Privateers

by Charlie Newton

  Okay, so maybe Eddie wrote a poem about cacos and braceros in Haiti, and time, then hid the poem in a 1927 dog-track win picture with office photos of him and Al Capone and two bottles of Barbancourt Rhum.

  Lotta room in that story, including a whole bunch of “Why?” This is not the treasure map I remember from Treasure Island.

  Maybe work the dates. All three photos were taken between 1927 and 1931.

  Okay. And the big news in 1931 was what? The Great Depression, worldwide colonialism, lull between the two world wars . . .

  Anne Bonny and I studied a bunch of this at Oxford a lifetime ago.

  I Google: “Haiti 1927–1931.” The first link is “Haiti—Wikipedia.”

  Of the million sections available in Wikipedia, I jump to “Early Twentieth Century,” take another slug of the Beneagles, and read four pages, the gist of which is:

  The US invaded Haiti before, or during, WWI, depending on which ‘official’ version you believe. The German army was funneling support to the rebels, hoping to incite another Haitian revolt. A revolution that would threaten US security and our corporate-banking and sugar investments. The US invaded/intervened, stayed on the island till—

  I close the browser. I drank any memory of Haiti out of existence for a reason.

  My hand tremor is back. I squeeze my Flyers talisman, stack the photos on the box frame, then my phone, grab the Beneagles, and take another big pull.

  The TV keeps talking.

  Fuck it. I Google: “Haiti US invasion.”

  According to the article, the US ran Haiti from 1915 till 1934. The marines officially landed in 1915, right after the Haitian president was dismembered by revolutionaries friendly to the Germans. The article also mentions the mystery of the missing 1,650 pounds of gold and the ghost ship, the USS Machias.

  The sheer amount of gold registers for the first time. At today’s gold prices, 1,650 pounds would be Wall Street kind of money; scorched-earth kind of money. And James W. Barlow Jr. is that kind of lawyer . . . who somebody wearing Susie Deveraux’s keffiyeh shot in both knees earlier today. Minutes after I left him.

  I glance at the 876 number for Anne Bonny—a guy who makes that call might could get out of the pan with the Irish mob and police, but he’d be officially into the fire.

  And your other options are . . . ?

  Exhale. I slide my phone to the table’s edge and punch ten of the eleven numbers that will connect Anne and me once again, in Jamaica, next door to Haiti. My finger hesitates above the last digit, lucky number 7. I roll my wrist to look at the name carved across the lifeline of my right palm, choose self-immolation, and tap the number 7.

  The phone rings three times.

  Anne’s boyish Irish accent answers, “Grand, Bill, joyous to hear you sane and sober. Liked you better sane and sober, situation being what it was . . .”

  Her voice strolls me down the sunny part of memory lane.

  “Hi, Anne. I think.”

  “You think? Have you gone timid on us?”

  “Always was timid. You and Carel were the pirates.”

  Anne laughs buoyant and vivacious, an echo of the stunning twenty-year-old redhead she was at Oxford. “Carel was a pretty one, wasn’t he? Broke my heart as he always did.”

  “So you’re a treasure hunter? In Jamaica?”

  “I am.”

  “And Carel?”

  “Last we spoke he was still roaming the red dirt of the motherland, training their Recce Commandos.”

  “Kinda surprised you’re in Jamaica, still. Are you and I . . . wanted . . . there?”

  “If you’ve forgotten, Bill, the way she works in our esteemed Commonwealth is a person’s history can be papered over. Transgressions will stay forgotten until a government minister can require another payment.”

  “Meaning we . . .”

  “Meaning we will always have enemies on the island. And friends. Not the least of which is me.”

  Nothing’s changed; Anne Bonny will walk a tightrope. “Do you, ah, hunt treasure on the come? For a piece if you find it?”

  Laugh. “I’m a smuggler, Bill. The treasure huntin’s a bitsy sideline, a notion to keep the authorities happy.”

  “But you know how, I mean, to hunt treasure, if it were around?”

  “Oh, she’s around to hunt; finding her’s the problem.”

  I ask the question that looms between us. “Have you been back to Haiti since . . . we, you know?”

  “Since our anniversary? Oh, I’ve been around her, off her coast. Tortuga, Cap-Haïtien, the wilder parts. Got a Rebelyon gurl in my crew, a nun the last governor hung for accusin’ the bishop. But I don’t sail Port-au-Prince and the south, other than the hurricane hole at Ferret Bay. Might could now—hell, Haiti’s on her fifth government since you and I were there—but sailin’ her today would have to be well worth the risk. We’d be facin’ six thousand UN peacekeepers, fifty thousand Ida rebels led by an army colonel turned revolutionary, and their boil-pot revolution about to cook off.” Anne pauses. “And yourself, William? Susie says you’ve stepped in it a bit.”

  I quit memory lane and silently segue to the bloodbath at Nick & Nora’s, Dave dead on his boat, Barlow kneecapped in his office. “Things are, ah, fluid. So it is actually your Susie calling me?”

  “A fine lass, she is, and can wear pants when it’s called for, but you likely already know that.”

  “No shit.”

  “Not to worry. Susie’s known to be a bit headstrong when the headmasters shake their fingers in her face, but I’ve only seen her shoot those who won’t heed her warning. If you have what we’re hunting, it’ll be me you’ll deal with. No worries there.”

  “Right. Anne Bonny . . . never an ounce of conflict near her.”

  Anne laughs again. “But I am a pretty one, still; and we never did see the stars together, although it was on my mind more than one night.”

  “Spent a few of those myself.”

  “Make a girl wait twenty-three years, she might think a man’s changed his mind.”

  Anne Cormac Bonny was the most attractive female I’d ever known, on so many levels that no woman since has taken me where I’d imagined she might. “Tempting.”

  Her voice deepens. “My job.”

  I laugh small. “Yeah. Tempting would be you.” I glance the photos and poem. “Is there money at the end of your rainbow?”

  “Appears to be. And a fair amount of discord.”

  Door glance. “How close are you?”

  “Depends on you; what you might have and our ability to decipher it. Last time we had this adventure ‘figured,’ it killed Susie’s boat and our mates.”

  “Sounds high-risk, even for you.”

  “Don’t think we have a choice, William. Our opposition is . . . motivated. If you have the last pieces we’re hunting, we’ll have the best chance. Greed helps a man make mistakes.”

  “Like Dave Grossfeld?”

  Silence, then: “Aye. Came to me knowing the whole of our story, yours and mine. Said it poured out of you in the night terrors he helped you battle. I forgave you for talkin’, your condition bein’ what it was.”

  “Was bad. I’m sorry.”

  “We are where we are, William. Let’s make the best of her.”

  “Your Susie didn’t say what she was looking for up here. Tell me what you guys want and we’ll go from there.”

  “Not possible on the phone. And you’d know that if you were thinkin’. Like it or not, you’re already a party. Phone up Susie; have coffee. Tell her I said not to hurt you. We’ll all talk after.”

  I glance out the window at a mixed minefield that I don’t know how to walk. “You’re guaranteeing my safety?”

  Anne laughs again. “Haven’t I always?”

  ***

  11:20 p.m.

 
South of Diversey Avenue, downriver two thousand feet from the Vienna Beef plant, is a WWI railroad bridge built out of red Indiana steel and Northern Illinois aggregate. On the south end, a trunnion-bascule tower rises five stories, including two massive concrete counterweights that haven’t been lowered to raise the bridge for as long as I’ve been alive. The bridge has three tracks and shakes when the trains are inbound. As a kid, I played on every inch.

  Mid-bridge in the moonlight and rust, walking toward me on the narrow repairman’s walkway, is Anne’s partner come to life, Susie Devereux.

  Ten feet separate us when I hold up my hand for her to stop on the narrowest length of walkway. Susie Devereux looks female-formidable in the heat and silvery shadows, but far from “safe.” Her jeans fit athletic hips, and she’s doing a solid impression of wholesome and unthreatening, not that I believe either.

  I ask, “Are you armed?”

  She shrugs an apology, then shows me that her hands are currently empty.

  “Me too. Stay there.” I step back, partially shielded by rusted superstructure and the lie that I have a gun. “I’m listening.”

  She says, “Nice place you picked. They sell coffee here?” Her accent is the same sexy gumbo of American and Scottish that I heard on the phone. “Ours is an amazing story, Bill, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, but the tale’s on the long side and better with a pint than coffee.” She nods west toward the yuppie bars of Bucktown.

  I say, “Doubt one pint would be enough. You and Anne are in it from the beginning?”

  “And another girl. Five years, give or take.”

  “Witness-protection before that?”

  Miss Devereux frowns. “Your friend Barlow tell you that?”

  Nod. “Looks like he and my friend Dave played me, used me as bait.”

  “You’d be right.”

  “Barlow said you’re off the grid. What’s that mean, exactly?”

  Miss Devereux doesn’t answer, then does. “Wasn’t witness-protection. Similar, but . . .” She shows me that her hands are still empty and moves one step closer. “I have family history on the North African coasts; grew up on contraband boats. Went to college, played some rugby with Anne, was eventually recruited as an Arabic translator by an agency whose name you don’t need to know. After 9/11, a number of us moved into interrogations as private contractors. Sheberghan, then Abu Ghraib, then Guantanamo.”

  Same story that Barlow’s file detailed for my trip to Rum Cay. “You’re gonna waterboard me?”

  She smiles crooked. “If sex and drugs don’t work.”

  I can’t help the grin. “Barlow said al-Zarqawi tried to kill you. On video.”

  She nods. “I got sloppy.”

  “But you’re not sloppy now.”

  She laughs. “You’d be a good judge?”

  “I’m working on this Bond-girl fantasy. It’ll help me make the bad decision you and Anne want.”

  “Let me guess, D cup, thong—”

  “Close. You were saying . . .”

  “I was scuba diving in Zabargad. Saudi jihadists killed three of my friends and grabbed me. The Saudis had me a week. Pre-rape and beheading, they lost a firefight to my rescuers. My contract was shifted to Guantanamo.”

  “After rugby, Anne and you hooked up at Guantanamo?”

  “No. The bad guys tried again in Santiago when I was off-base. Anne was two hours away in Kingston. We talked. She and another girl presented me with a change-of-career opportunity—the Capone gold—and I, again, put to sea under a flag of convenience, convincing two of my rescuers to come along.”

  “They were with you in Rum Cay and the breaks?”

  Susie pats her heart twice. “Two spectacular men I miss every day the sun comes up.”

  “They knew Anne’s Capone gold opportunity could be Haiti?”

  Susie Devereux nods again, but smaller, conciliatory, like she knows my history. She says, “Anne told me.”

  “She did, huh. Love to hear Anne’s version.”

  “Sounded horrible. Sorry it happened to you. And your brother. And the Down syndrome kid.”

  The deep concern for my feelings probably sounds more believable without the Live and Let Die soundtrack behind it. “So, what can I do for you, Miss Devereux?”

  “Maybe thank me? For saving your life today? Twice? And your pal Jon’s. Those gunmen weren’t shooting blanks.”

  There is no circumstance where I’ll admit out loud that I was part of a “French Connection” gunfight where nine people died, including one who didn’t deserve it. “I’m thinking the good thoughts.”

  Susie Devereux loses most of the wholesome, hair-flips upmarket brunette an inch, and rests both hands on her hips. Her shoulders rotate back and the T-shirt tightens across her chest. She elevates her chin, exposing a raw neck welt, and waits.

  I’m pretty sure no Bond girl could’ve done that better—somewhere between death threat and NFL cheerleader porn. The bridge trembles, then quits.

  She says, “Anne and I are looking for two items. Reliable sources say you have both. If you do, we’d like to buy them.”

  “How much would you like to pay, say, for one of them?”

  “I’d like both.” One corner of her smile improves from the flat version. “The items fit together. Like a puzzle. Your forte, according to Anne.”

  “Let’s price them one at a time—”

  “Let’s not.”

  The bridge trembles again. The tremble is two trains; one leaving the Clybourn station behind me, the other already past the Ravenswood station behind Miss Devereux. I’ll know what to do when both trains arrive; she won’t.

  “I need $140,000 for Dave’s loan shark and $50,000 for my hockey team. That’s the price for whatever it is you want.”

  She nods, but it doesn’t look like agreement. “Will one ninety cover everything, Bill? Including . . . today?”

  Dry swallow. Nothing will cover today for Loef Brummel.

  “Didn’t think so.” Miss Devereux nods again. “I don’t have $190,000 on hand, but I do have the same problems as you. The longer I stay in Chicago, the worse my chances are.”

  The bridge begins to shimmy.

  Miss Devereux focuses on the movement, then continues. “I’m sure your Canaryville loan shark is a bad actor, but those black men and women work for a nightmare called the Gryphon who you cannot outrun and neither can I. We either recover the treasure we’re hunting and he’s hunting, then pick the time and place to bait him into a fight—the highest and best ground—or he’ll pick, and we’ll lose. That includes you.”

  “Right. Like Nick & Nora’s is the highest—”

  “The blacks weren’t there to fight. They tried to kidnap me yesterday in Miami. The last one of them alive told me that our friend Dave Grossfeld gave you up, told them you were his guy to read the tea leaves O’Hare left behind. I tailed you from Barlow’s; so did they—”

  “Dave and Barlow’s ‘big job next week’ was gonna be me reading O’Hare’s tea leaves?”

  “Yeah, because for the last three years they’ve tried to figure it without me and couldn’t. The blacks’ job, then and now, is to deliver you, Astor Argyle, and the Barbancourt bottles to Haiti. Keep you alive until Piccard and the Gryphon can make sense of—”

  Deliver me? My knees try to buckle. The bridge shimmies hard. We both flex into our hips. “The blacks are Haitians? Looking for me?” Heart-rate explosion. “Explain.”

  A light appears on the tracks behind her. She leans over the superstructure looking for handholds on the outside above the water, and speaks faster, “Anne and I have a significant portion of the clues to the Capone / Banque Nationale gold. Our adversaries know enough to know the gold trail is real, but not enough to find it.

  “Early on we were partners with Barlow and Grossfeld. Unknown to us, the capital they invested
wasn’t theirs. To get the money, they went to Cranston Piccard, a CIA station chief who’d gone off the rails, and his French Haitian patron, the Gryphon. Piccard and the Gryphon had trouble reining in their . . . aberrant behavior.”

  Miss Devereux looks behind her at the train light.

  “Astor Argyle and the Barbancourt bottle hold the last pieces of the puzzle. But the puzzle has endless trapdoors and punji sticks wrapped in O’Hare’s poetry, his Chicago references, Haitian-USA history, and American racetrack parlance. If you don’t understand it all, then the clues and the Gryphon will kill you. My friends and I learned that the hard way.”

  “Bottle, as in singular?”

  “There are two. Anne and I have one. That’s why I surfaced as bait; why I’m here. For the second one and the Astor Argyle photo—that we think Dave and Barlow have, or had.”

  I chin at the wound circling her neck. “The clues did that to your neck?”

  “Same people who killed your friend Dave.” Her face tightens. “Grossfeld was a hockey player. I’m still here because rugby girls are lots harder to kill.” She focuses over my shoulder at a second train coming at her from behind me. “Two trains? Could we adjourn to someplace that won’t kill us?”

  “Are you gonna pay me the one ninety?”

  She looks behind her again. “You knew there’d be trains . . . they’re your backup.”

  “Grew up on this bridge playing chicken.” The bridge begins to shake. Rumble-and-screech echoes from both directions. I add, “Where you’re standing, you can jump or hang. Wouldn’t stand where you are, though. The inside train will kill you for sure.”

  Train lights illuminate us front and back. She jumps over the railing, loses her grip on the top railing, but grabs the rust-pocked I beam at the trestle. Her feet dangle twenty feet above the river.

  I flatten on top of the railing, hook it with both legs and one arm, reach down, grab her wrist. It will be almost impossible for her to hold on when the trains cross the bridge.

  I yell: “When you lose your grip, grab my arm—”

  The trains roar onto the bridge. Her grip on the trestle fails. She grabs my wrist and arm with both hands. The trains screech and rattle past. I say, “Throw your gun in the river.”