One Way or Another(4)

The officer sat back in the leather chair. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously at Marco. “What was the name of this yacht?”

Marco said he didn’t know, he had not had time to look.

“And what were you doing out there in the storm? What boat were you on?”

Marco explained he was a vacationer, about his dinghy, that a fishing boat had towed his small boat back to shore. “She was young, though,” he said, then stopped himself. He had spoken in the past tense. “She had on a blue dress, not exactly what you would wear if you meant to go for a swim off a boat.”

The man eyed him coldly, waiting.

“She had—has red hair,” he remembered. “A great cloud of coppery hair, kind of wavy, if you know what I mean.…”

The officer said nothing. He turned away and flicked on his computer. He clicked around silently for a few minutes. “Nobody is reported going overboard. Nobody missing,” he said. “The storm is over. She probably went for a dip.” He shrugged dismissively. “Foreigners on vacation think everything is safe everywhere. On vacation, they become immortal.”

Marco watched him write a message on a yellow Post-it, then walk over to the empty desk next to his own and stick it on the counter. “My assistant will keep an eye on it,” the man said, buttoning his jacket, already heading for the door, which he opened for Marco and the dog.

And that was that, Marco thought, as he squelched toward the café, where Costas greeted him with raised brows and a quick demitasse of boiling hot espresso from his fancy new Gaggia machine, his pride and joy.

Costas did not ask what had happened, that was not his way. Costas listened. He knew everything about everybody and mostly he kept it to himself. And to his wife, of course, the lovely Artemis, ten years younger and second only to the new Gaggia as his pride and joy. So what if Artemis gossiped with her friends, holding back her long dark hair with one hand while the other held her coffee cup, or in the evening a glass of the pink Cinzano and soda she preferred. She also always came back with more news for Costas to keep to himself, unless circumstances dictated otherwise. Which perhaps today, with what Marco Polo Mahoney told him, might well be that kind of occasion.

“Red hair?” he asked, casually. He had been told too many stories over his years behind the counter to take them all too seriously. He took a glass from the row stacked over the bar, poured a good shot of brandy into it, pushed it toward Marco. “Looks like you need that,” he said.

He yelled for Artemis to bring a towel for the dog, dripping onto his white-tiled floor, already awash in a litter of the small greasy papers in which snacks were served. Every now and again a helper, usually a young boy, would come out with a broom and sweep them into a pile in the corner, to be removed later by someone else.

Marco downed the shot. It hit his stomach like a time bomb, exploding a minute later to swirl through his veins. “Jesus,” he exclaimed. “What is that, Costas?”

“My own special brew. I don’t give to everybody.”

Marco bet he didn’t or there wouldn’t be many people able to walk out of there. He signaled for coffee, and a ham sandwich, which he gave to the dog. He took his cell phone from his wet bathing shorts pocket. It was ruined, of course. There was no phone at his cottage and he eyed Costas’s landline instrument and asked if he might use it. Costas pushed it toward him, then watched, alarmed, as Marco dialed many numbers.

“Where you call?”

“Oh, just New York.” Marco smiled at him. “My girlfriend is there.”

“New York? U-S of A?” Costas was stunned.

Marco nodded then heaved a sigh of relief as Martha picked up.

“Sweetie,” she said in that soft husky Brit accent he so enjoyed, “I was just thinking about you.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” he said, his mind still on the red-haired girl who had drowned, and his memories. “I’m in trouble,” he said, and then explained what had happened. “And I think it’s murder,” he finished.

There was a long silence while she thought about it. Then, “I’ll be right there,” she said, as though she was just next door and not thousands of miles away.





3

When Marco called her from Turkey, Martha Patron was in her pajamas in New York. She thanked God he couldn’t see her. The pajamas were flannel because she was always cold when alone in bed; blue and white stripes like a prison uniform, and she wore red bed socks. Added to which, taking advantage of a night alone, she had lathered her face in Vaseline, something she did once or twice a month and which she believed gave her skin a soft glow. In fact she often used it all over her body, of course only when there was no one to see her. She had just washed her hair and was letting it dry, skipping a comb through it and giving her head an upside-down shake every now and then. Martha’s hair was quite beautiful, a natural light honey blond, dead straight and blunt cut to just below her shoulders, something she maintained every three weeks. Expensive, but worth it, and anyhow she offset the cost against the pricey face creams she did not buy. It worked for her.

If you analyzed her looks, something Martha did critically every night before bed and in the morning when she first got up, she was definitely not beautiful: her jaw was too square and her chin too determined; her cheekbones were good though, for which she was grateful because, after all, that’s what held up the rest of her face. Her eyes were her best feature, rounded and endearingly childlike, a beautiful pale blue color that in some lights looked almost transparent.