“Who hid it?” he asked.
“Big man who shoot the frigate bird. I see him up on top and ask myself, what he hiding in the water? Later I go see.”
Burt shook the box, but it gave no sound. If it held money, it would take huge bills to total the fortune Rolf had mentioned. He doubted that they’d risk putting currency in water. No doubt it would be jewels, perhaps diamonds...
“See if you can put it back,” he told Maudie. “No, wait—”
He’d heard the screen door slam on the cabin. Through the screening bamboo he watched a man walk around the corner of the cabin, yawning and hitching his suspenders over the harness of a shoulder holster. The coarse brutal cast of his features duplicated those of Hoke, except that his head was topped by a coarse curly mop of brick-red hair. He stood at the foot of the ladder and looked up. Burt held his breath, then released it slowly as the man walked on around the corner. Burt waited for the sound of the screen door. When it didn’t come, he told Maudie to see what he was doing.
She left, moving with a silence possible only for one who had spent all her life on the island. She returned a moment later and whispered: “He stand in front smoking.”
Burt cursed silently under his breath.
“You wish to hide the box? I know a place they never find.”
Burt frowned. There’d be trouble when they found it missing, but maybe that’s what he needed. Make something happen, end the suspense, sow discord among the thieves. If one group thought that another group had stolen the loot, and if Burt could keep his own people out of the way...
“Let’s go,” he told Maudie.
She led him over the low ridge between the cistern and the fumaroles, moving with a speed he found difficult to match with his leg hurting and the box under one arm. Beyond the cistern, she dropped to her hands and knees and started down a green tunnel in the tall, thick grass just barely large enough to sneak through. “Goutis make these path,” she said over her shoulder. Burt crawled after the bobbing rump with the white skirt drawn tight over it. He was streaming sweat when they emerged on a steep rocky beach. A grove of stunted guava trees hid them from the man in the tower. Ahead of him Maudie moved along a low cliff, leaping from rock to rock with the agility of a mountain goat. Burt followed, planting his feet carefully on the slippery rocks. He saw her disappear through a crack in a cliff; he squeezed through behind her and found himself in a dark, narrow tunnel. Black water swished around his shoes; ahead, the tunnel disappeared into blackness.
“Now we mus’ get wet,” she said. She seized his hand, and in total innocence raised her dress to her waist and waded in. He felt the lukewarm water climb to his knees, then to his thighs. Her hand pulled him gently upward; his feet found holes in the rock and he climbed until her hand was withdrawn from his. Burt stood on level ground and sniffed musty air. A match flared, and a kerosene lamp sent probing yellow fingers against the gleaming walls of a tiny cave.
“I come here when Maman shout at me,” she said. “Only you know now, and me.”
Her eyes shone in the yellow light. Burt saw two garish, spangled dresses hanging from a jut of rock; below them lay a foam-rubber mattress and a thick woven blanket stenciled with the words: S.S. Carlotta, New York City. On a wooden box sat a ceramic ash tray labeled: The Mermaid, Charlotte Amalie, St. Croix. Beside the box were four pairs of women’s shoes, a spun-glass fishing rod, and an empty Haig-and-Haig pinch bottle. On top was a cigar box full of cheap bracelets and earrings, a half-dozen tubes of lipstick, a totally unnecessary home permanent outfit and, oddest of all, a squeeze-bottle of shaving cream. He felt like laughing; she was like a bower bird, lining her secret nest with glittering objects and understanding none of them.
“Now I understand why you learned to move so quietly,” he said.
Her eyes grew round. “You don’t tell Miss Joss? I take only what people leave about.”
Burt picked up a platinum wedding band and read the engraving: All my love, J.S. “I’ll bet there’s been some hell raised,” he said. “But I won’t tell.”
He tossed the ring back and turned to her. “Now listen, Maudie. I’m going to hide this box near here, but I won’t say where. If anybody asks you, you can say truthfully you don’t know anything about it. Okay? The men who lost it aren’t like the others who come here, they’ll kill you to get it. Understand?”
She nodded, her eyes wide.
“Okay, now go home. If there’s trouble, shooting, you can come back here. Otherwise don’t come near the place. Go.”
After she’d gone, Burt gouged a loose stone from the wall of the cave, wedged the box inside, then jammed the rock back in place. It was sunset when he stepped onto the pebble beach. Nature seemed to be making a gesture of defiance after a bleak, gray day. The clouds on the horizon opened like a parting curtain and revealed the sun floating like a huge golden pumpkin on the sea. Streamers of rose-purple light arched overhead and draped the entire island in a glowing net. Burt had a brief stirring insight: all human activities were like the rustling of mice in a magnificent mansion; a man’s hunger for diamonds was only a futile effort to capture and hold a fragment of the sun. He felt a brief urge to jump in the sea and swim away, leaving all these people to their own sick objectives.
The urge returned as he reached the path and saw Godfrey running toward him on his bandy legs. He felt a creeping fatigue; he knew he was about to be entangled in a net of other people’s problems.
“Sir, you remember the guitar strings you give me?”
“Yes. Why’d you stop gathering wood?”
“Everybody wanting to eat, sir. Boris ask Coco and me to help.”
Burt felt anger pinch his nostrils; how did you convince these people that there was danger?
“Well, what about your guitar strings?”
“I hang them behind the bar, now they are gone.”
“Did you tell Joss?”
He nodded. “She say tell you. She sick in bed.”
Lord, now I’ve become the island’s labor counselor. “I’ll try to find them later. Now get Coco and get back to gathering wood. Stay away from the club, you hear?”
The boy nodded and shuffled away.
Burt stopped by and looked in on Joss; she was propped up in bed, looking as though she felt every one of her years. She said she’d just been down to the club and wasn’t going back. “It’s the weather, Burt, my nerves are shot. That woman’s down there throwing it around, and there’s nothing but hard looks going back and forth. I’ve had enough nightclub experience to know there’s trouble coming. Well, let them tear up the joint, let them kill each other off with those guns they carry. I couldn’t care less.”
At the club, Burt found Rolf and Bunny seated at one table. Nearby sat Ace Smith and the red-haired man, both looking totally ludicrous in neckties, starched white shirts, and business suits.
“Get your boat running?” asked Burt as he passed Rolf’s table.
Rolf nodded curtly and looked down at his right hand. It lay on the table top, clenching and unclenching.
Ace called out with false joviality. “Hey, bird lover. Have a drink with us?”
“No, thanks,” said Burt, stopping beside the table. “You two are a little overdressed for a tropical island.”
“Habit,” said Ace. “We’re used to eating with chicks.”
Yeah, thought Burt, noting that the suits were heavily padded and thick in the chest. They’d left their big guns in the cabin, but they wouldn’t go out unarmed. Those suits undoubtedly concealed the small artillery.