At the busy air terminal in Caracas, the girls tearfully parted company. There was much hugging and exchanging of addresses. Irene, using the Casino’s AmEx card, bought everyone a ticket home. Linda lagged behind.
“Linda?” Irene questioned the girl. “Boston?”
Linda hunched her shoulders. “Don’t really have anyone to go home to.”
Irene touched the girl’s forearm. “MIT?”
Linda turned her head away. “Yes. Maybe. But there’s unfinished business, here.”
Irene looked around. Saw the others, arm in arm, headed for the Departures Gate. “Unfinished business?” She pushed for an answer.
Linda suddenly took a great interest in her shoes. “I’m sure you didn’t know, nobody did, but Jordan and I were more than just roommates.” Linda finally looked up and gave Irene her lopsided grin. “If you’ll remember our apartment, there was only one bedroom. And only one bed.”
Irene felt her heart bleed. Jordan, who had been sucked from the plane at forty-thousand feet, and Linda had been lovers. How could she have missed that? Irene felt like a dolt.
Irene slipped her arms around the girl, gathered her in. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. It must have been horrible for you.”
Linda lay a cheek on Irene’s shoulder. “It’s okay now. I’ve accepted it but I have to go back to the Casino. I need to talk with Jordan’s family, tell them how it was. What happened to her. It’s important that I do this, you understand– but I need phone numbers and addresses. And her personal things. I need to go back to the Casino,” she repeated.
“We’ll go together,” Irene hugged the girl. “There’s a little unfinished business that I have to attend to as well.”
Irene booked a direct flight from Caracas to Miami International and made inquiries regarding a connecting flight to Cracker-Jax Key. With the Bikini-Bus missing in action, Scirocco hadn’t faltered and now a charter service was ferrying the gamers to and from the island. The next flight left Miami the following day and Irene arranged for two seats.
The girls took a cab to the Best Western, booked a room and went shopping for jeans and shirts. At a stylish restaurant near the airport they sat at a corner table. They ordered a bottle of wine, two thick swordfish steaks and to appease their craving for leafy vegetables, shared a huge Cesar salad.
Back in their room they showered and, wrapped in complimentary bathrobes, they raided the bar fridge. Irene was burning up Scirocco’s AmEx card. Fuck him.
Linda dimmed the lights, tossed the pillows from one bed to the other and she and Irene sat side-by-side propped against the headboard with their legs stretched out.
Linda took a deep swallow. She wasn’t a big drinker, but, cozied-up with Irene on the bedspread, she enjoyed the crisp bite of the alcohol; it seemed to be the first time she had taken a breath in weeks. The vodka fogged her thinking and she relished the buzz. “Are you going to tell anyone?” she asked.
Irene studied her drink a moment. “About what happen after the crash? Who? The local police, maybe?”
“That’s what I mean. I got this huge guilt thing happening. It wasn’t there before, but now I feel I have to spill my guts. That it will be the only way for me to deal with what we went through.”
“You a Catholic? Lucky if you are; there’s always a priest.” Irene’s answer was flippant and she regretted it.
“No,” Linda conceded. “I’m not anything. You?”
Irene shook her head.
Linda took another deep swallow. “I wonder how the others will handle it. God– what we did.”
“What we had to do,” Irene corrected her.
“What we had to do…” Linda whispered, the tears glistening on her eyelashes.
Irene reached for her hand. “If what happened leaks out, we’ll be chastised. You know that. Held up to public scrutiny, we’ll be perceived as monsters. And condemned; found to be just as guilty as the men who raped us. Do you understand? If we talk, no one wins.”
Linda settled into Irene’s shoulder. “If it’s okay, I’d like to stay with you awhile. I think I’m going to need some moral support and you’re the only one left to talk with. The only one who could possibly understand.”
Her words touched Irene’s heart. Of all the girls, Linda remained her favorite. She didn’t know why. Maybe because the girl had fought so hard and achieved so much. Maybe it was the way her eyebrows arched when Irene teased her, or the lopsided grin. There was so much sincerity in that face.
Irene slipped an arm around. “You’ve touched me in many ways. I hope– well, I hope I’ll have the opportunity to return the favor.”
Linda’s face beamed with conviction. “Could we be together? Jordan is still close to the surface so you’d have to be patient with me. It might take time but we could try.”
Irene woke with a sigh. A chink of rosy sunlight between the curtains invaded the bedroom and cast intriguing shadows across Linda’s face. She slumbered peacefully and Irene took pains not to disturb her. Instead, she lay comfortably quiet and let her mind drift back. Irene remembered they had returned to the bar fridge to freshen their drinks and after, Linda had doused the bedside lamp. But instead of retreating to her own bed, she had slipped back in beside Irene.
There had been whispered confessions, a smile or two. Even some tears. And Irene remembered the touch of Linda’s lips on her own. Nothing passionate, nor even serious, really. But nice: Soft lips, tenderness, a little nibbling and hands stroking face and hair. Then sleep ushered in comfortably.
And now Linda rested on her side, nestled in Irene’s arms, her face in repose, a forearm resting between Irene’s breasts. It was a nice way to start the day, Irene thought.
Later, they would laugh about it.
At Miami International, Irene and Linda were seated in the back of the Boeing-737 for the flight to Cracker-Jax Key. Linda took the window seat and studied the blacktop. A tiny line appeared between her eyebrows that Irene had come to realize meant Linda was in deep thought. Irene settled in beside her with Jack’s notebook.
Irene didn’t have a plan. First and foremost, she wanted to know who was responsible for blowing a hole in the side of her airplane. She had seen the damage firsthand; the scorch marks on the metal. The fuselage had been blown out from the inside with the blast taking an engine with it.
She had been convinced that Hanz was behind it; that he was out to kill her. But she had found his remains in the cargo-hold and suddenly things didn’t add up. If she could decipher Jack’s cryptic notes she hoped to make better sense of what happened and have a better idea of a course of action when they landed.
Irene had the notebook open on her lap and was engrossed in the first few pages when she felt a dynamic shift in the air, like a drop in barometric pressure that foretold of a coming storm. There was a restless commotion and instinctively she glanced up.
The girl was making her way along the center aisle and couldn’t help but hold the attention of the other passengers. The sheer white cocktail dress looked to have been painted on and revealed a slim tight body without the encumbrances of underwear; a fact that had staggered the men and flustered the women.
It was a glamorous one-strap design that left the girl’s right shoulder bare with a show of buttery flesh and the side of a soft tempting breast. But the girl herself was anything but soft. Her hair was so black it shone with purple highlights and was severely cut in a pageboy with straight blunt bangs above thinly arched brows and hacked off just below the ears exposing a shaved neck. Her eyes were heavy with dark makeup and her cupid-doll lips were painted in lush liquidy red.
The girl wasn’t tall, not much over five-feet, even in her four-inch spikes, and oddly, she carried no baggage, except for a small shoulder purse with a thin strap. But what unsettled Irene was the niggling feeling that she and the girl had met somewhere, though Irene couldn’t place the face.
The girl found her seat and sat poised, as if trying to see over the headrest in front. Irene pushed the image to the back of her mind and returned to Jack’s chicken-scratchings.
By the end of the flight, a frustrated Irene was no further ahead. Jack’s infuriating habit of using acronyms made his notes undecipherable. The jets spooled down and the plane swooped in the trade winds. Irene could almost feel the yoke in her hands as the pilot steadied the plane in the glide path. The wheels touched and the plane rounded up.
There was a cheer from the passengers and people quickly stood to reach for the overhead bins. Irene stayed seated to avoid the stampede. She saw the mysterious girl stand and reach down for her bag. The startled man opposite was treated to an unexpected treat when the neck of the girl’s dress sagged and he saw a breast pressing for release. Irene suddenly had a vision of Jack looking down a young girl’s blouse. Sharice, she thought. No. Sherri… no the waitress, her was called Cherries. And suddenly it hit her. Cherries straightened and turned toward the exit. The stampede came to an immediate halt as the men stood aside to let her pass so they could enjoy the gait and roll of her fine round bottom.
A stunned Irene quickly flipped the pages of Jack’s notebook and read: Primo confirms. W-C is on the inside. It wasn’t that the water-closet was inside, it was the Waitress-Cherries who was on the inside. Somehow Cherries was connected to the cocaine cartel and Primo was using her to keep tabs on the Colombian drug lords and been selling the information to Jack.
Now that she understood Jack’s use of acronyms, she flipped back to Cayman Island. P-R wasn’t public-relations; it was Pilot-Ross. The B-S at the airport was Banker-Silvers. And the A-A Jack had taken to bed was Attendant-Alex.
Irene closed the notebook. Her mind was mushy but at least she had a plan. She now knew who M-C was.