by Philip Craig
VINEYARD DECEIT
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To Gen Prada and Joyce Goldfield, and in memory of Al Prada, who, long ago, welcomed me to their island and into their Vineyard Family.
Particular thanks to Dr. Thomas W. Adams—physician, poet, potter, gardener extraordinaire, and specialist on poison plants.
“A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.”
—JAMES 1:8
1
The first time I saw the Padishah of Sarofim was the morning when he nearly killed Zee and me with his cigarette boat.
It was just after the change of the tide in the Cape Pogue Gut when Zee hooked a fish. We were drifting in my dinghy and had the gut all to ourselves.
“Hey,” said Zee, “there’s life in the sea, after all.” She hauled back her rod and reeled down and hauled back again. “This is a good-sized fish or else a fighting little fool.”
It was the only hit we’d had since we’d putted over from Edgartown to seek the wily blues, so I reeled in and watched her work the fish.
It wasn’t hard to watch Zee. She was wearing her short shorts and a shirt with its tails tied around her waist and the blue bandanna she liked to wear around her hair when she fished. She was sleek as an otter.
“Maybe it’s a bass,” I said.
“No, it’s not a bass,” said Zee. “It’s a bluefish. I know a bass when I have one on.”
“Do you want me to help you land it? Fishing is man’s work, after all.”
“Pardon my repressed laughter. Where’s your fish?”
“I’m deliberately not catching any so you’ll have an improved self-image. Bad self-images are no-no’s these days.”
“My self-image is just fine, thank you. Gosh, this guy really is giving me a tussle.”
True. The dinghy was being towed across the slow tidal current. I got interested.
From the other side of John Oliver Point rose the rolling thunder sound of a powerful engine as a fast boat came up from the south end of Cape Pogue Pond. I hate and fear overpowered boats being driven too fast. They’re a danger to their riders and to everyone else in sight.
Around the far end of the point came a shining cigarette boat, throwing a spray of white water behind and riding a roar of sound. The boat curled along the inside of the Cape Pogue Elbow and came full speed into the gut, straight at us.
Jesus Christ! I grabbed the starter rope of my little Seagull outboard and gave a yank. The trusty motor kicked right over, but it was far too late. Before I could swing the dinghy away, the cigarette boat was on us. Zee’s mouth moved, but her voice was lost in the roar of the boat’s engines.
At the last moment the helmsman altered course a trifle. The boat missed us by a yard, severing Zee’s line. A second later the wake capsized the dinghy and dumped Zee and me into the water. When I came up I looked for Zee. She was treading water, still hanging on to her rod. The dinghy bobbed upside down beyond her. We were all drifting slowly out into Nantucket Sound on the falling tide.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. You?”
“Yes.”
Beyond the gut, the cigarette boat slowed and swung around and came back. There were three men aboard. They eased up near us.
“Are you all right?” This from the dark-eyed helmsman. There was a British intonation overlying an accent I didn’t recognize.
“You missed us by at least a foot, you stupid man!” Zee was furious.
The helmsman darkened even more, and his mouth tightened. An olive-skinned man with a hatchet face frowned. A blond young man dropped a ladder over the side. “Come aboard,” he said, leaning down and putting out a hand.
“I don’t want to ride with a maniac,” said Zee, coughing. “Get away from us before that fool at the wheel really does kill us both!”
“Please,” said the blond man.
Zee waved her fishing rod at the helmsman. “I had a good fish on, you dunderhead! You cut him off! People like you shouldn’t be allowed to drive! My God!”
The helmsman glared, and the man with the hatchet face spoke to him in a language I didn’t know.
The water was warm, but we were still slowly being carried out to sea. I swam to the cigarette boat and climbed aboard. “Awfully sorry,” said the blond man, giving my hand a fast shake. “Please, miss, come aboard.”
I reached down a long arm. “Come on, Zee.”
Spitting water, she swam over and handed up her rod, then climbed the ladder and glared at the helmsman, dripping.
“Just to make sure I’ve got the right man,” she snapped, moving toward him, “it was you who nearly cut us in two, wasn’t it?”
The helmsman lifted his chin and looked first at each man on the boat and finally at her. “It was indeed, madam. And what were you doing there, anyway?”
“You incredible jerk! I was fishing there, but this is what I’m doing here!” And before he or anyone else could move she hit him in the nose with her fist.
He gasped and raised his hands to his face.
“There, you wretched man!” cried Zee.
He staggered back. His legs hit the side of the cockpit and he went overboard backwards. Zee looked slightly abashed. The man with the hatchet face looked suddenly deadly. His hand dipped under his light summer shirt and came out with a flat semiautomatic pistol. He was very quick. He swung the pistol toward Zee, and I barely had time to step between them.
“No, Colonel!” The blond man’s voice was loud, but he did not step in front of the pistol.
The Colonel did not shoot, but neither did he lower the pistol. It was lined up on my solar plexus. Long before, I had been shot just a bit south of that spot and I still had the bullet nestled up against my spine.
From the water came a strangled shout in that unknown language. The helmsman was thrashing in the water. The Colonel hesitated, then glanced down at the helmsman and back at Zee and me.
Zee leaned over the side. “Now you know what it feels like! Swim over here, if you know how. Or are you as bad at swimming as you are at driving a boat?” It was clear that she had not seen the Colonel’s pistol. “Come on,” said Zee, reaching down. “That’s it. You needed a little cooling off, hotshot.”
The helmsman came up the ladder, Zee’s hand clenching his shirt. I looked back at the Colonel, and the pistol was gone. He and the helmsman held a short intense conversation while the blond man scurried away and returned with towels.
The helmsman glared at Zee, and there was a seepage of blood from his hawklike nose. The Colonel’s eyes were hooded like those of a snake. The blond man was conciliatory to all. “Okay, folks, let’s all just relax. You, sir,” this to me, “will you take that boat hook and see if you can snag your dinghy’s painter when I come up alongside of her? That’s it.”
I hauled the dinghy close, tipped it right-side up, and pulled it up the side of the cigarette boat so some of the water would empty out. When I eased it back in the water, it floated. Gone was my good graphite rod, a Penn 704 reel, and a tackle box full of gear. I pointed this out to the blond man and added that my outboard would now have to be rinsed and possibly repaired down at Pirate’s Cove, the local boatyard in Edgartown.
“Don’t worry, sir,” said Blondie. “We’ll take care of everything. We’re just delighted that you’re both all right. These things happen, in spite of our best efforts to prevent them. Allow me to introduce myself. Standish Caplan, State Department. My fault, th
is, I’m afraid. Allowed his . . . er . . . Mr. Rashad to take the wheel at the wrong time. A thousand pardons. You must allow us to take you into Edgartown. May I know your name, sir?”
“J. W.Jackson,” I said, angry about the pistol now that it was no longer pointed at me. “Who’s your gunman? We don’t see many like him down here.”
The gunman and I stared at each other. He identified himself. “Colonel Ahmed Nagy.” His voice was dark and had a cut to it.
Standish Caplan stepped smoothly between us, now that there was no pistol. “Mr. Jackson, Mr. Rashad. Mr. Rashad, Mr. Jackson. Gentlemen, please shake hands. No damage done, ha, ha, save a few wet clothes. Tempers cooling, I hope. Miss . . . er . . .”
“Zeolinda Madieras,” said Zee. “Mrs. Zeolinda Madieras.” She was still glaring at Rashad, but her lips were beginning to twitch. I knew a laugh was coming, and it did. She shrugged her shoulders. “Let’s call it even, then. Take us home. I need a shower.”
Rashad touched his nose. “In my country women do not strike men.”
“That must be some sort of country! Maybe you should go back to it, where you’ll be safe,” flared Zee.
Rashad’s eyes grew bright. He lifted a hand.
“Don’t even think it,” I said, but I was really watching Colonel Nagy.
“Madam, gentlemen, please.” Standish Caplan was somehow between Rashad and the Colonel on one side and Zee and me on the other. “Please, let us put all this behind us. Let me take the wheel and see if we can get Mrs. Madieras and Mr. Jackson and their boat safely home. Awfully sorry about the fish, Mrs. Madieras. We will be glad to replace everything else, but we can’t replace your fish, ha, ha.”
“Ha, ha,” said Zee. But she seated herself on one side of the cockpit and waved a languid arm. “Home, Standish.”
We parted at Pirate’s Cove Marina.
“Your names are in the book, yes? Well then, I will be in touch,” said Standish Caplan, handing us each his card. “Now I must take the . . . er . . . Mr. Rashad home and get him some dry clothes. Awfully sorry about this whole thing. Terribly glad you’re both all right.”
The Colonel leaned toward me. “We will remember you,” he said in a voice like a knife. He looked at Zee. “And the woman will not be forgotten either.”
He stood back and put a hand on the edge of the cockpit. He watched us with his hooded eyes as the cigarette boat rumbled away down harbor. Rashad turned once and looked back. His eyes seemed to burn with dark fire.
Beside me, Zee shivered in the warm August air. “Take me home,” she said. “I want that shower.”
We walked along North Water Street past the great captains’ houses, crossed Main at the Four Corners, and went up South Water Street past the huge pagoda tree that some captain or other had brought over from Asia in a flowerpot a century and a half earlier. We turned down toward The Reading Room, got my ancient, rusty Toyota LandCruiser from where I’d left it, in spite of the NO PARKING signs, on Collins Beach, and I took Zee home.
At the time I had no idea that we’d crossed swords with the Padishah of Sarofim or what that would lead to.
2
Behind every great fortune lies a great crime, as someone (Balzac?) observed. Certainly that is true of the Emerald Necklace of Sarofim. The theft of the emeralds had provided the beginning of a great family fortune two centuries earlier, and crime followed them to Martha’s Vineyard. Kidnapping and killings were only two of the evils that arrived with the necklace, and Zee was to be only the first island victim. Even now, chicanery and violence seem inexorably linked to the emeralds. They glitter from the dark shadows of their own history. Where did they really come from? What gem cutter cut them, what goldsmith set them? How many times have they been wrested from someone who had stolen them from someone else? How much blood has been shed for them? How much is still to be shed?
When I first heard of the Sarofim necklace, I had been enjoying clams, beer, and country music in my yard. It was about a week after the incident in Cape Pogue Gut. Standish Caplan had been as good as his word. He had sent me a generous check, and my outboard motor was again purring smoothly. Emeralds were not on my list of things to think about. I was dreaming about Jeremy Fisher’s eighteen-foot catboat.
I had been clamming the day before in Eel Pond, where I’d been having some luck lately. Good clamming spots get discovered and clammed out pretty fast on Martha’s Vineyard, so when we find one, we keep it to ourselves. My secret still seemed secure, and I’d got my bucketful in short order, brought them home, soaked them all night in salt water so they would spit out their sand, and now had them ready for frying. My mouth watered as the oil heated and I whipped up some tartar sauce.
You can dip your clams in a batter or in flour or in both before frying them. I use a batter. To get it to stick to your clams, you make sure the clams are dry and then chill them in the fridge until just before you dip them in the batter.
To the sound of Hank Williams, Jr., singing of the joys and sorrows of honky-tonk life, I cooked and ate, washing the clams down with Yuengling lager, an excellent beer (from America’s oldest brewery). Yum. What could be finer than beer and clams and C-and-W music on a fine August day on the beautiful island of Martha’s Vineyard? I took my portable radio and more clams and beer out into my yard, stripped down, and sat gingerly in Archie Bunker’s chair, the wonderful, comfortable but fragile old wooden lawn chair I was going to fix up right someday. Two of the Bad Bunny Bunch, who had evil designs on my garden, hopped reluctantly back into the oak brush and trees as I lay in the warm sun beneath a blue sky. Tan renewal time. I could eat, drink, and do that too.
Beyond my garden and the trees and across Anthier’s Pond, the August people could be seen, distantly, sopping up the summer sun on the beach or on their sailboards. Beyond them, out toward Cape Cod, where a line of lazy clouds hung against the sky, the sail and motorboats moved across the Sound. The wind was gentle from the southwest and sighed through the trees around my house.
I was finishing up the last of the clams and thinking about the eighteen-foot fiberglass catboat that Jeremy Fisher, who had decided at eighty-something that he was no longer up to singlehanding around Vineyard Sound, was willing to part with for a very decent price, which I could not afford, when I heard a car coming down my driveway.
My driveway is long and sandy and I don’t get a lot of cars coming down it, although I don’t mind when one does. I also don’t get dressed if I’m perfecting my tan. After all, I’m in my own yard and whoever is coming wasn’t invited and must take what he or she finds at the end of the road. On the other hand, one never knows, do one? What if it were the President of the United States? What if it were the Pope? Just because they’ve never come down yet doesn’t mean they won’t.
I placed the empty clam plate in a diplomatic position and took a pull on my beer.
The car belonged to the town of Edgartown, had blue lights on top, and was being driven by the chief of police. He stopped the car, and we eyed one another across the lawn. He shook his head, opened the door, and got out.
“You’re too late,” I said. “I spent all of the Brinks money on clams and I just ate the last of them.”
“Decadence,” said the Chief. “Aren’t you embarrassed to be lying out in the open like that, in view of low-flying planes?”
“I realize that it’s envy of my manly endowment that makes you talk like that,” I said. The Chief had never come to my house before, so something was going on. I got up and pulled on my shorts. “There, now you don’t have to feel embarrassed. I didn’t mean to show you up, but you’ve nobody to blame but yourself. You should have called and told me you were coming.”
“You off-islanders don’t even know what well hung means,” said the Chief, digging his pipe out of his pocket. “The chamber of commerce sent me to talk to you about this habit of yours of lying around naked. We have a lot of rich female tourists flying in here, you know, and when they look down and see you, they fly right home again, th
inking that all the men down here are underdeveloped. It’s wrecking the summer economy.”
I finished my beer and picked up the clam plate. “Come up on the porch,” I said. “I’m going to have another beer. You care for one?”
“Nope. On duty.” He stoked up his pipe and followed me up the steps into the screen porch. The sweet smell of his tobacco filled my nostrils, and once again, as always when I smell a pipe, I gave serious thought to smoking my own again. I still had my rack of briars and corncobs even though I hadn’t smoked in years. I’d once smoked cigarettes too, but I missed only my pipe. I sometimes suspected that the Chief deliberately lit up to give me grief. Now he puffed and looked out across my garden to the Sound. “Nice view,” he said. “How much land do you own here?”
“About fifteen acres. Just enough to keep people from getting too close to me. My father bought it a long time ago, when land was cheap. I couldn’t afford to buy it now.”
“Baird’s old hunting camp,” said the Chief. “My old man used to come out here with Baird and some of their pals. They’d bring their guns and a few bottles and a box of grub and spend weekends pretending to hunt while mostly they drank whiskey and played cards and told lies. My old man brought me up once or twice when he thought I was old enough to shoot.” He gestured toward the pond. “There used to be good duck hunting out there, not that we ever actually got around to shooting very many.”
“My father told me once that if you had all the whiskey that had been drunk in this place and if you poured it out, you’d have a river running all the way to the pond,” I said.
The Chief allowed himself a fast smile. “That’s about right.” Then the smile passed, and he stopped looking at the Sound and looked at me. “One of my special officers just retired to Florida. I want to replace him and wondered if you, being an ex-big-city cop and all, would take the job. I need all the extra officers I can get for a special detail that’s coming up. You might even like it. One night. Good money. Fancy clothes; a tux, probably.”
