by Lou Cameron
The mate nodded and said, “That ought to work, Skipper. But who do we have in mind as the guilty party?”
The skipper shrugged and said, “I’ll think about it. Let’s hope Romero’s just misbehaving somewhere aboard for now. If he’s still missing when we reach Mission Bay, we’ll just have to hand it on anyone who fits, as long as he nae a member of the crew.”
*
Captain Gringo woke up when he heard some idiot gonging the breakfast chimes outside. He was alone in a very rumpled bed. He didn’t care. Before slipping out discreetly before dawn, Margo had screwed him sillier than lots of lots of better-looking dames had ever managed to. As experienced travelers up and down the Mosquito Coast, he and Gaston had naturally booked seaward-facing staterooms, to avoid the furnace glare of the afternoon sun above the shoreline to the west. The only trouble with that was how the morning sun, which wasn’t that much cooler in the tropics, glared in through the ventilating slats and painted everything inside with tiger stripes of purple shade and glare that was too bright to look at with sleep-gummed eyes. So he rubbed his eyes, got up and staggered to the corner washstand to wash, with a tepid washrag, his face and everything else Margo had slobbered over. He really did have some of the new aspirin powders under the bunk, and his head felt as though it were full of belly button fuzz. But he wasn’t really hurting, and by the time you futsed around getting the white powder out of its little waxed-paper envelope into a glass of water, any headache a guy might have could be gone. He settled for brushing his teeth instead.
Then he shaved, wiped himself all over once for luck with the wet rag and got dressed for breakfast. He met Gaston out on deck. For some reason the little Frenchman looked as if he could have used some aspirin powders, too. Captain Gringo said, “I just had a funny idea. You know those new headache powders the Bayer Company puts out? What if they made them up as pills instead of loose aspirin-powder packets? Wouldn’t that be a handier way to get the stuff down in a hurry? I wonder if a guy could patent an idea like that.”
Gaston grimaced and replied, “Someone may, someday, but it won’t be you or me, my disgustingly awake and inventive. To apply for a patent, one needs a permanent address; and when one has as many people interested one’s present whereabouts as you or me, ooh la la! How did you make out with the shy one last night?”
“She’s not as shy these days. Please don’t tell me what a great lay yours was, Gaston. Right now, just the thought of pussy makes me feel like going back to sleep.”
“I need ham and eggs more than codfish pie at the moment, too. But what do we say to them over the breakfast table, hein?”
“It’s lady’s choice, of course. If they don’t know us, we don’t know them, see?”
“Merde alors, that part’s easy. What if they wish to make the eyes goo-goo avec amour at us in front of the other passengers?”
Captain Gringo repressed a shudder and said, “It’s the chance a guy just has to take when he leaps on any dame’s bones. I know we all do it anyway, but a guy shouldn’t ever kiss a dame in private that he’d be ashamed to be seen with in public.”
“Easy for you to say.” Gaston sighed, going on to explain, “I took Pilar to bed in hopes she might at least have a decent body under that shapeless black dress. Alas, the loose clothing flattered her trés ridicule. It took all my pride in the honor of France to continue, once I saw how ugly she was all over!”
“But you managed, right?”
“But of course. Would you want a seedy old Costa Rican widow spreading word all over Latin America that Frenchmen were impotent?”
Since by now they’d reached the dining room, Captain Gringo didn’t have to answer that. Inside, the skipper had already taken his place at the head of his table, and better yet, the other seats were filled with earlier risers, including the two sisters. So the two soldiers of fortune sat down gratefully at another table; and though there were neither ham nor eggs on the menu, they managed. They ate fast and got out and over to the main saloon, where there were more empty chairs. They ordered tall drinks to nurse and carried them to the now empty corner the card game had been held in the night before. The table was still there. So they spread their highball glasses and ashtray on it and settled back to wait for the boat to get somewhere more interesting.
Neither Margo nor Pilar came in, but the skipper and first mate did. The bellied up to the bar together and seemed to be having a serious discussion with the Hispanic bartender now on duty. For a guy with a drinker’s nose, the skipper sure seemed to take his time deciding what to order.
Another male passenger came in from the promenade, spotted the two English-speaking soldiers of fortune in the corner and came to join them. He sat down at the table uninvited, an insult that could get a stranger killed in many a Spanish-speaking cantina. But the dumb shit didn’t look Hispanic, so what the hell.
He introduced himself as D. C. Dodd, the Reverend D. C. Dodd, without going into just what hell-fire-and-damnation Calvinist sect he revved for. He said, “I hope I have fallen among Christian gentlemen, for the Devil has me over the barrel and, Lord have mercy, I just don’t know what I’ll do if you boys of my own faith and color let a fellow Christian down!”
“How much?” asked Gaston, followed by Captain Gringo asking, “Better yet, how come? Didn’t I see you playing cards at this very table last night, Rev?”
Dodd stared sheepishly down at the empty space in front of his uninvited space at the table and licked his lips wistfully as the two soldiers of fortune sized him up. They didn’t have to exchange comments. For once they were in complete agreement, and each knew what the other had to be thinking. The Reverend Dodd looked more like a beachcomber in a stolen clean outfit he hadn’t shit in yet than a man of the cloth, or come to think of it, a man. He was a flabby middle-aged guy of average height who looked like a tough ten-year-old could whip him. His pallid face was spiderwebbed with the little red lines of too much steady booze. But everywhere a blood vessel hadn’t burst, his complexion looked more like unbaked piecrust. He’d have probably been even paler if he hadn’t been in the tropics. He swallowed air instead of the drink he wanted, and said, “I said I’d been tricked by the Devil, I say the Devil, son! Those greasers who forced me into a game of chance last night were in league, I say in league, against me!”
“In other words, you’re tapped out?”
“That’s about the size of it, son. I’m so ashamed I could kill myself if suicide wasn’t an even more serious sin than playing cards. But life must go on, so if you could stake me to enough to get by on till we reach Limón, I’d be proud, I say proud, to pay you back there. You see, I’m a missionary for the Reformed True Baptist Church, and as soon as I can cable my congregation for more funds—”
“No soap,” Captain Gringo cut in, with a polite but cynical smile. He said, “You may or may not be a Hard-Shell Baptist preacher. But you’re full of shit.” Dodd looked hurt and replied, “Them’s hard, I say hard, words, son! If I wasn’t a man of the cloth, I’d ask for satisfaction on the field of honor from a man who as much as called me a liar!”
Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “It’s a good thing your religion doesn’t allow you to fight, then. What does it say in your charter about playing cards with strangers on steamboats, Rev?”
“I just allowed, I say allowed, I sinned last night, blast it! I sinned worse than playing cards! I allowed the demon rum to pass between my lips, and that was the beginning of my downfall as it ever is with mortal flesh! I’m sure those spicks put something in the rum punch they offered me after supper. They said it was a harmless refreshment made with more fruit juice than liquor, but the next thing I knew I was seated at this very table, letting them teach me a game of chance they called Picar Americano, I think.”
“It was stud poker, and you were dealing pretty good,” said Captain Gringo with a disgusted look. Before Dodd could answer, Gaston nudged him and murmured, “Regard, the skipper seems to be talking about us at the bar. I just c
aught his eye in the mirror and he quickly looked away, trés guilty!”
Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “Let him look all he likes. We’re not playing stud with this flimflam artist.” Dodd gasped and insisted, “Damn it, I say damn it and double damn it, I’m a man of the cloth; and if you’re so smart, tell me how come I was the one who lost last night?”
“How do we know you did? We weren’t around when the game ended.”
“Lord have mercy, are you accusing me of asking for help under false, I say false, colors, son?”
“It’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? Your tale of woe won’t wash, Rev. Whether you took those other guys last night or they took you, you’re a passenger aboard a half-ass passenger vessel. Three meals a day come with the ticket you had to buy to board her, right?”
“Yes, but a man has other needs, and, honestly, Son, I don’t have the wherewithal on me to buy myself an after dinner cigar!”
“You mean a drink, and you’re still full of shit, Rev. You know you could charge all the booze and tobacco that would be good for your health and settle up with the purser in Limón.”
“Damn it, I say damn it, I just spoke to the purser about a line of credit, and he turned me down flat, the papist rascal!”
Captain Gringo took a sip of his own drink before he observed, “He must know you better than we do, then. You must be a poor tipper as well as a loser, Rev. Any purser worth his salt would be able to cable home for you at any of the ports this tub will hit before it ever hits Limón. So if he said no, he knows as well as we do that there just won’t be any money from home waiting for you in Limón.”
Dodd looked downcast and said, “All right, you’ve got me cold: and you’re right, I say you’re right, that I’m a poor wayfaring stranger without two coins to rub together and no way in the world of ever paying your kindness back. But you look like a couple of real kind gents, so how much kindness can I hope for?”
Gaston, to Captain Gringo’s mild surprise, started to reach in his pants. But the younger American kicked his ankle to stop him as he told Dodd flatly, “Nothing. Zero. Goose eggs. I’d stake anyone I wasn’t mad at to a warm meal and flop, Rev. But you’re booked into a stateroom as good as mine; and like I said, they serve three meals a day to all passengers. So you’ve got your meals and your flop, and I don’t buy booze or poker chips for bums.”
Dodd tried to brazen it out with, “What happens when we get to Limón, I say Limón? Honestly, son, I’m flat busted and don’t know a soul there!”
“Tough titty. We never told you to go there. So go somewhere else, Dodd. You’re starting to steam me. I mean it.”
“Good Lord, would you threaten a man of the cloth?”
“I’m not threatening you. I’m telling you. If you’re a Baptist missionary, I’m a Catholic nun. So take a hike. I’m not going to say it again.”
Dodd rose, muttering something most unchristian under his breath, and moved over to the bar. Gaston chuckled dryly and said, “Sacre bleu, did we have to be so hard on the poor species of insect, Dick?”
Captain Gringo said, “Not if we weren’t putting into a place to get off any minute. Did you really want that pest tagging along after a couple of soft touches?”
“Ah, I stand corrected and, merde alors, regard what the lying cochon is up to at this very moment!”
Captain Gringo shot a weary glance at the bar and said, “I told you so,” as the desperately broke Reverend Dodd lit a Havana perfecto, Scotch and soda in hand. The skipper had left for the bridge or somewhere, but the mate was still there, a few spaces down from Dodd. As his eyes met those of Captain Gringo in the mirror behind the bar, the mate lifted his own glass in a silent toast and winked. Captain Gringo nodded back as he told Gaston, “I was right. Dodd works this steamer line regularly.”
*
SS Trinidad steamed over the bar into the harbor of Mission Bay with the eleven-thirty tide. Everyone on board who didn’t have a chore to work at naturally stood out on deck to watch the low, palm-fringed shoreline approach. Slow coastal voyages made people act like that. The crown colony of Mission Bay wasn’t much to look at, but at least it was something to look at.
Like most seaports along the Mosquito Coast, the British outpost lay on dead flat, not-too-solid ground. Inland, Nicaragua went up a lot more. Some of the more dramatic volcanic peaks even managed snowfields despite the latitude. But you couldn’t tell it from the swampy lowlands. A brown sluggish river divided the British settlement—or rather two settlements—as it ran into the big but shallow bay that gave the place its name. One of the crewmen told one of the nearby passengers that the English had named the river—what else—the Mission River. Farther inland, the Nicaraguans no doubt called it something else, but what did they know? Like other coaling stations the Royal Navy had carved out of the mangrove and Indian-haunted coastal plain of Nicaragua back in the forties, this “little bit of England” was too far from the more settled parts of Nicaragua for even the Nicaraguans to do more than bitch about. They were usually too busy fighting with one another to take on the Royal Navy, in any case.
As they neared the cobblestone quay of the settlement to the north side of the river, it became clearer that this particular little part of England was working the cliché to the point of artsy-craftsy. A white church steeple that looked as if it had been designed by Christopher Wren dominated the skyline. It probably had been. Old Sir Christopher had been a whiz at running up new English Baroque churches, cheap, after the Great London Fire, and his plans had been copied by lots of church builders in New as well as Old England. This particular one looked sort of silly with palm and pepper trees sharing its space against a cobalt tropic sky.
The two soldiers of fortune were pleased to see they were going to tie up at the quay instead of dropping anchor out in the roads and unlading by lighter. Getting down a gangplank could be a lot less complicated than talking oneself into a bum-boat. They held back and kept to themselves as the vessel docked. Each had filled his pockets with stuff from his kit bag he just had to have—and left said kit bag plainly visible in his stateroom. Each, of course, wore his double-action .38 invisibly under a linen jacket—and was there any law saying a guy couldn’t step out on deck with his mosquito boots and planter’s sombrero on? So they were ready to move out, the moment they could. The moment they could would be the tricky part. They heard one of the other passengers ask the purser how long they’d have ashore, and the purser told the other leg-stretcher to forget it, explaining, “We’re only dropping off a few cases of canned goods, and we won’t be picking any cargo up here in Gilead. So there won’t be time for shore leave.”
The two soldiers of fortune exchanged puzzled glances. Gaston said not to ask him. The question was answered for them when the other passenger asked it and the mate explained, “The colony’s called Mission Bay because it’s lousy with do-gooders who came to do good and did right well for themselves. This settlement north of the river’s called Gilead, after a town in the Good Book. The one down there to the south is called Zion. Same reason. The lime-juicers in Zion are even crazier. So there’s no point in going ashore anyway. You can’t get screwed, blewed or tattooed anywhere on Mission Bay.”
Captain Gringo and Gaston weren’t worried about getting screwed, blewed or tattooed. They just wanted to get off before someone got around to asking them what they knew about the late Hector Romero or, worse yet, where they’d gotten those fake passports and IDs that wouldn’t stand up to close examination in good light. So they played it cool until the ship was tied up and the gangplank lowered for the skipper and some ship’s officers to go down to the quay and argue with some other guys. The men waiting for whatever the ship was delivering didn’t look nearly so British as the church steeple behind them. As Captain Gringo lounged at the rail with Gaston, he muttered, “If those guys are English, I’m an Eskimo.”
Gaston shrugged and said, “They are trés dusky, even for the cast of Spanish types one usually finds in charge d
own here. But what of it? The Anglo-Saxon prefers darker meat to do his work of dirtiness, non?”
“Yeah, but you’d think the guys taking delivery in a British port would be lighter, and wearing snappier outfits. Those guys look like native stevedores.”
“Oui, and regard that net filled avec crates our jolly vessel seems to be swinging ashore for them. Perhaps they are stevedores, non?”
“Non. You don’t just dump a cargo on the docks without some guy in a suit and tie signing for it. There ought to be customs inspectors around here, too. Have you ever been in a for-Chrissake-British crown colony where a ship can just steam in and unlade without at least one guy in a pith helmet glancing at your bill of lading?”
“Mais non. On the other hand, our droll species of skipper seems to be some species of Scotchman; and we have been flying the British Merchant colors for some time, hein? Perhaps they put in here on a regular basis and the local authorities would just as soon not act so stuffy under a noonday sun.”
Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “Brits always act stuffy under a noonday sun. That’s one reason they run India these days instead of the people who grew up there. There’s something funny going on around here. Are you sure this is the last port of call before Limón?”
“Mais non, do I look like I run this species of tub, Dick? They may or may not stop somewhere further down the coast before it is too late for us to make a graceful exit. But do we want to chance it?”
“Not really. They should have already missed Romero by now, and the one nice thing about a port run so sloppy is that guys who’ll let a steamer drop off cargo without formalities are hardly likely to ask a couple of guys buying drinks for some ID! There’s nobody by the gangplank now. Let’s go for it!”
They did. They simply moved to the gangplank and were halfway down it before a voice that sounded like a schoolroom tattletale called after them, “We’re not supposed to go ashore! The purser will be angry!”
They ignored the other passenger. Guys like that were usually safe to ignore. Captain Gringo in the lead steered around a pile of freshly unloaded crates with the skipper on the far side talking to the natives with fife back to the pile. One of the other ship’s officers spotted them, frowned, but simply took out his pocket watch and held up two fingers. He probably meant two hours, since two minutes seemed silly.
