Privateers

by Charlie Newton

  Between me and the Sazerac’s open doorway are six wood tables, all made from heavy ship-plank. The doorway is flanked by two fifty-five-gallon drums burning scrub wood that smells like charcoal. The drums glow, each perforated with the shape of a Christian cross.

  There should be guards here or lookouts—unless Susie’s bad guys got here first.

  My loyal taxi drives away.

  Deep breath. All . . . righty . . . then. I step past the barrels.

  Inside, the Sazerac is ten degrees cooler and would be called medieval if we were in Ireland or Scotland. Two steps down to the right, under a heavy-timbered low ceiling, is a twelve-foot gleaming bar with one kerosene bowl-candle at each end. The two candles throw more orange glow than light. Behind the nearest glow is a jet-black barmaid cutting fruit I can smell. Her white eyes focus on me and her knife stops cutting. She’s wearing Jamaica’s traditional madras plaid, and I’m quite sure, armed with a modern semiautomatic pistol.

  Behind my shoulder I hear: “Respect, mon.”

  Nodding at me from a leeward window is a twenty-four-inch electric-blue parrot. To the parrot’s left, lit with hanging ship lanterns, is a life-size oil painting bolted into the stone wall—two women armed with flintlock pistols and cutlass.

  The bartender says, “Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Be the only known portrait, painted 1700-something in Charleston, America. Artist Eric Meyer.”

  I step closer. Anne’s resemblance to her pirate-queen namesake is stunning, a bit scary.

  “Ah-rite,” says the parrot.

  I turn back to the barmaid and step down to the bar. “Hi. I’m Bill Owens, friend of Anne’s from America. She was supposed to pick me up at the airport.”

  The barmaid eyes me; her hands and knife no longer visible.

  I inhale to add happy—

  The arched-stone doorway I just walked through darkens. Four black shapes file in. I can’t make out anything but their size and eyes. I fast-glance the bar to grab the fruit knife; I’m not going to Haiti.

  The eight eyes give me a long inspection. The largest shape steps forward into the orange glow: six two, 250, shaved head, one earring, one large hand visible.

  “What be your business here?”

  “Anne Bonny.”

  “Uh-huh. The minister send you? Ministers don’t hang us no more in Port Royal.” A pistol emerges from behind his back. “I send you back to Babylon in a bucket.”

  The barmaid two-hands a pistol at my ear.

  “BeBe!” A woman ducks in under the low wooden beam, jumps the stairs, and lands on both feet between the big man’s pistol and me.

  Five foot seven, black boots and pants, a pistol grip visible against her naked stomach, and a boatneck shirt that doesn’t hide muscled arms. The very best part is hair so red you’d swear it was burning.

  “Bill!” Anne Bonny hugs me with both arms. “A fine, handsome man you are.” She smells like cinnamon, pulls back, kisses me full on the mouth, then stiff-arms from my shoulders. “Did ya bring my Susie and all our breadcrumbs?”

  My eyes jump between Anne and the men behind her, the big one, BeBe, in particular. “Not feeling the love, Anne. Missed you at the airport.”

  “Aye, Bill, wanted desperate to be there, dressed and did my hair for it, don’chya see, but we’ve had a bit of trouble since we talked.” She smiles the smile. Girl’s in her forties and still has it, both barrels. Her eyes are emeralds.

  “Anne Bonny!” screams from the dark. “Be gon from here! This minute! You goin’ to the gallows at Tower Street, you don.”

  The three men behind BeBe have parted to either side of the doorway. A solid, curvy girl with dark-cinnamon skin stands backlit by the drum fires outside. She’s too young to be Siri. Whoever she is, she’s naked from the waist up, midtwenties, long perfect dreads, and pointing a silver cross like it’s a gun. “Anne Bonny be jailed and hanged for murder! Two hours’ time!”

  Anne raises her voice but doesn’t turn. “Sistah, be gone, now.”

  “Sistah” glares at the back of Anne’s head and doesn’t move. Sistah’s muscles are tight; her nipples hard. Candlelight glints off her cross.

  I fake a smile for Anne. “Jamaica wants to hang you?”

  “Somewhat of a new development.” Anne rebuilds the smile into a grin. “Grand to see you, William. Grand.” She kisses me again, slower, keeping the grin on her lips and her hips pressed to mine. Sistah jumps down the stairs to us.

  Up close, Sistah shocks me backward. She has white birthmarks that surround both eyes and cover one cheek. I’ve seen those marks before.

  She says: “Radio Kingston sayin’ Anne Bonny been convicted; for killing dead a Gordon House MP.” Sistah wedges in, her muscled shoulder and dreads pushing me back. Her lips stop at Anne’s cheek. “Say Anne Bonny feed him to the crocodiles by Black River, Treasure Beach. Say Babylon gonna hang Anne Bonny at Tower Street under the old law.”

  Babylon used to be slang for all things corrupt-government. A Gordon House MP is a “minister,” a member of parliament.

  Anne doesn’t move, blink, or turn. “Bill, do you have our breadcrumbs?”

  My eyes bounce from Anne to Sistah and back. I lie. “Half.”

  Anne loses part of the grin. “Half’ll kill us, Bill. The trail’s full of tricks and traps. Susie said you found Astor Argyle and the second bottle; is she wrong?”

  “Lotta unhappy people in here, Anne.”

  Anne leans around Sistah’s dreads and tells my ear: “Our Dave Grossfeld’s dead with barbed wire beat into his head; both eyes carved out, feet and hands cut off. That’s Petwo Vodou if ya ne remember, the bad, bitter-loa kind practiced up in Souvenance.”

  Sistah rams her chest against Anne’s shoulder and shouts: “Anne Bonny, you be gon with all that! Babylon comin’ now! They hang you today!”

  Anne grabs Sistah and hugs her chest-to-chest, the crucifix wedged between them. She whispers past Sistah’s ear to me, “They sayin’ Grossfeld had the second bottle and lost it to his killers.”

  “They’d be wrong. Dave didn’t have the bottle at five a.m. this morning. When I saw it.”

  Anne grins. “Have to be sure, Bill. Clever-certain. The Corazón Santo is a livin’ thing, and already feels us comin’.”

  “Whoa. Never said I was going anywhere but here.”

  “Won’t be us deciding. Our man Dave dying how he did was no accident. Our adversaries are marking their trail. I know you’re not forgettin’ the Oloffson. Luckner Cambronne’s girl in my bed was big, big Petwo Vodou.”

  Sistah screams, rips out of Anne’s arms with Anne’s pistol in her left hand. “You the white man!” Sistah jams the pistol at my face. “Who murder de Baby!”

  Flash and roar pound off the walls. Anne rips the smoking pistol out of Sistah’s hand, locks Sistah’s arm, then shoves her to BeBe. BeBe crushes Sistah to his chest with both giant arms.

  Anne shouts, “Take Sistah to her medicine, then the boat till she recovers herself.”

  Sistah screams: “I know you, white man! You murder de Baby! Murder de Rebelyon!” Her round eyes blaze in the birthmarks. A wide, ugly hangman’s scar circles her neck. BeBe lifts Sistah off the ground, turns, and carries her through the men.

  Anne inhales to speak.

  I shove my hand in her face. “What the fuck was that?”

  “You know what it was.”

  “Bullshit.” I rub my ears. “Your girl’s a fucking psycho—”

  “And I’d say she’s not. Vodou is poor-people politics. Don’t be laughin’ because it don’t belong to white people.”

  “Do I look like I’m laughing?”

  Anne gently pulls my hand down. “Petwo true believers are God-driven; she’s a formidable religion in the provinces—if that’s where this adventure’s goin’.” Anne belts her pistol, hesitates, then twists her hand li
ke a noose at her neck. “A Rebelyon gurl Sistah was. Advocated the violent overthrow of Haiti’s church and state and paid for it dearly.

  “But the Christian rope couldn’t kill her. That makes her a saint in Haiti’s dark arts. As do her birthmarks.” Anne looks over her shoulder, then back. “Remember?”

  Frown. Goddamn right I remember.

  “Sistah’s decidedly more accomplished than she’s actin’. A good use in Haiti, for a number of true believers’ reasons we’ll hope not to encounter, situations our girl Siri and a mountain full of rebels can ne handle.”

  “Listen to me, okay? I’m not going to Haiti. Got it? Bill Owens is not going to Haiti.”

  Sistah screams French Kreyol outside.

  I look at the door. “She’s your girlfriend?”

  “Sistah’s a family matter to me you’ll not encounter again.”

  I scan the Sazerac for more psycho apparitions behind the three men who haven’t left. “And Susie Devereux?”

  Anne waves the three men and the bartender out. “Bill and I will have a moment, thank you,” then turns back to me. She waits till we’re alone, then answers.

  “Susie booked a nonstop that should’ve beat you here. It landed without her. Her phone rings but doesn’t answer.”

  “Susie saved my ass in Chicago. I mean stone-cold saved me from another round in Haiti. We gotta help her.”

  “Aye, only way now is gettin’ on her gold’s trail. Susie’ll find us if she’s still on her own. If not, and she’s alive, whoever has her will do the findin’.” Anne cants her head. “Talk to me, Bill.”

  “And what would our deal be . . . on the trail?”

  “Full share, twenty-five percent. Susie, me, Siri, and you.”

  “Siri’s the revolutionary? Florent Dusson-Siri?”

  “Florent’s another reason we might survive Haiti. Do you have our breadcrumbs, Bill?”

  Inhale. Exhale. No reason to keep telling her I’m not going to Haiti. “Yup. I do. Better still, the second bottle has coordinates, in Kingston, straight across the bay. The old frigate docks downtown.”

  Anne grins. Her emerald eyes sparkle; she turns, jumps stairs to the door, and shouts toward the water: “Tell BeBe to finish loadin’ both boats.” She points across Kingston’s five-mile bay. “Have ’em to the Rodney’s Arms at sundown, ready to run,” then turns back to me. “Best we have a look at your coordinates and find our Susie; be on with the talkin’ and the doin’ . . . wherever that leads us.”

  “Those coordinates are in town. Your psycho girlfriend seems to think they want to hang you in town.”

  “Aye, William, is it a picnic you came for? Or a grand adventure with the girl whose knickers you fancy?”

  Nope, not much has changed. “Could I see them now? Just in case they hang us both?”

  “Hang us?” Anne thumbs down the waistband of her pants an inch and leers. “Do ya not remember who you were standin’ with when the whole of Haiti wanted your head, and my Carel did as well?”

  “Kinda hard to forget that.”

  “Aye. And did I step aside when conditions said it’d be prudent? Conditions of your own makin’.”

  “Nope, you didn’t; you said, ‘We sail together; we finish together.’”

  “Then that’s our plan, William. And it’ll be satin sheets for all of us, not a gallows.”

  Chapter 16

  Bill Owens

  Sunday

  The lights of Kingston begin to glitter in the odd twilight. Anne Bonny and I shrink lower in the sticky back seat of a rumbling, rackety Land Rover. Her man BeBe is driving. On his lap is an open-bolt MAC-10 submachine gun and four magazines. I have Anne’s pistol. She has a Belgian FN pistol-grip shotgun and her own MAC-10. On our left, Kingston Harbour is calm. The radio says the storm front has veered north as hoped. The bad news is the storm behind it, already a tropical storm that NOAA has named Lana. How big and how bad Lana will get is too early to tell.

  On our right, the how bad is well defined. The Tower Street Penitentiary is a brick-and-stone nightmare on the outside. Peter Tosh, Bob Marley’s guitar player, once said Tower Street on the inside was as low as mankind could descend on the mother island, and Peter was from Trench Town.

  Anne’s knee touches mine. She says, “My gallows is inside the main yard; being special-built brand-new. Ministers intend to make a show of me.”

  “Jesus, what’d you do?”

  She winks and pats my knee. “Defended myself.” Her hand stays on my thigh.

  Traffic slows as we pass under Tower Street’s twenty-foot walls and gun turrets. Any police roadblock or army stop will be a full-auto gunfight.

  “In case you’re who they hang first, could you fill in the blanks? Susie said you fell into this before she did?”

  Anne squeezes my thigh. “Five, six years back, Barlow needed a partner down here, someone who knew their way around. Barlow went to your Dave Grossfeld and his fishin’ connections; Dave came up empty, then came to me. Piccard and the Gryphon came in later as the expedition’s bankers.” Pause. “So you know, Cranston Piccard is the CIA rogue who got you out of Dimanche prison.”

  I lean away so I can see Anne’s face. “The guy . . . in the white suit?”

  Anne nods. “Piccard and Barlow are the same tribe. Ex-CIA fixers, professional lads who keep the world safe for democracy when there’s a profit to be made. None of us knew Barlow had gone to Piccard for the money—and Piccard to the Gryphon—until it was too late. Our only way out of the ‘debt’ the Gryphon decided he was owed was to find the gold.” Anne bites her teeth. “Didn’t work out. For Susie in particular.”

  “Susie didn’t say what’s in your file.”

  “A lot. But not enough.” Anne shows three handwritten pages. “Eddie O’Hare’s notes.” She shuffles the handwritten pages to a typewritten page. “Susie’s synopsis.” Anne paraphrases the notes in her hands: “In 1931, O’Hare was approached by two murderers he was already defendin’. They couldn’t pay their legal bills but didn’t want to die in America’s electric chair using a lawyer who couldn’t reach ‘an accommodation’ with a Chicago magistrate. Without explainin’ how they’d come by the Haiti gold, the killers said they had it—$500,000 worth. That’s back when $375 would buy a new Ford Model A. But owning the gold carried serious penalties—a guaranteed military-court execution for the missin’ marines of the ghost ship USS Machias. Then there’s the gold’s location.”

  BeBe says, “Duck.”

  Anne ducks behind the seat, cuts to a police car speeding past in the other direction, then continues. “O’Hare’s clients offered him the gold for $100,000.”

  The Land Rover bumps, then slows. BeBe says, “Traffic stop.”

  Anne folds the file under her MAC-10 and tells BeBe, “G’wan through. Calm as you go.” She ducks lower below the seat and pulls me with her. BeBe weaves through the traffic stop using both of the road’s shoulders, patting his arm out his window like it’s okay that he’s in a hurry.

  No sirens chase us. Anne pushes the file at me. “Read the rest. I’ll be watching behind us.”

  I sit up, look behind us, then read what remains of Susie’s synopsis: “In August 1931, Eddie O’Hare bonds out the least dangerous of his two killer-clients and goes with him to Santiago de Cuba, near Guantanamo. There, O’Hare sees, weighs, and verifies the Banque Nationale gold.”

  I look at Anne. “Holy shit, it is real.”

  Anne taps the file. “Read.”

  Susie’s synopsis continues: “O’Hare calls Capone. Against his accountant Jake Guzik’s advice, Capone agrees to finance O’Hare’s $100K purchase. O’Hare buys the gold at twenty cents on the dollar, but prior to O’Hare’s return to Chicago, O’Hare cuts a side deal with Remi Péralte to rob Capone. O’Hare knows Capone is just days away from being indicted by the Feds because O’Hare is the Fed’s sni
tch.”

  I blurt: “Our coordinates came from a dead Péralte in Chicago. Who’s Remi Péralte?”

  Anne says, “Half brother to Haitian hero Charlemagne Péralte. Charlemagne died in 1919 fighting for Haiti’s independence from the USA. Fifteen years later, Remi’s the perfect local partner for an American like O’Hare. Remi can operate in the Corazón Santo and anywhere in Haiti proper. So, at some point during the years Capone’s in Alcatraz, 1934 to ’38, we think O’Hare used Remi’s connections down here to move the gold from Cuba to”—Anne frowns big—“somewhere the map and coordinates you brought us will hopefully lead.”

  “What happened to Remi?” I stop Anne before she answers, and tell her: “Once the gold was hidden, O’Hare killed Remi Péralte like a good tomb-builder would, then returned to the US to wait for the gold’s problems to wear off.”

  “Aye.”

  The rest of the story doesn’t require me to read it. “But Eddie O’Hare, being an egotistical asshole, even by crooked-lawyer standards, makes a crucial miscalculation, given that he’s just put America’s most powerful gangster in Alcatraz. He miscalculates how long the gold’s ‘purification’ process will take versus how long he has left in this life.”

  “And there you have it, William.”

  I finish the story. “But one miscalculation doesn’t mean Eddie’s completely stupid. He would’ve worried that his days were numbered or at least open to discussion. So he creates this series of ‘artful’ clues and traps that only his poetic self can unravel; life insurance, should the wolf come to the door or his own memory fail.”

  Anne nods.

  “Is his death poem in here? The one the cops found in his pocket when he was murdered outside Sportsman’s?”

  “Aye.”

  I rifle the file. Although I’ve never seen it, the poem is part of Sportsman’s-Chicago gangland lore, likely written years after the poems Eddie stuffed in the Barbancourt bottles. I find it and read out loud:

  The clock of life is wound but once

  And no man has the power