by Lou Cameron
Gaston heaved a gasping sigh and managed to mutter, “It wasn’t my fault. She was tearing open my fly before I could shut and bolt the door!”
“Make sure you bolt it after me. Our only hope is to keep them guessing about whether the boss lady is in town yet. They ‘won’t expect the schooner and its crew to do anything dramatic until their princess is back on board, and if they haven’t mounted a twenty-four hour watch on the gangplank by now they’re so stupid we don’t have a thing to worry about. I still have to get myself aboard. So, any suggestions?”
Gaston was too polite to withdraw from Manukai, but wasn’t moving in her as he shook his head and said, “Mais non, I don’t see how I could even smuggle my own less interesting public image across the quay and aboard a vessel under constant observation without someone telling teacher on me, Dick. Not with the sun coming up, at any rate. Perhaps if we just waited here until night falls again?”
Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “I’m sure you could survive another twelve hours of what you’re doing right now. But God knows who has what kind of a lead on us already. I’ll just have to bull my way through to our own guys and play her by ear. Make sure you don’t let anybody catch a single glimpse of the princess here. Don’t even let her look out the window. Send out for food, and use the chamber pot under the bed instead of the crapper down the hall, okay?”
“I know how one hides out, Dick. What was that about Mamma Rosa?”
“She made another pass at me just now. I think she’s starting to feel left out. Any suggestions?”
“Merde alors, don’t look at me! Even if I didn’t have this adorable child to keep amused, and that is not easy, I’d rather eat you than Mamma Rosa!”
“Couldn’t you just sort of toss her a quick fuck for old time’s sake? She’s so hard up, I don’t think she’d insist on the full treatment.”
“Eh bien, you toss her the quick fuck then, on your way out. I am a man who makes love courteously or not at all. It is not that I am delicate. I’m simply getting too old for uninspired erections.”
Manukai pouted. “Would you stop bullshitting and move the one you’ve got right now some more, damn it?” Captain Gringo snorted in disgust and left. He wasn’t disgusted by what they were doing. He was starting to feel a little left out, too, as a matter of fact. But, damn it, somebody around here had to start thinking with his head instead of his glands if Manukai was at all serious about her mission.
That was something else to worry about as he made his way to the docks along now painfully illuminated albeit still deserted streets. How in the hell had even a half-ass Kanaka king entrusted a mission he had to take halfway seriously to a daughter as dumb as Manukai, unless, of course, she was as smart as they came, at his court?
There were times for a soldier of fortune to seek his fortune, and there were times when he had to think first of his own ass. This was starting to look like the latter. But, what the hell, they’d come this far, so he might as well at least see how hopeless it really was.
The docks were beginning to come to life as he reached the waterfront. It wasn’t hard to find the Orotiki. For, though schooner-rigged, she was the biggest sailing vessel in the harbor. She was a Clyde-built steel-hulled two-hundred-footer with auxiliary power as well as sails. The long black hull looked sinister enough without the figurehead resembling a wooden Indian carved by someone having a nightmare. An unguarded gangplank led down to the wharf. So he went up it.
A female Kanaka deckhand, if that’s what she was, wearing what looked like a big kerchief around her hips, a flower in her hair, and nothing else, smiled at him and called out in her own melodious lingo. A big, heavy set island guy appeared in the open hatchway of the quarterdeck and called out, “Aloha, Haole Blalah, what the fuck you want?”
Captain Gringo called back the princess had sent him as he approached the big Kanaka. The skipper, for that’s what his hat said he was, was young and good-looking, if one liked lantern jaws and heavy brows that met in the middle. He was wearing a white linen panama suit, with no shirt under the jacket and no shoes on his big brown feet. He admitted he was Captain Kuruhai as they shook on it. Then he suggested they talk in his cabin. Captain Gringo said, “Hold the thought. We were spotted by the other side up in San José, and if we didn’t lose them, another vessel could be putting out for the Guardian Bank any time now.”
Kuruhai shouted an order in Kanaka, and a vahine Captain Gringo hadn’t noticed up to now started up the shrouds to the lookout’s crow’s nest hand over hand. It was hard to see how he’d failed to notice her. She was naked as a jay, built like a brick shithouse, and moving her hula hips pretty good as she climbed. It was a swell way to avoid attracting attention in a conservative Catholic seaport. But at least she’d spot the dispatch vessel if they’d already attracted attention from the wrong people.
Both tall men had to duck as they went inside, although Kuruhai wasn’t quite so tall as Princess Manukai. The skipper’s cabin was Spartan but roomy, with a chart table set up in the center and built-in cupboards and bunks all around. Kuruhai mixed rum and coconut water for them both as Captain Gringo brought him up to date. The big Kanaka handed the American his drink, sat down with his own, and said, “Ain’ no big thing, Blalah. Suppose you got Princess Manukai down safe to the coast, we just gotta get her on board, cast off, and go get them fucking blackbirders chop-chop.”
Captain Gringo said, “It’s not quite that simple. I sort of like to plan my battles in advance. For openers, do you have a map of the area we’re talking about?”
Kuruhai nodded, turned on his stool near the chart table, and reached a long arm out to snag a rolled-up nautical chart from a nearby shelf. He spread it on the table between them, saying, “Royal Navy. The Lime Juicers draw the best ones. Don’t never sail the South Pacific with no Frog chart. The Frogs are better artists than mapmakers.”
Captain Gringo stared down at the British version of the Guardian Bank. It looked sort of as if someone had outlined a banana with a dotted line. If the scale was right, the oval of reefs and islets was about sixty miles long by twenty across. If those dots were dry land, there wasn’t one hell of a lot of it. Kuruhai put a big brown finger on the chart, covering at least half a dozen dots, and said, “Our boy who got away thinks the people we have to rescue are being held on a maybe five hundred acre rock about here.”
Captain Gringo frowned and asked, “He can’t pin down the exact island out of at least a hundred? I’d better have a chat with him.”
Kuruhai said, “You can’t. He’s back on Konakona, getting over the fevers he picked up in these waters. He wouldn’t be any good to you if he was here, Blalah. Them rocks out there don’t have no names, and they all look alike. The boy said him and the others had been diving off a bitty pancake of coral rock, with more of the same north and south, when he got sick of working for Haoles for nothing and went into the swimming business for himself.”
“Oboy. At least he was sure the slavers were Germans, though?”
Kuruhai shook his massive head and said, “No, we are. The kids them blackbirders lured aboard a Schooner with toys and candy wouldn’t know a German from a Greek. All you pink Haoles look alike to uneducated Kanakas. But us aristocrats who read can put two and two together no matter what the missionaries say about the way we screw. So it was no big thing to figure out a German-owned pearling syndicate had to be run by Germans, see? Wait, I got their business card here someplace.”
He half rose, rummaged in a drawer, and produced a card reading, Halle und Feldmacher, Bremerhaven, with finer additional print neither could even try to make sense out of Kuruhai said, “We asked other Haole traders we deal with about them. They’re known as crooks by all the other South Pacific trading companies, and you should see how the ones who don’t grab our people try to cheat us in business! That’s why King Kamamamoku sent his daughter to the mainland to get educated Haole-style. It’s a big pain in the ass to trade with people who consider you an easy lay.�
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Captain Gringo suppressed a laugh. For though it could hardly be said Princess Manukai had learned to preserve her virtue, he grasped the sense of what the Kanaka meant. He said, “Okay, if Halle and Feldmacher are known crooks working the pearl banks of the Guardian Bank with forced labor, they have to be blackbirders or at least working with blackbirders.”
Kuruhai nodded and said, “Let’s not worry about the fine print. Let’s go kill the cocksuckers!”
“Hold the thought. Like I said, it’s a good idea to start with at least a half-assed plan and, as of the moment, we’re not even sure which way to go, while they seem to be expecting us to drop by. So while we’re trying to decide which island to invade, they’ve had days to set up their defenses!”
“You pink people sure do worry a lot. When our old kings wanted to invade an island, they just loaded up their catamarans, said the proper prayers to the tikis, and hit the beach singing their war songs!”
Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “That’s probably why us pink people own all your bigger islands these days. We worry as much as you say we do. We call it military science.”
“Bullshit, we call it guns and numbers. The clap your whalers and missionaries brought us along with trade liquor and Jesus shaved the odds for you guys a lot, too, you know.”
Captain Gringo took another sip of the hardly weak refreshments his host had provided before he said, “Let’s not argue about that. I don’t own one square inch of anyone’s land, and we’re really agreeing about the art of war. How many guns do we have to work with, for openers?”
Kuruhai said, “We’ve a hundred repeating rifles in the hold, with nearly ten thousand rounds of ammo, a couple of cases of dynamite, and of course a cutlass for everyone on board.”
Captain Gringo nodded thoughtfully and said, “That’s not bad. Princess Manukai said you had fifty fighting men. If they hadn’t stolen her checkbook, it might have been possible to recruit some out-of-work Costa Rican soldados too.”
Kuruhai chuckled and said, “Oh, that Manukai. There she goes again with her mainland suffragette ideas. We don’t have fifty men. We have two dozen men and their vahines. But the princess seems to think women are just as tough as men. Some of them may be. But not all Kanaka girls grow as big as the royal family!”
“Ouch!” said Captain Gringo, adding: “Okay, that means we need at least seventy-five extra men if we want men holding all hundred of those rifles. I have an open mind about Miss Virginia Woodhull and her notions of females holding male jobs. But I’m not about to lead untrained hula dancers into battle against professional thugs of undetermined strength!”
He took another sip of his drink and said, “Shit, if only we had some money to work with. I suppose the princess could draw more from the bank here in Puntarenas on her signature, but if I was a slaver who knew she was after me and I’d already stolen her purse, I’d be expecting her to make for one of the few international banks in town, and they already tried to kill her once!”
The skipper said, “Hey, that’s no big thing, Blalah. How much money do you need?”
“You got money?”
“Sure we got money. What you suppose we pay people as we sail around these waters, seashells?”
The skipper put his glass down, got up, and moved to haul a sea chest out from under a bunk. He opened it. Captain Gringo whistled. The good-size chest was filled almost to the brim with gold and silver coins. The Kanaka said, “We got British Sovs, Mex Birds, Yankee Cartwheels, even Maria Theresa Dollars they don’t make no more. King Kamamamoku don’t take none of that paper shit for his pearls and copra, see?”
“I see indeed! You’ve got enough specie there to fund a modest war! So, okay, we don’t have to risk Manukai’s fair hide in the open after all. I may as well pick up two machine guns along with a guerrilla army of, say, seventy-five. My pal, Gaston, will know the trustworthy arms merchants and knockaround guys here in Puntarenas. So give me at least a thousand in gold, and I’ll get started right away.”
Kuruhai closed the sea chest, shoved it back under the bunk, and straightened up to ask, pleasantly enough, “Do I really look like a vahine you can fuck for a fishhook, Haole? You don’t get shit till Princess Manukai tells me she really knows you! My daddy gave a thousand acres of good taro land one time to a missionary who said it was for Jesus. Only, we ain’t seen Jesus on the property yet. We’ve wised up a bit since then.”
Captain Gringo chuckled and said, “I see why you’re still living under native rule. Okay, we’d better go ashore and have a word with her highness, then. Like I said, we have her safely under cover at a posada up the slope.”
The big Kanaka opened another drawer, took out a snub-nose S&W .32, and put it into the side pocket of his jacket as he said, “Let’s go then.”
They did. The naked lady lookout shouted down, when asked, that she hadn’t seen anything bigger than a rowboat putting out to sea against the tide, so far.
The skipper yelled at everyone else to man the main brace, swab the deck, or whatever he meant in Kanaka. Then he and Captain Gringo went ashore and headed south along the quay. Kuruhai asked how far they had to go, and Captain Gringo explained, “Farther than we really have to. In case someone’s gazing at our backs right now, I want them to think we have your princess down this way, see?”
“You don’t?”
“No. The posada I told you about is actually northeast of your schooner. But it’s still cool; the side streets will be even cooler; and I’ve been here before, so I know a few alleyways I’d sure as hell have a time tailing anyone through without him spotting me.”
They came to a waterfront chandler’s shop he and Gaston knew. He led the Kanaka inside, nodded pleasantly to the chandler waiting on a customer, and just kept going out the back door. As they moved up a narrow, shaded alley, Kuruhai chuckled and said, “I’m beginning to see why the princess hired you, Blalah. Are you always this sneaky?”
“Only when I’m worried about being followed, which is most of the time. Hold it.”
The Kanaka stood bemused as Captain Gringo looked both ways before opening a massive oaken gate, saying, “We can cut through this old churchyard to the next street. Nobody ever seems to be around on weekdays. Found this shortcut the hard way, when I had to, last time I was chased through Puntarenas.”
Kuruhai waited until they were cutting back the other way along the side street beyond the church grounds before he asked, “Do you really know this, town? I mean, do you know the vahines here?”
“Not all of them, and by the way, they prefer to be called señoritas. What’s the problem? You’ve only got two dozen naked Kanaka girls aboard your schooner.”
Kuruhai sighed and said, “There’s twenty-six, and it sure does give a man a hard-on.”
Captain Gringo laughed incredulously and asked, “Are you trying to tell me the skipper of a half-female crew can’t get laid, Kuruhai?”
The young skipper growled, “I ain’t trying to tell you, damn it. I’m telling you! I had a couple of native girls at our last port of call. But the vahines aboard Orotiki are tapu to me, and it’s starting to hurt like hell!”
“I can see how it would, considering how modestly they dress! But if every woman on board is off limits, why the hell did you bring them along?”
“That’s really stupid, even coming from a Haole! Didn’t anyone ever tell you us Kanakas are a passionate race?”
“I have heard rumors to that effect, But you just said all those girls were tapu, so—”
“Tapu to me, not to the other guys in the crew. I’m from the royal clan. Common people aren’t even allowed to eat with me. Fm only allowed to screw royalty or, of course, people who don’t follow the same gods. So about the vahines here in Puntarenas—”
Captain Gringo started to say he wasn’t a pimp, for God’s sake. Then he grinned and said, “As a matter of fact, Gaston and I have been trying to figure out how to get our landlady fixed up, before she calls the law on us. It’s only
fair to warn you, though. She’s ugly as a mud fence.”
Kuruhai brightened and asked, “Are you sure she really wants to get laid? Who cares what she looks like, as long as I can have some nukinuki without breaking tapu! I’m so hard up I’d screw a pig right now!”
Captain Gringo chuckled and said, “Well, Mamma Rosa walks on her hind legs, at least.” He didn’t think it polite to add he didn’t think that was a hell of an improvement. Kuruhai could always say no, once he had a look at the poor old hag.
They zigzagged on, stopping now and again to make sure they weren’t followed. Then they ducked in the back way to discover, as they met Mamma Rosa in the lobby of her posada, that they’d been wasting their time trying to make sure nobody knew where the princess was staying.
Mamma Rosa pointed to the expensive set of matching luggage just inside the front door and said, “An hombre dropped these things off for the lady upstairs just a few momentos ago. I tried for to tell her. But every time I rap on the door, that Gaston tells me for to go away, most rudely!”
Captain Gringo stared soberly down at the luggage and asked Kuruhai if he recognized the bags. The Kanaka nodded and said, “Sure, it’s no big thing. She took them with her up to San José. But didn’t you say somebody stole her things when they blew up her room?”
Captain Gringo sighed and said, “I don’t know what the hell they’re trying to tell us now. Wait here. I’ll take these bags up and see what Manukai has to say about them.”
“I’ll help,” offered Kuruhai. But Captain Gringo told him to stay with Mamma Rosa for now as he picked up the bags and started up the stairs with them. This tapu shit was a little complicated, and he wasn’t sure whether the princess wanted to be seen in the feathers with Gaston by a subject—or whatever Kuruhai was to her. As he left them together, he heard kuruhai telling Mamma Rosa what a great pair of tits she had. So, apparently, he really was hard up enough to lay a pig.
Captain Gringo got to the locked door and kicked it, calling out, “Open up, goddamn it. We got troubles!”
