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let’s go. We’ll take mine.”
    “They are expecting a phone call.”
    “Well they’re going to be surprised then, aren’t they?”
    “What about my clothes?”
    “You’re not going to need them.”
    “You drive up to the house they will kill her,” Zeller said. “Then we won’t drive up to the house.”
    Harry was parked in the driveway by the side door. It was 5:30 and almost dark. He led Zeller out, popped the trunk, took his eye off the German for a second and Zeller took off, hurdled the neighbor’s fence like a track star and disappeared. Harry started after him and stopped. Went back to the car, closed the trunk and drove to Troy to find Colette.

At 1:27 a.m., Hess saw the Bahamian policeman walk by the door, going outside to smoke. He pulled the IV out of his arm, slid out of bed, crossed the room, the ward quiet, patients asleep. Light from the moon was coming in the window next to his bed, illuminating part of the ward. At the door he glanced to the right and saw the policeman at the end of the hall. He looked the other way: no one was at the nurses’ station. He went back through the room to the window next to his bed, opened it and punched out the screen.
    “What do you think you’re doing?”
    Hess turned and saw Paulette, one of the night nurses, coming toward him across the ward. She must have been in the toilet room.
    “Have you lost your mind, man? Get back in da bed.”
    She reached him, hands on his arm and shoulder, trying to pull him away from the window. “Come on now, we don’t want no trouble.”
    Hess pivoted and went for her throat, taking the 110-pound woman down on the hard tile floor. She thrashed and fought, legs kicking, fingers trying to scratch his face. He had never strangled anyone. It required more effort than he realized. He kept his weight on her and the pressure on her neck and gradually she stopped fighting, eyes bulging, and went limp. Hess was breathing hard, exhausted from the effort, sweated through the hospital gown. He glanced toward the doorway, heard footsteps coming along the hall, picked up Paulette, put her in his bed and covered her with the sheet and blanket.
    He brought a chair over, stood on it and slid his feet through the window, sitting on the sill, turned on his stomach and lowered his legs until his feet touched the ground. Barefoot and naked under the gown, Hess crossed the street, feeling weak, and moved past dark storefronts in downtown Freeport. He saw two figures approach, slim Negros in white shirts, skin blending with the darkness.
    “What we have here?” the first one said.
    “We take your money,” the second one said, waving a knife at him theatrically.
    Hess looked at them and smiled.
    “Man what you wearing?”
    “Look like he escape from the hospital,” the second one said.
    Hess picked up the front of his hospital gown, flashed them and laughed.
    “Keep away from him,” the first one said, stepping back. “Crazy old bugger, man’s a mental case.”
    They moved past him down the street, Hess watching until they disappeared. He walked along the storefronts, stopping in front of Morley’s, a men’s store, bright-colored island attire on headless manikins in the window. He continued walking to the end of the streets, went right and right again, moving down an alley behind the stores.
    Morley’s had a solid rear door with deadbolts top and bottom. There was a window behind closed shutters. He saw headlights coming toward him, ducked behind a big blue trash bin, watching as a police car crept by, its spotlight sweeping across the buildings.
    When the police car was out of sight Hess went back to Morley’s and dug his fingers into the shutter slats, pulling the sides open. The window was latched, so he broke a center pane in the upper half with his elbow. The glass cracked and shattered. Hess reached in, turned the clasp, slid up the bottom half of the window and climbed in the room. Then he pulled the shutters closed and