Sweet Paradise

by Gene Desrochers

  “A reporter Junior was going to speak with got shot with a hunting arrow in front of us through the open door of my office.” I patted my chest. “He’s dead.”

  His expression remained passive, almost strangely so.

  “The blood on his leg?” Harold said.

  “Actually, he wiped off the other guy’s blood hours ago, but he won’t stop messing with the spot where it was.”

  “Jesus,” he muttered. “Does Herbie know?”

  I shook my head.

  “Yeah, probably for the best, dude. He won’t enjoy hearing that his son was in a room where someone was killed. Might make him more inclined to refuse your assistance. This got anything to do with mama ghosting us?”

  “No idea,” I said. “I’ve been a part of this game for an action-packed couple hours. All I know is a man’s dead and your nephew’s conviction that his grandma’s missing. Why don’t any of you believe him?”

  Junior exited the house with a determined gait and crossed the grass, holding a glass of water.

  “What’s up, kid?” asked Harold.

  He pouted and kicked at a rock. It tumbled toward the target. “Dad’s being a dick.”

  Harold nodded. I could see he wanted to agree, but he held his tongue.

  “What’d he say?” I asked.

  “He complained about wasting tuition money since we lose fifty-percent of this semester’s money if I drop out now. He also bitched about the cost of airline tickets. Like just ‘cause he’s afraid to leave this rock, I should never do anything?”

  “Hey man, your dad’s, like, thrifty.” Harold said.

  “No, he’s a cheap-ass.” Junior waved at the estate. “Got all this and acts like we’re broke. Shoot, if you hadn’t agreed, I wouldn’t even have Boise here on my case. She’s his mother.”

  Harold rubbed his neck and winced. “Look man, you gotta understand, your grandmother wasn’t always Missus Reliable. She had some wanderlust back in the day.”

  “Where’d she go?” Junior questioned.

  “Shoot if I know. Foreign lands? She’d go off with people then come back with ‘em and they’d stay a week. She’d call ‘em uncle-this or aunt-that, but none stuck around long. They’d go and she’d stay a while, then wander off again. We got raised by the maids and manservants back then mostly. I was the youngest, but those two,” he cocked his head at the house, “they got into some terrible mischief. Undocumented carousing. They got me started early. Heck, I’m still doing it.” At this last statement he grinned his stoned smile, eyes dull and dreamy. His teeth had a yellow tint, which reminded me that I hadn’t brushed since our last meal. “But, I’m willing to spend some bucks to be sure she’s still around. She straightened out and has been more reasonable the last twenty years. Also, she’s my mama.”

  “Can I use your bathroom?” I asked.

  “Inside to the right,” Harold said.

  I flossed and brushed, stealing a gob from a tube in the medicine cabinet, sticking my blue fold-up toothbrush back in my pocket after shaking off the excess water. My floss was running low.

  Through the French doors, I could see Harold and Junior talking. Harold mussed his nephew’s hair and said something that made both of them laugh. Thank God for uncles. I wished my Uncle Jim and my dad had been on speaking terms because I liked the guy a lot. But they weren’t, so we weren’t.

  The sound of running water issued from the kitchen but otherwise, the house had fallen silent without Hillary to incite chaos. The maid was washing dishes when I entered the kitchen.

  “Hi, Wilma, is it?”

  She started, flinging soap suds into the air. They paused mid-air, then began their slow descent.

  “Aye-yay-yay, mi son, you startle me!” Her hand covered her large bosom. It matched her wide hips. She shook her head as she leaned over the sink. A small smile broke on her lips.

  “What I can do for you? You want some water?”

  “No, nothing like that. I wanted to say I’m sorry about how Hillary acted to you earlier. It didn’t seem nice,” I said.

  She began washing the dishes again. “They pay me, so she think she can tell me anything and I have to do it. Miss Bacon, she say otherwise. I work for she, not dez brats.”

  “Do you live in this house?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How long since you last saw Miss Bacon?”

  “She done gone for da past weeks. Maybe three or four she done gone. She sometime go away. Not my place to say where da missus go.”

  My eye suddenly felt irritated. “May I?” I indicated the water. She stepped aside and let me put my face under the faucet. “You think she missin’?” I asked from inside the sink while rinsing out my eye.

  She turned her ear to me and cupped her hand. “You ask if she missin’?” She leaned back against the wall and looked out into the back yard. In the distance you could see a hazy expanse of endless grayish-blue desert. The ocean. It was quite the estate. “Could be. These children.” She shook her head with resignation. “I younger, but I had to work me whole life. Me whole life. Work make you grateful, you know?”

  She handed me a brown dish towel.

  “Did she used to take off randomly?”

  “Not no more. She change in da last ten years. Since Junior get to be seven or eight. Even before that she was more docile. She more like the family. But, I think she have somet’ing else in mind too.”

  “Something else?” I was confused. Wilma seemed to be in a stream of consciousness state.

  “Yeah, somet’ing she read. I see them arguing a lot recently.” She returned to the sink, washed a plate and a fork, then drained the brown, soapy water. The gurgling pipes forced me to speak up.

  “With each other or with Francine?”

  “Both.” Sounded like, boat.

  “What do you mean something she read? What would she read that would create such animosity within the family?”

  “Da sugar business. She no want da family to stay in it. Nothing good come from it. Not no more. She want to give back. She talk about something, like she find her god.”

  She ran the faucet, pulled the sprayer out and killed the suds in the bottom of the sink, then headed into the back of the house, leaving me standing there like a wallflower at the prom.

  A powerful shout erupted from the living room. I poked my head out. Herbie had opened the French doors. He was commanding Junior to come inside. They needed to talk about his cavalier attitude toward his studies and money. Junior slinked inside and upstairs, his father on his heels. Herbie walked with the pathetic confidence some men gained from deflating their sons.

  I moved into the living room and watched them ascend. At the top of the staircase, Herbie turned and looked down at me. A nobleman gazing down at a serf.

  “You are dismissed. Leave my son alone. Your ideas are infecting this family. You’re not welcome here.”

  Exposing secrets. It brought out the worst in people. Harold was in the driveway cleaning the blackened old wax off a surfboard. He offered me a ride home.

  “Was your mother a reader,” I asked as we jostled down the road in his brick-colored jeep.

  “Pardon? A reader. Who doesn’t read if they know how? Who’s gonna willfully be a fool?”

  We jounced over a pothole as we left the long, smooth driveway and hit the badly rutted “main” road outside the Bacon estate. Behind us, a wrought iron fence ambled shut. The gate man waved at Harold, who threw out a mock salute, which made the older fellow grin. From what I could see the private street serviced three houses, of which the Bacons’ was the last. We passed another gated driveway bordered by hedgerows. Up a hill I could make out a Mediterranean style roof surrounded by coconut trees.

  “You’d be surprised,” I muttered. “You taken a good look at humanity lately? Not brimming with intellectual curiosity.”

  Without slowing, he whipped around a be
nd, crowding the middle. Another car swerved around us, laying into the horn. The man threw his finger out the window. Harold smiled and waved.

  “That’s Jerrimy. He’s always angry because his parents spelled his name weird. We had classes together up in New England.”

  “You attended boarding school like Junior?”

  At the next intersection, a blue Toyota Rav-4 was parked in a dirt spot on the shoulder. A fat white guy with questionable facial hygiene had a paper open on the steering wheel. He didn’t look up as we flew by.

  “It’s a Bacon family tradition. Man, I was so pissed I told mama I’m never leaving again unless it’s to visit another island. No snow. Endless summer. That’s my motto.” His tan face lit up and it was like I could see waves foaming in his eyes. “You surf?”

  “Used to, out Hull Bay. In L.A. it’s territorial and you need a wetsuit. I also smelled funny when I got out.”

  He stuck out his tongue and wrinkled his nose. “Wetsuits suck, but if you gotta. Where you headed?”

  “The West Indian Manner.”

  “In town?”

  “Yup. East of downtown near ... ”

  “I know the place. It’s almost as big as our house.”

  We drove in silence for a few minutes. Dusk overtook us. He eventually flicked on the headlights. Traffic was light.

  “You believe this traffic,” he said as we halted at a stoplight with four cars in front of us. “What a hassle.”

  I looked at him out of the corner of my eye as I pictured nine p.m. in L.A. on a capillary having more cars per block than we’d seen in eight minutes of driving. He punched me in the arm.

  “I’m messing with you, man. You mentioned L.A. so I figured I’d complain about this piddly shit! The look on your face when you were contemplating how anyone could think this was bad. These are the little moments I live for.” He pouted his mouth and broke into a silly British accent. “Now, I know you’re dying to ask some more questions about me lost mum, so out with it, dear boy.”

  “Well, I was asking about her reading habits,” I said. “Do you recall her reading anything ground-breaking lately?”

  “Ground-breaking. Hmmm. Breaking ground you say? Hmmm.” He was still having fun with me.

  We swerved around another bend. To keep from leaning into him, I gripped the door handle and someone honked. Nothing much seemed to phase Harold.

  “You want we should swing by your office? The cops probably left everything open.”

  I hadn’t even considered that. “Yeah, great idea,” I said.

  As we passed through Havensight, a small sign you could barely read said “Daily News” with an arrow pointing right. “This is it coming up,” I said. Harold flung the wheel and cut off an on-coming auto.

  “You have a way with other drivers,” I said. My stomach did a somersault.

  My office door was indeed wide open. Darkness had settled in and street lights illuminated the parking lot. A few reporter’s cars remained, but otherwise the place was deserted.

  My door looked like a three-year-old had spent the afternoon finger painting on it. Kendal’s blood splatter had dried on the lower right below the doorknob.

  “Is that?” Harold pointed at the blood.

  I nodded with a shudder.

  The bloody arrowhead flashed in my memory. Morbidly, I thought of the bottle of champagne used to christen a ship. Kendal had christened my office.

  I limboed under the police tape and surveyed the inside. Nothing missing. Thank God for small favors. For what it was worth, I locked the door.

  “Getting back to your mom’s reading,” I said once we were back on the road. We passed Island Pharmacy, and I remembered my short supply of floss and the need for Kleenex in my office. I asked Harold to stop. He pointed at the “CLOSED” sign. I had gotten used to late-night pharmacies in L.A. In St. Thomas it seemed everything except bars closed by six or whenever they felt like it.

  When growing up here, my father had no trouble spending his lunch hour, breakfast hour, and dinner hour sauced, all the while holding down a job. The islands were full of functional drunks like Terry Montague.

  “Hey man, I’ve been thinking, maybe we ought to rummage through her room. She didn’t tell me much about that stuff but lately she was on about something, like all these years of shutting us out was for our own good. There were more, I dunno, varieties of people milling about. I mean, there’s always someone who she had business with, but these seemed more like social-activist types or something. Younger. I figured it was some charity she was starting and she’d tell me about it when she was ready.”

  “Varieties of people?” I asked as Harold flashed his high beams at an oncoming car whose lights were blinding us.

  He opened his fingers then dropped them back on the wheel as he shifted. “I dunno. More, you know, islanders. Locals.”

  “People of African descent?” I said.

  He looked at me then back at the road. “Good way to put it. I hate the word black. Hate the word white too. Never seen anyone who’s white or black, you know?” I waited for him to continue. “Just, I dunno, mama got friendlier with our workers lately. More respectful, you know? Not that she was disrespectful, but like they were more equals than before.” He paused, perhaps waiting for me to say something that made it okay. When I said nothing, he went on. “I know, it’s fucked up.”

  The man had a bit of white guilt, as he should. I pointed to Wet Willy’s, a bar with brick facing and slatted shutters that hadn’t been painted since prohibition. “I’m gonna have a beer before heading up. You want one?”

  “Guess I’m buying,” he said.

  We bantered about insignificant stuff as I swilled down the last drop of Guinness from my pint.

  With a belch of satisfaction, I clanked the glass on the wooden table and bookended it with my hands. My eyelids were going to need toothpicks to keep them from falling shut like garage doors, but I had two last acts of business to conduct with Mr. Bacon and my buzzed demeanor would help.

  “About the retainer,” I said.

  At this he waved his hand for me to shut up. Pulling a bulky Velcro wallet featuring a beige surfer riding a white wave on the flap, he counted out twenty hundreds.

  “What else?” he asked. “Are you going to tell me not to drive?”

  “When can we rummage through your mama’s things?” I asked.

  “Soon, maybe even tomorrow if I can get those home bodies out. Just be ready when I call.”

  I shared my cell info. As I rounded up the hill toward the guesthouse, I turned back.

  “Two more things,” I said.

  He lingered next to his car, peering at me through his own heavy garage doors. “I’m not Samoan.”

  “Did I say you were Samoan?”

  “Yes.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “What’s the second thing?”

  “You shouldn’t drive.”

  I didn’t wait to see if he followed my advice.

  Chapter 6

  Junior’s father was in no mood for games. Herbie popped some Dexedrine, an amphetamine prescribed for ADHD, but in his case used for alertness. He’d started the drug because of the focus and self-esteem boost, years of constant use evolving into dependence.

  Herbie’s hand raked across Junior’s face, raising an angry red knot on his cheek and sending him to the floor. He had come out of the bathroom after taking a shower to find his father sitting on the edge of his bed. Junior knew it was coming. He knew what the situation demanded. He’d gone outside the chain of command. Aired laundry.

  Junior’s face ached, but this was nothing. He had pride, but in this room, pride got you hurt. His father had never said “I love you.” Well, more precisely, he’d never said it in a loving way.

  “I show you love. I raise you. This is how you repay that kindness? Bringing this country stranger into my house. How dare you?” />
  The boarding school language. The highbrow berating. The street-level beating. All of it happened so fast.

  “And now my dumb ass brother is going to involve other people. He agreed to pay this, this fool detective, didn’t he?”

  Junior nodded from his position on the floor. Something dripped out of his nose. Junior watched it splatter on the hardwood. Not blood. Clear.

  “You are going to repay me for both the cost of the ticket, and ... ”

  Junior’s temper slipped silently from his grasp and shattered like a glass ornament. Still staring at the wetness on the floor, through clenched teeth he said, “I’m not going away. I’m here to find grandma.”

  His father bent down, his hot breath pasting his son’s ear with each word. “You will do as I say, boy. You will go complete your schooling. You will make this family proud, or you will get nothing.”

  I don’t want nothing from the likes of you, Junior thought. Although he felt rebellious, he dared not stick his hand into the shark’s mouth again. He kept his mouth shut. He let thoughts run free, but voiced nothing. Not now. Not in the dragon’s lair. He would wait for the right time, then he’d make his father proud by taking the initiative. Finally, he’d see Junior for the leader he would someday be.

  The small act of rebellion had taken every bit of courage Junior could muster. Confronting Herbie terrified him. He really wasn’t ready for this. He was a man, but not that man, not yet. Wasn’t sure he ever would be. Today, he felt like a gambler who had edged his one-thousand dollar chip toward double-zero, then pulled it back right before the roulette dealer waved his hand over the table. He didn’t know what had happened to his mother. Herbie gave the same evasive answers every time he brought up Gertrude. In August, right before leaving for college, Herbie’s anger over the questions had intensified to fury.

  “You ask me again, boy. I dare you to ask again! Your so-called mother, Gertrude, abandoned us. Forget about her, or I’ll beat your skull till you cannot remember that cursed name. Do you hear? Gertrude put her heart in a cage and threw away the key when she abandoned us.”