“I want to give him a piece o’ my mind about what he’s done to you,” he said. “Where’d the fucker call from?”

“It’s okay, Fire,” she replied. “Don’t get involved.”

He thought quickly. “If it concerns you then it concerns me, Claire. I need to know where he is. He wasn’t at his house when I called him.”

“Of course not,” she replied. “He’s in Jamaica … at a hotel in Negril.”

“Which one?”

“Sea something. I can’t remember—”

“Sea Cliffs, maybe?” he asked. Fuck, so many of them began with “Sea.”

“Aaah … that could be it.”

“How did he sound?”

“Weak … and hoarse.”

“This might sound strange … but … did he mention suicide?”

“Not at all. He just sounded very depressed … and rightfully so … he should be ashamed of what he did. Can you blame me for how I feel, Fire?”

He didn’t answer. He was too busy thinking about I-nelik’s words: When people want to kill themselves, Fire, they don’t want people to stop them …

He apologized to Mr. Bartley and dialed the hotel. There was no Ian Gore there, the woman said. He described him. No, they hadn’t seen anyone fitting that description. Maybe it wasn’t the Sea-something, he began to think. Maybe Claire was mistaken. And again, Ian could’ve registered under an alias. Fuck, he had to find him. Miss Gita was back and didn’t know her son had been there.

“Call the police,” Mr. Bartley said, when Fire told him what had happened. “Have them check all de hotels. Dat bwai wasn’t looking good at all when I did take him go town. Call all the hotels and see if him is elsewhere. We can’t let him kill himself. If you kill yourself you go to hell because you don’t have any time to ask forgiveness.”

“Ian needs no introduction to hell, Mr. Bartley. He lives there.”

He took Mr. Bartley’s suggestion, picked up I-nelik, and headed for Negril, which was more than five hours away.

Kill Phil. Kill Margaret. Kill me. The first time that Ian had heard this, it was clearly the voice of someone else. It had an accent he couldn’t place … the kind of British accent you’d hear in a Peter Cushing film. The voice he began to hear after Claire hung up on him was also from a film—his film. He was the star of this film, as well as the scriptwriter, producer, and director. The voice in this film was his own.

In his film, he was good and Margaret and Phil were evil, so he had to kill them. Then, to show how powerful he was, he would kill himself … then … then … he hadn’t finished the script yet … but … he knew that he would come back to life … or … maybe he wouldn’t kill himself … aaahh … he would have a fake bullet for himself and wouldn’t die at all … he would survive … somehow … because star cyaah dead.