The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [114]
He shook his head firmly. “Ruthie Nickerson? Not possible.”
“She just looked so familiar. This woman drove up with a gray-haired man in a Mercedes. It was like they were headed inside here, then all of a sudden they turned around and drove off.”
On his elbows, her father pulled himself up even higher and tried to look out the small window. “Who drove off?”
“Raffy knew them. He said the man was Feliz Diaz.”
Urgently, Jack called out in a louder voice than she’d heard him use before. “Raffy! Raffy!”
The Cuban quickly slipped back inside the room, sliding the door closed. “Keep your voice down!”
“Diaz was here and you didn’t tell me?”
Raffy gently pressed Jack’s shoulders back on the pillow. “I took care of it, Jack. I didn’t want you to worry. He’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
Raffy stroked his friend’s arm. “It was really clever. I take Annie’s phone. I quick call the driver—I know him from the band days, good cornet player—and I tell him to get Diaz on the phone pronto pronto. He does and I tell Diaz it’s me and I’ve got the Queen for him.” Raffy nodded proudly. “That’s right. I tell Diaz you’re hiding out on the Keys but I know where you left the Queen. I tell him I’ll sell you out for fifteen grand, cash. I made it a big number. I say I’m at the Hyatt in West Palm and that’s where the Queen is and if he brings me the cash tonight at eight, I’ll give the statue to him. He bought it 300 percent. He thinks he got a bum steer, whoever told him you were staying at Golden Days. So he drives off and never knows you’re here. Pretty smart, huh?”
Annie could see thoughts move in Jack’s eyes, looking for angles. He tapped his friend’s arm. “Yes, very smart. Until eight o’clock when you won’t be at the Hyatt.” He wondered aloud who’d told Diaz he was hiding here at Golden Days.
Raffy hunched his shoulders. The birds on his shirt hunched too. “I do not know the answer to that question. But you don’t have to worry. I said some rats were spreading the rumor. I said I’d tried to make you stay here at Golden Days, but you’d refused; I said you’d told me you’d rather die on the side of the road.”
Jack made a rueful face. “That much is true. Okay, thanks, Raffy. Very smart.”
The Cuban slipped back out through the door.
With a clumsy movement of his bandaged hand, Jack pulled out a small old-fashioned-looking pack of Chesterfields from under the sheet. The effort appeared to exhaust him and he made no attempt to light the cigarette.
She studied him a while. “Why don’t you give yourself up and sort this thing out before somebody does kill you. If you’ve actually got a relic that belongs to Cuba, give it to the police. Get yourself in a good hospital and for God’s sake, stop smoking. I can’t believe they even still sell those things.”
“Oh, darlin’, they sell anything somebody wants and somebody wants everything.” Her father pressed his bandaged hands together as if they were shackled. “I can’t be locked up again, not even overnight. I really can’t. So I was, well, damn grateful to Sam and Brad for getting me to Miami. Me and a whole cargo of express smoked salmon.”
Ruefully Annie shrugged at this confirmation that Sam and Brad had arranged to fly her father out of St. Louis. “Sam’s fond of Brad.”
“You’re not?” he asked.
Unaware, she rubbed at her unadorned ring finger. “We’re getting a divorce.”
He looked saddened. “I’m sorry.”
She crossed her arms. “You can love somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”
He smiled. “Who else is there?”
Abruptly she asked him if he’d ever been married to her mother. And by the way, where was her mother?
His cough sounded real. He seemed unable to stop. “Never married, no clue where she is.” The sharp relentless coughing doubled him over.
“Is this cancer operable?” She wondered why there was no medical chart attached to the foot of the bed.
“Nope. But stranger things have happened. Than my dying, I mean.”
By now Annie had had time to collect herself. Her face was calm, her voice level. “I only came