The clouds built high above the island and blotted out the gray sky to the east. The black clouds blustered about rain, and the wind shifted and the waves began to pound at the beach outside the dining room of the Café de la Paix.
Harry’s bones ached. Philippe watched him at the table. Harry drank coffee laced with rum. Once he said, “Did you miss me, kid?”
Philippe said nothing.
Philippe saw that Harry’s face was flushed with drink but that the cuts were healing. They had let him go the night before.
“When you were in prison, a man came to find you.”
“What man, little one?”
“He had red hair.”
“It was Colonel Ready.”
“Another man.”
“What kind of a man.”
“A white. Like you. And an American. He said he was your friend.”
“I don’t have any friends.” He tousled the boy’s thick hair. “Except you.”
“He went to your house.”
“He did, huh?”
“He asked me to take him there.”
“So you took him. What’d he do, bribe you?”
“You weren’t there. I thought he might be your friend.”
“I don’t have no friends, I told you that.”
“The police had been there before. I didn’t think it mattered.”
“What didn’t matter?”
“He wanted to find your notebook. I told him you were in the prison.”
“You’re a regular chatterbox, you know that?”
Philippe said nothing. It wasn’t right yet.
“They all want my notebook, Philippe. It’s the thing that keeps them going.”
“Yes.”
“Get me another bottle, will you?”
“Yes,” said the child.
Then: “Monsieur Harry?”
“What do you want?”
“I thought they might kill you.”
“So did I at the time.”
“He found the book,” said Philippe.
Harry paused. He put down the cup. He stared at the child.
“He found the notebook. In the pit in the toilette.”
“Jesus Mary and Joseph.”
“He took a net and took out the box. There was a picture of you, monsieur. And a monsieur named Hemingway.”
“Jesus Mary and Joseph.”
“The notebook was full of numbers,” said Philippe.
“Jesus Mary and Joseph, son-of-a-bitch.”
And Harry grabbed Philippe by his scrawny neck and squeezed until he felt the breath leaving the body of the boy, felt the muscles straining in the thin body against his hold.
“Who is it, you whore’s son? Who was this man that took the box, you son of a fucking whore, you black nigger bastard?”
The eyes of the child bulged.
Harry meant to kill him all right. Flaubert saw that. Flaubert was at the door of the back room and he had a cleaver and he thought for a moment if he should kill Monsieur Harry because Harry meant to kill Philippe. He stared at the tableau.
And the front door banged open in the wind.
Rita Macklin, in dark cloak, stood framed in the gray storming light.
Flaubert said, “Don’t hurt Philippe.”
“Who took my book, you little nigger brat?”
“Devereaux,” she said.
Harry Francis opened his hand and let the child breathe and Flaubert let the cleaver fall to his side and they all stared at the woman in the doorway. The wind blew into the room and the door banged on its hinge.
“Who the hell are you?”
“Devereaux took your book. And now Colonel Ready has it and Devereaux is dead,” said Rita Macklin. Her face was flushed. She had dodged her way from the Palais Gris through the shuttered town, past the army patrols, down to this place and she thought she had no strength left. She had run for no other reason than to run from the nightmare that Devereaux’s naked body was on a slab in that building, that his brain was splattered gray on a metal tray.
“Who are you?”
“I came with him. I’m a journalist. You’re Harry Francis and Colonel Ready is going to kill you and we have to get off this island.”
“Who was Devereaux, who was I to him?”
“Like you. An agent in the trade,” she said in a controlled voice that was as loud as the wind. “And he died in the trade and you’re going to die and that’s all there is. I want to escape—”
“Who told you this?”
“Yvette.”
His face blanched. She saw he thought it was true. Yvette would know. He knew about Yvette and he knew that she told the truth. She had the ring in her fist, it was the truth to her that Devereaux was dead, but her words were enough for Harry Francis.
“He took my notebook.” Slowly and sadly, Harry stood up and there were tears in his dead eyes.
And the first gendarme was in the door and he hit Rita Macklin across her back with his short baton. She stumbled and he took her by the hair and hit her again, and the pain fell in folds down her back.
“Allons,” he said to her and pulled her and the second one was in the door with handcuffs. Harry Francis took a step forward. The first policeman hit him in the ribs. Harry grunted. He swung again and Harry went down to one knee. He swung again and Harry cried out. And the third one was in the door and he did not know who to hit so he hit Flaubert because Flaubert had the cleaver in his hand. The cleaver fell on the floor. Philippe screamed and the third one hit him with the baton and Philippe was knocked out. Flaubert said nothing and tried to stand still and the third gendarme hit him again because he was standing still and doing nothing. The first one hit Harry Francis across the back twice and the second one pulled at the handcuffs so that Rita’s arms felt numb and her footing was bad and she slipped and the second one hit her again.
Harry said, “You bastards.”
The first policeman grinned and said, in French, that he would probably be back to arrest Harry later but that all they wanted now was the white woman.
They shoved Rita into the open Jeep. The rain washed down the seats and one of the policemen held her because she could not keep her balance in the open Jeep. The Jeep turned sharply around and headed north back four miles to the center of St. Michel town and then up to the Palais Gris, where the prison and the morgue were in the basement.
Philippe groaned, rose, ran to the door, stumbled, held the jamb, watched the Jeep.
He turned to Harry Francis and he said, “I’m glad they have the notebook. Because now they will kill you, too, along with that woman.”