Which, in fact, is exactly what it is now that I've zapped it with my patent undead garbage collector.
"We've got about two minutes before they send another watcher," I say conversationally. "If they're awake, of course.
So. Do you know Marc"
"What's it worth?" He lowers the chisel, looking at me as if I've sprouted a second head.
I pull out two fifty-euro notes. "This."
"Yeah, I know Marc."
"Describe him."
"Oily bastard. Works out at the gym down the back of Rue de Hollande in Marigot, fills in on the door of the Casino Royale as a doorman and bouncer. He's the one you're asking about"
I pull out two more notes. "Tell me everything you know."
The old guy glares at him, mutters something, gets up, and goes aboard the boat.
"I'll take those." Pierre puts down the chisel and I hand him the notes. "Marc is a piece of shit. He hits on tourist women and takes them for everything they've got. Nearly got himself arrested a year ago but they couldn't prove anything — or find the woman. Sometimes — " Pierre glances over his shoulder " — you see him in the early morning with some broad, going out on his boat. That one, there." He nods at a dinghy with a mounting for an outboard engine.
"Meeting up with another boat. The women don't come back."
I have A heavy, sick feeling. "Would this other boat happen to be from the Mabuse?" I ask.
He looks at me sidelong. "I didn't say anything," he says.
I nod. 'Thanks for your time."
"Thank you for taking out the trash." He gestures at the bollard where the bird was watching. "Now get out of here and please don t come back."
7: NIGHTMARE BEACH
I'M TWO KILOMETERS DOWN THE ROAD TO GRAND Case and the coastal route to Marigot when I realize I'm being tailed. I'm crap at this private eye stuff, but it's not exactly rocket science on Saint Martin — the roads are only two lanes wide. There's a Suzuki SUV about a quarter-kilometer behind me. I speed up, it speeds up. I slow down, it slows down. So I pull over and park at a tourist spot and watch it tool past. Just before the next bend in the road it pulls over. How tedious, I think. Then I get on the ethereal blower.
**Ramona? You busy?**
**Powdering my nose. What's up?** I stare at the car ahead of me, trying to visualize it well enough to shove it at her as a concrete image. **I've got company. The unwelcome kind.**
**Surprise!** I can feel her chuckle. **What did you do to annoy them?**
**Oh, this 'n' that.** I'm not about to go into my snooping activities just yet. **Billington's yacht is anchored off North Point, and some of the locals aren't too happy about if **Surprise indeed. So what's with the car?**
**They've been tailing me!** I sound a bit peevish to myself — petulant, even. **And Billington's got the marina under surveillance. He's using seagulls as watchers. That makes me nervous.** I couldn't care less about the flying sea-rats, but I'm not terribly happy about the fact that someone aboard that yacht has got the nous to run the Invocation of Al-Harijoun on them, not to mention having enough spare eyeballs to monitor the surveillance take from several hundred zombie seagulls.
**So why don't you lose them?** I take a deep breath. **That would entail breaking the traffic regulations, you know? I'm not supposed to do that.
It's called drawing undue attention to yourself. Besides, there's a whole stack of documents to file, starting with a form A-19/B, or they'll throw the book at me. I could lose my license!**
**What, your license to kill?**
**No, my license to drive!** I thump the steering wheel in frustration. **This isn't some kind of spy farce: I'm just a civil servant. I don't have a license to kill, or authorization to poke my nose into random corners of the world and meet interesting people and hurt them. Capisce?** For a moment I feel dizzy. I pinch the bridge of my nose and take a deep breath: my vision fades out for a scary moment, then comes back with this weird sense that I'm looking through two sets of eyes at once. **What the fuck?**
**It's me, Bob. I can't keep this up for long ... Look, you see that SUV parked ahead?**
**Yeah?** I'm looking at it but it doesn't register.
**The guy who just got out of it and is walking toward you is carrying a gun. And he doesn't look particularly friendly. Now I know you're hung-up on the speed limit and stuff, but can I suggest you — ** There is one good thing about driving a Smart car: it has a turning circle tighter than Ramona's hips. I hit the gas and yank the wheel and make the tires squeal, rocking from side to side so badly that for a moment I'm afraid the tiny car is about to topple over. The bad guy raises his pistol slowly but I've floored the accelerator and it's not that slow in a straight line. My wards are prickling and tickling like a sandstorm and there's a faint blue aura crawling over the dash.
Something smacks into the tailgate — a stray pebble, I tell myself as I swerve back up the coast road towards Orleans.
**I knew you could do it!** Ramona enthuses like she's channeling a cheerleader. **What did you do to get them riled up like that?**
**I asked about Marc.** I glance in the mirror and flinch; my tail is back in the SUV and has gotten it turned around.
It's kicking up a plume of dust as it follows me. I swerve wildly to overtake a Taurus full of pensioners who're drifting along the crest of the road with their left turn signal flashing continuously, then I overcompensate to avoid rolling the Smart.
**That wasn't very rucking clever of you, was it?** she asks sharply. **Why did you do it?** Irrelevant distractions nag at the edges of my perception: a twin-engine pond-hopper buzzes overhead on final approach into Grand Case Airport.
**I wanted to see if my suspicions were correct.** And if I was dreaming or not.
There's a van ahead, moving slowly, so I pull out to look past it and there's an oncoming truck so I pull back in. And behind me, closing the gap again, is the SUV. **I am going to have to lose these guys before they phone ahead and get some muscle ahead of me on the road to Philipsburg. Any ideas?**
**Yes. I'll be on my way in about five minutes. Just stay ahead of them for now.**
**Be fast, okay? If you can't be safe.** I pull out recklessly and floor the accelerator again, passing the van as the driver waves angrily at me. There's a kink in the road ahead and I take it as fast as I dare. The Smart is bouncy and rolls frighteningly but it can't be any worse at road-holding than the SUV tailing me, can it? **Just what are they doing with the women?**
**What women?**
**The women Marc was kidnapping and selling to the boat crew. Don't tell me you didn't know about that?** The Suzuki has pulled past the van and is coming up behind me and I'm fresh out of side streets. From here, it's a three-kilometer straight stretch around the foothills of Paradise Peak before we get to Orient Beach and the fork down to the sea. After that, it's another five kilometers to the next turnoff. I'm doing eighty and that's already too damn fast for this road. Besides, I feel like I'm driving two cars at once, one of them a sawed-off subcompact and the other a topless muscle-machine that dodges in and out of the tourist traffic like a steeplechaser weaving through a queue of pensioners.
It's deeply confusing and it makes me want to throw up.
**What do you know about — ** pause ** — the abductions?**
**Women. Young. Blonde. His wife owns a cosmetics company and he looks too young. What conclusion would you draw?**
**He has a good plastic surgeon. Hang on.** The muscle car surges effortlessly around another bus. Meanwhile the SUV has pulled even with me, and the driver is waving his gun at me to pull over. I glance sideways once more and see his eyes. They look dead and worse than dead, like he's been in the water for a week and nothing's tried eating him. I recognize that look: they're using tele-operator-controlled zombies. Shit. My steering wheel is crawling with sparks as the occult countermeasures cut in, deflecting their braineating mojo.