Rescue

fifties.

    The diagram Clark gave me didn’t exactly qualify as a map, but it allowed me to find my way to Room 139. Mercy Lodge was configured like a squared-off horseshoe, the open end facing the bay. Registration, restaurant, and indoor bar formed the center of the horseshoe, the south wing housing rooms 101 to 130 (and 201 to 230 above them), the north wing 131 to 160 (231 to 260 above).
    I left the Sunbird in another unlabeled slot, moving to the door of Room 139. I could hear an ice machine gnashing and clanking in the enclosed staircase that led upward outside Room 140. Setting down my suitcase, I walked over to the noise. A soda machine stood next to the ice-maker, but there was plenty of space for someone to wait and come up behind a guest approaching doors 138 to 142. I decided I’d best watch my back arriving home late.
    The key turned easily in the lock, the door opening onto a reception area with double sinks nicely sheltered from both the doorway and the bathroom by a half-wall. Beyond the wall was the sleeping area, a queen-sized bed in the middle of it. Two chairs and a little table nestled on the right side of two sliding-glass doors. The doors gave onto a four-by-twelve balcony with two strap-woven lawn chairs, no table. When I slid open the glass doors, I could see over the picketed railing to some guano-splattered boulders forming a rip-rap wall and leading down into the hammock.
    The trees themselves were what I’d guess was there before We were. Rough bark and scraggly limbs and small leaves, packed densely together with lots of saplings shooting toward the sky and some kind of moss hanging from the Ranches. Look a little closer, though, and you could see vines ^circling some of the trees and small bushes trying to get a behold in the rocks. Closer still, and some kind of spider looked like a crab with a black, pointy shell was spinning an orblike web at eye level to me. A ground squirrel suddenly scampered over the closest rocks and behind one of the larger trees.
    I went back inside the room. Unpacking the suitcase, I slipped the Detective’s Special and ammunition inside a zippered pocket for the time being. Then I took the rest of the cash from Lonnie Severn’s toilet tank and thought about where to put it. The travelers checks would carry fine, but I didn’t fancy having that kind of cash on me or in the hotel’s safe, and you never know where the maid staff might poke. Then I thought about the squirrel.
    Moving back to the balcony, I stopped and listened a moment. Hearing nothing, I hopped over the rail onto the rock wall and stopped again. Still nothing, and only the two rooms on either side of mine could see me where I was. Nobody seemed to be looking onto the hammock.
    I dropped down the wall to its base. No evidence of a gardener’s care. I found a nice cleft between two of the boulders, then shoved the plastic-wrapped cache into it. Measuring up, the cleft was between the second and third pickets on my balcony rail. I stuffed some dirt into the cleft and worried the dirt until it looked smooth and natural. Then I climbed back up the wall and over the rail.
    Sitting in one of the balcony chairs, I thought about what my next move should be. It would be nice to get an introduction to the Church as “John Francis,“ reasonably wealthy tourist and world-weary potential convert. However, I didn’t know anybody who could do that, and I didn’t see it happening quickly enough to help me. Before barging into the Church’s offices, I at least could establish Mr. Francis as a good tourist.
    I changed into swimming trunks, T-shirt, and old running shoes. Taking my room key and courtesy card, I headed toward the pool.
    The pool turned out to be on the other side of the parking area, near the tennis court. When I reached the water itself, all but one lounge chair already were taken, the sides of the pool filled with men in bikini trunks and beer guts, the women wearing female versions that flattered them not at all. The air was soggy from the smell of coconut oil, even with an eight-foot waterfall that looked so artificial the only natural thing about it was that the water fell downward. The single empty lounge was next to a woman with brassy blond hair and a figure twenty years past the thong suit she wore. I got a nice smile, then a frown as I turned away.
    The beach area was about a quarter-mile walk down a path through the hammock that had me swatting at only two mosquitoes, the