Vineyard Deceit

by Philip Craig

  “Naturally.”

  “The Padishah’s recovery of the necklace would significantly strengthen his image at home as a bold and decisive leader able to hold his own with a great power. The disappearance of the necklace this past weekend is an embarrassment to him, and in Sarofim an embarrassment to a beleaguered leader might just be enough to push him from power. For that very reason, the SDL would love to come into possession of the necklace. They would use it as a symbol of their own claims to power, a trinket indicative of their ability to outsmart both the Padishah and a great power such as the United States. A symbol is often more powerful than the truth, Mr. Jackson.”

  “Is it likely that the SDL pulled this off?”

  “Not so unlikely a possibility as you might think, Mr. Jackson. Members of the SDL have been on the island for several weeks now. They were here the night of the Damon party and are still here. You may have unknowingly seen them yourself: college-aged men and women working in the hotels and restaurants. When not serving meals or cleaning rooms, they work to advance their political interests.”

  Even in Sarofim they apparently know it’s easy to get work on Martha’s Vineyard in the late summer when many of the young Americans who come begging for jobs in the spring give them up to go partying in mid August before going back to school in September. Foreign workers—young people from Britain, Ireland, France, and, it seemed, Sarofim—are more dependable than their American counterparts. They like the money, they are willing to live like dogs so they can save it, and they never complain, because they can’t do as well at home. They dodge immigration officials who think they should have green cards and they won’t get any flack from me for working illegally.

  “What’s the SDL doing down here?” I asked. “We’ve got dope runners and movie stars and academic types and other undesirables, but we’re usually weak on revolutionaries.”

  Jasper Cabot’s voice was dry and had just a hint of Maine twang in it. “My guess is that they learned about the plan to turn the necklace over to the Padishah at the Damon party.”

  “How would they have learned about that?”

  He gave me the look of a Yankee peddler. “They have sources in Gwatar and here in the States too. Think of how many people know about even confidential matters. All it takes is one sympathetic person or one competent reporter to pass along the information.”

  Too true. No secret is secure when two people know it.

  “Do you know if they were on Chappaquiddick that night?”

  “No. That’s why I’ve hired you. But someone caused those disturbances. The attempted landing at the dock. The firecrackers tossed over the wall. Very distracting activities, don’t you agree?”

  I agreed. “But none of those distracting people actually got into the house.”

  “Perhaps they weren’t supposed to.”

  “A feint to capture attention while something else happened.”

  “Perhaps. Can you think of any other explanation?”

  “High jinks. College kids having fun. Party crashing. Tweaking the noses of the rich and powerful. Using up leftover Fourth of July fireworks. That sort of thing.”

  “An hour or so later the necklace was missing.”

  “You mean that the guards on the balcony outside the bedroom might have been enticed into looking one way while something happened behind them. Some act by a colleague already inside the building, perhaps.”

  “I know nothing of how it might have happened. I leave such analysis to the professionals. To an amateur, however, it seems likely that a relationship exists between the theft and the distractions that took place.”

  I thought he was probably right. “I don’t remember seeing any Middle Eastern types at the party. Except, of course, the Padishah and his party.”

  “Not every Sarofimian looks as you might imagine. There have been Eastern and Western ships calling at Gwatar for centuries, and the bloodlines are pretty mixed. When I was there I saw blue eyes and blond hair fairly often.”

  “I did see some blond hair and blue eyes at the Damon party. Helga Johanson, for example, has both. Do you know her? She works for Thornberry Security.”

  “I think you can omit her from your list of suspects, Mr. Jackson.”

  “I take it that you trust Thornberry Security.”

  He tilted his head. “They have always been completely dependable.”

  Death, taxes, and Thornberry Security. “Am I correct in guessing that Thornberry Security is still checking the guest list just in case some ringer got slipped into the party.”

  “I believe so. It is my understanding that Ms. Johanson is heading the island investigation for her agency. She is making her headquarters at the Damon home. I will inform her and the police that you will be working as my agent and ask that you all cooperate with one another.”

  I nodded. It wouldn’t hurt to ask, but it was no secret that police agencies often distrusted one another, to say nothing of distrusting private agencies and, worse yet, civilians nosing around on their own.

  “Where do these Sarofimian students live when they’re not down here making life tough for the Padishah?”

  “As you might guess, Cambridge has attracted a number of them. And Weststock has an active group.”

  “Who’s their guru? What’s their bible? I never heard of any group of true believers who don’t have a saint or two and a sacred text.”

  Cabot raised a brow. “Are you a student of political movements, then, Mr. Jackson? I didn’t know.”

  “The Christians have Jesus and the Bible, the Muslims have Muhammad and the Koran, the Communists have Marx and Lenin and Das Kapital. I imagine the SDL is no different.”

  “I’m not sure I’d throw all of those groups under the same umbrella,” said-Cabot, “but you’re right. The SDL does have leaders. Here in America one of the most important is Dr. Hamdi Safwat. His book Free People is a major text for the SDL, and he serves as both a mentor to Sarofimian students in New England and as coordinator for exiled parties interested in overthrowing the Rashad dynasty. He is a professor of Middle Eastern studies at Weststock College.”

  “I’ve heard the name and seen the book. Could he have anything to do with the theft?”

  He shrugged. “He was a friend of Willard Blunt’s, so he is linked to this past weekend’s crimes by that association at least.”

  “Yes. Do you know him yourself?”

  “We’ve met. A charming man. Very gentle. Very moral. Not the revolutionary type at all, or so you’d think. An intellectual. Fine sense of humor.”

  “Would he help me find some of the local students, do you think?”

  “Help you track down students who might, as a result, find themselves in difficulty with the authorities? Who might, because of that, be returned to Sarofim to face the secret police? Oh, I think not. Not at all. Many Sarofimian students over here are already worried that the new accords that are being arranged between Sarofim and the United States might result in the Padishah’s political opponents being denied sanctuary or the opportunity to study over here. Dr. Safwat would certainly not cooperate with anyone whose activities might increase the risk of that eventuality.”

  “Would he talk to me at all?”

  Cabot shrugged. “I can’t say.”

  “Do you know anything about his friendship with Willard Blunt? How it started? Why? What sort of friendship it was?”

  “If you learn as much from others as you are learning from me, sir, you should have this matter cleared up in no time at all. Yes, I can tell you something at least about Willard and Hamdi’s friendship, although I do not see its relevance at the moment. It began back in World War II, when both Willard and I were in the army and were posted to Sarofim. Our job there was to maintain a rather crude airport for Allied planes headed east for Burma and the Pacific theater of war.

  “Willard was immediately fascinated with the place and its people. So was I, but in no way to the same degree. Willard was blessed, as I have never been,
with the gift of tongues and soon could speak the language fluently. It’s an offshoot of Persian, incidentally. I could blunder around in it, but Willard was a master. He made many friends and soon, developed a great sympathy for the poorer class of Sarofimians. We were invited to the houses of young people our age. One of them was the home of Hamdi Safwat, whose father was a teacher. Hamdi was only a boy, barely in his teens, but he was very bright. There was a sister who quite knocked poor Willard off his feet. A great beauty, worse luck for her.” He paused, then went on. “The Padishah, the father of Ali Mohammed Rashad, our current Padishah, was infamous for his harem. He was also an absolute monarch, and one day his police simply took the girl. She was never seen again. The family protested. A few nights later the father disappeared. His corpse was found outside of Gwatar on a rubbish heap. He had been mutilated in unspeakable ways. I had never imagined such brutality.

  “Willard was half-mad, but I restrained him. To understand his emotions you should perhaps know that both he and I came from Quaker stock, which inclines us to disapprove of war and led the two of us to noncombatant roles in the army. Willard was at once committed to personal nonviolence and filled with rage at what had happened to his friends. Fortunately, our tour of duty in Sarofim ended shortly afterwards and we were shipped back home. The Blunts are people of considerable influence, and Willard, being an only child and the apple of his parents’ eyes, had no difficulty persuading them to arrange for young Hamdi and his mother to come to the States. Willard looked after them. Arranged for the boy’s education. The mother died years ago. Hamdi has been here ever since, and he and Willard were always friends.”

  Cabot drew a watch from a vest pocket and snapped it open. It gleamed as only old gold can gleam. He looked at it and slid it back whence it came.

  “Did he love the girl?”

  He shrugged. “Who knows. He was far from home and she was beautiful. We were all young and full of ideals. After he had been home for a few months, he did begin to go out with other women. I thought for a time that he might marry Amelia Stonehouse, but then she met Raymond Muleto.”

  “If he was a pacifist, would he shoot himself?”

  “A reasonable question. Some pacifists would not. Willard, however, approved of the Hemlock Society. Are you familiar with that organization?”

  “I’ve heard of it. They support the right of terminally ill people to take their own lives.”

  “Among other things, yes. Willard approved of their ethics though he disapproved of the right of one individual to kill another. He saw no moral contradictions.” Cabot put a card on the coffee table. “You may reach me at these numbers and addresses when you have something to report. Have you any other questions before I go?”

  “A couple. How much are you willing to pay to get the necklace back?”

  He named a handsome figure. “Of course I expect you to pay as little as possible, should you have the opportunity to pay at all.”

  Of course. The Cabots did not accumulate their fortune by paying extravagant amounts for anything, if they could help it.

  “If I happen to find out who killed Willard Blunt, I assume that you want me to tell the authorities first and then you?”

  “Yes.” His lawyer’s eyes were as expressionless as his voice. I didn’t believe his answer reflected his desire. “I must go. I’ll expect reports from you fairly regularly.”

  We stood, shook hands, and went out to his car. He turned it smoothly, and it purred away up my driveway. I watched until its headlights topped the rise in the road and disappeared and thought that I’d not like to have Jasper Cabot set his mind on discomforting me.

  The August night was warm and sultry. I went inside, got my keys, and drove to the Fireside Bar in Oak Bluffs.

  15

  Oak Bluffs’ main street is Circuit Avenue. There’s a honky-tonk quality about it that contrasts sharply with the prim propriety of Edgartown’s streets. It’s lined with shops catering to day-trippers who come in off the boats from Hyannis and Falmouth and then get on the tour buses driven by highly imaginative drivers whose ignorance of the Vineyard in no way prevents them from spinning entertaining explanations about what their passengers are looking at. Back in Oak Bluffs once again after their tour of the island in their driver’s mind, these tourists roam Circuit Avenue buying fast foods and souvenirs of their day on the island—brass trinkets, tee shirts, wood carvings of sea gulls on pilings, and other such New Englandish stuff, imported largely from Asia. Then they take the boat back to the mainland and tell their friends all about the Vineyard.

  Mixed with these shops are bars that are largely filled in the summertime by young working people and college types. If there’s ever a fight on Martha’s Vineyard, it usually starts behind one of these bars and consists of drunken young men making loud combative noises while they swing at one another or roll around on the ground until the local cops come and PC them for the night. The Fireside is one of these bars. I found a parking place just up the street and went inside to find Bonzo.

  Sometime before I met him, Bonzo was, I’ve been told, a promising young man. The only son of a widowed schoolteacher, he was the apple of her eye. Then, as occasionally happens to young men these days, he scrambled his brain with an illegal chemical additive, reputedly bad acid. He now earns a few dollars a day by performing menial tasks at the Fireside. He gazes out upon the world through sweet, empty eyes, and when not working, collects bird songs on his expensive recording devices and, now and then, goes fishing with me. He takes his work seriously and harbors no grudges against man or God. His mother lives in one of the gingerbread cottages near the Tabernacle and still labors in the academic halls of Martha’s Vineyard High School. She loves innocent, blank-brained Bonzo without hope or self-pity. I take her fish from time to time, as Vineyard fishermen do to folks who cannot catch their own.

  Bonzo and his mop and bucket were cleaning a spill back in the far corner of the barroom. The place was crowded with noisy people, mostly ten or fifteen years younger than I was, and the music was blaring in that mind-splitting mode that seems so popular with today’s half-deaf youth. “American Bandstand” and I were born and raised together, so I am familiar with many a wretched, once-popular song and singer, but compared to the current awfulness, even Elvis, once a controversial figure, now seems sedate and bland. My advanced age did not seem to offend anyone, so I went to the bar, found a stool, and ordered a Sam Adams.

  The Fireside was as alive with smells as it was with noise. The odor of beer, both fresh and stale, mixed with the faint fragrance of marijuana and the stronger scents of sweat and whiskey. Most of the customers seemed pretty cheerful, I thought, as I watched them in the mirror behind the bar. By and by I saw Bonzo spot me and come over. I turned on the bar stool as he arrived.

  “Hey, J.W.,” he said with his child’s smile. “Good to see you again.” He put out his gentle hand and I took it. “Do you think we can go fishing pretty soon? I sure like to catch those bluefish.”

  Bonzo was a tireless fisherman. He would stand on the beach with the surf sloshing his legs and cast and cast and cast, never stopping, rarely catching anything, delighted when I caught the fish his short, childish casts could not catch, alive with joy when he himself nailed some fish swimming close to shore.

  “The bluefish have gone up north,” I said. “They’ll be coming back down again in September. We could try for some bonito, though.”

  “Bonito! That would be just fine, J.W.!” A faint frown then mingled with his smile. “Say, did we ever fish for bonito, J.W.?”

  “I don’t think you ever did, Bonzo, but we can give it a shot. You know those little boats that are anchored around the ferry dock lately? The guys in those boats are after bonito.”

  “Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I knew that!” He beamed and it was like the sun dancing on water. “You got a boat we can use, J.W.?” Again that frown mixed with his smile. “I haven’t got a boat, myself, you know.”

  “I know you don’t, bu
t I’ve got my dinghy. That would be big enough on a calm day. I can bring it up in the LandCruiser and drop it overboard in the harbor and we can go out from there. I’ve got enough gear for both of us and I’ll pick up seme bait.”

  “Excellent! That will be just excellent! When?”

  “How about the day after tomorrow? Early. I can pick you up about dawn, say five-thirty. That way we can get a morning’s fishing in and you can still get back in time to go to work at noon.”

  He nodded soberly. “That’ll be good, J.W. I got my job here and I can’t just leave it. My work’s important.” He gave his mop handle a squeeze.

  “Say, Bonzo,” I said, “you’re the kind of guy who keeps his ears and eyes open and knows what’s going on, aren’t you?”

  He thought about the question, then nodded. “Yes, I am, J.W. I hear a lot, you know, because of my work. People talk and laugh and I’m right there and sometimes I laugh right along with them.” He grinned, then stopped. “Sometimes they don’t laugh, so I just be quiet and keep working. But I hear them and see them. You know what I mean, J.W.?”

  “I know what you mean, Bonzo. Tell me this: Did you ever hear anybody in here mention the name Sarofim?”