by Lou Cameron
The police sergeant nodded and said, “Of course. Chap called Dodd. D. C. Dodd. Claims to be a man of the cloth, but he has a record as a confidence man and, now, a murderer. But he’ll never murder again, I’ll vow. For we mean to hang him high!”
*
It was Ladies First at Government House. So Captain Gringo and Gaston got to cool their heels in the waiting room while the royal governor interviewed Olivia first in his office. Staring at the four walls might have been more boring if they’d been in a hurry to meet his nibs. The carpenter’s Gothic building was busting a gut trying to look like a combination of Whitehall and The British Museum, on the cheap. The linen fold oak-paneled walls of the waiting room were printed wallpaper when you looked closely, and the bench they were sharing was not-too-solid pine. But Captain Gringo wasn’t stewing about his personal discomfort at the moment.
He muttered, for perhaps the tenth time, “I can’t let a man hang for a murder he didn’t commit, goddamn it! I was in the same spot as Dodd one time. So I know what he’s feeling like right now. Boy, do I know what he’s feeling like!”
Gaston patted the front of his shirt again to make sure he was really out of tobacco before he replied, “If you intend to turn me in, I wish you would inform me in advance, my conscience-stricken youth. They don’t seem to have posted a guard at the exit, and I would like at least a bit of a head start, hein?”
Captain Gringo sighed and said, “You know I can’t turn you in. But I can’t let that poor slob hang for my crime, either!”
“Merde alors, don’t hog all the glory. I was the one who stabbed that seductive creature, and one could hardly call it a crime. The annoying mariposa had it coming. His sexual views were disgusting enough; but when one considers he was attempting to blackmail you, as well, what I committed was more what one might call pest control, non?”
“Look, I’m not blaming you for scragging the little shit. I’m just trying to figure out how to keep old Dodd from swinging for it! Doesn’t it bother you at all that they’ve pinned it on the wrong man, Gaston?”
“Mais non. The one they arrested is a species of shit as well. He was a petty criminal, a handler of pans, and a pest.”
“I wish you wouldn’t speak of him in the past tense. They haven’t executed him yet. Why do you suppose the officers of the Trinidad hung the execution of Romero on him? Dodd was nowhere near Romero when you and I shoved him over the side.”
Gaston shrugged and said, “Merde alors, that is soup of the duck to explain. They put the otherwise useless con man in the frame because he fit it better than anyone else, they thought; and because they had to frame somebody to avoid a more thorough investigation once Romero’s momma missed him. When the steamer docks at Limón, our adorable skipper simply has to tell the Costa Rican authorities that, while it is true they are missing a passenger named Romero, the matter has been settled, as the accursed killer of the adorable ass fucker has been arrested for the dirty deed by the British, hein?”
“Yeah, that works. Thanks to our broken-field running with those female passengers, the skipper probably handed Dodd over in good faith as the only one who didn’t have an alibi, right?”
“Mais non. I said they framed him, and I meant they framed him. They found no blood on the deck because I was trés careful not to leave any blood on the deck. So while they knew Romero had gone over the side—a deduction not too difficult to arrive at—they had no idea where or when. Ergo, they simply chose the passenger whose execution would cause the least flapping and turned him over to the police, here. But why am I explaining all this to you, of all people? You are in a position to know, better than most, how often people in higher places cover up their own dirty deeds with a hasty frame around the neck of anyone handy, non?”
Captain Gringo cracked his knuckles and growled, “Don’t I ever! Right now the poor bastard’s sweating bullets, wondering what the hell he ever did to deserve all this and how come nobody will listen to a word he says! Most of the guys on death row keep insisting it’s a bum rap, so the guards just shrug and keep walking while you beg them through the bars to for Chrissake get you another lawyer!”
Gaston didn’t answer. He’d learned long ago it was every man for himself in a wicked world, and he thought it was a sign of weakness to admit feeling shitty when one had to climb over someone else to get to the lifeboats.
The door to their right opened, and a uniformed aide told them the governor would see them now. So they got up and went on in. It was obvious they’d led Olivia out another, way, but too obvious a trap for knockaround guys to fall into. They’d decided, as soon as they saw the redhead was going to be interviewed separately, that their stories would have to jibe with hers.
Captain Gringo had expected the royal governor to be a stuffy old country squire type who pronounced India “Inja.” But the man behind the desk was on the pleasant side of forty, kept himself in shape, and the only thing that seemed British Colonial about him was his British junior officer’s toothbrush mustache. The aide seated them across the desk from him and discreetly faded out of sight as the governor, whose name turned out to be Forbes, offered them good cigars and waited for them to light up before he said, “Mrs. Perkins had been kind enough to sketch in the rough outline of your recent adventures, Gentlemen. But there are a few loose strings I was hoping you could clear up for me. Just for the record, of course.”
Captain Gringo did most of the talking as he gave his own version of their day in Gilead, leaving out the dirty parts and sticking to the story that they were a couple of innocent passengers stranded in a guerrilla held port when their ship left unexpectedly. But he stuck to the truth as far as their actual moves went. So Forbes cut him off when he got to bumping into Olivia again in the dark and said, “Yes, yes, I just assured the poor woman she had nothing to worry about, shooting a couple of the blighters. One could hardly expect white people to sit still for being occupied by bloody dago bandits, and I must say she showed more sense than her husband! I don’t know what on earth Reverend Perkins and some of the others who’ve elected to stay on in Gilead hope to prove. This El Chino sounds like a rum bloke no sensible Englishman could hope to cope with safely. You say the two of you met him personally? I’d like to hear your views on the blighter, since neither we nor our own trustworthy natives ever heard of him and his so-called army of liberation before they popped out of the woodwork like cockroaches a few days ago and, by the way, have you any idea why a Nicaraguan guerrilla leader would try to recruit a couple of banana brokers into his gang?”
Captain Gringo said, “Up front, El Chino struck me as some old jungle-runner they dug up to front for them. He’s probably a petty criminal. He may even be vicious, if it doesn’t call for risking his own skinny neck. But he’s just a stooge.”
“The devil you say. Who do you think is behind his deviltry, then, the Nicaraguans who shave more regularly?”
“Nossir. In the first place, the last time we looked, the more important Nicaraguan clans were too busy killing one another to play more complicated games. In the second place, even if we assume there is some Nicaraguan politico, who can read, reading Machiavelli in bed a lot, it still doesn’t work. Not even Machiavelli would suggest such a pointless plot. This whole colony’s due to be handed over to Nicaragua wrapped in a pink ribbon any day now, right?”
Forbes sighed and said, “I’m afraid so. As soon as we can manage an orderly evacuation. But it’s bloody complicated enough to arrange transportation home for over a thousand bloody families and ail their bloody furniture, even when bloody bandits leave you alone! Thanks to those guerrillas lurking just across the river—up to Lord knows what—most of my constabulary and even civilians with military experience are tied up pulling rearguard duty.”
He smiled thinly and added, “By the way, you two may be called on to stand your turns on guard before this is over. I know neither of you are British subjects. But you are white men, and I know you both know how to handle guns. Mrs. Perkins gave q
uite a glowing account of how you got her safely to our lines tonight.”
Captain Gringo nodded and said, “Your sergeant said the machine gun we brought with us is the only automatic weapon on this side of the river right now, and El Chino has some others.”
“So you say. You’ve yet to tell me why on earth the old bandit confided so much in two banana brokers he’d never met before.”
“I’m getting to that, sir. But first we have to work out a deal.”
Forbes looked cautious, but still intelligent, as he asked his American guest what on earth he meant by that.
Captain Gringo said, “To begin with, you can’t hang D. C. Dodd for the murder of Romero.”
“The devil you say. He murdered a man aboard a vessel of British registry. If you’re about to point out the late Señor Romero was a flagrant homosexual, forget it. Dodd already told us Romero tried to get forward with him and other passengers, and it put yet another nail in Dodd’s coffin when he was kind enough to supply the prosecution with his motive. I mean, even a homosexual who’s not even an Englishman simply isn’t supposed to be murdered while he’s under the protection of the British flag!” Captain Gringo nodded and said, “Dodd didn’t kill the fruit fly. I can’t tell you who did, and I give you my word it wasn’t me. But it wasn’t Dodd, and if you hang him I won’t be friends with you anymore.”
“Oh dear, I was so hoping you’d come to play in my yard, too. I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that as the royal governor here during a military emergency, I have the power to make you do just about anything I bloody want?”
“You have the power, as governor, to pardon Dodd, too. Saves a lot of paperwork. But you’re in no position to tell those other guys across the river what to do, and no matter how loud you yell froggy at us, you can’t make us jump as high as we might if we put our minds to it. You look like an old soldier, sir. Do I have to tell you the difference between a volunteer and a goldbricker?”
Forbes took another cigar from his desk humidor and lit it as he studied the men across the desk from him a long, thoughtful time. Then he said flatly, “You’re not a banana broker, Mr. Crawford. By the way, is that your real name?”
“It’s hard to say, sir. We seem to have lost our ID in all that dashing about behind the enemy lines, and that ought to hold up in court, too. But can we cut the bullshit and get down to brass tacks?”
“I wish you would.”
“Okay, never mind who we are and you won’t have to get writer’s cramp explaining things Whitehall doesn’t really have to know. As for Dodd, I’ll swap you one petty crook for a real mess of big ones if you’ll let him go.”
“Consider him gone if you can offer bigger fish to fry.”
“Okay, for one thing, the skipper and at least the senior officers of the Trinidad have been running guns to El Chino and his backers. We saw them. They were in the same crates we saw unloaded from the vessel earlier today, and since the steamer flies the British colors, I’d make that High Treason, wouldn’t you?”
Forbes started to say something dumb about the quick peek his own harbor patrol had taken at the Gilead quay before getting the hell out of there, fast, with the prisoner the ship’s crew had handed over to them. But Forbes wasn’t a stupid man. So he nodded and said, “That’s up to our Naval Intelligence to prove or disprove. Keep talking. Are you accusing any other British subjects?”
Captain Gringo said, “Yessir. Don’t have their names for you. But you must know better than me who’s chosen to stay on in Gilead and probably here in Zion as well.”
“Some of the colonists have seemed rather reluctant to cooperate with the evacuation and, yes, of course we know who most of them are. But refusing to come home when a colony is being turned over to another power isn’t High Treason. It’s simply bloody silly. Even if they buy El Chino’s assurances, what future do they face living here under the perishing Nicaraguan government? Why, dash it all, there isn’t any Nicaraguan government except on paper. The idiots keep changing governments with their flaming underwear! When we first got word about this colony reverting to Nicaragua, the Grenada forces were in control. But the last I heard, the Leon clique had won this season’s civil war and—”
“They know that, sir,” Captain Gringo cut in.
But Forbes looked confused and said, “Well of course they know it. I just said they’d won again, damn it!”
“I’m not talking about the Nicaraguans, sir. I’m talking about some of your colonists. They know the situation here in Bananaland a lot better than London or Washington, since some of them grew up here in this little bit of England on the Mosquito Coast. They know nobody in Nicaragua’s too interested in this neck of the woods in the first place, and that any Nicaraguan officials who might ever show up would be easier to bribe than a British colonial official.”
“See here, sir, I’ll have you know I’ve never taken a bribe in my bloody life!”
“That’s what I just said, Governor. Public officials aren’t paid as well in Latin America. Even if they thought they’d have more trouble making a buck or, let’s say a pound, under Nicaraguan jurisdiction, a lot of them would still think it was worth a try. This little colony’s been run on the cheap by Her Majesty. So she can afford to forget her modest investment and, hell, probably save money on flags and office paper if she just lets go. But the colonists who’ve done the work of colonizing this coaling station your Royal Navy grabbed by reflex action back in the forties have a lot more to lose. All the housing and business construction I’ve seen so far—save for this cheap government house here—was built with other people’s time and money. Hell, the quay up at Gilead was imported cobblestone and someone even built a railroad there.”
“Yes, the Gilead Lumber Company, Limited, and … hmm, are you suggesting British subjects would turn their backs on their own mother country just because they didn’t approve of current British policy on this side of the water?”
Captain Gringo laughed and said, “No offense, sir. But that’s a mighty stupid question to ask a Connecticut Yankee! I had an ancestor who fought at Lexington Green the day some, other British colonists decided London was giving them the shaft. I’m not sure I approve of the methods this bunch of pissed-off colonists seems to have in mind. For one thing, they could be playing with fire. But I’m not sure I can fault them for wanting to hang on to the good things they had going for them here.”
“A man who’d turn his back on his own mother country simply couldn’t be considered a gentleman. But come to think of it, we do seem to get a rather rough lot going out to the colonies to seek their fortunes. What was that you said about playing with fire?”
Captain Gringo explained, “Knowing Great Britain was abandoning them, and probably not too keen on becoming Nicaraguans overnight, some wise-asses have imported El Chino and his thugs to front for them. They already have the northern settlement of Gilead completely under their control.”
“The devil you say. Gilead’s been occupied by Nicaraguan guerrillas. If it was up to me, we’d get some Royal Marines in here and clean the buggers out. But Whitehall says not to bother, because—”
“Because London thinks it would be silly to spill blood and money over real estate they’re letting go of,” Captain Gringo cut in.
Gaston, who’d been trying to keep quiet and let him do all the talking, but was finding it painful, said, “Merde alors, I had not one species of ancestor at Lexington, and even I can see the plan! The sly dogs backing El Chino mean to move you off the property sooner than planned, forcing you to abandon almost everything but your adorable asses, you are supposed to think, to guerrillas. Then, once you are gone, voila, the brave Englishmen who elected to stay on will simply rise and chase the unwashed balls of grease back into the bushes, to no doubt proclaim Mission Bay an independent democracy, avec the full approval of Washington and no doubt total indifference of Nicaragua, hein?”
Forbes started to object, chewed his cigar instead and said, “Bastards! It will
probably work, too! The Monroe Doctrine says nothing about local populations setting up their own new governments down here! If it did, the perishing U.S. Marines would never get to see their families! But what can London do about this dastardly plot?”
“Not much,” said Captain Gringo. “That part of it would sit well with Washington and wouldn’t hurt either Britain or Nicaragua all that much. But I’m not sure the colonists secretly backing El Chino have thought it all the way through. That’s why I said they were playing with fire. It’s easy enough to pay a mess of local bandits to come and occupy you so you can rebel against them and run up your own new flag. But there can’t be more than a handful of Englishmen in on the plot or we wouldn’t have seen so many empty houses up in Gilead. They think they’re controlling El Chino and his thugs. They may be, for the moment. But El Chino does have an army now, thanks to them being so cute; and the old goat has his eye on the money down here in your vaults. He was acting pretty independent about some Englishman who wanted to chat with him this afternoon, too.”
Forbes gasped and said, “Oh, good Lord, we have all the money from all the banks in the colony under lock and key downstairs, too! But even if the traitors who brought this plague upon us all can’t control their unwashed Frankenstein creation, we only have to hold out until our transports arrive, and in a pinch, I could still cable for a detachment of real troops.”
“Sure, but how much time are we talking about, Governor?”
“Let me see … A convoy of passenger steamers are due in less than a week, and they should at least be able to take off most of the women and children.”
“Yeah, and if you cabled tonight for the Royal Marines, it would take ’em, what, at least two more weeks to get here?”
“If Whitehall dispatched them right away. Naturally they’d have to study the matter and—”
“And El Chino was talking about hitting you before you can get the women and children off!” Captain Gringo cut in, adding: “Thanks to the Englishmen working with him, he knows more about your defenses and plans than we know about his! He said something about getting his hands on some artillery. I hope he was bluffing. He may have expected us to make a run for it and tell you what we’ve just told you. But on the other hand, he didn’t strike me as a chess master, and they did try pretty hard to keep us from crossing the lines. So let’s call the odds fifty-fifty on that. If he starts lobbing shells into Zion, you’ll just have to give in to him. There’s an outside chance you can hold him off if he’s planning to come at you the hard way.”
