by Jay Giles
I felt the rumble of the engines starting as I changed into dry boxers and pulled on my cargo shorts. I pulled a t-shirt over my head as I made my way to the bridge where Su had one hand on the wheel, binoculars raised to her eyes. “I don’t see them.”
I felt a moment of relief, but only a moment. Their boats were small and fast. They could still intercept us before we got to Maceio. “Get cleaned up,” I offered since she was still covered with soot and ash from the fire. “Then let’s talk about what we do when we reach port.”
After she left, I got the sat phone out of my pocket and called Sloane. He needed to know what had happened. When he didn’t pick-up, I left the voicemail from hell: Two crew members dead, bridge shot to hell, salon gutted by fire.
A stressful hour-and-forty-minutes later, the Venetian neared Maceio. Our maps warned of numerous reefs and shallows. I wasn’t about to take any chances and slowed the Venetian to a crawl, carefully guiding her into the safety of the harbor.
Maceio greeted us with wide sand beaches lined with coconut palms and high-rise condos. On the beach, I saw people enjoying the sun and water. Around us, sailboats and windsurfers skimmed the waters. It looked wonderfully normal.
“What are you going to do?” Su wanted to know.
I wasn’t sure. A Holland America cruise ship—the Prinsendam—monopolized the dock area.
“I’m thinking we drop anchor here in the harbor and take the skiff in. Parking a shot-up boat near that cruise ship might get a lot of attention we don’t want.”
Su shrugged. “Okay.”
I found an out-of-the-way spot, dropped anchor, and we rode the skiff to a place where we could tie it to a pier.
A cabbie, leaning against a yellow Toyota Corolla and wearing a Chicago Cubs cap, agreed to take us to the main police station. It was a short cab ride, during which Su floated the idea of me going in alone.
“Why?” I pushed back. “It’s more credible with the two of us.”
She looked pale and her knee jiggled nervously. “You know I...I don’t trust the police. If they check, they’ll find I have a record...we won’t look so credible.”
We pulled up in front of an impressive older three-story building with a limestone façade, three neat rows of four multi-pane windows with carved stone tops and bottoms, and in the first floor center, a massive arched entryway.
“Looks like a prison,” Su said glancing out the window.
I gave it a look. “I would have said museum.”
She paid the driver and we stepped out on the sidewalk.
“You should—”
“If I spoke Portuguese, I would. But I can’t. I need you to translate. I’m an attorney. Nothing’s going to happen to you, I promise.”
She looked dubious but didn’t argue. Together, we climbed the three limestone steps to a small terrace area that fronted the length of the building.
“Are you sure?” She asked, stopping. “We don’t need the police. We can find an undertaker and have him help us with Ollie and Nestor. It’d be—”
“No. With gunshot deaths, we need to file a police report.” I took her elbow and guided her through big doors in the arched entryway. Inside was a madhouse of people yelling, arguing, crying. The noise seemed to intensify as it reverberated off the hard surfaces of the floor, walls and ceiling.
We wove our way through the clusters of people toward the front desk. A man with a black eye and a split lip bumped into me and immediately put his hands up wanting to fight. I shook my head and kept moving forward. Behind the desk was a small older man with a long nose and oversize ears who seemed oblivious to the chaos of the lobby. As we approached, he scratched the side of his head with a blue Bic pen. In front of him was a ledger book in which he was logging names and complaints.
Su gave him our names and when she told him about the murders, his head jerked up, eyes scrutinizing us.
I felt her hand on my arm pushing me to my right. “They’ll call us,” Su explained as we stepped away from the desk. Behind me, I could smell beer on the breath of the man next in line. Drunk and obnoxious, he started arguing with the old man.
“Somebody stole his wallet,” Su whispered under her breath.
Two young woman escorted by a young uniformed officer arrived next. Judging by the gaudy colors, short skirts, and platform heels, they were working girls.
Su leaned close to tell me so.
“Believe it or not, I’ve seen hookers before,” I whispered as a male voice called out “Li.”
We were escorted to a small white-walled room where an older man with fat cheeks, a shaved head, and no right ear was seated behind a wooden desk. In front of the desk were three metal frame chairs with green padded seats and backs. The man said something in Portuguese I took to mean sit. We sat. Behind the man was a large mirror that didn’t fool anybody. I caught sight of myself and was embarrassed by what a mess I was. I tried to smooth my hair over and wondered if anyone was watching us.
“Do you speak English?” I asked.
He shook his head, said something to Su in Portuguese. She nodded, looked at me as if to say I don’t want to do this, and nervously began talking. He let her talk and, in surprisingly delicate handwriting, began compiling notes.
When Su stopped talking, he consulted his notes and asked her several questions. Her answers drew frowns. He pulled his cell from a belt holster abruptly and spoke into it.
I was aware he was staring at me.
“What’s going on?”
“He’s calling someone who speaks English,” Su whispered. “He wants to board the boat and inspect your papers. This was a bad idea. He thinks we’re smugglers.”
“We’re—” My sat phone started ringing, “not.” I fished it out of my pocket. Sloane. “I’m at the Maceio police station. I’ll call you back.”
“How bad is it?”
“Bad enough, and it may get worse.” I hung up before he could ask how.
The door opened and a kid in a uniform that was a size too big for him entered. He had short reddish hair with sideburns that extended an inch past his ear lobes and an idiotic grin on his face. His voice matched his grin. “Hey, how’s everybody doin’?”
I would have taken him for a buffoon if it weren’t for the intelligence in his eyes. Those eyes were watching for nervousness, lies, signs of guilt, suspicious movement. He was going to have a field day with Su.
I needed him to focus on me. “We’re here to do the right thing,” I said in a serious matter-of-fact voice and explained what had happened.
His eyes evaluated my every word, inflection, and pause. “Cool,” he said when I finished.
Cool? No, it wasn’t. Something was off about this kid. “Your English is quite good,” I complimented him. “Where did you learn it?”
He grinned broadly. “Watching Friends. What da ya say? Let’s go look at your boat.”
Joey.
We rode back to the boat in what passed for a police cruiser—a black sub-compact of some unheard of brand and unknown vintage. It sounded like it was powered by a lawn mower engine and felt like it was rolling on rock wheels. Every bump—and there were plenty of them on the streets back to the harbor—registered in my lower back. On the skiff, Joey’s eyes got big as we approached the Venetian.
“Wow. That’s some yacht.”
Despite his awe, the Venetian looked trashed. The ship’s sides were riddled with bullet holes. In some places, whole chunks of wood had been blown off. Jagged shards of glass were all that was left of the bridge windows. On board, the blood pools on the rear deck and the smears where we’d pulled Ollie and Nestor into the salon were ugly bruises.
Joey seemed oblivious. He glanced briefly at the blood on the deck, walked into the salon with his hands clasped behind his back, his gaze scanned the empty charred room before settling on the two bodies covered by the sheet. He walked over, cautiously lifted a corner of the sheet. “Yeah, they’re dead.” He lowered the corner, straightened up, turned to me
. “You guys got any guns? Let’s see ‘em.”
“We don’t. You’re welcome to search the boat, if you want.”
“Nah.” He shrugged. “Let’s do the tour.”
We finished on the bridge, where I indicated the broken windows and bullet holes. “You can see where they were shooting at us.”
His gaze took in the glass on the floor, he put his little finger in one of the bullet holes as if to check the angle.
I watched him, wondering what he was thinking. He’d inspected everything and hadn’t made any troubling comments. Time to move things along. “Can you recommend a funeral home?” I asked. “Neither Ollie nor Nestor had family, so there’s no one to notify. I’d like to arrange a simple Catholic service and have them buried.”
“Not going to happen,” he said and gave me the idiotic grin that stretched from sideburn to sideburn. “I’m arresting you for murder.”
The End.
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