by Lou Cameron
Before Gaston could answer they were joined by a third man who sat down uninvited at their table. They both knew him. He wore the mushroom-colored uniform of the Costa Rican Guardia.
Gaston nodded and said, “Good afternoon, Sergeant. What are you drinking?”
The Costa Rican sighed and said, “Nothing, thank you. I am on duty and officially I am not here. They sent me to look for you two, but since I am not here, I haven’t seen you yet.”
Captain Gringo took out his wallet and flattened a bill on the table as he asked, “You wouldn’t by any chance know what they want with us, I suppose?”
The money vanished as the sergeant shrugged and replied, “All I know, officially, is that you are both to report in with your passports.”
The tall American placed another bill on the table and asked, “So what do you know unofficially?”
The Costa Rican glanced uneasily around and murmured, “Something to do with a request from the U.S. Consulate. Please don’t tempt me with more money. I am poor but honest. I don’t know any more than that.”
Gaston asked, “Were your orders to arrest us?” The unhappy sergeant nodded, but said, “They said to see if you boys would come quietly, but to bring you one way or another. The Yanqui from the Consulate spoke to my superiors about a reward. I, of course, recalled how seldom we enlisted men are asked to share windfalls with our officers and, besides, we are friends, eh?”
Gaston looked across at Captain Gringo and asked, “Shall I trot back to our place and pack, Dick?”
Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “No. They may have sent less friendly people there. I’ll see about the tickets and pick up some gear. You run over and see if you can shake some advance money out of Sir Basil’s cunt. Meet me by the cathedral steps in an hour.” He rose and strode away as Gaston and the sergeant remained seated for a moment. As Captain Gringo turned a corner the sergeant asked Gaston, “Did I do that right?”
Gaston reached for his own wallet as he grinned impishly and replied, “You are a born thespian, my old and rare friend. Your timing was perfection, and you remembered your lines. What more could any director want?”
The sergeant smiled, confused, and said, “Well, I did what you told me to do, but I still don’t understand what that act was all about.”
Gaston peeled off some bills and soothed, “The plot of my drama is too complicated to go into at the moment. Suffice to say, it worked.”
“You are playing a little joke on your big friend, no?”
“Oui! Sometimes I must do such things for his own good. But let us keep our little secret, hein? He’ll kill us both if he ever finds out.”
Chapter Three
Captain Gringo leaned against the starboard rail, smoking a Perfecto as he stared morosely at the moonlit sea. The bow wave formed a ghostly pale-green stripe across the inky water, and from time to time a firefly’s flicker betrayed a fish in the tepid phosphorescent water. It was cooler out on deck, but that wasn’t saying much. The cabin they’d booked was an oven where someone had once baked dirty socks.
They were aboard the S.S. Pomona, a Clyde-built, three island freighter of British registry. They were steaming up the Mosquito Coast just a few miles offshore. Captain Gringo had mixed feelings about this. The poorly charted Mosquito Coast was notorious for hidden shoals and islands that weren’t always where the map said they were. On the other hand, the S.S. Pomona was apparently held together with a little paint, and a lot of rust. Just so they wouldn’t have too far to swim, when the tub fell apart like a house of cards, he thought.
The sea was gentle. Another break. The ship’s screw was off-center and every time they crossed a slight-swell the blades came part way out of the water to wag the stern like a puppy’s tail, and every once in a while another rivet popped.
As he finished his cigar and flicked it out across the water, a soft feminine voice recited,
Dragon ships on moonlit water
Oar tips dripping cold green fire
Come to Erin, out for plunder
Up the Shannon, bent on slaughter.
The tall American at the rail turned to see a dark, dim figure that came just to his shoulder wearing a big Paris hat draped with mosquito netting. He smiled and said, “I never heard that poem before, ma’am.”
She answered with a trace of brogue, “I just made it up. I’m not sure the seas around Ireland are phosphorescent, but isn’t it the grand image? If Viking raiders didn’t drip cold green fire, they should have. Don’t you agree?”
“I guess so,” he chuckled. “But I never saw a dragon ship, and you’re the expert on Irish waters if I’m right about that County Cork you’d be speaking after.”
“Och, are you Irish? It’s Mab O’Shay I’m called, and my people came from Kerry and not Cork, thank you very much.”
“I’m Dick Walker, and I’m afraid our old sod might have been closer to London before they boarded the Mayflower or a sister ship.”
“Well,” Mab said dubiously, “as long as your people were Yankee in this century we’ll say no more about it. It was in 1836 they took the vote and our Irish Home Rule away from us. What would yourself be doing on this dreadful English tub, Mr. Walker?”
He said, “I was about to ask you the same thing. It’s a funny place to meet an Irish rebel.”
“Och, bite your tongue. It’s an American citizen, I am. I don’t know whether the seas of Erin hold cold fire, for I’ve never seen them. As for Auld Queen Victoria, she’s no better than she should be, but I’ve no dark Fenian plans to topple the auld bawd from her throne. It’s a registered nurse, I am. I’ve been working down in Panama against the Yellow jack. Now I’m bound for the Crown colony of Nuevo Verdugo to patch up the sugar cutters.”
“You’ve been hired by Pantropic?”
“Didn’t I just say so? I understand they own the whole island. Where are you bound for, Mr. Walker?”
He frowned and said, “Same place. I’m an ordinance consultant for Woodbine Arms Limited.”
Mab’s laughter seemed a little forced, but her voice was light as she said, “Och, won’t that be grand? You’ll shoot them and I’ll patch them up. In a way one could almost say we are in the same business.
Captain Gringo shrugged and stared at the horizon. He didn’t know what she looked like, and in any case, he was tired of defending his trade. He said, “The stars are either going out or there’s a squall line over to the east.”
Mab said, “It is getting darker, and the water’s stopped glowing, too. Have you any idea why that should be?”
He said, “Sure, the wee beasties that make the water phosphorescent are dropping deeper. We’re on the receiving end of a cold front and a lot of fresh rain water. We’d better get you inside.”
A gob of rain the size of an egg splattered nearby on the deck and he added, “See what I mean? I’ll see you to your cabin.”
She said, “It’s early. What about the ship’s saloon?”
“Have you seen what they call a saloon on this tub?”
“You’re right. At least my cabin has a window, and I’ve a fifth of the creature in my trunk. It’s down this way.”
He took Mab’s elbow as they stepped away from the rail. She made no comment as the deck was suddenly canted by the rising seas from the east. By the time they made it to her cabin door more gouts of tropic rain were leaping like wet frogs across the deck, spit under the overhang by the gathering storm. As Mab unlocked the door, he hesitated, not sure of the form. Then she opened it and said, “Come in before you drown out there. There’s supposed to be a light switch somewhere in here.”
He joined her inside as a gust of wind slammed the jalousied door shut, plunging them in darkness while, at the same time, the ship’s stern rose and the steel all around them vibrated alarmingly.
Mab found the switch and turned on the Edison bulbs as she gasped, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph! What was that?”
Captain Gringo stared down at what he now saw was a saucy lit
tle redhead with hellfire-green eyes he felt like swimming in. He smiled and said, “It’s just a crazy screw.”
“I beg your pardon, sir!”
He laughed and quickly added, “The ship’s propeller. It’s called a screw. It’s bent or missing a blade or something, and every time it breaks water it shakes the whole ship like that.”
Mab flushed and said, “Och, I thought … well, never mind what I was after thinking. Find yourself a seat and I’ll be seeing if I can find the bottle.”
The only seat the tiny cabin offered was the bottom bunk of the two that were built into the bulkhead. Even if climbing into the top bunk hadn’t been a ridiculous idea, it would have been impossible. Mab had it piled with luggage. So Captain Gringo sat down with his knees a bit high for comfort and watched the redhead rummage in a steamer trunk in the far corner.
Her back was to him, so he noticed for the first time that her thin shantung dress was forest green, and that because of the heat and lack of need, she wasn’t wearing the usual whalebone and obscenely vulcanized unmentionables women over fourteen seemed to find so necessary these days. Her skirts belled out below her trim waist, but, Praise Allah, the bustles and dolly vardens of the eighties were no longer the fashion, and a man could get a better grasp on the size of a woman’s behind. Mab’s derriere looked just about right as she bent slightly to reach deeper into the trunk. The ship’s stern rose, too, and as the crippled screw surfaced everything again went Voom-Voom-Voom. It jiggled Mab delightfully, but she straightened up as if she’d been goosed and gasped, “Oh my eyebrow! We’re sinking sure!”
Captain Gringo said, “Relax, I didn’t hear anything break loose that time. I think we’ve about shed all the rivets and paint that figure to come off tonight.”
He saw she had a bottle of white rum when she joined him on the lower bunk. She said, “I can’t find my teacups. We’ll have to share the bottle raw.” Then she uncorked it, took a healthy swig, and handed it to him. He said, “For a lady, you’re a two-fisted drinker. Most men need a little lemon juice to cut this white-lightning.”
“Och, I was raised on poteen. No Dago rum can froosh an Irish lass.”
Captain Gringo put the bottle to his own lips, rioting that the glass still tingled from her own saucy rosebud lips, and managed not to gasp as the raw white rum ran over his tongue like hot lava. He lowered the bottle, exhaled an invisible dragon flame, and said, “Smooooth,” and handed the bottle back to her. She was welcome to it. He was a big man, who could hold his booze, but this was liquid dynamite and there didn’t seem to be anything with which to chase it.
The bunk tingled under them as the stern rose again, and Mab spilled some rum in her lap when she was’ working on the second round. The vibration made them both aware that their hips were touching in the crowded quarters. But he figured it was up to her to move away if she aimed to. She didn’t. If anything she pressed her softer flesh closer as she said, “Wheee! It feels like a roller coaster.”
He said, “Yeah, the seas are really rising. I hope the man at the helm knows enough to quarter into them. Those ground swells feel like they’re touching bottom.”
“Oh dear. Do you think we’ll be shipwrecked?”
“I hope not. If there was anything but mangrove jungle along this stretch of the Mosquito Coast we wouldn’t be aboard this rust bucket much longer. Traveling by mule would be faster as well as more comfortable. But thee don’t seem to be any roads, so …”
“Jesus, I don’t want to wind up in no jungle. I hear there’re cannibal Indians as well as alligators and great man-eating snakes.”
She took another heroic swig of rum and he viewed her alarming drinking with mixed emotions. Liquor certainly simplified relations between the sexes, but he wasn’t a necrophiliac, and Mab just didn’t have the body weight to absorb that much booze. He said, “You’d better take it easy, honey.”
She grinned at him knowingly and asked, “Would you be the sort of rascal to take advantage of a maiden in her cups, sir?”
He doubted she was a maiden, but he said, “That’s the least of your worries. We’re standing off a lee shore in a full gale and we may have to do some serious swimming before sunrise.”
Mab took another swallow, considered, and said, “You’re right. We’d better take our clothes off before we wind up dead and drowned.”
She handed him the bottle and started to unbutton her bodice. He saw no reason to object. She wasn’t that drunk, but he’d played this scene before. He wondered if someday men and women could simply get together on some casual innocent sex without all these foolish games.
He knew she wanted it as badly as he did, but while Queen Victoria had managed to produce a full platoon of babies, she’d done it without admitting she enjoyed a good lay. Any white woman who wasn’t an outright slut had to pretend she was being victimized by her brutish quarry. He wondered if Mab was going to put him through the usual tears and remorse in the cold gray light of dawn. She probably was, but what the hell, it went with the icing on life’s bitter-sweet cake.
A pink nipple peeked out at him coyly when Mab suddenly had second thoughts and said, “Och, you’d better turn out the lights. I’m not one to be naked like a Carib in broad daylight, even to save us from drowning!”
He got up with a grin and flicked off the switch. Outside the rain was slobbering against the cabin door but a faint dim light came through the slits in the jalousie. The decking careened wildly under him as he groped his way back to the bunk. He put a hand out to steady himself and it landed right in Mab’s naked lap. She gasped when he sat beside her, leaving his hand in her moist thatch, and he said, “Sorry. I was reaching for the post.”
“Sure and I’ll bet you were, you awful thing.” She giggled, and, since she didn’t seem to be avoiding the fate she’d set up rather obviously, he pressed her back across the mattress with her feet still on the floor and kissed her as he started working her up with the fortunate hand.
It didn’t take much to fire her boiler. Mab responded to his kisses and put her own hand on the back of his to move it faster. Then she came up for air and said, “Wait. I have to take precautions. Take off your own duds while I practice medicine.”
She rolled away and moved somewhere in the darkness as Captain Gringo proceeded to peel. He heard the tingle of glass above the howling storm sounds and another series of alarming thuds from the ship’s screw as they wallowed over the next swell.
Then Mab was back and all over him, sobbing with desire and smelling of rum and perfume. She groped for his shaft, found it, and gasped, “Och, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, you might have warned a girl!” She forked a thigh across him and sank down on it with a moan of mingled awe and pleasure. He reached up in the darkness and took her soft, rounded torso in his arms to pull her on like a boot as the bunk tingled under his nude rump and the ship muttered “Voom-Voom-Voom!”
Mab laughed and said, “Och, ain’t this grand? The darling ship is doing half the work for us!”
Mab proceeded to do the other half. She moved up and down like a pro. But since money hadn’t been mentioned, he assumed she was a free thinker with advanced views for her generation. Being a nurse gave women certain advantages. He knew she knew more about anatomy and birth control than the average, properly raised Victorian Miss, and her?’ wandering ways suggested an adventurous streak, too. He wondered how often she’d done this and decided he didn’t really want to know. It was stupid for a man to expect a long series of innocent virgins. But Victoria and John Calvin had messed up male thinking, too, and he was trying to learn to rise above it, or maybe sink below it.
They were both hot as two dollar pistols, but he tried to make it last. So Mab came first and collapsed against him, crooning in the Gaelic, “Och, ma bhirmohr go brack!” as the screw surfaced, bounced him up and down, and he fired his charge unexpectedly. She contracted on him with pleasure and purred, “Jesus that was a lovely gusher! I hope there’s more where that came from!”
So h
e rolled her over and got on top to do some serious loving. She was over her first awkwardness, too, and so now that they were friends she worked her legs up to hook a heel over each of his shoulders, and though he was surprised to notice she still had on her high-buttoned shoes and stockings to the knees, he had no complaints. The rest of her felt like velvet where it wasn’t whipped cream. He was grateful for the storm. Without the damp cool draft from the jalousie they’d have been sweating like pigs by now. But it was cool enough for heavy pounding and he knew it was what she’d had in mind from the moment she’d approached him spouting poetry. The real thing was more poetic than any verse ever written.
They went at it hot and heavy until common sense and mutual exhaustion called for a break to’ get their second wind. As she snuggled against him on the narrow bunk, Mab moved her legs experimentally and murmured, “I thought I’d dislocated a hip, but I think I want you to try and cripple me some more. Can you reach the bottle? I forgot where I put it when you leaped on me like a maniac.”
He rolled over and groped along the rolling floorboards until he found the fifth of rum, on its side but corked by a lady who obviously planned ahead. He handed it to her, but said, “I’ll settle for a smoke. I can’t handle you, a storm at sea, and white rum at the same time.”
He fumbled again and found his jacket crumpled on the floor. He fished out a Perfecto and some matches, and while he was at it, retrieved his shoulder holster and hung it on a nail driven into the post at the head of the bunk. He struck a light and Mab glowed up at him with the match light reflected in her green, feline eyes. She said, “I think I’ll stay sober, too, if you’ll share that cigar with me.”
He lit up and took a drag without comment. More than one lady he’d met shared the forbidden joys of the manly weed. He passed the smoke to her by kissing open-mouthed and he noticed she inhaled it deeply. Mab was a girl who lived life to the hilt.
She laughed when she exhaled and took the cigar for a more serious puff. Then she said, “I don’t want you to leave until just before dawn, if we’re still afloat. That little old man you’re traveling with won’t come looking for you, will he?”
