The Lucifer Gospel

by Paul Christopher

  Finn took another bite of fish and sipped her beer. A tiny, bright red lizard ran across her foot. She was suddenly a very long way from ten hours in a British Airways 757 eating chicken korma, the pale kid with snot running across his upper lip licking it away every minute or so, staring at her between the seats.

  A little bit of a breeze blew up from the inlet. There was a faint smell in the air, an odd mix of rotting vegetation, seaweed, and smoke that should have been a turnoff but was strangely invigorating. Alive in a very simple, basic way. All she wanted to do was take a nap and stop thinking about anything at all, which of course was exactly the reason people came to the Bahamas in the first place. She took another bite of fish. Her plate was empty.

  “More,” said Lloyd. It wasn’t a question. He spatluaed her another few chunks of the battered fish. She ate it and drank more beer. Another lizard ran up the telephone pole. She was in a lizard-infested heaven.

  “Gecko,” said Lloyd, noticing her glance. “A little tiny alligator without any teeth. Hemidactylus frenatus. They eat bugs, keep the rooms spider-free, you know.” Hemidactylus frenatus? Lloyd had hidden depths, she thought.

  Lloyd turned to Hilts. “You want a room, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Fifty a night if you don’t use the AC too much. We watch the games out here if it’s good weather. Comes with the room.”

  “Games?”

  “Mostly fights. Tonight it’s a couple of middle-weights from Brazil. Eight o’clock. Beer’s cheap, popcorn is free.” He nodded to Poitier. “Show them a room, Mr. Poitier.”

  “Sure, General,” Poitier said with a nod. He took the overnight bags from them even though they weighed almost nothing and they filed around to the shady side of the big chicken-coop building.

  “You’re a bellboy too?” Hilts asked.

  Poitier shrugged. “He gives me the room on the roof, I bring him customers, take them to the airport or into town. Fair trade.” He put down the bags and opened the door with a key that was dangling from the lock with a big number tag on it. Room one. It was in the middle of the row.

  “One?”

  “Eleven. Other number fell off and Lloyd never replaced it.”

  “There’s not eleven rooms in the place.”

  “Lloyd’s got a thing about seven and two so he left them out.” He unlocked the door, pushed it open and picked up the bags. They followed him inside. If the outside looked like a Bahamian Psycho, the interior of the room fit right in. It had all the ambience of the Bates Motel. Two rust-stained inset laundry sinks for dishes, a gas camping stove for cooking, a pair of lumpy beds, and a sagging ceiling. Bathroom cubicle in the back with a shower stall. The floor was covered with emerald-green Astroturf. “Pretty good for fifty bucks,” said Poitier. The old air conditioner in the window was sealed with caulk.

  “As long as the roof doesn’t fall in,” said Hilts.

  “Been that way for years, no reason why it should fall down now.”

  Poitier leaned over the nearest bed and switched on the air conditioner. It wheezed into life and made a noise like a Volkswagen heater in the middle of February.

  “Enjoy,” said Poitier. He left them alone.

  Hilts watched a gecko skitter across the ceiling on gummy little feet that seemed to have suction cups on the toes.

  “I like it,” said Finn.

  “The gecko?”

  “The room.” She sat down on one of the beds. It sagged even lower. She’d seen worse on archaeological digs with her mother in the Yucatan, but not much worse. “It’s homey.”

  “That’s one word for it,” Hilts agreed cautiously.

  “Hiltons have reservations computers. Data terminals in the rooms. This place doesn’t even have telephones. We can’t call out. No one can call in. Its cheap and it’s safe.”

  “I guess.”

  “So how do we find out about the Acosta Star?”

  “DeVaux’s ship?”

  “That burned and sank.”

  “That one.” Hilts thought for a moment. “Maybe Lloyd or Sidney know something. They’ve been around since Creamie-pie, after all.”

  “I wonder how he got that name,” she said and frowned.

  “I hate to think,” answered Hilts. They went outside and back to the boat. The smoke had cleared. Poitier and Lloyd Terco were sitting down and drinking beer, staring at the old car and the swampy inlet beyond. A few ancient-looking conch boats were staggering out into the open water beyond the inlet, fishermen in shorts and wifebeaters like Lloyd’s sitting on the little cabin roofs or crouching by the outboard tillers. Wind blew through the long sawtooth leaves on the palms. You could almost see how it had been before Columbus, a few Carib Indians on the beach, cracking open conchs, stripping out the meat with stone tools, staring out to sea, waiting for genocide to catch them napping.

  Hilts and Finn sat down on a bench facing the two men.

  Hilts spoke. “Either of you gentlemen know anything about a ship called the Acosta Star?”

  There was a short silence. The two men exchanged a look and a shrug. It was Lloyd who answered.

  “French in the beginning. Ile de France, I think. Built in 1938 or so. Brand-new and they sunk her in the harbor to keep the Germans from getting her. Dutch after the war. They sold her to the Italians. When me an’ Mr. Tibbs here worked on old St. Georges she was called Bahamian Star for a few years, flyin’ convenience out of Liberia, but then Acosta Lines bought her. Must have been sometime in the late fifties, because they didn’t have her long before she burned and went down in Donna.”

  “Donna?”

  “Hurricane. Small and nasty.”

  “She sank in a hurricane?”

  “She caught fire first. Engine room. Got most everyone off and left a skeleton crew to fight the fire. Donna came out of nowhere and she disappeared.”

  “Where?” Hilts asked.

  “If I knew I wouldn’t have said disappeared.”

  “The neighborhood.”

  Poitier answered. “Some say the Tongue, some say the channel.”

  “The Tongue?” asked Finn.

  “Tongue of the Ocean,” explained Lloyd Terco. “Lot of locals just call it Toto. A hole in the water just east of Andros, a hundred miles long and ten thousand feet deep.”

  “Other people say Donna swept her farther before she sank. Great Bahamas Bank, Old Bahama Channel offshore from Cuba.”

  “What do you think?” Hilts asked.

  “Don’t,” said Poitier. “Don’t bother thinking about something had nothing to do with me so long ago.”

  “Tuck thinks about it. Talks about it too,” offered Lloyd.

  “Tuck?”

  “Tucker Noe. He’ll tell you he saw her go down, right in front of his eyes, off Lobos Cay Light, and that’s even farther. Pirates and Cubans and Boomers.”

  “Boomers?” asked Hilts.

  “Nuclear submarines,” said Poitier.

  “Who’s Tucker Noe?” asked Finn.

  “Fishing guide. Almost as famous as Bonefish Foley. Between them those two old men bonefished for every president since Lincoln and Ernest Hemingway besides.”

  “He’s still alive?” Hilts asked.

  “Hemingway? Naw, he long gone.”

  Finn smiled as she realized they were ribbing Hilts on purpose and he kept falling for it.

  Hilts scowled. “I meant this Tucker Noe.”

  “Just barely,” Lloyd said and laughed.

  “Can we talk to him?”

  “Sure,” said Lloyd. “You can talk but that’s not sayin’ Tuck goin’ to answer.”

  29

  Tucker Noe lived on the south coast of New Providence—the hurricane side, where the winds blew up the channel from the south, or curled in from the open sea to the east. Coral Cay Point stuck out like a bony finger into the pale green sea with mangrove on one side and coral bonefish shallows on the other. The point itself was a neat collection of narrow old docks and walkways that were home to thre
e dozen small fishing boats, a sportfisher or two, and Spindrift, once a World War Two minesweeper, then converted into an oceanographic research ship for the University of Florida, and finally turned into a live-aboard salvage and sometime dive boat run by a crew of aging ex-hippies and scuba junkies. Tucker Noe lived in a small shack perched on the end of the Spindrift dock beside a pair of old Texaco pumps and directly in front of his own bonefish boat, an unnamed thirty-two-foot cabin flatboat with a roughly made plank cabin sitting on top of the open deck. A worn canvas awning stretched from the cabin to the transom. The transom itself was fitted with two old-fashioned Evinrude outboards, both with their covers off and the guts of the engines exposed. A very old man was sitting on a plastic-webbed lawn chair under the awning with a homemade plywood table in front of him. The table was painted with checkerboard squares of red and black. A set of homemade chess pieces roughly carved from dark and pale coral were set out on the board. There were only a few pieces in each color left in play. A letter on blue airmail paper lay to one side.

  “Idiot,” muttered the old man, a gnarled finger pushing his king forward. “He takes me for a fool?” He glanced at the letter and shook his head in disgust.

  “I’ll be damned,” whispered Hilts, staring down at the board as they stepped aboard the old boat. “That’s the Opera House Massacre, or close to it.”

  Sidney Poitier made the introductions, then eased his backside down on the boat’s wide gunwale with a sigh.

  “You know something about chess, sir?” asked Tucker Noe.

  “Some,” Hilts said.

  “What’s the Opera House Massacre?” Finn asked.

  “A famous game in Paris, at the Opera House there,” explained the photographer. “An American chess player named Paul Morphy was challenged to a game by the Duke of Brunswick and a count something or other.”

  “Isouard was his name,” the old man supplied. His voice carried an educated English accent touched by the faint lilt of the islands. His skin was black and very wrinkled, even the smooth skin of his palms set out with a web of tiny creases. He looked as though he’d been out in the sun for a century, which was probably fairly close to being accurate.

  “That’s right. Anyway it was 1858. They were watching the Barber of Seville. Morphy was in a hurry to see the rest of the opera so he beat the two men playing against him together during the intermission. Morphy was the first international grandmaster from America. They didn’t have a chance.” Hilts pointed to the roughly made chessboard. “That’s how the game turned out.”

  “You have an excellent eye,” said the old man.

  “It’s a famous game.”

  “If you know about famous chess games. It’s not like playing Grand Theft Auto Four on a PlayStation,” said Tucker Noe.

  “I gave up after version number two,” Hilts said with a smile.

  “I have many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Even a few great-great-grandchildren.” The old man laughed. “I’m an expert at stealing cars and assassinating prostitutes on the streets of Liberty City, or wherever it is on the latest version. It seems to be a necessary talent these days, even here in our island paradise.”

  “They’re lookin’ for the Acosta Star,” said Sidney Poitier. There was a long silence.

  “You’re divers,” Tucker Noe said with a sigh.

  “Not really,” said Finn. “We’re interested in a passenger who might have been aboard on her last voyage.”

  “Family?”

  “No.”

  “The Acosta Star was no treasure galleon,” Tucker Noe cautioned. “She was an early cruise ship.”

  “We’re aware of that,” answered Hilts. “The ship is part of a puzzle we’re trying to figure out. It’s a bit of a life-and-death thing,” he added, frowning.

  “I’m becoming curious.” The old man smiled. “Not something that happens often to men of advanced years like me or Mr. Poitier here.”

  “Speak for yourself, old man,” the taxi driver snorted.

  “I generally do,” answered Tucker Noe. “When I’m forced to by the stupidity of others.” He arched an eyebrow at his friend, who arched an eyebrow back. Finn was beginning to wonder if there was anyone under eighty living on the whole island. She glanced toward the other side of the dock and saw a muscular, blond-haired man in a T-shirt clambering up the gangway on the side of the Spindrift, Tucker Noe’s neighbor. Definitely in the under-thirty class. She smiled at her little private thought.

  “His name is probably Tab,” said Hilts, who’d spotted the man as well. Not such a private thought after all.

  “Actually his name is Dolf van Delden. His late father was the Spindrift’s owner,” said Tucker Noe. “Dutch, from Amsterdam. I don’t ask beyond that.”

  “Interesting people you have here.”

  “Places like New Providence have always attracted interesting people. How many countries have a motto like ‘Pirates Expelled, Commerce Restored’?”

  “You make it sound like there’s some question of that.”

  “Jury’s still out on the pirate issue. Time was they had names like Morgan and Teach. Now it’s Escobar and Rodriguez.”

  “We were talking about the Acosta Star,” interrupted Finn.

  “That’s so.” The old man nodded.

  “Sidney here said you saw her go down,” said Finn. “In a hurricane.”

  “Donna,” Tucker Noe said, nodding. “She was in the eye, burning like a candle. I was making for Guinchos Cay or Cay Lobos before I sank myself.”

  “You were out in a hurricane in this?” said Hilts.

  “She was the Malahat. Old Chris-Craft fish boat I used to take charters out on.”

  “A fishing charter in a hurricane?”

  “Other business. And you’ve clearly never been in a hurricane. They have a tendency to come out of nowhere, just like Donna.”

  “What other business?” Finn asked.

  “None of yours,” answered Tucker Noe with a crisp edge to his voice.

  “Oh,” said Finn, suddenly understanding what the other business was.

  “You just leave it at that.” He glanced at Poitier. “I have changed my ways since then,” he added stiffly.

  “Bull crap.” The taxi driver laughed. “You just changed your methods, old man.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Tucker Noe, turning back to Hilts.

  The photographer waved dismissively. “No problem. This was at night?”

  “That’s right.”

  Simpson had said eleven at night, Finn remembered. It seemed as though his information was on the mark.

  “How did you know it was the Acosta Star?” asked Finn.

  “I didn’t, not right then,” answered Tucker Noe. “Though I had my suspicions.”

  “No radio?” asked Hilts.

  “I had one, but no one was calling on it,” said the old man.

  “And presumably you were ducking under the radar,” said Hilts.

  “This was 1960, young man. There wasn’t much in the way of radar at all back then. The Bay of Pigs was still almost a year away. I doubt if Señor Castro had a gallon of gasoline to spare for patrol boats. The Acosta Star was a torch, not a spy ship or any kind of threat.”

  “Did you try to help?”

  “No, I stayed clear. There was no sign of life, you could see that the davits were all swung out, lines in the water, lifeboats gone. A ghost ship.”

  “Was she under power?” Hilts asked.

  “Hard to say. Maybe. The swells were very bad. She might have stayed afloat for a long time if it hadn’t been for the hurricane. I reached Cay Lobos just before midnight. There’s an old lighthouse there. I beached Malahat on the lee shore and went up the tower just before the weather broke again.”

  “What happened?”

  “The hull had obviously been weakened. She broached and broke in half toward the stern. She was gone in less than a minute.”

  “No survivors?”

  “As I said, she was a hulk
. Everyone capable of getting off was obviously gone. There was no one left on board to survive.”

  “Acosta Star was a big ship. How come no one ever found her?”

  “She was a big ship but it’s a bigger ocean. I was the only one to see her go. Most wouldn’t have put her that far south or west. By rights she should have gone down in the Tongue, which is where most people think she is. Down in the deep.” He paused. “But she’s not.” The old man plucked the dark, carved coral king off the chessboard and twirled it between a gnarled old thumb and forefinger. “She’s in a little more than fifteen fathoms—her keel at a hundred feet maybe—lying on a sandy bottom in the shadow of a place called No-Name Reef. You could fly over her at wave height and never see her unless it was just the right time of day. Not that it matters any now.”