The Pirate's Daughter

by Robert Girardi

  “Meanwhile, right around this time, the civil war in Bupanda was just starting to heat up. A few enterprising Lebanese ship owners were buying Bupu POWs off the Andas and Anda POWs off the Bupus and selling them to the Arabs along the Red Sea. Dad was one of the first on our side of the pond to figure the real potential there. He set up a barracoon at Grand Terre, which is a fly speck of an island just northwest of the Palmetto Passage, recruited thirty captains out of the Brotherhood, and headed out for Africa.

  “Everyone started making a ton of money almost immediately. Second year of operation, Dad sold two hundred Bupus to Dominion Sugar to work their cane fields in Guyana for something like a quarter of a million bucks. But one night, during a hurricane, six of the Bupus got loose. One who could speak English eventually made it to Jamaica, and rumors trickled back to the States. Then the coast guard started to sniff around, and all of a sudden the Palmetto setup just wasn’t going to work anymore, so Dad started to look for another home base for the Bupanda trade. That’s when the Portugee came over and proposed a little private high-stakes card game just between him and Dad. If Dad won, he could bring the slave trade to Quatre Sables and turn it into a big-time operation and run the show, with no percentage off the top. If the Portugee won, Dad could still come out to Quatre Sables, but the Portugee would run the show with a twenty-five percent straight cut off the top, and one other little thing. Call it an added bonus—”

  Cricket paused to swig a mouthful of champagne straight out of the bottle. She topped up Wilson’s glass, spilling some over the side. When she drank again, Wilson heard the bottle chatter against her teeth. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve and went on in a shaky voice.

  “The Portugee is a real gambler; he’s addicted to gambling in the way that other people are addicted to drugs or booze. I told you a few things about him before, but not the whole truth. I’ve known the man since I was a little girl. He used to play in Johnny Mazep’s poker games in the old days and stayed with us off and on in the big house in St. George, and I guess I used to flirt with him in the way that little girls do. He seemed so fine with his perfect white suits and his swishy European manners. Then, one day, when I was about eleven, he drove me out to Capstan Head for a picnic—he had this white Mercedes limousine with a chauffeur that he always brought over from Miami on the ferry—and on the way back he pulled down my sundress and put his hands all over my chest and between my legs and took his dick out and his face got all red, and he started jerking off. I screamed, but the chauffeur didn’t even turn around. When he was done, he cleaned me up and told me to stop crying and acted as if nothing had happened. I didn’t say anything about the incident to my mom, because I was terrified and I felt guilty and I didn’t know if I had done something to cause the Portugee to act that way. I put the whole thing in the back of my mind where you put the bad stuff, and I tried to forget about it.

  “Five years later, the night the Portugee played his private card game with Dad, I had just come back from a dance at Palmetto High, where I had gotten stoned and fucked some greaser in the backseat of his car. It was about three in the morning, I was listening to Foghat on my headphones and getting undressed, and I didn’t hear the Portugee come into my bedroom. He pushed me down on the bed, put a pillow over my face, and raped me. Then, he took the pillow off my face and told me not to be scared, and he raped me again. I wasn’t a virgin, but it was horrible. At one point I looked up and saw Dad standing in the doorway, watching and taking hits off a bottle of bourbon.

  “The Portugee raped me one more time in the morning before he left. About ten A.M. Dad heard me crying and came in and told me that he had lost me to the Portugee in a poker game, that I was no longer his daughter, that I belonged to the Portugee now just like a slave and that I had no choice in the matter. I cried and cried, but my mother was dead by then, and there was nothing I could do. I didn’t fight it. How could I? I couldn’t run away again. Every time I ran away I just ended up fucking somebody for a place to stay, for a decent meal. You know what happens to naive young girls on the streets. What was the point? So a week later, I shipped out on the Portugee’s ship, the Jesus of Lubeck. I told you about that. The only part I left out was that he fucked me from noon till night the whole time, used me like a convict. I’ve been his woman ever since then. The man is obsessed with me. Whenever I try to leave him, he finds me, brings me back. He’s done that twice. The only life I know is the sea, I don’t know how to do anything else, and he’s got connections in shipping companies all over the world.

  “There’s just one way to escape the Portugee for good. I need a good gambler. You’re sweet and smart, and you’re a good gambler, right, Wilson? The minute you walked into Nancy’s shop, I knew there was something about you. I was attracted to you right away, and when you told me that your father had been a professional gambler, the wheels started turning. Right then and there I dreamed up the whole scheme to take you away with me.”

  “Cricket—”

  “No, let me finish. Every time I come home to Quatre Sables, I go stay at Villa Real for a few days and the Portugee fucks me. It’s not great, but I’m used to it. I was even sort of content with my life until you came along. It wasn’t so bad. Plenty of action on board one ship or the next, and I’m on my own most of the year, so if I have a fling in some distant corner of the world, who will know? But now the Portugee’s on this kick where he wants to marry me. I’ve been able to put him off for the past two years, but he doesn’t want to wait any longer, and he’s serious. Says he’s getting old, says he wants to settle down, have kids to take over that damned pile of old stones in the valley. Listen, Wilson, this Ackerman thing is my first real operation as a full partner. I have a legitimate share in the profits under the Articles. Until now, it’s been pocket change—ten thousand here, twenty there. But when that rich bastard finally coughs up, we’re talking about millions! Enough money to get away and live for the rest of our lives! I mean anywhere, Europe, South America, you name it. We can live like normal people! We can have a house together and who knows, and we—”

  Cricket’s voice cracked. She leaned forward and put her face in her hands and began to sob in loud, jerky spasms. Wilson felt embarrassed, didn’t know what to do. He wanted to tell her that he didn’t trust her, that he couldn’t live off the earnings of piracy and murder and slavery, that you could never base your own happiness on the sufferings of others. In the end, he finished by doing what men of feeling have always done when faced with a desperate woman in tears. He took her in his arms and held her close and offered what comfort he could.

  13

  The big blue Lagonda pulled onto the main road of the shanty city from an alley halfway down the slope. Making his way to the Black Spot through the rain and the sodden crowds, Wilson stepped beneath an overhang to let the elegant vehicle pass. It was a fifties-era Rapide, royal blue, with a lovely Tickford body and chrome wire wheels. He had only seen pictures of cars like that in books. Rain beaded the surface of its glossy waxed hood; the engine purred along, no louder than a clock. When it came past Wilson’s overhang, the car stopped and idled there for a moment, water hissing against the big radiator. Then two men got out of the front and stepped over to him, and Wilson recognized Mustapha and Schlüber, Captain Page’s lieutenants.

  “Don’t make a fuss,” the German said. “Just get in the car.”

  For emphasis, Mustapha pulled open his raincoat and showed Wilson the butt end of an old U.S. Army issue Colt .45. Wilson shrugged and slid into the back of the Lagonda, the door closing behind with a solid chunking sound. The seats were of fragrant, worn leather; the trim along the doors burled mahogany with silver accents. Front and back were separated by a privacy screen of thick glass. The mahogany dash, set with pearl-faced gauges and a steering wheel of solid crystal, reminded Wilson of a dining room table laid out for Christmas dinner. Mustapha came around to the right-hand side and got in behind the wheel, Schlüber got in from the other side, and the car eased into gear
and bumped down the muddy slope.

  When Wilson’s eyes adjusted to the dull rain light of the interior, he realized he was not alone in the backseat; the pirate captain slumped against the door in the far corner. Today, he wore a rumpled brown suit and a stained yellow tie. His eye patch was askew. A half pint bottle of vodka stuck out of his breast pocket.

  “You going to kill me this time, Captain?” Wilson said.

  The pirate would not reply. He grunted, mumbled something to himself, and took the bottle of vodka out of his pocket and knocked back a healthy slug.

  They reached the docks and veered up to the left of the barracoon. The windshield wipers made a soft thumping sound on the glass. The road curved around the ragged outskirts of the city, then widened out and entered thick jungle a half mile beyond the last shanty. After a minute, Wilson felt the tires cross a bumpy surface. He pressed his nose to the window to see a pavement of ancient cobbles passing below. Along both sides of the road here, crumbling neoclassical statues were set at intervals of every hundred-odd feet: nymphs and goddesses, satyrs and heroes, all vine-covered, half eaten by jungle.

  At last, the pirate held out his bottle of vodka. “Have a drink, citizen,” he said, but would not look in Wilson’s direction.

  “That’s all anyone seems to do on this island,” Wilson said. He took a small sip from the bottle and handed it back.

  “I hear you want to marry my daughter,” the pirate said, and he swung around suddenly and fixed Wilson with his one watery eye.

  “Not exactly,” Wilson said.

  “Good, because she’s not mine to give away,” the pirate said. “I lost her to the Portugee years ago in a poker game. I suppose she didn’t tell you that.”

  “She did,” Wilson said. “And as far as I’m concerned, she doesn’t belong to anyone but herself. She’s got the right to do whatever she wants with her own life.”

  The pirate gave a grin that showed a mouthful of yellow teeth. “Very funny,” he said. “Tell that joke to the Portugee. This isn’t the States, kid. My daughter’s not some average middle-class bimbo from Bumfuck, Illinois. There are no rights in Quatre Sables except property rights. Everybody belongs to somebody else.”

  “That’s not why I’m hesitating about this,” Wilson said.

  “Huh?”

  “First of all, you’ve got to admit, the circumstances are very weird. Second, even under normal conditions, I just don’t think I’m ready for marriage right now.”

  “You’re kidding,” the pirate said.

  “No,” Wilson said. “And there’s more. To make a successful marriage, two people should have certain interests in common. They should at least share a similar temperament. Cricket’s a fascinating, beautiful woman, but my tolerance for murder, slavery, and piracy is very low.”

  “You’re killing me, citizen!” The Pirate started to laugh, and he tipped his head back and his laughter came out in a long, drunken howl.

  “One last thing,” Wilson said. “The in-laws.”

  The pirate stopped laughing, and his eye narrowed.

  “Unsavory,” Wilson said. “That’s the best I can say. In truth, this whole business gives me the hives. I’ve never asked God for anything in my life, but when I saw those poor miserable Africans down there in chains, I asked Him to give me a chance for revenge on all of you.”

  “Let me tell you something,” the pirate said in a calm voice. “You may not like slavery, but it’s the wave of the future. They’ve got just one thing in Africa, and it’s a thing they don’t need—more people. There’s just too fucking many of them, look at Bupanda now. Three million dead in the last ten years from starvation and butchery and civil war didn’t even make a dent in their population problem. I’ve seen Bupu tribesmen with ten wives and seventy-three kids, living on garbage heaps. Did you know that Bupanda is the most densely populated country in Africa? Every little nigger slut over there has an average of ten kids, we’re talking average. The Western press never reported that, did they? I remember Rigala before the war; you had to crawl over your neighbor just to take a shit. The country was beautiful once, rolling hills, forests—reminded me of Ireland. Now, except for a few clicks of heavy jungle in the highlands, the forests are practically gone, the hills are covered with decomposing bodies. Two hundred years ago, Malthus said the only way to control population was through misery or vice. The Bupandans, they’ve got the misery part down pat. We’re the vice part.

  The pirate chuckled to himself and sloshed more vodka into his mouth. Wilson stared out the Lagonda’s rain-wet window and considered what the pirate had said. The jungle slid by, a tangle of underbrush and moral complexity.

  “I’ve seen a lot of terrible things these last few months,” Wilson said when he was ready to speak. “And I’ve decided that I’m going to live in the world as if it is a better place. Call this the romantic approach to life, a simple solution to a difficult problem. In any case it’s the only way I can figure to keep my moral balance and my sanity. My gut tells me slavery is a great evil, and I’m going to live by what my gut tells me—that’s another way of saying I’m going to live by my principles. But I’m afraid it may be too late for Cricket. She’s been wallowing in your mire for most of her life. She desperately wants to come clean, but it may be too late to get the dirt off.”

  The pirate sat up and capped the bottle of vodka and shoved it back into the pocket of his rumpled brown suit.

  “I could cut your throat right now,” he growled. “Cut you ear to fucking ear and drop your body in the jungle for your guts to be eaten out by animals.” Then he rapped a sharp knuckle on the partition, and the glass slid down and Schlüber turned around.

  “What is it, Captain?” the German said.

  “Show this little bastard your knife.”

  The German grinned and reached into his coat and pulled out a bone-handled knife, its long blade curved like a sardonic smile.

  “I wouldn’t,” Wilson said. “The Portugee is a friend of mine.”

  “Bullshit,” the pirate said, and made a throat-cutting gesture. “Cut him, Schlüber.”

  “What about the car, Captain?” Schlüber’s grin faded. “What would the Portugee say if we got blood all over his Wilton carpets?”

  “You heard me,” the pirate said. “Cut him!”

  Wilson tried to stay calm. Sweat broke out on his forehead. He looked from the pirate to Schlüber and leaned back slowly into the door. The jungle was only a few yards away. But the German’s face went white, and he turned without another word and put the screen back up. Wilson let out an inaudible sigh of relief.

  “Look at this, you bastard,” the pirate said to Wilson.

  Wilson looked down.

  The pirate held out a knobby hand, and Wilson saw it was trembling with rage.

  “That’s how close you came,” the pirate said. “If I had real men working for me instead of goddamned M.B.A.’s, you would already be dead. Now keep your fucking mouth shut.”

  Wilson turned again to the window. Out in the rain in the jungle underbrush, he saw a statue of the virgin huntress Diana, a headless deer at her feet, on a pedestal of marble taken by creepers. Her bow hand was gone, and with it half her arm; the other hand plucked at raindrops. Moss grew in the empty marble sockets of her eyes.

  14

  Sheep grazed placidly on grass at the bottom of the disused moat. A great wrought-iron gate perhaps thirty feet high led into a cobbled courtyard where a fountain modeled after the Trevi in Rome splashed quiet water into a basin full of lily pads. The Lagonda pulled into the courtyard and stopped before the main entrance of the house, a baroque portico alive with saints and angels and arabesques carved in a pinkish stone that looked softer than sand.

  “I hope you come back in chunks, you insufferable little fuck,” the pirate said as Wilson stepped out of the dark interior.

  “We’ll see about that,” Wilson said, and was going to say more, but the pirate slammed the door, and the Lagonda lurched over th
e cobbles and out the mouth of the wrought-iron gate.

  Wilson stood in the rain looking up at the house till the shoulders of his jacket were soaked through. He found a handkerchief in his pocket and blew his nose. A second later, the front door opened. A diminutive woman wearing a housedress and flowered apron peered out and said something in a rapid language he did not understand.

  Wilson shook his head. “English,” he said. “A little French.”

  “You get wet,” the woman said. “Come inside.”

  Wilson went up the wide marble steps and, after wiping his feet carefully on a mat that read “Bienvenudo,” stepped inside. The Villa Real had been extensively remodeled sometime during the last hundred years. The walls were covered with dark Victorian wainscoting and hung with paintings in ornate gilt frames of the same era. Wilson noticed an uncatalogued Madonna by Murillo and two Goya bullfighting canvases he had never seen before.

  The woman showed him to the library, a vast room with Gothic arched ceilings and bookshelves two stories high. Diamond-pane windows overlooked the formal gardens. The Portugee was on a ladder selecting a book when Wilson entered. Wilson remembered the man immediately. Don Luis Hidalgo de la Vaca looked the same as he had the night of the cockfight, except he had traded his white linen suit for a red silk smoking jacket and quilted Moroccan slippers of yellow suede. His chauffeur, the Killa from Manila, sat quietly in a Tudor armchair by the window reading a biography of Bismarck. He closed the book and followed Wilson’s progress across the room with heavy-lidded eyes.