THEY GOT BACK to the palazzo around eleven thirty. I hadn’t been able to sleep, despite a glass of warm milk, and lay in bed staring at the ceiling. They didn’t speak, at least not once they entered the front door, and I heard two sets of footsteps echoing down the halls, each in their separate wing. I was glad of that. Somehow I had imagined Bill making a move tonight, him dressed all dapper and showing off his connections at the palace. If he had played his pawn, or knight, or wherever he was in his game, he had not yet won anything. Lena’s footsteps passed by my door, not pausing. I wished there were more wings in this place, so she wasn’t so close to me. I’d grown used to my privacy. But between her refusal to be near Bill, and his wish to keep her distant from Hughes, even the palazzo was challenged to accommodate all these social quandaries.
I was disturbed that Bill had taken such an interest in Hughes. Drying him out and involving him in our plans. Even Lena seemed ill at ease about him. I wasn’t sure he could be trusted. What had he done that Bill and Lena would not tell me? And was he really cured of his addiction? If not, he would have no moral compass and could sell out any one of us. Not everyone was like Bill, able to give up their drugs once and for all, like discarding a toy after childhood ended.
Bill was usually good at reading people. It was his gift, like a lion senses weakness in a herd of prey. He knew who would do what and why. But was his judgment clouded? Succeeding at this job for the mysterious Miss Maggie was clearly important to him, and he was involving Link for practical reasons. Lena could not be on the radio twenty-four hours a day. Bill might be so focused on this scheme that he failed to see it was not a good idea to throw Lena and Link together in a shared project. God knows Bill could be overconfident about his own charms. I guessed I had to trust him. He’d never been wrong about anyone before—except me. I had betrayed him for Lena. Link might do the same. Maybe Bill was the one in danger.
Given the choice of who to protect, I’d certainly choose Bill over Link. Except when I had hated Bill, when he was in the depths of his addiction, he had been the best friend I’d ever had.
I flopped over onto my side, plumped the pillow, and shoved the sheet down to my waist. It was hot and uncomfortable in my room tonight. Sometimes I wished I had just stayed in Sequim. It was nice and cool there, and while it had been boring I had no worries. Running my saloon, I’d been a big fish in a small pond where there were never any sharks. In the tropics there were dangers everywhere, it seemed.
AT BREAKFAST THERE were three place settings in the conservatory, with three eggs, three toasts, and three guavas. Bill was already sitting down, looking chipper, when I joined him. Lena came down a few minutes later, rubbing her eyes. She grabbed her chair and set it away from us, behind some potted orchids. She came back for her plate and cutlery, and returned to her chair to eat alone in silence.
“Last night was excellent, By God,” Bill said, loud enough for Lena to hear. “We eyeballed the Nazi and saw the layout of the palace. We’re going to stop this bastard from killing the king. That’s what they call Wet Affairs in this business. I don’t know why. Maybe because everything ends in blood? These Harvard boys puzzle me. Just call a spade a spade.”
I spilled some coffee on my lap. Everything ends in blood? Lena should not be involved in this. Even in our bank robber days, killing someone had been incidental and unfortunate, and certainly not planned out in advance.
“All we need now is to find out the date.” He raised his voice. “Lena, get on your radio voodoo. Me, I’ll tap my networks. You know, By God, my idea of a criminal has expanded since the old days. They’re in all walks of life. The most crooked fuckers are in police, in government, what have you.” He took a sip from his glass and smacked his lips. “Do you like this juice?”
I looked at the green liquid dubiously. I hadn’t tried mine yet. “What is it?”
“Avocado.”
“How do you squeeze an avocado? They’re not juicy.”
“Squeeze anything hard enough, you can crush it,” Bill said.
“Is that one of his mottos?” Lena said from across the room.
“No, Lena. I say a thing, I mean it for what it is. I’m speaking of this here avocado. Wouldn’t life be easier if we were all like that?”
“Byron, please pass the coffee,” she said, and I carried the silver pot to her. I hesitated, then poured it into her cup, thinking Bill would not like me to leave the coffee on her table. He usually had at least two cups.
Lena gave a little cry as something hit the glass wall of the conservatory and dropped to the ground. “Is it dead?” she asked. I rushed over and found a little bird lying still behind a potted palm. Bill stepped in front of me and wrapped it in his white linen napkin.
“I feel its heart beating,” he said. “It just needs to rest a minute in the dark.” He cradled it to his chest and Lena returned to her eating, staring intently at her plate. Her knife scraped the porcelain as she cut her toast.
“Check if there’s a message on its leg,” she said.
I thought she must be joking, but Bill took her request seriously. He opened the napkin and shook his head, no. A minute later he released the bird, tossing it like a magician from the white cloth. It flew off in a dash of blue and yellow, out the open door it had come in. “Sunbird,” he said. “They like the nectar from my flowers. I’ll have Dass keep that door closed.”
Bill returned to his seat, grumbling that his egg was cold now.
“Speaking of closed doors,” Lena said. “Byron, I’ve noticed that Link never comes out of his room. Is he a prisoner?”
“Prisoner?” I looked sideways at Bill. “No.” Bill did have some strange hold on him, but I didn’t know how.
“He’s just keen on his radio work,” Bill said. “I’m curious. Was he as good at it as you? That is, before he became a traitor.”
I was dying to ask what he’d done, but the atmosphere was more than strained. Maybe I could get Bill to tell me sometime when Lena wasn’t around.
“I want to see him today,” she said.
“Take her up there, By God. But only for ten minutes. He needs to keep on that radio.”
I STOOD AT the door awkwardly, peering inside as Lena went into Hughes’ room. I was always some goddamn third wheel. Hughes was sitting and staring into space. The radio was turned on, but only loud static hissed out of the speakers.
“Should you try another frequency?” Lena said, in a voice so gentle I hardly recognized it as hers.
“Right,” he said, shaking himself from his daze and reaching for the dial.
Seeing the distress on Lena’s face, I withdrew to my room to give them some privacy. I sat at my desk, making origami cranes from old ledger papers with the numbers crossed out. I made a lot of mistakes when I first started the valuation of Bill’s goods.
The next thing I knew, Lena was knocking hesitantly on my door, but from my clock I saw that twenty minutes had passed. I hoped Bill wouldn’t be sore at me for letting her overstay the time. I told her to come on in, shoving the cranes into a drawer.
“May I?” she asked, gesturing at the leather club chair beside my desk. I nodded and she sat down.
“I need your help.”
“With what?”
“Link intends to kill the Nazi.”
I quirked an eyebrow, thinking uncharitably, and why would I care about that? But Lena attributed some Christian concern to me and grabbed my hand. “We can’t let him do it. It’s a death wish. Bill will take advantage of it because Miss Maggie’s orders are to kill the Nazi. How nice for him, not to get his hands dirty. But if Link dies it would be my fault.”
“How would it be your fault?”
“Oh Byron, I can’t stand to tell you what I did.” She buried her head in her arms on the desk. The breeze of her collapse ruffled the wings of a paper crane I’d failed to corral, and I swept it into the drawer with the others. “But the short story is, it was because of me he was sent to Burma.”
“He must have done something himself, surely? Bill hinted at something.”
“He made a mistake. He’s paid for it and then some. But he said he’s got nothing to live for.” Her voice had been muffled in her arms, but then she stared up at me and spoke clearly. “I’m going with him. I’ll try to protect him. I got some special training in the war.”
“But von Roth was SS. It’s too dangerous.”
“Well, I’m going.”
The expression in her granite green eyes left no room for doubt. Why was she willing to risk death for that man? I didn’t know what had been between them before, but Bill was right—Hughes didn’t love her now. I doubted he would love anyone again. He was already dead, you just had to look at his eyes to know it. She should let him do what he had to do. It might at least bring him peace.
Had anyone ever been ready to die for me? I doubted it. Rachel, the girl in Sequim who had wanted to marry me, was already married to someone else, so clearly I was not the be all and end all to her. Life was nothing more than a series of letdowns.
“Can I be your driver?”
She jumped up and hugged me. “Thank you,” she said, and she was so close to me that the words caressed my cheek. I had to fight the urge to put my hand there.