Read Online Pressure Drop by Peter Abrahams - Free Book Online Page A

lap.
    â€œWhat the hell is this?” Howie said.

7
    â€œLet’s get polluted,” yelled someone in the back of the plane. The flight from Miami to Nassau lasts forty-seven minutes but it was long enough, as Matthias had often observed, for tourists to get the pollution process well under way. They were itching to check into the hotels of Paradise Island or West Bay Street, where a getaway world of booze, smoke and sex with partners whose names they didn’t always get straight was waiting just for them: the sheets were being changed at that very moment. There were no raised voices on the return flights.
    The plane banked between two thunderheads, descended over water that changed abruptly from deep indigo to translucent green, glided over a narrow stretch of scrubland and jack pine and landed at the airport. The door opened. Hot, moist air came in. Hot, moist four-day-three-nighters went out. They filed unknowingly past the empty corner in the terminal where Blind Blake had played his banjo for so many years and into the long lines at the immigration booths. Matthias went to the booth with no lines, marked RETURNING RESIDENTS . “Nice trip, Mr. Matthias?” asked the immigration officer, waving him through.
    In the parking lot, two shirtless boys, ten or eleven, were eyeing his Yamaha 535. “You boys don’t want this old thing,” he said, climbing on and starting the engine. “Too slow.” They giggled. Matthias drove off.
    The bottom of the sun was just touching the horizon when Matthias leaned into the turn at Love Beach and rode through the feathery shadows of the casuarinas. The sun wobbled at the impact, as though it had really been made of Jell-O all the time, and quickly slipped away. A minute later the sea, which had been a caldron of red and gold, went black. By the time Matthias reached the downtown part of Bay Street, the sky, which had been a pastel version of the sea, had blackened too, and a round white moon had risen over the low roofs of the shops and office buildings.
    The shops were closed, the office workers had gone home, the street was quiet. The air felt hot and wet and thick, more like a low density ocean than a mixture of gases. Matthias parked his bike in front of Island Cameras and approached the adjoining door. There were half a dozen bronze name plaques on the wall—Island Imports, Inc., The Bank of Zurich and the Bahamas, the Nassau Panamanian Bank, RR Group, RR Investments Ltd., Ravoukian and Ravoukian, Barristers and Solicitors—but only one buzzer. As Matthias reached for it, he heard a husky whisper from the shadows: “Smoke?”
    Matthias didn’t reply.
    The whisper came again, more insistent. “Hey, mahn. You wan’ some smoke?”
    â€œNope,” said Matthias. Soft footsteps padded away.
    Matthias pressed the buzzer. A voice crackled from a speaker above the door. “Yes?”
    â€œMatthias,” Matthias said. The door clicked open.
    Matthias stepped inside, closed the door behind him and climbed a worn wooden staircase. At the top were another set of name plaques and a single door, partly open. As he went inside, through the simply furnished waiting room, with its mildewing copies of People and Ebony , he smelled burning tobacco, strong and European, the same smell released on opening a book by Eric Ambler.
    Ravoukian sat behind his desk in the inner office. He was writing rapidly on a legal pad; blue smoke curled slowly up from his cigarette until the ceiling fan sucked it in and whirled it away. Ravoukian looked up. He was a short, round man with big dark eyes, made bigger by the thick lenses of his glasses. “Not good?” he said.
    â€œNot good.”
    Ravoukian leaned back in his chair and sighed, blowing a smoke cone across the room. “You look tired, Mr. Matthias. Sit down.”
    Matthias sat. Smoke rose. The ceiling fan turned. Through the walls came the faint chordings of a guitar. The