Johnson Johnson 04 - Dolly and the Doctor Bird by Dorothy (as Dorothy Halliday Dunnett
Authors: Dorothy (as Dorothy Halliday Dunnett
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baseball shoes with genuine Nescohyde vinyl uppers and safety rubber cleats.”
“Your agent’s secretary wants watching,” I said, handing him my nail scissors. He removed the lady with care. With, indeed, a regrettable artistry.
The Twin Otter cruises at 8000 feet and does a comfortable 150 mph. The journey to Miami was less than an hour and we had coffee halfway: “ ‘The Beautiful People eat a leisurely breakfast. Why shouldn’t you?’ ” quoted Johnson; and Lady Edgecombe smiled while Sir Bartholomew grimaced weakly. He was looking forward, clearly, neither to his dialysis nor to the prospect of further attempts on his life. I could see the bulge where Johnson’s gun (or his pipe) lay in his pocket. He gave no sign of discomfort from his invisible burns and had already suggested that I forget them.
I did. Like plucks of crabmeat, small fleshy clouds hung over the blue sea below, and ladders of fine cloud streamed past higher up. There are seven hundred islands in the Bahamas, and they lie avocado colored in a marbled green and blue sea which shoals to apricot and light apple green as it lifts to the beach. So white is the sand and so clear is the water that land and sea blend in a thin watered green, and you must stare to see the faint dermatoglyphic patterns which show you fly over water. Off Bimini, speedboats passed over the blue like smoke-tailed rockets crossing the heavens. “There’s Miami,” said Johnson.
And it was the Florida coast. Flat land skeined with sheets of flat water. Groups of skyscrapers white and polished as eye-teeth passing below us, surrounded by vacant stretches of plain and of water, and the stubble of acres of houses, set in palm trees and blue pools and a sparkling mosaic of cars.
“There is no reason,” said Johnson, “why any one of you shouldn’t have a fully sodded lot there in Leisureville.”
“Leisureville is rather attractive,” said Lady Edgecombe. “I was shown over it once. Or maybe it was Canongate-on-the-Links. They’re very careful whom they admit.”
“But you have your perfect setting, Denise,” said Johnson. “On Great Harbour Cay.”
“Denise misses the company a bit, off season,” Sir Bartholomew said into the ensuing small silence.
I had been neglecting him. I said, “You’ll be in very good hands. I shall see you settled and comfortable, and I shall be on call if they want me. You’ll be surprised how simple it all is.”
“I daresay,” he said, and smiled at me. With his wife there, and the two pilots, nothing could be said. But he must be wondering, as Johnson was wondering, why after all these years should he be singled out for attack now? And for such sordid and painful attacks, as if personal malice were in some way involved, not simply the task of one agent to dispose of another.
Johnson said, “You’ve got the best of it, you fully sodded lot in Miami. I’ve got to go and be buddy to forty society ladies and gentlemen I’ve had the misfortune to immortalize on canvas. I’ll expect you both at the Fontainebleau whenever you’re free. Denise. Doctor MacRannoch. Ask for Timpson, my agent. Nice chap. Lives in Miami. Made of fine bonded copper with a verdigrised patina.”
It was in fact a surprisingly accurate description of the bronzed Timpson, who stepped forward to meet Lady Edgecombe and myself inside the undulating white frontage of the Hotel Fontainebleau later that morning. After the cool of the hospital, the sun blazed on the flights of white steps leading up to the two sets of doors; inside Lady Edgecombe sighed with relief in the vast space of the lounge with its islands of armchairs and tables on several acres of squared marble floor. Above us blazed oval chandeliers the size of small swimming pools; the room, if you could call it a room, seemed crowded with American citizens in wigs and dark glasses purring at one another, with cigarettes spiraling smoke from their knuckle rings.
Mr. Timpson, however, was a
“Your agent’s secretary wants watching,” I said, handing him my nail scissors. He removed the lady with care. With, indeed, a regrettable artistry.
The Twin Otter cruises at 8000 feet and does a comfortable 150 mph. The journey to Miami was less than an hour and we had coffee halfway: “ ‘The Beautiful People eat a leisurely breakfast. Why shouldn’t you?’ ” quoted Johnson; and Lady Edgecombe smiled while Sir Bartholomew grimaced weakly. He was looking forward, clearly, neither to his dialysis nor to the prospect of further attempts on his life. I could see the bulge where Johnson’s gun (or his pipe) lay in his pocket. He gave no sign of discomfort from his invisible burns and had already suggested that I forget them.
I did. Like plucks of crabmeat, small fleshy clouds hung over the blue sea below, and ladders of fine cloud streamed past higher up. There are seven hundred islands in the Bahamas, and they lie avocado colored in a marbled green and blue sea which shoals to apricot and light apple green as it lifts to the beach. So white is the sand and so clear is the water that land and sea blend in a thin watered green, and you must stare to see the faint dermatoglyphic patterns which show you fly over water. Off Bimini, speedboats passed over the blue like smoke-tailed rockets crossing the heavens. “There’s Miami,” said Johnson.
And it was the Florida coast. Flat land skeined with sheets of flat water. Groups of skyscrapers white and polished as eye-teeth passing below us, surrounded by vacant stretches of plain and of water, and the stubble of acres of houses, set in palm trees and blue pools and a sparkling mosaic of cars.
“There is no reason,” said Johnson, “why any one of you shouldn’t have a fully sodded lot there in Leisureville.”
“Leisureville is rather attractive,” said Lady Edgecombe. “I was shown over it once. Or maybe it was Canongate-on-the-Links. They’re very careful whom they admit.”
“But you have your perfect setting, Denise,” said Johnson. “On Great Harbour Cay.”
“Denise misses the company a bit, off season,” Sir Bartholomew said into the ensuing small silence.
I had been neglecting him. I said, “You’ll be in very good hands. I shall see you settled and comfortable, and I shall be on call if they want me. You’ll be surprised how simple it all is.”
“I daresay,” he said, and smiled at me. With his wife there, and the two pilots, nothing could be said. But he must be wondering, as Johnson was wondering, why after all these years should he be singled out for attack now? And for such sordid and painful attacks, as if personal malice were in some way involved, not simply the task of one agent to dispose of another.
Johnson said, “You’ve got the best of it, you fully sodded lot in Miami. I’ve got to go and be buddy to forty society ladies and gentlemen I’ve had the misfortune to immortalize on canvas. I’ll expect you both at the Fontainebleau whenever you’re free. Denise. Doctor MacRannoch. Ask for Timpson, my agent. Nice chap. Lives in Miami. Made of fine bonded copper with a verdigrised patina.”
It was in fact a surprisingly accurate description of the bronzed Timpson, who stepped forward to meet Lady Edgecombe and myself inside the undulating white frontage of the Hotel Fontainebleau later that morning. After the cool of the hospital, the sun blazed on the flights of white steps leading up to the two sets of doors; inside Lady Edgecombe sighed with relief in the vast space of the lounge with its islands of armchairs and tables on several acres of squared marble floor. Above us blazed oval chandeliers the size of small swimming pools; the room, if you could call it a room, seemed crowded with American citizens in wigs and dark glasses purring at one another, with cigarettes spiraling smoke from their knuckle rings.
Mr. Timpson, however, was a
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