CHAPTER 7

 

 

Since the Ruff rural property was also an ad hoc private wildlife reserve, and  included endangered birds, Roxie and Spence had designed a cat veranda behind his house on the compound.  It was already near completion. With Hank and Richie pitching in, the Cat House was finished in two days.  Sturdy fencing protected the wild birds but the cats could still stalk them.  Adding live plants including a kitty-herb snack bar, driftwood catwalks, hideaway boxes and an easily-cleaned cat loo made the big airy space as appealing as it was safe.  Snakes were excluded near ground level by a curved overhanging plastic fender extending from the base wall.  A broad gutter edging the roof discouraged serpents’ slithering in from up there.

 

Glad for some time to spend on their own lives – and romances – the bodyguards briefed replacements and took off.  Come wedding week they would return to duty.

Roxana was bombarded by demands for interviews regarding her childhood abduction. She declined all.  “It’s ancient history, and the details are nobody’s business, outside of law enforcement.”

 

“Are you sure?”  Spencer’s secretary hung up after what seemed the hundredth phone call, this one from an Australian TV chat show.  “One good blurt might do the trick.”

 

“I doubt that.  There are so many of them, all determined to squeeze one more tear, one more detail out of you...they’re tireless, relentless scavengers.”

 

Spence nodded.  “True.  But starving them just makes them hungrier.  And meaner. As Ulysses S. Grant famously advised, ‘it’s better to have your enemies inside your tent pissing out, than outside pissing in.’”

 

Laughing, Roxie demurred, “I’m not going to be another weeping Wilma reliving childhood trauma for the cameras.  And remember, our tent is protected by a palisade –  the family law firm.”

 

And in fact, that firm was busy with a rank selection of proven pissers.  Roxana’s doctor Helen Gifford and other hospital personnel in Austin filed a joint defamation lawsuit against Drake’s magazine’s publishers.  As was asserted in legal lingo, Drake’s persistence in his abortion story contradicted the information submitted on pertinent  medical and medical-insurance forms.  Those forms were signed under oath that their contents were true, on penalty of fraud and perjury charges if untrue.  Hence, all medical personnel who had signed Roxie’s medical forms had been publicly accused by Drake of perjury and fraud when he contradicted the statements they swore to as true.  As Roxie also had signed treatment and medical-insurance forms under oath, she had also been accused of perjury and fraud.  A novel but devastating  approach.

 

Drake’s memory was tersely cursed anew in the offices of Sunday Scenes and Sounds.

 

Still, the defamation derby hadn’t run its course.

 

Some tabloids tried to keep Ruff - Drake death-connection rumors afloat, but they sank.  The more spectacular ones evoked laughter from law enforcement but still polluted the airwaves.

 

The media focus on Ruff as “prime suspect” had provided some cover for the FBI probe of the pedophile activities of Drake, Dickie Kane and George Jericho.  The latter had vanished.  Dickie was questioned at length but denied knowledge of Drake’s predilections and fate – and of George Jericho.  (Kane had confidence in the club’s web masters.  They had eluded exposure for years.  And with Drake dead and his computer destroyed, what proof could investigators find?)

 

Sugarman languished in jail.  Expecting release within hours of his booking, he gradually realized that the charge he described as “obstructing justice by withholding evidence of an attempt to kidnap and battery of a child, which I didn’t know happened because it’s not what happened,” was not going away cheaply or easily, however absurd it seemed to Reggie.  And network honchos didn’t rush to spring him. Ratings were boosted by his predicament and resulting call-in discussions of paparazzi antics and California kidnap laws.  Reggie was decreasingly pleased by his role of media martyr.  He fumed at  “this abuse of freedom of the press.”  The affront was a tired topic, though, before he got back on the air.  It wasn’t until days after little Dave’s dad had returned him Down Under that Reggie’s boss forked out his bail.

 

Cal Donald went unquestioned.  The only photo of Cal anyone could find was on a twelve-year-old passport.  Spence Ruff was apparently not pressing charges since there was no one to press them on.

 

When Cal slipped back into L.A. he no longer resembled that old passport portrait.  He had shaved off his beard, cut and beached his hair and bought a slick pair of green-tinted shades.  Assuming surveillance of his Redondo Beach bungalow, he checked in to the Four Seasons Beverly Hills Hotel.  Aimée Imhoff had fattened his bank account with another shipment of cash from her stash.  Neither his true name nor hers was on the account.  But Cal cringed every time he used his alias.  Too transparent to anyone with a devious brain.  Aimée considered herself devious, but she flattered herself.  Anagrams were for aging minds.

 

As for early flak aimed at Spencer’s presumed marriage to Roxana, it began with the Gordieva rumor, then branched out to Antoine and his “bigamous extra wife”– still unnamed but pictured incongruously in a sparkly G-string and pasties, vowing to “track him down in Australia and demand the alimony he owes me.”  Peony was said to be “packing a knife to gut that bitch with if she comes near my husband!”  Speculation twigged off from that limb regarding what “diabolical Voodoo witchcraft Peony is working against her busty stripper rival.”  The generic stripper was then photographed with “juju bags” hung on a gold chain and resting provocatively between her frightening implants. 

Doorstepped and presented with this picture, Peony asked the camera lens, “Does she have to buy an extra seat for those, I wonder?  If the plane loses pressure, will they explode?”

 

“Can you do a spell for that?” a reporter called out.

 

“I never would.  Innocent passengers might drown in all that silicone.”

 

~*~

 

Ruffrox wedding plans were secretly and swiftly coming together.  Reservations were made at a remote resort complex east of Australia, an atoll with a small lagoon (one of many remnants of an ancient continent that had drifted free some 250 million years ago, now known as New Caledonia).  The little arc of thirteen pine-strewn fragments was called Isles de la Vie.  Its rugged main island bore the grim name Cimitière.  But for the wedding there was a smaller islet – complete with a little white-sand beach and a rectangular hill – named Lit Vert.

 

“Green bed?  How’d it get that name?”

 

“From the air,” the resort rep explained, “It looks like a giant bed with two fat pillows and a green duvet.”

 

“Perfect!”

 

Just eighty meters from Lit Vert was a pair of cute islets, one in a mini-bay of the other, known as La Mère et L’Enfant.  That, Spence was told, was “the most private spot on Earth, the furthest seaward.  No one goes there because there is no beach, only sharp rocks, but the reef is very lively there, lots of fish to look at if you bring snorkels.”

 

Lit Vert offered twelve cabins with two bedrooms apiece.  These were nestled among the trees and ferns above the strip of gleaming beach.

 

In her invitations Roxie warned, “We’ll be roughing (and Ruffing) it, so forget your hairdo since the nearest salon is a long windy boat trip away.  And bring reef shoes, tee-shirts, swim suits, snorkeling gear and sunscreen.  We’ll be as close to a camera-free environment as possible, so if your makeup kit ends up in Lost Luggage, who cares!”

 

W-cubed and Muriel, who had spent some party-hearty time in Noumea with Spence years ago, immediately emailed their RSVP.  Wayne also passed along his aunt’s report on Helmut.

 

“He’s becoming a legend in his own time, very popular with ladies lost en route from the bar to their cabins.  Humpin’ Helmut on the Hounding Main!”

 

Spencer laughed.  “Helmut der Root Meister,” he typed back, “Friggin’ in the riggin’.”

 

 Roxie pinched his okole.  He yelped.  “Hey, I have to sit on that!”

 

She giggled.  “I can’t help it, I’m Italian. We’re born with forefingers and thumbs like lobster claws.”

 

 “Yeah, weapons of ass destruction!”

 

“Oh, that’s witty, awesome even.”

 

“ I’ll show you awesome, Lobster Girl!”  Spence heaved her over his shoulder and charged in to their bedroom.

 

~*~

 

A bit apprehensively, Lesley broached the subject of religion: who would marry them, in what kind of service?

 

Roxie smiled at her polite concern.  “A priest is a priest.  I don’t care what sect.  Whatever god or gods exist, it or they don’t change according to how they’re named or the dogmas of different religions.  Whatever type of service Spence wants is fine with me.  My family is open about it all. So don’t worry.  But if a large snake attends, don’t try to kill it –  that’s Damballah.”

 

As Katya appropriated the senior Ruffs for grandparents, Roxie’s eyes kept going moist.

 

“They’ll spoil her,” Spence warned.

 

“No, only the parents can ruin a child with indulgence.  From parents the child learns discipline, from the outside.  Then when the grandpapa and grandmama indulge the child, and she thinks ‘but they shouldn’t let me do that’ she has her first encounter with self discipline.”  It went without saying that new grandparents living close-by were a blessing poignant to Roxie who sorely missed her parents.

 

~*~

 

Jozey Markswell joined Alvin Claddon in his hotel room for an intimate supper.  The room was alive with music.  Frowning, Jozey recognized the complex compas beat.  But these drums, accompanied by chanters, guitars and some kind of flute, were friendlier, she thought, swaying and turning.  She found herself dancing and Al joined her.

 

Jozey had met Al when he’d dropped by her office that morning.  He had some great candid shots for her site.  They got along well.  Al found Jozey’s acid tongue amusing.  He found her intriguing in other ways as well.  The way she wriggled with excitement as they dished dirt was rather arousing, seen through a haze of gin.  She was on the rebound, appreciated  his interest in her work and recent marital misfortune, and by cocktail hour’s third round, responsive to his come-on.  He was her type: neat and conventionally dressed, shorn and shaven, blonde, slim and straight.  While they were unremarkable, his facial features were regular and pleasant enough.  And his travel tales charmed her.  Made her want to use her long-neglected passport.

 

And he danced better than she’d expected.  They did a makeshift samba.

 

“What’s this music?”

 

“Haitian, Boukman Eksperyans,” Al said.  “Lady I met in the lift gave it to me.  Don’t know why.  Like it?”

 

Jozey had stiffened, but with a deep sigh she relaxed.   “Oh, hell, I might as well.  What did the woman look like?”

 

“Blonde, big braid of hair, tall, Amazonian in fact, impressive sort.”

 

“Purple dress?”

 

“Long purple shawl, or maybe it was a dress.  You know her?”

 

“I’ve seen her around.”

 

“Don’t know the language – it’s got French in it, sort of pidgin French, I suppose.”

 

Jozey samba-stepped over to the CD player, picked up the jewel case and took out the liner notes.   “This cut is ‘We’re Here.’  ‘...Se pou nou ke nou la, Fo pwofet-yo nou la, Se vwe nou la.  Nap prye, nap veye, Pou timoun-yo-nou la.  Pou-yo change.  Foi ke nou veye, nou veye...’  Yeah, you can kind of hear the French.”

 

“What’s that mean?  What are they singing?”

 

Jozey squinted at the tiny print again.  “‘We’ll tell them we’re here.  False prophets, we’re here.  It’s true, we’re here.  We’re praying, we’re watching out for the children.  We’re here for them to change.  We have to watch out, we’re watching...’”

 

Now it was Alvin who went rigid.  His sudden solemnity evoked Jozey’s native nosiness. “Do you have kids?”

 

“Ah...no.  No kids.  Never married.  Odd lyrics, those.”  Al punched off the CD and replaced it with music to dine by.  “Let’s order, shall we?  Finish your drink, we’ll get champagne.”

 

Feeling desirable and racy, Jozey stayed overnight.  She awoke hungry and energetic for the first time in what seemed ages.

 

They saw each other every day.  As they explored each other’s grudges the defamation diva in Jozey rallied.  They discovered a mutual malevolence towards Spencer Ruff.

 

“And that ditsy wop diva of his!  Voice of an angel but taste of a street whore.”  Jozey groaned in mock dismay.  “When his wife died we all pretended we cared.  But we couldn’t wait to see which bimbos he’d chase and which ones would reject him, and which ones he’d get – who had taste that...that crude!  It was unpredictable.  Always has been with him, the ones we thought were so classy until they showed us how abysmal their standards really are!  Even Janie Fletcher, her I.Q. is about equal to his weight, but when she showed up with him, I knew what an actress she really is.  I still believe her child is his: she used him for stud; but at least she had the sense not to marry him.  And then when he had that on-location romance with Bonnie Beaton, while her husband snuck off to the Playboy Mansion every night.  They were supposed to be the Perfect Hollywood Couple!  So she dumps him for that...that wombat.  And hubby gets revenge banging bunnies.”  Jozey was squirming with enthusiasm, savoring her bile.

 

Al gazed at her, curious.  He was nobody’s fan, particularly not a fan of Spencer and his famous fists. But Jozey’s vitriol was remarkable to Al.  For him a job was a job, you did it for the filthy lucre, it was all about ‘the Benjamins.’  He inquired, “Which bitches rejected our wombat?  Any names I’d know?”

 

At the moment Jozey couldn’t think of one.

 

The two concurred on the need to damage Ruffrox, taint their romance, waylay the wombat’s wedding, or at least crash it.  Why not collaborate on an Antipodean caper?  Alvin Claddon had saved up leave days for nine years, he told Jozey, so why not spend it Down Under?  Jozey had a vacation due, too.  With their snooping skills they could sleuth and bribe their way in to that wedding.  Better yet, haunt that honeymoon.

 

Al volunteered to “duck down there and reconnoiter.  They don’t know what I look like.  And I  know we can sell whatever we get; we’ll have a joint scoop.   The word’s out, they’re sneaking off to some place remote.  Leaving the kids behind, maybe.  I’ll find out.  You prepare to hop a plane at a moment’s notice.”

 

“Oh, they’ll lug those brats along, don’t worry.  They don’t dare leave them behind. They know they’re one mistake away from a Child Services intervention.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Why not?”  She sneered.  “If we say they’re lousy parents, they are.  One tumble in front of a camera, we make it ricochet in to multiple incidents of neglect and negligence.”

 

Jozey counted the sick days and vacation due her.  She had twelve days’ worth.

 

After eight days Al flew to Australia., and Jozey waited to hear from him.

 

~*~

 

Members of the D’Orsini clan and Roxie’s Gordieva in-laws came down before the other foreign guests.  They wanted time to tour as well as get to know the Ruffs.

 

When Spencer went to the airport to collect the Gordieva party an observant paparazzo at the Ruffs’ gate relayed an alert to a partner assigned to the airport.  By sheer luck, that pest spied Spence in a parking lot near the international terminal complex, conferring with a group of adults he didn’t recognize.  He had no images of any Gordievas.  Scampering from his car to the one Spence stood beside, he heard scraps of conversation not about the wedding, but about the electric car.  He assumed Spence had been surrounded by curious fans and was using the opportunity to advertise his new Green Ride.  The day’s only flight from Russia wasn’t due for some ninety minutes.  The pap didn’t know the family had flown in from New York.

 

Steeling himself, he approached.  “Hey, Ruff!  When do her in-laws get here?  The last ones, I mean, the Gurdeevas?”

 

“The ‘Gurdeevas?’  Never heard of them.”

 

“Okay, so I mispronounced it.  Are they going to leave with Katya?  How are you going to stop them?  Have they filed their law suit yet?  Seeing as they’re world-class lawyers, how are you going to beat them?”

 

Staring at the intruder as if he were a slug devouring her vegetable garden, Nina  Gordieva spoke, her tone frosty as a Siberian winter.  “There is no such law suit.”

 

“Okay, restraining order – whatever.  Our sources say they’re coming armed with big legal guns and if you two get hitched they’ll blast you with every damn thing you ever did, and that’s a whole hell of a lot of crap!  So how are –”

 

“I’m telling you, you shaschlik, that the Gordieva family is here to attend the wedding, not stop it, and they approve whole-heartedly.  Who is this ‘source’ of yours?”

 

“Who is your source?”

 

“Idiot!  We are our source.  We are the Gordievas.”

 

Idiot’s face changed expressions several times before he could phrase another query.  But the group slid in to the Green Ride and nearly drove over his toes as he recorded their departure in pictures.

 

~*~

 

Air Caledonia flew resort guests to an island halfway to the Isles de la Vie.  From there, one had a choice of two chartered small prop planes or three large catamarans for the rest of the journey.  Once on Cimitière one found an assortment of sail and motor boats for hire.

 

But not, this week, to the secret venue of the Ruffrox wedding.  No one would even acknowledge it – this was quickly apparent to anyone not on the invitation list.

 

On Cimitière Alvin Claddon met John Richards.  Richards was already a fixture at the one real hotel’s bar.  Glumly John apprised Al of the situation.

 

“I’ve begged and threatened and shoved bank notes at every snotty plane pilot, and every smelly boat skipper.  Not one is willing to take me to Ruffrox’s rented rock.  They just smile and act like they don’t know what I’m talking about, and then suggest I go catch fish. Can’t get a word out of them.”

 

Spence and Roxie had paid them well to preserve their privacy.

 

Spencer’s “bounty system” was simple, if expensive.  He’d hired a friend to print clear, labeled copies of pictures of the more aggressive paps and gossips who might converge on the archipelago.  These were sleeved into small albums.

 

Another reliable mate had made the rounds of the resort’s harbors.  Along with the rogues’ gallery albums, he handed out copies of Spence on video, and cell phones with video-cams to any conveyor without one.  Such phones were already popular purchases even out here, due to the exclusive clientele.

 

“We’ll pay you for every one of these blisters you refuse to transport to the wedding island,” Spencer’s video image proposed.  “Double for any of them you can maroon on another island until we’ve gone home.  Or just sail out in the wrong direction and get lost with.  We’ll make it worth your while, and if you keep whatever bribe they give you, well, that’s your business.  All you need to show us is a video clip of their attempt to hire you.”

 

Both private-plane pilots, more numerous boat skippers and one adventurous hot-air-balloon jockey who gave aerial tours on calm days accepted the ad-hoc contract.  It became a point of pride that they would keep this wedding under wraps – under the verdant duvet of Lit Vert.

 

By the time Richards and Claddon got to Cimitière, Spence and Roxie were already in residence on Lit Vert.  They would have four days to themselves.  This pre-wedding honeymoon was another privacy stratagem.  The lovers assumed that spies would be watching for families and friends to leave the Ruff compound en masse, assuming the couple would travel with them.  The bulk of their luggage would.  But they had slipped off with unsuspicious-looking rucksacks in a fast yacht after an unremarkable afternoon of shopping, then drinks at a yacht harbor’s members-only boite with two of Spence’s old school chums.  The boat had left them near the airport, where a car picked them up en route to the Air Caledonia gate.  Posted outside the compound, most of the press pests were marking arrivals.  Not expecting a sneak departure.

 

~*~

 

Jozey hurried on to her flight.  She was eager to rendezvous with Al.  At his hotel where he’d reserved adjoining suites, she found a note from Al.  He and John Richards, it told her, were off on the hunt.  Analyzing the locals’ refusals to transport them to certain areas of the atoll arc, they had figured out which direction to follow on the scent of Ruffrox.

 

Today Claddon and Richards had joined forces.  They had hired the resort’s sole hot-air balloon.  Though its flyer Yves LeBaron had already refused to fly to Ruffrox’s refuge, Al and John boarded the rattan gondola pretending interest in photographing shoals of fish, turtles, sea birds and marine mammals.  Most days, Yves wisely hugged  familiar coastlines at low altitude with passengers admiring life on the reefs.

 

Jozey stretched her legs.  Exploring the picturesque town was easy exercise.  Presently she wandered to an outlying cemetery.  The island’s namesake was the final port for several centuries of unfortunate mariners as well as for ancient residents whose origins were blurred by the thickening lens of time.  Jozey strolled amongst the head stones. 

A drum beat alerted her to an approaching cortege.  This wound up the coast road with an ornate black carriage drawn by a matched team of gray horses.  Black plumes waved from their bridles.  More plumes of various hues were carried by mourners in black veils.

 

Heading the procession was a tall African in shiny top hat and mourning tails.  Jozey knew before she saw that he wore broken spectacles.  And swung a long black baton.

Heart thudding, she withdrew to the far end of the cemetery, crouching against the wrought-iron fence.  When the cortege halted by a gaping new grave, she dashed out and back to town.  She tried the beach.  Much more cheerful place.

 

~*~

 

For some thirty-five minutes Al and John were compliant passengers.  They watched how Yves handled the burner and kept the balloon on course.  Once they had the basics down and the balloon was high enough, they jumped Yves and overwhelmed him.

 

That was no quick or easy job.  John continued to grapple with him while Cal manned the burner, blasting hot air in to the gondola to speed their trip.  More hot air only made the blue and white canopy rise.  Steering it was the problem now.  Cal consulted a map taped to the basket’s wall,  tried to turn more leeward towards the far end of the arc where they assumed the wedding would happen.  Two islets were big enough for cabins and piers.  Five others of descending sizes straggled windward.  The largest of the seven was squarish and lushly vegetated, resembling a bed with two lumpy pillows.  It also sported a crescent of bright sand.  A short distance from the beach were two much smaller rocky points, one in the miniature bay of the other.  “Hey, look.  Those are La Mère and L’Enfant.”  Cal snapped a nice bird’s-eye view of the pair.

 

As the balloon floated closer a flash of flesh on the sand told the hijackers where to focus their lenses.  Cal jammed a picture stick in to his camera.  Its telephoto caught the first series of shots before the Ruffrox even noticed the approaching balloon.

 

John, an amateur with a camera, divided his attention between shutter and the crouching angry Yves.  Yves took up most of his effort.  Claddon took most of the pictures.

 

Aloud he itemized his prizes:  “Great look at her butt...Wow, now the tits...he’s got her on her back...Aha!  That’s the million-dollar shot, the flag’s flying and it ain’t half-staff – full erection! Now his butt...she’s got her legs around him!  Money, money, money, money!” he sang.

 

As the balloon dropped dangerously towards Lit Vert, on its curved fringe of beach Spence and Roxie rolled naked entranced by each other, the sensual sun and the soothing song of surf.  They had buzzed around their temporary domain in a Zodiac.  It was now parked at the water’s edge. They had strung a long rope between two trees, hanging wet swim suits and towels on it, screening them from any boat that passed their windward beach.  But from the air they were devoid of cover.

 

They fell apart and stared upward as the canopy shadow passed over them and voices in strife spoiled the song of the sea.

 

Al swore.  “Shit, now they see us.  No matter, as long as they stay naked!”

 

But then a gust of wind deformed the canopy, and another made it luff.  Yves cried out a warning as the balance of weight in the big rattan basket changed suddenly.  Off balance, John grabbed the basket’s rim.  Yves took the opportunity to spring up and lunge at Cal.  Their fiercely renewed combat was brief.

 

Gaping at the lurching gondola so low overhead Spence and Roxie were startled to see Yves tumble out, flipping backwards in to the surf-crested reef.  Spence charged in to the  breakers to help him.  The gondola arced like a pendulum.  The luffing canopy filled for a moment and pulled its cargo sideways.

 

From the swinging gondola John, not a swimmer, was also ejected in to the sea and submerged, kicking wildly towards the jut of rock in the tiny bay – L’Enfant.  But a big breaker picked him up and threw him head-first against the rock.  Dazed, he spread-eagled with limbs relaxed and stared up blinded by the sun.

 

Spencer leapt naked in to the sea and stroked towards Yves.  Roxie phoned the Cimitiere rescue squad.  She reported the balloon crash and requested a police launch and an ambulance boat.  Then she pulled on her bikini and reef booties and  plunged in, assisting Spence as he hauled the stunned, sputtering pilot to land.  Though he’d suffered a hard knock to his forehead and coral cuts, the pilot vehemently cursed as he witnessed his canopy pulled under and ripped on the jagged reef.  The gondola was snagged on the tallest tree top.

 

Yves explained how he’d been hijacked and apologized for the intrusion.

 

“We could see you fighting, no worries, mate,” Spence calmed the man.  “We’ll stand up for you in court against these bloody wankers.”

 

Al had finally fallen out as the gondola arced wildly over the islet’s clump of trees.  He clung precariously to a swaying limb of the tallest monkey puzzle tree.  Its pole-like trunk stood bare for some nine or ten meters, with a pack of slender branches under a flattened crown, those branches like some stone-age weapons, straight staffs studded densely with stiff dark-green leaves pointed and defensive as blades or shark’s teeth. One hand was near-useless – his ulna was visibly broken.  He had lost his camera.  But he had a full picture stick zipped in to his windbreaker pocket.  Its contents would net him big bucks.  He needed assistance to descend without crashing on to those rocks.  The branch wasn’t a thick one, none of them were on this bizarre tree.  And the weird leaves were like little spear points.  He could hear fibers snapping...  Terrified, he wondered if Spence would come to his aid.   Spence got the pilot on to the beach.

 

This done, while Roxie took off swimming to help the jerk in the water, Spence got his trunks and reef shoes on, settled Yves in their boat, and then with a coil of marine Goldline rope, went to find the other man.  Spotting a camera on the ground near the copse of  monkey puzzle trees, he smashed it with a rock.  From the shards he retrieved its digital guts.

 

He could hear the other hijacker squawking, “Help me, please!” Spence found him in the tallest monkey puzzle.

 

“Why should I help you, you turd?  You nearly killed your pilot and wasted his source of income!  You can get yourself down – or break your arse trying!”  Spencer held up the camera’s heart.  “So much for your money shots, asshole!”

 

“Jesus, my wrist is broken, I can’t hang on!  Have a heart!”

 

“What toilet roll do you work for?  Call them to help you.”

 

“Come on, you got a rope, I saw it!”

 

“What’s your name?  Can’t rescue you without a proper introduction, can I?”

 

“Al, Al Claddon.  Come on, the other guy pushed him out, not me!”

 

For several more minutes Spence enjoyed his advantage.  When the culprit’s handhold loosened visibly and his pleas reached whining pitch, Spence relented.  “But only if you tell the cops  the truth and stand trial for injuring that pilot and wrecking his balloon.  And shell out for a new one.  Not to mention his bloody hospital bill.”

 

Spence got the rope up to him, a rock tied to one end and hurled over the limb, and waited while the man awkwardly coiled it around his waist, gripped the rock end and began to descend while Spence belayed.

 

This wanker looks familiar, Spence thought, but couldn’t quite place him.  When his feet lowered close enough, Spence looped his end of the rope around the ankles and tied a quick bowline on a bight.  The wanker was now stuck.

 

“What are you after, asshole?”

 

“I’m a freelance photojournalist. I just wanted picture. Come on, man, help me!”

 

Now Yves and Roxie were yelling. Spence left the wanker there, safely attached to the tree.

 

~*~

 

Roxana had swum close enough to the fallen man to see he was conscious now, grasping a jut of reef, groggily shaking his head, blood leaking in to the water and drifting on the current.  It wouldn’t take long to get him safely to L’Enfant  if he could add his own muscle power.  She resumed her vigorous sidestroke.  When a shriek rose above the splash of surf she tread water and  looked again.  Now she couldn’t see the man but he was thrashing wildly several meters out from the reef.  She saw an arm, a bloody arm, and something else that made her consider her own safety.  A large dark gray mass breaching, rolling back under...and then the unmistakable dorsal fin.  Roxie turned and swam for La Mère.  Frantically she waved at Yves whom Spence had bundled in to the Zodiac.

 

“Shark!  Bring the boat!  Don’t go back in the water!”  Her shouts did not quite drown out the two agonized screams John Richards managed before his chest was pierced by triangular teeth.  With ribs crushed and shoulder ripped away, the sole mercy in his fate was the sudden severance of his superior vena cava.  Roxie did not bother to look back. There was nothing she could do.  She tried not to imagine those huge, immensely powerful jaws, the last awful sight of  the human prey’s life.

 

Roxie couldn’t see Spence.  Was he already swimming?  “Shark!  Get out of the water!”

 

Behind her, a few final splashes, then just the rhythmic waves.  Her shock deepening, she said a prayer for the man Yves had identified only as “John something.”

 

Spence and Yves picked her up in the Zodiac.  She was pale and trembling.  When she explained why, they searched for signs of life, or remains.  They found nothing but a diffusing red stain at the edge of the deep, dark-blue water beyond the atoll.

 

Realizing they had to wait for the police, Spence ran the boat back up on the mini-beach.  He couldn’t leave Cal dangling.  The creep had an obviously broken wrist, and the news of his mate’s awful death would be its own punishment.  Spence decided the news would further subdue him at least, after which he could be brought down.

 

“Got some bad news.  About whoever the bloke was who helped you wreck the balloon.

He went in to the reef and...well, you bleed in the sea in these parts, you’re in trouble.  Roxana saw a fin.  Big one.  Your mate’s disappeared.  Sorry.”

 

“Not my ‘mate,’” Cal snarled.  “Reporter from England.  I don’t even know who to contact.”  Massaging his swollen wrist, he winced, and spewed a stream of invective that educated even Spence’s experienced ears.

 

“Well, you’ve got your own way of mourning, eh?”  Shaking his head, Spence returned to Yves and Roxie.  She had out her first-aid kit.

 

Yves was on the cell phone.  It was his fourth attempt to draw someone to answer the set in his cabana, and at last someone did.  He told Spence the names a minute later.  “Alvin Claddon and John Richards.”

 

Returning to Roxie who was packing up their stuff, Spencer embraced her, rocking them back and forth.  “Remember, we’ve got a marriage to start.  What happened today is not our problem.  We just forget them.”

 

“Who are they, anyway?”

 

“The jerk up the tree, his name is Alvin Claddon.  Something familiar about his face, and the name too, sort of...”

 

When she was calmer and seemed less inclined to puke at the memory of the shark and bloody water, Spence challenged her to guess the ID of the deceased hijacker.

 

Roxie grimaced.  “I don’t want to, can’t think...it’s not something I’d wish on anybody.”

 

“I know, Honey.  But if some creep we’ve run up against had to be shark bait, someone only a shark could digest, who would he be?”

 

Roxie got it first try.

 

~*~

 

After Spence at last released him from his monkey puzzle trap Al gathered breath.  He let his cramped muscles recover, took a long swig from the canteen hooked to his belt.

Then as Spence led him out to the beach Al attacked.

 

Shoving Spence backwards in to the ferny brush Al – in tough-soled boots – easily outdistanced him, heading for the boat and escape.  He had to grapple again with Yves in the Zodiac, but managed to wrest the outboard controls and fire the motor up just as Spence lunged for the gunnels.  Spence was dragged off the beach.  But he never let go, climbing aboard and slugging Al, who punched back.

 

Yves took charge of the motor controls as soon as Spence too Al down.  He switched the motor off and levered the screw out of water.  An instant later Spence heaved Al over the starboard pontoon.  Jumping overboard he finished the fight with a left jab to the nose.

 

Alvin Claddon was hog-tied on the beach when the local constabulary collected him.  Spence had left Al’s broken wrist free of the knots.  But he had removed his boots.  The police had no problem with him.

 

The officers shook their heads sadly at the other hijacker’s fate.  “They grow big out here, those sharks,” one remarked.  “And whatever they leave the smaller fish eat, and crabs pick the bones.  Won’t wash up here, though.  The current will take it away.  Whatever is left might come up in a net; we’ll see.”  He heaved a blustery sigh.  “But you two, you enjoy your wedding!  Don’t be thinkin’ about this death.  It’s all part of La Vie, isn’t it?  And you should focus on the best part, shouldn’t you?”  He gave Spence a brotherly pat on the back, and Roxie a sweet peck on the cheek.

 

 

Chapter Eight