by Ed Teja
Wise in the ways of island food and knowing Gracie’s special skills, Bill and I both managed to enjoy delicious red snapper, served with plantains, and rice, and naturally, washing it down with the bottle of Barbados’ finest rum, Gazele’s present.
I should point out that, like old salts everywhere, Bill and I drink our rum with… rum. We watch, astonished, as the yachties, especially French yachties, jazz up their drinks with lime juice and sugar. Even some of the locals like it that way, and it probably is handy for getting a person drunk faster, what with the extra sugar and all, but that concoction, not to mention all that effort, seemed like a waste of good rum to me.
I like the taste of rum.
At a table in the corner, four older men, probably off yachts, were contaminating their rum and playing poker — by my standards, partaking of a double evil.
Bill saw me looking at them and laughed. “You don’t get the attraction of games of chance,” he said.
“The operative word is game,” I said. “My life always has enough gambles built into it without risking money on the turn of a card.”
“The truth of the matter,” Bill said, “is that you don’t like card games because you suck at them. You can’t lie for shit. The way you would play, it wouldn’t even be gambling — you would just be donating your money.”
As a reasonable adult, one who enjoys the give and take of intelligent debate, I stuck my tongue out at him. His observation contained more than a single grain of painful truth.
After Sally cleared away the dinner dishes, taking time to give Bill a grand and lingering, promising smile that went far beyond the desire of a waitress for a good tip, we sat back with the last of our bottle to enjoy the ambiance and the taste of the rum. Our table looked out over the water and as the sun set, the tropical night growing dark quickly, we saw the riding lights of the boats anchored in the yacht basin begin to twinkle, while around the edges of the basin, lights came on in houses and businesses, reflected out over the water.
Jackson came walking in with his two crewmen. His guys headed for a table, but he split off, wandering out way and slapping us each on the shoulder. “How it going?”
“We’re fine. You seem kinda late getting in,” Bill said.
“We had us a wild time with them Venezuelan coast guard types, boy,” he said.
“What was their problem?” I asked.
“Them not want us catching no damn fish, seems like.”
“Why not? Why do they care?”
He grinned. “You know them big Japanese tuna fishing boats, the ones what got helicopters and all sorts of fancy gear on them?”
“Sure.”
“Seems they don’t like us taking away the food for the tuna, so they paying the coast guard to chase us off.”
“And you just apologize and sail off?” I asked. “I can’t picture that, somehow.”
He laughed, a big, hearty, rolling laugh. “Sure, that exactly right. Then we go around an island or two, put out the nets and drag them as we head home, doing what they say but taking the long way. Long enough to fill them nets.” He laughed. “Hell, boy, we caught ourselves a mess of sea bass.”
“A profitable day, then?”
“Damn right.” Then he was off to join his men in food and drink.
“Jackson is an adaptable sort,” I said.
“He’s a fisherman,” Bill said. “You gotta be to survive in that business, dealing with governments, bad catches, and rotten weather…”
Business kept picking up, surrounding us with the rising clamor of a busy bar, the chattering of people, the clanking of plates and glasses, and the pulsing of a new soca tune on the stereo. Sally took our plates, lingering as she took Bill’s, and we settled down with the remnants of the bottle for an evening of not much.
After a time, Walter came in, making a beeline for us. In his wake I saw a man I didn’t know, but my instinct said was some sort of official person or another. It was another example of my finely honed instincts at work, although I suppose his uniform might have given me a clue.
“Martin, Bill, I’d like you to meet our new head of the police here on St. Anne,” Walter said, slipping into a seat at our table. He held out a hand toward the other man. “This be Inspector Thomas George. The poor man was recently assigned to we island to restore law and order.”
I waved to an empty seat. “Welcome. Have a seat, Inspector,” I told the tall, thin man. I guessed he was about forty. He had a long face punctuated with sharp, inquisitive eyes that danced around the room, taking in everything, not just us, with an intensity that impressed me. I’d be willing to bet that, if you met him later, he’d be able to describe everything he saw in detail.
“I’m afraid this is not a social call,” he said. “I’m here on a police matter.”
Bill laughed. “This is St. Anne, Inspector. Everything in the islands is social, including police matters, maybe especially police business. If it ain’t social, it ain’t happening.”
“Just so,” Walter said, struggling to keep a straight face. He leaned forward to speak conspiratorially. “You see, our Inspector George just coming back to the islands after spending three years in England where he has been enjoying the fog, and tea, and neckties, and working at Scotland Yard,” Walter said. “You needing to give he some time to readjust to our ways. Right now, he wanting to talk to you and thinking today somehow better than tomorrow, so I telling he that this would be the place to find you.”
“And now that you have found us, you’d better have a seat,” I said. “I’m getting a kink in my neck looking up at people. That makes me cranky and uncooperative.”
With a very English harrumph and some starched-collar resistance, the inspector finally took the offered seat, sitting stiffly. The ever-vigilant Sally brought two glasses and Bill poured the men drinks.
“I’m afraid that I’m on duty,” the inspector said.
“No matter,” I said.
Bill pushed the glass toward him. “The point behind my colleague’s vague statement is that if you don’t drink on duty around here, you ain’t gonna earn people’s trust. If you want answers to your questions, you best drink up.”
The Inspector’s scowl deepened. “That’s not the way—”
Seeing his hesitation, Walter winked at me and raised his glass. “Now we need to be drinking to the Queen,” he said.
I chuckled at the way Walter’s toast put the man on the spot. Bill and I raised our glasses: “To the Queen.”
With an anxious look around, Inspector George picked up his glass and gave Her Majesty a modest sip before putting the glass down. Walter’s clever ploy, playing off loyalty to the queen against the regulations, impressed me.
“So, this police business you’ve come about —” I said.
“Urgent business,” Bill added.
His scowl deepened. “Are you telling me you really don’t know?” he asked.
“Know what?”
“This is about that sailboat you brought in today,” he said. He had a way of chewing over his words that made him appear thoughtful. Maybe he was, but accurate judgments of that sort take time.
“I figured that much, seeing as that’s been the headline news today. But why is a yacht rescue police business? We didn’t put it on the reef and rescuing a stranded boat wasn’t a crime the last time I checked.”
“There are some unsettling circumstances.”
“Unsettling,” Walter snorted. “Be saying it plain, Inspector George, so the man can say what happened.” He turned to me. “The inspector thinks you a lying man,” Walter said, pretending not to notice the glare the inspector gave him.
“All I said was that the facts are not clear,” the inspector said. “I need to hear the facts from you.”
“Fine,” Bill said. He looked at me. “May I?”
“Be my guest.”
Bill faced the inspector and put on a calm face. “Here are the facts: We steamed up from Trinidad
this morning. On arrival, we came across a sailboat on French Reef; a woman standing on the reef next to sailboat told us she drifted onto it; we yucked the sailboat off the reef and took it into the yacht basin; we anchored the sailboat, and, at the lady’s request, Martin took the woman ashore. Then we resumed business as usual, up to and including having a fine dinner here at The Barracuda.” He raised his glass. “And that, Inspector, are the facts we know.”
The inspector looked from Bill to me. “Nothing else? Anything to add?”
Bill folded his hands and looked the inspector in the eye. “Not a thing.”
When he turned his cop gaze on me, I shook my head. “I concur with the facts as presented. Everything is seemingly rather clear, and all operations were performed in broad daylight with no special effects. No animals were harmed while performing this daring rescue.”
As Bill talked, the inspector’s face darkened. “That’s all well and good, but those are simply your statements, not facts.”
That earned him a guffaw from Walter. “What I said — he thinks you are lying men.”
With his hands on the table, Bill leaned toward the inspector, using his rather sizable bulk to intimidate the man, as he does. “If that is true, it makes me exceeding curious. Which of those statements do you contend are not factual, good sir? The woman, French Reef, and the sailboat seemed tangible enough to us. Given that I know damn well that we didn’t sneak around the island and build either a yacht or a woman, I’m rather certain we found them both on the reef as we said.”
“And that very same sailboat is floating at anchor out there,” I said, pointing at the yacht basin. Realizing I couldn’t see it, I squinted. “Or it was, the last time we saw it.”
Inspector George looked at me, and then Bill.
“I got the boat tied up alongside the dock until things get settled,” Walter said.
The inspector nodded. “Your… story, your version of the events raises a number of questions.”
“Such as?”
“Where is this woman now? What happened to her?”
I laughed. “We have no idea.”
“We didn’t put a tracker on her, Inspector,” Bill said. “Around here, you take a person ashore, and they go where they go.”
“You told the Port Captain she was staying at Gazele’s guesthouse.”
I held up a finger and grinned at Walter. “No. That strays from the facts.”
“Then?”
“I told him that the woman told me she was staying at the guesthouse and that we took her to Gazele’s dock. I also told him the name she gave, but I didn’t check her ID. I also told him that there was a storm coming in, and I told him the boat was damaged but seemed sound.” I looked at Walter again. “Anything else?”
“You asked me to tell Gazele you had her cargo for her.”
“Right.”
The inspector turned his glass on the table, considering taking another taste, I suspected. “The thing is, we got no record of a woman with that name arriving on the island — not this one, nor St. Agnes.”
“So, she lied to us about her name,” I said.
“Or she came on a tour boat,” Bill said.
That got the inspector’s attention. “What?”
“There are any number of ways to arrive and depart this island without it being official.”
“There are?”
“Sure. If I had a reason to get on this island without going through formalities, it wouldn’t be hard, even for a man of my rather obvious cheerful disposition and size.”
“How?” I wondered that the inspector was so curious, but Bill was warming to his story.
“Well, I’d go to another island, maybe Grenada. There are tour boats and dive boats leaving all the time and they head this way. It isn’t that far to get here in a small boat. I’m pretty sure that if a person slipped the operator a hundred bucks, it would be enough to persuade him to put me ashore and say nothing about it.”
“With even less hassle, you could hitch a ride on a sailboat,” I said. “Especially a pretty lady. She just goes to the marina and asks around to find a boat heading over here. Maybe she slips them a little money so that when they check in, legal and all, they fail to mention you came with them. In fact, since we found her with a sailboat, maybe that boat brought her here.”
The inspector looked at Walter, who nodded. “I expect it happens that they don’t declare all the passengers. We don’t check who might be on the boat.”
“And just like that you go ashore and here you are, on the island, free of cumbersome documentation.”
“I bow you your expertise,” Bill said. He turned to the inspector. “We have a clear division of labor on board the motor vessel IRREPARABLE HARM. I am in charge of navigation since Martin gets lost going to the bathroom. I also handle philosophy, particularly epistemology and ethics, and, of course, poetics; the Captain here handles bureaucratic paperwork, is in charge of looking good, chatting up port authorities, logistics, and doing any sneaky things that require doing.”
Walter touched the inspector’s arm, and I thought the man was going to jump. “You best get to it. Tell these boys why this matters or they gonna keep just funning you until the rum runs out.”
The inspector drew himself up. “When the Port Captain called Gazele and learned she never heard of this woman, he got worried about the boat. The boatyard told him they didn’t get a call either, so he sent someone out to the boat to check on its condition. He’s the one who found the dead body.”
He said it as a throwaway line, watching our faces closely for a reaction. “A body?” Bill asked. “What body?”
“Named Warren Davis,” Walter said. “The man what owned the boat.”
“And I’d like to know why you didn’t mention that part,” Inspector George said.
I shook off bad feelings. “Because we didn’t know that part.”
“How could you miss it? The man was lying on the center of the cabin floor.”
“Sole,” Bill said sharply. The inspector looked at him, puzzled. “It’s important to be accurate as well as factual. Cabins don’t have floors, they have a sole. And we didn’t notice the dead body because we didn’t go on board the boat.”
The man scratched his head. “You didn’t go on board? I thought you salvaged the boat.”
I shook my head. “No, we pulled it off the reef. I checked the hull from the outside and was confident that any leaks I didn’t see would be slow ones. The woman said not to bother being thorough. She claimed she’d contact the owner and get the boatyard on it right away.”
“Basically,” Bill said, “the boat wasn’t our problem — we were just lending a hand and had no reason, and no business, going on the boat. If the woman hadn’t been there, we would have inspected it.”
“Why is that different?” the inspector asked.
“Maritime law. See, if no one had been on board, then we could declare salvage rights.”
“They could claim the boat,” Walter said. “A boat like that would be worth a nice piece of change and they’d treat her like they own.”
“Damn right,” Bill said. “But she was there and said it was her friend’s boat. And that shows we didn’t make her up. Why would we when it kept us from declaring salvage?”
The inspector shook his head. “You weren’t curious to learn more about her?”
That made me smile. “Given that the rescue was just a favor, lending a helping hand, we didn’t have time to be more curious. We had a delivery schedule to meet. Besides, here in the islands, asking questions isn’t a good way to make friends.”
Bill nodded. “The things we’d be curious about, like whether she had a boyfriend, didn’t seem to come up. A man who would loan her an expensive boat suggested that she wasn’t available.” He sighed. “She is a pretty one. Might be pleasant company.”
“Unless she’s a murder,” Walter said.
“The man was m
urdered?” Bill made a face. “You just said a body. Killed is a different fact than found dead. A bigger thing.”
“He’d been shot,” Walter said.
“Even so —” I could see where his thoughts were headed.
I needed to shift the conversation. “The point, Inspector, is that we have really told you all we know, every fact. I know you’ve been off the island for a time, but this kind of thing isn’t that uncommon.”
“Boats winding up on the reef with dead men on board?” he asked.
“A boat sailed by someone who doesn’t own her winding up on the reef…”
“Not at all unusual,” Walter said, refilling his glass. “Not the right thing at all, course, but…”
I held my glass out for the same treatment. Bill followed suit.
“But the woman disappearing and finding the dead man on board…”
“People disappearing isn’t that strange. The body is a twist,” I said.
Bill acknowledged my comment with a nod. “Even if Martin and I knew the dead guy, even if we had a reason to kill him, I don’t think it would make much sense for us to steal the boat, run it aground, and then bring it back. And we wouldn’t shoot him.”
“No?”
“If we wanted him dead, Martin here could just slip on board the boat at night and kill the dude with one of his special ops neck twisting moves. I think that’s how he’d do it, being a considerate type who wouldn’t want to wake the neighbors with gunshots or screams.”
I grinned. “My uninformed friend means a special SEAL move, not special ops.”
“You were a SEAL?”
I nodded. “Was the murder weapon on board?”
The inspector shook his head. “No. I’m assuming it got tossed into the sea somewhere.”
“Unless the killer still has it,” Bill said.
“Why keep it and incriminate yourself?” Walter asked.
Bill scratched his fat nose. “Well, if I was on a killing spree, not that I think about such things much, I’d be inclined to hold on to the murder weapon as long as I thought I might need it.”
“Unless you were afraid of getting caught with it,” I said.
“There is that pesky issue,” he agreed. “You might be right after all, inspector. I withdraw my objection.”
