“Wait a second,” the girl said. “You can’t—”
“Lock her aft,” Kelly repeated. “Then we’ve got work to do.” Rubbing his hands together in workmanlike anticipation, he went forward to see Starnap.
“That’s kidnapping!” the girl shouted.
Frank smiled at her. “Is that what it is? Think of that, Robby. We’re kidnappers.”
“Think of that,” said Robby.
(8)
Caper
“But it’s so soon,” said Robby, sitting there with a piece of toast in his hand.
“Starnap says this morning,” said Kelly, “and Starnap’s running this operation.”
“Let’s hear it for Starnap,” said Frank.
The three of them were sitting around finishing breakfast — bacon and eggs and toast and coffee. They’d been up all night, feeding Starnap the new information and receiving their orders, but they were all too keyed up to feel tired. Outside, a beautiful morning swelled like a balloon, Montego Bay sparkling and gleaming as though it had just had its teeth brushed.
“It just seems so soon,” said Robby. “Maybe we ought to watch her some more first.”
“Starnap,” said Kelly, “says we know all we need to know. If we wait, other elements could come in and change things. Maybe after the first day she’ll quit the festival and go back to Hollywood. Maybe the festival will shut down. Maybe somebody else will show up to take her around everywhere and make it too tough for us to pull the job at all. All sorts of things could happen.”
“It’s just so soon,” said Robby. “That’s all. It’s kind of sudden. I’m willing, I just didn’t think it would be this sudden.” He finished his coffee.
Kelly looked at his watch. “Time to go,” he said.
“I have to get my uniform,” Robby said. He got up and went over to the door to the aft cabin, turned the knob, and said in surprise, “It’s locked.”
They all remembered at the same time. They stared at one another, and Robby said, “The girl.”
“I completely forgot about her,” said Frank.
“Hell,” said Kelly. “All right, never mind her. She’s safe there till we get back.”
Robby said, “We have to give her breakfast, Kelly.”
“Damn,” said Kelly. Irritated, he went over and unlocked the door, looked in at the girl sitting on the bed in there, and said, “Come out here and eat your breakfast.”
She turned her head and gave him a look of infinite scorn. “Don’t mind about me,” she said.
“Good,” said Kelly, on whom sarcasm was wasted, and shut her in again.
But then she pounded on the door so much they had to give her breakfast after all.
From the new Rose Hall development up in the hills along the coast to the east of Montego Bay there’s a beautiful view of the Caribbean Sea, blue and gleaming under the huge dome of washed-blue sky, dominated by the sun.
Rose Hall is no Levittown. The plots are large and hilly, the houses are all architect-designed, the road curves gracefully through the tract. Many of the plots have been sold, but only a few houses are completed, each with its swimming pool, air conditioning, patio, privacy fence, and lush landscaping. Money lives on Rose Halls hills, and more money is on its way.
An artist would love Rose Hall’s view, and a sociologist would love its implications, but Kelly was neither. “It’s up here someplace,” he said, frowning at the undeveloped plots. “A purple garage door.” Among the items his tape recorder had picked up last night from the moneyed conversations around him had been one about a house that would be empty up here today, its owner off to Kingston.
“Maybe they were drunk,” Frank suggested. He was in the back seat, and Robby was driving. They were all in a pale blue Ford Cortina, an English car rented this morning from Avis.
“They kidded him about it,” Kelly said. “It was serious. You heard the tape. A purple garage door.”
“There!” shouted Robby, the car veering as he took one hand off the wheel to point. He was having trouble with this car; not only was he supposed to drive it on the left side of the road in Jamaica, the steering wheel was on the right, and the gear shift was on the left side of the steering wheel. That wouldn’t have been so bad except there was another lever on the right side of the steering wheel, where the gear shift would normally be, only this one was for the directional signals. Robby had a tendency, whenever he wanted to shift into second, of signaling instead for a left, which confused him almost as much as it did the traffic behind him. But things were better now up here in Rose Hail, mostly because there was no other traffic and it didn’t matter which side of the road he drove on.
The house at which he’d pointed, other than the purple garage door, was quite good-looking. A kind of extravagant ranch-style, it was constructed on stilts out over a slope falling away behind it toward the sea. Built crossways along the slope, it looked as if it would boast sea views from every room. Its stucco exterior was white; the rich landscaping around it was mostly green and red; the privacy fence around the swimming pool on its left side was of pale bamboo; and the carriage lamp beside the drive was sensible black and white. In company with all this the purple garage door, wide enough for a Piper Cub, looked like a huge bruise.
“What if he decided not to go?” said Robby.
“He said he had to be in Kingston today,” Kelly said, “to meet his family. The other one said he’d pick him up at eight o’clock and take him to the airport. It was definite.”
“Unless they were drinking too much,” Frank said. “The guy could be in there asleep right now.”
“We’ll find out,” Kelly said.
Robby had stopped the car on the road, near the driveway entrance. Now Kelly got out and walked up the driveway and along the slate walk to the front door. He rang the bell, waited, knocked on the door, waited, rang the bell again, waited, knocked on the door again, waited, shouted, “Hello!” waited, rang the bell a third time, waited, shrugged and came back to the car. “Nobody home,” he said. “Come on up.”
“Okay,” Robby said. As Kelly walked back up the driveway, Robby signaled for a left and raced the engine. “Damn,” he said, switched the directional signal off, used his left hand to shift into reverse, and backed up. Then he signaled for a right and backed up some more. “Damn!” he said.
“You’re doing fine,” Frank told him.
“Shut up,” Robby suggested. He switched off the directional again, shifted into first with his left hand, and drove the car up the slight slope of the driveway, stopping in front of the purple garage door.
In the meantime, Kelly had taken out a huge key ring containing many hundreds of keys and had started trying them, one after the other, in the lock in the middle of the purple face of the garage door.
Robby fiddled with the directional signal, took his foot off the clutch, and the car leaped forward and stalled. “Damn!” said Robby.
“You’re a menace,” Frank told him. “Let me out of here.” He climbed out.
“Wait’ll you drive it,” Robby snapped. “Just wait.”
Kelly kept trying keys.
“Time for my first metamorphosis,” said Robby, getting out of the car and taking off his pants.
“There!” said Kelly. The garage door slid up and out of sight, which immediately made the house look a thousand times better. Inside was a sand-colored Mercedes-Benz 300. “Beautiful,” said Kelly.
Robby had opened the rear door of the Cortina and taken out a pair of black trousers, which he now slipped on. He was already wearing a white shirt, to which he affixed a black bow tie, then shrugged into a thin black jacket. For the last, he put a black chauffeur’s cap on his head. “How do I look?” he said.