The Four Corners Of The Sky (61 page)

“You made the switch?” Dan asked Annie.

She smiled. “Yep.”

“Damn, you’re quick.” He hugged her affectionately. “I should take you to Las Vegas.”

“That’s what my dad used to say. I took the negative. But Fred Owen’s got an eight-by-ten print of the photo of us in The Breakers. There were also two emeralds, three rubies, six sapphires, two diamonds. The rubies are about the size and shape of tiny eggs, but there was nothing anywhere near a 135-carat star ruby in there. And if there were supposed to be seven emeralds in the crown? There are three in the queen now and those two in the pouch makes only five. Where are the other two?”

Dan said he suspected that Jack and Raffy planned to hold back an emerald each. “Finders’ fees. Well, look’s like poor old Willie’s out of the loop on this deal. I’m going to take him out for a drink when we get back to Miami and tell him to watch his step on those big fat flat feet of his.”

Somehow, strangely, Annie knew that she would see the beautiful coppery-haired woman in the café, just at the table where she was sitting. There was a row of tiny bamboo café tables next to a row of little orange trees in wooden boxes, next to the open square. The woman wore large elegant sunglasses and thin brown linen clothes. On the pavement at her feet was a small soft brown leather suitcase and a shopping bag that looked very much like the one in which Annie now carried the Queen.

Dan kissed Annie. “I’ll be down the block.” He pointed in the direction of the Ramirez Gold and Silver shop and kept walking without looking back as Annie headed toward Helen Clark.

Taking a chair at the table next to the woman, Annie quietly studied the crowd of shoppers and tourists milling about in the Plaza. A waiter moved nearby and she used her little bit of Spanish to him. “
Camarero
.
Una botella de agua, por favor. Gracias.
” After he left, she said to the woman, “You’re Helen Clark.”

The woman nodded yes without looking at her.

Annie set down the old shopping bag between their tables. “But your real name is Ruthie Nickerson. You’re Georgette’s aunt, aren’t you? I met you in Emerald once. Did you pick the name Clark from Clark Goode?”

The woman’s head lifted in surprise. Now she looked over at Annie, who couldn’t see her expression because of her sunglasses. Then she took the glasses off and Annie saw that her eyes were as blue as the sea. She had the lovely low voice of the woman who had made the phone call warning Annie to stay away from her father’s criminal pursuits.

“Hello. It’s been a long time.”

Annie looked from the woman’s face to her hand, which was suntanned and freckled. The hand rested on the table near the small white cup of Cuban coffee. Ruthie’s fingers closed around the cup. She wore no jewelry.

“You helped me with my algebra,” Annie said.

A long silence. Finally the woman spoke again. “How are Sam and Clark?” Her voice was measured. “Good friends to me.”

Annie told her they were both fine. “And you were a friend of my father’s?”

“I suppose friend’s a word.” She sipped at the dark coffee.

“I really think all he wanted to do was sell Feliz Diaz that stupid statue and leave me a lot of money. Kind of sweet and silly.”

“All he wants to do is make life exciting. He almost got himself killed, not to mention me. Or you.” Ruthie glanced down at Annie’s shopping bag. “The statue didn’t belong to him. So, that’s the Queen of the Sea in there?”

Annie said that it was.

Ruthie told Annie what was in the other shopping bag and that Jack had arranged for it. “The art of the con,” she smiled.

“Did you know Dad’s dying?”

“Did he think he wouldn’t?” Ruthie drank a sip of coffee. She spoke not unsympathetically. “But I’m sorry to hear it. He was the best dancer I ever met.” Her eyes moved slowly left to right across the busy plaza. “We can’t sit here long. How many gems in the bank pouch?”

Annie saw no reason not to enumerate the contents. “The real Queen’s got three big emeralds in her crown already. Dad must have put them back in the statue.”

“Just three?” Ruthie set down her coffee cup in a thoughtful way. “How about the 135-carat star ruby?” She moved her perfect teeth over her lower lip when Annie shook her head no. “This could be a problem. Feliz is paying Jack a great deal of money for
La Reina Coronada
. He expected more emeralds and that ruby to go back on that silver box with the Holy Thorn inside it. Now he won’t have either. He’s a mobster but a good Catholic. He honestly believes the Queen should go to the Church, and go looking good. I’m going to have trouble selling this…‘as is’ sale to Feliz.”

Annie was quiet a minute, then she said, “How much did my dad, or Fierson, tell you about the photo at The Breakers? The one with your friend Feliz Diaz in it.”

The woman looked baffled. “McAllister Fierson?”

“Yes. The government big shot who arranged for me to get here to Havana. My dad told me last night that what Fierson really wanted from that bank pouch was a photo.” Annie described her birthday party picture and named the men who sat laughing together in the background of the restaurant. “Fierson specifically told me to stay away from you if you were in Havana. You might want to watch out for him. My dad told me that the negative to that photo was his gift to you. I’ve got it here.”

Ruthie leaned away, thinking hard. “Well, Jack has surprised me…” She stubbed out her cigarette.

Annie said, “The negative and a print were in the pouch with the jewels. I left everything but the negative in there for this
FBI
agent Fred Owen.”

“Fred,” said Ruthie. There was a world of contempt in the word. “He’s over there in that Chevy with Willie Grunberg. Willie’s a good guy.”

“I’ve got the negative under my hand.”

Startled, Ruthie glanced over at Annie for a moment. Then she asked if anyone, and she meant anyone, had possibly seen her remove the negative from the pouch?

“No,” Annie assured her. “I’m very fast.”

Ruthie said there were now at least two men at the café and there was another man standing in the Plaza; all three were watching them right now. Before too long, Annie had to leave the negative and the Queen and walk away.

Annie said, “Dad used to give me lessons every day. Five years old, I could palm the wallet right out of your purse, study everything in it, put it back and tell you the contents to the last detail. And you’d never know your wallet had been out of your purse.”

Ruthie Nickerson smiled slightly. “I recall that your dad had great hands.”

The remark startled Annie. “You were lovers,” she blurted out.

The woman’s mouth softened. “No. Never. He said he was in love with me. I wasn’t with him.”

Annie was confused. “I thought you were lovers.”

“We could have been. But we weren’t. Those were crazy times. Clark was going back to Vietnam. He’d reenlisted. So back he went and ended up a
POW
.” She shook her head ruefully. “Funny. Jack couldn’t talk me into loving him. I couldn’t talk Clark out of leaving me. I never figured Jack would do what he did. Take you, I mean.”

Annie stared a long time at her eyes. They looked familiar because they looked like her own eyes. “Are you my mother?”

The older woman looked at her, looked past her, replaced the sunglasses. “I came to the same conclusion. But only a week ago.”

Annie’s eyebrow arched. “In St. Louis?”

Ruthie took a cigarette from a leather purse. Annie noticed her hand was shaking slightly. “Yes, in St. Louis. Of course Jack knew all along but he kept it to himself. Unless he told Sam. But I never thought it until I saw you there in the airport. I had assumed…” She frowned. “That you were growing up happy in Ohio. The way I’d planned.”

“In Barbados…Why?” Annie asked.

The woman’s brow tightened. “…College. I talked my way into a fellowship; I wanted a career.” She laughed. “Not exactly the one I have. Jack tracked me down to the island, tried to stop me, and—although I certainly didn’t know about it at the time—after I left for the States, he, well, stole you.” She smiled. “You’re the most beautiful thing he ever stole.”

Annie rubbed at the back of her neck. “You didn’t think I was your baby when you visited Sam that night at Pilgrim’s Rest and helped me with my algebra and she told you I was Jack’s daughter?”

She shook her head. “No. I just remember thinking how lovely you were, and how lucky you were to have Sam. I figured Jack had met someone, had a baby with her. But in St. Louis, when I saw you…and I, I don’t know, I just knew.” She was quiet a moment. “I went to St. Louis trying to help keep that idiot Jack from getting himself killed, which is exactly what Feliz was ready to do to him. Jack was sure he could get out of his gambling mess by selling Feliz
La Reina
. It was another one of Jack’s crazy schemes. But Feliz seemed to fall for it. Like I say, the idea of making a big gift to the Church appealed to him. I did what I could to scare you off. Back in Miami I reamed Jack out about the whole thing. I told him if he didn’t back off from you I’d see to it that he was locked up for twenty years.”

Annie thought about this for a while. Then she asked Ruthie if she’d ever really met Claudette Colbert.

She said that she had. “Briefly.” In Barbados, during her pregnancy. The movie star had been very kind and helpful to her.

Annie felt a bitter taste. “Everything was ‘briefly’ with you, wasn’t it?”

“No.” Ruthie looked at her, then with a wry smile, added, “I say this not ruthlessly, and not without rue.” Annie immediately thought back to the night in the Pilgrim’s Rest kitchen, the glamorous stranger punning on the word “Jack” during the peculiarly intense Scrabble game with Sam. “I’ve done serious work for a quarter of a century. That’s not brief. I’ve worked with the agency, always undercover.” Ruthie called to the waiter for her check. “For years, I’ve been passing along to our government useful things about Feliz and his friends. To find those things out, I make Feliz trust me. That’s my work.” Ruthie took another cigarette from a pack in her purse.

“You shouldn’t smoke.” Annie leaned forward as the waiter left. “Okay. The negative is in your jacket pocket now.”

Ruthie nodded; the wry smile widening into a version of Annie’s smile. “Good for you.”

“By the way, Trevor Smithwall told me you had my back.”

The woman frowned, shaking her head. “He shouldn’t tell you things like that. I’m the mistress of Feliz Diaz.” The waiter set down checks at both their tables. Ruthie gave him money. “And you, you train flyers on combat jets for the Navy. I heard that from Sam. I called her once, just to see how she was. She told me about you and the Navy. Of course, she’s a peace freak but she’s very proud of you.” Her hand moved forward, brushed past Annie’s.

Annie paid her own check. “Are you in danger from Diaz?”

Ruthie shook her head. “The irony is, Feliz loves me and I’m actually…fond of him.” She touched her pocket into which Annie had slid the negative of the photograph at The Breakers. “At the right time, this will help. McAllister Fierson has started to distrust me. He’ll find out he was right…” She glanced around the plaza again. “We’ve been sitting here a little too long. You need to go. Your friend Dan Hart? In Miami, they say he’s a very good cop.” She smiled. “Getting fired can be a sign of a good cop. You two look fond of each other.” She bent toward Annie’s table, moved her hand over to hers and this time let it rest there for a little moment, her fingers moving quietly, like a heartbeat. She said in her lovely voice, “I thought the world would be different.” She took off the sunglasses again and her eyes wetted to a darker blue.

Annie touched her mother’s fingers. “The world
is
different. I had it easier.” As she said this, she felt a clear sense that what was real between the two of them had little to do with the words they were speaking to each other, the words that made sounds in the air. But that what was real was as indefinite as water and that the meaning of it all floated somewhere between them, side by side, nearly together, as submerged as a ship’s keel in the ocean, moving unseen through the waves. And then Annie slipped her hand away.

All at once there was a loud screeching noise of horn and brakes in the street beside the café. People jumped to their feet at the other tables.

Annie saw a two-tone taxi slam to a stop. A small man in bright green trousers flopped across the cab’s fender, rolling over its hood and falling to the crowded cobbled pavement.

An old woman shouted in alarm. Customers ran from their tables at the café and others rushed out of the restaurant, swarming in front of the boxed orange trees near the front row of small tables; all were trying to catch a glimpse of the accident.

In the midst of the hubbub, Annie stood up and saw a slender recognizable hand move smoothly across Ruthie Nickerson’s table-top. She saw two green sparkling objects fall from tanned fingers into Ruthie’s hand. Then the people behind jostled her and she lost sight of her father.

Annie squeezed quickly between the little boxed trees and raced into the plaza. She spotted Dan Hart running out of a low stucco arch toward her. Across the cobbled opening, on the other side, a little apart from the crowd, Jack Peregrine stood, thinner, frailer, in cream silk trousers and Cuban shirt, dappled gold like Ruthie’s brown leather bag that he held up to her in the sunlight. He waved the Fed Ex envelope that Sam had sent to Key West in his other hand. She started running toward him but he grabbed Dan’s arm, thrust the leather bag at him and then slipped through the arch, turned, waved his hand in good-bye, and vanished.

Annie spun around to look back at the café. The small bamboo table was empty. The shopping bag with the Queen in it was gone. The white coffee cup sat there on the café table, coppery lipstick on its rim. Beneath the table the other shopping bag sat beside Ruthie’s chair.

Dan and Annie took the bag back to their hotel room and unwrapped the Queen of Sea. Well, at least a modern copy of that statue, done in gold plate and without jewels in its crown. But modeled—Ruthie had told her—on the real Queen; made right here in Havana by the talented goldsmith, Maria Ramirez, Raffy’s mother.