Aaron Elkins - Gideon Oliver 09 - Twenty Blue Devils

by Twenty Blue Devils

  Nick had been bowled over, converted on the spot. The Paradise plantation's changeover to the new technology had begun the next week. And the preparation of the affidavit had been turned over to Brian, lock, stock, and barrel. Nick hadn't done much more than sign it when it was finished. And it had been that affidavit more than anything else, so they understood, that had sunk the notorious three G-men all over again.

  "Yeah, but if Nick was the one who signed it,” John pointed out, “how would they even know Brian had anything to do with it?"

  "I'm not arguing the point, John,” Nelson said. “I just thought it ought to be mentioned. You're the one who said you think there's something fishy."

  Another leaden silence dropped onto them. Cups clicked in saucers. Chairs creaked.

  "I'll tell you what I think,” John said at last. “I think we ought to have his body exhumed and then get it examined by somebody who knows what he's doing. Then let's see where we are."

  "Oh, my Lord, that's horrible!” said Maggie. “It'd just about kill Therese."

  "It wouldn't kill her,” John said patiently. “If somebody murdered Brian, she'd want to know."

  "So would we all,” Nick said; his first words in a long time.

  "But if he was out there in the heat for a week, there's not going to be much left, John. Some bones, maybe."

  "I know. It'd take a forensic anthropologist."

  Nelson snorted. “Of which there are dozens in Papeete."

  "I was thinking of bringing somebody in from the States."

  "You know somebody?” Nick asked.

  "Yeah, I do. The best there is."

  Nick took a while to reply. He sat rotating his cup in its saucer and staring down at its untouched contents: Tahitian Blue Devil, the highest-priced coffee in the world, bar none. At last he looked up and spoke.

  "Do it,” he said softly.

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  Chapter 8

  * * * *

  High in the ink-black sky over the South Pacific, sprawled at his ease in a roomy Air New Zealand first-class seat, with a first-class meal of duckling with orange sauce comfortably inside him and a stemmed crystal glass of Courvoisier at his elbow, Gideon Oliver was having second thoughts.

  He didn't like exhumations. And not merely on aesthetic grounds; that went without saying. More important, exhumations were traumatic experiences for family and friends; especially for family. Digging a corpse out of its grave for a belated postmortem was a sure way to rip open the wounds that had begun to heal when the body was laid down in the first place. And that never failed to make him uncomfortable.

  Besides, he had a hard-to-shake conviction that it was all going to be in aid of nothing. The string of accidents Brian Scott had gotten caught in might make one wonder, but accidents did frequently happen. In strings. And what credible reason was there to think they weren't accidents? Would anyone in his right mind try to murder someone by knocking down a shed in a windstorm?

  On top of that, John's faith in Gideon's ability to find signs of murder, if murder there was, was flattering but overblown.

  There were a lot of things that could kill you without leaving a road map on the skeleton. Most things, actually. The chances were good he would come away from the analysis shaking his head, with nothing to say one way or the other about the cause of death. Or let's say that there were indications that it had been due to a fall, which seemed the most likely thing he would find; a fractured skull or pelvis or some crushed vertebrae. Fine, but what would that prove about murder or the absence of it?

  And on top of that he and John were on their way to a foreign country with the sole and express purpose of second-guessing its official law enforcement authorities. This, he had learned long ago, was unlikely to be a rewarding experience.

  And finally, on top of everything else—or maybe underlying everything else—he was going to be away from Julie for almost a week and already he missed her

  John, untroubled by morbid doubts, was stretched out in the seat next to him, headphones on, contentedly watching the end of the new James Bond movie on the screen. As the closing credits began to roll, he took off the headphones and smiled at Gideon. “Good show. You should have watched."

  "I've been thinking."

  "Worrying,” John said. “Okay, what's bothering you now?"

  "A lot. How did you talk me into this anyhow?"

  But they both knew the answer to that. John had called and asked him on the previous Wednesday, the day after the news about Brian's death had come. Gideon had promptly ticked off his reservations and John had listened patiently.

  When Gideon had finished, John had finally spoken.

  "I'm asking you as a favor, Doc,” he said simply. “This is my family."

  That had been enough; he and John were old, good friends. They had worked on a lot of cases together and had been in some difficult situations together. They had saved each other's lives.

  "I can't get away till the end of next week,” Gideon had grumbled for form's sake. “I have a seminar I can't palm off on anybody else."

  "Is that gonna hurt the bones? A week or two one way or the other?"

  No, Gideon had admitted, it wasn't likely to hurt the bones. Speaking personally, the older the better, as far as he was concerned. He would have preferred them about ten thousand years older, in fact, brown and dry and clean. Still, the air of Oceania was notoriously warm and humid, and a week or ten days out-of-doors there might already have done a pretty good job of getting down to the bare bones of things, so to speak. And the additional time in the ground wouldn't hurt either. Or so he hoped.

  Well, then, there wasn't any problem, John had pointed out. Moreover, Nick Druett had offered to pay Gideon's top consulting fees (Gideon had refused) and to fly them out first-class, put them up at the Shangri-La, a nearby beach resort, and pick up all expenses (Gideon had accepted).

  The flight attendant came down the darkened aisle with the cognac bottle, paused attentively beside them, and at their nods topped off the glasses. The flight had left Los Angeles forty-five minutes late and the attendant, apparently taking personal responsibility for the delay, had been extraordinarily solicitous of the few first-class passengers ever since.

  "Ahh.” John resettled himself luxuriously, sipped from the brandy glass, and smacked his lips. “Does this beat the hell out of government travel, or what? Listen, I've been doing a little digging. I found out some interesting stuff."

  Gideon turned toward him.

  "Remember I told you Nick wasn't the only guy to file a deposition with the U.S. attorney at that first kickback trial? Two other growers had the guts to do it too?"

  Gideon nodded.

  "Well, one was from Java, the other one was from the Kona Coast. And they're both out of business now. The Hawaiian guy died falling mysteriously out of a hotel window in Honolulu and what used to be his coffee farm is now the King Kamehameha Shopping Village. The Javanese guy just threw in the towel after three fires on his farm. The place is up for sale.” He raised his eyebrows.

  "And you think the Mob's behind it all?” Gideon asked.

  The question made him feel faintly ridiculous. Most of the six or seven forensic cases he took on in a typical year were everyday, garden-variety murders, sordid and simple: the prostitute's body dragged out into the woods and hurriedly covered with leaves and dirt; the drug dealer cut down in some deserted, filthy house and left where he fell; the victim of revenge or jealousy or domestic rage tossed into the Dumpster in a black plastic garbage bag—or in three or four plastic bags. Only once had he been involved with organized crime, and then from a distance. “The Mob” was something melodramatic and unreal, a million miles away from his everyday professorly concerns with Pleistocene Man and hominid locomotion.

  Besides, could anyone be expected to take seriously three guys named Nutso, Zorro, and Nate the Schlepper?

  John shrugged. “I just think it's interesting. Something to be considered."
<
br />   "All right, tell me this: Here was Brian on this ten-day camping trip on a remote island in the middle of the Pacific. How would Nutso and the boys know where to find him? How would anybody know where to find him?"

  "Good question,” John said amiably as he finished his brandy.

  The attendant, as sensitive to every movement of his charges as an auctioneer watching for bidding signals, was back with the cognac bottle. Gideon shook his head; John accepted a refill.

  "You know,” Gideon said after a few minutes of near-dozing, “now that I think about it, I think I remember reading about that kickback case. Didn't one of their goons turn state's evidence? Bingo...Bongo..."

  "Klingo Bozzuto,” John said, laughing. “They called him that because one of the bosses thought he looked like a Klingon.” Reflectively, he rolled some brandy around his mouth. “He did too, sort of. But he wasn't a goon, exactly, he was a Mob accountant. Way handier for state's evidence than some gorilla who could barely write his name."

  "Are you serious? An accountant named Klingo Bozzuto?"

  "Yeah, it'd look great on a business card, wouldn't it? Klingo Bozzuto, CPA: a name you can trust."

  "Well, tell me this. What happened to old Klingo? Did the bad guys go after him? Because if they didn't bother with the guy who broke the case—their own stooge—I don't see them hunting down your cousin."

  "No, they didn't go after him,” John said.

  "All right, then—"

  "They didn't go after him because they couldn't. The Bureau got him into a witness protection program. That was part of the deal. Changed his name, resettled him in the Midwest somewhere, and found him some kind of job with the railroads. As far as I know, he's still at it."

  "Mm,” Gideon said.

  "Listen, Doc,” John said earnestly, “I'm not saying the Mob had anything to do with this. How would I know? I just don't want to rule anything out. Right now, all I want is for you to look at what there is. After you see Brian's body we'll worry about who did what to who."

  And that was another thing that was bothering Gideon. “If it is Brian,” he said, knowing it would set John off.

  It did. John's eyes rolled toward the ceiling. “Doc, he had his wallet on him His watch was lying a few feet away, busted. His wife identified it. Only about six people live on the goddamn island, who else could it be?"

  They had been through this more than once, and Gideon was no more convinced than he'd been before. “But his wife didn't identify him,” he pointed out.

  "Well, how could she? He was lying out in the sun for a week. They shipped him back to Tahiti in a body bag inside a box. Therese wouldn't even open it."

  Gideon shuddered with real empathy. “Who would? But it still means he's never been positively identified."

  "So who's arguing with you, but who else could it be?” he demanded again. “It's common sense, that's all. Brian went there and he never came back, right? They found his body right under the, what do you call it, the plateau where he was camping, right?” John's arms had begun to flail dangerously near his brandy glass. “The local police say nobody else is missing, right?"

  "Right, don't get so excited. It probably is Brian. But ‘probably’ and ‘definitely’ are qualitative distinctions—"

  "Doc, Doc, don't do this to me. You know what Charlie says about you?"

  Charlie was Charlie Applewhite, John's boss, and Gideon knew exactly what the special agent in charge of the FBI's Seattle office said about him. Applewhite had said it to his face not long ago after reading a report that Gideon had turned in.

  "Dr. Oliver,” he had said matter-of-factly, his small, square hands folded on the gleaming surface of his desk, “I have often wondered why it is that whenever we call you in on what gives every indication of being a simple and straightforward case, it always seems to end up being such a wondrously, stupendously, mind-bogglingly, screwed-up mess."

  It had pricked Gideon's temper. If the FBI wanted a cursory analysis from him the next time, he had replied, one in which he accepted things on their surface and told them what they wanted to hear, just let him know and he would oblige. He would even adjust his fees downward.

  "Look, John,” he said now, “the only way I can work is to start with what I know and go from there. I'm not going to accept something as a given because it's common sense. You ought to know that. What do you want me to do, base my findings on what people think?"

  "Hell, I don't know what I want,” John said, yawning. “I just want you to find out what there is to find out, okay? I'm sorry I said anything. Whatever you come up with is fine with me."

  "Fine. That's what I want too."

  "Fine. Great.” He tipped his seat all the way back and settled down, then cocked one eye open. “Just keep it simple, will you?"

  And with that he was asleep, not a man to give a second thought a second thought. Gideon sighed, turned off the overhead light, kicked off his shoes and lay back for a couple of hours of sleep too.

  "Good news, everybody,” he was informed by the pilot's folksy voice as he began to drift off. “We seem to have picked up a tailwind, so it looks as if we might be arriving in Papeete at a pretty reasonable hour after all."

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Chapter 9

  * * * *

  But there is no such thing as a reasonable hour at which to arrive in Papeete. By balsa raft, maybe, but not if you're coming by scheduled airline service. International flights over the South Pacific are overnight affairs, geared to arrive on the far side of the ocean—in Auckland, or Los Angeles, or Santiago—at a decent hour of the morning, which means they touch down in Tahiti at midnight if you're lucky, or 3 A.M. if you're not.

  John and Gideon weren't. They arrived at Papeete's Faaa Airport at 2:45 A.M. Gideon was not at his best. When he traveled he generally tried to follow the rules laid down by his old professor, Abe Goldstein, in his field anthropology course. Rule One was: never arrive in a strange place at night on an empty stomach. “In the dark and with a low blood sugar level,” Abe had warned with somber emphasis, “new places don't look so hot."

  Well, there was nothing wrong with his blood sugar level. The breakfast of eggs Benedict served just before landing had been wonderful, and he had amazed himself by eating all of it a bare three hours after dinner, but with less than two hours of sleep in between he was queasy and unsettled. And that second cognac, which had seemed like a good idea at the time, didn't seem like one now. In addition, there was the surreal jet-age shock that came from having stepped into an upholstered canister in funky, familiar L.A., relaxing for the duration of a couple of good meals, and then stepping out of it into a place where everything was abruptly exotic: the snatches of conversation in liquid French and soft, rhythmic Tahitian, the smells, the noises, the way people walked and gestured, the moist, tropical air as thick as cream.

  They walked through the marble-walled, open-air lobby, past groups consisting mostly of excited, handsome, bronze-skinned Tahitians, many of the women with flowers in their hair and flower leis in their hands, waiting to greet returnees. At the curbside in front, where Nick had promised to have someone on hand to pick them up, hotel and travel agency vans were lined up with open doors. Beside them, staff members, mostly French or American, were marking off their clipboard checklists in the light of the street lamps, greeting their travel-dazed charges with only slightly forced smiles, and loading them efficiently into the vans, docile and subdued, each with a lei now draped over his or her slumping shoulders.

  John looked on with narrowed eyes. “If anybody tries to put a lei around my neck,” he told Gideon, “they're dead meat. I'm telling you.” John had had three cognacs after dinner, not two, and he was clearly regretting it.

  "It looks as if you don't have anything to worry about,” Gideon said, scanning the names on the vans. Tahiti Nui Travel, Sofitel Maeva Beach, Tahitian Odyssey Adventure, la Orana Tours, Aroma Travel..." There's nothing here from the Shangri-La."

  "Ther
e's gotta be. If Nick said he arranged—"

  "Johnny! Over here!"

  Shambling toward them from the lobby was a large, loose-limbed man in his sixties, wearing shorts, tank top, and thongs. Even from forty feet away, Gideon could see the fuzzy mat of light hair that covered his shoulders and arms.

  John brightened. “Nick! What are you doing here? It's the middle of the night."

  "Well, hell, I thought I'd take one more crack at convincing you to bunk at my place. There's all kinds of room. You too, Dr. Oliver.” He stuck out his hand. “Nick Druett. Nick."

  Gideon shook the offered hand. “Gideon."

  "What do you say, John?"

  John shook his head. “Wouldn't work, Unc. I already explained why."

  "Explain it again, would you? I didn't quite get it the first time."

  "Because,” John said, “when you're coming to look into a fishy death in the family, the last place you want to stay is the family homestead. It cramps your style."

  "But why? We wouldn't get in your way, you know that."

  "That's not the point, Nick,” John said patiently.

  "Well, what is the point?” Angrily, Nick pushed shaggy, thinning hair somewhere between blond and white from his forehead. “You can't actually think that anyone in the family had anything to do with it, can you?"

  John looked uncomfortable. “It's been known to happen."

  Gideon was surprised. Not once had John mentioned the possibility of his family's involvement in Brian's death. That was like him, though; he would have felt disloyal bringing up family suspicions to an outsider, even to Gideon. But he was a good cop too; he wouldn't have discounted them either.