"Hey Mike," Maria Verde called out, her head popping into sight over a rock. "Everything going OK down there?"
"Yeah, yeah, Maria, no problem. I'll catch up in a minute."
"So you're missing some...what'd you call it, ganja?" Lucy asked.
"Look, I don't know why you think you need to be involved in this thing, but..."
She decided to take the plunge. "I wasn't planning on getting involved in this thing, as you call it, Mike, until I ran into a dead guy the other night. That's when..."
"That doesn't have anything to do with..."
"Oh, bullshit. You don't really believe that, do you, Nack? How well do you know Joey Ruskin, Mike?" He blanched. "And who the hell knows what Angus stumbled onto that night."
"Angus had a fucking heart attack, Lucy. Why can't you give up this...this...Look, we only got a minute, so let me tell you how it works." His eyes were darting around. He was in a panic, talking a mile a minute. "Why should I bullshit you? Hear me out, then you can decide what you want to do. You're a writer, you get paid shit just like I do. So this is the deal. There's a million people like us up in New York, Boston, Phillie, wherever, who would still like to smoke the occasional joint, only all the dope's moved to the ghetto and nobody has any connections anymore. So Joey's trying to set up a separate network that bypasses the Kingston posses and makes reefer available to people like us. You can't tell me you find smoking pot immoral, Lucy...or is it just that you want a cut?"
She said, "No, I don't...but...a cut of what? What's in it for you?"
"Use your head, Lucy. You know how it goes when we get back. The PR bimbo hustles us through customs, there's no way they're gonna inconvenience important travel editors like us, so we sail on past..."
"With your bricks in your bags."
"You got it. I meet a guy at the airport, he takes my bag and gives me a lot of cash, and that's that."
She considered. Actually, it sounded like a pretty good scam, as far as these things went. "Well, there's still the little matter of Angus Wilson and his so-called heart attack."
"It wasn't so-called, dammit."
"Come on, Mike, do you really believe that..."
"Hey Luce," Mickey called up. "There are packs of wild tourists baying at my rear. Get me outta here."
"You got it, Mick," she said, hanging over the rock for a look down at her.
"So where's the dope, Lucy?" Nack hissed.
"I don't know," Lucy tossed off. "Maybe ask me later and I'll remember. Here you go, Mick," she added, leaning over and reaching down.
"You have got to come up with my dope, Lucy," Nack whined. "Or...or..."
"Accidents can happen," Maria Verde said softly. She arrived on the rock just as Lucy hauled Mickey over the edge. Mickey landed on her feet, and suddenly the four of them stood eyeball to eyeball.
"Well, no use taking a meeting here," grinned Mickey a few seconds later. "Let's waltz up another rockpile."
"I think Mickey and I will go solo from here on," Lucy said. "We'll catch up to you later."
Nack had a long look at her. "OK, Lucy, but just remember what I said."
Maria grinned, and this time the malevolence welled up onto the shifty surface of her face. "And what I said," she added, and scrambled away, Nack trailing after.
"What was that all about?" Mickey asked after Nack had climbed out of sight.
"You don't want to know," Lucy said.
When Mickey answered, "Oh yes I do," Lucy decided to tell her. After all, there was strength in numbers. Particularly in the face of a threat.
Half an hour later she had brought Mickey up to speed on the goings on, and Mickey had enlightened her as to what she, Mickey had won that long ago day when she'd drunk an entire bottle of 151 to win a bet. Over three other travel writers, two women and one gay man, she'd won the chance to attempt seduction of Joey Ruskin, and she had succeeded.
They completed the hike, then took a stroll through the Instant Jamaican Village of Green River Falls, where entrepreneurial natives of the Magic Island sold their wares. Lucy bought a t-shirt with a black, big-hipped lady dancing across the chest in bright native garb, and a bottle of ginger beer. When the Grand Strand gang climbed on the bus a few moments later to head back to the hotel, neither Mike Nack nor Maria Verde were anywhere to be found, and so they left without them.
"So you wanna come over to Harold's room and help make a plan, Mick?" she asked as they climbed off the bus back at the hotel.
"Nah, I don't think so," Mickey said. "Me and Henrietta are gonna take a tennis lesson from the pro. He looks like Denzel Washington and talks like Hugh Grant, so...I'm sure you can handle it—whatever it may turn out to be—with Harry's help."
"Yeah, yeah," Lucy said. "Catch you later."
"No doubt. Tonight's the big do at Hababi's."
"Oh shit, that's right. You gonna dress up?"
"Sorta. But its beachfront casual, so..."
"The zombie wife'll probably be wearing Versace."
"Yeah, well, that's her problem," Mickey said.
Five minutes later Lucy rapped on the door of Harold's room. When no one answered, she knocked again. Nothing. She circled the building, located his patio, and approached. The door was locked and the curtains drawn. She couldn't see a thing. She returned to the back of the building, rapped loudly on the door, and called out, "Yo, Harold, you in there? Harold, open up."
"Can I help you, Miss?" came from somewhere above. Lucy stepped back for a look. A chambermaid—not Prudence Fallowsmith this time—looked down from the second story balcony railing.
"Um....yeah," Lucy said. "I left my purse in my friend's room and he's not here and I really need it. Think you might let me in for a minute?"
"Well I don't know, Ma'am, I'm not supposed to..."
"His name's Harold Ipswich and he and I are good friends," Lucy said. "You can take my word for it. His room's right here, we're both on the press trip. Hey, go in with me. I just wanna take a quick look, hon..."
"Well, all right, Ma'am, hold on a minute." She disappeared, and emerged a moment later from the stairwell. "Please don't say anything about this to my boss or..."
"Not to worry," said Lucy. "My lips are sealed." The girl, whose nametag ID'ed her as Jane Arlington, pulled out a fat ring of keys, picked one out, and unlocked the door. Lucy pulled it halfway open. "Harold," she said softly, and when there was no answer she pulled it all the way open and had a look. "Jesus Christ," she gasped on seeing the room, for it had been torn to pieces: drawers pulled out, clothes strewn all over, blankets and sheets tangled in a heap on the floor. Ransacked.
"My goodness," said the maid. "I cleaned this room not...two hours ago," she said. "This fellah some kind of wild man?"
"You're sure it was this room you cleaned?"
"I did all of the ground floor in this wing first, Ma'am," she said with certainty. "Well, I'd best get my cart and do it again," she sighed, and turned to go.
"Hey, wait, hon," Lucy said. "You've got enough to do, you shouldn't have to do the same room twice. I'll take care of this. What can I say, Harry's a slob."
"No, Ma'am, I..."
"I insist," Lucy said, and pressed a twenty dollar bill into Jane's hand. "Now you just go ahead and do what you have to do. I'll lock the door when I leave."
"I can't take this...we're not allowed to..."
"Just take it, Jane, honey. I know you can use it." She did.
As soon as she was alone behind a locked door Lucy turned off the lights, then dragged a chair into the bathroom, climbed up, and began dismantling the light fixture, a glass globe with an ornamental brass fitting that screwed into a bracket above the ceiling. A moment later, she had it loose. She pushed the wires and the dangling socket and bulb aside, and reached up into the round black hole. After a few seconds of groping she pulled one of the ganja bricks down. She tossed it down and reached up for another one.
When she'd brought them all down, she replaced the light fixture, returned the chair
to its place amidst the chaos of the bedroom, then went back into the bathroom to gather the bricks into a plastic laundry bag. She turned off the bathroom light and was halfway across the bedroom headed for the patio door, bag in hand, when she heard the sound of a locked door being tried.
She slipped from the semi-dark room into the darker closet, pulled the slatted wood door halfway shut, and crouched, holding her breath.
"Shit, mon, look at dis!" A woman's voice, hissing.
"Jesus X. Christ." A man, whispering. Harold? She couldn't be sure, as the lights came on and she cowered in the closet. "What a mess!" Definitely Harold.
"I will help you to clean up, Harry," said the woman, whose voice sounded faintly familiar.
"Nah, forget it Pru, I'll take care of it. Just let me..."Lucy could hear him moving the chair into the bathroom, climbing up on it, and dismantling the light fixture..."check on this. Shit, it's gone!"
"What's that?" said Pru.
"The pot. I'd stuck it up here. No one knew but Lucy, and there's no way she woulda moved it unless...Oh, hell," he said, and Lucy heard him jump down and rush to the phone. He dialled a number and waited. "She's not in her room. Damn!" He slammed down the phone. "Listen, you get back over there and see what's up, OK? I'm gonna see if there's anything in here that might tell me who...visited."
"No problem, Harry," said Pru, and suddenly Lucy knew the voice: Prudence Fallowsmith, the woman who cleaned her room. What the fuck??! Her room! Christ, what if they tore hers up too! What if they took her camera with the memory card still in it!
Lucy heard the door close. She waited as Harold picked up the phone. "Hello, operator. Have you got any messages for me? Right, Harold Ipswich. Nothing? Nothing from Lucy Ripken? Are the people from the Green River Hike back?...Half an hour ago? Thanks." He put the phone down. "Damn," he said. She heard him sit down on the bed.
She stood up, slid the door open, and walked out of his closet, bag of bricks in hand.
"Hi Harold," she said. He jumped. "It's right here," she added, displaying the bag. "I was..."
"Jesus, Luce," he said, rushing to her. "You scared the shit out of me. What the..."
"I came by a little while ago, and talked the maid into letting me in since you weren't here and I was worried about this," she waved the bag at him. "But it's all here. When I saw how they'd wrecked your room I..."
"Who did it?"
"I don't know, Harry. The maid said she'd cleaned it up two hours ago, so...your guess is as good as mine."
"Yeah, well...we both know who that would be, don't we? But how did they know to look for it here? Who let you in?"
"The maid. Her name was Jane. Jane Arlington. But Harry, who the hell is Pru?"
"Pru?" He looked like a guilty boy, grinning awkwardly. "What do you mean?"
"Comon, man, don't bullshit me. Someone named Pru was here just a..."
"Ohhh, that Pru. Prudence. She's a maid too...an employee here."
Lucy waited for more. It didn't come. "Yeah, I know. I discovered her cleaning the inside of my closet the other day...so why are you and Pru on such intimate terms, if I might ask, Harry?"
"Intimate? Hardly, Lucy." He looked...conspiratorial. "Listen, Luce, I can't tell you now, but...trust me. She's...allright."
"All right? What does that mean? We've got a twenty pound sack of illegal dope, my life was just threatened, and I'm supposed to trust a hotel maid to be in on the...deal?"
"Whaddaya mean, your life was threatened? Did you go to the Falls? What happened?"
She paused, wondering who to trust, and decided if she couldn't trust Harry, she was sunk anyways. She told him about the hike.
"Criminy," he said when she'd finished. "The plot thickens. So now what?"
She stood. "So now I gotta get over to my room and see what sorta havoc got wreaked, know what I mean? But for starters I'd like to get rid of this," she said, picking up the bag and shaking it at him. "Leverage is one thing, but..."
"No, we can't do that now, Luce," he said quickly. "Not a good idea."
"But I thought that's what you wanted to do. I'm sure as hell not gonna stash it in my room. Not with that slimeball Nack lurking about. So what should..."
"Let's take it down the beach after dark and bury it."
"Harry, this is getting seriously sticky. Besides, we have to go to the Hababi Event tonight."
"Right. Perfect. We'll go late...after we're sure all our pals have already headed out, we'll do the dirty work."
Either Prudence had cleaned up, or they hadn't hit her room. It was like she'd left it, right down to the cameras still sitting on the closet floor under her dirty clothes.
The busload of press invitees, including Joey Ruskin, Maria Verde, Mike Nack, and Jefferson Hababi, took off as darkness fell, and shortly thereafter Lucy and Harold sneaked their sack of pot down the beach and buried it beneath some rocks above the high tide line about halfway to the mansion on the bluff. Back in her room, Lucy showered then slipped into bikini underwear and a very short black linen dress, put on her face, and met Harold in the lobby. They arrived by cab at the beachfront home of Jackson Hababi about an hour late.
"Well whoop-de-do," said Harold, as they stepped out of the cab and paused for a look at the house: two stories of sprawling pink stucco stretched into the darkness of the manicured jungle in both directions. An enormous Georgian fanlight window, lit from within by a crystal chandelier, glowed above the front door. Parrots squawked in the rustling palms, and the sound of steel drums drifted faintly from the other side of the house, which faced the sea.
"Let's do it, Harry," said Lucy, taking his arm as they approached the front door.
Harold hefted the big brass knocker and rapped twice. A few seconds later the door swung open, and a tuxedo-clad, white-gloved butler ushered them in. They strolled through the glittering, brightly lit entry hall into an enormous, marble-floored living room furnished with throw rugs, Oriental vases filled with flower arrangements, and expensive wicker. A life size full-body portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Hababi in evening clothes dominated one wall. Opposite it, four open pairs of French doors let onto a torchlit verandah. They followed the butler across the living room and onto the verandah, where the revelers had gathered.
On the far side of the crowded verandah, a barbecue cooking line was going full blast, and three white-toqued chefs manned the grills and smokers. Lucy smelled burning pork, beef, chicken, and fish, and mingling with the different meat odors, the piquant aroma of jerk sauce. The steel band, banging melodiously on their metal drums, had set up under the palms down closer to the water. Spotlights stuck among the coconuts cast the three drummers in a blue and red glow. Another food line offered salads, vegetables, and breads. Two bartenders mixed drinks. Clusters of partygoers mixed it up on the tiled verandah, the lawn, and the beach.
She and Harold got Red Stripes and stood at the edge of the verandah, where they could see in both directions. The first face she recognized belonged to Sandy Rollins, in a blue spotlight, hovering near the band. In a red dress, Sandy swayed, and the way she swayed conveyed a simple truth that Lucy had not considered about Sandy Rollins prior to that moment: she loved to screw black men. Or was it musicians? In any case, drink in hand, hips grinding, Rollins offered herself to the three steel drum players, who currently beat out a tropical version of "You Are the Sunshine of My Life.”
There were plenty of white girls who came to the islands to get laid by the local talent for a week or two. But Lucy had not figured Sandy Rollins, longtime Haitian resident and racist extraordinaire, for one of them. Maybe she had a load of liquor on, and the sexual repression that underpinned her racism was overcome by gin. Who could understand such twisted things? Surely not the bibulous Dave Mullins, clutching a tall glass of something blue as he sashayed up to Rollins with an elephant-samba move, and began to dance. Effortlessly she shifted her body more directly at the musicians, stranding the Dancing Dave Bear with his blue drink in a blue spotlight. Then he spotted Harry
and Lucy across the lawn, and slipped into a cha-cha-cha maneuver as he headed their way, a merry grin plastered across his round, sunburned face. "Here comes the party animal," Harold murmured. "And he looks positively enlightened."
"Hey kids," bellowed Dave. "Yer late! What happened, miss the bus? What a great pad, eh?" He hoisted his blue cocktail high, then killed it.
"You got it, Dave," Lucy said. "How's the barbecue?"
"Excellent," he said, ogling her dress. "Particularly the pork. Hey Lucy, you wanna cha cha cha?" he added, wriggling his hips.
"Nah, I don't think so, Dave. I gotta eat. Maybe Harry'll dance with you," she grinned.
"I think," said Harold drily, "That Maria Verde would be a better partner for Big Dave, don't you, Luce?"
"Absolutely," Lucy said. "Dave, track that Verde honey down, immediatement. She'll samba you right to paradise, I reckon."
"She's not here, or I woulda," he said. "Cuz I like the way she shakes her...thang." He grinned. "But she got off the bus right outside the hotel gates. Said she forgot her lipstick. She come with you maybe?"
Lucy and Harold looked at each other. "Oh shit," he said.
"Should we go back?" she said.
"It's too late," he said. "If she saw us, she's already got it. If she didn't, she might tear your room up this time but she'll never find it anyways."
A loud, tangoesque flourish on the steel drums sent the crowd scattering to the edges of the verandah, clearing the center, into which now tangoed, rendering their worries irrelevant, Maria Verde and Jackson Hababi, followed by Joey Ruskin and Mrs. Jackson Hababi, and last by Louise Rousseau and Mike Nack. The three couples swirled about for a moment, during which time Joey Ruskin, tonight wearing black, demonstrated effortlessly his mastery of the tango. They stopped to a smattering of applause. "Good evening, my friends," said Jackson Hababi, in a white linen suit, "And welcome to my home. I hope you've all had a chance to enjoy the barbecue, and had several drinks as well, because now it is time to tango. Boys," he shouted out to the band, "Something lively now, eh?"
Murder on Naked Beach: A Lucy Ripken Mystery (The Lucy Ripken Mysteries Book 1) Page 12
