Bill Pronzini - The Crimes of Jordan Wise

"Your second wife."

"Yeah, mon. Bad mistake."

"What happened with her?"

It was a question I'd asked a couple of times without getting an answer. He took so long to respond I thought he was going to stonewall me again. But then he said quick and hard, spitting the words, "You ever see a coral snake? Pretty, mon, pretty snake. But underneath that pretty skin, full of poison."

"She must have hurt you bad."

"Never been hurt worse."

"But you survived."

"Poison don't get in deep enough, that's why."

"I guess we're both lucky that way," I said. "So when you found out the truth about her, that's when you gave Isola to your sister to raise and left Nassau."

"That's when."

"What did you do about the woman?"

"Nothing, Cap'n. What should I do?"

"I don't know. Seems like there ought to be some way to keep a woman like that from hurting somebody else."

"Snake bites you, what you gonna do? Beat on her or get away quick so you can suck out the poison?"

"You could do both."

"Too late then. You can't get all the poison out."

"I suppose you're right."

"Right enough," Bone said. "Only smart thing to do with a snake is stay out of her way, don't let her fangs get in you again."

That was all he'd say about his second wife, then or at any time afterward. I never did find out exacdy what it was she'd done to him, and he never once spoke her name.

From time to time I ran into one of the people I'd known when Annalise and I were together. On an island as small as St. Thomas, that kind of thing is unavoidable. Twice I encountered Royce Verriker, once near Emancipation Garden and once on Waterfront Drive during Carnival week. The first time, he spoke to me in his glad-handing way, making a snotty comment on my regrown beard and long hair, and I turned my back on him and walked away; the second time we made a point of ignoring each other. Maureen Verriker passed me without speaking in Market Square. I exchanged stiff hellos with Gavin Kyle in the Dronningens Gade liquor store, and with the Potters, the British rum connoisseurs, at the Yacht Club regatta.

It happened again on a morning in late September, on the dock at the Sub Base harbor marina. I'd just returned from an errand and I didn't notice the sloppily dressed woman until she came up and blocked my way. "Richard Laidlaw? Is that you under all that hair?" She laughed at my blank look. "JoEllen Hall. Remember me?"

I recognized her then. Annalise's drinking buddy, the Red Hook divorcee and not very talented artist. She seemed thinner than the last time I'd seen her, more juiceless, her sun-darkened skin as lined and cracked as old leather. She was there sketching for a new series of paintings, she said. How was I and what was I up to these days? She'd heard I was living on my boat; how come I'd given up the villa? Was I seeing anyone now that I was single again? Nosy questions in her too-loud voice that I answered in monosyllables.

After I made my escape, I didn't think any more about her. Just another chance meeting to be quickly forgotten. Only it wasn't. Hell no, it wasn't. JoEllen Hall hadn't been down there to sketch and running into her hadn't been accidental and her questions hadn't been casual. The whole thing was a put-up job—a goddamn scouting mission.

On a Saturday afternoon ten days later I came up the companionway from belowdecks, where I'd been doing some work on the generator, and Annalise was there waiting for me.

I didn't believe it at first. Eyes playing tricks. Mistaken identity. Hallucination. I stopped stone still, staring. No mistake. Annalise. She stood on the stringpiece astern, bathed in sunlight in a way that made her seem to glow, both hands clutching a straw bag, a tentative, nervous smile on her unpainted mouth that came and went like a blinking sign.

"Hello, Richard," she said.

It took me a few seconds to recover from the shock. "Jesus," I said.

"I guess you never thought you'd see me again."

I had no answer for that. I stood flatfooted, the oily rag I'd been using dangling from one hand. She wore white shorts, a white halter top, and a pale-blue-and-white beach shirt. The exposed parts of her were no longer tanned; the pale skin was sun-reddened in places. Her hair was long again, shoulder-length, worn in one of those frizzy-permanent styles. She'd put on a little weight in the past two years; it showed in a puffiness around her cheeks and mouth, a slight bulge at the waist of the shorts. Signs of dissipation in her face, too, veins showing here and there, faint crow's-feet around the eyes, a muscle twitching along her jaw. Her hands kept kneading the straw bag.

She said, "I see you've changed the name of your boat."

"Does that surprise you?"

"I'd be surprised if you hadn't. Windrunner. I like that."

I didn't say anything.

"I like the beard, too. And your hair long that way. They give you a sort of sea captain's look."

I didn't say anything.

"Is it all right if I come aboard?"

"Why?"

"To talk."

"We don't have anything to say to each other."

"Yes we do. I have so much to say to you. Is it all right?"

"No," I said.

She chewed her lower Up, head cocked a little to one side, eyes lowered. Her pleading-little-girl look. "It took a lot for me to come here like this, Richard. Please don't turn me away without listening to what I have to say."

"How long have you been on the island?"

"Two days. I've been staying with JoEllen Hall. You remember JoEllen?"

"All too damn well."

"She told me you were living on the boat now."

"Sure she did. Among other things. Good old JoEllen."

"She let me use her car to drive over from Red Hook," Annalise said.

"Why the hell did you come back?"

"To see you."

"What do you want? More money? More of my blood?"

"No. God, no."

"You must want something. You always did."

Struck a nerve. "I deserve that," she said.

"Well? I'm waiting."

"It's hot standing here in the sun. If you don't want to talk on board, can we go to one of the cafes? I'd really like to have a drink."

"I'll bet you would."

"Please, Richard. Just for a few minutes. Listen to what I have to say, then if you want me to I'll go away and never bother you again."

The urge to tell her to fuck off then and there was strong. But I couldn't do it. I had to hear her out, find out what she wanted. For my own protection.

We went to Harry's Dockside Cafe. Neither of us said anything on the walk over, or when we first sat down at an outside table under one of the brightly colored umbrellas. She couldn't hold eye contact; the few times she tried, the smile would flicker on and then flicker off again after a few seconds and she would look somewhere else.

It felt unreal to be with her again this way, all of a sudden, so close I could reach out and touch her. As if she weren't really there and what I was facing was a holographic projection of her, the image of an intimate stranger. I kept waiting for the anger and the hate to rise up in a choking wave, but it didn't happen. Undercurrents, yes, but that was all. The surface of feeling was curiously flat and empty, like shoal water under a gray-black sky.

No more rum punches for Annalise. She ordered Scotch, a double, no ice. I wanted an Arundel; I settled for beer to keep my head clear. Before the drinks came, she rummaged in her bag, came up with a little amber-colored plastic bottle. The prescription kind, except that it had no label. She shook out a white tablet, swallowed it dry.

I said, "What's that you just took?"

"Valium. For my nerves. Somebody I know got it for me. Not JoEllen—where I was living before."

Scraping bottom, all right. She'd never used drugs of any kind when we were together. "Where was that?"