Authors: Maggie; Davis
Christ, we’re too damned close to the water!
Chapter 15
Gaby woke in the morning to find the bed a battleground of twisted, tangled sheets, feeling more tired than she had when she’d gone to sleep. With a groan, she turned on her stomach and buried her head in the sweat-damp pillow.
This was no way to forget James Santo Marin, when her very dreams were haunted by him! She was certain that something had gone wrong, that he’d been in danger somewhere. Oh, God, she didn’t even know if he was alive! But the terrible bond that held them captive to each other had been the conduit for a message.
I want you. I need you. Now—when I fear I may never see you again
.
How could she say that she was going to put him out of her mind and marry Dodd when he wouldn’t let her be? What was he doing? What sort of danger was he in?
The alarm clock went off and Gaby reached across the bed to silence it. She prayed for just a few minutes more before she had to get up and go to work. After a night like the one just past, she deserved it. The clock kept on ringing. She picked it up and shook it savagely, but still it kept on.
She forced her eyes open and saw to her drowsy surprise that she really had shut it off.
The doorbell, she realized slowly. Somebody was ringing the front doorbell downstairs.
Gaby threw her arm over her eyes and tried not to groan. It was only seven A.M. The paper boy had been paid, the power company meter reader never rang the front doorbell, and neighbors never called at that hour. There was no reason for anyone to be downstairs. Then it occurred to her that it was probably David Fothergill come to move his things into the garage apartment. She jumped out of bed.
Hurrying to the top of the stairs in bare feet and in her old sleeveless nightgown, she paused long enough to call, “Who is it?”
There was no answer.
The cloudless early morning was hot and sultry, and the tile floor of the
sala
was warm to the bottoms of her feet as she crossed it. She unlocked the front door and flung it open. “David, what do—”
She never finished.
The broad, coppery face was almost on a level with her own, since the man stood two steps below in the drive. Straight black hair framed somber black eyes, and a wide prominent nose rose above a full, forbidding mouth. He was heavyset, with huge sloping shoulders like a wrestler. All he needed, Gaby thought, horror-struck, was the pastel suit and mirror sunglasses. But he wore denim work clothes.
She was so stunned she didn’t even have enough presence of mind to step back and slam the door, leaving him outside.
“Miss Collier?” the Colombian drug dealer said, looking at her curiously. “Miss Gabrielle Collier?”
Some part of Gaby’s brain was still functioning. She tried to shove the door shut, but a huge copper-colored hand seized it and held it open.
“I’m Harrison Tigertail, Miss Collier.” He was watching her with unblinking, obsidian eyes. “We’re here to fix the roof.”
Strange noises were coming from directly above them. Over the Colombian’s shoulder she saw an aluminum ladder propped to one side of the front door and a metallic-blue van parked in the driveway.
“Roof?” There was no possible way, she thought wildly, the roof on the Collier house could have anything to do with drug dealers. But then she wasn’t sure about anything anymore. “You can’t do it,” she cried, “whatever it is!” She pulled on the door, trying to hide behind it. “I—I haven’t got any money!”
The giant looked her over with careful interest, taking in her bare feet, the sheer cotton nightgown, her disheveled hair. “It’s all paid for, including the materials.” He produced a business card from his shirt pocket and held it out to her. “We specialize in roofing. Twenty years in the business.”
Roof. Paid for
. The words finally penetrated. The wrestler-giant’s voice was flat, very southern with the distinctive Florida twang. He didn’t sound like a Colombian drug dealer. Gaby held the card with shaking hands so she could read it. “Miccosukee Contractors,” and under that, “Harrison Tigertail, President.” On the bottom was a small metallic-blue logo, a drawing of a
chickee,
a Seminole Indian thatched dwelling, and: “General Construction. Remodeling. Free estimates. All work guaranteed.”
She stared wide-eyed at him. “You’re Indian?” Her voice was a horrified croak. “A Seminole—a
Florida
Indian?” “All my life,” he assured her solemnly.
Every child in the Miami public school system visited the Seminole Indian tourist villages along the Old Tamiami Trail at the fringe of the everglades. The Miccosukee Seminoles were famous. Fifty families had been driven into the everglades in the middle of the last century by United States troops, only to emerge over five hundred strong in the second half of the twentieth century, claiming federal funds and status as a native American tribal nation, and demanding that a huge administration center be built for them on the highway from Miami to the Florida west coast. They were known around Miami as tough, trustworthy in business, but not particularly friendly.
Indian, Gaby told herself, not Colombian. She raked one hand through her tangled hair, pulling it back from her face in a gesture of utter confusion. Nothing was very real anymore. Her dreams seemed to have melded with life. A Miccosukee contractor named Harrison Tigertail had come to fix the roof. And it was paid for.
She started to open her mouth and then shut it quickly. Dodd, she realized. First her mother’s bills at the hospital. Now the roof.
“Wait,” she said to Harrison Tigertail. “Don’t start anything yet. I have to call somebody.”
She left him standing on the doorstep while she hurried to the living room telephone. Dodd was still at home, but ready to leave for the office.
“I really don’t think you should do this,” Gaby told him, tired and out of sorts, more annoyed than grateful. “I can’t let you go on paying for things, especially when I don’t know how we’re going to pay you back.”
“Pay me back for what?” he asked.
“The roofers. The contractor is here to fix the roof. He says it’s paid for.”
There was a pause. “Tell him to check the address, Mouse.” Dodd sounded impatient. “He’s got the wrong house.”
Gaby leaned against the wall. The heat, the almost sleepless night, the turbulent dreaming, had left a murky lid on her consciousness. It was hard to think. “He has the
wrong house
?”
“I don’t know anything about any roofers, Gaby.” He was irritable now. “Call me back. Give me a ring at the office when you get it straightened out.”
Gaby walked back to the front door slowly. Harrison Tigertail and another stocky, powerfully built Seminole in a coverall, his long straight black hair held with a headband, were getting more ladders out of the truck. The younger Indian eyed Gaby, and she realized for the first time she was standing barefoot in the bright sunshine, wearing only an almost transparent old cotton nightdress.
“Mr. Tigertail.” She crossed her arms over her chest and gave the younger Indian a hard look. “You have the wrong house. Nobody here has paid for any roofing repairs.”
The huge Seminole sent the younger man off with the ladder and climbed into the cab of the truck. He returned to her with what looked like an order book. “Collier house at this address.” He took out the invoice and handed it to her. “Fix roof.”
Gaby looked at the work order, telling herself she should no longer be taken by surprise by any of the bizarre events that dogged her. The paper in her hand described in matter-of-fact words the repairs needed for an extensively damaged roof at this address. The bill was charged to Santo Marin Hermanos, Incorporated, Miami, and stamped
Paid.
Harrison Tigertail waited until she’d finished reading it.
“Jimmy’s out of town,” he said with rocklike impassivity. “He won’t be back for a couple of days. But you can check it out with him when he gets back.”
Gaby told herself it was very hard not to feel that dreams, illusions, even nightmares were taking over her life. Why did she have the feeling that an ominous circle was closing about her?
Take, for instance, she thought numbly, Crissette Washington. Whose boyfriend was David Fothergill. And David had just happened to be able to find a
santera
priestess who knew Jorge Castaneda, the
babalawo.
Who in turn knew James Santo Marin well enough to have someone telephone him to come and get her. Who seemed to tie all this together in some mysterious way with a roofing contractor who knew him well enough to call him “Jimmy.”
Harrison Tigertail picked up a bucket of roofing cement in each hand and started for the side of the house.
“Don’t start work!” Gaby hurried after him through the overgrown, crimson-flowered oleander bushes, wincing in her bare feet. “James Santo Marin is paying for this, isn’t he? And not what it said on the invoice. Not his company.”
The contractor put down the buckets of cement and squatted on his heels to open one of them with a pocket knife. “I got my people on top of your house,” he said blandly. “You might as well let us go ahead and find out the extent of the damage.”
Standing over him, Gaby saw Harrison Tigertail’s hair was inky black, so fine and straight the morning breeze ruffled it like silk. “Old clay barrel tiles, aren’t they?” he asked. “Made in Cuba long time ago?”
“Yes, my grandfather had them handmade when he built this house.”
Her back was growing warm in the sun. A steamy night mist still drifted at ground level under the palm trees. All around them Florida’s tropical woodland birds sang loudly, musically. The world seemed peaceful, normal, reassuring. Gaby knew better.
“I don’t want you to do anything to this house,” she said. The big Indian looked up. “I want you to tell me how you know James Santo Marin.”
He sat back on his heels. “In ‘Nam,” he said shortly. He removed the lid from the bucket and laid it on the ground. “Jimmy flew A-Sixes, and I was his electronic surveillance systems officer.”
Gaby sat down abruptly on the unopened bucket of cement and stared at Harrison Tigertail.
“Jimmy was the best damned pilot I ever saw.” He thought that over for a long moment, then added laconically, “Still is.”
Pilot
. James Santo Marin didn’t deal in drugs. If he was the “world’s best pilot,” if he’d flown military jets in Vietnam, it was plain what he was doing now! Miami’s most eligible bachelor, the sought-after “Prince of Coral Gables,” the incomparably dashing owner of an expensive sports car, a leading-edge-technology yacht, and his own Lear jet, was no doubt one of that great army of smugglers who flew the planes that brought drugs into Florida from South America. Not actually a drug dealer, then, she thought bitterly. That was the job of others, like the Colombians.
“He’s always pushing for something, that Jimmy,” the contractor was saying, “but it’s hard to keep a good perspective here in Miami where
latino
means anything.” Harrison Tigertail paused and looked down at the cement he was stirring. “Vietnam sort of pulled everything together for Jimmy. ‘Course, we came in late the last year of the war, he was just a kid, but ‘Nam was tough, even then. When we got back to the States Jimmy knew what he wanted to do.” He carefully put the stirrer on the ground and wiped his hands. “Runs in the family, all that being idealistic and political. Castro’s still got his daddy under house arrest down in Cuba. From what I hear, the old man will die before Castro will let him go.”
Gaby had followed his words with growing dread. She didn’t really want to know anything more about James Santo Marin. He haunted her dreams. She managed to find something of him nearly everywhere.
“What’s he doing now?” she blurted. “While he’s out of town?”
He didn’t look at her. “Didn’t he tell you?”
“He—” She stopped short. The telephone call in the newsroom, threatening her with lawyers, that had put her into a tailspin and sent Jack Carty to her desk. Yes, he had said he would be out of town for a while. “You’ll just have to pack up your stuff, Mr. Tigertail.” The calmness of her voice surprised her. “I can’t let you fix my roof. I certainly wouldn’t let Mr. Santo Marin pay for it.”
He fixed his black eyes on her. “Well, honey, that’s between you’n him. But just offhand, why don’t you let Jimmy do what he wants to do?”
She stared at him.
“Wants to do?”
“Well, it’s true, Jimmy’s been with a lot of pretty girls, really beautiful women, but it’s never been anything serious, not even getting to first base, if you know what I mean. I told my wife it just seemed like Jimmy couldn’t go beyond being agreeable as all hell, and let it go at that.” He shrugged. “Course the last few years he’s just been a bunch of wires, hasn’t had much social life. I never see him relaxed no more.”
Gaby jumped up from the bucket. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Actually, I don’t even know this man. Look, I’ll write you a check,” she said, knowing her checking account was empty, “to reimburse you for your trip.”
The big man didn’t move. “You know,” he said, squinting up at her, “Jimmy’s gone around with Anglo girls before.” He paused. “But he never once got around to offering to fix their roof.”
Gaby drew herself up, indifferent to the sun shining through her nightgown. “I’m engaged to be married, Mr. Tigertail. I want you to understand that. Believe me,” she added bitterly, “Mr. Santo Marin understands it too. His message is that he doesn’t want to have anything to do with me.”