Bill Pronzini - The Crimes of Jordan Wise

"It gets really bad when five or six cruise ships come in at once," Annalise said as we drove. "One of the first things the Verrikers told me was to stay away from downtown on those days. The only locals who like the tourists are the shopkeepers."

Despite the overcrowding, the island for me was still the tropical paradise the guidebooks made it out to be. Once you got past the ramshackle native quarter, you encountered lush tropical vegetation and old-world charm just about everywhere you looked. Frenchtown, for instance—Cha-Cha Town to the locals—where the descendants of the first Huguenot settlers on St. Barthelemy lived in small, brightly colored frame houses that had been passed down from generation to generation. They were fishermen, mostly, who spoke an ancient Norman dialect and wore square, flat-topped straw cha-cha hats and had little to do with the other white residents.

I had my first look at Charlotte Amalie from half a mile across the bay. A mix of new and ancient commercial buildings set along the curve of the waterfront, private homes spread in a wide arc halfway up the surrounding mountains—red roofs and whitewashed stucco walls sunstruck and shimmering in the humid heat. The broad harbor, the offshore islands, the turquoise blue of the Caribbean dotted with sails stretching out beyond. It's not easy to describe what I felt, seeing it for the first time. The best I can do is call it a sense of rightness, of belonging, as if I were meant to be there. As if my previous life had been a waiting or trial period, everything I'd done a rite of passage. I tried to put this into words for Annalise, but she didn't understand. She just smiled and nodded.

We dropped down to Veterans Highway and drove in along the harbor past the airboat terminal, the slips for the Tortola ferries and glass-bottom excursion boats, the anchored yachts at the King's Wharf marina. Annalise pointed out landmarks along the way. One was Fort Christian, a looming pink-plaster pile guarded by a couple of ancient cannon, built in 1671 by the Danes who'd been the first whites to settle the island. It was not only a tourist attraction, which housed a museum in what had once been the dungeon; it was also, in those days, where police headquarters and the local jail were located.

Near King's Wharf, Annalise turned onto one of the uphill streets. We climbed across Dronningens Gade, the main drag, and up past the old slave market and then around Berg Hill into the residential district. The streets up there were narrow, mostly one-way, forming a maze of curves, loops, angles. It had taken Annalise half a dozen trips before she could make all the right turns without consulting the real estate agent's instruction sheet.

We emerged finally onto a twisty little street called Quartz Gade. The handful of villas along it were on large lots carved out of the hillside below street level; all had red tile roofs and lush gardens and either steep driveways or covered parking platforms. She indicated one as belonging to the Kyles, Gavin and Robin, and a larger one on the hillside above, flanked by huge flamboyant trees, as the Verrikers' home.

Our place was down toward the end. White stucco, red tile roof, walls draped in crimson and purple bougainvillea; driveway and one-car garage set at right angles to the house. There were high stucco walls on both sides. The wall on the east side flanked a steep set of stairs that led down to the next street and beyond. The steps were wide and made of ship-ballast brick imported by the Danes during the mid-1800s; they'd been built because the pitch on some of the hills was too steep for streets and cars and also to provide residents with direct foot access to the shopping district. There were several of these long public staircases in Charlotte Amalie. Once I got to know their locations, I mapped out a series of shortcut routes to and from our villa. The return climb could be a bitch in the heat of the day, even though the crow-flies distance was only about a quarter of a mile, but we got used to it and used the stairs fairly often to keep in shape.

The villa was built of stone and stucco, and the thick walls cooled the interior. Annalise had said it was small, but that was a matter of perspective. Six rooms, all good-sized, the living room and master bedroom long and wide with high, beamed ceilings. Whitewashed walls hung with tapestries and pictures by local artists. Beige tile floors. Massive old furniture. All the modern conveniences.

Two sets of heavy, jalousied doors opened from the living room onto a wide cobbled terrace that ran the width of the house. Two more sets of doors gave access from the master bedroom to the terrace and to a narrow side veranda. The garden ran downhill some fifty yards: coconut palms and guava trees, oleander, hibiscus, white ginger. The view was spectacular. From one point or another on the terrace you could see most of the harbor, Hassel Island and its mountaintop fort, a section of Water Island, the Caribbean in the distance.

When we finished the tour, Annalise said expectantly, "Well? What do you think?"

"As advertised. You couldn't have made a better choice."

"I just love it. I knew you would, too." She kissed me. "So what do you want to do now, as if I didn't know?"

"A shower first," I said. "And something cold to drink."

"You go ahead. I'll make us a couple of rum punches."

I was in the shower, soaping off, when she brought the drinks. brought them naked into the tiled stall. We drank standing close together under the cool stream of water, not sipping but gulping, and then we took turns with the bar of soap. That kind of foreplay doesn't last long or allow for a time-out to towel dry and hop into bed. Our first round of lovemaking in our new home was started and finished standing up in the shower.

Over the next ten days we christened all the other rooms. The terrace and the side veranda and the garden, too, each of those after dark in deference to public decency.

I met Royce and Maureen Verriker the next day, and the Kyles and some of the other members of the white establishment at a Christmas party the Verrikers hosted that weekend. Only about 10 percent of the island population was white—U.S. expats, and descendants of U.S., Danish, and French settlers—so it was a fairly small and close-knit community.

Richard Laidlaw was more comfortable in a party atmosphere, among strangers, than Jordan Wise had ever been; better able to mix and make small talk. But that doesn't mean that I liked it. Annalise was genuinely at ease, smiling, laughing, charming everyone, enjoying the attention, but a part of me stood off and observed what she and the others did and said and then took cues from them so I could make all the appropriate responses.

Royce Verriker was a few years older than me, tall, lean, with a mop of sun-bleached hair and intense gray eyes. Very suave, very glib: if I hadn't known he was a lawyer, I would have guessed it on the first try. When he and I talked, he asked a lot of questions, not prying, just displaying interest. I gave him all the rehearsed answers—successful Chicago tool-and-die manufacturer, made a bundle in the stock market, decided to sell my business and retire young, moved down here to live the good life in the sun. He smiled and said he envied me. He also said, "I imagine Annalise has told you that my specialty is domestic law. But if you ever need any other kind of legal help or advice, my door is always open." I thanked him and said I'd keep that in mind. Typical lawyer. Cut him open and he would bleed green for money and brown for bullshit.

His wife, Maureen, was a slender, thirtyish redhead, the dark-complected rather than the pale-skinned variety. One of those pretty cameo faces, but with oddly sad eyes. A little reserved until you got to know her, pleasant and gracious. She and Annalise had hit it off from the first and were already friends. She wore a skintight blue dress that night—and low-cut blouses and tight pullovers and skimpy bikinis at other times—that called attention to overlarge breasts. The way she dressed was Verriker's idea, not hers; he was the one, she'd told Annalise, who wanted to show off her boobs.