Straits of Fortune - Anthony Gagliano [81]
“Hurry up,” I said. “This place has a bad feel to it.”
Vivian, still carrying her shoes by their skinny straps, darted to the bed, grabbed the teddy bear as though it were a delinquent child, and began twisting its small, brown, disbelieving head. I watched in amazement as she unscrewed the head and tossed it onto the floor next to her shoes. Then she got the decapitated bear by its leg and shook it over the white quilt.
Something that looked like a gray seedpod fell out and bounced on the quilt. It was one of those extremely compact, extremely portable minidrives with a USB connector at one end. Vivian reached down to pick it up, but I was faster and scooped it up before she could grab it. I checked it out for a second, then put it in my pocket.
“I’ll hold on to this, if you don’t mind. Nice trick,” I said. “The bear, I mean.”
“My mother gave it to me. I used to keep pot in it when I was a kid.”
“Put the head back on, and let’s get out of here,” I said. “No need for anyone to know we were here.”
We were halfway down the stairs when I heard the sound of tires crunching on the white gravel that bordered the drive. A moment later there was the sound of a car door slamming shut. Vivian froze on the steps behind me. I looked back at her. Her eyes were bright with fear.
“Who?” she asked. “Williams…?”
“Maybe. Come on,” I said. “Out the back.”
The doorbell rang just as we hit the first floor. We ran along the hall that led back to the pool, Vivian’s bare feet padding away on the marble tiles. We sprinted past the Colonel’s failed Japanese garden and headed out toward the back of the garage where I had parked. There was a space between the mansion and the garage that looked out toward the driveway. I peeked around the corner. Only a fraction of the driveway was visible, but the space was wide enough for me to spot the rear end of a black sedan. In a way I was relieved.
“It’s not Williams,” I said. “It’s the cops.”
“Now what?” Vivian demanded desperately.
“We can’t take the car. They’ll nail us before we hit the causeway.” I looked back over my shoulder at the ripple-free expanse of the ocean behind us. Then I saw the seawall. It went beyond the house and disappeared from view behind a blockade of hedges.
“Where’s that seawall go?” I asked.
“Not far. We share it with the neighbor next door, about three lots away.”
“All right. That’s it, then.”
We ran down to where the seawall stood futile guard against the ocean. One good-size hurricane and the Colonel’s glass house would be an aquarium. The cement wall, four feet high and two feet wide, made about as much sense as the stunted bonsai trees, but for now it was our only road out.
I helped Vivian onto the seawall, then climbed up after her. The hedges at the end of the Colonel’s property were backed up by a wrought-iron fence that extended to the edge of the wall. The hedges were too wide to step around, so the only way to the lot next door would be to grab hold of one of the bars with my left hand. I could do it easily enough, but I wasn’t sure about Vivian. I told her to stand as close to me as possible, then pressed the left side of my body as far into the hedges as I could. I reached out with my left hand and grasped a single rusty iron bar. With my right arm, I took Vivian by her waist. The plan was to swing out and around the fence to the vacant lot next door.
I stretched out my left leg as far as it would go and told Vivian to grab me around the neck. I felt her arms trembling against my chest.
“Are you sure you can do this?” she asked.
“Hold on.”
I braced myself, measuring my strength. Vivian weighed about 110, and I would have to support her weight as we swung out over the ocean.
“Why don’t we just give ourselves up?” she asked plaintively.
“Not yet.”
I tightened the muscles in my left leg and pushed off with my right leg extended about forty-five degrees, like the pencil end of a compass, as it swung out over the water. Vivian’s weight added to the swing’s momentum. We did a complete 180-degree turn around