40
Catering to the big resorts, Margarita Island was a bamboo-faced restaurant with a faux-straw roof. Surfboards, life rings, and beach toys hung from the inside walls, along with starfish or blowfish filling the gaps. Seated at the bar, which was constructed from a cross section of a dune buggy, Thornton watched a tiny, dilapidated Peugeot ascend the sandy driveway. The Peugeot’s dashboard lights showed him its driver, the FedEx deliveryman — Ferdinand, he’d scrawled on the back of the card he’d given Mallery. The Peugeot was a problem. Thornton and Mallery had been hoping for the FedEx truck, so that he could make a delivery to Windward Actuarial.
The back bar mirror revealed another problem. Ferdinand, now extracting himself from the Peugeot, wasn’t wearing the FedEx uniform Thornton also needed. The FedEx man had opted for a satiny collared shirt in spite of Mallery’s bubbly mention over the phone of her affinity for men in uniform.
“Okay, slight change of plans,” Thornton said.
“What do you have in mind?” asked Mallery, perched on the next barstool.
“We add a second round of drinks.”
“I’ll need that anyway. What else?”
“During the first round, find out where the truck is, where the keys are, and where his uniform is.”
“That should naturally work into small talk.”
“Do your best. Other than that, same plan as before. Either I, from here, or you, from your table, will take care of his second drink.” They each had a cigarette whose filter he’d replaced with four capsules’ worth of powdered chloral hydrate. In countries like Barbados, you didn’t need an appointment with a psychopharmacologist — or even a prescription — to get the potent sedative. You just walked into a drugstore and bought Benaxona, the Mexican-made insomnia remedy. Thornton had calculated that four doses ought to put Ferdinand out for ten to twelve hours.
As Ferdinand bounded into the restaurant, Mallery sprang from the bar, embraced him, and exclaimed, “You came!”
The hostess, in bikini top and grass skirt, sat them in a booth. Watching via the back bar mirror, Thornton found it hard to hear their conversation over the music, but he made out FedEx and truck. Good.
After about thirty minutes, Ferdinand drained the last of whatever had been in his ceramic coconut, rose, and lumbered toward the CABANA BOYS room.
Mallery shot to the bar. “Good news is he has the keys on him, the truck is parked at his house, and his uniforms are in his dresser,” she said. “Bad news is he wants to get out of here now — it’s too pricey.”
“Did you try a free drink?”
“I offered to buy another round, of course.”
“You paying probably doesn’t count as ‘free’ to him. I’ll try and get the bartender to bring you over two more drinks ‘on the house.’ People often have a hard time letting anything go to waste that they’ve gotten for free.”
“Worth a try.” Mallery hurried back to the booth, sitting just in time to light up at Ferdinand’s return.
Thornton ordered another daiquiri for Ferdinand and a second bottle of beer for Mallery. He deployed the rapidly dissolving chloral hydrate into the ceramic coconut while the young woman tending bar turned around to change his $100 bill.
She delivered the drinks to the booth along with the news — which cost Thornton an extra twenty — that Margarita Island was having a buy-one-get-one-free special tonight. Ferdinand pumped a fist in response.
Toward the end of the round, he began to teeter. Mallery suggested she drive him home, pantomiming the operation of steering a wheel. Ferdinand appeared to protest but fell from his bench in midexplanation.
Playing the Good Samaritan, Thornton hurried to assist the young woman in getting her date off the floor and outside for some fresh air.
The parking lot had no resuscitative effect. “So far, so good?” Thornton asked.
“Not exactly.” Mallery helped him shoulder the deliveryman’s weight. “The last thing he said was he wanted to go to a hotel.”
“Let me guess. A wife and kids at home?”
“Just one kid, a newborn.”
“What a guy. Time for Plan C.”
“What’s Plan C?” she asked.
“We need to work on that.”
They dragged Ferdinand to the Peugeot. Thornton fished through the FedEx man’s pockets until he found a wallet with a driver’s license. He stabbed a finger at Ferdinand Ring’s home address. “Plan C.”
After a twenty-minute drive to 1032 Palm Forest Road, he left Mallery and the dozing Ferdinand in the Peugeot on a dark roadside, then hiked fifty yards up a rocky driveway. This sparsely populated part of the island was illuminated only by the starlight trickling through the dense canopy of leaves and branches. At the top of the driveway, he came to an old chattel house, the rot in its frame evident in silhouette. A faint light and a flickering television screen shone through a window, beside which the FedEx truck was parked. Thornton was tempted to simply drive it off, but if whoever was watching TV reported the theft to the police, the jig was up.
There was no doorbell, no light above the stoop. Thornton climbed the steps and knocked on the door, which was eventually thrown open by a small, dark-skinned young woman with delicate features. The dim light made it hard to peg her age, but there was no doubt about her emotion: fury. But apparently intended for someone other than Thornton. Taking him in, her face softened to wariness. Withdrawing a step, she looked poised to slam the door and lock it.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Hi, Mrs. Ring. I’m Gartland Fredericksen, Fed-Ex’s regional vice president for operations.” He flashed Ferdinand’s business card, which only listed, in mouse type, the address, phone number, and e-mail address of the Bridgetown FedEx depot. “First, let me assure you that Ferdinand is fine.”
The woman put a hand to her heart, without sincerity.
“I should add, ma’am, that it’s my pleasure to meet you.” He extended a hand.
She accepted, shaking limply, apparently bewildered.
“FedEx won a last-minute contract to service the Realtors’ convention here on the island tomorrow,” Thornton went on. “We need Ferdinand along with every other warm body we’ve got to sort packages through the night. That’s the bad news. The good news is the shift pays double overtime.”
The woman smiled. A forced smile, Thornton thought. Was she buying the act? Because if she were, she ought to have asked him in. Or maybe she simply didn’t want to wake the baby.
“I just need to pick up a uniform for Ferdinand,” Thornton said. “And take the truck back to Bridgetown.”
41
The narrow Pine Street building consisted of three stories of cement painted a faded tangerine, with three rows of hurricane shutters. Painted over the old name on the sign was DELUX INN, along with five stars. Thornton and Mallery maneuvered their drugged 250-pound captive into the diminutive white-tiled lobby, which smelled vaguely of a locker room. Draping Ferdinand’s arms around their shoulders, they gave him the appearance of staggering.
The sallow night clerk avoided eye contact. He’d seen stranger, Thornton guessed. Probably he knew that no good could come of getting involved. The question of passports was never raised. Paying cash, Thornton had a room key in hand in sixty seconds. Then he and Mallery hauled Ferdinand up the stairs, the drinking song warbling from a second-floor room drowning out their clatter.