The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [207]
The well-dressed bank manager bowed to her but didn’t answer. Instead he read from the sheet of bank stationery he carried. “En primer lugar. El Rey del…?”
Dan turned to her. “He’s asking you for the king of something.”
Immediately Annie heard her father’s voice, softly like a far-away echo, when he’d called her last night and then she’d seen him shimmery in the ghost light by the pool in Key West. “King Queen Sam,” he’d told her then. “King Queen Sam. King Queen Sam.”
She smiled solemnly at Ramirez. “I understand. My father’s first question is, ‘The King of the what?’ The answer is ‘Sky.’ The King of the Sky.”
Dan said to the banker, “El rey del cielo.”
The slim man nodded, checking the answer against his paper. “Sí, gracias, sí. King of the Sky. Y, en segundo lugar. Y,…del Mar?”
“He’s asking for the something of the sea,” Dan said.
Annie had anticipated the question. The King of the Sky, the Queen of the Sea, her lost father, her lost mother. “Queen,” she told Señor Ramirez. “La Reina Coronada del Mar. The Queen of the Sea.” She looked over to the two FBI agents, who were pretending they weren’t watching her. Somehow she began to think, perhaps irrationally, that her father’s life, not just his jail sentence—but his life depended on her correctly answering these questions. She could feel her heart quickening, pulsing in her neck. Would Feliz Diaz take revenge for the poker debt, for the statue scam, by killing her dad? Would the government just let that happen? Or would the government itself get rid of him, because of his knowledge of the photograph, if Annie failed to provide what was wanted? Could she make Fierson believe there was no further threat?
“Annie,” Dan urged her, “One more question to answer.”
Ramirez closed his sheet of paper and smiled with an ironic shrug at her as if the third question were useless. “¿Y, por último, cuál es el nombre de su madre?”
Annie was startled. She frowned at Dan. “Did he just ask me for the name of my mother?”
“Yes.”
Heart thudding now, Annie hesitated. Was this a trick of her father’s? Perhaps she was supposed to say, “Claudette Colbert.” Or give one of the other false names he’d offered her? But which one? She didn’t know the name of her mother. Wasn’t that what this whole journey had been about? Wasn’t it to find the name of her mother that she’d come after him all this way? She didn’t speak.
“Annie?” asked Dan, scowling. “Your mother’s name?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
“What?”
She heard her father’s voice’s again, “King Queen Sam. King Queen Sam.”
Her father was telling her the truth.
She smiled the radiant smile she’d given Sam when she’d taken her first steps into her arms. “Sam,” she told the manager, so softly that he leaned toward her inquisitively. “The name of my mother is Sam.”
“Sam?” asked Dan, puzzled.
She nodded. “S-a-m. Samantha. Sam. Samantha Anne Peregrine.”
Teofilo Ramirez was unable not to smile back at her. “Sam, sí. That is correct. Gracias.”
Dan hugged Annie. “That’s all three.”
With a bow, Mr. Ramirez held out the navy-blue lettered bank pouch. When Annie didn’t seem to see him, he gave it to Dan. “Gracias. Adios. Buenas vacaciones.” With a surprising quickness, he walked away and vanished behind the iron rail.
“Beautiful,” Dan put his arm around Annie, who was breathing hard, fighting off exasperating tears that made it hard to see. “You okay? You did great.” He handed her the dark-blue pouch. “Sam, huh? I thought she was gay.” He spoke in a nonchalant way, gently wiping her eyes with his fingers. “Okay, they’re watching us. Take your look in the pouch. Make it easy going.”
Dan kept talking casually to her until she took a deep breath and took a look inside the pouch, checking through the contents. “Got it,” she said quietly. She zipped up the pouch. “Ready?”
“Yep. Now we hand the pouch over to Mr. Fred Owen as instructed.”
They strolled toward the bank doors and through them and into the sun-bright street, followed by the two agents. Outside the door, Willie, breathing hard, passed by, bumping them. The younger man in the