"We left our rental back at the hotel and walked," said Peggy, playing her part in the little script. "Your office is only a few blocks from the Royal Bahamian."
"Nothing's very far from anything in Nassau," Mary said with a laugh. She turned up the wattage on her smile even more. "I've got the Land Rover parked in the back. Why don't you meet me out front?"
The Land Rover looked brand-new, silver paint gleaming. It projected confidence, success and good taste, and hinted at adventure and imagination. A surgeon driving a Mercedes usually elicited thoughts of greed and gouging, but a vehicle like Mary's was a mark of her success.
The real estate agent wheeled the big car around, narrowly missing one of the little, privately owned jitney buses and headed west down Bay Street. At the corner of Charlotte Street they stopped for a horde of adults and children wearing Mickey Mouse ears and led by a tall, young, black man dressed as Captain Hook and looking terribly embarrassed about it.
The Mickey cluster was taking digital snapshots of everything they could see and clogging up the sidewalks. Nobody seemed to mind, which wasn't surprising, since according to Mary a single cruise ship in harbor for twenty-four hours could leave behind as much as half a million dollars, not including docking fees.
They drove down Bay Street past the low, yellow building that housed the U.S. Embassy, then turned sharply and passed by the Royal Bahamian. After the big hotel the town quickly disappeared, replaced by dense, lush foliage on one side and the ocean on the other, the inshore water an impossible translucent green.
They continued past fish-fry shacks and scattered stucco residences, past low-rise condominiums, corner stores, gas stations and liquor outlets, Saunders Beach, one of the few public beaches for native Bahamians and finally reaching the "golden mile" of the major hotels on Cable Beach, just past Goodman's Bay.
In the middle distance, standing on one heavy leg in the shallow water like a stork, was a building that looked as though it came right off The Jetsons cartoon show. According to Mary it was a defunct tourist attraction meant be an underwater fish observatory.
Past the hotel, restaurants, clubs and open-air native markets they went around the long, sweeping curve that took them toward the south or "hurricane" side of the island. The farther along Bay Street they went the more the landscape changed. The houses grew larger, were set back farther from the road and had more junglelike foliage and coconut palm groves between them.
Just as the street curved again, they turned left off Bay Street and headed for the coast along Clifton Bay Drive to a long, narrow peninsula with the ocean visible on both sides. There had been a security booth at the Clifton Bay Drive entrance to the community, but Mary had barely paused as the man in the bright white uniform with the old-fashioned, white English bobby's helmet had waved them through with a smile as wide as Mary's own.
Mary Breau turned the Land Rover to the left and they followed the road toward the end of the peninsula. The houses here were much smaller than the others, more like the kind of neat cottagelike structures you found in suburban Dublin or Galway.
"E. P. Taylor Drive," said Mary. "Taylor was a Canadian billionaire who originated the idea of the gated community. At one time he owned and developed all of Lyford Cay. Just for fun he bred racehorses. Northern Dancer, the greatest sire in the history of thoroughbred racing, was his."
"You sound like a fan," said Brennan.
"I get over to Hialeah every chance I get." She smiled. "My not-so-secret vice." They pulled up in front of a neat, yellow stucco bungalow with a short, crushed-stone drive. Through the palms they could see the open ocean and a small stretch of private beach. "Here we are," said Mary.
Holliday, Peggy and Brennan climbed down from the Land Rover and made a show of knocking on the glass-paned double doors. Holliday cupped his hands and peered through the glass. No telltale blinking red light of a security system visible, but that didn't mean much. The alarm panel could just as easily be in the closet to the left of the door. He turned back to Mary, who was waiting patiently in the Rover.
"Maybe he's round the back," he called out. Mary nodded.
They all trooped around the side of the house to the back lawn and the patch of white sand beach. He checked the back door. It was much like the front except here it was a single door, not a double. It would be a snap to open. There was a small lanai with lawn chairs and a round table, a furled umbrella rising out of the center of it.
"You better have some sort of plan, Doc," warned Peggy. "Or we're in big trouble. That security guard isn't going to have a big smile for us the way he did for Mary."
Holliday looked from the open ocean, then back to the house. No more than 150 feet from the house on the left of the beach with a pile of old paving stones that might have been a breakwater or a private pier once upon a time.
"No problem," said Holliday. "I've got a perfect plan."
"Famous last words again," answered Peggy.
8
"Are you sure you really know how to drive one of these?" Peggy asked, obviously nervous and clutching the nylon rope handholds on either side of the inflatable. The boat was a twenty-one-foot Zodiac powered by a fifty-horsepower Evinrude outboard engine, and it was skipping easily over the calm waters offshore from Cable Beach, sending up a salt-tanged burst of spray every few seconds.
To their left the long line of hotels and an unbroken strip of pure white sand stretched into the distance along the curve of Delaport Bay. It was getting close to sunset and the western horizon was on fire in a spectacular pyrotechnic display of yellow, red and orange.
Driving out of Nassau past the fish-fry shacks with Mary Breau, Holliday had seen a sign that read ARAWAK CAY BOAT RENTALS with an arrow pointing down a packed-earth road, but at the time he'd thought nothing of it. After spending a couple of hours with the real estate agent for the sake of appearances, they had her drop them off at the hotel. A few minutes later they were in their rental driving back along West Bay Street to the dirt road.
The road led to a roughly made combination seawall and causeway, which led onto Arawak Cay, a messy, industrial wasteland with the Conch fleet of fishing boats in the protected, shallow harbor of the inner bay and larger ships, including the barges shipping the big casks of bottled water from the mainland, since Nassau had no fresh water of its own. Conch, the familiar, large pink shellfish, was protected in most parts of the world, but here the stony beaches of Arawak Cay were littered with literally thousands of them, tossed aside after their meat had been removed. Conch-pronounced "konk" by the natives-was used for almost everything: conch salad, conch chowder, deep-fried conch, breaded conch, grilled conch, conch burgers, barbecued conch, even smoked conch. There weren't many restaurants along the Cable Beach strip that didn't have it on the menu somewhere. One of the more successful conch fishermen, a big Sumo wrestler type who went by the nickname Big Bambu, had branched out into renting Zodiacs and selling conch burgers as well as Kalik and Red Stripe beer to people who wanted to have a picnic and explore.
No experience was necessary to pilot the boat, just the name of your hotel and your passport left behind for security. After listening to Big Bambu giving Holliday firm instructions about bringing the inflatable back before dark they set out for Lyford Cay, this time approaching from the sea. The only equipment they carried with them was the jack from their rental.
"Yes," said Holliday, "I really know how to drive this thing."
Peggy didn't look convinced, but Brennan was thoroughly enjoying himself, sitting happily in the bow, the spray hitting him squarely in the face, and reveling in the sensation. Holliday suddenly had a brief, compassionate vision of a young, unhappy Irish boy with very little childhood, raised by stern Jesuit priests who frowned on simple pleasures like boat rides.