“People can’t just disappear off the face of the earth!” I complained to David.
“Of course they can. Happens everyday. That’s why the Salvation Army has a missing-persons’ bureau.”
“So what am I supposed to do? Report the Genesis community to the Salvation Army?”
David laughed. “Why not? They’re very efficient at finding people.”
Instead of the Salvation Army I tried the French navy, politely inquiring whether they had any information about the activists who had harassed their nuclear tests in the Pacific, but their only reply was a formal denial that any such harassment had even occurred. It seemed, as the weeks passed, that von Rellsteb had truly succeeded in vanishing off the face of the polluted earth.
Then Matthew Allenby struck gold.
“Actually I didn’t do a thing,” he said modestly when he telephoned me with his news. “It was one of our American groups who found him out.”
“Where?” I said eagerly.
“Have you ever heard of the Zavatoni Conference?” Allenby asked me.
“No.”
“It’s a biannual event, a chance for environmentalists and politicians to get together, and it’s convening in Key West in two weeks. Most of us would like to hold it somewhere more ecologically significant, but if you don’t offer politicians the comforts of a five-star hotel, then they won’t turn up for anything. But the point is, Mr. Blackburn, that the organizers sent an invitation to von Rellsteb….”
“They knew where to write to him?” I interrupted angrily, thinking of all my wasted efforts to discover Genesis’s whereabouts.
“Of course they didn’t,” Allenby said soothingly. “Instead they placed advertisements in all the West Coast environmental magazines. But the amazing thing is that he’s accepted their offer. He’s agreed to give the keynote speech. It’s something of a coup for the organizers, because most of the ecotage people won’t agree to debate with the mainline organizations, and—”
“Where exactly is this conference?” I interrupted Matthew Allenby again.
“I told you, in Key West, Florida.” He gave me the name of the hotel.
“So how do I get in?” I asked.
“If you make your own travel and hotel arrangements,” Allenby suggested with diffident generosity, “then I’ll say you’re one of my delegates. But I know that hotel doesn’t have any spare rooms, so you’re going to have trouble finding a bed.”
“I don’t give a damn.” I could already feel the excitement of the chase. “I’ll sleep in the street if I have to!”
“Don’t be too eager!” Allenby warned me. “Von Rellsteb might not turn up. In fact, if I had to give odds, I’d say there’s less than an even chance that he will actually arrive.”
“Those odds are good enough for me!”
“It really is a long shot,” Matthew warned me again.
But I reckoned that only by a long shot would I ever find Nicole, and so I bought myself a ticket to Miami. David opined that I was mad, an opinion he hammered at me right until the moment I left England. He drove me to Heathrow in his ancient Riley. “Nicole won’t be at Key West! You do realize that, don’t you?”
“How do you know?”
“Of course I don’t know!” he said. “It is just that like other sensible human beings I predicate my actions, especially the expensive actions, on probabilities rather than on vague hopes that will almost certainly lead to a debilitating disappointment.”
“You don’t believe in miracles?” I teased him.
“Of course I do,” he said stoutly, “but I also believe in the existence of false hopes, disappointment, and wasted efforts.”
“All I want to do,” I explained very calmly, “is to find Nicole and tell her about her mother’s death. Nothing else.” That was not entirely true. I also wanted, I needed, Nicole’s assurance that she no longer believed I was responsible for her brother’s death. That belief of Nicole’s might be irrational, but it had snagged in my heart and still hurt. “And to find Nicole,” I went on, “I’m willing to waste quite a lot of my own money. Is that so very bad?”
David sniffed rather than answer my question, then, for a few silent miles, he brooded on my obstinancy. “They have pink taxis there, did you know that?” he finally asked as we turned into the airport.
“Pink taxis?”
“In Key West,” he said ominously, as though the existence of pink taxis was the final argument that would prevent my leaving. He braked outside the British Airways terminal. “Pink taxis,” he said again, even more ominously.
“It sounds like fun,” I said, then climbed from the car and went to find my child.
David was right. There were bright pink taxis in Key West.
And I was suddenly glad to be there because it was a preposterous, outrageous, and utterly unnecessary town; a fairy-tale place of Victorian timber houses built on a sun-drenched coral reef at the end of a one-hundred-mile highway that skipped between a chain of palm-clad islands across an impossibly blue sea.
I felt I had been transported out of grayness to a sudden, vivid world that contrasted cruelly with the damp drabness that had been my life since Joanna had died. My hangdog spirits lifted as the pink taxi drove me from Key West’s tiny airport into the old town’s tangle of narrow streets. I was headed for a private guest house that my travel agent had somehow discovered, which proved to be a pretty house on a tree-shaded street close to the town center. The guest house was owned and run by a man named Charles de Charlus, who, when I arrived, was flat on his back beneath a jacked-up Austin-Healey 3000. He wriggled backward, stood to greet me, and I saw that he was a handsome, tall, and deeply tanned man whose face was smeared with engine oil. “Our visitor from England, how very nice,” de Charlus greeted me as he wiped his hands on a rag. “You look exhausted, Mr. Blackburn. Come inside.” He ushered me into a hallway lavish with beautiful Victorian furniture, where he plucked a room key from the drawer of a bureau. “I’m giving you a room that overlooks the Jacuzzi in the courtyard. Do feel free to use it. We have a weight room if you need some exercise, and an electric beach.”
“An electric beach?”
“An electric tanning salon. For cloudy days.”
“I doubt I’ll have much time for relaxation,” I said, trying not to show the awkwardness that suddenly flared through me. “I’m here for the Zavatoni Conference.”
“Oh, you’re a green! Well, of course, aren’t we all these days?” Charles led me upstairs and ushered me into a wonderfully comfortable room. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t come in and show you where everything is.” In explanation he held up his hands which were still greasy from his car, then tossed the room key onto the bed. “Your bathroom is through the blue door, and the air conditioner controls are under the window. Enjoy!” He left me in the cool of the airconditioning. The curtains were closed, presumably to fend off the fierce sun, but I pulled them aside to let in some light and found myself staring down into the palm-shaded courtyard where the bright blue-tiled Jacuzzi shimmered and foamed in the heat. Two men were sprawled in the water. Both were stark naked. One of them, seeing me, raised a languid hand in greeting.
I let the curtain drop. I could feel myself blushing. Joanna, I thought, would have been mightily amused, and I could almost hear her accusing me of a most ridiculous embarrassment. I took her framed photograph from my seabag, put it on the bedside table, and thought how very much I missed her.