Martin Billings Caribbean Crime Thrillers

by Ed Teja

  Inspector George finished his rum and didn’t object when Walter added a touch more to the glass. I warmed to him. With just a little time, a little exposure to his own culture, he should fit right. That laid-back mindset can prove an irresistible force. “And you have no idea where this woman went?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “I need you to stay on the island while I check things out, hear?”

  “Yes sir,” I said. “We have no reason to leave when the fun is just starting.”

  He glared at me while deciding if I was being smug, then nodded. “Fine. And if you see her around before then, you call me.”

  He put a business card on the table and Bill scooped it up. “I’ll have that. Junior here would just lose it,” he said. “He ain’t what you call organized.”

  With an uncertain expression, the Inspector downed his rum and nearly smiled. “That’s good stuff. I’d forgotten.”

  “Mt. Gay,” Bill said. “Better than tea.”

  “I’d like you to come see me first thing tomorrow,” he told me.

  “Both of us?” Bill asked.

  He weighed his answer. “No. Captain Billings, if you drop by, we can sit down and review what you’ve told me. I’ll see things differently after I’ve had time to think through what you’ve told me and a chance to talk to a few other people.”

  I wondered who he wanted to talk to. I doubted it would be the people hanging around the dock. “Certainly,” I said. “I’ll be there for the opening bell.”

  “At the crack of ten,” he said, then shook his head. “If my friends at Scotland Yard heard that we have a police station that keeps hours…”

  Then he was gone.

  “He’s going to do fine,” Bill purred. “He’ll learn the ropes soon enough.”

  “Strikes me, he’s no dummy,” Walter said.

  “We told him what we know, Walter,” I said. “All of it.”

  “Good,” he said. Then he reached for the bottle, as a person does when comfortable among friends. He held it up to the light so we could all see that we were in dangerous territory. “We seem headed for shallow water,” he said. “That’s not much for a long evening,” he said.

  “I think that, if we asked nicely, Sally might be able to find us another bottle,” I said. “And if we actually bought one, you know it would definitely please Gazele.”

  Walter clearly liked my answer, and he smiled as he drained the last of the rum into his own glass and then looked around for Sally. “Where that girl is?”

  5

  The squall looming to the east, that had been threatening all morning, hit hard about midday, wrapping us in a cocoon that turned the sky black, made the temperature drop abruptly, and unleashed a furious torrent of rain that pounded down on the steel roof of the wheelhouse.

  Bill had gone to his cabin for a nap, and I sat at a desk, reveling in the reassuring drone of rain on the roof. Snug in harbor, with HARM secured by two anchors, the torrential downpour became tropical music. At that moment it helped numb the pain of doing the ship’s books.

  Paperwork! I hate it, all of it — paying invoices for work the boatyard had done, thinking about ordering supplies, and looking at our cash flow over the next month. Not that all the news was bad, but I just have no love for adding columns of figures.

  When I decided to get into the cargo freighter business, when Bill talked me into it, that was one aspect I didn’t give enough thought to. It never occurred to me, but there it was. I figured I had been lucky. What business didn’t have some serious downsides and unexpected gotchas? As such things go, this wasn’t exactly hell and the rest of it was good, something I enjoyed and that meant I spent time at sea.

  At the moment, fuel was our most pressing need. Although HARM was reasonably fuel efficient, her tanks held a lot of diesel. In the scheme of things, that was a good thing, as taking on fuel up island was an expensive option and bunkering it in our tanks let us plan when and where we bought fuel. But when it started getting low… well, now I was looking for a business reason to get down to Trinidad again soon, where it was a lot cheaper. Until we got paid for this run, we didn’t have the money to top up. Now we had the money but weren’t where the fuel was cheap.

  In the old days, before Hugo Chavez did his thing in Venezuela, you head there for cheap fuel, cheap Polar beer, and good rum. Back then, we made those runs a couple times a year. With that once wonderful country under new management since around 2000, it was no longer such a good option. Even if we made the trip, it was unlikely we’d find a marina with enough fuel to spare, anyway.

  The storm broke, leaving the air fresh and cool. I closed the ledgers. I’d juggled the numbers until even I didn’t believe them anymore and was glad when Bill wandered in to make a rather predictable suggestion.

  “Time for a drink ashore,” he said. “The air is clear, the water calm, and my belly hollow.”

  “And The Barracuda beckons,” I said.

  “Where we are owed a free drink by the lovely lady who owns the damn bar and is giving you the glad eye,” he said, winking. “A winning combo if I ever saw one. Not much in the world better than that.”

  “Let me stow the paperwork in the desk and I’ll be with you.”

  “Lilly and I won’t wait forever,” he said, ducking out.

  As we were in the commercial harbor and the public dock over in the yacht basin, we had a couple of choices. The easiest was to take the dinghy to the dock right by the customs shed and tie up. But then we’d have to catch a taxi over to the yacht basin. Instead, as Lilly was a lovely girl who didn’t mind a bit of open water, we motored around the point to the yacht basin and tied up at the dock all the boaters use. It’s centrally located, and leads tight to Front Street, the main street that runs parallel to the waterfront.

  The Barracuda bar perched comfortably a couple of blocks further down, overlooking the water as a waterfront bar should.

  “Look at all the pretties,” Bill said, pointing to bunting that was slung from rooftops crossing the street. “Someone is planning a party and I think we are invited.”

  “That’s a cheerful thought. Of course, getting people interested in partying doesn’t take a whole lot of convincing on these islands.”

  “No, sir. These are intelligent and cultured people.”

  Like most Caribbean bar/restaurants, The Barracuda was a thatched-roof open air place with wooden floors. Laid-back is the term most people use to describe the atmosphere. I call it my kind of place — a relaxing establishment dedicated to booze and food and conversation, with the only ferns in sight being those that grew up through cracks in the floor.

  We’d arrived early and found it fairly empty. That suited us, as we had the wild and crazy idea of having a relaxing and nice dinner before the evening rush got going strong. And there was always an evening rush. This was the gathering place for boaters of all stripes—yachties, fishermen, and grubby freighter crews, like us.

  We grabbed our favorite table, one that had a view of the yacht basin. Even though Bill and I aren’t generally fans of most yachts, there are some lovely craft in the area, just as there are some fine deep-water sailors that get jumbled in among the day sailors.

  I saw that one boat, in particular, had caught Bill’s attention. Anchored out at the edge of the basin, not far from where we’d anchored WANDERER earlier, sat a junk-rigged boat. The junk rig is a working rig — practical, if not exactly in fashion. I had to admire the look of her.

  “A man could sail around the world on a boat like that in style,” Bill said.

  “She’s not going to go well to windward,” I pointed out.

  “If I decided to go sailing, it would be to sail around the world. I couldn’t imagine wanting to rush a trip like that,” he said. “A boat like that promises fairly genteel, if leisurely, passages. There’s no fancy rigging to deal with. Trimming the sails is basic, freeing a soul to kick back and read a book, drink some rum, an
d watch the ocean go by. And all that is just as nice at three knots as at ten.”

  He had a point, and it wasn’t the first time I’d heard him talk wistfully about doing something like that. I wondered if he thought about it seriously, or just enjoyed the fantasy. “The trip would be better with company.”

  “With the right company,” he said. “With the wrong person, it would be hell. I do keep a weather eye out for a woman who loves the sea. Going around the world as the wind takes you, sharing it with a lovely lady who can handle the helm in a gale — that’s my idea of an ideal retirement plan.”

  His reverie, the faraway look in his eyes snapped when Gazele came up, greeting us with a smile. I stood, and she gave me a warm hug. “I knew you’d come,” she said. She had two glasses and a bottle of rum in her hand. Setting the glasses in front of us, she poured healthy drinks then sat the bottle down and rested a delicate hand on my shoulder, a soft touch. She bent down and whispered in my ear. “I’m glad you came to see me, Marty.”

  “And where else would we go?”

  She clucked. “I was wondering about the foreign woman you picked up.”

  I grinned at her. “She’s trouble. I’m trying to forget her. Not that I have a clue where she went.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Is a small island. If a man decided he wanted to find someone it wouldn’t be so hard.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Is she pretty?”

  “I’m not even saying. You know she parked a perfectly good yacht on a reef, right? A woman like that seems like she’d be too much trouble for me.” I touched her hand. “The wrong kind of trouble.”

  “You saying you might like my kind of trouble?”

  I laughed, “Against my better judgment,” I said, taking her hand, “I’m saying it might be fun to find out what sort of trouble you are.”

  She laughed to let me know she heard, and then straightened, turning to look at people who were filing in, starting to fill up the tables. The look in her eyes changed and I suspected it was due to the smell of money that began to fill in the air, arousing her in a different way entirely.

  “I gotta get to work,” she said. “These customers got no respect for a woman’s pleasure,” she said.

  “You are complaining about having too much business?” Bill asked.

  “It not the amount, fool. Just that considerate folk would come in here nice and steady, throughout the night, and every night of the week, not all arrive in one damn bunch, like some damn school of sardines swarming around the reef then shooting off, all sudden like.”

  Her good-natured complaining, the image she conjured of sardines, made me smile. Everyone knew that the woman loved staying busy, being successful, and having her bar bustling with activity, all those things made her feel nothing but happy.

  As she scooted off, Sally Walker, Gazele’s main waitress, came up to us. I noted that, as always, she directed her high-intensity smile at Bill. “So what you boys having with your rum?” she asked.

  Bill refilled his glass. “More rum. It goes great with everything.”

  “Gazele said you boys should be hungry…” she smiled and let her hip brush Bill’s shoulder. “For some food.”

  I pointed to a gecko, sitting on the rattan railing that divided the place up. “Say, is there a special on these fellas?”

  Sally turned the page on her order book, poised her pencil over it, ready to write. “If you want to order gecko, Darling, then I’m betting we can fix you up. Roasted or deep fried? Seeing as they’s about one million of them running around. Now you understand, we don’t put them on the menu, seeing they eat lotsa bugs and all, but I can catch a dozen or so… why not?”

  Bill laughed. “I’ll stick with fish. Red snapper, please.”

  Sally pointed over her shoulder toward the old swimming pool that had once been the pride and joy of a guest house next door—until a hurricane removed the entire place. In the aftermath, the owner wanted to move to the US and sold it to Gazele. She leveled the mess of the house, but kept the pool, filling it with salt water and a variety of fish. “You want fish, big man? I can get you a fine deal on Larry,” she said.

  “Larry’s probably a bit tough by now,” Bill laughed. Larry was a six-foot barracuda. Jackson had given it to Gazele as a joke, but she’d named him Larry and put him in the pool — now he owned it and the other fish that swam in it were his meals.

  Sally cocked her head. “We got eating sized ones too, but they cost more.” She pointed to the large tank behind the bar that held more of the namesake barracuda. These were practical ornaments but could also play an important role on the menu. Eating barracuda was an iffy proposition. They could be a source of ciguatera, dangerous toxins that accumulate in reef-eating fish, such as parrot fish, that then got concentrated in the predators that ate them, a food chain topped by barracuda. But the island mantra said: “long as your arm, do no harm.” People ate the young ones and prepared right, the fish’s tasty, firm flesh made for good eating.

  “I think I’ll stick with your famous red snapper and fries,” Bill told her, nodding toward the tank. “Those boys look real happy right where they are.”

  I looked at them, swimming about, looking lazy. “I’ll have the same.”

  “Coming up.”

  “Say, Sally, on the way in we noticed that someone is dressing up Front Street. What’s that all about? Is there gonna be a big party?”

  She scribbled on her order pad. “Damn right. Seems some minister bringing an important man over from St. Agnes to we little island. Seems the minister has a need to stand in front of folks and tell us how making themselves rich is good for us.”

  “Elections must be coming up,” Bill said.

  “When is this party? Soon?”

  She shrugged. “Not sure, and it don’t pay to ask around here. All I know is it’s gonna be nice and loud and, when I hear the music playing, I gonna know it’s time to dance.” She bumped her hip against Bill. “We gonna dance, big man?”

  “With you? Hell yes,” Bill said, winking. “I’ll dance you right off the floor.”

  “You best be a man of your word, big man, cause Sally is counting on dancing all that night. And if you can’t keep up…”

  “I’ll keep up, little lady.”

  “Whatever night it is,” I said.

  “It be whenever the music starts happening.” She grinned. “If I wait for the music, then I don’t get there early and have to hear them politicians telling they lies. I can go straight to the partying.”

  “Smart woman,” I said.

  “You bet your ass.” With that, she tucked her pencil behind her ear and swished her way back to the kitchen to put in our order.

  The look on Bill’s face as he watched her walk away amused me. “Is there something going on between you two?” I asked.

  Bill tipped his head. “If I have anything to say about it, there will be.” Then he grinned, and licked his lips, sliding his chair back and looked out at the junk-rigged yacht again. He lifted his glass with a faraway look in his eyes, then sighed. “I wonder if Sally would like to learn to sail.”

  It didn’t seem that unlikely.

  7

  When we are in port, it isn’t unusual for Ugly Bill to find a reason to spend the night on shore. Typically, this reason is female, and tonight’s reason was named Sally Walker. That evening we’d hung around The Barracuda and, as the crowd thinned, Sally took him aside and suggested a more satisfactory option than sleeping alone on his lonely, hard bunk on a steel freighter. Wise in the ways of the world, he took the option.

  Life on board an island freighter might sound romantic but staying on board loses its allure quickly in the face of warm competition from real romance.

  I’ve been known to fall prey to those welcome temptations myself but, alas, by closing time, I saw that Gazele was out on her feet. The effort of getting rich, one drink at a time, proved exhausting even for her.
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  She sidled up to me with an apologetic smile. “If you are hanging around on my account, darling, I might owe you an apology. This crazy evening left me no good for anything but sleep tonight,” she told me. I started to speak, but she touched her fingers to my lips. “I don’t want you going with me and being disappointed. No, we gonna wait until we both right for it.”

  I hate logic that doesn’t lead to the conclusion I want. She did manage to give me an intoxicating kiss before retiring alone to her room behind the office.

  I’d steeled myself to the idea of dealing with that woman, and now the opportunity had dissolved. Life! At the very least, the challenge and pleasure of Gazele’s company, the chance to experience her unique mixture of hard-headed aggression and extremely sensual femme fatale attitude, was postponed.

  She wouldn’t be an easy woman to deal with, I felt certain, but a man could do worse — being alone struck me as much worse.

  And so, acutely aware of being alone and lonely (something aggravated by seeing Bill slip away with the luscious Sally Walker), I motored Lilly back to HARM.

  But I’ve been alone and lonely before and refused to dwell on things that weren’t going to happen. On board, I went to my cabin and took a shower, then slipped on an ancient robe and went up on deck. As I end up spending an unfair number of nights alone on board, I’d set things up nicely for myself. I had a wide and comfortable portable recliner, a table that Bill and I retrofitted with a cabinet underneath that served as a portable bar, and even decent music (mellow jazz) that I could pipe onto the foredeck. Ensconced with all the essentials, sipping a lonely rum, and watching the brilliant night sky is calming.

  St. Anne is a busy little island, but it still managed to remain untroubled by many of the amenities of other commercial ports. The harbor is lit only by windows and running lights, so the stars remain visible — the clear and sharp beauties hang against a black background above the small halo of light surrounding the harbor.