Kelly said, “She’ll turn him down. Starnap says so.”
Frank said, “What does Starnap say about chance encounters? She runs into an ex-husband on her way through the lobby. What about that?”
Kelly said, “Starnap says that if chance enters into it, altering the pattern, and it is early enough to extricate ourselves without having alerted her to our plans, we should return to the boat for further instructions. If it’s too late, we’ve already tipped our hand, we should try to ad-lib past the interference, and if that’s impossible, we should give it up, return to the boat, flee Jamaica, and work out another operation elsewhere. Starnap says that in its absence we are left to our own judgment about whether or not the pattern has been altered sufficiently to cause changes in plan or return for further instructions.”
Robby said, “Sometimes I’m not so sure about Starnap.”
Kelly said, “Why not?”
Robby said, “It thinks too complicated, that’s why not. Like, look at us. We want to kidnap Sassi Manoon, right? So what do we do? We steal a car. Then we bounce a forged check. Then we kidnap two men and steal their truck. We steal a Persian carpet. Before this is over, about the only thing we won’t have done is spit on the sidewalk.”
Frank said, “Don’t be too sure.”
Kelly said, “Starnap knows what it’s doing. You can have perfect faith in it.”
Robby said, “That’s good news.”
“Yeah,” said Frank.
“Tell him he’s driving too fast,” said Sassi.
The chauffeur glanced in the rear-view mirror. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and eased down from thirty-five to thirty.
Benny said, “You’re driving too fast.”
“Yes, sir,” said the chauffeur. He eased it back up to thirty-five.
Behind her shades, Sassi shut her eyes. She could only take simple progressions today; interweavings and multimedia implosions were out. She was the perfect example of the McLuhanesque mind, intending to do nothing but read from left to right forever. No crosscuts, no curlicues. No chauffeurs answering her when she tells Benny something to tell the chauffeur, then Benny telling the chauffeur and then the chauffeur answering him too. Only straight lines today, in every meaning of the term.
“We’re here,” said Benny, outside her closed lids.
“Of course we are,” she said. Or maybe she just thought it and didn’t have the strength to say it. In any case, she didn’t have the strength to open her eyes and look. What did she care where here was? I am, therefore I am here. Sum, ergo something or other.
The Rolls stopped. Sassi half-opened her eyes, and looked through trembling lids at a sun-dappled colored bellboy in a green jacket, reaching to open the car door. Watching the bellboy, she said, “If you’ll take the dogs, Benny, I won’t bitch at you for a week.” Kama and Sutra, standing now, were stretching all over the place.
“Sure,” Benny said.
She couldn’t tell what he meant by that, and she didn’t want any of those things either. Cryptic, enigmatic, all that stuff. Out with it. Hangovers require simple declarative sentences that make simple declarations.
The door swung open, and a puff of external heat entered the air-conditioned interior of the car and curled like a boa around Sassi’s shins. Sassi sighed. Past the bellboy she could see the smiling faces of a welcoming committee.
“This movie better be worth it,” she said.
“What time is it?” Kelly said.
Frank looked at his watch. “Twenty to eleven,” he said. He was leaning against the left front corner of the VW. The VW and the Cortina were parked on the left verge of route A1, near Rose Hall. Across the road lay the sea, blue and calm. Kelly and Frank and Robby were clustered between the two vehicles, Frank leaning on the VW, Robby sitting on the Cortina trunk, Kelly pacing back and forth between them. All three were smoking, Kelly with the most obvious nervousness, and though Kelly had a watch of his own he’d been asking Frank the time every minute or two.
Now he snapped his cigarette away. “Time to get moving,” he said.
Robby said, “Maybe we should wait five more minutes. To be on the safe side.”
“According to Starnap,” Kelly said, “Sassi Manoon and B. B. Bernard will quarrel within ten minutes of the beginning of the movie, and Bernard will go outside with the dogs. If it’s twenty to eleven, he’s out there now.”
“If they got there on time,” said Frank.
“Starnap says—”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Frank. He shifted his weight away from the VW. “Starnap says, I know.”
“Starnap doesn’t make mistakes,” Kelly said dangerously, daring somebody to disagree.
“Come on, Robby,” Frank said.
“Okay,” said Robby. He slid off the Cortina trunk.
Kelly looked at the two of them. “Starnap does know,” he said.
“Nobody’s arguing with you, Kelly,” said Frank.
“We’re doing it, aren’t we?” said Robby.
“All right,” said Kelly grumpily.
“It’s just nerves,” Robby said. “We’re all nervous, that’s all. There’s no need to fight among ourselves.”
“All right,” said Kelly, still grumpy but trying not to be. “You two come along in three minutes. Right?”
“Right,” said Frank.
“See you,” said Robby.
Kelly waved a hand, jerkily, and walked up to get behind the wheel of the Cortina. “Shift with the left hand,” he whispered to himself. “Shift with the left hand.” He could see the other two in the rear-view mirror, watching him with anticipatory grins on their faces. “Shift with the left hand,” he whispered.
He started the engine, shifted with his left hand, felt great relief, and drove triumphantly out onto the highway, speeding toward Mahoe Bay Hotel in the right lane. He didn’t move over till he looked out and saw a hundred-ton mile-wide maroon bus with lots of windows thundering toward him in the same lane. “Drive on the left,” he told himself as the bus whistled by. “Drive on the left. Shift left, drive left. Shift left, drive left.”
Kelly saw B. B. Bernard and the two Afghans mousing around some shrubbery to one side of the hotel as he drove the Cortina into the parking lot. Good. So far, everything according to plan. He left the car — gratefully — and got his clipboard from the back seat. Starnap maintained that a man with a clipboard is never questioned, because a clipboard is a sure demonstration of official status. A man with a clipboard must be authorized.
Kelly carried his clipboard into the hotel, and followed Frank’s directions up to the second floor and down the hall to 27A, the entry to the projectionist’s booth. He tried the knob there, but the door was locked.
Had there been a change of plan? He knocked on the door, waited, knocked again, waited again, and was just about to knock again when the door opened and an angry brown face said, “What? We’re busy in here.”
We? The projectionist was supposed to be alone. Well, it didn’t matter. Kelly plunged ahead, saying, “I have to come in for a minute. This won’t take long.”
The projectionist looked at the clipboard, accepted it as proof of identity just the way Starnap had said he would, and grousingly said, “Well, if you got to.” He stepped back and Kelly went up the high step and in, shutting the door behind him.
The room was, as Frank had said, small and crowded. The huge black projection machine on the right, looking like a robot made by ants, was whining and whirring and occasionally clanking. Its brother robot on the left was quiet. The letdown table in the middle was let down, and on it were distributed various pieces of cold chicken wrapped in wax paper, two bottles of Red Stripe beer, a bottle opener, and a deck of cards. But there was no second person present. Apparently the projectionist spoke of himself in the plural, employing the editorial “we.”