Romeo shrugged. "’He jests at scars, that never felt a wound.' I needed that slug to cool me down."

"I'm sorry we blew it, old chap."

"Well, I'm out of Drug Enforcement, as of now. And Hoagie...?"

"Yes?"

"I recommend the same for you."

Hoagie shook his head and looked down at the little boy. "First I'm going to find the bloody bastard who did this!"

Romeo didn't know the whole story, and there wasn't time to tell him now. Hoagie started down the alley at a fast clip, toward the sound of the big brass band.

Send her victorious,

Happy and glorious,

Long to reign over us

God save the Queen!

He had unleashed a monster on the island. There was no way on God's green earth that he could quit.

***

Carla sat on the speaker's platform. Her stomach churned with anger. Below her, the Royal Bahamas Police Force Band, in their bandstand gazebo, made ready to do her and the statue homage. The Prince George Town Village Choir, sweating in blue blazers, sat behind her.

And in her hour of need and triumph Mike hadn't even crossed the street.

The black senator reminded his constituents that he had paved the road from Prince George Town to the Whiskey Cay Airstrip.

"Yah, mon," someone called from the rear. "That de tourist side de town. You buyin' us pretty statue, ay? When you be pavin' roun' Pretty Sally Cay, where de black folk live?"

The senator, not in the least disturbed and speaking in Oxford English, concluded on a note of welcome, begging his American friends to spread the fame of Whiskey Cay far and wide. The mayor, Jason Witherspoon, rose.

And still no Mike. She could see him across the street, sitting at the table, drinking all alone.

He was not himself. Something had been wrong ever since they'd returned from Amity. And it wasn't all her fault....

Thea was fidgeting in the first row, below, and tugging at Ellen's arm, craning back to see the beach, where her friends were playing.

"Shall I take her?" Ellen mouthed.

Carla could see, over the heads of the people below, a dozen children from Thea's preschool class, herded by Margaret de Lacey, the local dentist's wife.

Carla nodded at Ellen. "Sure"—she pantomimed it—"go ahead." Thea was gone like a shot. Ellen excused herself to Jake and Louisa and followed her granddaughter to the beach.

Still no Mike....

"And so the moment of truth has arrived," boomed Witherspoon. "And our community will be graced by something we shall look at every day, something we shall think beautiful, like the famous sculptress herself. ..."

He turned and beamed at Carla, the sunshine gleaming off his jet-black skin.

Politicians were all the same: Witherspoon, Kennedy, Reagan, Aquino... black, white, or brown... oblivious to their listeners' boredom once they got the floor.

"Something that makes us stop and ponder..."