and engine oil smeared across their bodies.
One of them tousled her hair from behind.
“You want my money?” Peta reached into her pocket, ready to give them whatever she had on her.
They laughed, quietly, and pressed closer.
One of them smacked his lips, as if anticipating a tasty morsel. “This one’s delicious. I gon’ eather a-w-e-l up.”
Another stuck his head through the open car window. “Hey. Look-a what I found.” He slid his body into the car and emerged with her medical bag. “Must be good stuff in here, me t’ink.”
A hand tugged at her blouse, another at her skirt. She pulled away, into the arms of a third, who kissed her resoundingly on the mouth. What an idiot she was coming out here alone, at night, during Carnival. She was heavily outnumbered. They were young and they were strong and, judging by the alcohol on the breath of the one who had kissed her, they were considerably more than a couple of sheets to the wind. If they decided to rape her, which seemed inevitable, there was nothing she could do. If she shouted, who would hear her?
Still, it couldn’t hurt to scream. Maybe kick a few gonads.
“You want to use your maldjo on me?” She turned to face the one who had kissed her. Immediately she heard what she expected, the sound of one of the Jab Jab coming at her from behind.
Using all of the knowledge Ray had taught her, she kicked backward. Her foot found substance and one of the boys screamed and doubled over.
“You wan’ it rough, bitch?” another youth said as he grabbed her by the hair.
She pummeled him with both fists and screamed at the top of her lungs.
A Moke rounded the corner and came to a screeching halt in front of them. Her would-be molesters froze in the vehicle’s headlights as, crossbow in hand, Frikkie Van Alman jumped out of the driver’s seat of his low four-wheel-drive jeep.
Immediately, the Jab Jab Molassi scattered, shouting, “Sorry, man…mistake, man…sorry, man,” as they vanished into the surrounding forest.
Peta took in a deep breath. “Great white hunter rescues damsel in distress,” she said, trying to slow her rapidly beating heart.
“I am delighted to be of service,” Frik said. “Perhaps you will allow this to make up in some small measure for the recent unpleasantness between us.”
His casual air, combined with the apparent miracle of his timely arrival, told her instinctively that the whole thing had been a setup. Asshole, she thought. Fucking immature asshole.
She feigned more trouble catching her breath while she got her emotions under control. He might be an immature asshole, but he was also dangerous and armed. “Are you talking about Simon, or about your performance at the airport?” Or Blaine, she thought.
“Both.” He lowered the crossbow. “I’ve apologized to you about the incident at San Gabriel. I’m afraid Mr. Blaine got overzealous. He won’t be causing a problem for any women for a while, I assure you. As for my little, um, tantrum at the airport. Blame that on my male ego. Whatever the reason, I’m over it.”
“Am I supposed to say thank you for that, too?”
Frik made a weak attempt at a chortle. Then, never one for subtleties, he offered her the protection of his boat through the rest of Carnival.
Setup or no, Peta remained concerned for her own safety. For the moment, she decided, it was best to pretend friendship. She had little doubt that the same ego that Frik had blamed for the incident on the tarmac would persuade him that she was genuinely fooled by his attempt at charm.
She followed him back through town to the marina, recently renamed Blue Lagoon, where theAssegai was moored. The gate man let them in. They parked near the all-but-deserted bar and made their way down the narrow walkway to the boat.
As always, the dogs, Sheba and Maverick, greeted their master energetically. He settled them down, then ushered Peta on board. She accepted a drink from his ample stock and they exchanged a few pleasantries as they seated themselves at the big wooden table that stood on the afterdeck. The image of Arthur falling asleep on this very table the night they’d saved him from the Communists, seventeen years earlier, entered her mind.
Drink in hand, Frik’s tone went from solicitous to confidential. “I know what you think, Peta. You think that I had something to do with Arthur’s death.”
He waited for her to say something. Keep waiting, you bastard, she thought.
“You couldn’t be further from the truth, you know. Arthur was my dearest friend. I would never have done anything to harm him and I will always miss him. Come, I have something to show you.”
He took her into the ship’s saloon and showed her the pieces he had of the artifact. They were resting in some sort of wire frame. She recognized the oddly shimmering surface of the pieces and marveled at how perfectly the piece she recognized from the undersea cavern, the one Blaine had taken from her, fit into what had to be the one Paul had left Frik. Intuitively, she could see where the little cups and nodules on her piece would fit, and how Arthur’s, stuck in NYPD’s Midtown North evidence lockup, would link neatly to all three.
“It may surprise—even shock you—to find out that I know you have a piece of the artifact,” Frik said. “I saw it around your neck during the newscast, that god-awful night in New York.”