“Alex? Why on earth would you do that?”
“He’s in the loop, isn’t he? Beatrice caught him browsing in the Fountain files.” Wolfe’s face went pale.
“I know what she thinks she saw. She didn’t and he wasn’t. She didn’t know what she was seeing.” “Or maybe I should talk to Henderson?”
“And do what?” said Wolfe, flaring up again. “Threaten to abandon the project? You feeling suicidal these days? I know Henderson, Peter, better than you do and this is one dragon whose tail you don’t want to jerk. He has a violent temper, and once he’s mad, he stays mad. You have your life back, don’t jeopardize it.” “Gee, that sounds an awful lot like a threat, Freddy. Is that what we’ve got here?” “That’s your overheated imagination talking, Peter. I’ve never found it necessary to threaten anyone. I’m telling you, just get back to work and don’t rock the boat. People are jumpy enough already. As for this business of telling Beatrice your sex dreams about beautiful young women, I’d advise you to stop. In fact, I’d go further: I’d advise you to put all that crap out of your mind. I’m counting on you to be professional and honor the commitment we’ve made to each other.” He sighed. “I don’t want to see all this fall apart, and, Peter, I don’t want to see you get hurt like some teenager going off the road because he’s getting head for the first time.” “I see,” said Peter, getting up. Wolfe was smiling again, faintly, and sucking on his Gauloise. “I love you like a son, Peter. Now get out of here.” Peter blinked. Like a son? It was altogether too much. He got the hell out of there. Instead of heading for his lab, Peter went back across the breezeway to the restricted wing and into his room. Beatrice wasn’t there. The walls were closing in on him again and his legs had begun to twitch with a vengeance. He wondered if he should go over to the gym and hit the treadmill. Then, gazing up at the darkening sky from his terrace, it struck him that he was sick to death of the goddamn treadmill. You rain and got nowhere. He took a Valium and lay on his bed. But he was unable to quiet his mind. Before long something else struck him: this woman he had been dreaming about? How did Wolfe know it was a woman? The only way was if the old bastard had talked to Beatrice. What the hell was going on here? Another question occurred to him. What the devil had Wolfe meant when he said people were jumpy enough as it is? Who besides him was jumpy?
Elizabeth lay in her bed at the Casa del Frances and wondered about the tree frogs. She had read somewhere they were no bigger than silver dollars, but that they sounded much larger. Why she should dwell on these creatures disturbed her. She had never seen a coqui, and yet the image of one, with its dark bulbous eyes and prehensile toes, kept drifting through her head, staring out at her from inside a mason jar. According to Ivor, the owner of her hotel and her new best friend, kids in the South used to go hunting for tree frogs after dark. Her dad had been stationed in Mississippi-Hattiesburg, some place like that-so maybe that would explain it. They needn’t have come to Vieques at all. If I have been to Vieques, she found herself thinking, something traumatic or unmentionable must have happened here. Or was it simply that her insomnia was turning her mind into a sieve? Since the day she had followed the guy with the messy hair to the Inn on the Azure Horizon, she had only managed to sleep for a couple of hours at a time, waking with a start at the slightest noise. By day, she had driven several times past the inn, but never did she see any sign of the kid or of his Range Rover. Yes, the woman at the desk had told her, a young fellow had stopped in and asked after her once since they had last spoken. She asked if Elizabeth wanted her to let him know where she was staying in case he came back. She did not, thank you very much.
She thought of calling Hans’s mother and telling her where she Was, just in case. But just in case of what?
She had twice gone back to the civilian airport, too, once to check out the Caribair arrivals and once to check out departing flights. But no one she knew arrived or left, and she herself wasn’t going anywhere until she understood something about what had brought her here. That mysterious voice from the Internet haunted her: IN OTHER WORDS, ELIZABETH, WISH YOU WERE HERE- Whether or not she had been on Vieques before, she felt deeply that she belonged here now and that to leave would be cowardice. But what she could actually do to feel in any way proactive rather than just hanging out passively at the hotel she did not know, and that drove her crazy. She wasn’t used to living her life like this, and the only way she was able to live with it at all was to convince herself that, in some mysterious way, she was being asked to wait. Wait as a monk might wait for enlightenment by surrendering to something completely beyond his reckoning, something personal, something all-consuming. So she waited. And thought.
Who knew she was staying at the Casa del Frances besides her three flight attendant friends and Ivor Greeley? No one she was aware of. She knew she had to do something, even if it meant wandering the streets. Anything to shatter this paralysis, she thought, grabbing her car keys. She padded through the darkened hotel and into the parking lot, where an old man was asleep on a chair. He had flowing white hair, enormous blue-veined eyelids and a three-inch scar along his jawbone. He was supposed to be the guard, so one night Elizabeth had asked him, in halting Spanish, if he had seen anybody resembling the young man with wild hair hanging around during his watch. He said he absolutely had not, but now, as she watched him snoring away in his chair, she knew why. Still, she didn’t have the heart to wake him. There was no need to worry: he didn’t move even when her headlights swept him on her way out to the street. She drove into Esperanza and walked aimlessly for an hour along bright avenues and quiet alleys until she found a bar called Bananas. Mary Blanchard had mentioned that it was one of her hangouts. The place was noisy and full of Americans, including Mary and her two buddies. “Hey, Lizzer, pull up a stool!”
She did, and they shared a plastic bucket of fried onions and a round of Coronas. After regaling Elizabeth with stories of drunken celebrities and live births at thirty-five thousand feet, Mary slid her chair closer. “So what happened to this hunk you were supposed to meet down here?” she asked. “Don’t tell me he stood you up?” Elizabeth sipped her beer. “Afraid so.”
“Unbelievable. Fine. So what we have to do now, I think, so it’s not a total loss, is get you laid, all right?” Elizabeth begged off. “I think maybe it’s time to go home.” “You mean, home home?”
“I think maybe it is,” said Elizabeth, with sudden conviction. “Thank you all for everything. Really. You’ve been great. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t run into you.” She gave Mary an impulsive hug, almost like a sister she had met and now was leaving again, and left the bar. Something about the loud music, the smell of beer, the notion of people looking for one-night stands saddened her terribly. He felt so near, somehow, she felt she should leave immediately. But by the time she was back in her car, the conviction had vanished and instead of returning to the Casa del Frances to pack, she drove up the coast. If he feels near, she thought, it’s stupid to leave. Leave when he feels very; very far away. He didn’t feel that way right now, not by a long shot. There was a frill moon painting the sea. She passed Sun Bay and Half Moon Bay, and then stopped the car about five miles beyond when something odd caught her eye just past the trees. A soft pale glow rising from the beach below, too weirdly green and too diffuse to be from house lights. Maybe someone was shooting a movie. Mary had said several had been shot here-Heartbreak Ridge and Lord of the Flies. But she couldn’t see any of the usual trucks or signs of crews and all she could hear were the coquis. She got out of the car. Have I been to this beach, was I here as a child? Or did I drive past it the day I tailed the strange kid? She closed her eyes, trying to block out the sound of the tree frogs. The air and the surf reminded her of Cannes. She locked the car, then stood there, undecided. Maybe I should just drive back to the hotel and take a hot bath, she thought, an altogether pleasant and sensible notion. Instead, she started walking toward the sound of the ocean.