The drummer ripped off a crepe-paper mask of violet and orange. She was a woman, wearing a white bandanna and earrings of hammered brass.

With half-closed eyes she sank cross-legged to the dock and began to drum softly. She increased the beat and the rhythm until the distant brass band faded.

In her high, clear voice, the houngenikon called for her ancient loa:

Maître Agwe, where are you?

Don't you see I'm on the reef?

I've a rudder in my hand...

Only then did Papa Jacques unmask. Black eyes glittering, he unfastened his shark's-tooth necklace. He dangled it high.

His eyelids dropped. He entered a trance. He chanted, in a high, wailing monotone:

Mâitre shark, where are you?

Don't you see I'm on the reef?

I've a two-legged goat for you,

I've your teeth in my hand,

Use them and dine well.

He hurled the bucket and gourd into the water. They floated gently, moving slowly in the current toward the beach around the point.

He touched the necklace to his lips and flung it after the bucket.

Then he turned swiftly, and, followed by his houngenikon, walked back to Kingston Street.

When they were gone, the little black boy ran from the warehouse and picked up his mask. He held it to his face.

The distant pulse of the Royal Bahamas Police Force Band made the dock planking shiver:

Oh, Britannia, Britannia rules the waves,

Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.

The little boy began to shuffle to its beat.

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Hoagie Newcombe's fingers were damp with sweat. He was trying to open the vault in a storage room off Romeo's embalming lab.

He had gambled a year of his life on this sting, and today he was gambling the rest of it. But now that they were on the verge of success, he had forgotten the combination to the safe.

Behind him, he could feel Lomas's eyes drilling into his back. "Ten..." Hoagie chanted, "eight... six..."

The last three numbers were his daughter's birthday, but what was it? March 12, 19—what? March was three, then right past zero to twelve... but 1968, 1969, 1970?

If only he had his flying log. He'd been flying from a carrier in the Persian Gulf when he'd gotten the dispatch from his wife in Nassau: "A girl, Prudence Amelia Newcombe, seven pounds three... your eyes, my hair ... wish you'd been here instead of me."

Nineteen sixty-eight or 1969? He tried 1968. The vault wouldn't open.

All right, work backward. How old was she when she disappeared? Seventeen? Or eighteen? The man behind him would know, but he couldn't ask him.

Not yet...

He dried his fingers on his shirt. He could hear Alejandro muttering to his boss in Spanish but could not make out the words. He felt supremely exposed.

He took a deep breath to settle his nerves. He must not fail now. He had worked too long on the scam, against too many odds.